I would like to share with you this Thai Cuisine Restaurant located at SkyPark, One City!
The well furnished restaurant, allows the diners to dine comfortably with pride. There's an outdoor section for dining, well, it get's pretty warm since there's no air-conditions plus eating spicy food may make you sweats 'cats and dogs', nonetheless, if its a windy day, you're on luck! Bonus! Dining in the outdoor session enables you to have take a look on the view of Puchong, if it's at night, that would be extra romantic!
There's goes one of the explosive of the night. The fish in the photo may look pale looks pale, but yet, do not judge a book by its cover.
This tom yum fish is fiery hot despite the sauce doesn't look spicy, well, the fish keeps me eating even though I can't really tolerate spiciness because it was really tender, succulent and perfectly seasoned.
Even though the fish cost me cupssss of plain water, it is still may favourite!
Signature Thai Fish Cakes.
Here comes the tom yum gong. "Phewwwwwwww." It's spicy, really spicy.
I stop drinking the soup after the 3rd sip. Ooopsie. But I would say I love the tangy soury taste of it, but for a coward like me, this is way too spicy.
My all time favourite, Pineapple Fried Rice. Okay, finally something which is not spicy at all. I can die in peace, the fried was GOOD! Perhaps it's the aftermath of having too much spicy food?
Fried Egg with shrimps, forever best friends, indeed a really good dish to eat with rice.
The only disappointment of the night, Pandan Chicken. None of the Pandan flavours and aromas were extracted by the chicken. I wonder why.
But the chicken cutlets were still very tender, at least it compensate the flavour.
Stir-fried kangkung.
I usually don't eat that for the leaves are usually overcooked, taste 'old'' and being too spicy.
But not in here, they did a great job on the marvelous seasoning.
Fried Squid/ Cuttlefish. Umm, well, not so special. Crispy as usual, but did not have sufficient seasoning that day. :/
The overall dining experience was really good,
with the lovely ambiance and gorgeous scenery of the USJ/ Puchong night view,
the food may not be superb, but it is good enough to complement everything stated previously.
Address : 10th Floor, Skypark@OneCity, Jalan USJ 25/1A Subang Jaya
Nestled in one of the most happening foodie street, Uptown Damansara,
Ecole P is one of the exquisite themed cafes found in this area.
The back to school theme wasn't new, but in fact,
Ecole P nailed it right, when comes to the perfect old-school ambience.
FOC snacks and refillable!
Classic Buku Latihan or Exercise Book Menu. This is fun!
Cakes and Mocktails are named after the epic cartoon characters! We had a great time choosing our food and beverages, kudos to the menu planner!
Nonetheles, the environment was rather suffocating as there are very limited space they have, ad the ventilation wasn't that good. Anyhow, thank God we still manage to take a table of 5.
The old school bell.
Drinks are being served in 'tabao' or you say plastic placed in a stainless steel mug, just like the good old days. :)
Oh, did I mention the name of this drink is Spongebob Squarepants?
(Lemon + Passion Fruit + Honey) RM 8.90
We were searching for the cutlery, and unexpectedly....
Taaadaaa! It's all inside the cute cartoon school bag!
Egg Fried Rice, nothing really special, but it taste like the usual fried rice I used to tapao in the economic rice store haha, it does brought back a lot of memories, it's good in the very original way. RM 14.90
I love the combination of the side salad, apples and raisins. Crispy yet juicy chicken chop lied on a bed of soft mashed potatoes complemented with mushroom sauce. YUM! <3 RM 15.90
There you go, the full list of the beverage served here.
FYI, Power Ranger is really good! ( Lychee + Passion Fruit + Mango + Lime + Orange)
Some cute props like the chat bubbles are provided for your selfie moments :)
The overall experience was fun and lovely, you get to talk a lot based on the things you've seen in the shop, and the approach was friendly and happy.
We all had a great talk that night, just one thing I would comment,
HOWEVER, IT'S REALLY WARM, I've been sweating most of the time. :/
Hot summer, Dry wind, sweat like crazy and want some coolants?
Ice cream kills the heat!
Our chemistry lecturer gave us this ice cream project in October,
and yes, it was totally awesome, exciting and inspirational!
People asking about what am I studying actually,
from a pure culinary arts diploma, now studying chemistry and biology,
"who are you, what are you actually?" some people asked.
In short,
type CULINOLOGY in google.
It's something like Food science+Food Techonology+Culinary Arts = Culinology!
Anyway,
get back to the topic.
Ice-cream, yumm yummm.
And so, our task was making own exclusive ice-cream machine.
Taaaa-Daaa!
It's a chemistry project, yes, chemistry.
Understanding chemistry and apply it on food.
Ice cream was truly easy to make even without a machine or a home ice cream maker , but of course, convenience of these products is unarguable.
But if you have time, why not try making them by yourself which gives you more satisfaction?
And I'm telling you, the ice-cream made by simple mechanism is NOT inferior to the ice cream you buy outside. :)
# Rule 1 : Thermal Insulation
Having a good thermal insulation as the outer layer is important, in order to pertain the freezing cold temperature inside to freeze your ice cream mixture. Plastics is a good thermal insulator but not as good as wood or ceramic. If plastics is being used, the heat transfer will be taken place faster, and this cause the coolants to lose its coldness, as temperature increase.
We decided to use ceramic flower pot, since I have a few at home. However, the main point of using it is because of its excellent thermal insulation property which helps to maintain and prolong the cool temperature of coolants inside the flower pot while freezing and churning the ice cream mixture.
We actually use ikea chair pad, a polypropene sheet to line the inner part of the ceramic pot to maximize the cooling and freezing process.
Temperature is crucial in making ice cream!
If the temperature is not cold enough,you might get whipped cream before it is cold enough to freeze the mixture for the ice cream (since you are going to churn your ice cream continuously).
#Rule 2 Fast, fast, fast cooling of ice-cream mixture!
As for the inner container where the ice cream mixture would be held, a normal milk powder tin is being used. Tin has high thermal conduction, which allows heat transfer to occur in higher rate, cooling and freezing the ice cream mixture more efficiently.
You know what, if the internal container is not good in thermal conducting, you might get whipped cream even before your ice-cream mixture can be frozen to make ice cream( since you still churn it continously)!
Therefore, having a good thermal insulator as outer container and good thermal conductor as the inner container serves the function right!.
#Rule 3 : Churn while freezing, Do it Fast, Scrap it more!
For the spindle, I bought stainless steel ruler as the scrapper by screwing them into a small wood roller. The bearing was also attached on the wood roller to ease and lubricate the spinning movement of the spindle.
When the ice-cream mixture is being frozen, it is crucial to crush the ice crystals into smaller and finer crystals to achieve a silky smooth texture. On the other hand, the spindle also helps to incorporate air into the ice cream mixture, giving the ice-cream a better volume. Scrapping of the ice-cream mixture in the tube aids in making better quality of ice cream, as the ice crystals formed are being crushed and mashed more frequently, and also, helps the formation of ice cream faster by distributing the heat out from the ice cream mixture.
(This means that, you don't need to worry having frozen ice cream on the side of the container, and the center part remains liquid.)
To spin the spindle, we thought of using a hand crank or a bridge, but the price of these attachments aren't practical for a small machine project. And therefore, we used this household hand driller to operate the spindle, it helps a lot, seriously. We hammered a nail into the center of the wood roller vertically until half way, wrapped it with whole lots of duct tape, for the grip of the hand driller.
#Rule 4 : Cold, Very cold, Freezing Cold!
Forget about liquid nitrogen and dry ice when you can get your superior quality of ice-cream with cheap materials. Use ice and salt, that's it! Ice itself has melting point/ freezing point of 0 Celsius, but when salt is being added, it lowers down the melting point, this means that now the temperature remains under 0C albeit some of the ice have melted into liquid form. Here, we used 500g of Salt to 1 kg of ice.
In fact, adding little a little bit of water helps to freeze the ice-cream mixture faster since it has larger specific heat capacity as compared to ice's heat specific capacity. In other words, it helps to absorb more heat from the ice-cream mixture.
I was worried about the machine, crossing fingers and praying really hard, wish that the ice cream will turn out magically. Curiosity always the best motivation.
First Attempt :
I used more than one hour to get to this stage. Too soft, too sandy, taste is good, but overall not a good one. :(
For the first attempt, I didn't have enough ice cubes, so I filled through half way, and that's no really efficient. Besides that, I stabilize the milk tin, sot that only the spindle turns instead of the whole milk tin.
From here, I realised that, it's better for the milk tin to spin together with the spindle, in fact, double spinning, double effect...
And it works!
Second Attempt:
Jason made a wood rack to hold the hand driller, brilliant! :)
Taaaa-Daaa, and this is what we get!
Oreo Vanilla Ice Cream
This ice cream is farrrrrrrr better than the first attempt, it is too good that can't be described.
Smooth and rich, everything is just so right. :D
We are happy kids after having a great success in making ice cream, and so we make can drinks sorbet. :)
