It's the start of a Looonggg weekend! #4

Things have been hectic lately and planning for dinners has been rather difficult; what more to plan for Junkie Friday? Normal weekday dinners have been instant ramen or rice crackers, as if it has been a huge junkie week.

Pizza always does it for me. =) And this time, it is Dr. Oetker's Pizza Quattro Formaggi! [Honestly, it has always been Dr. Oetker's] A perfect cheat dinner; it is a combination of 4 cheese pizza, a blend of mozzarella, edam, emmentel and blue cheese. With all the cheeses, it made the pizza really creamy.

I am honestly no big fan of blue cheeses but I do not mind this one. The flavour wasn't as intense as certain blue cheeses I have tasted previously. Having said that, my girlfriend once told me the good blue cheeses are the ones with a strong intense taste or flavour to it.

A frozen pizza which doesn't taste frozen, it was a dinner totally worth the money- AUD $3!

It's spring

and the weatherman could not decide if it should be warm and cold.

That is when I need a hot bowl of miso noodles soup.

And it is so easy to make too.

It is spring, after all. 

It's the end of the week. Junkie Friday #3!

In a span of a week [or less], I went through a 'journey' on Kettle's Multigrain Chips. I thought I'd go wild with the chips by tasting the Honey BBQ [photo not taken], Sweet Chilli & Sour Cream as well as Sour Cream & Chives.

In short, these little ones are 'Grainwaves' wannabes but totally fell short of it. Are those ''flavours'' you can see? [steals quote from Arnott's]. Sour Cream stood out a lot more with citric acid listed as an ingredient. Having said that, Honey BBQ had citric acid listed too! So it was a lemon-y BBQ flavoured packet of chips.

I discovered this interesting website which also had the author's personal "Chips Rankings''. Totally inspiring! Despite that thought, I might actually be staying away from my foes [or friends?]; the flavour enhancers [just naming a few; 621 and 625] for some time. This is a horrible love-hate relationship!  

The next question is "How is all these related to Junkie Friday?'' Well. the binge began on a Friday.

Have a great weekend! We, on the other hand, are very occupied for the upcoming weeks but will definitely try to keep up with the posts. 

El Fresco Italian Restaurant @ Empire Shopping Gallery

One fine weekend, Lisa, Kean and I were hunting for food in a fairly new shopping centre in Subang - Empire Shopping Gallery. After taking a walk around the 'food' floor (where most of the restaurants and cafes are located), we decided to have our dinner in El Fresco Italian Restaurant. This restaurant setup was a little different from the rest - it is located inside Jaya Grocers.

El Fresco is a grocerant (grocer + restaurant). Here, you can actually choose your own meat or seafood from the super market and have it cooked for you for an extra RM6 on top of the meat or seafood purchase. It also comes with a side of alio olio spaghetti, stir-fried mixed vegetables or salad.

They only cook a limited selections of meat and seafood only. Guess a lot has to do with its costs, or else everyone will go for the cheaper cuts :P

I regret for not bringing my DSLR with me, which I initially did intend to bring with me that day as I had in mind to snap some food pictures. Please bear with the 'not-so-interesting' pictures. I promise to make it up in the later blog posts with nicer and sharper pictures :)

We ordered a Quarto pizza - I guess quarto refers to the four main ingredients which are turkey ham, anchovies, olives and mushrooms. Yes, let's not to forget that the pizza was topped with mozzarella cheese. It did not turn out to be quite what we had expected it to be; the turkey ham, anchovies, olives and mushrooms are all divided quarterly. Can't really taste everything in one bite :(

Quarto pizza

We hand-picked a piece of sirloin cut of Aussie beef and Norwegian salmon and handed these to the cashier as he took our orders. We had the sirloin steak paired with stir-fried mixed vegetables and salmon with alio olio spaghetti. I was quite pleased with the art the food that was served, however not really with its quality. The sirloin steak served was well done, instead of medium (which I had requested for), and its taste was rather bland - just beefy, and the mixed vegetables were a bit salty but I guess you have to eat both the meat and the vegetables together. The salmon was OK though I would have preferred the skin to be a little crispier, and slightly more chilli flakes and garlic would be better with the spaghetti.

Sirloin steak with mixed vegetables

Salmon with alio olio spaghetti

Overall, the food was OK. The total bill came up to RM73.35 for 3 main courses (Breakdown: Quarto pizza RM24, Sirloin steak RM18.60+RM6 and Salmon RM18.75+RM6) which I felt it was reasonable. I do like the concept of selecting your own meat and getting them to cook it for you, but perhaps this is why the meat tasted bland.

Location:

El Fresco Italian Kitchen (its inside Jaya Grocer),

Lot 6, LG-G1, Empire Shopping Gallery,

Jalan Ss16/1,

47500 Subang Jaya,

Selangor Darul Ehsan,

Malaysia.