yumchia

happy valentines day. x

2011-02-13T14:41:00.000-08:00

"for God so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life." - John 3:16

freakanomics. and meatloaf.

2010-11-04T06:45:00.000-07:00

i was reading freakanomics recently. Yeah, i’m late to the game. I have a tendency not to read books when everyone is reading them, and i’ll read them at my own time. Literary trendiness is too much for me to bear. It’s the same way how i never really relish book reviews in the guardian – it’s all very well someone liking a book or thinking it sucks, i’d like to make up my own mind, in my own time and not have someone tell me.

Freakanomics is an enjoyable read. it made me ask my own questions. Like why do good restaurants always go downhill after a certain period of time? Is it just complacency of the chefs, or is there a larger price question at hand, some tipping point in which restaurants tip from excellent to unbearable? It brought to mind my time in Chicago, where at law school, the economic analysis of law was the constant theme running through all the classes. “Fair” was the four letter word one never dared utter in class. What’s the price of “fairness” and how does economic efficiency reflect itself in that concept? It was extremely capitalist. A far cry from the more socialist approach at the LSE where our classes revolved around the indictment against all big, bad and evil corporations and we were challenged to look at the wider range of stakeholder interests, which generally included the society at large.

Freakanomics also made me think of meatloaf. Not the aged rockstar (though there’s a whole other story there). Meatloaf – the food. I admit it isn’t the most straightforward of connections to make, but allow me to explain. It’s not that complicated. This guy i dated while in Chicago, AF, was quoted in Freakanomics. He wrote a paper while doing his phd in economics and said some clever things which were quoted in the book. AF really likes meatloaf. AF’s idea of a gourmet meal out was meatloaf from the boston kitchen. There was also that time i almost killed him by suggesting dinner at our neighbourhood Hyde Park thai restaurant – he’s allergic to peanuts and they cooked everything in peanut oil. The date ended in A&E. I guess i knew it was never going to work out when i realised he wasn’t a foodie. I’m not sure i can be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t obsess over food like i do.

Anyway, meatloaf. I haven’t eaten it since all that time ago in Chicago with AF. Meatloaf with mash and gravy. It’s comfort food. And it’s comfort food season.

I pretty much followed the recipe (http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/09/my-favorite-meatloaf/) on The Pioneer Woman’s blog. That woman is genius. She almost makes me want to marry a farmer. Actually she just makes me hungry.

The only part i deviated from was the ketchup glaze, only because i don’t like ketchup. So I made a glaze with Sriracha instead. I would have eaten this with a velvety mash (in they style of Robuchon artery clogging butteryness) and bisto. But i didn’t because i didn’t have potatoes. Don’t’ judge me for eating Bisto - it makes me happy.

boisdale with the boys

2010-10-29T07:39:00.000-07:00

Trust J and K to pick boisdale for supper – it was the whisky club and cigar terrace that drew them there. Couldn’t get more boy friendly than that unless we had gone to a gentlemen’s club. But i don’t’ think the respective wife/girlfriend would have approved, and i’m glad – the last time i went to stringfellows i don’t think they served food.

Still i was grateful to have been invited along for dinner and what was a really good night out. I cant’ believe i’m saying this, but the menu was so sexy. Not in that clichéd minimalist fusion food trying way too hard way. There was nothing fusion about the food here – standard classics done incredibly well. This menu oozed confidence. And confidence is sexy. Very sexy. The choice of starters offered on the menu included straightforward pleasures such as oysters, prawn cocktail, crab on toast, caviar. J has a theory that if any place is confident to put something as mundane sounding like prawn cocktail on its menu and claim it to be a house specialty, it’s either got unjustifiably high regard for itself, or the prawn cocktail is going to be damn good. And it was. A mound of fresh crisp prawns on a bed of lettuce crisper still, dressed with green harissa mayonnaise and mary rose sauce and liberally dusted with paprika. It was a joy to eat. Banish all thoughts and bad memories of the supermarket tubs of prawn cocktail bachelors buy to eat the garishly pink mayonnaise. This was a complete joy to eat.

K and I each went for the caramelised diver caught south uist king scallops, roast macsween haggis, saffron mash, dry curd Ayrshire ackon and spinach puree. How does the very sound of that not immediately send shudders of undisguised pleasure down your back? Well it did that for me and i had to have it. Had to. And it was more than i thought it’d be. The scallops were perfectly executed, juicy, plump and sweet like all great scallops should be. The haggis, fried to a crisp in little mounds, the bits of bacon providing yet more smoky crunch against the creaminess of both the scallop and the gloriously yellow saffron mash.

It was the night for cow. K’s steak tartare was extremely tasty and served with thin cut shoe string chips which were perfectly crisp and a very good thing to eat with the well seasoned raw mince and fresh egg yolk. I could never work out why Mr Bean didn’t’ take to steak tartare – it’s a glorious thing to eat when done well. A bite of the thin cut chips and i declared that if i was queen, i would outlaw all other forms of chips and just have these – off with the heads of those who dared serve me those soggy chunky chips which are nothing short of a monstrous disaster. I’ve never really liked chunky chips – the potato to surface area ratio doesn’t do it for me.

J and I had a rib eye each – he chose his with the grated black truffle and glazed carrots. I had mine with béarnaise sauce, watercress and a grilled tomato. I had asked to sub the tomato for mushrooms – i wasn’t in a tomato mood, and the chef was nice enough to give me both the tomatoes and the mushrooms. The wild mushrooms were luscious, velvety, and tasted like an autumn romp in the woods. We also ordered a side of Jerusalem artichokes to share. The steaks were very good. and i'm glad they gave me the right amount of bearnaise - i hate it when the bearnaise runs out before you're done with the steak.

If the food so far had me shuddering in pleasure. The deserts made me scream in pure delight. Silently of course. I had the earl grey brulee which came with vanilla ice cream, a jam-filled sponge and a marshmallow on a spoon shaped butter tuille. K had the chocolate torte – so rich yet not cloying at all and just completely delightful. J’s oatmeal icecream with raspberries had the perfect balance between the tartness of the fruit and the smoothness of the oatmeal icecream – it also came with a pastry cigar filled with whisky cream which made J very happy indeed.

Boisdale has several branches over London – and to be honest, before this night, it never really appealed to me – i thought it’d be too stuffy and tartan. It was very tartan, and while a little old school, the food is completely delightful and a lovely time was had. Thanks J & K for taking me on your boys night out! x

Boisdale of Belgravia

15 Eccleston Street
Belgravia
SW1W 9LX

www.boisdale.co.uk/belgravia

mr alien's chilli

2010-10-28T08:36:00.000-07:00

As we filed out of spinning class on Monday evening, Elliot, the spinning instructor said to each one, “well done – good effort”, until I walked past him and he said “one class only? Not staying for the double? Lightweight… tsk tsk” followed by a shake of his curly haired head and a big frown. Why do i get treated differently? :( not fair.

But the frown was worth it. I would normally have stayed for the double spin class extravaganza where Elliot holds court on Monday, but i received a text in the afternoon announcing that Mr Alien had cooked a large pot of chilli and help was needed to consume it. I’ve had Mr Alien’s chilli many times. It’s fabulous. And it comes with home made guacamole. And nachos. And fantastic company – Mr and Mrs Alien count as one of my favourite people in the neighbourhood and it’s a joy to hang with them and their lovely family. Plus i always get fed lots. I love people that feed me.

Mr Alien making guacamole.

Guacamole which i helped to mash.

Chilli!

The chilli was rather more spicy that usual. Mr Alien had somewhat overcompensated for the mildness of the new spice mix he was trying. It was still richly delicious. He was explaining how to make his chilli, and i was only half-listening – i figure why make it myself when i can just come round and eat it. He does however put a whole bar of extremely dark chocolate into his chilli, and it definitely shows itself, bringing out the other warming flavours of the stew as it emerges.

Thanks Mr and Mrs Alien – I had a fab evening - the company was, as usual spectacularly fabulous. x

mamuska!

2010-10-28T07:25:00.000-07:00

Y and i decided to be brave last night and travel into the deep south that is Elephant and Caslte in search of chow. Polish chow to be exact. We wanted to go to the fabled shiori for sushi, but alas, they were all booked up for a private event. Mamuska! has been on my list of places to try and Y thought it looked fun. To be honest, I was really glad he was coming with me – i was a little bit scared to go there by myself. It’s probably old age – i don’t remember ever being scared coming to Elephant and Castle late at night when i was in my twenties, revved up with drink and raring to go for a night out at MOS.

We both felt it necessary to have a shot of wodka each to start the meal. And what a meal – we were completely stuffed by the time we stumbled out of the polish café on the second floor of the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre. All for £25 for the both of us. With starters at £3 and mains at £5, bargain seemed like an understatement. I’ve eaten far worse food for £5 – with the few exceptions, most meals bought for £5 have that mass factory produced freezer burn microwaved air about them. Think of the inedible meals that you’re subjected to at some pubs. There was none of that nonsense here.

We ordered Barszcz i krokiet z miesem (beetroot soup with minced pork croquette), Pierogi Mamuski! z kapusta i boczkiem (dumplings with cabbage and smoked bacon topped with onion and bacon), Kotlet schabowy (pork chop with potatoes and salad), Gulasz (goulash). I just realised we didn’t’ have desert which is an anomaly – but there simply wasn’t space. I particularly liked the pork chop – possibly because it was breaded and deep fried, but it was surprisingly not heavily greasy like i was dreading it would be. Hearty, but not artery cloggingly so. The pierogi tasted like chinese dumplings, and there’s something just so comforting about meat wrapped in dough – i haven’t yet met a dumpling i haven’t liked as much as my duvet on a cold winter’s night. The goulash was a little stock cubey and could have benefitted from a little more paprika, but it was velvety and stewy all the same. I didn’t take to the beetroot soup, but it was more because it looked too much like cranberry juice. It did taste very nice and Y was rather pleased he could have the whole mug. The croquette that it came with was a tasty bit of minced pork wrapped in pancake, breaded and fried.

There’s other stuff on the menu that i’d like to try – like all the other pierogi variants, and the potato pancakes. It’s not a place for vegan rabbit like health food – the portions are hearty and the cooking heartier still. But i shall wait till Y fancies another trip there or someone else is brave enough to venture south and take me.

Mamuska!

Unit 233, 1^st Floor

Elephant & Castle

Shopping Centre

London SE1 6TE

http://mamuska.net/

sabor

2010-10-22T09:15:00.000-07:00

JW suggested Sabor for dinner – he was craving latin American food. I was a bit wary – the last time we spoke about latin american food, the conversation involved his very graphic description of eating a spatchcocked guinea pig. It made me think of the two guinea pigs i briefly owned when I was a trainee. I was convinced they were gay – perhaps it was just a matter of guinea pig grooming behaviour, but it sometimes looked a lot dodgier than purely a practice of guinea pig hygiene.

Sabor, thankfully didn’t serve spatchcocked guinea pig. They did however, have a range of food spanning a number of south American countries. They have Ceviche.

I love ceviche. I love raw fish. LOVE IT. I ordered sea bream ceviche which had a abundantly citrusy dressing and a little mound of cress which i ignored. Don’t get in the way of my fish. We tried also the cod ceviche which had a chilli lime marinade and came with toasted corn. A trio of empanadas accompanied with a jalapeno and tomato relish was delicious – lightly crisp on the outside yet meltingly dense inside. We had hoped to try their home made chorizo, but they had run out alas.

I ordered the Pargo Rojo con Gallo Pino, pan-fried fillet of red snapper with a cocoa chilli coating with red beans and a tomato sauce. We also tried the Rabo Encendido, Cuban slow braised oxtail in malbec served with garlic mash and a huge plantain chip, the Aji de Gallina, a Peruvian dish of chicken breast with a golden saffron mash and aji Amarillo sauce. The sauce is spicy, but doesn’t immediately strike you as such – the heat stealthily rises from the back of your tongue catching you unawares, but in a most pleasantly warming way. The Conejo en Salsa de Chocolate, a unctuous slow cooked rabit in a spicy chocolate sauce with potatoes in tumeric cheese sauce – spicily chocolatey in that gorgeous Peruvian way. And yucca fries – we liked them so much we had two servings.

We shared a bottle Ribera (2006 Ribera del Duero, Arrocal, Spain) which was smooth and fruity. It was described as having chocolate hints, but not a flavour i readily picked up. Extremely quaffable in any case.

JW said to save space for puddings, because they did them well here. He’s usually not wrong about food. Alfajores con Helado de Café, Peruvian/Argentinian biscuits served with coffee ice-cream and dulce de leche sauce. It was everything i thought it’d be – comfortingly sweet, but not sickeningly so. The coffee ice-cream, made with their own house blend of coffee, was possibly the best coffee ice-cream i’ve had. We tried also the Dulce de Leche brulee, and passionfruit cheesecake. Dulce de Leche makes everything taste good.

Sabor is lovely – a little bit of a trek up Essex Road, but definitely worth the trek. And for those that can’t make it to the inca trail, this place brings a little bit of gaily authentic latin American with a slightly modern twist to us in the grey of London.

Sabor

108 Essex Road

London N1 8LX

www.sabor.co.uk

le mercury

2010-10-22T06:45:00.000-07:00

le mercury is one of the few places that restores my faith in the belief that one can still find decent grub in London without having to also resort to bank robbery.

The menu isn’t complicated – mostly bistro classics. No faffy modern twists. Just incredibly straightforward and tasty. And all completely affordable. We were a gaggle of girls, and decided against having a three course meal each, so opted for the girl friendly route of a couple of starters and deserts to share. And for our ‘almost’ 3 course meal, a bottle of wine, coffees, service and a bellini came up to less than £25 a person.

I adored the crayfish and lobster ravioli with spinach and shellfish sauce. And i was wishing we didn’t have to share, because i could have definitely eaten the whole thing myself. The ravioli, blowsy and fat with crayfish and lobster meat, the sauce, velvety and luscious and extremely moreish. The moules mariniere we shared were confidently executed, as was the foie gras and duck ballotine with poached dates and thin crisp toast.

I had the ribeye steak with frite as my main, which was a little disappointing – but this was the fault of the meat itself rather than the way it was cooked. The shallot sauce that it came with was a joy, but they had cooked it to my medium rare order, it was just the quality of the meat itself which let it down. The other mains which were ordered were however, a joy to eat, and the table descended into temporary silence as food was shovelled into hungry mouths. We ate between us, roast breast of duck on garlic mash, roast lamb with rosemary, sea bass fillet with minted pesto, and slow roasted honeyed pork belly with celeriac.

I had, i’m ashamed to admit, already eaten 4 puddings by the time i arrived at dinner, so i was happy to go without. Everyone else looked at me like i was mad – no pudding? I did suffer pudding envy as the plates of cheesecake, sticky toffee pudding and poached pears arrived, but had to content myself with a double espresso instead. I didn’t try any, but from the repeated silence that descended as puddings were devoured, followed by the happy groans of gratification, i surmised they were pretty good. And the fact that no one was very enthusiastic about offering me any meant that they were possibly too good to be shared.

Le Mercury

140a Upper Street

Islington

N1 1QY

http://www.lemercury.co.uk/

colin firth. wanton noodles.

2010-10-22T03:38:00.000-07:00

I’m having a blonde phase. I succumbed to the lure of hair extensions – R highly recommended her extensionist, so a phonecall and a tube ride to Finsbury park later, i now have long wavy hair. Never had such long hair before – it’s LONG and it comes halfway down my back. I’m probably genetically unable to grow such long hair, so it’s been a real novelty having long locks. Having a real rapunzel moment.

Took my hair to the movies last night. The premiere of the King’s Speech. It’s a brilliant movie – it makes you laugh and it’s deadly touching – makes you almost want to weep when the King weeps, an inspirational tale of a man who wanted to do what was right, scared as he was, sought help and faced his fears. He might not have fought bears, but when a man faces his fears and fights through the struggle to beat being scared, it’s a brave man indeed. And i got to be in the same room Colin Firth. Who is hot. At 50. Not in the George Clooney way, but gorgeous in his own right.

Here’s a picture of colin firth – third on the right – he’s tiny because i can’t work out how to zoom in.

Enough about gorgeous men. Getting my hair done and watching a movie was pretty hard work and made me hungry. A dinner was needed. I have a natural suspicion of most restaurants in Leicester Square, and on the rare occasion i make it down there, i go to either four seasons for roast duck, leong’s legends for xiaolongbao, or HK-Diner for wanton noodles. A toss-up between the three choices and HK Diner it was for wanton noodles. It’s not Mak’s, or Tsim Chai Kee, but the wantons are plump with prawns and pork, and the stock is luscious. The noodles are a tad limp and not as “Q” as one would like. I laughed when I first heard the term “Q” to describe the texture of noodles – it’s a term used among chinese folk, first in Taiwan, to describe the al dente springiness of perfectly cooked egg noodles. A nice dollop of chilli oil, and i was in business. HK Diner actually has some rather nice cha-chaan-tang style dishes, and bubble tea. And as all proud and proper chinese restaurants do, unabashedly discrimiate against white folk and have a completely different menu for folk who can read chinese.

HK Diner

22 Wardour Street
London W1D 6QQ, United Kingdom
020 7434 9455

make us cake! make us white chocolate cheesecake...

2010-10-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

JM, my secretary, came into my office one day and handed me a piece of paper. I hadn’t asked for anything from her, so i was a little puzzled to be handed paper. i glanced down and realised it was a recipe for a white chocolate cheesecake – the recipe naturally came with the implied request to make cake. I would most certainly oblige. I don’t think i’ve ever turned down a request for cake.

So here’s the cake i made. I brought it into work today for the lovely secretaries, and i think it was pretty good.

100g digestives, pulverised into crumbs

50g brown sugar

50g butter, melted

100g white chocolate, melted

500g cream cheese

100g icing sugar

200ml cream

Shot of baileys

Mix the digestive crumbs, brown sugar and melted butter well and form a crust at the bottom of a 20cm springform tin. Refrigerate till set. Whip cream cheese, icing sugar, cream, melted white chocolate and shot of baileys well. Spread on top of crust and leave to set in fridge overnight. Easy peasey.

The original recipe said to “place a few cut strawberries strategically on the top of the cheesecake”. What does it mean to have “strategically placed” strawberries? What’s so strategic about the placement of strawberry halves? alas, strawberries aren’t in season so i couldn’t strategically place them on the cheesecake. i might have been a tad liberal with the baileys, and it definitely didn't suffer from the lack of strategically placed fruit.

zucca is pukka

2010-10-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

i’m not quite sure how i’ve ended up always answering my phone at work with “[my name] speaking”. It was as if saying “hello” is for wimps. None of that for me. I can’t remember if that was a slavedriver’s inc policy – but if it was, it certainly wasn’t uniformly practiced. And now i’m so used to doing it, i’ve stopped questioning it’s oddness. Till today.

This woman rang me, and i answered in the usual way. And then she asked me who i was. I just said!!

Random rant. I just want to write about zucca. Because it’s pukka. I couldn’t’ help that. i love it when things rhyme. Or sort of. In my randomest of moments, i write haikus. You know, Japanese styled poems which have 5-7-5 syllables. There was a certain ex-friend that used to be the unfortunate recipient of the products of my poetic inspiration. Maybe we’re not friends anymore because i wrote him too many haikus. I do get carried away. But it’s fun. Beats thinking about how to take security over shares. Then again i also like alliteration. Random ranting.

Zucca. Modern Italian restaurant on Bermondsey street. You’d think that the closest tube station to Bermondsey Street is Bermondsey – it’s not. London bridge is closer, and it’s not even that close to Bermondsey. But i digress. The food at Zucca, is again, pukka. I met A&C for Sunday lunch there and we had a brilliant time. You can’t beat hanging out with old college mates, especially not when they make you laugh till your sides hurt like A&C do.

I was late, as usual, and A&C had decided that we would order a couple of starters to share. We got the carpaccio of seabass, prosciutto with figs, buffalo mozzarella with grilled vegetables. The carpaccio could have been a little colder, but it was tasty and struck the right balance with its citrusy marinade. Prosciutto with figs, as ever a classic. A fresh fig is a delight. All we got in Singapore were the dried variants, and i never knew why the bible made such a big deal of them, until i ate my first fresh fig. It’s the perfect thing to eat with salty, fatty cured meat. They gave us a little grief when we asked for butter for the bread, but understandably so because they are very proud of their olive oil.

The usual indecision reigned over main choices, but i finally decided on the slow-cooked duck with polenta. I always fear I’m playing Russian roulette when i order polenta – it can go so horribly wrong and you end up with a plate of grey gloop. But this was nothing like that. C wasn’t entirely a fan of polenta, but a mouthful of this one and she smiled in approval. The duck, slow cooked to fallen-apart goodness was beyond tender in stewy deliciousness. A ordered veal chops which were excellent. C’s grilled squid was unbelievably tender – squid being another thing that could go so wrong – you either cook it for 30 seconds, or more than an hour. Anything in between just yields chewy rubber. The squid was grilled with chilli and came with a large rocket salad. I’m definitely getting that the next time.

I hinted at the suggestion that we skip desert when A&C looked at me in horror at the mere thought of that. So pudding it was, apple cake with an abundance of cream. Pudding also came with A&Cs hilarious recollection of how you can’t get crème fraiche in crete.

Altogether, lunch was a delightful affair, and i will most certainly be returning soon. And sooner still for lunch with A&C - let's not leave it too long.

Alas, i am incorrible and i couldn’t resist. Haiku for the day:

I do like zucca

it's really rather pukka

they don’t serve yucca

zucca

184 bermondsey street

se1 3tq

http://www.zuccalondon.com/

bimbimbap. young bean.

2010-10-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

out of all the cities i've ever lived in, i miss Tokyo the most. it's a bittersweet sentiment. i had one of the lowest points in my life so far in tokyo, but i also had the best fun of my twenties. i miss the constant sense of novelty, the never ending assault on my senses as i sought every experience in a city which has so much quirkiness, tradition, convention and . the language barrier was difficult, but also in part a reasonably enjoyable challenge as i navigated round the city, speaking in broken japanese to waiters, cabbies and the odd businessman who tried to chat me up and buy me a drink. i miss the club we used to frequent where models were given free entry - it made for great eye candy. i miss the ramen counter in shibuya where many a post-partying 4am eating binge was held - we loved it because we could just punch in our choices into the ramen vending machine and no japanese was needed to be spoken. i miss the sunday afternoon walks around harajuku and yoyogi park to watch the teenage goths and teenage rock bands rehearsing next to elvis presley wannabes. i miss the japanese curry houses where we would compete over lunch to test our tolerance of the spiciest curry levels - i usually won. i miss the hospital themed bar where cocktails came in sryinges. i miss the amazing array of takeout options for dinner when working late - especially the man who would bring me dolsot bimbimbap, stone bowl and all, right up to my desk.

dolsot bimbimbap. i rate it among my favourite comfort foods. it's a shame no one offers that service of bringing stone bowls laden with rice right to your desk in london. but i’ve found an alternative source. lunch with J at Young Bean has become a regular occurrence since i started work in the city. we often have bimbimbap cravings and we come to this place to eat the good stuff. Taki, the brazillian-japanese head waiter is charming, and still tries to offer us the menu when all we only ever want is beef dolsot bimbimbap and perrier. i couldn't eat bimbimbap if it doesn't come in a stone bowl anymore. it's fantastic, the sizzling rice, the glistening egg, the strips of raw beef, the jullienned mix of carrots, seaweed and greens. you heap your chosen quantity of chilli sauce into it. you mix. and you eat. i like to let my rice sizzle a little more so that hopefully a nice crust forms around the bottom of the bowl which i can then crack into little crisp pieces. Young Bean isn't fancy, and most of the lunch crowd comes for the buffet lunch spread. But they do a good bimbimbap - the sauce is right, the ratio of ingredients is balanced, the stone bowl properly hot so you get lots of crusty bits. its all about the crusty bits.

Young Bean

2-3 Bassishaw Highwalk

EC2V 5VS

martians. and ziloufs

2010-10-14T06:33:00.000-07:00

I recently read Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. Yes. I know. Me. Reading a book like that. The bottom line of the book, as you can guess, is that men and women are completely different. Seems so obvious, yet something we so easily forget. The blurring of gender roles in modern urban and professional life has led to the inability of smart, intelligent men and women to realise that they are so completely different from each other. The anecdotes about the underlying causes of domestic arguments, resentment and misunderstandings made me laugh. I saw in them reflections of reality, of how things were. And a reminder of why it is sometimes so exasperating to have a conversation with a man. Which always makes me appreciate why girlfriends are important – you’re from the same planet and they understand you.

R understands me. We are most definitely from the same superior planet. A girl’s night out for dinner and cocktails and a jolly good catch up was long overdue. So it was off to Zilouf’s. R had been there before and thought it charming. And it was. It had character without being overbearing. And i liked the little decorative touches, like the antique sewing machines littered around I was, to be honest as I always am, worried about any place that describes its food as pan asian. But there was honestly no need for concern. The food was delicious and the portions were entirely generous.

R started with the thai beef salad, and I had sticky pork ribs. They were unctuously sticky. I started eating them with my hands, licking the caramelly saucy goodness as i went. The meat just fell off the bones in the very satisfying way that well cooked ribs do.

We both went for the crispy pork belly for our mains. The crackling was gorgeously crispy. And the roasted pumpkin round was a delight. Roasted till just done, it was a nice sweet foil against the richness of the fatty pork belly. It came served on a bed of pak choi. Always amuses me when pak choi is served like that – i always prefer it done the regular chinese home-style way (as i probably do most vegetables), stir fried quickly with oyster sauce and garlic oil – but the freshness of the pak choi worked well with the other flavours already on the plate.

There was lots of other stuff on the menu i wanted to order too, but that’s okay – i’m determined to come back. My only gripe was with the trio of fruit flavoured sorbets we ordered to share which were a tad too sweet, but the desert offerings had other options which sounded delectable.

As with chats with girlfriends go, our chats soon turned to the topic of Martians – of husbands, boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, toyboys and flings. Of male bosses, colleagues and the gorgeous spinning instructor. I shared the lessons learnt from Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, and regaled the anecdotes from the book to test if they rang true with her. It was a night of conversations laced with much sage nodding and belly hurting laughter as we swapped stories on the Martians in our lives. I’m not sure i’ll rush out to buy the other books in the John Gray Mars/Venus series – there is a limit to how much value one can get from books like that which makes a single point, useful as it is, over and over again to ad nauseum. Though, i suppose it can never hurt to be told one more time – Men are different from us. Treat them like a woman at your peril and with possibly disastrous consequences.

Thanks for a great night R – i had a lovely time. x

ziloufs

270 Upper Street

London

N1 2UQ

http://www.ziloufs.com/

does sex sell? il bordello.

2010-10-08T03:17:00.000-07:00

My neighbours (i still can’t quite work out if they’re next door or the flat above) have sex every Thursday morning. The first time i got rudely awoken by the creaking sounds, i cursed – who on earth does DIY at 7.30am? and then for weeks after, i questioned, why is he trying to cut up MDF at this time ? and why can’t he get a frigging new less creaky saw or one of those cool woodwork gadgets that ty pennington uses on “extreme makeover – home improvement”? (i haven’t watched EMHI for a long time, it makes me cry. I am a real weepy sucker). Can’t he just cut up the frigging piece of wood and just be done with it instead of doing this EVERY WEEK for 3 minutes? Then it twigged. I can be so thick sometimes. Ah. Poor girl. 3 minutes!? Sometimes even less…i reckon the bloke must be swiss german. Swiss german precision and efficiency y’know. Leisurely pleasure must be an unknown concept in their world.

I don’t actually want to talk about my neighbours bonking. I want to talk about dinner. With M. at il bordello. I know sex sells, but seriously, to call your restaurant, the brothel? Only the Italians. The sister restaurant is named La Figa, which literally means The Fig. Nothing wrong you say, except that every Italian speaker will tell you that’s a euphemism for a part of the female anatomy.

Then again, i don’t’ care what you call a restaurant, call it the Rat Hole if you’d like. As long as the food’s tasty. And it is well tasty here at Il Bordello. And it’s delicious at La Figa too. What to eat what to eat what to eat? As i perused the menu and debated the choices in great detail, i was grateful that M is one of the more patient people i know – he has to be – he shared a room at slavedrivers inc. with me for 6 long months in which i whined, talked far too much, drew him pictures on our shared whiteboard, and imposed general queen-like, spoilt princess behaviour on him. I think he’s even watched me cry once. very occasionally i gave him some work to do and hopefully taught him some good nerdy derivatives stuff – which i suppose was the main purpose of him being subject to my idiosyncrasies.

My indecision arose from wanting to eat everything on the menu. But M was nearing breaking point with my indecision. He threatened to order for me. I went against the advice of the waiter who was extolling the virtues of one of the specials, and went for penne amatriciana – safe classic – pasta scrolls in a rich tomato sauce with pancetta. I asked them to make it extra spicy. I love it that way. Bring on the chillies. They did as i asked and it was spicy. Lashings of freshly grated parmesean (grated with their dinky battery operated cheese grater no less), lots of black pepper from their giant grinder. Exactly what i wanted.

M got the pizza il bordello. It had good stuff like pancetta, artichokes, mozzarella.

We shared a tiramisu of course. Luscious it was. Espresso sodden, mascarpone saturated sponge, running over with cream. We looked longingly at a plate of profiteroles that was whisked to another table. Coffees were superb – you can always trust the Italians to make good coffee.

does sex really sell? Of course it does. George Clooney can sell me anything. But i’m glad Il bordello doesn’t rely on sexiness of any sort to sell me its food – it highly irritates me when restaurants try so hard to be sexy in a bid to disguise the fact that the food isn’t actually all that good. Il bordello gives good honest, hearty Italian food. Definitely worth lots of visits. Just beware the waiter at the door that insists you flirt with him for a bit before he seats you.

Il bordello

81 Wapping High Street

London E1W 2YN

http://www.lafiga.co.uk/

burgerlove

2010-10-07T03:45:00.000-07:00

i’m battling the internal red tape monster at work, or rather, my boss is battling the internal red tape, to get me to new york for 3 months. Can’t-hardly-wait. Here i come baby, my shake shack burger baby. I hope they put me up near union square so that i’m close to the shake shack (and also this really terrific shoe shop). I know it’s insane – my level of endearment to the shake shack burger knows no bounds. It’s love i tell you. True love.

I will write about the shake shack burger when i’m finally in new york. I will – nothing will stop me. You’ll beg me to stop my burger love soliloquies. But i bring good news, i’ve found a burger in London that finally makes me smile. It makes me smile in the way only being in love does. I felt like i was cheating on the shake shack burger the first time i bit into this London hunk and fell again in love, but alas, i figure it’s not cheating when it’s in a different time zone. Postcode fidelity. I kid. I would cause grievous bodily harm (or worse) to any bloke that ever dares to cheats on me anywhere he is on the globe. Put my black belt in taekwondo to some good use. I kid too. I don’t know what i’d do. Eat more pasta and cry i think. And then cause some real harm – not the physical kind. It’ll be worse.

My London hunk was found at the Luxe – or to be precise, the takeout stand of the Luxe in Spitalfields. The nice man in the stand toasted my bun because i asked him to, and cooked the burger to juicy medium rare perfection. I didn’t want anything green with it. I think lettuce and tomatoes detract from the taste of a perfect burger - the meat juice, the melty cheese, the oozy mayo. Anyway, who are you trying to kid with your attempt to squeeze in your 5-a-day in a mouthful of cardiac unhealth. It is what it is. Eat salad later.

This burger makes me smile precisely because he does what he is best – be a cheeseburger. He doesn’t try to be more than he is. He’s secure in what he is. There are no pretentions, no extra poshness. No confusion. No drama. No grey areas. Just solid beefburger, quality bread (none of that bread factory kingsmill nonsense), a swipe of proper mayo, melty cheddar. His brethren includes what was called “the works” burger, but that wasn’t quite as good. It was trying too hard. Much too hard. I thought about why i didn't quite like that burger at Bar Boulud too - it sounded so right on paper, but i guess, it too was just trying too hard. Don't try baby - just be yourself.

I’ll be back soon my lovely hunk. I love you.

the luxe

109 commercial street, London e1 6bg

http://www.theluxe.co.uk/

i'm okay now. saunterelle

2010-10-05T10:09:00.000-07:00

I feel i should caveat that the last post was written in a state of half-rage and unassuaged pain. Irrational and unjustified as it might have been – things were said that were possibly irrational and unjustified. And so while i’m not in the habit of editing what is already posted, a few editorial post-post comments might be in order. The Boy (can we call him a boy? or indeed anyone above the age of 30?) is not-an-asshole. Not a saint. But not an asshole. I would not be friends with an asshole. He doesn't deserve to be called an asshole and I apologise. That term should purely be reserved for the bottomest dregs of society. Like union bosses. I say that in jest. But only half so. Anyway, misunderstandings aside, we’ve apologised in some form to each other. It’s not the best of situations. But things need to be left as they are. I made my decision, and it was a reasoned one. Nothing’s changed and it is what it is. Life goes on. I am better than dwelling on it.

I have now majorly-calmed-down and had a good long talk with God. Thank God that he isn’t like one of my girlfriends – fabulous as they are and extremely grateful as i am for their friendship. God is much more supreme. And reliable. And infinitely patient as I’ve whined, reasoned unreasonably, cried, and cried some more. He doesn’t roll his eyes, or try to placate me. And He helps me.

So a week of crying-too-much-to-function like a drama queen, topped up by the weekend of i’m-not-getting-out-of-my-pyjamas-and-being-selfishly-self-indulgent. Enough is enough. Sunday morning saw me dressed in a tracksuit and uggs, dragging my heels to the corner shop to get the Sunday papers and a baguette. I had to summon all that was left of a smile and any ability to flirt at 10am on a Sunday morning to convince Mr Shopkeeper to let me off with owing him 18p. Hardly would have bankrupted him considering his extortionate mark-ups. It was a waste of a just baked baguette on me. I cursed its just warm freshness as i tried to slice it into rounds to make garlic bread – the only thing i could reasonably fathom subsisting on that day. I burnt the first lot in my zealous quest for garlic crispiness and cursed some more. I’d not usually advocate a diet of white bread, butter and a whole head of garlic. But comfort food has no rules. You eat what you like to stop the pain and the voice in the head that makes you rage and cry. You eat what appears to be the food version of a duvet. And hey, they say garlic is a superfood, and it possibly counts as one of my 5-a-day.

Anyway. The comfort eating must stop. The self-indulgence must be curbed. It is not healthy. And this post is not about garlic bread. I figured a 3 course sit-down lunch does not qualify as comfort eating – it’s the meal of emotionally balanced grown-ups. I have never read a scene in any chick-lit or watched a scene in a rom-com (both of which I am admittedly partial to in my less cerebral moments) where the girl, raw with pain and fresh hurt, takes her tears and her broken heart out to dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant and orders the tasting menu. No, she digs into cookies and cream ice-cream, pepperoni pizza or something equally disgustingly saturated fat and non-complex carbohydrate laden and slobs around in her tracksuit bottoms and a teeshirt with holes. It never is appetizing. I hate cookies and cream ice-cream and I haven’t eaten a pepperoni pizza since I was 14. The heart-break healing process in those books also always takes place in the company of some other equally men-hating sorority, and on a battered sofa or duvet and Kleenex ridden bed. No starched tablecloths or mid-century classics. I suppose I just want to do better than ice-cream and pizza, better than bowls of pasta and garlic bread. I know i can do better. I am better.

Anyway, in my quest to be all emotionally balanced and grown-up, i took myself to lunch at Saunterelle – the restaurant in the Royal Exchange. And i must say – i was most pleasantly surprised. That amidst the pin-striped middle aged men, the chatter of shipping deals being brokered at the next table, the soft furnishings, the starched tablecloths and the over-attentive waiters, i found an oasis of calm.

I started with confit of black chicken leg on a bed of lentils. It came garnished with fried quails eggs and a bacon strip so crisp it shattered with the lightest tap of my fork. The chicken was incredibly tasty. The bed of lentils, a mouthful of health, but swaddled lovingly in cream. Lentils make me think of gypsies. I’m not sure why.

I was very tempted by the mushroom risotto as my main. It screamed comfort. But i went instead for the slow-braised beef cheeks, with purple sprouting broccoli and the most unctuous funghi concoction ever. There was also a sprinkling of autumnal nuts of some sort. Nuts always seem autumnal to me – i see a nut, and i immediately see in my mind’s eye, a squirrel munching on it in preparation for the winter. Nuts are autumn. On a side note, did you know that there’s been a surge in the black squirrel population in the UK? Sad about the red squirrels though. I just read that in the news today. But I digress, the beef cheeks, slow braised to fork tender, and as i squashed the meat gently with my fork, its fibres fell apart gracefully like water ballet dancers in unified formation. Okay. I’m being dramatic. It was very yummy. I left a lone mushroom for the last mouthful and there was much shuddering in pleasure.

There was never any doubt that i was going to order the banana cake with peanut butter ice cream, caramel sauce and peanut brittle. Enough said. It’s like they read my mind and made me the ultimate crunchy peanut butter sandwich with banana and salty caramel in the form of cake and ice-cream. On a posh plate. On that note – i think smooth peanut butter is a complete waste of time, space and the earth’s resources. Who on earth eats that anyway when there’s the good crunchy stuff?

It’s amazing where one finds calm – i suppose it’s a state of mind rather than a physical location, but who knew that mine would involve starched tablecloths and a room full of pinstripe suited men? I suppose the food definitely helped.

To The Boy: On the very off chance that you ever read this blog (you probably don’t and i hope you don’t) – i hope all is well with you and I hope you’re okay. I still don’t think it’s a good idea we pretend to try to be friends right now. We will suck at it. But it is what it is. And hopefully one day, when we’re all grown up, when life’s settled a little more and the elements of the universe concur to cross our paths – it won’t be up to me to make any attempt to make contact otherwise – maybe we’ll be friends then. Take care you. In my prayers. x

saunterelle
the royal exchange
bank
london ec3v 3lr
http://www.danddlondon.com/restaurants/sauterelle/home

pasta and pain

2010-10-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

it's that time of life again - the time where i eat a big bowl of pasta and cry. And soon i will pull myself out of my pit of self pity, deal with the rage by trying not to break anything. And harness the energy that comes from “i’m hurt and he’s an asshole”. Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. And i’ll show you you fucker. I’m fabulous. I love you, but i’ll live.

pasta choice this time. Orrechiette with chillies, garlic, tenderstem broccoli tips and prawns. Simple. Tasty. Clean. I bought a bag of handmade orrechiette from Sibilla who had a stall at the Portman street party and made me wait 20 minutes for a mouthful of pizza fritte. It was unbelievably worth the wait. It was that night i had indulged a chair fetish and gone to see the chairs being displayed at Timothy Mark as part of the London Design Festival. I love chairs – the good ones are sexy – they represent what good design is – gorgeous to look at, cheeky, fun and functional. Cant’ do without functional.

but i digress. Orrechiette and broccoli. Like a bad marriage gone good. It doesn’t sound right. But it works so well. Little florets of tenderstem broccoli – i used only the tips. I’m in pain, i’m allowed to be self indulgent and just use the tips. Sautéed in lashings of lovely olive oil, crushed cloves of garlic, and a whole chilli in a brunoise-like proportions. I say brunoise-like because i just wanted to use the word brunoise. It was no where near the uniform 1/8-1/8-1/8 inch perfection classical cutting requires. I like perfection. I’m anal. But this is real life – cooking for real pain. Not a place for perfection. A handful of prawns added to the swirling mix, tip in the al dente ear shaped pasta. Season, Swirl and Serve. I cooked all this in a wok. Italian food in a wok. It’s how i roll.

i don’t suppose anyone will read this rant and so i feel free to indulge. i’ve neglected this blog for long enough so no one reads it – which suits me. Blogging has never been about the readership, the attention – it’s just been a place for me to write and rant. A place for me to write about the things i love. This is part of my cathartic process. Writing has always been part of my cathartic process.

I’m showing clear signs of a deranged woman – i know that too well myself. The crying. The rage. The more crying. Waking up in the middle of the night with the incredible urge to hit him. The repeated double sessions of spin in the gym. The eating of pasta. But i will do anything to get the pain out of my system. To get him out of my system. I no longer care. I’m task oriented. I’m focused. I just want to get back to ‘normal’. To the even keel that life was before i ever met him. To the way things were before i met him that one fateful evening i decided to stop crying about losing george and go out for dinner. I should have stayed at home crying about george. I should never have met him. I ended things amicably – or as amicably as i could – waiting till the end of our evening together to say what i had to say- quickly, succinctly, gently. i planned to say it. Say it before he did. Because we’re both giant ostriches and awful at actually having the conversation we should have. Then crying all the way home on the tube, and for the rest of the week. Thank goodness for my own office – that in between writing the article on derivatives and project finance, the sobbing has gone hopefully largely unnoticed by the rest of the world. He doesn’t have to know. He will never know. And it’s best that way – i’d like to think i’ve left this whole episode behind me with some dignity. To counter the indignity of having been told in various permutations, intended or not, that i’m not pretty, smart or conversant in current affairs enough for him.

The thing that gets me seething right now is his accusation about being a current affairs ignoramus. So i’m not christiane amanpour. And granted, i take the point about always being able to be more up to speed, to be thinking deeper, to be more aware of what goes on in our world. I am a great proponent of having a view, taking a position, even when sometimes that position is – i need to think more about this before i take a position. I am a lawyer after all – i usually have an opinion about things and you usually have to stop me from arguing my case. But perhaps consider this, we don’t talk about our view of which milliband should have won, the impact of the equality act, the middle east peace process, the dire state of the british economy, whatever it is that ticks his current current affairs boat – we don’t’ talk of those things because we talk about him – we talk about the issues he struggles with, or his ex-girlfriends, or just him. We talk of life. I would talk about the politics, the legislation, the economy – but I don’t’ need to listen to his defence (or attack) of trident, or his views on the credit crunch to know that he’s intelligent. I know that already. I would talk of those things, but oh well, we’ve spent the last few conversations talking about his ex-girlfriends and his gripes with them – turning the talk to trident and the british nuclear defense position just seems, well, incongruous. And he’s not so good at listening anyway. He thinks i don’t have a view because he’s never asked for my view.

i’m not christiane amanpour (who i think is clever, even if her ABC ratings have dropped). But i’m clever. Clever enough to walk away from this right now and stop the hurt and confusion. Stop being in a place where i’m being told i’m not pretty enough, not smart enough, not interesting enough. Fuck you asshole. I’m not perfect, but i am who i am. I deserve someone who’s brave enough to accept me for who i am and love me as i am. I took my head out of my ostrich hole long enough to realise that was what i felt about you, but you’ve responded by pretending i don’t exist.

You love someone – you consider his flaws, you wrestle with the thought of those flaws, you see his strengths and you decide, you love him and accept him as who he is. But now i have to un-love him. And say it out loud to myself each time i want to cry for the loss of our friendship – he’s an asshole and he’s hurt me. I don’t like doing this – but my strategy now is to argue against myself, convince myself that his flaws outweigh his strengths and that it’s cosmic luck in my favour that things have turned out the way they have. It’s not easy to stop loving someone. But for my sanity, for the sake of moving on, for the goal of getting back to normal, i must. But right now, it’s back to the bowl of pasta. I’ll try not to cry.

jollof rice and nigerian indomie

2010-01-18T14:07:00.000-08:00

I was recently accused of being ‘eastern’ (whatever that means, I suppose eastern as opposed to being white and western). it seemed a strange label – being called ‘eastern’ and I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. perhaps I naively think of myself not firstly in terms of skin colour, race, culture or background – I’m just me. and perhaps I just never thought that any of my friends who knew me well would think of me in primarily in those terms. if anything, I am sometimes accused of not being Singaporean enough (also, whatever that means).

that is not to say that I have an aversion to my skin colour (I quite like my tan), race, culture or background. all those factors contribute to who I am as a person. I embrace the fact that I grew up in singapore, that I am chinese, that my default comfort food is rice. but I also embrace the fact that I’ve lived away from singapore for a third of my life, that london is now home, and that spaghetti is also my default comfort food (particularly in spaghetti pie).

anyway, I love rice. I love rice in almost all of its forms. I say almost, because I hate rice pudding. I absolutely detest that stuff. but rather than start a diatribe against rice pudding, I shall sing my soliloquy of love to rice: I love it white and plain. I love it all fragrant and chockfull of turmeric in briyani. I love it vinegared and nestled beneath raw fish in sushi. I love it deeply yellow (or squid inky) with squid rings and prawns in paella. I adore risotto. I love my parent’s fried rice. and as I’ve recently found out: I love jollof rice.

i first had jollof rice when the long suffering O (anyone who’s a real friend of mine is by definition long-suffering to put up with my idiosyncrasies) made it for me. Jollof rice, for the uninitiated, is a west African rice dish made essentially from rice cooked in a paste of tomatoes, peppers, onions and palm oil, which lends to its luscious red colour. O invited me and the DC to her aunt’s over Christmas last year, and there again, was a big pot of Nigerian jollof rice. it was great. I ate nothing but jollof rice (and the fried rice that O insisted I try, I just couldn’t face any meat). it was so good I emptied the contents of the pot into a turkey sized Ziploc bag and took it home and ate it for days after. O’s aunt was mortified that I scraped the bottom of the pan to dislodge all the gooey caramelized bits into my Ziploc bag.

O tried to teach me how to make it, but her instructions were along the lines of: blitz the tomatoes and peppers and onions, fry the rice in palm oil and cook it all together till done. O - I think I need a demonstration (with samples). I wanted to cook it for ages but procrastination got the better of me. I bought two pointy red peppers over the weekend (to be honest, I bought them also because reminded me of Spock’s ears, though that in itself probably isn’t the best reason to buy vegetables of any sort).

anyway, here’s pictoral proof of my efforts. nowhere as good as O’s or her aunts. I ate it with roast chicken which had a liberal dose of paprika.

on a completely unrelated tangent, O and I found ourselves talking about Nigerian indomie on one of our (almost) weekly saturday brunches. for everyone who’s eastern like me and grew up in singapore, Malaysia or Indonesia – you’d be very familiar with indomie, makers of millions of packets of mi goreng asli, eaten with fried eggs and ABC kecap manis by us easterners by the tonne, which undoubtedly has been the saving grace of homesick Singaporean/Malaysian/Indonesian students in the western nations. well, did you know, Nigeria has their own indomie – it’s made by a Nigerian company and they have flavours catered for the Nigerian palate. they have jollof flavoured indomie. DC and I are trying to get our hands on some and do a taste test. Get in touch if you’ve ever had both iterations – we’re curious.

happy place

2010-01-18T06:07:00.000-08:00

I used to have a happy place when I was a child. You know, the happy place in your mind you go to when you're sad, bored or lonely. Mine was a spacecraft – built for one. It was egg shaped (think eerio aarnio-esque), had a blue furry seat which reclined fully in to a bed. And it had all sorts of buttons, levers and dials. There were windows which I would look out into space, and with me on my cosmic voyages, was timothy the teddy bear. All this was in my head of course, the spacecraft I tried to build in my bed wasn't egg shaped and it was constructed out of pillows, but trusty timothy was with me. I was fascinated by the space-travel volume of my Charlie Brown and Peanuts children's encyclopedia, and I would gaze endlessly at the pictures of astronauts in space. They had to eat sticky food due to the lack of gravity in orbit - and there were lots of pictures of them eating macaroni and cheese.

I was thinking about that happy place recently – I haven't gone there since I was 12. But as random thoughts go, I thought about what I'd eat if I were an astronaut. I don't care very much for those freeze dried packs of beef stew one finds in camping shops apparently developed for space travel. As sticky foods go, I love sticky rice. I love sticky rice with sweet ripe sliced mangoes. I love it cooked with coconut milk and pandan custard in kueh salat. I love it steamed in lotus leaves with bits of pork belly, chicken and water chestnuts at dim sum.

And as with many of my random thoughts lead to the kitchen, I found myself making these chicken rice balls. Minced chicken (or minced turkey works too), marinated with soy, a splash of rice wine, sesame oil, mixed with chopped scallions and bits of mushroom. The mince mix was rolled into little balls, then coated with glutinous rice which had been soaked overnight. The rice coated chicken balls were then steamed for 25 minutes and eaten with a chilli sauce.

p.s. I still have trusty timothy, though now he resides in my wardrobe beneath my row of suits rather than on the bed in our makebelieve spaceship – I rescued him from storage in my parent's house and flew him up to london with me a few years back because I couldn't bear (lol) the thought of him languishing alone in that dusty store-room.

a parent's love - jindalle and princi

2010-01-14T04:42:00.001-08:00

I know my parents love me because they keep sending me food and other food related items. Every time they visit, they bear suitcases full of my favourite chilli sauce, chicken rice paste, laksa kits and lots of other stuff from home. I've learnt to stop trying to dissuade them with assurances that actually I can get all that stuff in London – it's their way of showing me they love me and you can't argue with that. I have a mate who routinely gets pineapple rice paste simply because she once mentioned she liked it, and now she doesn't have the heart to tell her mom she can no longer bear that stuff. She secretly gives it away. I don't think it’s a uniquely Singapore trait though – comparing notes with my mates, I discover American moms send cookies, Japanese moms send ramen and sushi seasoning.

My ever-resourceful mother had somehow found a willing mule in the lovely SH and he was loaded up with a large parcel for me and DC as he travelled back to London after his Christmas break in Singapore. It proved a little bit of a problem actually meeting up with SH since I had no idea what he looked like. Mom said I might recognise him from when we were kids at church in Singapore. She also said we'd both have things to talk about because we both play the violin. Of course – because I remember everyone I've ever met as a child and I talk about the violin lots. Not. I do love my mom's logic. Anyway, I decided I'd take SH to dinner to thank him for his mule efforts – I figured, we both had mobiles and at worst, I'd just approach every Chinese person with a large parcel at picadilly circus tube station.

We were craving Korean, and DC had read a review of Jindalle. CC was persuaded to come along for dinner and so we trooped there, large package in tow which was being opened and its contents examined as we walked down haymarket. As DC regaled random facts of high stomach cancer rates in Korean people because they eat so much chilli, we ordered a seafood pancake, dolsot bimbimbap, tofu and kimchee soup and marinated pork and beef for the grill. All spicy and chilli laden of course. Nothing beats the cold like lots of spicy chilli and warming grills.

Despite the rather abrupt and random service (there was a slight kerfuffle involving our request for extra bowls), the food was nice. Not amazing. But nice and it hit the kimchee-craving spot. A selection of kimchee, potato salad and beansprout salad to start us off. I always find it amusing we get potato salad in Korean and Japanese restaurants. Perhaps in my mind I link potato salad so closely to the german version that any other version, especially in the context of a Korean/Japanese restaurant amuses me. The kimchee wasn’t as spicy as I'd hoped, but we reckoned it had been tailored for slightly less robust occidental palates. The seafood pancake had a healthy seafood to batter ratio, crisp on its edges, and ever so slightly gooey in its middle.

The tofu and kimchee soup had a poached egg and a selection of seafood. The rest weren't too keen on the soup to begin with, but I liked it. I'll eat anything that contains a poached egg – such is the comforting power of the poached egg and its oozy goodness over plain sticky rice. Poached egg, spicy and contains tofu – what's there not to like? The dolsot bimbimbap – sticky rice topped with raw beef slices and a raw egg yolk served in a hot stone bowl – was adequate. The bimbimbap sauce was sweet and spicy and the beef was fresh, but our main complaint was that the stone bowl wasn't hot enough. One of the joys from eating dolsot bimbimbap is the crispy layer of rice that results from the bottom of the rice being seared into caramelly crunchiness as you scrape the last bits from the pot. You need a searingly hot stone bowl to achieve this, and alas, ours had its Fahrenheit failings. i like saying "dolsot bimbimbap" - everytime i say it, i remember the time working late in Tokyo when i ordered in, this poor chap from the korean place i rang came bearing my dolsot bimbimbap, stone bowl and all right to my desk in my office. i almost fell off my chair laughing. it took all my broken japanese i then knew to say thanks, and to ask for what one should do with the stone bowl when i was done - i hardly thought it was disposable.

We had been warned at the point of order that the marinated meats might not be as spicy as we'd hope for as they had been down-spiced for the western palate. They did have a little bit of heat and as they grilled, we waited and poked the meat intermittently to prod it to doneness. While we waited, we talked of Seoul Garden – the chain of Korean inspired meat barbeque all you can eat buffets in Singapore. I say 'korean inspired' because to call it a proper Korean barbeque would be pushing it. the conversation brought back memories, of after school binges on weekends with my high school mates, starving teenage boys (and girls, but mostly the boys would eat like there was no tomorrow) who would pile their plates high with strips of beef, pork belly and frankfurters ( I did say Korean inspired) back to the table where we burn them to carcinogenic doneness on the tabletop grill. This would inevitably be followed by the bottomless frozen yoghurt binge also at this Korean inspired barbeque joint, where we'd make an assortment of sugar laden concoctions involving frozen yoghurt, sprinkles, the odd bit of jello and toffee sauce. It seemed a simpler time then – all it really took to make us happy was lots of food, but then again maybe I'm glossing over all that teenage angst. To be fair though, all it takes to make me happy now is still lots of food.

They brought us a dissected orange each to top our meal off.

As all greedy Singaporeans would, we decided that puddings were in order. That dissected orange just wouldn't do. SH suggested the creperie on wardour street. We trooped there, large package still in tow (we hadn't lost it yet). I was secretly glad the creperie was closed because that meant we could go to Princi. I love Princi – I find every excuse to drop in there whenever I'm in Soho. They do proper bellinis, mean coffees, and I go into gaga meltdown just walking past the bread and pastry counter. I have to physically restrain myself from leaping over the glass counters and stuffing my face full of their puffy slices of wood fired pizza with mozzarella, brie, speck, asparagus all glistening and beckoning come-eat-me in their sultry pizza voices, the trays of assorted cakes and creamy tiramisu, the bowls of devilishly handsome salad. It's enough to make anyone expire from sheer want and unadulterated lust. We took turns at the cake counter making our selection, and we had a strawberry and custard tart, a zabliogone and chocolate mousse cake, a pear and apricot tart and some other chocolate/custard cake that was just as delightful.

teddy bear's picnic

2010-01-13T08:08:00.000-08:00

If you go down in the woods today

You're sure of a big surprise.

If you go down in the woods today

You'd better go in disguise.

For ev'ry bear that ever there was

Will gather there for certain, because

Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

Ev'ry teddy bear who's been good

Is sure of a treat today.

There's lots of marvelous things to eat

And wonderful games to play.

Beneath the trees where nobody sees

They'll hide and seek as long as they please

That's the way the teddy bears have their picnic.

Picnic time for teddy bears

The little teddy bears are having a lovely time today

Watch them, catch them unawares

And see them picnic on their holiday.

See them gaily gad about

They love to play and shout;

They never have any cares;

At six o'clock their mummies and daddies,

Will take them home to bed,

Because they're tired little teddy bears.

If you go down in the woods today

You'd better not go alone.

It's lovely down in the woods today

But safer to stay at home.

For ev'ry bear that ever there was

Will gather there for certain, because

Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

I love Henry Hall's Teddy Bear's picnic song. It makes me smile and I think of paisley blankets on grass, plastic tea cups, egg and cress sandwiches, cake and teddy bears. I think of growing up reading Enid Blyton. Of the Magic Faraway Tree. Of the Famous Five and their adventures. Of Mallory Towers and their midnight feasts. It's odd living in London now, and remembering the picture I had as a child of what England would be like. All I can say is – where are the endless picnics in the woods and everyone eating blancmange and macarons? It was a great mystery to me as a child, what blancmange and macarons were – none of the adults really knew and I made up in my head what they looked like. One of the first questions I asked an English person when I first moved to london was – what one earth is blancmange? No offence to those who love blancmange, but I must say, it was nothing like what I thought it'd be like and i'm still getting over the disappointment.

I digress. It wasn't quite the Teddy Bear's picnic. But we had egg and cress sandwiches and cake. And adult tea cups. Mrs Eclectic Elephant has been very much pregnant and it was her baby shower. She was brave enough to trust me with the baking so I arrived with scones, a lemon cake, mushroom and crab tarts and coffee chocolate cupcakes. and these teddy bear cookies.

all the best Mr and Mrs Eclectic Elephant. And to Baby Yowser, I can’t wait to meet you.

get me outta here!

arcadia

2010-01-13T07:52:00.000-08:00

off the main throes of Kensington high street lies Kensington court – a mere slip of a pedestrianised passageway where arcadia resides. DC and I had found ourselves at high street Kensington having run an errand, and we were cold, hungry and indecisive. hot food was needed, and quick. there was a throng of chain restaurants that beckoned with their predictable food – strada, cote, prezzo. we made friendly banter with the cold waiter lurking outside arcadia as we perused their menu. the cold was playing with our ability to think – arcadia was empty except for a table of two, and the waiter seemed a little too keen to entice us in. but the menu promised rabbit ragu – I had visions of warmly comfortingly steaming, slow-cooked tomatoey goodness – we decided to take a chance.

the interior of arcadia was as far from chain restaurant formulaic uniformity as interiors go. gilded mirrors, an odd selection of watercolours and paintings of old-school italian families all clad in lace and black and eating sunday lunch. the wall was painted with mural of what looked like a tropical forest (sans toucan and other Amazonian features). italian opera piped softly through. the waiters descended on us in trios and patiently answered our inane questions about the menu.

the bread basket arrived – cold swirls of dough and off cuts of cold pizza. I spied a lonely anchovy on one of these off cuts. oh dear God. I thought, silently praying “Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, and please save us from whatever potential monstrosity the mains are likely to entail”. other than being stone cold, the bread also reminded me of those airplane rolls you get on the little tin trays that masquerade as a meal when you’re stuck in the coach class of a flying aluminum tube – suspiciously soft, dubiously sweet, with a little pat of criminally tasteless butter in tin foil. it’s the sort of bread you know you shouldn’t eat (along with all the other stuff on that tin tray), but you do anyway in some inexplicable response to the emotional trauma of being imprisoned in the aluminium tube, often made unbearable when you’re stuck in the middle seat between two fat ladies. I wanted to walk out and across the alleyway towards to neon blue lights of prezzo.

I was undoubtedly pleasantly surprised when I took my first bite of the rabbit ragu lasagnetta. blown away even. prayer does work. it was actually almost amazing. thin handmade sheets of egg pasta on the right side of al dente sandwiched layers of soft minced rabbit that had been slowly cooked in tomato. this was lasagna as how it should be – blousy yet comforting without any of the white stodginess of the school dinner versions. it brought me memories of the best home made lasagna I ever had when I once spent a summer in perugia – Nonna, the italian woman who made it told me how she used chicken wings to make the stock in which the sheets of pasta were cooked in and then layered with tender chicken pieces, fresh cherry tomatoes, mushrooms and slices of mozzarella. I wanted thirds.

I digress. DC’s seafood spaghetti cooked in a tin foil parcel was impeccable. the waiter made a great show of opening up the foil envelope that housed the seafood spaghetti. it was worth the show – the foil curtains were raised to reveal a happy abundance of seafood – lagoustines, prawns, baby octopus, calamari and mussels. all were perfectly cooked. no rubbery squid rings on this plate.

it was soon decreed once our mains had been tasted that this place would get our pudding order. we reckoned that if they did our pasta this well, puddings would possibly be a safe bet. we went for the chocolate and hazelnut tart with vanilla ice-cream. it was reassuringly hazelnutty tasted like gianduja.

arcadia isn’t a destination dining venue – in all honesty, and because I’m very lazy, although I would very happily eat at arcadia again, i probably wouldn’t schlep all the way to high street Kensington just to eat there. it’s the sort of place you’d like to have in your neighbourhood as your local italian – the food is honest and stands by itself without the embellishments of superfluous cream, butter and olive oil that chain Italians sometimes resort to in their quest for tastiness. just don’t eat the bread.

semplice

2010-01-08T02:17:00.000-08:00

I itch for change. I sometimes actually crave it. Despite all my risk averse tendencies, I itch for change. This itch has led to moves across countries. It's led to the sudden and very determined bid to take up a new sport or skill. I once spent a weekend painting the entire studio flat I was then residing in a cathartic bid to scratch that itch and to rid myself of some boy-related angst. There was also that time I tried to learn how to play the saxophone. I'm not sure what it is, whether that itch emanates from some subconscious need to run away from reality, or a physical response to deal with underlying emotional tension. Or perhaps the itch is simply just an itch, the curiosity as to what lies in the land-of-different-from-right-now.

I don't always need a big change. Sometimes a small change will do. Like making pasta from scratch. Like getting a haircut. Though there was that time I came home with punky spiky hair dyed red much to the amusement of my very understanding mother. I still have to masquerade as a professional of sorts in my day job, so I didn't go down the punky spiky hair route, but I did give the lovely Jorych a very wide brief and trusted him to do as he wanted with my hair. I wanted something different, and he gave me something very different. Jorych gave my hair a final artistic tousle as hairdressers do and asked for my thoughts – i told him I looked like a boy. He disagrees. I am pleased though – the haircut's grown on me quite quickly.

The haircut deserved to be taken out to dinner and I wanted to catch up with the fantabulous LG. A last minute ring round on a Wednesday afternoon in a bid to get a Thursday evening dinner reservation proved a little challenging. I was more than pleasantly surprised to bag a table at Murano – Angela Hartnett's Italian venture out in Mayfair. Decked out in my favourite LBD, FMBs (don't you love these clothing acronyms) and my new haircut – dinner at Murano beckoned. But then I read Giles Coren's review of Semplice and I changed my mind. I'm an indecisive woman. But I was curious about a place which converted Giles Coren to risotto. Murano would have to wait.

Perhaps I was v hungry. I wanted to eat most of the offerings on the menu (save for the cod – bad to eat cod). I started with the Giles Coren coverting risotto – Milanese risotto with saffron and bone marrow. I can't say that I had the conversion experience that Giles Coren had. Maybe it's because I am already a risotto convert. It wasn't the best I've ever had (that accolade will have to go to the brown crab risotto at the sportsman in kent), but it was pretty good. A deep rich yellow with heaps of saffron, studded with oozy bone marrow. It was a touch more al dente than I had first expected, but like my haircut, it grew on me quite quickly and I was sad to eat the last spoonful.

The risotto was followed by a tagliata of Fassone beef with French beans and a mixed salad. I chuckled when I read the footnote accompanying the description of the Fassone beef explaining that the Fassone beef comes from piedmontese cows and only the females are used because they are more tender. Slices of sirloin, cooked medium rare, still lovely and pink in the middle and extremely tasty with almost a hint of gameyness.

LG started with the Ravioli with braised Fassone beef, spinach sauce and aged ricotta cheese. She also had the milk fed veal with broad beans, carrot and a herb sauce. I have to admit a twinge of plate envy when LG let me steal a bit of the ravioli – it was blousy as ravioli should be. The veal was very tender and the carrot puree a nice touch.

We shared a pudding – a pairing of rum baba with an almond and chocolate tart with Chantilly cream and pistachio ice-cream. It came with a rather large chocolate pistachio crisp. I was secretly pleased LG didn't really take to the rum baba because I love rum baba – I love the texture, the sponginess in my mouth, oozing with rum as your jaws clamp down on it– the sweetness of the sponge against the hint of spicy heat of the rum, the richness of the cream. It makes a perfect bite.

I'm not sure the itch will ever be sufficiently scratched. It's been somewhat soothed by my haircut, dinner and an evening spent with a loved friend and remembering that I have much to be content about and thankful for right now in my present reality. Though admittedly as I write, Google is scouring the net for drumming lessons…

Semplice

9/10 Blenheim Street

London W1S 1LJ

t: 020 7495 1509

http://www.ristorantesemplice.com/

new year's resolutions

2010-01-04T15:28:00.001-08:00

I was trying to remember how I’ve spent various new year’s eves in the noughties. last year, I played poker in a cocktail dress and killer heels with boys in tuxes at a casino royale james bond themed house party. I rang in the millennium at the overcrowded banks of the thames. various new year’s in between in strappy tops at overpriced clubs drinking overpriced cocktails. and I’ll always chuckle at the memory of that one year where I spent the last 15 minutes of the year running through a carpark with seanster, pheebs and pilot hoping to catch the fireworks outside the esplanade in singapore. this year, I was in my favourite shorts, flip flops and a teeshirt that says “I recycle boys” – and I’ll have to say it’s been the best of the decade. in a bittersweet sort of way.

this new year’s eve was a duvet evening. metaphorically speaking. I didn’t stay in bed – I rang in the new year’s with my best friends and DC at home. We wore silly hats, drank an abundance of proseco, watched fireworks from my garden. We had chinese hotpot and two deserts. two because we coiuld – homemade pear sorbet. and a melty chocolate fondant cake with ice-cream.

and as I fished for bits of salmon belly with my little wire net out of the bubbling pot of soup, I had a duvet moment – I was comfortably cocooned amongst people I loved and I was soothed in the deeply belly warming way that only hotpot soup can – the communality of cooking your meal together, eating an assortment of bits of meat, fish, vegetable, dumplings and tofu – usually overcooked, in a paranoid bid to avoid salmonella poisoning. and also because you've lost the dumpling you were eyeing and by the time you've found it it's gone slightly mushy.

as the radio chimed in the strains of big ben counting down to the new decade, we clinked our glasses of bubbly and I said goodbye to the memories, the mistakes, the disappointments of the past year and the past decade. I bid adieu to the angst of my twentysomething years, the constant uncertainty of where I was going to be and the novelty and unsettledness of moving cities. I’ve decided to stop running for a bit. I’ve walked away from a move to HK and i've committed to staying at home in London, at least for the next few years. and despite the seeming settledness that remaining static entails, I’m excited about what that brings.

anyway, my rabid thoughts on the new year, when all I really wanted to talk about was fried chicken. new year’s resolutions don’t work for me. it’s odd because I’m absolutely stubborn about lots of things. but every year I’ve resolved to turn vegetarian, train more, watch less telly – i do the exact opposite, I eat lots of steak, refuse to go to the gym and slob in front of the telly for hours on end. it’s classically human – you want to have what you can't. you want to do what you can't.

so anyway, rather than face the inevitable disappointment of failure to stick to well intentioned goals, I’ve simpler resolutions for this year and for the decade: to laugh more, to have deeper friendships, to be (more) fabulous. and to eat more fried chicken. simply because I love fried chicken and life’s too short to not eat fried chicken.

first day back at work, and I’ve done reasonably well. I’ve gone for a run and did quite a lot of productive delegation. but I also forgot to eat lunch, so come dinner time I was hungry. DC asked what was cooking, and I said, fried chicken.

bitesized pieces of chicken thigh fillet, marinated in soy sauce, chilli bean paste and sesame oil, dredged lightly in flour, bathed again in egg and then lovingly panko-ed and fried in hot sunflower oil. lovingly panko-ed because I love panko – it gives a crunch like no other breadcrumb can yet somehow still remaining light in its own panko-ey way. DC was a little bemused by my addition of the chilli bean paste to the marinade, but it worked well – a little beany spicy kick beneath the crunch of the panko and the tenderness of the just-cooked chicken. it would have done well with the sweetness of a little Japanese kewpie mayonnaise, but we had to settle for hellman’s.

our meal was not without any virtuosity – we ate our chicken with a crunchy green salad. and leftover mash – because we believe in our household, that potato counts for one of your 5-a-day.

to a new year and a new decade. to more laughter, deeper friendships, being fabulous. and more fried chicken.

peter luger's

2009-05-21T12:11:00.000-07:00

the two maitre'ds that held the power to deny you entry.

"steak you can cut with a butter knife." that's what someone at a dinner party once told me about peter luger's as she rabidly raved about it. i wasn't sure whether to trust her, seeing that she had spent most of the evening being very picky about the fabulous food that our host had made and had nothing but absolute contempt for the food at the fat duck. very opinionated utter contempt. but i suppose taste is subjective and who was i to judge her for saying that vegetables were evil. and being a self-proclaimed overly fussy meat eater, i reckoned she'd probably be picky about her steaks, and she had nothing but high praise for peter luger's.

after the scotsman's directive that i had to go (and i absolutely trust the scotsman about everything he says about food), i was still wavering as to whether i should go. but when tuty emailed saying that she and the gentlemen krauts were planning to go and would i like to join them, i thought - it's a sign, i have to go. and so on a friday evening, we trooped over the williamsburg bridge into brooklyn.

peter luger's was heaving when we arrived, despite it being almost 9pm. while waiting for the call from the maitre'ds to be seated, we hovered at the bar amongst a mix of old men, wall street types with their pucci clad, gucci toting hot totty, families with their awkward teenage sons. despite having made reservations, it was a good 30 minutes before we were finally shown to our table. it seemed rather appropriate that me and tuty had come to peter luger's with a pair of germans - the restaurant had the feel of being inside a bierstube - williamsburg used to be a predominantly german neighbourhood.

we were absolutely starving by the time we seated and we knew what we wanted - two steaks for two, with sides of german fries, creamed spinach. and bacon to start. bacon. this was no place to count the calories or to worry about cardiac health - this place serves bacon as a starter. and it was a fabulous starter - it was a nice healthy slab of thick bacon, nicely streaked such that each bite rendered a burst of healthy tasting hog fat. the bacon was smoky and not overly salty and had been grilled such it had nice cripsy bits at the right places.

the steak you could indeed cut with a butter knife. it was that soft. but the porterhouse/fillet mignon humongousity which was served to me and kraut #2 that day was amazing. although we had a party of 4, we had to order two steaks for 2 - one cooked medium rare and the other medium well. kraut #1 and tuty wanted their steaks cooked WELL. well done steak is a monstrous travesty to which i have no intention of ever participating in. i was quite ready to order my own steak, but kraut #2 thankfully was persuaded to have his steak cooked medium rare and so we shared. if i could do it again, i think i would have gone rare. i do like my steaks blue and bloody. or as bikesterbud puts it, black and blue.

the steak was served with much panache by the otherwise deliberately gruff waiters - it's all part of the old-school charm which is the peter luger experience. the extremely hot plates were placed on an incline so that the meat juices would flow down. the steaks were served sliced, and our waiter took a slice, swiped it along the sides of the serving plate, causing the meat to sizzle further before placing the slice on our plates. apparently the serving plates are heated to about 400F so that diners are able to further cook their steaks at the table if they so wish. i can't honestly remember any of the dinner conversation we had, if any. i was in a meat filled daze as i stuck my fork in and chewed and kept on reaching into the serving platter for more. there's something to be said about aged steaks. there's a nutty depth to the meat when it's allowed to age, a wholesome, heartwarming depth that screams - i came from a happy dead cow and i actually taste like beef! there came a point where i thought i couldn't physically take in any more, and then i soldiered on some more - i was compelled to. it wasn't just the meat, it was the german fried potatoes, with their bits of charred rosemary and sea salt, the luciously creamy spinach...

the krauts demanded that we had pudding after all that meat. it was unbelievable. these two skinny men, eating all this meat and still demanding pudding. and so we had the only pudding that they really wanted, the apple strudel. and so we shared the apple strudel, which came with a splodge of real cream - none of that overly white aerated transfat nonsense otherwise served in establishements all over northern america. here was good honest cream, and with the swollen apple chunks in their crisp blanket, it was the perfect end to our carnivourous meal.

was it the best steak i ever had? i can't honestly say that it was. but it was very good, and it definitely rates among the top five steak experiences. since peter luger's, i've had the chance to eat another steak (which involved some unintended illegality, the details of which are best never disclosed) which was amazingly melt-in-your-mouth-tender and will probably be THE best steak i've had to date (and my source of that steak told me there was even better stuff from where that came from). but the experience of being at peter luger's is something i will remember for a long time - its old school charm, its confidence, its easy informality. i had rung earlier in the day to ask if there was a dress code and could i please go in flip flops, i was told - we're casual. and they are, they're proper but casual. they take their steaks very seriously, they're waiters don't smile. but you have a good time. they throw gold peter luger chocolate coins on the table at the end of the meal - the kind of stuff you get at pirate themed parties for 6 year olds. there's a laugh in those waiters somewhere.

redhead and other fried chicken musings

2009-05-15T05:30:00.000-07:00

i've eaten the fried chicken at redhead and i'm now spoilt for life. i will never be able to eat fried chicken without constantly thinking about the wonder that redhead fried chicken is.

the redhead fried chicken is a wonder. its a frank bruni appvoved wonder. the skin so crisp, the meat unbelievably moist, each bite oozes chicken buttermilky juicyness beneath the crunch of the crisp skin which floats in lightness above the meat. each bite brings you sadness - sadness because you're one bite to no-more-fried-chicken-on-the-plate-ness. and it is sad when you've finished the fried chicken on your plate. I suppose you could order a second serve, but that would mean you'd have just polished off a WHOLE fried chicken. each serve of this delectably perfect fried chicken is a half chicken - a quarter dark meat, a quarter white. and the white meat is just magic - fried breast portions usually suffer from the unfortunate consequence of being dried out in the process of deepfrying. not so, the redhead wonder. our breast portion was plumpily plump. almost more juicy than the dark meat. it was almost as if the chicken had a buttermilk breast implant.

the fried chicken was served on a goat's cheese and scallion bread pudding and a spinach salad. both were delicious.

and as if fried chicken wasn't going to be enough. we had a serve of bacon peanut brittle. yes. bacon. because bacon makes all things better. even peanut brittle. and boy were they right. it was salted caramel in peanut form - maple basted bacon bits interspersed amongst golden caramelised peanuts. one could possibly eat bowls of this endlessly while nursing endless beers (and quickly cultivating all sorts of cardio-health problems). it was salty, sweet and extremely moreish. i took some home and it's sitting in the fridge because i want dad to try some of it when he gets here. i've had to physically hide the pack behind the blocks of butter so that i won't see it and grab handfuls of it and stuff it down my greedy mouth everytime i open the fridge.

oh and did i mention our waiter/barman was really good looking? as if you needed any more reason to go to the redhead.

i did eat other fried chicken in the week - fried chicken being the main reason to go to new york (of course, after shazzer, bikesterbud, tuty and per se). they were pretty good too:

Amy Ruths

Chicken and Waffles - Mdme Jackson took me to harlem to eat at the institution that is Amy Ruth's because i had been harping on about chicken and waffles for weeks. it's such an amazing concept - my two favourite food groups on one plate: the fried chicken food group, and the waffle and syrup food group. Mdme Jackson ordered a couple of sides to let me have a taste of harlem soul food - so we had collard greens, mac n' cheese and potato salad. All artery cloggingly good.

Mama's Food Shop

Fried Chicken as a snack - Shazzer and I stopped by Mama's Food Shop on the way home, cos you know, we needed a snack. I know i'm truly mates with someone if they share my complete enthusiasm for, and don't find it strange that you could get fried chicken as an afternoon snack - just to shore up that deadbeat period between lunch and dinner (at Peter Luger's - yes i know i'm mad). We sat on the couch watching the FoodNetwork and ate our fried chicken - and it was GOOD and a sign of perfect contentment in friendship. Extremely crispy, with lots of blackpepper in its crunch. Wasn't as moist as the Redhead wonder, but it was not too bad. We ate it with sambal - fantabulous.

flushing chinatown

2009-05-13T04:33:00.000-07:00

shazzer and i had been gunning to go to flushing for weeks before i even stepped foot on american soil. i was so excited about the prospect of going to flushing chinatown i bored my dad, my boss and my neighbours endlessly about going to flushing chinatown. you had no idea. thing is, you can't get real chinese food in london. you can't get the gut busting, tear jerking, heart warming chinese soul food. and flushing Chinatown promised this real chinese food. so for weeks, i had been drooling over food porn in blogs and online articles written in awe of this mecca of real chinese food in Queens.

leaving the 7 train and exiting the bowels of the subway station, i felt like i had been beamed into downtown mongkok in kowloon - bikesterbud was the only white guy to be seen for miles and all around us, throngs of chinese people doing their food shopping, signs all written in mandarin, grocers selling dried mushrooms and seahorses, street food vendors plying scallion pancakes, crullers, chinese kebabs. it was surreal.

we headed first to the Golden Mall (41-28 Main Street, Flushing NY 11355) - a nondescript building that housed a warren of the most amazing eateries in its basement. shazzer and bikesterbud had first chanced upon this place when they had followed a troupe of dragon dancers (all of whom were white men, naturally) during chinese new year. here in the Golden Mall was Xi'an Xiao Chi (), a stall that sold food from Xi'an (where there are pandas). i went up to the stall owner and ordered a hot and sour noodles and dumplings. and liang pi (). the conversation with the stall owner went something like this:

"你一定要点凉皮!" - "you have to order the liangpi"
"我刚点了一盘." - " i just did."
"好! 你一定会喜欢!" - "good - you'll love it"

and i did. we all did. shazzer and bikesterbud were probably a little perturbed when i said i was going to order the liangpi - and understandably so, the picture of the dish stuck up on the wall or the idea of cold noodles didn't seem very appetizing. but i loved the stall owner's pride in his dish - it's the stall's signature dish and everyone orders this amazing concoction of cut up noodle sheets doused in the most amazing sauce - a sauce which was spicy, savoury, tingly, nutty and slightly vinegarish all at once. interlaced with the crunch of courgette strips and beansprouts, the soft and chewy noodles and the firm tofu slices soaked up this amazingly wonderful sauce. it was so good i went back to the stall owner to tell him i absolutely adored it, and took a pack to go for eating on the plane ride home. it was great plane food - no heating up necessary, and all that rolling about in my handbag on the way to the airport just gave opportunity for the sauce to reach every crevice between the noodles and the tofu.

we ventured out into the streets again after lunch in search of more chow. we stopped off also at the Flushing Mall (13331 39th Avenue, Flushing NY 11354) - yet another uninspiring building with a random selection of retail tenants, but in its basement, a food court with an array of food stalls selling shaved ice, japanese filled pancakes, scallion pancakes, hand pulled noodles, rice pots. i could have easily spent an afternoon just watching the various stall owners cook their yummy grub. the rest of the afternoon was spent meandering round the streets of chinatown and its koreantown annex - there are whole blocks where from downtown mongkok, you're suddenly beamed into suburbian seoul - nothing but rows of korean eateries interspersed amongst korean retailers, korean churches, korean laundry shops.

it was with a little sadness that i boarded the subway back to manhattan - i almost didn't want to leave. bubble tea in hand, a serve of scallion pancakes and pack of liang pi to go in my satchel, an afternoon with shazzer and bikesterbud and lots of chow - there couldn't have been a better way to spend my last full day in new york.

crazy congee in nyc

2009-05-05T17:44:00.000-07:00

shazzer demanded that the congee gets its own blog post. so here we are.

the congee was crazy. bits of chopped up roast duck in rice congee, the once crisp skin, little slivers of duck fat, bits of duck meat. it was insane. a drizzle of sesame oil and lots of white pepper. we had stumbled into this little underground eatery where for the entire duration, we were the only chinese girls in there. they first brought us English menus. I looked over at the waiter, telepathically transmitting the plea “please sir, please give us the real menu”. it worked. he read my mind and brought us over the real menus written entirely in chinese. and we ordered the real food.

and the little message in the fortune cookie at the end of the meal was so apt.

of course that wasn’t all we ate. here’s some of what else we ate.

I love the manhattan chinatown. it’s gritty, it’s real, it’s huge. streets lined with little authentic eateries, old school chinese bakeries, lots of bubble tea shops, the odd ballroom dance studio, fresh seafood markets with their styrofoam boxes of fresh fish and alligator meat, the old man and his cart selling his pancake batter balls with bach and beethoven blaring on the radio. it’s got heaps of character. I got yelled at by a woman conversing to herself about the size of my derriere for almost a block. it was flattering in a way – I’ve never had my derriere discussed at such length. and I can’t wait to go to the flushing chinatown on the weekend – I hear it kicks this chinatown’s ass.

bananarama

2009-05-04T15:29:00.001-07:00

i recently bought a glow-in-the-dark banana guard on the internet. it got sent to me at work and when I opened the package, my first (irrationally angry) thought was, who sent me a sex toy at work?!?!?!?! it took me a good five minutes to realize what it was. and despite what everyone says, it’s great. I can carry my banana to work in my handbag without worrying about it getting bruised. I won’t lose my banana in the dark either. the only downside is perhaps that JJ still gives me a strange look when I take it out at work.

so anyway, I’ve been on a mission to make good banana cake. and after almost a month of banana cake/cupcake experiments (and subjecting people at slavedriver’s inc with the results thereof), I’ve finally cracked it and made what I determine to be my best banana cake work ever. it’s good. very good.

my version of the ultimate banana cupcake:

banana, pecan and (rummy) raisin cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting and caramelized banana crisp

cupcakes:
125g butter
125g self raising flour
125g sugar
2 large free range eggs
2 very mushy bananas, mushed
good handful each of chopped pecans and raisins (i sometimes use my stash of rummy raisins, and add a couple spoonfuls of rum while I’m at it)

maple cream cheese frosting:
250g pack of cream cheese
50g icing sugar
very generous glug of maple syrup

caramelized banana crisp:
very thin banana slices – I managed to get about 50 slices out of one banana
lots of sugar

preheat the oven at 180C. cream the butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time, add the mushed bananas, chopped pecans, raisins and fold in the flour. divide amongst cupcake holders and bake for about 15-18 minutes. cool. whip the frosting ingredients together and frost cupcakes. adjust the generosity of the glug for the strength of your maple syrup and to taste.

to make the caramelized banana crisps, sprinkle the banana slices with sugar and lay in one layer on a baking tray – grill to a golden brown crisp. it definitely helps with the cleaning up and the removal of the banana crisps if you first line the baking tray with a non-stick liner.

ribon

2009-04-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

if i ever got pregnant, i reckon i'd probably be one of those annoying women who had the most inappropriate cravings at odd times and tortured her husband till she was sated. actually. i'm not pregnant (never have been) and i'm like that already. inappropriate cravings at odd times. maybe that's why i'm still single. menfolk are aware i'd be a terrible and tortuous wife to bear. childbearing would be a trial to both of us - definitely for him because he'd be sent out to procure odd things to eat at odder times. and i'd probably just dream some of these up just to be a pain and to torture him for fun.

reading murakami's norwegian wood on holiday made me crave sushi. which wouldn't normally have been an issue had i been in london. there are 4 within a 10 minute stroll from slavedrivers inc. not so in landlocked austria, land of schnitzel and strudel - and definitely not on the mountains in zillertal where we were. i did like the schnitzel and the strudel. but all those mention of sushi bento boxes in the novel was making me sushi hungry. i wanted raw fish. raw, cold, fresh slices of otoro, suzuki, amaebi and sake, glistening balls of ikura atop gunkanmaki, sweet pouches of inarizushi. lots of wasabi tinged shoyu. anything but yet another schnitzel.

so first day back to reality and LG was drafted for dinner duty after work - we were going to ribon near st paul's. i used to go with regularity when working at a client's round the corner, but hadn't been for ages.

i like ribon. the food's properly japanese. the prices are rather reasonable. a great selection of sushi, sashimi, donburi type bowls, udon, yakitori sticks and other izakaya type food. it's a lovely, cosy, cavernous space with none of the chi-chi pretension of other wannabe sushi bars that give up taste in the pursuit of trendiness. japanese businessmen and nomura bankers come here for sake drinking sessions in the basement. and the sweet waiter who served us was very cute. and very nice. he brought me extra napkins to blow my nose and showed the right amount (i.e. lots and lots) of concern when he noticed i had a cold. i'm such a sucker for sympathy.
eschewing the good value set menus for the choice of ordering what we wanted off the alacarte menu. we went for the mixed sashimi, a couple of maki rolls, agedashi tofu, gyoza, unagi, and a bowl of udon for my cold. one must always have noodle soup when sick. it definitely hit the sushi craving spot. the fresh slices of sashimi was just what i needed. the raw freshness of each slice, dipped in wasabi and shoyu, eaten in one slithery mouthful. i am convinced wasabi is the way forward for curing colds. the udon was a delight to eat - none of the homecooked prefab thick slodges of rice noodle - here were delicate strands in a light broth, with mange tout and wakame. the agedashi tofu was simply beautiful - a simple dish, often wrecked by inattention and . cubes of deepfried tofu, doused in a light soy/dashi sauce, topped with a healthy mound of finely grated daikon.

ribon have a delivery service. so if you work in the city, you're in luck. spare a thought for us poor sods stuck out in canary wharf. no one good ever delivers so far east.

chicken rice ambitions

2009-03-17T14:22:00.000-07:00

i hated junior college. i did make some lifelong friends from my two years in that pressure cooker of a school and i have memories that will always make me smile, but being in the daily company of painfully overachieving 17 year olds definitely wasn't exactly a whole bag of fun. it was made worse when we were asked with regularity to state our goals in life and give detail as to what our college and career choices were. everyone seemed to know what they wanted - most wanted to go to NUS, oxbridge or ivy league colleges and be doctors, lawyers, psychologists, aeronautical engineers or other highbrow jobs. they told us the world was our oyster. aim high. make us proud. they wanted us to conform to their plan to produce a nation of clone overachievers.

when asked - i said tongue in cheek that i wanted to sell chicken rice. i thought it was a noble profession - selling chicken rice - peddling one of the nation's most favoured and famous national dishes. i was going to set up Chia Ann-May chicken rice. the adults, needless to say, were not impressed. of course in the end it seemed easier to give them the answer they wanted - yes, i wanted, more than anything in my life, to join the ranks of overworked doctors in the singapore medical health service. i suppose i trotted out that answer with such regularity and mock conviction that I started believing it myself. Let's just say i'm so glad God has much better plans. I'd be a terrible doctor.

i suppose i might not have been that good a chicken rice seller after all either - i thought to myself as i chopped up the chicken i had just made for dinner - it was a bit of a mess. jase had come over for dinner after church and was watching me massacre the chicken. he also had to help me forklift the chicken out of the pot. i normally would have cheated and used chicken pieces rather than a whole bird which would have been heaps easier. i suppose i was trying to do things properly for once. mrs fei-lo had given me a running commentary on how she made chicken rice, and after reading a few more housewife-esque online forums, i reckoned i could make a go at it. plus i hadn't properly caught up with jase since he returned from chile an age ago, and what better way to celebrate a friendship than with a whole chicken.

cooking the chicken wasn't rocket science - a whole free range organic bird, stuffed with half an onion and about two inches worth of ginger, covered with water and brought to the boil and then left to simmer for about 25 minutes depending on the size of the bird. it would have been a breeze if i had the right sized pot. which of course i didn't. my pot was just that tiny bit too small to have the entire chicken covered in water. so as the water boiled away, i looked on worriedly at its exposed breast, mocking me as it sat above the waterline, taunting me with potential salmonella scares. I did have the pot covered though, so i was hoping that some of the steam would steam the breasts to completion. there was some chicken-in-pot manouevering involved, and it was fine in the end, but not without a little bit of that unnecessary drama. jase was a little hungry and suggested that it'd probably be alright with a little bit of pink. i quoted SALMONELLA back at him. i didn't go through all that food safety training for nothing.

chicken broth from the pot was then used to cook the rice - studded with a couple of cloves of garlic and slices of ginger to give that fragrant edge. and a pinch of sea salt. i should have added a couple tablespoons of chopped onion too but i forgot. it was fine nonetheless. mrs fei-lo adds butter to her rice, but i didn't. i was saving my butter to make cake.

the highlight of the meal for me was the ginger scallion oil dipping sauce - minced ginger and scallion warmed through in vegetable oil. such simplicity but it really made a difference to the whole meal. heaped tablespoons of this stuff brings the bland boiled chicken out of its boring depths. i love it and i made the full fat version which is definitely the yummiest way. mrs alien had stopped by earlier that day with mr alien and alien junior while out on their sunday walk and gave me tips on how to make a low fat version – she uses just a touch of oil, and thins the sauce with chicken stock and a touch of soya sauce – it sounds delicious too and perhaps in my more virtuous moments I might try that one day.

i had a couple of side dishes to go with the chicken rice - blanched tenderstem broccoli in oyster sauce with garlic oil and garlic chips, tofu soup with the chicken broth and spicy prawn and pork wantons. nothing says welcome-back like wantons.

theo randall and the faff of the green/orange/pink bag

2009-03-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

Warning: This blog entry is about a Girls Night out. And handbags. And Girl Friendly Cocktails. And a chickflick. And other lawyer-esque neuroses that only LG and I will fully appreciate. It may cause extreme headaches, more confusion about the female species (if you're not female) or a feeling of extreme boredom. Read at your own peril.

I'm not usually this indecisive. And it surprised me that we had stood in the Longchamp shop for more than 30 minutes having the green bag/orange bag/pink bag debate, much to the amusement of the shop assistant who was trying not to snigger. It was a very thought out debate I will have you know - the merits of each were weighted in very logical manner - mostly by LG. I'm just flappy and I had gone in just wanting the orange bag. We left with two orange bags. So much for the very long green bag/ orange bag/ pink bag debate. Though now I might save up to get a second green one.

Anyway. Dinner at theo randalls beckoned. LG had enticed me out with an evening of her fabulous company, and a chick flick. While LG's company was more than enough to entice me out, I reckoned I couldn't do the chick flick without a nice dinner and a couple of cocktails at least for strength and courage. Plus I'm grumpy when I'm hungry. grumpy rachel is best avoided.

LG is fabulousness personified. I've known her since we were fourteen, and at the risk of embarrassing her, she's always been one of my models of how-to-be-sensible-and-grown-up-and-totally-fabulous. Very good for someone as flappy and juvenile as me. Plus, she's one of the few people who will understand and have conversations with me about the importance of writing detailed and structured holiday itineraries (with space for spontaneity within reason), the joy of standardized filing labels and why organising your clothes by genre, colour and hanger type is completely normal behaviour. And the best way to mark-up and tag documents. But she's also one of the girlfriends I may have to kill one day because she-knows-too-much.

We had decided to go for the toptable offer menu instead of the full a la carte. More money for cocktails we thought. We started with their house apertivos - proseco with apero and blood orange puree, with bits of floating blood orange sorbet. A tad sweet perhaps, but it was a Girls Night Out and we were entitled on occasion to overly sweet Girl Friendly Cocktails.

I was glad LG decided to go for the ravioli with sage, spinach and ricotta, because I wanted that too, but I also wanted the seafood risotto. Risotto is such comfort food - the stuff you eat with a duvet on the sofa and a book and lots of black pepper. I loved the smooth, luscious grains of cannaroli, swathed in fishy stock, studded with bits of mussels, calamari, cockles and salmon. LG's ravioli was beautiful - pasta pockets with the right shade of thinness, and a delicate sage, spinach and ricotta filling which seemed to get the balance right between the cheese and the spinach.

I was trying to convince LG of my very potted version of wine pricing theory which I thought I read somewhere once - that restaurants screw you with the second cheapest and the second most expensive glasses of wine. It's human nature - people don't want to be seen as being overly cheap, so they shun the cheapest selection and go for the tier up. Or they don't want to be seen as overly flash and spending the highest amount on wine, so the go for the one just below. And restaurants are entitled to use that bit of human psychology to their benefit and impose the highest mark-ups on those two bands. But I suppose it's just my potted theory. LG very wisely ignored me, and also decided to ignore the sommelier and went for a second glass of the proseco cocktail. I had to eat my words when the sommelier recommended the second cheapest glass of red - I suppose I was mesmerized by his ravings about how it would raise my meal to transcendental heights and complete my experience of eating the medium rare fillet with salsa verde and rocket. I exaggerate. It was nice. Young, but relatively full bodied and wouldn't overpower the steak. That's what the sommelier said I think. But maybe he was just screwing with me. I've found this article in the Harvard Law Recorder that explains my potted theory with much more articulately.

We somehow pottered our way through the puddings - a lemon tart and a chocolate cake, both served with crème fraiche, which we drew lines down the middle and switched plates halfway. I find it's the best way - territorial pudding lines - to preserve friendship between girlfriends. Avoids the you-ate-more-chocolate-cake-than-me fight. But I suppose LG's much too sensible to ever have that fight with me.

the chick flick wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I suppose I had set my standards so low I couldn't possibly have been disappointed. Or maybe I'm just flappy and in need of some brainless entertainment. We tottered to cocoon for cocktails after, which were brilliant - a little mandatory flirting-with-the-barman-who-is-making-us-the-cocktails-and-throwing-his-shaker-around-with-such-needless-panache. All a little bit of harmless fun and more Girl Friendly Cocktails. It's the only way to end a Girls Night Out.

deanes and a pig and p in belfast

2009-03-04T13:47:00.000-08:00

people gave us strange and pitying looks when we told them we were going to belfast for the weekend. why on earth would you go there?

to eat. which is pretty much my usual answer for why i go anywhere. a girl's gotta eat. i'd been wanting to go to deanes since i read a raving review an age ago.

the ever lovely P, partner in crime, super duper girlfriend and fellow lover of dresses, didn't need much persuasion. she trusts me too much i think.

having left our bags at the malmaison, first stop - st george's market. it's a lovely market - it's tiny, compared to borough, but it's cosy. as we threaded our way through the throng of food stalls, a brass band playing in the background, we walked past a man roasting a pig. we stopped and stared. did we have time for a roast pork sandwich? it was pushing 11, and we did have lunch reservations at 1. P and i came to a consensus - we'll share one, and we'll walk it off. how couldn't anyone not absolutely adore P?

and we were supremely glad we shared the roast pork sandwich - it was without a doubt, the best roast pork sandwich i've ever had. the meat was so utterly moist. i've never had roast pork so unbelievably, lusciously juicy. it almost didn't need the applesauce, which was smooth and sharp with a touch of cinnamon. we tried a little of the herby stuffing. and to top it all off, lashings of crackling. P didn't want her bits of crackling. so she gave me all of hers. again. how couldn't anyone not absolutely adore P?

lunch at deanes was a delight. they seated us near the kitchen, which afforded us a slight view into where the chefs were bustling about, plating up and squeezing little squeezy bottles. we had lunch with a delicious bottle of argentinean malbec which got lovelier as it got decanted and breathed. and as we drank our way through it, we got sillier. it's probably never a good idea to update your facebook status when you've had half a bottle of malbec and way too much silliness going on. but even without the malbec, p and i would have been silly anyway. that's what girlfriends are for. if you can't be silly with your girlfriend, who can you be silly with?

p started with a venison carpaccio. thinly sliced, slightly gamey tasting meat, with slivers of almond and a little cress salad, shavings of parmesean, and little cubes of picked shitake and butternut squash. i had the smoked salmon tart - a warm quivering slither of quiche - smoked salmon infused eggy custard just gently set on a thin, crisp tart base. it came with a watercress and carrot salad and smidgeon of dill and horseradish.

it was a tough choice between the duck and the beef. p had the duck, which came roasted with carrot dauphinoise, pickled pear, confit of more duck, savoy cabbage and a gingerbread puree which made the dish. it was a whimsical touch. the beef (locally sourced no doubt) came with bits of bone marrow and buttered green beans. and triple cooked chips. i was a little non-plussed by the chips if i was to be honest, but then again i've just had a whole summer eating frites in brussels.

puddings were a joy. simple but well done. i had lemon tart - not to curt, but just sharp enough. p had the creme brulee, studded with lots of vanilla specks. she had way too much fun cracking the caramelised sugar top.

i was convinced a weekend in belfast would not have been complete with a proper irish fry (with potato cakes) and irish stew - both of which we had on sunday. it was a little bit of a struggle finding somewhere on sunday morning that was going to do irish fry - Belfast has a strong christian tradition, and the city goes to church on sunday morning. I had been hoping to go to Brights, Chips and Things which i was told was the definitive place to get an irish fry in Belfast, but alas they were closed. we did find a cafe which did the trick. and then for irish stew - the lovely people at malmaison highly recommended Whites, Belfast's oldest bar.

so to all those people who gave me strange and pitying looks - i'll have you know i really enjoyed my weekend in belfast - the locals were absolutely lovely - we were chatted to, given detailed instructions and tips, and just made to feel welcome. people took the time. we had lots to eat. and of course, i had P. any weekend away with P is always going to be absolutely lovely, wherever we are.

banoffee pie

2009-03-03T10:17:00.000-08:00

i'm a terrible friend - i'm terrible at keeping in touch. having not properly caught up with M for ages despite having made several aborted attempts at meeting up for a pint, i rang him (almost crying) - please come cat hunting with me - i begged over the phone. and M, being the ever dependable bloke he is, came cat hunting with me. twice. he is a dear. he always has been - i will forever be grateful for his furniture assembly expertise and the time he bailed me out, cheered me up and bought me lunch when i got pickpocketed in the tube.

i'm trying to be a better friend. and so, i thought i'd make M a batch of mini banoffee pies to thank him for all the cat-hunting company. M's not really a foodie. but there was that rare occasion when he once raved about mini banoffee pies. they're a doddle to make.

i crushed a large bag of ginger biscuits with a rolling pin. one could use regular digestives. it just happened that i had ginger biscuits in the larder. the ginger was a nice touch in retrospect. adding enough melted butter to bind the crumbs, spoonfuls of the buttered crumbs were divided among foil cups and left in the fridge to set. i cheated and used ready made caramel, though one could always boil a can of condensed milk for the same effect. when the tartlets were set, the banoffee pies were assembled with a little smidgeon of caramel, a couple of slices of banana, a splodge of whipped cream (which hadn't really been whipped as such but rather pumped full of NO2 gas in an iSi siphon - less washing up that way) and a sprinkling of cocoa powder.

M - thanks for being a brilliant mate. i hope you enjoyed the rest of the banoffee pies.

l'anima

2009-03-02T15:41:00.001-08:00

i like l'anima. it's been a relatively new discovery, but there's something which feels familiar and comfortable about it.

maybe i like it because it's straightforward. it's unfussy. i like unfussy. it doesn't leave you guessing. the menu comes with a glossary of sorts which guides you through italian food patois.

maybe it reminds me of latium. i miss latium. i'm not sure why i haven't been back in ages...

i digress. back to l'anima. i'd been meaning to revisit since we first came for fluffymonster's birthday last december - i had the tagliolini with wild mushrooms and black truffle and pork belly with mash (and crackling). we didn't have their puddings, because i brought birthday cake from ann-may. they were absolute darlings about the cake - they took our cake back to the kitchen and plated our slices up after the obligatory embarrassing birthday song and candle malarky. anyway, i wanted to go back and eat the exact same things. and pudding. it's not that i'm risk averse - the other offerings on the menu seemed fabulous - it's just that i know what i like.

so when an opportunity to have dinner with G. came up, i suggested l'anima. and G. was sweet enough to oblige.

having lost george (the love of my life) when he went missing a month ago, i grieved for a week. but i knew i was really sad when even though i had stopped crying, i lost my will to eat for almost three weeks (it's come back since theo randall and duck rice, but that's another story). it's really annoying, this losing my appetite business. i never really seriously lose my appetite. even when i'm sick. but for three weeks i ate very little and subsisted mostly on bananas, green tea, bits of toast and the occasional slice of cake because they were the only things i could fathom eating most days. i guess i wouldn't have minded if i lost some weight in the process, but fortuitous things like that never happen to me. so having arrived at l'anima with a somewhat shrunken stomach and my voracious gluttony not yet fully reinstated, i had to be tactical about what i was going to be able to eat.

i'm sure i could have eaten G. under the table. not that it's a competition. but i normally would have. i'm the greediest person i know. so while G. ate his charcoal scallops with n'duja and salsa verde with gusto – he graciously let me steal a quarter of one of his scallops. it was punchy - the saltiness of the n'duja and the slight tartness from the vinegar in the salsa verde. there was also a hint of something spicy. drizzled with lashings of healthy olive oil and served with a chunk of griddled toast.

nothing was going to stop me from having pudding. i decided to forego having a starter. i would have just ordered pudding. but i think that might have been a little too weird. you can't ask someone out to dinner and then just have pudding. so i had the wild mushroom fettucine with black truffle. don't think parpadelle al funghi at carluccios. nothing against antony carluccio and his eternal mushroom love fest. but this l'anima offering was nothing like that. you could taste all the earthiness of the mushrooms - a superb mix of chanterelles, morels and other bits. they must have been coddled lovingly in their own juices and lots of parsley infused stock and more olive oil, giving the mushrooms a lovely, shiny sheen, which when eaten with the scrapings of black truffle and the delectably blousy fettucine strands made me want to smile endlessly. the velvety slips of pasta slid down effortlessly. i could happily eat a whole heaping bowl of this anytime. i'd probably go bankrupt. but i'd be a happy bankrupt. i did think i preferred it a touch more when it had the slightly thinner tagliolini strands rather than the fettucine - it seemed slightly less delicate this way, but no less delicious.

i'm glad G. ordered the pork belly and mash. mostly so that i could take a picture of it for posterity. but i figured anyone who eats pork belly and mash and enjoys it can't be all that bad. i couldn't bring myself to ask for a forkful, seeing that he was tearing away at it with much enthusiasm. but i remember that it was fabulous - it was crispy moistness, with just sufficient fat rendered out in the roasting process, keeping the pork happily basted, but with a lovely golden crunchy crackling. it comes with a smudgeon of a honeyed spicy sauce, which cuts through the velvety mash and brings an added warmth to the luscious, glistening pork.

i wanted to eat everything on the pudding menu. and because i stopped reading when i saw gianduja cake (read chocolate and hazelnut yumminess). i almost didn't care what ice-cream it came with. it came with fiore di latte. i somehow read that to be coffee. my mind plays strange tricks on me when i read chocolate. fiore di latte, though not defined on the menu, literally means "milk flower". the wisdom of google tells me that fiore di latte is pure unflavoured ice-cream made only from whole milk, fresh cream and sugar. the soft pillowy cake was sufficiently chocolately, without being overpoweringly so. it came with a drizzle of raspberry coulis and a couple of poached raspberries, and a caramelized hazelnut. the ice-cream tasted of, well, milk – it was the type of non-custard based ice-cream that only Italians seem to do well (though on yet another rambly tangent, woollie just sent me a ramsay stem ginger ice-cream recipe he says I absolutely must try – he says it’s like eating frozen double cream).

i can’t remember what G. had for pudding. it was nutty and came with a fruity sorbet I think. it was lovely anyhow.

new is always nice. but it's even nicer if you like it enough to go back and get to know it better. I think l’anima’s going to be one of those places. though I think I’ll live dangerously and order something different the next time.

rachel ramen

2009-03-01T16:27:00.000-08:00

I was always remember the day I came up with the concept of rachel-ramen. pebbles, the Scotsman and i had spent a week traipsing round Hokkaido in a little rented Suzuki hatchback, driving to furano to see the lavender fields (and to eat some dodge tasting lavender ice-cream, and forgettable Japanese cheddar), cape erimo for the scotsman’s virgin experience with the atlantic ocean (where we kipped out in our sleeping bags beneath a lighthouse, and pebbles went stalking a fox), detouring to obihiro to eat buta-don, and asahidake where the two of them made me sleep in a tent and where I kept them up with my snoring. the snoring was payback for the tent.

we had started and ended the trip in Sapporo, and there we were, sitting on our backpacks, waiting for the train to the airport for the flight back to Tokyo. and as we waited, I wrote in my journal and came up with rachel-ramen.

I had in that week eaten an abundance of ramen. Hokkaido is known for the miso-ramen variant, heaped with crab legs and sweet corn. I absolutely adore miso ramen – the springiness of the noodles, the comforting earthiness of miso, the heady nuttiness of sesame oil, the bite of bamboo shoots, the freshness of a sprinkling of chopped scallions. sometimes you got cha-siew -slips of fatty rolled pork stewed in shoyu and mirin. I loved it when there was ni-tamago, with its set white, but quivering yolk. each ramen-ya had a different stock base, formulated through years of experience and hours of dedicated simmering. I always felt a slight tinge of melancholy as I came to the inevitable end of a ramen meal and as my soup spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl. it was as I was bidding adieu. it wasn’t just a bowl of noodles.

af had given me the worst insult by having french toast at hubbub just before he came to lunch. his excuse was that when I said I was making ramen for lunch, he assumed it was going to be pot-noodles-esque. pot noodles from my kitchen? and how long has he known me? only since we were seventeen.

the concept of rachel-ramen wasn’t complicated – I was just going to put things i liked rather than the usual ramen toppings of bamboo shoots, beansprouts, sweetcorn and cha-siew. and besides I hate sweetcorn. I’ve never seen the point.

I made the stock base by roasting a kilo of pork ribs till they achieved a somewhat honeyed hue, browned a couple of chicken thighs in the pan, and boiled/simmered the ribs and the chicken with carrots and half an onion for almost 12 hours. the end result was a thick, deeply brown and happily gelatinous stock which was then thinned with a little water and heaped tablesppons of shiro-miso to form the soup base. I wish I had time to get better ramen noodles, but had to do with the ones from the local oriental supermarket, which were adequate to a point and relatively springy. and to these noodles doused in soup, I topped the bowl with a handful of baby spinach which wilted in the hot soup, a panko-ed pork katsu loin fillet, a prawn and pork wanton, firm tofu slices, a sprinkling of chopped scallions and an extra tiny drizzle of sesame oil. I also added half an attempted ni-tamago. I had followed the promptings of various food blogs but when I cracked the eggs open to check on their progress, my heart sank when they turned out overcooked.

af was ultimately forgiven. he did after all eat the entire bowl of ramen. and we have been mates for a long time. I dug out my old japan journal and looked for the page with my rachel ramen ramblings on it and we had a little chuckle – save for a couple of extra ingredients, I almost got it exactly as I planned all those years ago.

sake no hana

2009-02-25T15:20:00.000-08:00

there's nothing good about the credit crunch.

except perhaps, that there's been a deluge of offers on toptable.

and so with the offer of 50 per cent. off the food bill, i've found myself back at sake no hana for the third time, this time with the red hare, mrs red hare and mister yau. i like the miso chilean seabass in houba leaf. try saying that quickly three times. i made mister yau say it three times quickly and it made me laugh. but maybe i just like laughing at mister yau. He's a hoot. We spent all evening quoting him verbatim.

i really do like the miso chilean seabass in houba leaf. While there's nothing particularly inventive about this dish which is practically served at every izakaya worth its mettle, it's very well cooked here. the fillet comes in its just-barely-cooked still translucent flakiness, its delicate sweetness emboldened by the deep earthy miso paste. there's a lone ginko nut and a couple of shimeji mushrooms which burst most delightfully in your mouth.

having just come from a session at the whisky society (where a naked woman (or the perception thereof) was involved) and then proceeding to order every cocktail which involved calpico on the drinks menu, much as we wanted sashimi, we were also in need of a little bit of grease. we might have gone a little overboard. This is what we had:

1. sesame aubergines - deep fried batons of aubergine, coated in a sweet smokey sesame paste and sprinkled with more toasted sesame.

2. tuna yukke - tuna tartare. spicy with a quail's egg yolk atop a peppery rocket salad.

3. sashimi moriwase - turbot, chu-toro, sake, octopus, mackerel. a little bit of bartering went on - try splitting two pieces of each sashimi amongst four (very lovely but hungry) mates.

4. agedashi tofu - panko and bonito flake crusted cubes of deep fried tofu, served with a soy and dashi sauce. the bonito was an interesting touch.

5. soft shell crab with wasabi salad - not so yummy but we ate it anyway.

6. katsu of berkshire pork - more panko deepfried goodness.

7. yaki-onigiri with unagi - unagi-don deconstructed. the just-crisped cake of rice wrapped around with a sweet grilled slice of freshwater eel, oodles of kabayaki sauce.

8. gomoku rice topped with omelette strips

9. mixed seafood tempura

and of course we had pudding:

1. nashi pear tart with lavender and chocolate ice cream

2. white chocolate and pistachio mousse with cherry beer sorbet

3. chocolate fondant cake with milk ice cream

4. walnut croustillant with vanilla ice cream

i had pudding with a glass of sauternes ch. de malle '98. the sommelier was as sweet as the desert wine - he came round to pour out our measures, and was about to leave with the dregs in his bottle, but we convinced him his dregs wouldn't make up another measure, so he might as well top up our measures. which he did. and all served with a smile.

mango tree

2009-02-24T14:42:00.000-08:00

"being married means you have to order the desert your wife wants rather than the pudding you really want." -- mr fei-lo. (i'm not being rude. the nickname for the purposes of this blog entry was chosen of his own accord - curious choice since mr fei-lo and the missus are hardly rotund.)

mrs fei-lo and i were going to have the mango with sticky coconut rice for pudding. that decision had already been made a week ago when we had booked sunday lunch at the mango tree for post-orchestra sustenance. mrs fei-lo was trying to convince mr fei-lo that he should order their selection of ice-creams and sorbets because she was curious about one of the sorbets - it did seem an intriguing selection, including the likes of vanilla-pandan, calamansi, chocolate and lemongrass and something called "fruits exotiques" which frankly just sounded a little dodge.

mr fei-lo was clearly not interested in the sorbets. he wanted the mango with sticky coconut rice too. he did however show a brief moment of weakness which was pounced on upon by the missus. in the interests of marital harmony, they reached a compromise, he settled on the Guay Ob Ma Prow Sob - layered caramelised banana and coconut pudding with caramel sauce and banana ice cream. it did turn out to be rather nice - having a texture of not unlike bread pudding, the mushy gooey bananas and the sponginess of the coconut cake-like concoction. the banana ice-cream didn't really taste of banana, but it was comforting to eat with the pudding nonetheless. i did however notice the contents of mrs fei-lo's desert plate being slowly chipped away at surreptitiously by her husband. and who could blame him? deliriously sweet and ripe brunoises of mango layered with sticky coconut rice, drizzled with coconut sauce and mango puree. it made me think of summer days and the comforting simplicity of lounging around in shorts, flip flops, metal spoon in hand while clutching at a half eaten overly ripe mango, juices running down my fingers with abandon to be licked clean later.

i did have a brief moment of plate envy earlier at lunch - after our starters of fish cakes with sweet chilli sauce and the barbequed pork strips with its tangy, tamarind dip, i was immediately seized with a i-wish-i-ordered-that-instead covetousness upon the arrival of the plates of pad thais that had been ordered by the fei-los. mr fei-lo had ordered pad thai with king prawns - a happy mound of sweet wok fried rice noodles held in captivity beneath a wispy egg net. mrs fei-lo ordered the pad thai with lobster - this came wrapped in its own little egg pancake and a tempura-ed bit of lobster. being seasoned so that the noodles were slightly less sweet than mr fei-lo's king prawn pad thai, the subtler succulence of the lobster bits were able to shine through the dish.

"thou shalt not covet (thy neighbour's plate of pad thai)" i reminded myself of the tenth commandment. and besides, my duck curry was a sight to behold. sitting prettily in its own little pineapple boat, it was brimming full of succulent roast duck pieces. i'm extremely partial to duck. it's probably my favourite meat on par with pork belly. it's probably the high fat content. i stopped coveting. the duck curry was more than perfectly adequate - the right amount of spice, juicy chunks of pineapple and cherry tomatoes, lots of roast duck and eaten with lashings of steamed jasmine rice. a little bartering took place as we swapped bits of pad thai for duck curry.

it was a lovely meal and a fabulous sunday - i couldn't think of a better way to spend it as i took a post-prandial nap in the car on the way home - music, friends i absolutely adore, lots of food, an afternoon nap and being driven home - what more could a girl want?

buen ayre

2009-01-09T06:24:00.000-08:00

I don’t' have anything against vegetarians. I honestly don't. I just don't really understand them. While I might inadvertently go without meat for stretches of time and I am extremely partial to tofu, I invariably have phases of extreme carnivorousness where all I want is a bloody steak. And I like mine quite bloody. I figure, the cow's already dead, you might as well eat it.

I was having one of my moments of extreme carnivorousness. I hadn't been to buen ayre or seen mister yau or fz in a bit, so I convinced them to make the trek to hackney - buen ayre was definitely worth the trip.

And it definitely is. It's exactly what it says on the pack. It's an argentine grill. Think COW. And Argentinean gauchos on the pampas. And a proper asado where the meat is treated with respect and dignity and grilled to perfection by an expert parillero. Don't think uncle fred at the family poolside barbeque charring everyone's steak to bits while drinking way too much Carlsberg and repeatedly saying "oh my, what a big girl you are now" with a leery sneer when you go back for seconds of carcinogenic carbon and try to save the bit of steak from absolute destruction.

mister yau and fz were running late. And I was hungry. So I ordered empanadas to start - little deep fried pockets of spinach and cheese. And a bottle of Malbec. The pretty waitress suggested the Finca Flichman, Reserva Malbec 2007. It was very nice. And it wasn't terribly dear. If you know me, you'll notice I only ever describe wine as nice, very nice, or crappy plonk. I'm not terribly astute at this wine tasting thing as you can tell. The tasting notes say that it was a "rich, well-structured wine with a strong, peppery, slightly earthy palate. Four months in oak barrels gives an attractive roundness to the finished wine." As I said, it was very nice.

i would have done serious damage to the bottle when the mister yau and fz finally arrived. They were hungry, so we ordered the parriladas deluxe - 14oz prime Argentine Sirloin, 11oz grilled Argentine rib-eye, two pork sausages, black pudding and provolone cheese. fz wanted a portion of hongos a la parilla con pesto - grilled mushrooms with pesto. I'm being juevenile - the word "hongos" inexplicably makes me laugh. The mixed grill arrived on a mini barbeque - heaps of meat sizzling happily away, eaten with dollops of chimichurri dressing.

It was a real bonus to find the Off-Broadway Bar down the road where we went for post-steak constitutionals. I love it. It's a lovely space, coffee shop by day (with proper Americano and no frothy cappuccino affairs), stellar bar by night. felt a little east village new york. They have wooden tables, connect four and boggle and you can sit playing games, drinking cocktails and eating their plates of cheese and charcateurie all evening. Next time perhaps.

mmmmh!

2008-09-05T09:05:00.000-07:00

I love cooking classes – I love being told what, how and why to do things, to learn new techniques, to be able to ask my innumerable silly questions about techniques, ingredients and their substitutes.i especially love learning about cultures of countries i'm in through ttheir food. and best of all, I love being able to eat the teaching material.

I found mmmmh! through the blogger network and signed up for their Belgian cuisine class. I did try begging to be let into their already full molecular techniques class (read pipettes, calcium chloride, sodium alginate and such), but such were their popularity that they were at capacity and there was already a waiting list. The Belgian food class did sound intriguing however, with their offerings of beer soup and meatballs.

The class was taught by the all knowledgeable Sergio. an architect in his former life, he now helped run mmmmh! and its multi-faceted food linked services. They didn’t just do cooking classes for budding amateurs, they ran corporate events, team building cooking classes, food consultancy services – and of course they had a fabulous kitchen shop with a whole array of covetable equipment and ingredients – lovely bottles of green virgin olive oil, fleur de sel, artisanal pasta jostle for shelf space with wurstoff knives and kitchenaid stand mixers. All rather covetable stuff.

Putting on our aprons, we started the evening off with a few glasses of house wine and nibbles as Sergio explained the format of the evening. We were a small group of 5 – I was glad to find I wasn’t the only first-timer. We’d have to do some of the work, he explained – I’m not cooking for you lot. Across the room, chopping boards had been laid out and we were ushered across to start chopping up a couple of onions, shallots, garlic and various other mise en place.

Over at an island housing various induction hobs, Sergio taught us to make the base of the beer soup – onions and garlic sautéed in butter into which flour was sprinkled for thickening and cooked off. Veal stock and leffé blond was added in almost equal measure to taste. More leffé blond was when Carlo, former lawyer turned chef/instructor/director of mmmmh!, walked into our class and requested for more beer in the soup. The soup was finished with an emulsion of egg yolk and cream and topped with croutons of bread which had been fried in butter. Belgian cuisine clearly isn’t for those on a diet.

Deep fried ham and cheese was next – slices of ham sandwiched between two slices of cheese was coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried. Served with a tomato salad which had been dressed liberally with a vinaigrette of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The tomatoes were extremely fresh. The cheese we had used was maredsous – a cheese produced by the maredsous abbey, also known for the originators of maredsous beer, now produced by the same people that produce duval. Sergio said using gruyere would probably work if I couldn’t get maredsous in England.

Third on the menu was liege meatballs – formed from a mixed mince of veal and pork into which bay leaves, thyme, onions and fresh breadcrumbs had been added, golfball size spheres were panfried till a crust had evenly formed, and then continued to braise in sirop de liege – a jammy concoction of various fruits and lots of sugar. We ate this with braised caramelized chicory and boiled potatoes.

Because we had been good, Sergio threw in a bonus pudding in the form of dame blanche – vanilla chocolate with chocolate sauce and whipped cream. Varlhona chocolate nibs were melted with cream into which a few drops of water was added – Sergio explained that this would stop the sauce from solidifying too quickly when the sauce was poured over the ice-cream. The cream was whipped in an iSi siphon and NO2 chargers – you wouldn’t have expected less from the man that teaches the molecular gastronomy classes.

It was an extremely fun class and I had a brilliant time – and as i sat round the table drinking more wine and eating seconds of ice-cream, i reckoned there were probably less fabulous ways to spend a friday evening. i was in the company of people who were clearly passionate about food as the conversation turned again to global cuisines, source of ingredients and yet more cooking techniques - you know when you’ve got a bunch of foodies together when even when they’ve just been eating, they’re still talking about food.

oh my! viva m’bomma

2008-09-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

I’ve haven’t laughed so hard for a very long time.

The meltons were in town enroute to watching the F1 in Spa – beer and steak were in order. I did text them asking if they would eat fish, but they are after all antipodeans. As I trekked over to grand place to meet them after work, I remembered why I hate wearing shoes – they impede my ability to think and they’re a health hazard – those dang heels kept getting stuck in the crevices of the cobbled streets. Mr melton gave a running commentary of the high heels sprint race in Sydney recently. That man is a font of knowledge. I found a write up on the telegraph online – the attached footage is really quite entertaining – watch it here.

We had time to kill before dinner, and so, a couple of beers at l’archiduc where I was accused of drinking girlie beer because i had ordered a strawberry beer. We somehow also managed to come up with the first draft of a potential best man speech for a mate back in london. All very productive stuff. A short ramen-related diversion later, we found ourselves at viva m’bomma where we were ready to eat some serious meat.

Viva m’bomma came with high recommendations from the secretary at bigbankbrussels. Go if you like meat, she said, they do all sorts of really Belgian stuff, including all the insides as she clutched vaguely at where her liver was, as if to drive home the point. I probably zoned out somewhere at the point she said “meat”. Mmm. Meat.

Upon entering Viva m’bomma, we were greeted by a rather large pig. mr melton took a picture with the pig.

A chalkboard of the daily specials were brought out and translated.

“carpaccio of (something) of (something) with smoked (something)” said the very polite young waiter. I stopped listening at carpaccio. Mrs melton ordered this, and because we thought we heard the word ‘boeuf somewhere in that sentence, we assumed. It was wrong to assume, especially in a restaurant that was the Belgian version of st john’s. the daily specials included veal tongue, grilled bone marrow served with speculoos. The regular menu had calves brains in two preparations. We were getting a bit nervous. Mrs melton needed a little convincing that Stoemp was really quite harmless - plain, albeit extremely tasty mash with vegetables, served with bacon and/or sausages. bangers and mash in other words. she eyed me suspiciously.

i started with snails in an extremely garlicy cream sauce, with lashings of rocket and baby potatoes. the rocket was extremely peppery against the earthiness of the snails. tasty. i'm just glad i didn't get mrs melton's carpaccio. it actually wasn't all that bad - it tasted like chicken ham and came with a nice looking drizzle of balsamic vinegar and a tomato salad of sorts. it just didn't look like the raw beef slices we were expecting.

the very nice waiter was summoned and called to account for what exactly lay on the plate. "i told you - it's carpaccio of 'hudder'". 'hudder'? he started miming the milking action of a cow. ah right. carpaccio of udder. he must have seen our faces turn green while across the room, a couple mimed again the milking action of a cow and laughed. it was quite surreal.

the stoemp was fortunately just stoemp and not some offal related interpretation thereof. it was delicious - velvety mash infused with large oozy tracts of carrot, very tasty sausages and strips of bacon. mr melton and i went for vol au vent with chicken - a pastry cup overflowing with chicken chunks, mushrooms, meatballs and a very creamy sauce. all very comforting hearty carnivorous fare.

Post dinner, we schlepped back in the general direction of grand place when we heard a sudden, but very civilized exclamation: “oh my!”. A comically gruesome window display in a video rental store of a man being very bloodily sawed in half had been a somewhat shocking sight to mrs melton who both had jumped and exclaimed in shock in very civilized measures. Her reaction was completely unexpected and rather out of character. Mr melton and I spilled our guts on the pavement laughing so hard we got tummy aches. We spent the rest of the evening exclaiming “oh my” at everything however inappropriate or unwarranted to the chagrin of mrs melton. A tad juvenile of us perhaps. But you had to be there. it was udderly hilarious.

dandoy

2008-09-02T16:25:00.000-07:00

I can’t think of anything not to like about pain à la grecque – crisp doughy goodness studded with large crystals of sugar. I had deliberately walked the long way home to include a detour via rue de la rollebeek to get a bag of these from the dandoy branch. they brought back instant memories of the snack I had as a child – slices of white sandwich bread, buttered and sprinked with sugar – devoid of all useful nutrition yet bringing so much innocent pleasure in its straightforward simplicity.

pain à la grecque, or ‘greek bread’ has nothing to do with Greece. according to the worldwidegourmet.com, these delectable snacks find their origin in the Fossé-aux-Loups, also known as the gulf of Gracht. a baker friar made baguettes and rolled them in coarse sugar and these came to be known as ‘bruut van de grecht’. the misnomer came about when french troops occupying Brussels mis-translated these as pain à la grecque. and so the name stuck. a little useful trivia for the next pub quiz.

dandoy are the oldest biscuiteers in Brussels. on entering their flagship store on rue au beurre (how very apt), the homely spiciness greets you in a warm embrace. the display of little butter sables, brown ginger speculoos – it makes you want to grab large handfuls of each offering and stuff them in your bag while the lady behind the counter isn’t watching instead of patiently waiting in line to choose each daintily packaged offering. but maybe that’s just me and my greediness speaking.

and simply because I miss george desperately, here’s a picture of the de la morinerie print I’ve bought for him.

senza nome

2008-08-25T17:28:00.000-07:00

There’s a chain of relatively well regarded seafood restaurants in Singapore named “No Signboard Seafood” – they started out in a hawker centre selling their seafood dishes that mrs proprietor cooked up from the seafood that mr proprietor brought back on his bicycle from the market. They couldn’t afford a signboard for their humble little store then, but the food drew in a loyal clientele, and word of mouth spread round the tiny island of their signature white pepper crab – they became known as the ‘no signboard seafood restaurant’. Rather literal, but it worked – they now have a chain of 4 restaurants all bearing the same name, and cooking the same famous white pepper crab.

I digress. I’m not sure why I thought of the “No Signboard Seafood” restaurant when I mean to write about Senza Nome where me and y had dinner on her last night in town. Senza Nome, means “without a name” – I’m certain it wasn’t because they couldn’t afford a name, but it’s a curious choice nonetheless. They seem, however, to have made a name for themselves, they were fully booked that evening, and have got a Michelin sparkler for their efforts. I was excited. But then again, I’m always excited when pasta is involved.

A brief glance at the menu and I wanted to order everything that contained the word bottega, of which there were a healthy number. It was too hard to choose. y and I decided to take the lazy option and went for the degustation menu – four courses of seasonal offerings.
A bread board of cheese infused foccacia arrived which helped to assuage our hunger, as did an amuse bouche of soft mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and a bread stick, drizzled over with fruity olive oil.

We started off with a first course was seafood and mash. The attempted description in French did sound a lot more delicious – but the waitress gave up when me and y responded with blank stares. Her attempt to describe the dish in English resulted in something along the lines of “seafood and mash”. Scrumptiously plump mussels and shrimp resting precariously atop a mound of creamy mash which itself was nestled in a bath of tomato infused fish broth which tasted pleasantly not unlike boulliabaise. It was absolutely lovely.

The pasta course was simply amazing. And it’s not because I’m partial to pasta. It’s simplicity was not something to be sneered at. Perfectly formed fresh handmade egg pasta rolls, al denté and reveling in the luxury of a straightforward tomato sauce in which the neat cubes of tomatoes had been confit cooked in an abundance of rich velvety olive oil. It was very exciting to eat, yet very comforting.

The fish course came in the form of a fillet of dourade ( which google informs me is gilthead bream) smeared over liberally with a paste of aubergine. It was lightly grilled beneath this eggplant blanket, and came with yet another helping of the delectable mash dressed in the lightest drizzle of fish broth and more of that delectably virgin olive oil.

Having been gazing enviously at the table of five next to us who had also gone for the same menu while they ate their puddings, we had heretically considered asking the waitress to forego the fish course and get us straight to pudding. ours finally arrived – an shot glass with a rich chocolate mascarpone topped with an even richer chocolate sauce, next to it, a little dish containing a quenelle of tiramisu ice-cream, tasting wholesomely of espresso and more mascarpone and chocolate. Despite all its richness, none of it was cloying – the mascarpone had the lightness of mousse, the chocolate sauce adding a bittersweet note.

Like its name, the food at senza nome was simplicity personified – no fancy preparations, lecithin infused foamy chi-chi-ness to confuse and wow the senses. In a town where molecular preparations jostle alongside bistro brusqueness for your dining dollar (or rather your epicurean euros), the quality of the produce and the cooking at senza nome was a refreshing breath of confident sophisticated simplicity.

Le pré sale

2008-08-24T18:22:00.000-07:00

I couldn’t in good conscience let Y spend a weekend in Brussels without a trip out for moule frite. It just wouldn’t be right. Deciding against chez leon, tourist institution purveyor of not-too-bad moule frite in rue tourist-trap des bouchers, we ventured into the fishier and slightly grungier streets of st Catherine.

st Catherine feels a little weird – it feels like it’s missing a large body of water, or a tiny boat bearing canal at least. Rows of seafood restaurants line the square which used to be a dock. In the wisdom of early Brussels town planners – they silted up the river and the dock became redundant, but somehow, the waterside feel of the place still lingers.

Le pre sale was heaving when we walked through its doors. We were offered a table after an hour’s wait. No worries – that suited us fine – lunch was still lolling about in our tummies and the extra hour digesting would make space nicely for a kilo pot of mussels. And chips of course. And mayonnaise. We considered all this while sitting along a tiny water feature in the place of where the dock used to be. And it made us hungry.

It was a little pointless giving me a menu – I had been contemplating all afternoon which moule flavour I was going to go for when I decided that we were going to le pre sale for dinner. Being extremely partial towards white wine and cream, but equally enamoured towards just lashings of garlic and butter, it was a difficult choice to make. The chalkboard menu solved my dilemma – they had garlic, and cream, and garlic and cream.

A large steaming pot of mussels came, plump and fat, dotted with chunks of celery and lashings of cream and garlic. It smelt delicious. I love moules. I can’t get enough of them. Bathed in the milky succulence of the moule steeped cream, I was so thankful I wasn’t planning on snogging anyone that night as I ate the garlicky goodness with abandonment.

The frites however, far surpassed any other chip I had ever tasted. I could eat them all day long and forget all conventional wisdom about cardiac health. They were the perfect size, finger length batons having the width somewhat in between the lanky French fry and the chunky English chip. It had attained chip nirvania – the finely tuned ratio between crunchy surface area and internal fluffiness which came from probably having been fried twice for ultimate crispness.

I love moule frite.

bocconi

2008-08-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

set within the grandeur of hotel amici, a stone’s throw away from grand place and its throngs of camera toting tourists, bocconi offered a quiet spot for an early sunday lunch. having just picked y up from gare midi, we settled upon brunch at bocconi and were expecting to eat our way through a promising sunday brunch buffet, we were disappointed to find out that the service of sunday brunch would resume only in September. it had started raining again and we were far too lazy to traipse all the way to the Conrad instead, so we stayed.
and I’m glad we stayed. I could possibly have eaten three helpings of the calamari ink taglioni with king prawns and cherry tomatoes in a lobster sauce. each forkful evoked happy vibes of tingly pleasure – the taste of the sea espoused in the savouriness of the smooth black taglioni compounded with the richness of the lobster infused cream sauce, foiled perfectly against the sweet acidity of the cherry tomatoes and the plumpness of the prawns. happy vibes of tingly pleasure.

y let me have many mouthfuls of the beef carparccio she started with and the absolutely scrumptious chanterelle risotto she had for a main. the thinly sliced beef carpaccio came with lashings of pecorino and a drizzling of fresh pesto. the chanterelle risotto was richness personified – the luxurious velvetiness of the rice grains, the meatiness of the large chunks of chanterelles – guilty bliss not usually associated with a meat-free dish.

we shared a tiramisu for pudding – the usual affair of espresso soaked sponge layered with mascarpone and cocoa jazzed up with the accompaniment of a shot of espresso granita and a very agreeable amaretto .

as we finally left bocconi, y said that hotel amici used to be a prison – gruesome beginnings for what is probably now one of brussel’s finest hotels where rock stars and politicians stay the night. if prison grub was anything like what we had for lunch, I’d happily be incarcerated there.

i heart ramen

2008-08-19T17:47:00.000-07:00

The ramen master scene in tampopo is hilarious. Watch it here, courtesy of youtube.

Just watching it makes me hungry. In the scene, the ramen master and his apprentice are at a ramen bar where they are served steaming bowls of ramen. The apprentice wants to dive in straight into his bowl of ramen, but his master sits there, contemplating the ramen, and upon being asked what the right way to eat ramen is, the ramen master launches into a soliloquy and goes through the rather elaborate rituals involved in approaching the esteemed bowl of noodles. It’s hilarious.

"first caress the surface with the tips of your chopsticks.."

"what for?"

"to express affection".

hilarious.

D and I did no such thing when we found ourselves seated at Yamato. I could hardly wait for the ramen. This was so exciting. D and I had been having i-love-ramen talks for a while and this was going to be it. the day of ramen reckoning. It was Yamato’s first day back in business after their summer holiday, and even before it had opened for the evening service at 7, a considerable queue had formed along the street. They finally let us in and the queue snaked in. Fortunately, D and I were able to bag the last few seats at the bar while the rest of the queue continued to wait. I admit there was a brief moment of schadenfreude joy.

I must have squealed in delight when the bowls were finally handed to us across the counter where behind it, mr and mrs yamato were busy cooking them up. Proper ramen noodles swimming deliciously in a deep earthy miso broth, topped with slices of katsu, a deep fried, panko coated fat marbled pork cutlet. None of that poseur nonsense that gets passed off as ramen in wagamamas and other pseudo ramen-yas of that ilk in london. I was so happy it was unbelievable.

Later in the fortnight, still beaming at the memory of ramen, I contemplated returning to Yamato for another bowl but somehow decided to head towards au bon bol for a bowl of their hand pulled noodles, or la-mian, the Chinese version, which technically is the ancestral root of all ramen. They were well springy, having been pulled and stretched into gluten submission, served in a clear meat broth and topped with my choice of roast duck. Despite having the same lineage, ramen and la-mian are almost two completely different creatures. Without prejudice to my own Chinese ancestry, I have to say I prefer ramen to la-main any time, but that’s perhaps largely due to the fact that I’m also extremely partial to the gyoza potsticklers that you can always get with them.

ogenblik

2008-08-19T00:19:00.000-07:00

Fresh back from a week in Tewkesbury and back to reality in bigbankbrussels, I headed out on my first day back at lunch for grown-up food at Ogenblik. having perused the menu online, i knew what i was going to get. I had to have it - the Mille-feuille de saumon et de queues d’écrevisses au coulis de langoustines. How could that one sentence not move you to insatiable and immediate desire? It had all elements that one legitimately lusts for – pastry, salmon, crayfish tails, and a langoustine puree. I had to have it.

and any establishment that starts my meal off with a good healthy chunk of warm rustic sourdough baguette, and a slab of butter will have a place of honour in my (potentially cholesterol laden) heart. A glass of house vin blanc, simply because it cost less than eau pétillante, me and the sourdough baguette anticipated for the arrival of THE DISH.

it was exactly what it said it was going to be - a wedge of pastry, layered with generous chunks of salmon and prawns, oozing with spinach and cheese, sitting on a creamy, velvety sauce which was the embodiment of everything good about langoustines - the sweetness that comes from being a hardy bottomfeeder - i find it best not to think of what exactly they feed on - they are after all excellent in almost any form. i ate it all 'ogenblik' - in the blink of an eye. like a bottomfeeder.

the tipping point

2008-08-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

I was sent some porn via email today – and it the picture of a fine bird. to be more precise, it was the picture of a lovely piece of roast duck over gravy soaked rice. I had to stop myself lusting.

I’d like to blame SQ, porn provider of the day, for having tipped me over the should-i-be-good-and-go-to-the-gym-or-go-and-look-for-roast-duck-instead balance. to be honest though, I had been craving roast duck and rice for the better part of the past homesickness tinged 3 weeks and this was probably just the excuse I was looking for to indulge those cravings.

and so it had to be done – a brief moment of half hearted contemplation as to whether the pursuit of roast duck was a worthy reason to give up attendance of spin class. of course I decreed that it was. I trotted off to the aptly named Hong Kong Delight at 33 rue Ste-Catherine with its rows of hanging barbequed meats. it looked admittedly rather dingy – but it was exactly what I was looking for – a good honest hole in the wall.

I was seated and presented with a menu written in chinese – it had the usual offerings - an assortment of one-dish meals on rice, noodles and soups. I ordered roast duck on rice, and a bowl of shrimp wantons in broth. sipping the jasmine tea I had been served, it almost felt like I was in a 茶餐厅 in downtown kowloon rather than lower town Brussels – the chatter of mandarin and Cantonese speaking customers around me, the sharp bang of the chef chopping up my duck, the strains of cheese over the radio.

the leg of roast duck had a good amount of meat, the skin was nicely caramelized though it could have benefited from being a little crisper. there was a good splash of duck gravy over the rice, and I added a large helping of chilli oil. the wantons were nice – proper thin egg pastry skins, and plump prawns, it was a good side to go with the greasiness of the duck.

I couldn’t be happier.

jaloa

2008-08-04T16:59:00.000-07:00

mr alien was in town on business, and very kindly brought me out to dinner on his very generous expense account. It was however a monday night in the dead of august (when many good restaurants in brussels go on holiday). determined not to be subject to the trappings of a usual tourist spot, i upped the efforts of my restaurant search (by eschewing the usual timeout guide wisdom for the recommendations of the lovely secretary at bigbankbrussels) and was nudged favourably towards jaloa.

mr alien was understandably hungry at the time I met him – and the 10 minute walk from his hotel near rogier to ste Catherine wasn’t helping. Ignoring his hints at stopping at quick for dinner, we soldiered on and rewarded ourselves with the order of the ‘surprise’ menu – 4 courses of seasonal food, putting you at the absolute mercy of the chef’s whims.

We were first served with a trio of tasters – a very light carrot soup, an even lighter carrot mousse and a fritter of courgette and cherve. It was all very tasty, but for that brief moment of doubt, I questioned whether this was the starter or simply an offering of amuse bouche. And for that brief moment of doubt, my heart sank ever so slightly because mr alien was very hungry and I hoped this wasn’t one of those restaurants where they served dollhouse sized portions in the name of chi-chi-dom.
Thankfully it was just an amuse bouche, because next the real meal started when we were served a tian of tuna tartare with tomato, chervil, coriander and dill and an olive breadstick. Drizzled generously with olve oil, it was a taste of the Mediterranean sea. It was light and refreshing, but substantively set us up for the rest of the meal to follow.
The fish course was in the form of a langoustine, wrapped in filo pastry. Atop a bed of ratoutuille and saffron foam. The saffron foam seemed rather odd as a combination to the ratoutuille, but it did bring out the edgy sweetness of the langoustine.
Veal sweetbreads served with green and white asparagus. Ris de veau is one of those things you don’t really find in London, but in Brussels, it seems to be a rather common occurrence – cooked rightly, it’s an extremely tender piece of meat without an overtly offaly aftertaste. It was fortunately cooked relatively well here in jaloa – the softness of the sweetbreads yielding against the bite of the asparagus, drizzled with a somewhat acidic yet caramelized sauce.
Pudding– a simple offering of cream with summer berries, topped with a round of speculoos, the Belgian gingerbread biscuit, bathed in a dense, rich chocolate sauce. It was one of those deserts where you try to kid yourself is healthy because it contains some manner of fruit, but the taste of decadence on your tongue as the cream and the chocolate sauce meet the crunch of the buttery speculoos tells you otherwise.
We did stumble out of Jaloa more than sufficiently satiated and I was certain I did mrs alien proud by ensuring her husband had been well fed. So till the next time you’re in town with your expense account mr alien…

lunch at g's

2008-07-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

I’ve known G for almost a decade but have never had the pleasure of tasting his attempts in the kitchen. And so when he offered to cook Sunday lunch for a couple of friends and I was privy to one of the limited invites, I jumped at it. I love homecooked meals. Plus I was curious about G’s cooking skills.

I had to laugh when G served his starter of melon and parma ham. Just look at the frilly hat on the toothpick. This was a side of G I’d never seen before.
His lasagna was excellent – having made a tactical decision to let his pre-assembled sit and rest for the greater part of the morning before finishing it off in the oven just before lunch, the homemade bolognaise and white sauce sauce had time to settle between the layers of pasta. I had two helpings. There wasn’t very much space left for the tarts G had procured from le pain quotidien for pudding.
Thanks G – it was a brilliant meal – great food, and fab conversations with your mates. And of course, more things I learnt from lunch that day that i can now tease you about. That’s what friends are for eh.

belga queen

2008-07-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

I like belga queen. I could see how some might say it’s clichéd – but I like it. I like the grand entrance, the high stained glass ceilings, the traces of opulence reminiscent of the building’s former life as credit du nord. and I liked the very good looking waiter.

I’ll go back just to look at the waiter. but the business lunch menu wasn’t too bad either.

I started with a tomato mouse with diced tomatoes, watercress salad, lashings of pecorino, basil pesto and lettuce. Yet another take on the insalata caprese with the themes of tomatoes, cheese and basil – clichéd, but delicious nonetheless - the light foamy creaminess of the tomato mousse, the very refreshing coolness of the lettuce, diced tomatoes and watercress, the sharpness of the pecorino with the luxurious velvety-ness of the fresh olive oil and basil pesto emulsion. I would have licked the inside of the glass clean had gorgeous waiter not walked by and smiled at me.

y.u.m.m.y. – both the starter and the waiter that is,

the main was a simple affair – served with flourish in a large cast iron staub cocotte, a roast chicken leg with sections of white asparagus and tourneed roast potatoes – it came with a sweet yet sharp gravy through which a strong sense of thyme had been infused. the asparagus was soft and tender – no hint of stringiness, and the roast potato was comfortingly fluffy.

and of course, any visit to belga queen can’t be complete with a visit also to its loos – the unisex affairs with see through cubicle doors – and always prompting a gaggle of stragglers waiting the wings, trying to figure out how one’s modesty is preserved in such a bathroom.

le pacifique

2008-07-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

I love it how you can get Chinese food almost everywhere, simply because there are Chinese people everywhere. They really are everywhere. There are advantages I suppose – Chinese people means Chinese food - one never has to go too far in search of some version of Chinese restaurant. The trick however seems to be separating the dodgy joints from those that are worth their woks – and with Chinese restaurants, outward appearances almost always mean nothing – the dingiest looking hole-in-walls could be turning out the tastiest stuff.

And so after three and a half weeks in Brussels in Brussels, and having chinese food withdrawal symptoms, D brought G and I to le pacifique, a Vietnamese Chinese setup. With her almost encyclopedic knowledge of restaurants in Brussels, she was definitely a good person to know. And of course she’s terribly nice as well. Her recommendation of le pacifique came with the missive to eat number 34 on the menu – hoi sin sang mien – crispy egg noodles with an assortment of seafood. Who were we to argue with the expert, and so we supped on sang mein, grilled prawns over rice noodles and fried calamari rings with salt and chilli.

grilled prawns,plump and in their shells, atop a bed of blanched rice noodles, a generous sprinkling of fried shallots, scallions, ground peanuts and shredded carrots.

fried calamari rings with salt and chilli

number 34 - hoi sin sang mein - deep fried egg noodles with assorted seafood and bokchoi in oyster sauce.

bonsoir clara

2008-07-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

with a rue Antoine dansart address, bonsoir clara was promising to be achingly trendy just with its locale. a stone’s throw away from various homegrown designer boutiques with their painfully minimalist displays, the kartell shop on the corner with its lust inducing starke ghost chairs and l’archiduc, I was envisaging a room brimming with arty type people and yummy mummys doing lunch in between shopping for more yummy mummy clothes – which might have made getting a table for lunch a difficult affair.

but thankfully for me, that wasn’t the case and I was easily seated by the window overlooking rue Antoine dansart. not that I have anything against yummy mummys. the lunch menu was written on a board – there wasn’t a choice for lunch, though a brief glance through the carte did seem to offer several chi-chi sounding dishes (which I admit that in a weak moment of yuppieness I might have succumbed to), such as tempura-ed courgette flowers with brandade and tomato emulsion.

so the lunch menu – I started with tomatoes with a tian of smoked mozzarella, drizzled with a light basil pesto-esque sauce – it was a somewhat pseudo space age take on insalata caprese especially with the dried tomato crisp sitting atop the mozzarella which brought to mind freeze dried astronaut food (and tasted somewhat freezedried), but other than the erroneous tomato crisp – it was a perfectly adequate summer lunch starter – the tomatoes were refreshingly sweet against the saltiness of the smokey mozzarella cubes and the punch of the basil.

the main course was a little bit of an oxymoron – it was titled something along the lines of roast beef carpaccio – and it was that – roast beef, but sliced so thin, and the middles so pink as to be rare. it was topped with an assortment of cubed summer vegetables – purple sprouting broccoli, carrots, mange tout, courgettes, lashings of shaved parmesean, a large handful of rocket, and drizzled over with a balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing. it came with a cone of very thin waffle cut crisps. the dish could have done with a little more of that dressing, but that was perhaps my only substantial complaint – otherwise, for EUR 12.50 for entrée, plat and a very good coffee (with accompanying chocolate square no less), it was more than perfectly adequate for a middle-of-workday lunch.

ps. there aren’t any pictures simply because I committed the (usual) schoolgirl error of lugging my humongous camera all the way to work and down the cobbled streets through the throngs of tourists, but wisely forgot to also bring my memory card. so all these perfect shots I did attempt to take have been lost forever to digitalcameralblackholeness. oh well. any excuse for another lunch there.

the kitchen shop

2008-07-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

so I am a little odd. I’d rather spend my paycheck on a set of steak knives and kitchen equipment than a tod’s bag or christian lobutins or whatever it is that girls buy.

and so I did get myself a set of steak knives this weekend. I couldn’t help it – there they were, beckoning me from the shop window, six laguiole steak knives with a lovely heavy wood handle and little bees carved into the metal work, all sitting prettily in their wooden box. I’ve been walking past them and lusting everyday on my way home from the gym. the shop caters to the catering trade, selling wine glasses, dinner plates and cutlery in bulk, stacks of crockery piled on the floor, boxes of other service ware – and in the midst of all that chaos, these lovely steak knives. I also managed to wander into a lovely kitchen shop, dille and kamille, where i found the loveliest assortment of cookie cutters and other things I know I don’t need but couldn’t help buying anyway.

here’s a picture of my spoils.

1. extra large mixing bowl - possibly the largest i've ever seen.
2. giant rabbit cookie cutter
3. blue glass cake stand
4. pesto
5. tealight holder with metal cutouts of reindeer
6. fleur de sel
7. orrechiete with dried ceps, saffron risotto
8. spekuloos moulds
9. rocking horse, pig and cat cookie cutter
10. laguiole steak knives

and finally,

11. clothes peg with a ladybug – simply because I’m a little twee.

lovely lola

2008-07-18T15:42:00.000-07:00

d once accused me of being a yuppie – I don’t think she was merely referring to the fact that I was an urban professional between the ages of 25 and 35 – it was more in the context her sisterly duty sister to give me grief about what can only be crassly described as my sometimes surfacing need for pseudo-trendiness.

I suppose tonight was one of those nights where I just wanted to go somewhere modern, sleek and possibly painfully trendy – somewhere where their interiors had sleek, clean lines, where the menu wasn’t overly fussy, where the wait staff was gorgeous and where they hopefully had tall cylindrical glass vases with lengthy statement making orchids.

I was assured by timeout and google that Lola was going to be one of these places. Lola even had the tall cylindrical glass vases with lengthy statement making orchids that screamed this place über-trendy and is going to charge you lots for chichi looking food that might not taste very good.

the orchids were wrong – because the food wasn’t chichi looking. and it certainly tasted very good. I started with a crab stack with avocado, black sesame biscuit and wasabi mayonnaise. it was a very generous helping of crab – a tian of large, meaty chunks of fresh crab (none of that tinned stuff here) with creamy avocado through which a touch of citrus sharpness was detected. it was topped with a thin galette type pastry with an obligatory scattering of black sesame seeds which I suppose qualified it as the “black sesame biscuit”. there was a thin swipe of raspberry coulis and another of honey – both of which added a refreshing sweetness against the savouriness of the crab and the acidic creaminess of the avocado. I couldn’t really detect any heat of the wasabi, but it was overall a thoroughly enjoyable experience eating it all.

I had for my main the seabass risotto with thyme and provence vegetables – two fillets of seabass poached in fish stock, with a cake of creamy risotto and what looked like a rather elegant line of ratoutuille. the seabass was well, seabassy. it tasted exactly how seabass should taste and I was glad that they did not finish off in a pan or try to do anything fancy with the sauce – all it had was a drizzle of fish stock for moistness. together with the extremely creamy risotto through which some sort of soft cheese (like boursin, but it probably wasn’t just boursin) had been stirred through and it gave the mild looking risotto a powerful punch, which was a very welcome dimension against the mild sweetness of the seabass and the wholesomeness of the ratoutuille.

there was a black strip of unknown origin nestling on my risotto. it looked like kombu, but it didn’t’ taste like kombu. I was perplexed. the waitress didn’t know what it was called in English. I tried to mime seaweed with my hands, but she said it wasn’t that. it was hilarious. maybe she thought I was miming eels. anyway, I digress. my kombu conundrum led me to meet a pair of finns who were sitting at the next table who decided to rescue me from miming misery by informing me that what I thought was kombu was in fact, the grilled peel of an aubergine. ah. very clever. both the charming finns who explained that aubergine peel business to me, and the chef who decided to use it – it was a visual joke, linking the aubergine used in the ratoutuille to the marine theme of the seabass. and that’s all that trendy rubbish going to my head as I probably have read too much into what was probably just a garnish and a clever way to use up every component of the aubergine.

the finns, e and c, were very nice. they love lola – to the point they come almost every month and have the same dish (in its various forms and permutations that the chef tweaks for the seasons) of cod, mash and herby vegetables. they thumbed through the restaurant section of my timeout guide which I had gone through with a yellow highlighter, and put little stars next to the ones I should definitely try, and crosses against the ones which were utter rubbish and gave me a list and running commentary of their favourite restaurants. I hope I see them again – we’ve exchanged emails – so maybe I’ll get taken to one of their fav spots.

les petit oignons

2008-07-10T16:38:00.000-07:00

I can’t ever go back to les petit oignons.

it wasn’t the food – the food was very good and just what I needed today – honest, well executed food. I’ve had a very frustrating day where many things were talked about but very little achieved. today also seemed to be “would-strange-men-please-speak-to-me” day. having very politely but firmly refused the offer of a lift from strange man #1 who momentarily held up traffic and opened the door to beckon me in while I was waiting for the tram, I thought my strange man ration for the day (and indeed for the year) must be all used up. did he honestly think I was going to get in the car with total stranger? but alas, I was accosted all through dinner by strange man #2, the head waiter at les petit oignons who thought it would be a really good idea to keep asking me out for a drink and left his mobile phone number on my receipt. just great. I just need to turn of the big neon sign sticking out of my head that’s apparent to these strange men.

so that’s why I think it’s better I not return to les petit oignons lest strange man #2 recognises me and accosts me again. which is a shame. because I really liked les petit oignons. I had even been planning to go again in three weeks when the changed the menu – which, according to strange man #2, is what they do every three weeks or so, reflecting the seasonality of produce and the spoils of their regular supplies trips to france.

I started with a gratin of seafood – a little le crueset cocotte of scallops, prawns and cod in a light cream sauce over ribbons of leek. savouring the firmness of the fresh seafood against the smoothness of the cream sauce and ribbons of leek that while watching the patter of rain through the windows as it rained over the restaurant terrace, it was a very comforting dish.

Time Out remarked that the portions here were as they put it “invigorating portions” which I found to be a very fair remark as strange man #2 brought my main course with a warning to eat slowly if not I’ll never finish it. It was a very hearty plate, filled with many happy pieces of lamb fillet, roasted to a happy medium rare pink with a rich red wine gravy. the cake of charlotte potatoes with its tender scallops of potato slices baked with cream and the braised and then panfried chicory with its bitter sweet tinge completed the happy family.

I started talking to the jar in which my desert came in. I couldn’t help it. it was very good and I thought I should let it know how good it was. and maybe subconsciously I was hoping my strange behaviour of talking to my food would put strange man #2 off. anyway, back to the jar. it held a very lovely tiramisu “in the style of les petit oignons” as the menu put it. I’m sure the description sounded a lot prettier in french. a layer of strawberry liquor soaked sponge, lashings of strawberry juice laced mascarpone, topped with a thin sprinkling of muscovado which had been grilled to a delicate crisp. it was very good and strange man #2 was slightly visibly shocked at the spepd at which I had eaten my way through it.

oh well. maybe it’s for the best, my reluctance to return to les petit oignons – with food like that I’d probably have returned much too often than would have been healthy and start looking a little onion myself..

bosquet 58

2008-07-05T14:58:00.000-07:00

“The three course menu takes commitment” – Time Out, Brussels.

i was wondering what Time Out meant when it said that about Bosquet 58, and as I paused to take a break as I struggled to finish the very moreish tarte tatin, i understood. this place really knew how to feed you.

even before I had placed my orders, I was presented with a glass of kir royale. very nice. it was extremely efficient service considering that madame louradour, wife of the chef proprietor was the only person servicing the front of house. she also very kindly handed me an English menu when after asking for a table, my french came to a halt. I could however ask for a glass of house white because that’s what I’ve just learnt today from the french cd I’ve been listening to. she had to correct my pronounciation though. the house white was extremely drinkable, slightly dry with an aftertaste of honey – very surprising considering that it cost less than eau minerale.

i had passed in the window display, a chalkboard with a handwritten menu du jour – at EUR 13 for three courses, I had somehow assumed it was only available for lunch. I was mistaken – that was the cost of dinner. I think I love Brussels.

the offerings were simple and honest bistro type food – no fuss with complicated preparations or frou frou presentations here. but it was good. eschewing the many salads and terrines on offer as a starter, I went for the vegetable soup, a comforting concoction of legumes, carrots and lentils, pureed to creamy consistency. the duck confit came with a more than generous helping of frites, and a rather peppery sauce – not a green in sight. I resolved not to eat all the chips which was very difficult to do as they were fried to a perfect crisp on the outside while still retaining that lovely fluffy interior that is the mark of a well cooked chip. the tarte tatin came with an assortment of fresh fruits and a very rich vanilla ice-cream – i tried to be virtuous and ate all the fruits first, but that didn’t stop me from eating all of the tarte tatin with its crisp (top)base and the lusciously soft slithers of apples which had been baked with a touch of cinnamon to absolute utter tenderness.

I’d normally say Bosquet 58’s a sure candidate for a repeat visit, considering that it’s only down the street from the gym. I had however earlier today compiled a list of all the restaurants I want to eat at in Brussels, consolidating the tips from reading various guides, blogs and recommendations from mates – I’m beginning to think that 3 months isn’t going to be long enough to eat my way through them. it’s just as well – I’m never going to be able to fit into my clothes after this summer if I keep eating at places like Bosquet 58.

p.s. - leave a comment if there's a particular restaurant in brussels you reckon should make my list.

a girl denied chocolates

2008-06-30T14:03:00.001-07:00

g had very sweetly taken me on a walking tour after dinner on saturday to minimize the probability of me getting lost on my way to work. it was very sweet of him. I take after my father, and I have very bad sense of direction – everything looks the same to me (sorry pa – it’s true. mom’s the human compass in our family). i did my best by committing the route to memory along the lines of “walk past the horrendously expensive and pretentious shops, turn left at the humongous horse, walk past the palais royale, see the park and bob’s your uncle.”

g took me back along a different route, lest I get bored of walking past the very grand palais royale. and wisely pointed out where pierre marcolini was as we walked through Sablon. the geography of central Brussels fell into place. I wouldn’t get lost now.

so my first day at work today. and I headed straight for notre dame au sablon and took a sharp right.

“I’m sorry madame, we’ve closed the upstairs early today because we need to count the chocolates, you cannot choose which chocolates you want…”

panic. horror.

“you don’t understand. I need chocolate – I’ve had a bad day.” wallowing in self pity as I thought of my trip out to the sticks during lunch to pick up my replacement emergency american express card (who no doubt are one of the best credit card companies in the world and they don’t have to pay me to say that).

“… you could take one of these boxes which have a selection of chocolates…”

that’s no good. i had planned on filling half the box with those hazelnut ones. I briefly contemplated buying a jar of chocolate spread and eating it with a spoon.

then I remembered. they have a pastry counter. I finally manage to smile at the guy behind the counter, who i now realise is gorgeous. had I not been so hungry I’d have blushed. I choose the Oveido, which is, according to the description given, “Sabayon de chocolat au lait avec des notes de caramel, croustillant de noisettes caramélisées et praliné noisette sur un biscuit vanille aux éclats de noisettes et crème à la vanille fraîche de Tahiti”

or in my dodgy translation - sabayon (fancy french speak for egg yolks with sugar) of milk chocolate with notes of caramel, crust of caramelized hazelnuts and hazelnut flavoured praline on a vanilla biscuit with hazelnut vanilla cream. or something that tasted like that. I’ll let the picture speak its thousand words for itself.

“this won’t cure all your troubles, but I hope it makes you feel better” says the gorgeous chocolate man.

I picked up a jar of salty caramel confit too. I couldn’t help myself.

and I’ve joined a gym. as my master slavedriver put it to me before I left for brussels: “how are you going to keep your weight down?”

blue is back

2008-06-28T14:53:00.001-07:00

and so am i.

much as I’d like to blame slavedrivers inc and its unyielding yoke, truth is, my extended disappearance from flogosphere simply involves a combination of inertia, laziness and procrastination. oh well, I’m sure you missed me.

the smarties advert makes me laugh. every single time. “WE’RE NOT IN” they holler behind the closed door, the sheepish looking yellow smartie sent out to get rid of the blue smartie with that earnest look on his face. it’s hilarious. even now as I am typing this I’m chuckling.

so the blue smartie is back. the press release states that the blue colouring has been derived from some seaweed compound. no more evil e-numbers. okay. bully for the clever smartie makers. I never understood how a blue smartie is appetizing – what’s wrong with just regular chocolate coloured chocolate.

speaking of chocolate. i now find myself in Brussels where I’ll be for the next three months. I promise not to visit and rave about Pierre Marcolini every day even though it looks like it’s just a 10 minute walk from where I’ll be at work. despite all my grand plans to make a beeline for Pierre Marcolini since I arrived early this afternoon, I’ve yet to have been near a chocolate truffle, mostly because the afternoon so far has been spent at a police station with some rather very amusing policemen and on the phone with not so amusing credit card helplines. my only crime was to stop at Quick for a drink and to read the city map where I was duly distracted by a flurry of french while my wallet was extracted from my bag. the annoyance of having to replace my stolen credit cards aside, the whole experience was surreal. a trip in a speeding police car to the station, I was offered and goaded into accepting cigarettes by the two rather dishy policemen as they gave me innumerable tips on protecting personal property and not talking to strangers, quizzed about my dating history and told to hold onto my seat as they sped down the street, deliberately speeding up where there was a speed hump which resulted in the tiny police car being airborne for a few seconds. at the police station, my two police escorts proceeded to greet every male officer in the station with a kiss before handing me a photo album of various male suspects from which I was expected to identify the pickpocketers. my blingberry was made fun of, as was my t-shirt and a slightly filthy joke was made about loaded guns. it was all harmless banter though and for my troubles, I now have a police report in french which names me as the victime and the two policemen have successfully instilled in me a general attitude of paranoia.

oh well. c’est la vie. G’s meeting me for dinner and rescuing me with a stash of emergency cash which will tide me over till my replacement cards come. hopefully the rest of the three months will bode much better than this. I think it’s off to Pierre Marcolini for some cheer up chocolate with my emergency cash.

to the daisy

2008-06-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

With little here to do or see
Of things that in the great world be,
Sweet Daisy! oft I talk to thee,
For thou art worthy,
Thou unassuming commonplace
Of Nature, with that homely face,
And yet with something of a grace
Which Love makes for thee!

- Wordsworth, from “To a Daisy”

little daisy inspired cookies.

am particularly pleased with the green colouring in the icing – I’ll have you know it’s completely e-number free. only because I decided to extract the chlorophyll from spinach using one of rick tramonto’s recipes. and no, the icing does not taste of spinach.

tru-ly yolky

2008-04-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

i’m addicted to cookbooks. I blame amazon and their one-click purchasing mechanism. gone are the days where the process of having to manually input the credit card details which gave time for pause and to soberly consider carefully the absolute necessity of one’s potential (and usually frivolous) purchase.

so I found myself having purchased rick tramonto’s cookbook based on his restaurant, Tru without having thought clearly if I needed yet another cookbook. it’s a lovely cookbook – the right balance between recipes, background text and pictures. it got delivered to me at slavedrivers inc. and I tore into it, heading straight to rick’s recipe of the egg yolk ravioli. I’ve been meaning to do one of these for a long time, stopped only by inertia and laziness of having to unearth the pasta maker from the back of the cabinet. having also recently watched an episode of market kitchen where a version thereof was being made – my confidence was bolstered. LL was coming over for dinner and to say goodbye – my one last time to experiment on her before she left London.

and because I was disorganized and didn’t have half the things that tramonto called for (including a pre-made mushroom veloute and NO2 chargers for my iSi whip maker), I came up with my own version thereof. I did however follow (roughly speaking) his proportions for the pasta dough. rolling these out on the next to last setting on the pasta maker, I cut out large squares of pasta which were then lightly dusted with flour. I sat on these squares a mound of blanched, drained and finely chopped spinach into which I had mixed a generous portion of boursin and lots of seasoning to taste. on this mound, I sat an egg yolk - a free range and very fresh egg yolk of course. a second square of pasta was draped over these egg yolk mounds, taking care to expel the air as I sealed the edges. cutting off the excess pasta dough, the raviolis were quickly cooked in briskly boiling water, drained, and dressed with a little butter, salt and pepper, and a quick shaving of pecorino.

I can’t say they were even half as good as Tramonto’s version, but the whole concept of the egg yolk oozing out and self saucing the thin pasta sheets definitely got LL’s approval. I’m going to get my act together and properly make Tramonto’s version with all his quail egg, mushroom veloute and cep foam business.

what to do with two cans of duck confit

2008-03-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

what’s a girl to do with two cans of duck confit which may or may not be past their best by date? my boss recently gave me a can of duck confit – which was fantastic, since I generally love duck in most of its permutations. the only problem was, already taking up a major tenancy in my very small larder was another can of duck confit from some forgotten trip to paris. and my larder was definitely not big enough for two rather large cans of duck confit. I figured there wasn’t going to be anything wrong with the duck – it was canned in its own fat. not being one to throw away (almost) perfectly good food, there was only one thing to be done – make pasta.

I had seen, in ages past, emeril lagasse making duck confit pasta on the food network (the American version of UKTV Food). of course emeril lagasse made his own duck confit by slow roasting the duck legs in their own fat for a very long time in a very low oven. well I didn’t have to bother with all that slow roasting business – I just needed to open one very large can.

I made a pasta dough out of flour, eggs and a tablespoon of hot water in which a substantial bunch of saffron had been infused. the dough was left to rest in the fridge for an hour while I tended to the filling. shredded confit duck, an assortment of sliced mushrooms, and lots of freshly milled black pepper was sautéed and cooled. I contemplated the addition of cream to bind it, but decided against as it was sufficiently rich as it was. rolling out the pasta dough at the thinnest setting on my pasta machine, I cut out 3 inch rounds of pasta, half of which were filled with a mound of the duck and mushroom filling and a parsley leaf, and sealed with the other half of the pasta rounds. the ravioli took no more than 3 minutes each in briskly boiling water. drained, and dressed in lightly warmed butter to which a few drops of duck fat had been added and seasoned with sea salt and more black pepper.

crab (lobster) noodles

2008-02-07T13:22:00.000-08:00

I have very fond memories of being brought out by my dad to eat lobster noodles at royal china or mandarin kitchen at Bayswater. Those days of being a cash strapped student, invariably homesick and desperately missing decent Chinese food. Dad on one of his flying visits to London would take me out to dinner, and we'd always head for those lovely crustaceans. They were always good - wok fried chunks of sweet lobster, served on a bed of thin egg noodles which had been braised in lobster stock, sweetened by strips of ginger and spring onion. It was a messy dish, involving ones fingers, special lobster spoons and a nutcracker, leaving a trail of lobster shells as one picked through the claws. We always ordered our lobster with double portion of noodles. There was also always too much food - a table set for two, with food ordered for about four. We sometimes got the yam duck too - pieces of duck coated in yam and deep fried.

I haven’t had lobster noodles in ages. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I'm too lazy to trek all the way to Bayswater. Maybe it's because I've been busy eating my way through the other excellent restaurants London has to offer. I had a taste of them again on Saturday when Y fed me some which had been doggie bagged from lunch. It was fabulous (well considering that we had determined only to eat chips and garlic bread for dinner (which we both adore), doggie bagged lobster noodles was relatively posh). I couldn't stop thinking about lobster noodles after that.
Still too lazy to trek to Bayswater, I decided to attempt to make these myself. Or at least some sort of potted version thereof. I couldn't find any lobster either, so I settled for crab.

One portion of thin egg noodles

Fish stock (in an ideal world, use homemade crab, lobster or prawn stock)
Spring onions (finely slice the white bits, and cut the green bits into strips)
Large handful of crab meat chunks
Handful of watercress
Minced chilli
Mirin
Sesame oil

1. sauté the white bits of the spring onion in a splash of oil till softened, the green bits and the minced chilli and stir briefly. Add about a cup of hot fish stock and bring to a boil.
2. cook egg noodles in stock till noodles are cooked and have absorbed the stock. The stock should now be reduced to a thick, syrupy consistency.
3. just before the noodles are done, tip in the crab meat and the watercress. Cook till the crab is cooked through and watercress wilted.
4. season with just a splash of mirin, sesame oil and soya sauce. The mirin should bring out the sweetness of the crab.
5. eat with a nice dollop of xo sauce or teochew chilli oil

Not quite the lobster noodles from bayswater. but enough to tide the cravings over till I next make the journey west.

homeward bound

2008-01-08T21:09:00.000-08:00

am now sitting in the hong kong international airport waiting for my cattle class ride back to london and savoring my last hour of freedom. i’m dreading the flight, but it’s good to be headed home, to george, my bed, my kitchen. ironically, I must admit part of me even misses slavedrivers inc. apart from having spent two thirds of it convinced that I was suffering from some near fatal strain of tuberculosis as evidenced by a horrid cough which prompted people around me to step back, an endlessly streaming nose, a pounding head, generally feeling sorry for myself and being an absolute grump. the worst thing was that I had even lost my appetite. I didn’t want to eat – conclusive evidence that I was VERY sick. despite my efforts to convince dad that I might have tuberculosis, he wisely ignored my hypochondriac self diagnosis and gave me a cocktail of drugs, antibiotics and painkillers to shut me up. which i’m glad to say worked because despite the last hints of the cough which hasn’t yet completely gone away, I’m very well now – I’ve got my appetite back.

and just as well I got my appetite back as me and mom ate our way around hong kong. perhaps I’ve been overcompensating for the lost days in singapore, but the indigestion’s been well worth it.

fresh off the plane from singapore, it was time for champagne brunch at SPOON. it was definitely a case of my eyes being much bigger than my belly as I walked up to the kitchen counter and helped myself to the starters. mom was visibly shocked at my fully laden plate. but what a plate. scallop carparccio, spoons of lobster on coleslaw, tuna tataki with croutons, pine nuts and raisins, parcels of pan fried foie gras, shotglasses of cucumber jelly with prawn cocktail, sea urchin custard. the list goes on. mom loved the sticks of mozzeralla and cherry tomatoes with an exceedingly good pesto. there was a salad of some sort which looked rather delicious. but why would one eat salad when there was foie gras and scallops on offer. and tuna tataki. I had four plates of the tuna. we had a great view from our table – boats chugged across the hong kong harbour in front of us, while behind was a table laden with a gorgeous ham which was shaved in wafer thin slices and brought to us with offerings of cheese, figs, bread and a yummy glass of cote du rhone which came just as our main course was being served. mom chose the lamb, cooked medium rare with ratte potatoes stuffed with bacon. I had beef Wellington. which came with a (gratuitous) salad which mom kindly ate. it was all very good. I hardly had space for pudding, which was yet another smorgasbord offering. we walked into the pastry kitchen where the pastry chef chatted to us and explained each dessert offering available. I was having trouble concentrating on what she was saying as I was much too keen to start on the plates of chocolate mousse, tiramisu shots, irish cream flavoured marshmallows. my eyes again being much larger than my belly.

mom wisely refused to have dinner with me and my mate. she couldn’t believe I could eat anything after lunch. but I could. especially as it was at tung po seafood at northpoint – a place I had read about and begged mom to help me speak to them in Cantonese and try reserve a table. she thought I was mad. no one books at a “zicha” restaurant – she said. tung po seafood is a ‘zicha’ place (literally, cooking and frying) – which is a genre of local restaurants in asia where the chef proprietor cooks up a range of dishes. this is differentiated from specialized street food vendors which usually concentrate on a certain dish. one of tung po’s signature dishes is its squid ink noodles, not entirely different from spaghetti nero di sepia. another of its signature dishes we ordered was the shrimp cooked in salted egg yolk – which was probably one of the better versions I’ve had. my mate also ordered a dish of wintermelon cooked with pork mince and three eggs – century egg, salted egg and regular chicken egg cooked in a light broth. I could hardly move after dinner and barely stumbled back to the hotel.

the last two days have been a blur of countless meals of dim sum, roast duck, chinese barbequed meats, dumplings and french toast. I love hong kong french toast – they call it 西部多士 or “west toast” – two slices of bread with peanut butter, dipped in egg, deep fried and served with maple syrup. absolutely bad for you. and absolutely yummy.

so it’s with a very bloated stomach that I’m boarding this flight back home. and just as well. I hate airplane food.

spaghetti pie

2007-12-15T14:48:00.000-08:00

this blog entry is dedicated to any of my long-suffering friends and family who have ever had to bear my soliloquy of praise as I waxed lyrical about one of my favourite comfort foods (or worse, had the dubious duty of eating it). and to george, whom I miss terribly. i give you – spaghetti pie revisted.

spaghetti pie - born from the thought that if I simply combined all the things I loved in a single divine plate of ultimate comfort and pleasure – something good must come out of it. and so from the depths of eggs, bacon, cheese, spinach and spaghetti, I made spaghetti pie, which was essentially a giant omelette made out of the above mentioned ingredients. the first time i made this was the winter of the year spent in Chicago – I was particularly in need of comfort – for amongst the other trials of spending a winter in Chicago, I had my first experience of having to shovel my car out from under a drift of snow, the difficulty of which was compounded exponentially by the fact that I was using plastic shovel from k-mart and also because i grew up in the tropics where snow was more a romantic notion rather than an unpleasant reality to battle with.

I made this with worrying frequency in that year (it was a difficult year, and spaghetti pie was justified only in absolutely dire situations for comfort especially I had absolutely no intention of dying from cholesterol induced heart disease even in my lowest periods). I tweaked it each time I made it, finding out through trial and error that two eggs and 80g of regular spaghetti gave the best noodle to egg ratio, it was best if I drained the chopped spinach well before beating it into the eggs, panfried slices of bratwurst worked really well in place of bacon, gruyere was the optimum melty cheese, using two spatulas was the best way of flipping the entire omelette and keeping a round shape, and that it was best cut into 8 wedges and eaten with a fork.

not many have shared my optimism for spaghetti pie. some have even given me grief about it. I was for the longest time left thinking spaghetti pie was probably one of those secret pleasures best enjoyed alone. that was until I went backpacking in japan and discovered okonomiyaki. for in the food hall of a departmental store in Hiroshima, me and my fellow travelers, s and jk sat at a counter ordering what looked to me to be exactly like spaghetti pie – Hiroshima style okonomiyaki.

okonomiyaki (お好み焼き) literally means “cooked what you like, the way you like it” and is a giant pancake of egg-based batter with a myriad of toppings including shredded cabbage, seafood, cheese, bacon, pork, mochi. the toppings, batter and mode of cooking okonomiyaki vary regionally within japan, the two most famous variants coming from Osaka and Hiroshima. the Hiroshima version of Okonomiyaki involves cooking in layers, and usually involves a layer of yakisoba – or fried egg noodles.

having not made spaghetti pie in ages and wanting to clean out my fridge before I left on holiday – I reckoned it was the perfect excuse to make a version of spaghetti pie/okonomiyaki. curiously enough, I had half a bag of fresh spaghetti, a couple of free-range eggs, shredded greens and seafood mix. how rather convenient. in keeping with okonomiyaki tradition, I finished the dish off with Japanese mayonnaise and a sprinkling of bonito flakes. George had largely left me in peace to make this while he pondered the prawn I let him have from the seafood mix. he did however come to see what the fuss was about when to his horror the bonito flakes started moving in response to the heat of the pan. the look on his face was quite priceless.

I wondered as I finished the last wedge why I hadn’t made spaghetti pie/okonomiyaki in ages – it was delicious. perhaps it was the increased awareness of the wisdom of keeping cholesterol levels in check. perhaps it was because I had lost one spatula. perhaps it was because I’ve realized that while food is comforting and a delight, a bout of emotionally binging will only leave you bloated, suffering indigestion and is at the very best a somewhat temporary emotional stop-gap. I now know that seeking your comfort in a real, permanent and faithful God is much better solution.

“even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me – psalm 23:4”. also, seeking y our comfort in God won’t give you indigestion.

p.s.: if you haven’t yet bid on Menu for Hope – there’s still time! loads of brilliant food prizes to be won – check out the post below.

promises and patterson's

2007-12-09T03:08:00.001-08:00

i promise, that while i am finally on my glorious holiday starting this coming saturday, to write about zafferano, dining at the gherkin, spaghetti pie and george's fascination with bonito flakes, orrery's, pierre gagnaire toast at glade/sketch, the very good looking tom aikens and all the other greedy episodes in my life in the last two months. and of course all the yummy things i'm going to be eating while i'm on holiday.

but for now, i'd like to tell you all how you could win yourselves

if you've read my previous raving posts on this blog, or have been one of my victims as i launched into a soliloquy declaring my affections for Patterson's, you will know how much i love going there - i love the food, the inventive dishes, the superb service, the squashy plants on the table. and because i like to share the love - i'd love for you to dine at patterson's for yourself. As part of Menu For Hope, a campaign by food bloggers all over the world to raise funds for the UN World Food Programme by raffling off various food related prizes, the good people at Patterson's (again - how is it possible not to love them?) have kindly agreed to donate a three course meal for two (without wine) at Patterson's. It's all for a fantastic course (sic) - the money is going towards a school feeding programme in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. it's a meal for two - if you win it, i promise not to hate you (for too long) if you don't take me. seriously though - i can't think of any reason why you wouldn't desperately want to bid for this amazing prize. The prize code for this meal is UK27 - you will need to specify this code when you are bidding.

more about the Menu of Hope campgain at these other London food blogs: Cooksister and The Passionate Cook.

Instructions on how to bid:

1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from our Menu for Hope at http://www.chezpim.com/blogs/2007/12/menu-for-hope-4.html
2. Go to the donation site at http://www.firstgiving.com/menuforhope4 and make a donation.
3. Please specify which prize you'd like in the 'Personal Message' section in the donation form when confirming your donation. You must write-in how many tickets per prize, and please use the prize code.
Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 tickets for EU02. Please write 2xEU01, 3xEU02. The prize code for the Patterson's dinner is UK27.
4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so we could claim the corporate match.
5. Please check the box to allow us to see your email address so that we could contact you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.
Check back on Chez Pim on Wednesday Jaunary 9 for the results of the raffle.

waiter, there's something in my... topless tart

2007-11-21T15:58:00.000-08:00

nothing like a little bit of imbb pressure to get the blogging juices going again. cooksister's hosting this month's "Waiter, there's something in my…" monthly food blogging event. this months' theme is the rather saucy sounding "topless tarts".

adapted from a g ramsay recipe, my contribution to the topless tart roundup is the open mushroom tart.

open mushroom tarts

puff pastry - puff pastry isn't that difficult to make, but ready rolled's fine too
sliced mushrooms - loads of them and as many as you like - i generally use a mixture of chestnut, ceps, girolles, shitake and portobello
butter
single cream
parmigiano reggiano
pepper

preheat the oven to 200C. roll puff pastry out to the thickness of 1/8 inch and cut out discs of approximately 6 inches in diameter. The size of how large you'd like your tarts to be dictates how large your discs should therefore be. place each disc of puff pastry on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. lay another piece of baking paper on top of this disc, and another baking sheet on top to weigh it down. this stops the puff pastry from rising while being baked. by all means use your silpats if you have them you lucky sods (while I think of you and turn green with envy). bake the puff pastry discs till golden brown and entirely crisp.

sauté the sliced mushrooms in butter. the trick is to get as much moisture out of them as possible so that they are entirely mushroomy and the resulting mushroom liquid is thick, syrupy and full of mushroom goodness. season as you go along. this may entail sauté-ing them twice with a rest in between. you want this quite dry and concentrated because you won't want a soggy tart. when you are sufficiently satisfied with the mushroomyness of the mushrooms, add a trickle of double cream and a crackle of black pepper. there should be just enough cream so that the mushrooms are bound together lightly but not so much it's overbearing.

assembling the tart could not be simpler - place a disc of pastry on the plate, and spoon on a heapful of mushrooms and top with generous shavings of parmegiano reggiano. I often serve mine as a starter with a rocket salad, or sometimes as a size adjusted canapé topped with slithers of grilled proscuitto.

Of course if one of your diners is an avid mushroom hater, as a guest-of-honor at a recent dinner party was (and worse still if you're like me and totally forgot this rather major fact, merrily going about your mushroom buying business, realising with horror when it has become far too late to change the starter), the pastry disc is a happy medium for a variety of other toppings. I sautéed leeks and ham in a cream sauce which worked rather well for my mushroom-hating guest.

banquette

2007-11-04T16:11:00.001-08:00

there was something rather disturbingly hilarious about the fact that we were sat at a table on the first floor of the savoy, peering intently out of the window over the foyer in anticipation the arrival of a black cab. the vehicle in question had no passengers, simply an envelope bearing a document which ls was going to have to review over dinner. as usual, I filled our time boring ls with random trivia about how the savoy court was the only street in london where vehicles are required to drive on the right.

welcome to london. or rather the anomaly that is the City – where documents take taxi rides by themselves, and according to the play we had just watched, where blackberrys rule the day and bankers diarise sex with the wives via their secretaries. Alex the play is hilarious – based on the comic strip satirizing the comedy that is the City and its clown bankers. hilarious. and perhaps it was so funny because for all the fun it poked at life in the city, it was painfully very close to the truth.

lucky for my tummy, reservations at banquette were in order and we toddled over for a well deserved supper. banquette, one of the g ramsay family, whose design was apparently inspired by the interior of a 1950s corvette stingray, looks like the inside of an American diner, albeit a rather sleek one at that. fortunately there wasn’t any meatloaf or grits on the menu, there was however a delicious sounding burger and spaghetti carbonara – comfort food for a friday evening – the end of a long and painful week battling the clowns and their other circus friends in the City. well, at least it was the end of the week for me. ls was still reading his document.
document drama dealt with, we decided to forgo a rather too energetic sounding party in the interests of sheer fatigue and for more comfort sought in bellinis and the strains of jazz piano in the American Bar – home of harry cradock’s legacy cocktails. it was a lovely mellow bar, evoking images of women in glamorous cocktail dresses and men in fedoras in the days of speakeasy and the prohibition – the long lost days before blackberrys and taxi-riding documents.

happy halloween

2007-10-31T18:18:00.000-07:00

I’m glad I live in an apartment which doesn’t lend itself to conducive treat-or-tricking. it’s not so much the repeated opening of the door to the neighbourhood kids, in a range of pvc getups and an abundance of make-up and fake blood designed to make them pseudo- vampires/witches/Britney-spear look-alikes (in increasing order of scariness). it’s the fact I know I will probably scoff all the treats before the children even arrive.

my one concession to Halloween this year has been, shock horror, my first jack-o-lantern. I even got myself a 99p pumpkin carving set. I could have gone for the deluxe £1.50 set which came with pumpkin carving templates. that would have been 51p better spent considering the rather wonky toothy grinned pumpkin I ended up with.

my real motivation however, was the inside of the pumpkin. having scooped out a large cup worth of pumpkin flesh, there was only one thing to do – make pumpkin risotto.

pumpkin risotto (inspired in part by a g ramsay recipe)

cup of pumpkin flesh
olive oil
cup of Arborio rice
vegetable stock
minced garlic
bay leaf
proscuitto

cut the pumpkin flesh into chunks, drizzle a little olive oil, and roast in a single layer at 200C till tender. cool. whiz into a puree.
heat the olive oil and sauté the minced garlic. add rice and stir till grains are all coated in the oil. add a ladle of vegetable stock – the pan should be sizzling hot and the addition of the vegetable stock will cause the rice to spit and jump about in the pan in a rather angry manner. stir. stir and stir till stock is almost all absorbed. keep adding ladles of vegetable stock, continuously stirring till each ladle of stock is absorbed. repeat till the rice is tender but still slightly al dente. stir in the pumpkin puree. fry the bay leaf in a little butter till crisp. I grilled a slice of proscuitto for a couple of minutes till crisp and crumbled it over the risotto together with the bay leaf. definitely a treat.

piri-piri chicken

2007-10-30T20:07:00.000-07:00

what’s a girl to do when her boss gives her a bottle of piri-piri sauce from his recent travels to the Algarve? she makes piri-piri chicken.

piri-piri chicken

chicken – marinated in half a bottle of abovementioned piri-piri sauce (alternatively, whiz into a puree a handful of birds-eye chili, a splash of vinegar and a splash of olive oil), huge tablespoons of minced garlic, salt and a glug of olive oil. I advocate using a spoon. you will regret having used your hands if you inadvertently rub your eyes.

not the most precise of measurements I admit but you’ll figure it out, as things depend on how hot you like your chicken. ideally left to marinate overnight as the chilli permeates every crevice in your chicken and acts partially as a tenderizer. bring to room temperature (if chilled overnight in the fridge) and roast at a preheated oven at 200C for about 25 minutes depending on the size of your chicken (parts) till the juices run clear and skin is deliciously crisp.

I served my chicken with spinach rice and a carrot salad dressed lightly in a splash of the chicken juices from the roasting pan. mix a couple of tablespoons of the chicken juices from the pan with a good glug of the piri-piri sauce (depending on how hot you like it and if there’s any left) and drizzle over the chicken.

i love pattersons

2007-10-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

they say, you know it’s true love when you can’t stop smiling and thinking about the object of your affections. I couldn’t stop smiling at work on friday, simply just thinking about the prospect of dinner at pattersons. I couldn’t stop smiling during dinner. and I couldn’t stop smiling after. and I’m still smiling now. it’s true love I’m convinced. of course, the pleasure was compounded exponentially by the brilliant conversations and the lovely company of E.

I never thought I could love pattersons more than I did. but they charmed our socks off by giving me and e a glass each of champagne on the house, and an absolutely brilliant amuse bouche in the form of a panfried halibut with spinach puree, tomato concasse and (I think) carrot purree. and a wafer of black truffle. absoulutely brilliant. and it eased the pain of the after-effects of my indecision when I had decided to forgo the halibut which was on the specials of the day. as the table had been booked in e’s name, i’ve concluded e’s got special dining powers. definitely making her do all the bookings from now on.

I was secretly pleased that they hadn’t changed the menu yet. having had the same starter the last two times I was at pattersons, I fought all temptation to order the langoustines for the third time, and instead went for the rabbit tortellini. “it tastes just like chicken (but better)”, I said soothingly to e, hopefully dispelling any fluffy-animal-rabbits-are-too-cute-to-eat issues as I hoisted onto her a forkful of the sweet flakes of rabbit meat encased in its light, al dente pasta shawl. she very graciously reciprocated (as I hoped she would) with a forkful of the blessed langoustines and courgette flower tempura.

I want to meet the chef and his kitchen staff at pattersons and kiss all of them. they’re lovely people I’m convinced. the food is really very well executed, and inventive without being pretentious. and I always have a very good time. and they’re not overly precious about their food. e decided to forego the foie gras stuffing in the dover sole (which came with the lovely punch of celeriac puree and basil pesto gnocchi), and they happily obliged. and the resulting dish was just as brilliant as I remembered it with the foie gras stuffing. our lovely waitress couldn’t have been more apologetic when she gravely informed us that the panna cotta that e had requested for puddings were sold out, and the kitchen was more than happy to acquiesce to e’s request for sorbets (which weren’ on the menu as such), and obliged with a trio of lovely fruity sorbets.

being the greedy git that I am, I wasn’t going to have anything omitted from my mains, which was the well hung fillet of beef, with breaded sweetbread, ratte potatoes and baby carrots. nestling on the square of lusciously tender potatoes was a single clove of roasted garlic. it was a good thing I wasn’t planning on snogging anyone that night, because that single clove of roasted garlic gave me unparalleled pleasure as I squeezed its soft mushy garlicky goodness out of its shell and smeared it liberally over each mouthful of the potato. I’m not much of a meat-and-two-veg kind of girl, but if meat-and-two-veg were always done like this was, I could eat it every day. I had for pudding, the vanilla and chocolate cheesecake with almond macarons. to be honest, I was slightly dreading this as I had in my mind’s eye, a generic supermarket cloyingly sickening slice of overbearing cheesecake. I’m not sure what I was doing thinking of that. of course pattersons wasn’t going to serve me a slab of drudge – the cheesecake came in delicate quenelle shaped spoonfuls of goodness. I must have audibly squealed with pleasure with each pop of the almond macarons into my mouth.

it’s slightly disconcerting, I mused on the drive back home, that while i sometimes question my ability to fully explicitly express my affections for anyone in a coherent and sensible manner, I have absolutely no difficulty in saying - I absolutely love pattersons. no doubt about that.

p.s – I’ve finally found out the name of the squashy plants on the tables – they’re colloquially referred to as “mind your own business”. or if you’re being posh – soleirolia soleirolii in latin.

fit for the queen

2007-10-30T19:22:00.000-07:00

i sometimes wonder if princes harry and william ever eat pot noodles? as they stumble out of boujis after yet another night out partying and boozing on the house with their mates, do they ask their drivers to stop for a kebab, or do they ring their butler/cook/entire royal staff and order a royal fry-up? do you think the queen likes curry? rumour has it that prince charles has never buttered his own toast. what on earth do the royal family eat?

this nation, obsessed with its royals, was given the opportunity to watch various top chefs in the country compete against each other for the opportunity to cook for the queen’s birthday lunch in the bbc show “the great british menu” last year. it was a tense affair, almost as fun to watch as iron chef without the dodgy japlish voiceovers. the panel of judges – the at times scathing trio of prue leith, oliver peyton and matthew fort could well have given simon cowell and his x-factor gang a run for their money. it was good television to watch though at times the chef’s choices of dishes were a little bewildering. bryn williams won the honor of cooking the fish course, and when he started cooking at odettes, he put this dish on the menu. royal food brought to the people.

I was royally late for lunch. having very wisely decided that I would venture to drive to odettes without the aid of a map and in very logical fashion decided that since I knew how to get to regents park, I imagined huge signs pointing me in the direction to regents park road. I was obviously not taking any account of the fact that london’s bewildering road nomenclature system, the added complications of one way streets and my general lack of direction which would prove this almost impossible. several panicky calls to the restaurant later, motivated only by the prospect of lunch and my embarrassment of having kept jl waiting for the greater part of half an hour, I soldiered on and finally arrived in a fluster. a profusement of apologies later, I finally looked around the restaurant and immediately calmed down. it was absolutely lovely. the wallpaper with its grey vinery pattern, the bright yellow chairs. it was funky with character, an entirely relaxed clean space without any hint of bland minimalist starkness.

the eating procession started with a shot of sweet creamy corn soup topped with a popcorn. jl chose to start with a scallop ceviche – sweet slices of scallop with its panfried brethren, a pea veloute and sweet pea shoots. I started with a roast quail breast. it was accompanied by a quiver of jelly which was surprisingly savoury with a hint of vinaigrette.

the fish course – roasted turbot with oxtail and cockles. I had wanted to eat this dish ever since the first time I watched bryn cook it in the preliminaries when he beat angela hartnett to represent wales. it was inventive – a myriad of layers which demanded culinary curiosity. while the french have regularly done their turbot with bacon – bryn’s addition of the braised oxtail and the cockles made me want to snatch the plate away from prue leith as she ate it all and praised it between each mouthful. jl had gone for the monkfish – it came with a lentil broth and a bed of greens. the disks of fish had a coating of some sort we couldn’t quite identify, but it was extremely delicious.

I’m so glad jl loves pudding because the odette puddings were absolutely brilliant. jl chose the caramelized pineapple with coconut ice-cream – Tropicana on a plate. I had the frozen strawberry parfait with strawberry and mint compote, and the most adorable mini strawberry donuts.

I don’t’ know what the queen eats on a daily basis. I’m sure she has the best of the land (and I imagine the royal pantry to be brimming with duchy originals products). but if she had bryn williams cook the fish course for her birthday, she is one lucky lady indeed.

latium

2007-09-22T17:37:00.000-07:00

when p and I had dinner at latium last month, I was accused of eating in a filthy manner. p wasn’t referring to any lack of basic hygiene, but stated emphatically that dining with me was like having the sound track of a c-list pornographic movie playing in the background. I obviously did not agree, but my mouth was too full of the beautiful fish ravioli to argue. I groaned in pleasure in response.

three weeks dreaming about the fish ravioli, I had to go again. the table booked, I lobbied c into having supper with me.

I ordered the same starter I had the last time I ate at latium – three moreish mounds of beef tartare, each topped with a poached quail’s egg, with a side of rocket salad. it was more moreish than I remembered. c chose the foie gras terrine with a cherry brioche – rich and sweet, total decadence.

the pasta courses were next. or rather THE pasta course. having convinced c that the fish ravioli was simply divine, and also that I wasn’t willing to share any of mine, c ordered his own plate of fish ravioli. it was a work of art – four different coloured ravioli squares placed in front of us in the order we were meant to eat them in. black squid ink ravioli with its filling of monkfish, spinach ravioli with its treasure of cod, egg ravioli with brill and carrot ravioli with crab. the raviolis were dressed in a light fish broth and shaved bottarga. it couldn’t get much better. this was true love.

the mains were lovely. to be fair to the mains, they had big ravioli shoes to fill as I was still lusting after the fish ravioli even after it had come and gone. c’s pork belly was a lovely chunk of well roasted pork goodness, the crackling a delight. I had braised beef which came wrapped in cabbage which when cut open revealed the tender strips of beef which fell apart in an satisfying manner to absolve itself of all its slow cooked goodness.

having eaten till bursting capacity, we could just about manage petit fours – a good looking tray of truffles which we were much too full to eat in its entirety which was a real shame. we did however had a nibble of each truffle which we then placed back on the tray in such a manner it seemed we hadn’t touched it at all. rather juvenile on my part I admit, but I blame the fact that I was still on a high from the fish ravioli.
latium has definitely made it onto my favourites list. the waiters have promised me that while the main menu is seasonal and subject to daily changes depending on the market produce to which the kitchen is subject, the current ravioli menu is on for the entire year. I’m probably going to cry when they break my heart and stop serving the fish ravioli.