Merdeka Stuff and Lemon Rosemary Chicken

So how was your pre-Merdeka celebration?

I celebrated mine the usual way. I had Chinese class. LOL!

OK... OK... then I had dinner, did a little shopping and at 11.30pm, decided to go out into town with my friend.

Bad move. Seremban was a mass of traffic jams the entire day due to road blockades for the Merdeka celebrations and it culminated around midnight.

So as you will see from the photos below, all traffic reached to a standstill before the Petronas station before the Bukit Rasah bridge in town.

Then the road became a mass of activities. The Petronas station must have made a fortune that night with all the stranded car passengers dropping in for some refreshments.

Sitting in the car, we managed to have front seats for the firework display that night.

Boring... what's the fun in seeing money burst into spectacular colors for the few short seconds? Anyway, it was rather interesting seeing people come out of their cars. Rows of motorcycles zooming by.. do you call them 'Mat Rempits'? I did take a couple of photos which didn't turn out clearly.

In the photo below, this half naked patriotic chap with the flag served as our traffic guide by directing traffic to an alternate escape route. Thank God!

Here are more photos of 'Mat Rempit' wannabes. Groups of kids congregated here and there on their bicycles. Gosh, can you imagine riding bicycles at this hour alongside impatient cars on the road? It's a disaster waiting to happen.

OK, time to change topic. Remember the Lemon Rosemary Chicken recipe. Yup, I cooked it on Merdeka day. Here's the link for the recipe.

Here's the picture for you to savour.

Verdict: Tender, juicy, sour-ish and with a spicy pepper kick. The skin doesn't brown easily due to it being immersed in lemon juice.

Here I must thank my guinea pi... oops, colleague for generously giving me a set of measuring cups and spoons for this project.

One thing about the recipe though... I find the cooking times insufficient. If you follow the time and temperature, you'll end up with blood on the inside. If you don't want blood inside the roast chicken, I recommend cooking it for an hour.

The coarse ground black pepper is the most expensive part for this dish. Some people might find it weird because of the sour taste, but my brave guinea pigs finished it after declaring it weird. LOL!

OK, I confess, I'm addicted to roasting. Argh!! Help!