Crisis Christmas 2010

There was change in the air this year at Crisis Christmas, which all took a bit of getting used to. I have volunteered at the Quiet Centre for the last three years now, and had much enjoyed the challenge of the tiny and ill-equipped kitchen, avoiding where all the cold spots were in the centre, and the karaoke led by Lloyd on the last day. This year, however, the Quiet Centre was replaced with a new project targeting really entrenched homeless people, who would never normally search out these types of services.

It was a challenge in the initial few days. Apparently we only had 2 guests on the first night we were opened, and although we got this up to a healthy 25-30 guests towards the end, this was not really up to what we were used to at Quiet, where sometimes we had to churn out up to 120-150 meals for both guests and volunteers.

In some ways this was a welcomed change, as the kitchen was much more relaxed, to the extent that we kept having little sit downs with teacakes at 5:30pm. It was also lovely to be with the same volunteers from the Quiet crew, peeps like Ed, Mo, Dom, J, Evelyn, James, Lisa, Darren, Andy, Tat, and of course special mention to Sue, all of whom ensured we had no custard left by Day 6. And it was even more lovely that we felt we really got to know some of the guests. I know you're not supposed to have favourites at these things, but I loved loved the Polish guy who loved tomatoes, the guy who never speaks (except for when he wants to be cheeky and ask for an extra large portion), and the lovely lady with the dog who never failed to come back to the kitchen after the dinner to say how nice it was.

In the kitchen, we were extremely relaxed in the first two days, mainly because the kitchen was huge in comparison to what we were used to, and everything seemed to work! Also making 60 portions as opposed to 120 portions makes a big difference. Here was our bread & butter pudding effort from the first night:

As ever, we did suffer from a lack of fresh ingredients, particularly as we were getting to the after Christmas period. Our freezer was flooded with airline meals from Qatar Airways, and we struggled to think of something creative to do with the Malai Kofte meal, which I still don't really know what it was:

Mmmm... looks appetising, doesn't it (!)

Even more appetising were a box of Linda McCartney 'roasts' that we discovered in the freezer. They came with no cooking instructions, just frozen blocks of bland:

This was probably the most Ready Steady Cook moment I've been faced with at Crisis, when Norman asked me to try and create something with this. We were so so low on fresh ingredients at this point, I really did struggle, but this was what I ended up making:

Connie's vegetable stew surprise (serves about 30)

4 tins of French onion soup (we had no onions left at this point)

3 bags of carrots, peeled and chopped small

8 vegetable Oxo cubes, made into a stock

2 bulbs of garlic, chopped finely

10 suspect looking Linda McCartney 'roasts', pinged in the microwave for 15 mins to defrost, then chopped small

Several handfuls of mixed herbs, including Norman's lovely lovage

1. Fry about a quarter of the garlic in a little oil, careful not to burn.

2. Add in about a quarter of the carrots, frying until starts to shorten.

3. Add in about a quarter of the Linda McCartney, try your best to get some colour on the things.

4. Add in a tin of French onion soup, and about a quarter of the vegetable stock.

5. Add in a handful of herbs, stir stir stir.

6. Let it all bubble for a while to cook through.

7. Transfer to a huge catering size tray, and cook in the oven until it is time to serve dinner.

8. Repeat as many times as you can without making a huge mess in the kitchen (which I failed and got told off for)

Obviously I made too little even with this recipe, and ended up doing a spicy tomatoey version because we'd run out of French onion soup at this point, and still desperately needed to get some flavour into the Linda McCartneys. It actually tasted alright in the end, the man who doesn't speak even came back for seconds! But then anything tastes alright covered in grated cheese and chips:

We made this on the last day I was there, and because we'd had such a relaxed time of it, we decided to really stress ourselves out by making chips. Norman has been doing Crisis Christmas for 15 years now, and has never made chips. After this Christmas, he swears he will never make chips at Crisis ever again. Imagine doing chips from frozen for 60 people, without a deep fat fryer, and only having about 2 spare catering trays at your disposal, and with no way to store them once they were cooked. Somehow we managed to do it with a combination of frying pans and dancing around the ovens and panic and a little stress, and I must say we were sooooo popular with the guests that evening. But never again!!! We are ordering McDonald's in next time if they want chips!!!

And here is my lovely crack team in the kitchen, sporting the sexy hairnets are Synthia, Dave and Norman (and also Helen on the first day!). Can't wait to see you guys again next year! X

Green brunch

Singapore as a whole really surprised me. I was I guess expecting this anonymous, big city, full of tall buildings, very clean, and not a lot else. I certainly did get all of this, but it was so much greener and comfortable and full of air than I had expected. I'm definitely going back again. And another great surprise was when Eunice took us out for brunch, it was to a place that would not have been out of place in London.

One of the big frustrations with living in Hong Kong is that I feel that cafes and restaurants here are all so identikit, it's almost like there is a manual for making nice, shiny, anonymous places with absolutely no character or design about them. When I went back to London for Christmas, the thing I loved most was walking around Soho, seeing little cafes like Flat White, the fact that Banksy had just done a pop up gallery next to a bunch of sex shops, still spotting new graffiti by Invader, getting annoyed that Koya was closed... How surprised I was then when something in Singapore really embodied the spirit of this, albeit in somewhere that looks like a strip mall on first site.

House on Dempsey Hill is an ambitious project that seems to encompass a restaurant, a spa, a retail shop, and a corporate conference centre in some space by the trees. You could call the place completely design over function, as the dining room features an over-sized table that patrons eat under, arm chairs which are too low to sit in and eat, drinks served in jam jars, but the place really won me over. It also helps that their house slogan/poem made me wonder whether they had stolen lyrics from the Manics, but that's another story...

I read in their funky over-designed newspaper menu that one of the chefs is a graduate from Peter Gordon, and the fusion influences are clear to see, although in some ways the menu is play-it-safe with more brunch classics like eggs, asparagus and hollandaise and French toast. What is innovative though is their presentation. I did love their choice of crockery, all so deliberately mismatched and shabby chic. Although I still think any chef putting sauce in a shot glass should just be shot:

After our massive amounts of pigging out, I went for their Ahi Taki Salad, which was really very good. We were all debating on how to recreate this at home, the tuna having been marinated in what we guess is soy, chilli, fish sauce, tamarind, peppercorns.

They are also very famous for their thin crust pizzas, which are enormous. This is a English breakfast version of it, easily would have fed a family of four:

Their dessert and cakes menu allows their strength in food design to shine. Everything is again impeccably presented, but potentially at the expense of flavour. For example, their grapefruit tart with green tea pastry was stunning visually, but the actual taste was way too tart, with both grapefruit and lemon, and the huge blob of solid meringue didn't really belong.

The spa and retail shop upstairs has equally the same amounts of attitude, with a browbar, someone making cakes live, and lots of too expensive toiletries. They also managed to steal $2 from me for a Sylvia Plath pencil, but I loved the fact that they sell Sylvia Plath pencils! Oh what I would give for a place like this in Hong Kong!

Singaporean street food

Despite our excesses in fine dining in Singapore, the thing I had looked forward to most about our little trip was the street food. In fact, when Eugene and Eunice asked me what I wanted to eat, I said the only thing that was compulsory was laksa. Only we never quite managed it, nor did we eat any chicken rice!!! I think this is just their attempt to lure me back to their country, my friends are super cunning you know.

We landed into Singapore at nearly half past midnight, but Eugene knew us too well, and immediately whisked us off for some 宵夜. Roti prata is a classic showing of the mixed-up-goodness of Singapore. I'd actually never eaten it before, and Eugene took us to reputedly the best place, conveniently close to his house.

It wasn't quite what I expected actually, basically a thin pancake stuffed with whatever you want, served with a big bowl of curry sauce. Mine was stuffed with onions and mushrooms:

Although I preferred the paper thin version with a small sprinkling of sugar. For some reason I get a bit sugar addicted in Asia, they do the savoury/sweet thing so well after all:

All washed down with my first genuine teh tarik. In fact, I just looked up teh tarik on wiki, and the picture looks suspiciously like the place we went to! Subtlely different to the Hong Kong milk tea, this tasted maltier to my taste buds, although I'm still not 100% certain where the difference lies (apparently teh tarik is condensed milk, and HK milk tea is evaporated milk, again, not that I really understand what the difference is!):

We somehow also managed a bowl of tofu pudding each after this! And the morning after, the feeding only continued. We went to one of the hawker markets near Eunice's place, and I was pleasantly surprised at how clean it was (then I remembered I was in Singapore!). Apparently this one has just been rebuilt, and this was just so civilised!

E&E soon disappeared off to buy a selection of the best goodies in the market, but honestly I think you can come here more than 10 times and still find interesting new things to eat. The best thing we had was something called shui kueh in Singlish, or 水粿 in Chinese. It's hard to described really, a kind of soft rice cake, which reminded me of cheung fun and 粉粿. But the thing you are really eating is the preserved radish mix which goes on top. This stuff is dangerous!! So morish!! In fact, we made Eugene return to the same stall the next day to smuggle two pots of the stuff back to Hong Kong.

This is where it's from!!

Upon getting the radish back to Hong Kong, we put it into our mega-cold fridge, and it is so congealed that it only leads me to conclude that the major ingredient in the thing is pork fat. No wonder if it's so good. I also smuggled some back to the UK for my parents to have a try, thankfully I just look too innocent for those customs officers.

Some other interesting stuff we ate included a variety of steamed 糕 type stuff, with savoury and sweet fillings. All these were reminiscent of something Chinese, but with a bit of a Singaporean twist. The red ones were filled with peanut or red bean, and the pink and white ones were savoury iirc.

And we also indulged in some fish cakes, Asia's favourite street snack of all time! So F.A.T.!

You will also see that there is a blue plastic bag in the corner of some of the photos. Eugene also bought something else, but just could not fit it in, so we never even opened that bag, and instead just carried it around with us for the rest of the day. Yes, we are bad people. I blame Eugene's influence, he always manages to convince me to do things I don't want to do :p

18 courses in a day - yes, it has to be Singapore

As grumpy as I have been about moving back to Asia, one of the best things is to be nearer to two of my dearest friends. Eugene in particular has been a very big part of my foodie life in recent years, and probably the person who talked me into switching jobs to work in the industry (with many many subtle hints of 'hire me! hire me!'). It is a small crime that I have never been to his home country of Singapore. And I start my Singaporean posts with a tribute to my dear friend Eugene, showing him doing what he does best :D

Now, I knew I would need to bring an extra stomach or two if I was going to go visit Eugene in Singapore, especially as Eunice was also in town, but I certainly did not expect the AVALANCHE of food that was coming my way. They had kindly booked us a kaiseki lunch at Goto on Ann Siang Road , which has a tremendously good value 6-course set lunch at around £30 iirc. However, quite unexpectedly half way through the afternoon, Eunice received a call that Iggy's, apparently the 28th best restaurant in the world, had a last minute cancellation, and asking would we want to come? It was rude to say no, but that did mean we were on for 18 courses in one day. And this is not including the street food we had for breakfast that morning!

I won't bore you with my narrative and will mainly let you enjoy the food porn of this post. All I will say about Goto is that the only thing that niggled me was the unnecessary kimonos that they make all the waitresses wear, including the Filipino waitress who just looks plainly odd. The food and the surroudings were clean, great quality, and you are wondering how they do it for so little money. My favourites was the salmon roe with yuzu and sake in the first course, and the matcha swiss roll in the dessert.

My other dear friend Sen managed to join us for our tremendous meal at Iggy's. Situated inside the Hilton hotel on Orchard Road, there was a noisy wedding party next door, and the whole decor is just a little hotel for me. It reminded me of how bland the room at Hibiscus is. Nevertheless, the food and the company soon made me forgot all of this, and this was genuinely one of the best meals I ate in 2010, and probably in the noughties. Each course was unfailingly interesting, with many highlights including the scallop with bacon foam (the only time I have ever understood the use of foam), the deep fried quinoa, and the combination of strawberry and gorgonzola.

Also a special mention on the butter, so good that I scoffed two pieces of mini baguette on top of my 12 courses!! Whipped butter with a little shaving of parmesan on top, oh my god, work of genius:

And I will end with this ominous picture - someone has already mentioned that it looks like a pile of cocaine on a bag of malteasers:

This was 'Winter', a combination of coconut, coffee, lemon, and chestnut, and probably the best dessert I have ever tasted. Sneaking chestnuts into desserts generally gets my vote, but it was light, it was Christmassy, it was clever, it was well balanced, and it was snow! Also helped by the fact that the dishy pastry chef kept coming out and talking to Eunice :) Genius, genius, very much worth the 10lbs I probably gained in that one day.

Semi decent

I mentioned in my previous post that rumours have it that most of the features in 飲食男女 are actually paid for by restaurants themselves. Now, this is just hearsay, but the fact that the following restaurant has been featured no less than 3 times in the last 3 months is either a sign that this is true, or that there is absolutely nothing to write about in Hong Kong.

I very excitedly read about Limehouse in Wanchai very soon after my arrival here. Not only was it a British restaurant, but the name is just instantly appealing, to the extent I wondered whether it was a play on the fact that Limehouse is now where loads of Chinese people live in London. I soon hopped along hoping for some British delights.

Turns out the place is pretty small, and dinner is hard to get a reservation. But their location at the wrong end of Ship Street means that lunch traffic is pretty dire, so they have come up with a ridiculously good value $88 two-course lunch including tea or coffee:

I got overexcited again struggling on what to choose, as their a la carte menu was also full of nice comfort foods from home:

The $88 menu was too difficult to resist though, especially as I found out it was oyster chowder as soup of the day. Not bad, although not sure about the doily (actually doilies seemed to appear a lot, again not sure if there are being ironic):

I loved the inclusion of chicken tikka masala on the menu, so I had to get it really, even though I've eaten the total of about 3 chicken tikka masalas in my over 20 years of living in England, despite it being our national dish and all now. This was comforting, yet really very bland. Was this another play on Britishness, a play on how bland our food was? Maybe. Or maybe they just forgot to add any spices in the sauce.

Jonny went for the throw-back shepherd's pie, which was a tomatoey version rather than a sticky savoury brown version (you know what I mean!):

Caris loved her duck liver and egg from the a la carte menu:

And I thought the best dish of the day was Sen's salmon fishcake actually, very meaty with fish and very well seasoned:

Caris and I have returned since for dinner and have had a nice little chat with the owner Toh. Unfortunately, the whole thing is a lot less British than I had hoped. Toh has basically spent a few years in catering college in England (Leith's, iirc), but has picked up some of the British classics which he has imported into his menu. But that is where the Britishness ends! He didn't quite get my sense of humour when I was ribbing him on the inclusion of the word 'scallions' on the menu, and I had a somewhat heated debate on the merits of British wine with him. Actually that reminds me, I promised to bring him back a bottle of Camel Valley - all those of you in England, do try the Camel Valley Rose sparkling wine!! Super yummy from Cornwall!!

It turns out that Toh and the head chef at Limehouse are refugees of the now defunct M on the Fringe, which closed after its owner turned her attentions to expanding in Shanghai. The rest of the team is now apparently working at another quite cute Western concept, with one of the first dai pai dongs serving Western food at the Sheung Wan Queen's Street food market. Dubiously named ABC, it literally is a in a dirty wet food market. However, I was pretty impressed with how full it was, with two or three tables of gweilos tucking in:

The menu has the same retro feel of Limehouse, to the extent that they both feature Steak Diane on it. Has anyone eaten Steak Diane since the 70's except for in these two restaurants?! Anyway, the prices are ok, but when you think about it pretty steep when you think they must be paying zero rent on the place, and you are sitting in a plastic chair eating with school dinners cutlery. The menu also reads like the mandatory list of 'things to include on menus in Hong Kong. Truffles? Tick (twice in fact). Foie gras? Tick. Suckling pig? Tick. The only elements missing are wagyu beef and sea urchin (although they do have steak and salmon roe as substitutes).

The salmon roe and crab tortellini with lobster sauce sounded very good, and was not badly presented on the plate. But when you tucked in, it was a pretty amateur effort. The pasta is just a little too thick, the filling just a little clammy and mushy. The lobster sauce also tasted suspiciously of lobster bisque out of a can that had been boiled down a bit...

The seafood paella was better, crammed with clams, prawns, squid, and the texture of the rice was pretty good. The only real offender here though was the inclusion of bacon as well as chorizo, which was just too much saltiness.

We also tried the churros and the apple crumble, both of them pretty disappointing. Although I should just learn never to eat churros unless I am at that little shop near Sant Antoni Market whose name I will never remember and will probably never find again.

Both of these establishments are fine, but both of them are pretty much cooking food I can cook at home at home-cooking quality. There is also the problem that because they are cooking these 'classics', they are never going to please my palate as I am so particular about what goes into my crumble and the sausages in my bangers and mash. Which reminds me I forgot to smuggle some of Rod and Diane's sausages back here :(