Still eating copious amounts of beef

I am still in Chile, with another week to go before I head to Peru to do the Inca Trail, and I am still eating my way through the cow population here. We have no idea whether it is the slow cooking or whether it is the quality of the beef itself, but it is so incredibly tender that you rarely need to use a knife.

Some of the highlights of last week's eating was to try some traditional Chilean favourites. First is the empanada, which is like a cornish pasty really, but they traditionally stuff it with beef, onions, boiled eggs, and olives (empanada de pino):

I also tried the Chilean heart-attack-on-a-plate, lomo a lo pobre, which is a steak accompanied by fried onions, chips, and two fried eggs. We actually had it at an Argentinian chain popular in Chile, and the steak was soooooooooooooooooooooo very good, even though the South Americans tend to overcook it to medium/medium-well.

However, given the geographical positioning of the country, the Chileans also eat a lot of fish. We were lucky enough to visit the port and beach towns of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar at the weekend, both popular hang-outs of Santiagoians. Here, we tried a Chilean seafood chowder, paila marina, which had abalone (!), scallops, prawns, and conger eel:

Most of the group actually opted for the Chilean version of fish and chips at this restaurant, and just chose the fish at the top of the page (menus invariably all in Spanish), not knowing it was conger eel. Some flinched when told, but most enjoyed it (yay!). The flesh is much less oily than the eels back home though, much meatier like a monkfish.

And of course, the reason I am actually here is to build a house, so I really should write about that. We were finishing a half-built wooden house for a single mother Valesca, and her child Martin, and here is the finished article! It sits on an extremely pretty plot surrounded by flowers, and we donated the paint for them to have it yellow :) It only consists of two tiny rooms (you can barely fit a double bed in each), but it will provide some much needed space for Valesca and Martin.

Apparently Chileans love frankfurters too!!!

So, I am in Chile doing yet another Habitat trip. Unlike in Kenya, we are staying in the most civilised place, which even has wi-fi connection, so I can keep you all up to date with my happenings here.

I have been here 3 days so far, and the food has been absolutely amazing. We are staying in a little town called Valle de Casablanca about 45 minutes from Santiago, and each day we have some local ladies cook for us - Lucia for breakfast and dinner and Rosita for lunch.

The first foodie thing we noticed is that there is a LOT of meat eaten here - each meal time there are literally HUNKS of meat on offer. For example, this is a typical lunch for us, just look at that hunk of beef I was supposed to eat!!:



The other most pleasing thing is that they are obsessed with frankfurters, just look at their supermarket counters!!! (the bottom shelf was also all yummy sossijes):

And also look at what they fed me for dinner the second night I was here (the gloopy stuff it is served with we decided was some kind of winter melon/marrow thing):

So all in all, having the most fabulous time here foodwise. And I shall post about the fabulous wine in my next one ... :)

The best roast dinner in London

This post is dedicated to Stu. xxx

It took me a while to decide which place I should go to for my final dinner before I left for South America. In the end, for a quintessentially British experience, I decided on going to Le Cafe Anglais in Bayswater, mainly because I liked the fact that it is a little bit special, but at the same time, it just serves good British comfort food.

The restaurant is in the most random of places - on the 2nd floor of Whiteley's shopping centre on the site of a failed MacDonald's - but once you arrive at the door, it is gorgeous. There is the most amazing Art Deco-ish windows on the outside, and inside, the lighting is also pretty retro and old skool. The other striking thing as you walk is is the huge spit-roasts in the centre of the room, and it is no wonder that it specialises in EXCELLENT roast dindins.

To start though, you are so spoiled. There is a choice (well, I say choice, but I normally end up getting both) between hors d'oeuvres at £3 each, which range from parmesan custard with anchovy toasts ("adults dippy egg and soldiers", as excellently described by Matthew Fort) to mackeral teriyaki and cucumber salad, and proper starters, simpler fare such as omelette with various fillings to the pike boudin that I had. I have never had boudin before, and I was in an experimental mood, and I was so glad I tried it. It was extremely light, although not very pretty - a sort of light fish mousse crammed with herbs surrounded by a beurre blanc:



For mains, it is mainly roasts (from chicken legs at a bargainous £4 each to grouse at £20-odd) as well as a few fish dishes. We had a little snoop at the rotisserie, and decided that the pork roast with fennel and garlic looked the most promising, and it was served with the most crackly crackling:

Potentially the second best roast pork I've ever had, which explains why this post is dedicated to my fabulous friend Stu. We did a little reunion trip to the Duke of Cambridge in Islington, which is an all-organic pub (right down to organic cola). The roast pork there is just out of this world - so favourful, just a revelation how they managed to make pig taste so good.

These sorts of places make me miss London. But off to South America I must go...

More ugly, but delicious food

Despite coming from Hong Kong, I don't own a digital camera, nor do I want one - I think it's something to do with the trips I used to do around China with 20 other Chinese people and having to stop for pictures every 3 minutes. The only pictures I ever take are of food, and it's all done with my slightly crappy camera on my Blackberry - that's why most of the pics on this blog look a bit dodgy.

But the food in this post really were pretty ugly, but just goes to show presentation really isn't that important. Anchor and Hope on The Cut has been hailed many a time as one of London's best gastropubs, serving some very good British grub. Given their no booking policy, it is always heaving, meaning you have to get there pretty early to avoid a 2 hour wait. But the bar area is a lovely traditional pub, and they serve some interesting Polish sausages as you wait.

The main reason we go there is for their duck hearts on toast, which are the most wondrous thing. I have no idea how they cook them so perfectly - they are so soft which suggests they have been hours stewing, but yet when you cut into them they are still perfectly medium rare. I was raving about them to the couple next to us, not sure they were convinced, but it is just like the perfect combination of ducks liver and ducks breast - mmm! So good we nearly ordered some extra for dessert:

The other starter we tried was the cuttlefish risotto - this was quite unusual given that they put a little bit of chilli in there. Again, very ugly:

For mains, we had originally wanted their roast rib of beef for two, but unsurprisingly they were already out of that when we got to ordering. Never mind, as we always eat that, and it meant we had to try something new. What we both ended up with was slow roast lop with fennel and creme fraiche - we had to look up lop, and it turns out to be very cute floppy eared bunny rabbits. This was gorgeous, the fennel worked really well with the surprisingly rich meat:

Anchor and Hope does have a sister restaurant Great Queen Street which does actually take bookings and is much nearer to my house. Only reason why I prefer A&H is the duck hearts, which I've never seen at GQS. Has anyone ever seen hearts at GQS? If so, that would make me a very happy bunny...

Winter warmers

Given that it was 30C in Kenya, and approaching summer when I left Sydney, it's surprising that I'm surviving the cold in London right now! It is the weather for stews and casseroles, and I also wanted to cook something new for a change, so I experimented with an oxtail casserole. I would also like to claim that it was a credit-crunch inspired choice, but it was bloody difficult tracking down oxtail in central London, and stewing steak is probably a lot cheaper.

Oxtail cooked in Guinness (serves 3-4)
1.5 kg oxtail, chopped into inch pieces
2 onions, roughly chopped
2 carrots, roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic, peeled but kept whole
Flour
1 bottle Guinness
1 pint beef stock
6 bay leaves
Salt and pepper

1. Dust the oxtail in seasoned flour, shaking off the excess. Brown the oxtail pieces in a hot pan on all sides to seal the meat, taking care not to overcrowd the pan

2. Remove the oxtail and place into a large casserole dish. Back in the frying pan, add the onions, garlic and carrots and fry on a medium heat for 5 or so mins.

3. Deglaze the pan with the Guinness, and pour the whole lot into the casserole. Pour over the beef stock until most of the oxtail is covered. Tuck in the bay leaves.

4. Put into a very low oven (Gas Mark 1, around 140C), and let it cook for 3 to 3.5 hours.

5. Serve with mash, lots of it!

Not the prettiest thing in the world, but so lovely on a cold night. We also had a visit from the local ginger cat that night (who is very fat and spoiled by the looks of things) - we offered some of the scraps of bone after we were done, and she turned her nose up at it!!

London lunching around Piccadilly

Two of my favourite people now work around Piccadilly Circus, and I'm most jealous of their excellent lunch (and dinner) options. Potentially the best thing about that area is the amount of good, inexpensive Japanese options - Brewer Street is filled with little Japanese cafes, and there is also the Japan Centre on Piccadilly itself, which has been enlarged in the last year or so to incorporate a separate shopping area and a large restaurant.

Dave and I decided to opt for Ten Ten Tei on Brewer Street, where he usually goes for his una dons. It has a larger than normal menu compared to the other establishments along that road that I've been too: lots of bentos/sets under a tenner, and a good variety of ramen/dons/your usual katsus and teriyakis. I was happily recalling the excellent ramen I had at Ryo's in Sydney, which made me in the mood for some shoyu ramen:

The soup base was obviously out of a packet, and the noodles were unsatisfyingly soft, but the pork topping was nice, lots of fat as you can see! Dave opted for the oyako don (chicken and egg on rice), what I would consider as the ultimate Japanese comfort food.

Next lunch was with Sally, who reminded me that Cha Cha Moon, Alan Yau's most recent venture, was just round the corner in Ganton Street. It's had some quite awful reviews, but given that it's Mr Yau, and it's his attempt at replicating the Hong Kong style cafe, I had to go and try.

The first thing that struck me was that everything is still very very cheap - most dishes are £3.50, and they are all a good size (probably bigger than in Wagamamas who now charge you around the £10 mark). The second thing that struck me though, was how odd some of the fried noodle dishes looked - they seemed to be the most popular option amongst the diners around me, and lots were swimming in dark soy.

I had really wanted to try their chicken fen pei (雞粉皮), a cold noodle dish of chicken and peanut sauce, something you really can't find in London, but it was unavailable (I'm guessing it can't be the most popular dish). So we opted for a Singaporean char kway teow, crispy duck lao mein, and some prawn guotei:

Everything was a bit underwhelming - I'd happily eat it, but it all felt a little Chinese takeaway, and I'm also sorry to say, a little Wagamama-esque. I did like their choice of drinks though - Hong Kong style milk tea is available and very authentic, and you can get all the vitasoy you want here too!

Maybe I was missing the point a bit by getting fried noodles - will return next week to try their wonton soup I think - the next table also had a Taiwanese beef noodle soup that looked quite good.

Revisiting some favourites

I'm back in London for 2 brief weeks before my next adventures, and having to see all my friends means I'm eating rather well at the moment! A perfect excuse to visit some of my old haunts.

Carl was after dim sum, and I thought I'd drag him away from the usual Royal China which he favours and introduce him to Yauatcha on Broadwick Street. It is one of my favourite dim sum places in London, although it is completely untraditional, and the charging per pot of tea (at around £6 per pot) does drive me nuts.

We completely stuffed ourselves. For the traditionalists, we had prawn dumpling (蝦餃), scallop siu mai (燒賣), siao long bao (小籠包), char siu bao (叉燒包) and fried pork buns (生煎包). For the little less traditional (which I'm not going to try and translate into Chinese), we had prawn and beancurd cheung fun, venison 'char siu' puffs, salt and pepper quail, and duck and shiitake roll.


Verdict on the food: still a cut above the rest of the dim sum places in London, but some things not as good as it used to be. The siu long bao in particular had very tough skin, and there was quite a long wait between some of the dishes (despite the restaurant being half empty). The prices also seem to have been inflated since I was last here - even the most basic dishes are now at least £4/£4.50. Given that I am in theory unemployed, I was very glad when Carl offered to pick up the bill, but at £40 a head, it was pretty steep (even taking into account we overstuffed ourselves).

In other news, Jess was in town visiting from Australia this week, so I obviously had to show her the best of this great culinary city. Latium on Berners Street has been a little secret amongst my foodie friends for a long time now, and time and time again it has delivered the most tremendous value for money, amazing Italian food. The menu boasts a 3 course meal for under £30, and I am still amazed it has not exceeded this yet - please don't go to this restaurant and make it really popular so that prices go up.

Standards remained high on my latest visit - in the past (particularly with large groups), service has been a bit ropey, but we had the most charming waiter who flirted a little too much with our table. Jess loved their signature dish of fish ravioli:

I loved my starter of mozzarella with grilled vegetables (oh my god the mozzarella was good):

Martin (Jess' better half) had a very pretty ravioli with taleggio and walnuts:

Star of the show for me though was my main course. To be honest, I've never really been that wowed by Latium's main courses, the highlight is always the antipasti or the pasta for me. But this roast monkfish with pumpkin sauce and wild mushrooms was just perfect - lovely and light, full of flavour:

I was told during the meal that Latium now have a chef's table for £50 a head for 5 courses - that's my birthday dinner for next year sorted then :p

Kenya

Every year, I volunteer with the charity Habitat for Humanity on a house-building project abroad. The original plan this year was to return to Tanzania where I was last year, but last minute changes meant I went to Kenya instead.

We were posted to a tiny little village called Kaplong, right in the middle of Kenya's beautiful tea plantations in the west of the country (not far from where Obama's granny lives, if I try to be topical). It was not the Kenya you'd imagine - gorgeously green, the skies poured nearly every day, and was really rather cold at night.

We were lucky enough to have food cooked for us by local women everyday, and the food was simple and delicious. As you can imagine, most Kenyans bulk up with lots of carbohydrates - rice, potatoes and maize form the majority of any meal. The national dish is a carb-heavy concoction called ugali, a dough-like substance made of maize, kind of like dried up wallpaper paste. I had this in Tanzania last year, and I still haven't acquired the taste! Thankfully, we were only treated to it once, and instead, our meals were more like the one below:

Rice, peas, chicken, and cabbage - very healthy and very delicious. Another thing I fell in love with was the dish sukuma wiki, which in Swahili literally means "stretch the week" - a spinach/kale dish cooked with onions and tomatoes. Unfortunately though, given the amount of food I ate, I think I came back gaining weight :(

I also thought I would for once post a photo that is not food-related - here is a picture of the beautiful house that we built!



We had started from scratch, digging the foundations for this basic 4-roomed brick house, and by the end, we had got to the lintels above the windows. All in 10 days!

Just before we left Kenya, we visited the very famous Carnivore restaurant back in Nairobi. The guidebooks boast that it is one of the Top 50 restaurants in the world, so of course I was dubious. As the name suggests, it is supposed to be a treat for carnivores - a huge selection of meat is grilled in-house and carved at your table:

Unfortunately, I think the reason this place got so famous was the game meat it used to serve - anything from zebras to warthogs. However, the Kenyan government has banned the serving of game meats now (not surprising given the tourist income the country receives from foreigners coming to safari), and the only 'interesting' meats served are ostrich and crocodile. As someone in my group said, 'it's just like a carvery back at home!' - the meat is generally overcooked and tough, but we did like the ostrich meatballs.

Farewell Australia

People who know me know that I like lists (I am a perfect J, Myers-Briggs fans), so the following sums up my lovely 4 months in Australia.

1. Favourite place in Sydney

Unsurprisingly, it is a tie between my beloved places Spice I Am and Sardine Room. Favourite thing from Spice I Am was the som tum, and also the duck mussaman curry which is sometimes on on special:

I also really liked their mussel pancake, which unfortunately is only available at lunchtimes:

I shall also really miss Sardine Room and the lovely Angie. If only I had a local restaurant like this back at home! This is the scallops with duck ravioli in a rosemary broth that I had the final time I was there (and yes, that is 8 scallops per portion, servings are huge!):

2. Most funny moment in supermarkets

I avoided supermarkets like the plague in Sydney - they are so awful it even made me miss Sainsbury's! Potentially the worse thing about them is their cheese collection, a sample photo is below:

Apparently "Tasty" means strong cheddar, and "Non-Tasty" is mild - but it did make me giggle every time I saw the signs. I did manage to find proper mozzarella once (obviously not in a supremarket), at $10 a ball (!)

3. Thing I missed most

This is a most silly thing, but frankfurters cannot be found in Sydney (especially not the Hertz brand). You might be asking me why a foodie would be into frankfurters so much - truth is that my lovely dad used to make me a frankfurter omelette every morning before school when I was young (a miracle that I wasn't a enormous as a teenager).

4. Most overrated place

It is a Sydney tradition to go and eat takeaway fish & chips from Doyle's at Watsons Bay, and this I certainly enjoyed (with Jess). But I really did loathe the restaurant Doyle's which is a few doors down the way, which is so overpriced it charges around $35 for a portion of fish & chips. The place is really such in the 70's - here is their lobster mornay (accompanied by retro salad):

5. Most sickly experience

Having to work with Reika and Jess meant that I had an unreasonable amount of exposure to chocolate - even though I'm a girl, I'm really not too fussed about the stuff. Not surprising then, that I was super sick at Max Brenner's chocolate cafe. Their famed hot chocolates contain a lot of sugar, and should not be accompanied by an additional chocolate waffle:

All in all, I thought Sydney had some amazing Asian food (particularly Thai and Vietnamese), but European food is a bit lacking. I was really quite blessed living where I was right next to Potts Point - would definitely recommend that area to foodies thinking of moving to Sydney!