I am absolutely in love with Macarons! I think they’re one of the best desserts in the world. Couple of days ago, I had a friend to gave me a box of 10 macarons to taste and boy oh boy, it was absolutely and definitely sinfully delicious!

The box itself was nicely wrapped.

But sorry son, I couldn’t resist myself much longer. The moment I opened the box after taking the pictures above, I started devouring them like some starving carnivores. It had 4 different flavors. I’m not so sure the exact flavors but I tasted peanut butter, something like mocha or coffee? Not too sure on this.. another one is orange or lemon perhaps? And salted caramel.

GOD. I can’t describe how lovely and delicious the salted caramel was.
The lemon had a nice tangy zesty flavor. Loved it.
The peanut butter is yummy!
And the mocha or coffee one is actually not that sweet compared with the rest. It has a bit bitter flavor, which is really nice for those who doesn’t wanna risk going into sugar shock.

I wish I had more, especially salted caramel because it was the best out of the bunch. It was my first time tasting salted caramel ones too.

Sorry I’ve been MIA for a while. I had a lot of of issues with my life. Anyways. I have a lot of pending blogs to write here so bear with with me.

I just wanna write about this awesome mushroom!

I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE this mushroom! When I went to KL last month, they gave out free samples for this mushroom at Cold Storage 1Utama. It tasted awesome. I loved it. It’s great as snack to. The lady told me how she fried the mushroom. The thing about this mushroom is that you don’t have to wash it. You can just straight away open the pack, cut out the bottom (dirt) and cook. The stem is the best part. You just fry with 1 teaspoon of oil because the mushroom itself will release its own moisture when you cook so you don’t want a lot of oil.

Then you add in a little bit of ‘Perencah Ikan Bilis’ (Anchovies Flavored Stock Seasoning Powder) and voila. Done. It’s so tasty that I just make it as a snack when I’m hungry. You can find this mushroom at anywhere that sells Japanese food – Cold Storage or Jusco. Try it!

This has nothing to do with food or cooking but just wanna share and shamelessly plug my new project – Street Neko!

It’s an online shop selling trendy fashion clothing from Japan, Korea, Malaysia and other Asian countries. Please do support it! It’s very new, just launched it today, so we have limited items but more will come soon! I decided not to go with just a blogshop because I don’t have a lot of time to maintain it compared to this. I also like to be very organized and have a record for every transaction. It’s also more professional this way.

So please support it and click ‘LIKE’ on the facebook page!

For the past few weeks I’ve been craving Japanese curry. Whenever my friend do an open house for Hari Raya, he would serve rice with Japanese curry (we studied in a Japanese school hence why it’s very Japanese oriented Raya hehe). So lately I’ve been wanting to try to make one. I read that majority if not all housewives make curry using curry roux which you can buy in store in Japan. Of course you can find recipe to make the curry roux from scratch but it’s just not the same. But what surprised me, and actually disappoint me was that after googling I found out that all of the Japanese curry roux which you can find in Japanese stores are NOT HALAL. Not even ones that claimed to be for vegetarian.

When I went shopping I saw this golden curry roux from S&B, the only curry roux available in Jusco Ipoh. On the package it mentions ‘NO MEAT CONTAINED‘.. at the back it also says “NO MEAT-RELATED PRODUCT CONTAINED‘. So I fgured this is somewhat ‘halal’ to eat, as it has no meat or meat related product in it. I made my first Japanese curry. IT WAS DIVINE. It was so awesome.

But I’m still a bit suspicious about the ingredients. Googling gives me more disappointment because I can’t find any info on this S&B product beside its official website – S&B Golden Curry Sauce Mix. True enough that the ingredients do not contain any meat product.

WHEAT FLOUR, EDIBLE OIL(PALM OIL, CANOLA OIL), SALT, SUGAR, CURRY POWDER, SPICES, COLOUR:E150a, MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE, MALIC ACID, DISODIUM GUANYLATE, DISODIUM INOSINATE

I googled each of the ingredients and was disappointed again to find out that ‘Disodium Inosinate’ CAN be non-halal if derived from animal. From wikipedia, it says:

Disodium inosinate is generally produced from meat or from fish. Alternately, it may be produced from tapioca starch without any animal products involved in the production. Therefore, disodium inosinate may not be suitable for vegans and vegetarians, and in most cases not suitable for observant Jews, Muslims and Hindu, depending on the origin of the product. Like rennet it is normally a non-vegetarian product; only the producer can provide information on the origin although it is in some cases labelled as “vegetarian” in ingredients lists when produced from plant sources

NOOOOOO. :(

Unsatisfied,  I decided to email S&B and clarify this once and for all. I don’t wanna stop eating the curry because I love it, and it’s so awesome. Today I got an official reply from S&B.

Dear Ms.Tany

Thank you very much for your message and interest in our products.

I am Hiroki working for S&B FOODS INC as a sales for Southeast of Asia.

Regarding your question,
The product does not contain meat or meat-related products as you said, but we don’t have any HALAL certificate.

As for your question, Disodium Inosinate in its ingredients are derived tapioca and sugarcane, NOT animal meat.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any further questions.

Best Regards,

—————————
Hiroki Ito (Mr.)

Yay!!

Thank you S&B!

Do you have any idea how happy I am to know this? It sucks that all curry roux are not halal, so I’m very happy to find one that is halal. Sure, it doesn’t have any halal certification, but I’m fine with finding out that none of the ingredients contain non halal product and that disodium inosinate derived from tapioca and sugarcane instead of animal so I can eat in peace now. I love Japanese curry because of the taste and the thickness of it. I don’t like Indian curry that much because it’s runny, and not that fond of malay curry because of the thickness of coconut milk and oil.

No wonder I can’t find any other Japanese curry roux brand in Jusco Ipoh anymore except for S&B.

So yeah, to any Muslims who are suspicious about Japanese curry, you now know that this one is safe to eat. Another one that I heard is halal is ‘Kenko Foods Gourmet Curry‘ though I haven’t found it yet in my city.

PROJECT: RED VELVET CUPCAKES WITH CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

When I browse food blogs, I keep reading about red velvet cupcakes. They said it tastes soooo good. Quite recently I went to Cupcake Chic and saw red velvet cupcakes and decided to try. They were right, it was SO GOOD. It’s my new addiction. So I decided to try to find the recipe and make it but never got around to it. Earlier this month I decided I wanna make it as my cream cheese was expiring haha.

I also found my key ingredient. So how did it turn out?

It was a partial success! It was so delicious!

Why it was a partial success? Because the cupcake was a bit too soft. Maybe I overbeat the batter. I did take a bit long to beat them so that could be the reason. If the texture of the cupcake were just a little bit firm and ‘full’, then it would’ve been a complete success! However, I don’t think it was bad for a first try! The cream cheese frosting was a bit too sweet in my recipe, but the sweetness plus a bit sour taste was still so good.

Can’t wait to make it again. Hopefully my updated version will taste even better :D