Gap Year for Eating

Crisis Christmas 2011

2012-01-17T21:00:00.004+11:00

Yes, I only ever seem to blog about Habitat and Crisis, but they are inevitably the highlight of my year! Crisis in particular now has become a compulsory yearly event, made worse by the fact that all the troops for the afternoon shift at our residential centre has become so cliquey, it is simply an excuse for us to spend lots of time together and catch up.

This year was no different, with the same old kitchen team of Norm, Synthia, Dave and myself, but this year we also had the wonderful culinary skills of Evelyn joining us. What was radically different, and thank god for it too, was that there was no airplane food in sight! We had proper proper food to cook with, and this made it a lot easier (although I guess I secretly missed the challenge of taking apart 50 airplane meals to make it into something palatable).

Case in point was when I arrived on the first day to a whole load of beautiful haddock fillets. We are now the smallest centre only feeding up to 40-50 mouths including the volunteers, but we had been delivered about 50 fillets of fish, and no freezer had yet arrived for us to store it! So we had to cook it all, which meant me making the biggest batch of bechamel sauce in my life for a lovely fish pie for the first day. My right arm is about an inch thicker than the other one now. It was so yum, probably the best thing I've ever cooked at Crisis.

Although one still felt sorry for the vegetarians, as unfortunately we still had to rely on good old Linda McCartney for sustenance. I must say, when I started Crisis the Lindas were actually pretty nice, but now we have the ever occurring sawdust-like vegetarian sausages which do not look the most appetising...

The most challenging day as always is Christmas Day itself, the only day we can't make it up as we go along. We were a small kitchen, with only one small oven, so that was a challenge doing two big turkeys. But Norm led us well, and we managed to do not only very moist turkey, but also pigs in blankets, roast potatoes, sage and onion stuffing, roast parsnips, broccoli, carrots, peas, but no sprouts alas!

The Christmas was made even more special as we were also sent a whole bunch of smoked gammon, so we could make proper Christmas ham!!! To be truthful, none of us had actually cooked this before, I vaguely remembered watching someone's mum do it once before, so it was a bit ad lib. But it was still so good! I love love a Christmas ham, I can probably just do one in the middle of summer and eat it all myself.

And don't worry, I haven't forgotten the most important thing about Crisis Christmas, and that is the Crisis Christmas Custard. Oh yes it needs a capital C for the Custard. It is what we get the volunteers to come back each year, and Evelyn made it even more wonderful by bringing in some proper vanilla pods, so that we had proper proper Custard! God it was so yum. We also made a Christmas trifle (very inventive actually with some dried up scones), but I forgot to take a photo, probably because it was devoured rather quickly.

The only slight hiccup was when suddenly morning shift didn't have any chefs in on the second to last day, and Dave and I were roped in to help. We have never done a morning shift before, which informs doing breakfast to order, as well as doing lunch at the same time. We were a little stressed, why do people all want eggs that we suddenly cannot fry very competently?! We will be happy to go back to the cosy familiarity of afternoon shift again :)

And finally to my favourite picture of Crisis this year. Bless the likes of Tesco, Sainsburys, the Co-op who donate all of our food each year, but goodness is it tough to work with catering sizes of some items! This was our cheese block at the end of the week; even after hacking at it every day, we still literally had a square foot of cheese left. Lucky Dave and I mastered the art of making macaroni cheese for the masses this year, we will try to reduce the cheese mountain for 2012!

Return of the refried bean

2012-01-17T19:55:00.004+11:00

I worked with Habitat in Guatemala back in 2005, and it was the first time I went anywhere really "exotic"! And unsurprisingly for greedy little me, the recurring memory was that I ate a LOT of beans, and a LOT of plantains. As Honduras is next door, it is not surprising that it again featured heavily on the menu (contributing to my rather heavy hips after the trip :( )

Creature of habit, I ate the same breakfast everyday when we were in Santa Rosa - huevos rancheros (ranch eggs, or basically a fried egg with some tomato salsa on top), with fried plaintains and a plop of the good old refried bean. Thank god I was on a building site everyday afterwards.

We went out several times during our stay, and ate at some varied places including the local pizza joint and a Mexican place. However, it was the local place doing traditional local food that Johny took us to that stole our hearts, to the extent that we demanded to go back again! The food was good and hearty, the recurring theme of beans and plantains somehow transformed to be a bit more interesting. For example, the refried beans were served with a local cheese not too dissimilar to mozzarella in texture, but a little bit more salty, very addictive combination:

Plantains were served with a creamy, slightly sweet and tangy sauce, utterly delicious.

I also managed to sample a local delicacy of conch soup when we were still in San Pedro Sula (the city where we landed, which in the week before we arrived was awarded most murderous city in the world. We got out quickly.) It was a little bit coconutty, but not a lot else other than that I'm afraid. And obviously after the event I am feeling a bit guilty about eating conch, not sure about its endangered status.

And finally for a Lonely Planet shot, every afternoon we enjoyed going to the local coffee shop opposite our lodgings - Honduran coffee is lauded even by Starbucks, and I was happy to see the cafe culture very much alive even in this little town. And my hips got even heavier with the daily cake I was consuming :)

Habitat 2011 - Honduras

2012-01-17T18:30:00.007+11:00

This year's Habitat trip brought me to Honduras in Central America. It is a little known country as I found out when I was trying to fundraise, but it has always been a destination for me as Ben, my first ever Habitat leader, raved about doing a Global Village trip there before.

It was my first "corporate build", which is when Habitat is working with a corporation rather than individual volunteers, and I was working with volunteers from the publishing company Reed Elsevier. Reed Elsevier is a huge organisation with over 30,000 employees worldwide, and each of my volunteers were "champions" of their local "RE Cares" community programme. It was very nice to be working with others who are all so committed to helping others, and each of them also were sympathetic with each other's efforts to make other people do more!

Honduras itself is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, and is still recovering from when Hurricane Mitch destroyed much of the country back in 1998, when 6,000 people died and more than 75,000 were made homeless. It is no surprise then that the focus of Habitat's work is to create hurricane and earthquake-proof homes in Honduras, and so far they have helped more than 10,000 families in the country.

We were building in a small mountain town Santa Rosa de Copan, their claim to fame as being the closest big town near to the Copan Ruins. It was a gorgeous little town with cobbled streets and not a lot going on. We were building for a single mother Mariela who has a little girl Sarahy; interesting to note that single mothers did not seem to have the same kind of stigma that they suffer elsewhere. With high unemployment, there is not much to entertain the youngsters of the town, to the extent that Habitat will be building a village especially for single mothers in another future project.

We were only in Santa Rosa for 5 days, as corporate builds tend to be a lot shorter, so unfortunately it did not progress as much as other builds I've been to in the past. We were also rained off for the first day! Luckily, the foundations had already been dug when we arrived:

Here is Mariela with little Sarahy. Her uncle Martin also spent most of the week with us, and he was her main helper on site. His English is non-existent, as is my Spanish, but oh did we get to know each other when we went salsa dancing on the last evening. That man has got good hips!

Our main jobs for the week were to create the "re-bar" steel reinforcements which make the house more earthquake proof, mix cement for the foundation, and start the block work for the external walls.

(and I post a rare picture of me actually doing some work! not many of these exist, ha!)

(I should take a leaf from Abbey's book...)

And by the last day, we got about a quarter up the house! It normally takes 3 months for the normal builders plus the family and helpers to build a house in Honduras, and with our help this will be reduced to 2 months, so we felt slightly better about ourselves.

Even after all these years working with Habitat, I still never fail to have a good cry during dedication. The team in Honduras should also be commended for giving us some of the most warm cultural welcome for our team. We were welcomed by some traditional dancing on our first day, and the last day's dedication had a live xylophone band (hijacked by myself and Liza after not so long, ha!). Much credit to young Johny who looked after us during the build, we couldn't have done it without you. (and also thanks to Rena who I stole all the photos from!)

No viva la comida :(

2011-11-24T14:36:00.003+11:00

I cannot say that I am not fussy about food. There are very few foods that I will refuse to eat, true, but I do have a "no waste of calories" policy - I am so greedy that I will normally reserve my calories for things I think are worth eating, so rarely junk food, and god knows how I survived in with British lunchtimes and the preferences for sandwiches.

Which meant that even 4 days in Havana was a bit of a struggle food-wise. During the economic struggles of the "special period", it seems that the country managed to survive by creating carb-heavy food monstrosities, to the extent that Cuban food culture is pretty dead. Walking around central Havana, and all that is on offer in local places appears to be ham and cheese sandwiches, cheese and ham sandwiches, or pizza, the dodgy thick base kind. Although given that most of these offerings around between US$0.50-2.00 a pop, you can't really argue. I tried the pizza at this place in Habana Viejo, got a pizza bigger than my face for about a dollar served on a piece of A4 paper, and it was fun eating on the street corner with the local bici-taxi drivers.

The other common offering in these local peso restaurants was chuleta de cerdo, basically a pork chop served with rice and beans, deep fried plaintains and salad. This was the only sign of fresh vegetables in the entire time I was in Havana!! Enormous portion for about US$1.50, probably one of the better meals I ate, but it was pretty hard to find in the centre of town. I also tried to find "ropa vieja", a traditional dish literally translating as "old rope", or strips of beef on rice and plaintains, but couldn't find whilst I was there :(

Unfortunately as a tourist, you are normally shepherded towards the tourist restaurants in town, where you pay with CUCs, and then suddenly the price of a meal goes up by 20-25x. Although the service at these places is pretty good, and there are normally more than 2 things on the menu, you do wonder at spending US$25 on a meal when you can buy an ice cream for about US$0.04 on the street.

One of the more famous places is El Aljibe in Miramar, which was walking distance to where I was staying. Apparently the bitter orange sauce that comes with their roast chicken is a state secret, but as soon as I saw the tour buses parked outside I should have known to go elsewhere. It's probably quite popular with the Western tour groups as it is essentially all you can eat chicken with unlimited rice and beans, chips, plaintains, and salad, but the roast chicken itself was really dry and pretty disappointing. Then I find out that it's actually owned by the government, so kudos for them doing such great marketing to make money out of us tourists!!

It was also at El Aljibe that I realised that mojitos in Cuba are not all that! I think the fundamental thing is that no one seems to wash their mint very well, and so there is always a bit of soil floating around in your drink. Even in "posh" places like these... and somehow my blackberry camera thinks mojitos are pink also...

The paladar is a private run, normally family restaurant, that was invented during the special period to let normal families have some kind of additional income other than their government work. Nowadays in Havana, some of these have become big tourist traps, a refuge for those who want something other than their usual ham and cheese sandwich. The paladar again very near my place called Vista del Mar was in a very nice setting, with seaviews and a swimming pool, and an exclusively white Western clientele. Although paladares are not strictly allowed to serve prawns or lobster (there is a government monopoly), it is what everyone has. A side of rice and beans (part of a meal that is US$1.50 on a street) is a rip-off US$3.50 as a side dish. The daiquiri was pretty good though...

But again, you get to thinking that families who run these sorts of paladares must be just rolling in it nowadays. The obviously benefit from the earning in CUCs, spend in pesos practice, not really in keeping with my socialist ideals!

On my last evening in Havana, I had to try the most famous paladar of all. La Guarida was where the Oscar nominated Fresa y Chocolat was filmed, and multiple international newspapers have mounted a lot of praise on their new take on Cuban food. It is so famous that apparently they have hosted Matt Damon, Uma Thurman, and they even have a blog on their website. I must say, the atmosphere of the place is wonderful - you go through a suitably dilapidated entrance to arrive at the top floor of a townhouse, and the restaurant is spread across 2-3 cosy rooms, with tables on the balcony also.

The menu would also not be out of place in a trendy Soho restaurant either. They even served an amuse bouche (!) - some kind of deep fried carrot creation:

I had a lot of difficulty choosing particularly my starter, with items such as papaya lasagne and tuna ceviche. I ended up with a watermelon gazpacho with prawns:

It turned out to be a basic tomato gazpacho with a small scoop of watermelon sorbet and a few little deep fried prawns, so not quite as wow as I thought the description implied, but after a hot day of walking around the city, it was refreshing and just what I wanted.

The mains are a little less exciting, and I settled on a fillet of grouper served with a sauce that is traditionally from Guantanamo - can't remember the Spanish name, but basically a lemony white wine reduction with onions. More amusing was I asked for some simple vegetables on the side, and all they could offer me was either sweet potatoes or yuca - no wonder I put on nearly half a stone during my holidays!

I guess people love this place because again, it is a refuge from the monotony of normal Cuban food offerings, but I wouldn't say it is *that* amazing. It's not that cheap either as this meal came to around US$40 with a glass of slightly dodgy tasting cabernet sauvignon.

Somewhat ironic also that when I had my overnight layover in Miami, all the restaurants outside my hotel were Cuban. All the good Cuban food now is probably in the US. Food does seem to be the big casualty of the communist era, but I also wonder how important food is to Cubans in general. They seem far too busy dancing and drinking Havana Club!

Viva La Habana!

2011-11-24T12:40:00.005+11:00

I'm notoriously bad at keeping up this blog, but my trip to Cuba was probably one of the most amazing in a long long time, it moved me to write!

My friends have always joked about my left-wing leanings, and I've been talking about going to Cuba for the longest time. It is a funny holiday destination: it is a refuge for frozen Canadians looking for winter sun, and there are plenty of beach resorts like anywhere else in the Caribbean. Such a shame as these tour groups generally stay out of Havana, which I found to be one of the most intellectually stimulating, fascinating places I've ever been to.

Culturally, Cuba does not feel like a communist country. Cinema, dance, visual arts, sports, these all not only strive but the Cubans appear to be amazing at being creative all round. My favourite area in the city was Vedado, where there is the Institute of Film and what felt like a cinema or art gallery on every street corner. My favourite museum was by far the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, where there is an entire building devoted to Cuban art. Castro's version of communism greatly encourages the arts, but I think it is also in people's blood to appreciate these finer things in life.

The architecture of Havana is also gorgeous. There has been a conscious government programme to improve the areas around Habana Viejo, and most of the old town looks amazing, with some of the loveliest squares to walk around. I also loved all the Art Deco that has survived - there are absolute monstrosities of pink and green to be found, but also lovely places such as the Bacardi building and random street signs:

The family that I stayed with were also thoroughly comfortable and middle class. Mauricio and his second wife Diana lived in Miramar, about 15 minutes car ride from the centre, in the penthouse apartment in one of the nicest suburbs. This was the view from their balcony, overlooking the Malecon and Caribbean Sea:

Mauricio's father used to be relatively well off before the Revolution, and as a result they were left with a rather big house, which meant they could trade it for this amazing penthouse apartment. The remnants of this has meant that Mauricio quit his government job about 10 years ago, and his sole income now comes from renting out his two spare rooms to tourists like me. His family is the model Cuban family: his daughter is in Brussels, sponsored by the government to study Art History abroad; his step-daughter is doing a degree in Graphic Design, and step-son is a rock band (very good taste in music and loves Radiohead!) and wants to be a sound engineer in TV production. Mauricio and Diana seem to spend their days chilling on the balcony and watching Brazilian soap operas at night.

The only slightly dodgy thing in his house was the shower, which only has hot water through an electric shower head, something I haven't seen since I was in Tanzania!! Hmmm, who's great idea was it to have exposed wire so close to water...

Of course, life is not this rosy for everyone in Cuba, even Mauricio acknowledges that in Havana, he is a rich man. The most fascinating conundrum for me stems from the dual economy in Cuba. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, with subsidies for Cuba disappearing overnight, tightened by the US trade embargo, Cuba's economy was plunged into darkness, and very briefly, the country experimented with legalising the US dollar, before settling in the current system of having two currencies both active in the economy. The government allowed limited private enterprise in small businesses such as family restaurants and apartment rentals, and these private enterprises earn in Cuban Convertibles, or CUCs. On the other hand, all government employees are paid in the national currency, the Cuban Peso, where the exchange rate for CUCs to Peso is currently 1:25.

I understand why this came about, but I remain extremely confused by how this system works on a practical level in the present day. In reality, most things tourists have in contact with, such as the nicer restaurants, taxis, supermarkets, all work in CUCs, whereas 95% of the population trade in Pesos. But at the same time, CUCs and Pesos can be exchanged very freely on street corners, no passports or documents required. This means that for fortunate Cubans such as Mauricio, he can earn in CUCs and spend in Pesos, making him an extremely rich man indeed. How sustainable this is, I really do question, as there is an obvious financial apartheid for those who can benefit from being in the middle of these two economies.

I really only scratched the surface I felt in the very short time I was in Cuba, to the extent that I now joke that I have to go back to write my PhD. I also met someone randomly in a bar who extolled to me exactly what he thought was wrong with Cuba. This Ghanian born 30-something man was probably trying to pick me up and earn a few free Cuba Libres off this obvious tourist, but turned out to be the offspring of idealistic communists who took him to Cuba when he was very small. Now apparently working as an English and music teacher (his English really wasn't good enough to be teaching!!), his big plan in life is to get out of Cuba.

It was interesting to speak to him, but he got thoroughly irritating after a while. According to him, the biggest problem with Cuba is the lack of freedom, not necessarily in terms of your expression, but he felt he was being watched at every turn, and you cannot do anything due to the number of police roaming the streets. I have to admit that I noticed this - I never felt so safe walking around a major city in the middle of the night, especially as street lighting is less than reliable - but his paranoia was quite extreme. He was also clutching a copy of Catcher in the Rye, which apparently is banned along with many other books including 1984, Brave New World... I'm trying to verify whether this is true: one of the other things I noticed in Havana is the number of bookshops absolutely everywhere (not to mention the huge second hand book markets in the city squares), but you also notice that there are a LOT of political writings dominating these bookshelves: the usual Marx, Castro, Jose Marti... Lastly, he complained that Cuba is an extremely racist country, with the blacks concentrated in ghettos in Central Havana whilst whites live middle class lives out in the suburbs. I was not in Havana long enough to truly understand this, but when I got up to leave after refusing to buy him another round, and he complained that I was being racist, I did feel like this guy had a huge chip on his shoulder.

A city of mass contradictions? Certainly. Something I want to find out more about? Absolutely. Ultimately, currently living in the uber-materialistic world of Hong Kong, simply walking around a city where recycling is a necessity not a fashion, where there are not even corner shops, where supermarket shelves are not in abundance, I found Cuba to be an absolutely refreshing experience. A shame then that food culture is indeed an oxymoron in this country, because otherwise I would be back there in a shot.

Crisis Christmas 2010

2011-01-02T21:17:00.003+11:00

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

2011-01-02T20:29:00.004+11:00

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

2011-01-02T19:53:00.003+11:00

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

2011-01-02T19:10:00.009+11:00

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

2011-01-02T18:19:00.006+11:00

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 :(

Hilariously bad: Brasserie version

2011-01-02T17:52:00.003+11:00

It is tradition in Hong Kong for anything new to be completely rammed to the heavens for the first two or three months of opening, no matter how bad it is. I think this is partly due to the fact that there is very little independent media to review things here; I've been told that most features in 飲食男女, the leading food magazine, are actually sponsored by those actually featured, and openrice.com, where everyone seems to upload their photos, suffers from the usual user-generated website biases. We really ought to ask Matthew Fort and Jay Rayner to come over and be mean for a while over here.

Lily and Bloom opened in the LKF Tower roughly three months ago, with a bar called Lily on the 6/F and the restaurant Bloom on the 5/F. I've been to Lily a few times now, and have already seen a steady decline in the number of patrons in this short time, people's attention spans are just too short in this city. I actually think Lily isn't bad; the decor is more understated and thought-out than most bars, and the drinks are not bad. The only thing I would criticise it for is the need for the bar staff to give you a torch to read the menu, such is the lack of light in the place.

Bloom, on the other hand, is a minor disaster. Our super fussy friend Jonny was visiting, and knowing that he doesn't like anything saucy, spicy, anything mildly Cantonese really, we stuck to a safe Western option. Bloom seemed to fit the bill, given that the wife and I had not yet tried it. The menu reads very well actually, you could have picked it up in any trendy part of London, featuring bone marrow, ox tongue, as well as a nice selection of seafood including fresh oysters on show at the bar. In fact, bone marrow was briefly on the bar menu in Lily as well, but we've noticed it has recently disappeared (unsurprising: how are you supposed to eat that elegantly perched on your barstool?).

The food itself, however, had really suspect ingredients and was just way too fussy for me. Caris and I shared the starters of ox tongue and bone marrow, two of our most favourite ingredients. Unfortunately, the ox tongue was really 'off', not sure how long it had been festering in the kitchen before it was actually cooked. We left most of this uneaten:

The bone marrow is another version of the often copied parsley and bone marrow salad from St John. However, we ACTUALLY DIDN'T FINISH THIS, it was that awful. The pungent sauce that came surrounding it didn't do anything for the marrow, and the bread was over doughy. So yes, two starters, both not finished. A difficult feat for us!

Something strange had come over me and I ordered chicken for my main course (their special of lobster spaghetti which was what I really wanted had run out). The chicken itself was actually really not bad; carefully roasted, good skin, I polished most of it off. What ruined it though was the random accompaniments (which you can't quite see) - for some reason, this was served with baba ganoush?! Why?! Especially this was a baba ganoush that had BITS OF CHOPPED BOILED EGG IN?! No thank you. Just give me a simple plate of roast chicken and potatoes, no fancy pants stuff please!

The one saving grace I guess was that Jonny really liked his main of seabass!! But I put it to the fact that he'd been cycling for two weeks in Mongolia beforehand, and even I tend to shudder at the thought of Mongolian lamb, having also suffered it myself for two weeks previously.

So sigh, my quest for decent, not too expensive, not Michelin starred Western food in Hong Kong continues. Maybe I should just open one myself... Err.... hang on....!

Hilariously bad: Italian version

2010-10-05T18:14:00.003+11:00

Hong Kong is renowned as one of the international cities in the world, a blend of East and West, blah blah blah. Unfortunately, most of the 'western' food in the city really does not live up to that, even when you are certainly paying 'western' prices for it.

I have had a recurring thought since I moved over here that I should start a new business and run a waiting staff training school here. I know the Chinese are famously bad for their service, but if you are running a westernised establishment, charging 3 to 5 times more than the average Cantonese meal, I think there is no excuse in not training your staff properly.

Food knowledge tends to be the big hurdle for most waiters I have found. Posto Pubblico is in the heart of gweilo land on Elgin Street, and on a Friday night it was absolutely packed. It didn't help that we were on the worse table in the whole restaurant, stuck behind a pillar, making it difficult to attract anyone's attention.

The dining room itself is relatively small, with maybe 40 covers max, but there was clearly no demarcation of sections for the waiters. Every time we ordered or asked for anything, a new one would appear, which meant that water was never topped up, no one noticed empty plates. For a place that proudly states a no service charge policy, you would think the waiters had incentive to work harder.

But it was the food knowledge that the waiters really fell down on. However rude a waiter can be in a Chinese restaurant, they know their menus inside out, even in small little cafes. They had a special of "Tagliatella alla Luffa" on the menu, and given my Italian really isn't so good, I asked what it was.

"It's like fettuccine." was the reply.

"OK..."

"It is pasta madam, like spaghetti". Now you are treating me like an idiot.

"But what does 'alla Luffa' mean?", I asked, patience slowly disappearing.

"I don't know. But it is like spaghetti."

I gave up. Why have specials on the menu, all of it in Italian, and no one able to explain it? I settled in the end for their horribly named straw and hay tagliolini with peas and pancetta, a little too saucy and salty, but the pasta itself wasn't bad.

Caris tried the other special of Cappaletti Nonna Francesca, which was "like ravioli with chicken stuffing in a tomato cream sauce". A much better description of the item, but Nonna Francesca obviously didn't know how to make a tomato sauce, or controlling portion size for that matter:

But the worse monstrosity was to come. I am not a dessert person, but Caris is, and I was intrigued to see that they had cheese on offer. Even more intriguing was that they had homemade mozzarella as a dessert item, not sure you're supposed to eat mozzarella for dessert?!?! And I really oughtn't have asked what comes with the cheese, as the waiter looked so perplexed it was quite obvious they never sell cheese as dessert. I asked to try a portion of their mozzarella and taleggio, and it came with a basket of stale bread:

Whilst I applaud their attempts to make mozzarella, please leave it to people who know what they are doing back in Italy!! The mozzarella was sad, dry, lacking in any flavour or tang. I felt so sorry for the taleggio that we took it home and promptly forgot about it in the fridge.

Sham Shui Po - wah, amazing!

2010-10-04T00:10:00.007+11:00

I actually grew up on Kowloon side, once a proud resident of Mei Foo near the end of the red line of the MTR, but a mere 6 months of living in Central made me a firm Hong Kong Islander. For those of you who don't come from Hong Kong, this may seem absurd; Kowloon is about 5 minutes boat ride away from the Hong Kong Island side, and that is probably the most time consuming way to travel between the two. It is another one of these Honkie neuroses.

We all know though that Kowloon is actually better in many ways, especially if you want to see Hong Kong as it is to most locals, rather than just the shopping malls and skyscrapers. Caris and I headed to Sham Shui Po (深水埗), apparently a bit of a foodie heaven, furnished with some of Juliana's rather thorough research.

We were actually looking for a noodle shop when we stumbled across 添好運, probably one of the most famous dim sum places in Hong Kong now after the Michelin bods decided to award it one star. Sceptics have all said it was Michelin's attempt to rid itself of its French- and fine dining-centric tastes, that these Frenchies know nothing about Asian food really. To be fair, the owner is the ex-executive chef at 龍景軒, the only Chinese restaurant in the world with 3 stars. He wanted to start an egalitarian dim sum places, serving the best food at decent prices, an aspiration I can only applaud.

Rumours have it that queues can be up to 4 hours at the original Mong Kok branch, but the second branch in Sham Shui Po is much bigger, and at 3pm we literally walked straight in. So did not plan on having dim sum, but oh well! The decor isn't much to look at, the tea is attractively served in plastic jugs on your table:

The menu is refreshingly small, especially as it seems to be the trend for restaurants to have new frang-dangled modern varieties. There are about 25 items, with a mainly traditional slant. They didn't have my favourite 牛柏葉 (tripe, mmmm!), so we decided to stick to everyone's family favourites. The compulsory 蝦餃 prawn dumplings had very fresh prawns, but the skin was 麻麻地:

The 牛腸粉 beef cheung fun was a huge let down, to the point of being really very bland. Avoid.

I forgot to take a picture of the 蘿蔔糕 turnip cake, but it didn't look that much out of the ordinary. But it tasted much more refined than your usual dim sum restaurant version, with clear shreds of turnip, very little flour, very good. And at $10 a portion, a complete bargain.

I guess their signature dish is their 酥皮叉燒包, basically a 叉燒包 with a 菠蘿包 topping (I have given up trying to translate at this point - basically a very sophisticated pork bun!). We saw them being ferried to almost every table, to the extent that a 4-top right near us had about 4 portions to themselves (3 buns per portion!). Not only do they look pretty, blushing slightly from their time in the oven, they tasted AMAZING. Just the right balance of sweet and savoury, the bun wasn't heavy, so so moreish. And this is $12 a portion, yes, about a quid for 3 buns!

Knowing Honkies, I'm sure the place is packed more for the prices (cheap even by Hong Kong's normal standards) rather than having a consistently wow menu. Thankfully though, the Sham Shui Po branch also allows you to book, even for a private room where there is an additional book-in-advance menu, featuring more funky stuff, like fried foie gras dumpling and abalone with chicken puff. The minimum spend for the private room is $1000 though, even with 10 people, it'd be hard to spend that much at these prices! Definitely worth a trip mid-afternoon just for the pork bun.

The place that stole our hearts though in Sham Shui Po was the humble little 公和荳品廠, literally a factory specialising in tofu and tofu related products. Non-Chinese just don't get tofu, but it has a very special place in all Chinese hearts, and at 4pm this place was packed. It is exactly what we mean by local local, this place probably hasn't changed for about 50 years. There was a hilarious sello-taped sign advertising 'new products', the sello-tape so yellow it is probably older than me.

Check out the mega old school tap for the soy milk!! You can also just about make out the uber-dirty looking factory floor to the right of the photo:

Now, my mum makes the best 豆腐花 in the world. She only ever makes it at home (from scratch!!!) back in Ipswich, which means I haven't eaten it in well over 2 years now, but even so, I almost never bother with this yummy dessert when I go out. It was clearly the speciality at this place though, check out their container!!!

In case I upset my mum, I will say that their 豆腐花 is definitely on par with that I have at home. The hot version which we both had was impossibly 滑, the sugar syrup just sweet enough.

We also sampled their stuffed tofu, the frying and the 鯉魚 fish stuffing took away from the taste of the tofu itself in my opinion. We still lapped it all up though :p

I have been looking into trademarks and IP a little this week, and I was thoroughly impressed that they had a certificate on the wall listing their trademark, which is from 1909!!!!! We did leave this place a little worried for its future, the staff looks like they work so hard for their cash, we're pretty sure the next generation will not want to carry this kind of thing on :(

Thoroughly fortified with dim sum and tofu, we nevertheless continued to eat more. We saw a big crowd outside this shop, so we decided it had to be good, and it turned out to be on Juliana's original list. 八仙餅家 specialises in traditional biscuits, things like 皮蛋酥 century-egg puff and 杏仁餅 almond biscuits. There was a non-stop stream of people stopping and picking up a little something:

Caris got a 核桃酥 walnut biscuit, something I have probably not eaten for literally 25 years. But once it entered my mouth I immediately got that familiar feeling of rich butter and sugar, yet impossibly 鬆 at the same time. Probably the second best thing I ate today after that pork bun.

We kept eating sugary snacks of yesteryear, including something from a shop that specialises in 糕. Now, the word 糕 really is hard to translate. A lot of people use 'cake', but it really doesn't get there. 糕 is normally steamed rather than baked, and can come in many varieties, some of which are more 'cake' like, but others, especially those made of rice flour rather than wheat flour, are more wobbly and tight in texture. 坤記糕品 only sells the wobbly variety:

There was 紅豆糕 red bean 'cake', 芝麻糕 sesame seed 'cake', 白糖糕 literally white sugar 'cake', but I went for a 砵仔糕 little basin cake (no photo, sorry!), made of yellow sugar and rice flour, mainly as I know my dad has been looking for a place with good 砵仔糕. Unfortunately, it wasn't really that wow, and pretty expensive at $4.50 (aren't I cheap, that isn't even 40p!).

I will round off this rather long post with something even more unhealthy. I somehow managed to avoid getting fish balls or 雞蛋仔 egg waffles on the street, but Caris couldn't quite resist getting some 炸大腸. I won't translate, but look at the picture. What does it look like? Gross? Well, think about the body part after that :D

Back to Hong Kong: eating for under £3

2010-09-10T00:18:00.004+10:00

Yes, I have made my triumphant return to Hong Kong! I never really planned on coming back here to live, to be absolutely honest, but when my boss offered me an unbelievable job, I didn't have much of a choice. I've been back for a few days now, and remain very excited about being back so far, mainly because I still haven't quite moved into my lovely flat in Pok Fu Lam yet.

I have been spending a bucket of money so far, so thank goodness that I'm rediscovering how cheap it can be to eat out. Today I finished all my stuff in town relatively early, and the thought did cross my mind to go home and cook. But then I figured that it would not only be less hassle, but a lot cheaper, to actually eat out. That is rather depressing actually. All of the meals below cost me less than £3 or HK$36. I bought a tub of Greek yoghurt the other day, which went over this threshold :(

Cafe de Coral is the McDonald's of Hong Kong, cooking a huge variety of Cantonese classics. The food is pretty meh, specialising in being cheap and quick rather than culinary, but one dish has captured my heart, their 一哥焗豬排飯, or 'big brother's baked pork chop rice'. This is very typical of the Cantonese dishes which try to be slightly Westernised, and is sometimes accompanied by creamy chicken with sweetcorn. For a mere $31, how on earth do they make that pork chop so soft? Dave loves his so much that he has left time at Hong Kong airport to make sure he can have a last portion before he flies back to London. Note the token broccoli to try and counter the million calories:

The other classic I have already found myself eating is 南記, which has the honour of being on my list of favourite Hong Kong restaurants. Sophisticated cooking it ain't, but I adore their hot and sour soup noodle, served with their signature fish sticks 春卷 and fish skin dumplings 魚皮餃, yours for a mere $27 (they put their prices up!):

Believe it or not, I have made myself try some new things rather than going back to all my old haunts. After yoga class today, I really fancied some congee, but stumbled across this place when I was walking around Causeway Bay. There was a long queue outside, so I'm not sure how good this place is supposed to be, but who can argue with a two course meal plus drink for $28? First course was Taiwanese soup noodles with pig intestines and oysters (yes, squeamish beings should look away now), served with some too-sweet soy milk:

This was accompanied by fried dumplings with chives, wrapped in a funny way to maximise the ease of cooking. Not the best dumplings I've ever eaten, but the wrappers were very thin, a little factory-made tasting. The best thing about the place was that they kept spelling dumplings as 'dumpings'. Don't come here after you're feeling a bit emotionally vulnerable!

On the other end of the scale, I heard that a new coffee shop in Central that had a roaster in the actual shop itself, so off I went to Holly Brown on Stanley Street to try and find a decent cup of coffee (yes, I succumbed to Starbuck's the second day I was here when I was dying of jetlag, and it took me 20 minutes to find one!!).

There is indeed a roaster inside the cafe, which also specialises in gelato, which seems to be the thing that is pulling in the crowds rather than the coffee. Some Italian dude called Domenico was doing lots of fiddling about with the roaster, but I'm not really sure why. Only espresso based drinks are offered, although they do also do the more unusual flat whites, marocchinos, but even though a variety of different beans are on offer to buy, only the 'house blend' is offered. So no interesting drip filters, no cafetieres, I'm guessing the 'simple coffee' movement that is so hip in Soho London hasn't quite hit Soho Hong Kong.

Whilst I was happy to see a flat white on the menu, I did choke at the idea of paying $34 for a small one. Even more alarming was the fact that the two gentlemen in front of me ordered a cappuccino and a latte, and the dude made all three drinks at the same time. There was absolutely no notable difference between the three! So as a result, my flat white had a little too much milk, and I have no idea why they serve it with a little blue straw?!:

Habitat build 2010 - back to Kenya

2010-09-04T21:48:00.004+10:00

This year's Habitat for Humanity saw me returning to Kenya, where I built in 2008. Even though I've been to all sorts of far flung places with Habitat now, East Africa does have a very special place in my heart, and I'm always looking froward to returning there.

Despite the fact that Kenya is probably one of the richest countries on the continent, levels of poverty remain dire, particularly in the countryside. This has not been helped by the civil unrest in 2008, when 800 people died and a further 600,000 were displaced. While peace has now been restored, and a new constitution ratified without further violence, the future still remains in the balance for most Kenyan citizens.

This year, we were building in the Maua region near Mount Kenya. This region is generally populated by the Meru tribe, and is particularly famous for the cultivation of 'miraa' or 'khat', a mild amphetamine that is legal in Kenya. It is the drug that is used to produce 'legal highs' in the UK, in particular mephedrone or MCAT or Meow Meow, which have now been outlawed following several cases of misuse. Nevertheless, chewing the branches of the miraa plant is the way of life, and builders all happily had little twigs hanging out of their mouths. It does taste rather rank, and you have to chew an awful lot to get any effect, so none of us really understood what the fuss was about. I'll stick with just a cuppa next time.

We built for two families. Julius and his wife Rosita had 10 children, and a growing tribe of grandchildren, and currently lived in a basic 2 room wooden house. We were helping them to build another wooden structure, as they had just received the first part of the loan from Habitat. This was a relatively straightforward house, with us helping to dig the foundations, mixing cement, the usual jazz.

The second house was a little more challenging. Mithika and his wife Helen had 6 kids, and made most of their living from growing miraa in their acre plot of land. Yes, we were building the house for the local drug baron! Mr M, as we liked to call him, had rather grand renovation plans for his existing 3 room wooden house. Apparently he wanted to cut off the bottom half, lift up the house, and then put the foundations in underneath. And somehow that was exactly what we did.

Here is the builder, sawing off the bottom half:

The house was literally floating in mid-air when he was finished, propped up with only wooden beams placed strategically around the sides. I was already panicking at the whole surrealness of the situation. Definitely the oddest house I've ever built:

I was used to Kenyan time, and the general relaxed way in which Kenyans do not really have a plan. But when you are building a house backwards, everything makes no sense. All the debris from inside the house had to be removed through the only door at the front, and there was so little of the original house left by the end. Even the wardrobe was floating at one point:

The idea of it all was to have a stronger house, with brick work complementing the existing wooden structure. It was pretty difficult to work in these conditions, absolute health and safety nightmare:

By the final day, we had finished adding the main block work, and also managed to give it all a fresh lick of paint. However, Kenya being Kenya, nothing is straightforward! Mr M went and got the paint, and came back with only yellow and green. Then he told us to start painting then promptly disappeared. The house started to look a bit Jamaican to be honest, and all the builders kept worrying us, telling us it should be blue. Hmmm... anyway, I thought it looked quite nice!

Aside from the work in Maua, we also visited an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp on the outskirts of Nairobi. This is a camp where some of the displaced people ended up after the events of 2008. Each displaced family were awarded funds by the government to try and rebuild their lives, and with the help of Habitat, 335 families are currently building a safe shelter to live in this new place. Unlike the traditional Habitat model, the families only pay sweat equity, acknowledging the fact that many of these families are female-led households without a steady income, but this also means that they are much more reliant on donations. Read more about it here. We spent only about 30 minutes in the camp, but seeing families still living in leaky tents left a profound effect on all of us.

Goatiness in Kenya

2010-09-04T20:21:00.006+10:00

Whilst Kenya isn't exactly renowned for its cuisine, I hadn't quite expected the level of revolt from my team when it came to the food. This was all made worse by the fact that nearly everyone on the trip was sick at one point (yes, imagine being sick when all you have access to is a pit latrine), and even a week after we're all back home, some of us are still recovering from sore tummies and knowing a bit too much information about everyone's bowel movements.

Given that we were in the middle of the countryside, it was no surprise that the food was repetitive and pretty simple. A typical breakfast looked like some space-age creation with my malaria tablet being the main event, accompanied by a boiled egg, a mandazi (sort of Kenyan doughnut) and a cuppa (no milk please):

Lunch and dinner were pretty much the same everyday, a combination of rice, chapattis, goat meat, spinach/cabbage/peas, avocado and banana and oranges for afters. The chapattis in particular were very yummy, slightly sweet, but not quite so yummy after having them for 2 meals 7 days in a row. I actually quite liked the goat, particularly with a bit of gravy, but unfortunately it was what made most of my team's stomachs turn.

I have often heard horror stories of families asking the team leader to kill a chicken, which is a big honour. Thankfully it has never happened. Until I remembered that Julius owned a poultry farm, and until Rosita came to dedication with a chicken in her arms. Yes, I started panicking now, and backing away!!!! Thankfully, the team were all attuned to the fact that I am sooooo scared of chickens by now, and Martin chivalrously stepped in to accept the gift. And thankfully we didn't need to kill it there and then:

We named it Kiev, and ate her for dinner that night! Unfortunately Kiev was a tough old bird, wasn't really very tasty. Here she is!:

As is usual with all my Habitat trips, I usually take a few extra days after everyone's gone home for my own little R&R. Both Clare and Caris, who have spent more time in East Africa, advised me that Lamu Island was the place to go, so off I went!

Lamu is little known compared to its very developed cousins Mombasa and Zanzibar, but I think it was better for it. We stayed in Shela, with 12km of unlimited beach, and there were relatively few white faces to be seen. This may have explained the amount we got hassled for business everywhere we went, but the place remained charming nevertheless. Just look at the view from our guest house:

We stayed at a place called Banana House owned by a man who claimed he was called Banana. His wife is Dutch, and it was clear the couple understood what Western service is, unlike much of the Kenyan tourist market. The rooms were simple but stylishly done, hammocks swung everywhere. One of the other good things they offered was the use of their chef; give the chef some money to go to the market, tell him what you wanted to eat, and he'll cook it for you. So we gave the chef a tenner each and this is what he came up with:

Ellie who came with me had the simple criteria for our food in Lamu: only fish and vegetables. Ok, we probably broke it a little by having lobster and vegetables that night, but oh bliss it was. Can someone marry soon please just so I can go back to this place for my honeymoon? Anyone will do! Haha...

Expensive shades of beige

2010-08-12T03:42:00.004+10:00

As blasphemous as it sounds, I don't know an awful lot about Pierre Koffmann. I was still an impoverished student when La Tante Claire closed down in 2003, when he almost disappeared from the London restaurant scene. But he is now back (to quite a lot of fanfare which I don't quite understand), in where the Boxwood Cafe used to be at the Berkeley Hotel.

I must say, the sign outside announcing Koffmann's is a bit retro for me. I know he's going for the hearty and simple fare, but it looks a bit rustic for the smart Knightsbridge location. Inside, the space is still a bit awkward, with the dining room divided by a tiny bar in the middle; I had wanted a little drink before I sat at the table, but alas, no room for little me.

The impeccable service started before I had even walked in the door. When I called up to book, I wanted to hire their reservations girl immediately. She did all she needed to do, but so much more: asked about allergies, any special requests, do I need information about the hotel, all done efficiently and politely. Exactly what you want.

And inside, the only fault I can give to the service is that it is at times a little overattentive. Our waitress (who used to be at the Connaught and then at Petrus it turns out) was faultless. She not only knew the dishes inside out, but seemed to be very enthused with the food, something that is so rare in this country unfortunately. I will as a result excuse her rather twee mentions of Chef Koffmann "this is a special Chef Koffmann thought of during his break today". Hmm...

The menu is exceedingly boring, loads of French classics you would expect, with only one or two really interesting sounding dishes. Unfortunately, I had had a big lunch, and the famed pig's trotters just sounded too heavy. I started with one of the specials, a salmon tartare with cucumbers and chive cream:

Fraser went for the mackerel terrine - which turned out to be a very clever dish actually, layers of vinegared mackerel wrapped in wafer-thin slices of cucumber:

Fraser went for the braised beef cheeks as his main:

With skate with morels pour moi:

Chips and vegetables were served with all main courses for free (extra points for not trying to charge for sides); the chips charming presented in yesterday's French newspaper:

Overall, the savoury dishes were all impeccably done. The flavours were very clean, ingredients very fresh, I thoroughly enjoyed my rather boring dishes. The only small fault was that my skate was a little raw in the middle, but it was one of the best skate dishes I've eaten in a restaurant.

Fraser somehow talked me into dessert, and the only thing I really fancied was the pistachio souffle, the price of which made me a choke a little at £12 a portion! It was enormous, swimming pool sized, way way too much. I didn't think the souffle itself was that amazing, a bit too sweet and repetitive for me, but the pistachio ice cream it came with was gorgeously smooth, not too sweet, very nutty:

Fraser went for his usual chocolate mousse and tried to be artistic when he was taking the picture. He loved it:

There was a good selection of wines by the carafe (good given it was a school night), and the bill came to £120 for two. Toilets were confusing as there were too many mirrors, beige carpets. Pierre Koffmann could be seen through the glass panel looking into the kitchen!

It is one of those restaurants when if you ask me whether I would go again, I would hesitate to say yes, even though the food was thoroughly excellent, served by one of the best waitresses I've had in a long time. Maybe it is just the location: I'm rarely in Knightsbridge and it always seems like a long trek even though it's only really round the corner from one of my workplaces. Fraser made a fair comment that it is just a bit weird going to restaurants in hotels. The menu and/or the decor always seems a bit compromised, and you are always surrounded by some odd mix of people. But you should definitely go once, if only to steal their rather cute pig cloakroom tickets.

Let's start again

2010-08-12T03:30:00.003+10:00

It has been an age since I blogged, there is a huge backlog of photos I've collected over the last few months, but I have been a thoroughly busy bee.

So busy that I can't remember the last time I really cooked at home. So when on Monday I found myself heading home at 9:30pm, even though it's late, I decided to attempt something not particularly complicated but still a little new. I was visiting Cerys and her lovely new baby Eira in Cardiff and was reading Jamie's Italy whilst playing with baby, and found a nice recipe which you can do in the time it takes to boil the pasta. Always my kind of recipe.

Spaghetti with kind of pesto (or spaghetti alla Trapanese according to JO) (serves 1)

125g of spaghetti or linguine

Handful of whole almonds

2 handfuls of fresh basil, leaves picked

1/2 clove garlic

Extra virgin olive oil

Coarse sea salt

Freshly ground pepper

Handful of cherry tomatoes

Handful of freshly grated parmesan

1. Put the pasta on the boil

2. Dry roast the almonds until it is just coloured. Meanwhile, in a pestle and mortar, smash up the garlic with a little salt, and slowly grind in the basil. Once the almonds are roasted, put in the basil mix and smash up until pretty fine.

3. Lug enough olive oil in the mortar to make it wet enough to coat all of the pasta. Add in the parmesan and mix well.

4. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and squish a little with your hands.

5. Drain the pasta. Using the same pan, add in the tomatoes, pesto, and spaghetti, mix well.

6. Scoff in front of the telly.

Starting to be a bit obsessed now

2010-06-06T22:15:00.004+10:00

Someone really needs to remove that 1-click purchase facility on Amazon, as I am already impulsive enough about buying cookbooks as it is. I am still feeling quite inspired by vegetables recently, and treated myself to two Ottolenghi cookbooks. His most recent book Plenty is particularly inspiring: it is entirely vegetarian, but his recipes are consistently interesting. I love the fact that he is introducing me to new ways with new ingredients: definitely stock up on limes, coriander and cumin before you try his recipes, and get used to going to Middle Eastern supermarkets to look for frozen okras.

I snipped this recipe from the Guardian back in March 2008, but have only just managed to make it now that it is also in the cookbook. It is really moreish, and I would add even more chilli next time.

Green Pancakes with Lime Butter (serves 3-4 as brunch)

For the lime butter:

100g unsalted butter, at room temperature

Zest of 1 lime plus 2 tbsp lime huice

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp white pepper

1 tbsp coriander leaves

1/2 garlic clove, finely chopped

1/2 tsp chilli flakes

For the pancakes:

110g self-raising flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 egg

50g unsalted butter, melted

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground cumin

150ml milk

10 spring onions, finely sliced

2 green chillies, finely sliced

250g baby spinach

1 egg white

Olive oil, for frying

1. First, make the lime butter. Put the butter in a medium-sized bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until it turns soft and creamy. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Tip everything out onto a sheet of clingfilm and roll into a sausage shape. Twist the ends to seal, then chill until firm.

2. Put the spinach in a pan with a splash of water, cook until wiltered, drain and let it cool. Once cooled, squeeze hard to expel all the excess water. Roughly chop.

3. Make the pancake batter by putting the flour, baking powder, whole egg, butter, salt, cumin and milk in a mixing bowl, and whisk until smooth. Fold in the onion, chilli, and spinach into the batter mix.

4. Whisk the egg white to soft peaks and then carefully fold this into the batter.

5. Pour a little oil into a heavy frying pan and place on medium-high heat. For each pancake, ladle two tablespoons of batter into the pan and press down gently. You should get smallish pancakes (definitely not American style), about 7cm in diameter and 1cm thick. Cook for a minute each side, until a nice golden-green colour. Transfer to paper towels and keep warm.

6. Serve three pancakes per person and place a disc of the flavoured butter on top to melt. Serve with salad, or like me, some lovely smoked mackerel:

In love with quinoa

2010-05-24T19:57:00.004+10:00

Yotam Ottolenghi is a genius, and I may have mentioned it before on this blog already. His 'new vegetarian' column in the Guardian has opened my eyes to the world of vegetables, and even though most of his recipes do have a long list of (sometimes unfamiliar Iranian) ingredients, it has been worthwhile to restock my store cupboard.

This is the recipe I have made twice in a week since I got back to London. The addition of cumin and chilli is a work of genius.

Avocado, quinoa and broad bean salad (serves 6, easily half-able)

200g quinoa

500g podded broad beans

2 medium lemons

2 small ripe avocados

2 garlic gloves, crushed

200g fresh breakfast radishes, sliced lengthways

50g purple radish cress or small, fresh purple basil leaves

1 tbsp ground cumin

75ml olive oil

1/4 tsp chilli flakes

1. Place the quinoa in a pan of water, bring to the boil and simmer for 9 minutes. Drain in fine sieve, rinse under cold water, and set aside to dry.

2. Throw the broad beans into a pan of boiling water, return to the boil and drain immediately. Refresh with cold water and set aside to dry. Gently press each bean with your fingers to remove the skins, then discard.

3. Top and tail the lemons. Stand each one on a chopping board and cut down the sides, following the natural curve, to remove the skin and white pith. Over a large bowl, cut in between the membranes to release the segments into the bowl. Squeeze in the juice from the membranes.

4. Peel, stone, and thinly slice the avocados. Add to the bowl and toss to cover in the lemon juice. Add the dry quinoa, broad beans, garlic, radishes, half the radish cress, cumin, oil, chilli flakes and some salt and pepper. Toss gently, without breaking the avocado, and season again if needed. Serve garnished with the remaining cress.

This was the version I made, substituting the broad beans with asparagus (why can't I find broad beans anywhere at the moment?!), lemon with lime, and I couldn't find any purple cress:

This is so so so good, try it. I am in fact having it for my lunch!

White rice will not kill you

2010-05-24T19:12:00.005+10:00

Whilst I was extremely exasperated with some of the food neurosis of Californians (I've just been reading about how Zooey Deschanel is vegan, and is apparently allergic to soy, gluten, diary, and eggs), I have returned to the UK with more of a focus on the healthy stuff. Here's a little round-up of some of the little healthy establishments I liked lots and some I liked less.

Calling your food shop Beautifull would make some people baulk, but I was surprised to see the number of men inside this cafe in Laurel Heights. I really liked the concept; they sell a huge variety of salads, most of them very interesting, as well as hot food like meatballs, as well as soup noodley type stuff. It is the kind of lunch place I always dreamt of having when I was working on the Strand, even if the prices were a little keen. This was my lunch of salmon fishcake with a red quinoa salad, with roasted pumpkin:

I have been very taken with quinoa since I returned (excellent recipe coming up), but it would not surprise me if they decide that it is carcinogenic after a few years. Actually, I just read up the recipe of the quinoa salad above, and it has Hijiki seaweed in, which apparently is also carcinogenic!

The very first place we went to for dinner after I landed in SF was a gorgeous place called Flour & Water in the Mission. It is a crazily popular place serving Italian/ Mediterranean style food, doing the fresh ingredients cooked well formula that SFians do so well. Again, I was bowled over by the waitress, who disturbingly seemed to want to be our friend. My lovely main course was a ravioli 'doppio': a double filled ravioli with a seafood mix on one side and a pea puree on the other:

One place I liked not so much was Gather in Berkeley. The name summarises the idea of the place, which is to serve food suitable to everyone, from the strictest vegan to the most ferocious carnivore, so that it is a place you can gather your friends. It was packed on the weeknight we went, so obvious there is a demand for these things, and overall the cooking was fine. My pork cheeks were very soft, even if the rhubarb sauce was just a little too sour to go with it:

What did irk me though was some of their descriptions of the food, in particular their 'vegan charcuterie':

It was actually a gorgeous platter of food, including interesting ways with wild mushrooms, broad beans, some of the best vegan food I've had in ages, but why oh why oh why did they have to call it a charcuterie?!?! Just call it a vegan plate!!! Stop trying to be clever with words!!!

So this is the end of my SF postings, hope you enjoyed. I end with one of the best meals I had in SF, with all my favourite Californian things. If someone can tell me what Farmers' Cheese is, and where I may be able to buy it in London, I would be very grateful.

Best of (not quite) SF

2010-05-16T23:09:00.004+10:00

I have to be honest, I didn't really know much about Thomas Keller before my little trip. I knew there was someone who owned rather a lot of restaurants in the United States, but I have never really had the inkling to research them, kind of like when I'm disappointed when Jay Rayner or Matthew Norman write about non-London restaurants (yes, I'm one of them annoyingly London-centric Guardian readers).

The fact that we actually ended up at one of Thomas Keller's restaurants was kind of by accident. We'd planned to do a little trip to Napa and Sonoma, but we'd made no bookings, done no planning, but managed to blag a table at Ad Hoc by asking our hotel concierge to book it for us. And we nearly didn't make it, as we finally looked up where it was, and it was going to be a good 50 minute drive from our hotel in Santa Rosa. I am so glad we managed to drag ourselves out.

Apparently, Ad Hoc itself is a bit of an accident, with Thomas Keller intending it to be a burger joint, and whilst they were waiting for the license for it, he set up a chilled place where they would basically cook their staff meals. Today, it is still a family-style place, with only one menu per day, no choice, and I'm pretty sure they've up the ante from their usual staff meals.

It is such a horrible cliche nowadays to say that ingredients is the secret to good cooking, but Ad Hoc is a pure celebration of the gorgeous produce of California. And they manage to just put some genius combinations together. Here was our very simple, but glorious menu:

OK, I must admit, I was disappointed to see a salad as my starter, but it turns out that they always serve a family style salad as starters at Ad Hoc, and it was probably the single best dish I ate in my whole time in SF. A little gem lettuce salad, with potentially the most amazing dressing ever:

They call the dressing 'green goddess dressing', and when I asked the waiter what was in it, he spent about 5 minutes going into the ins and outs of the recipe. Literally 5 minutes. I had to write it down to try to remember it. The ingredients involve parsley water, chives, anchovies, buttermilk, creme fraiche, aioli, lemon juice, probably some other stuff, combined in the most convoluted way. But I don't care, it was divine. I was smothering my lettuce with it. I was dunking my bread in it. I may have dunked my finger in it.

And furthermore, I was impressed by the fact that the waiter knew exactly what was in that dressing. The waiting staff, on the whole, had amazing food knowledge, and you suspect they are all budding chefs biding their time by waitressing for Thomas Keller. I wish waiters in this country cared about the food as much as they did!

Onwards, the peppered beef flatiron was a little flat for me. Sorry, I will continue the battle of British vs. US steaks here:

But the veggie side with it was wonderful. I really ought to start cooking radishes:

Their cheese course was also very very amazing. Apparently the Browning Gold comes from somewhere in New York, with perfectly ripe apple, and a perfect almond brittle. My dream kind of dessert:

And unfortunately, the cheese course was so good, I wasn't really paying attention for the pudding (cocoa rib cake with raspberry sauce and hazelnut ice cream), or the very cute petit fours:

I heard that they have a band of regulars who come every week to Ad Hoc, I am so jealous. I was so enamoured by this restaurant that I have already got a copy of the cook book Ad Hoc At Home next to me on the sofa right now. It makes for a very interesting read too. Having grown up cooking in the casual style of Nigel Slater, having a cookbook written by an obsessive 'proper' chef is a real change. The first recipe is for fried chicken, simple enough, but once you read it, you realise that the whole recipe takes about 15 hours from start to finish. And there is a whole page telling you off for using tongs in the kitchen. It's one of those serious whole Sunday kind of cookbooks, which I am sort of looking forward to discovering.

Oh, and did I mention? Thomas Keller was dining on the next door table. I didn't recognise him.

Asian SF (part 2)

2010-05-14T23:50:00.004+10:00

One of the key things I wanted to try in SF was the sushi, and I can even call it research for work! SF is overrun with sushi places, reminded me of Hong Kong where there is almost one at every street corner, many of questionable quality. The one we went to, however, turned out had a Michelin star a few years back, and I took it as a good sign that they could only offer us seats at the sushi bar when we walked in without a reservation.

Sushi Ran in Sausalito is in quite a sleepy neighbourhood, Sausalito being the one stop north of the Golden Gate bridge that tourists manage to get to. There is an adjoining sake and wine bar next door, and the layout of the restaurant itself is pretty tiny, dominated by the large sushi bar. Having spent quite a lot of time examining sushi bars recently, I was really quite impressed with this one. The display was pretty standard for Japanese restaurants, but the chefs behind the bar all showed very good knowledge of their product, and just chatty enough (thankfully none of the American false over-friendliness). Our chef was hilariously named Garth, but with an appropriately Japanese sounding surname:

Their sake list was also pretty impressive, didn't count exactly but probably about 30 different sakes, many available by the carafe. It is still interesting to see how restaurants present their sake lists, many I've seen, including this one, actually put a little picture of the label on the menu, which strikes me as both a little useless and a little tacky. Never mind, at least the tasting notes were pretty good, and we opted for a sake I recognised: dewazakura oka, which was fragrant and light. The way their served it meant that getting the table all wet was a bit inevitable:

Sushi Ran boasts that they ship a lot of their fish directly from Tsukiji Market in Tokyo, but Garth explained that because it was Golden Week in Japan, their shipment had been delayed, so the selection was quite limited on the day we visited. This was a shame, because we were comparing the sushi in SF vs. London (he came to do an extensive visit last year), and one of the things he complained was the lack of variety in London, but the selection that day in SF didn't really show me what I was missing.

The uni was so good and fresh and creamy that we ordered another round. It was a good sign of their freshness that they ran out really soon into the evening:

Monkfish liver (ankimo) you don't really see on the menu in London (although Chisou has it as an appetiser), and it was very good. I'm all into my creamy nigiris as you can see:

Their hot food impressed me less, with some quite steep prices and variable food. Their tofu tasting was an interesting concept, with tofu 3 ways, but only the usual agedashi tofu was any good. The top one was disturbingly cold and made me squirt juice across the table, and the one with chilli at the bottom was disappointingly bland. And this is a tofu fan telling you that tofu is bland!:

Fil had never had black cod miso before, so we went for that. Pretty good version it was too, fish was meltingly soft, but at a very steep price, one of the most expensive 'mains' they had on the menu, tiny portion size:

We also sampled some of the crazy maki that Californians are known for. They didn't actually have California roll itself, but all sorts of maki with a similar idea. Their spicy tuna roll was so so, with the spice coming from the sprinkles on top rather than within, but we really liked their miso scallop roll, again, creaminess always wins me over:

We had also asked for a crispy salmon skin roll, but after being told that it would take 30 minutes and it was towards the end of our meal, we asked for their recommendation instead. Garth mentioned that they sell around 10,000 of their crunch maki every year (we worked out that it was just about believable at around 30 of these rolls a day), which includes eel, avocado, spicy crab, and shrimp, and as you can see, lashings of sauce on top:

For me, there was far far too much going on in this roll, with so much stuff inside that it collapses as soon as you put it on your sharing plate, so you end up eating it in pieces anyway. I guess it is this style of sushi which is popular in California though, if they sell so many of it, which I think is a shame, particularly as I've just looked up their sushi menu online and looked at how many types of fish they normally are able to serve. We never did get a chance to try any more sushi whilst I was in SF, but pretty impressed if this is the standard they set.

Asian SF (part 1)

2010-05-14T20:33:00.004+10:00

I kept wandering around San Francisco thinking that it reminded me of Sydney; the bay is arguably even nicer, and the bridge even more impressive, but even better, there appears to be things to do in SF other than go jogging. But from a foodie point of view, Asian food was another point of comparison between the two cities. It is the Thai and Vietnamese food that I miss most about Sydney, and SF certainly was able to compete on that front.

Our first weekend started well with a visit to the Farmers' Market in the Ferry Building. Someone very clever decided to re-purpose this large cavernous space as a mecca for fresh produce, and the place was heaving with yummy mummies on the Saturday morning we went, just imagine if they scrubbed up Borough Market a bit and put it in Primrose Hill! It was almost too clean for me, but I loved to see how people revelled in the produce.

It was interesting to see that the emphasis of this market vs. Borough at home, which I think is a reflection of Californian vs. British strengths in food. In Borough Market, arguably the best things are the meat and the cheese, and whilst there seemed to be a healthy industry for these farmed goods in SF, it was definitely not quite to British standards. Most alarmingly, meat and fish is sold in zip-lock bags, all filleted and neat and clinical, no way you could have figured they came from animals. Interestingly, we read that Fergus Henderson was going to be guest-cheffing at a few restaurants after I left, not sure his cuisine would go down that well in SF to be honest.

On the other hand, the vegetables and fruit is the real star of the show in SF, and these are the things I'm craving now I'm settled back into cold, cold London. The oranges in particular were like eating sunshine, and strawberries so sweet it feels they must have injected them with sugar. No wonder they can have raw movement in California, one of the only places where raw food is glorious enough to shine by themselves.

But getting back to Asian food, Eugene sent me a list of his SF favourites, and bang on top of the list was Slanted Door in the Ferry Building. Fil tried his hardest to get me to try other stuff instead for lunch, but it looked too enticing! It is apparently one of the Top 10 grossing restaurants in the US (or California, I forget which), and you can immediately see why. The place was rammed on a Saturday lunchtime, and we were lucky enough to get seats at the bar after being told it would be a 90 minute wait for a table. The restaurant makes the most of its location with huge windows all along the harbour, and minimalist design, but ultimately I think the success of this place is down to the consistently good, fresh food.

We decided to test the place with some Vietnamese classics as well as some of the more funky things on the menu. I'd only been in SF for a few days at this point, and putting uni on the menu just made me want to try it. This uni was served with avocado, cucumber, and black tobiko, and was wild Californian uni:

The combination was really quite fabulous, loved the contrast between the crunchy cucumber and the creaminess of the avocado and uni together. The uni by itself wasn't anything to rival its Japanese cousins for creaminess on its own though, hence I guess the inclusion of the avocado to help it along. Sometimes these slightly Americanised 'sushi' dishes have too much stuff in them, but this really worked.

More traditionally, we also had their Slanted Door spring rolls and a Vietnamese crepe:

Both these dishes you see in almost every Western Vietnamese place going, but this was probably the best two examples I have ever tasted. Both dishes were incredibly light; the spring rolls laced with very thin slices of pork to give another dimension of flavour, and the crepe not only had the freshest ingredients, but floated in my mouth. The curse of Western Asian cuisine is to use substandard ingredients and cover it is cloying sauce as a disguise, but this was the absolute antithesis.

Our decision on Slanted Door was mainly because of our equal obsession with Asian soups, so we tried both their wonton soup and their beef pho:

To be honest, the pho is nothing to write home about. Indeed, Eugene told me off later for ordering pho in somewhere that wasn't a 'proper dirty Vietnamese place', and he is so right. The wonton noodle soup was pretty decent though from the one bite of noodles that I got out of Fil. The noodles had exactly the right texture, and also the prerequisite 'fairy liquid' taste you get from Hong Kong noodle eateries. However, we went to the sister Out The Door on my last day in SF and tried the same dish, and disappointingly there the noodles were all stuck together and the whole dish was swimming with MSG. Stick to the pork buns if you're going to OTD.

The other Asian place that Eugene recommended was The House on the corner of Grant Ave and Vallejo. This was a much smaller, family feel affair, and I loved the little homey touches they had. Their place mats I thought had the perfect combination of being cost effective and cute:

We were meeting two old friends for dinner here, so I couldn't really focus on the food, but their special starter of seared scallops with a miso ponzu sauce was by far the most successful thing we ate that night. I love that combination of saltiness and sourness:

The grilled seabass with soy dressing that everyone raves about, however, was only just ok. The seabass must be a completely different breed to what we have in England to warrant such a huge steak, but ultimately I found the flavour to be meaty but a bit bland.

The boys both had the special of grilled cod, the most interesting thing about it was the presentation:

Served with what was essentially a Californian roll that had been sliced lengthways, apparently this was really quite good as well as being creative.

With the higher proportion of Asian population, it is not surprising that the Asian food is of a good standard. We also went to the much heralded Yank Sing for dim sum, again, very high standards even though they don't seem to be able to make char siu buns properly. Still, we still managed to get tourist-trapped in Chinatown - we had decided to go there on an empty stomach lacking any decent recommendations, and relied on yelp.com to find somewhere to go. We apparently went to one of the best Chinese in America at Chef Jia's, according to some of the reviews, and I really should have known better when reviews praise a restaurant for its use of chicken breast meat. I should just trust my instincts and never eat in a Chinatown ever again.

Unhealthy stuff in San Francisco (yes, it's possible)

2010-05-13T21:32:00.003+10:00

My first few days in San Francisco felt like a whirlwind tour of what you can take out of food and still manage to eat it: gluten-free, meat-free, soy-free, lactose-free, and of course, fat-free. More on that in my next post, but I wanted to celebrate all the unhealthiness of the city first.

I have never understood why American students always come to London and moan about the lack of Mexican food. Even with the advent of Wahaca, I still don't really get the appeal of what I see is essentially a cuisine made of mixing some kind of tortilla with some tomatoes with some meat, and then smothering it with cheese.

La Taqueria in the Mission is such a favourite amongst my friends, that Fil has come straight here when he gets off the plane, and apparently we are going to all live in a communal squat with Eugene and Aisha just so that we can be near. This humble Mexican joint has been in the Top 100 San Francisco restaurants for many many years now, and was suitably crowded with an eclectic crowd when we went, a mixture of local Mexican families to what looked like a well-fed white Texans on tour.

Inside, the menu is small, you can basically get either various kinds of tacos, or various kinds of burritos, served with a small selection of drinks. The walls are adorned with the numerous awards the place has earned over the years:

I went with the expert, who recommended the carne asada burrito with a strawberry agua fresca. At this point, it remained somewhat unpromising:

But unwrap the tinfoil, and I finally, finally understand what this was all about. This was unlike any burrito I have had, in London, US, or Mexico. There was no rice, no avocado, just a perfect mixture of beef, tomato salsa, and beans in a tortilla wrap, nothing more. And I am thinking that this might only work in California where the tomatoes are just amazing. It was so juicy that I think I used up half a carton of napkins, and hence why the photos suddenly stop. It took a long walk around Mission to digest it, but that only helped me to think it was the best neighbourhood in San Francisco (living in East London helps).

Oh, and the agua fresca was amazing too, probably because the strawberries in California are in season and amazing right now. Sorry, British strawberries will never again cut it for me.

Somehow, we managed to top this food coma with brunch at Dipsea Cafe in Mill Valley, a local favourite serving 'homestyle breakfast' in Marin. It is like one of those cute little American diners that you always see in films, complete with the booths and the unlimited jug of coffee and the overly friendly waitress. I was almost expecting Pumpkin and Honey Bunny to come and rob everyone.

Their breakfast menu is a little ridiculous for choice, including some interesting things like huevos rancheros, gravlax scramble, but I thought you should just go with the locals, and ordered the Dipsea Special of two buttermilk pancakes, one egg, link sausage, bacon, and home fries.

Now, I'm used to a good old big English breakfast, and was getting my stomach prepared for the onslaught. But I still wasn't quite expecting the enormity of the pancakes that were presented to me. I was expecting little drop-scone sized things, but they turned out to be bigger than my face (and ever since my teens I have been teased for having a huge face):

And that huge nob of butter on top was just unnecessary. I somehow managed to plough through about one of those pancakes before admitting defeat. I have a Nigella recipe for American style pancakes, the proportions of which are so huge that I have to halve the recipe each time, but now I understand where she's coming from. We actually spotted another table on the way out which had ordered an extra full stack (3 pancakes) and side of bacon on top of their normal breakfast.

Fil started getting worried about me during the trip because I kept refusing food, saying I wasn't hungry. If you've ever met me, you would know that this is not normal. I didn't want any dinner that day, and I'm sure I am still digesting some of that pancake right now.

One last naughty outing was to go to In and Out Burger, mainly to placate my foul mood after I found out about the inconclusive election results and was missing the Guardian last Thursday. There is only one branch in San Francisco (and another in Marin), so unsurprisingly it was packed that lunch time. I had forgotten what all the secret codes were, so we went for a straightforward cheeseburger & fries. It was much better than the one I ate in LA this time last year, it is certainly a superior fast food burger, and I think it's strategy of keeping the number of branches small probably ensures the quality.

Don't worry, a full report on salads, fresh fruit, and ridiculous healthiness in the next post :)

Birthday at Hibiscus

2010-04-28T23:07:00.008+10:00

Hot off the press from Monday, the San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants have just been announced. Only 3 restaurants from the UK made it onto the list this year, old favourites Fat Duck, St John, and a new entry at number 49 for Hibiscus.

Either Fil is psychic (unlikely), or just very well trained (even more unlikely), but it ended up being the venue of my surprise birthday dinner a few weeks ago! For their Friday and Saturday nights, you don't get a menu, you just get to choose the number of courses you want: 4, 6, or 8. We decided to be averagely fat and went for 6 courses. Here they are without any commentary from me:

Amuse bouche

Apple and Carrot Soda

Devon brown crab

Salad of Devonshire Crab, Tokyo White Turnip, Kentish Sea Leaves, Cream & Smoked Olive Oil Dressing

Black bream

Cornish Black Bream Stuffed with Morels & Kaffir Lime, New Season Broad Beans & Coffee

Snails

Fricassee of Herefordshire Snails, Turkish Morels, “Vin Jaune” Sauce & Wild Chervil

Squab Pigeon

Roast Squab Pigeon, Tamarillo Confit in Muscovado, New Season Carrot & Passion Fruit Puree, Cheltenham Beetroot

Selection of British & French Cheeses

From Neal’s Yard and Bernard Antony

Pre dessert

Strawberries and Celeriac with Sichuan Pepper Foam

Winter Garden

Iced Nougat Parfait of Candied Roots, Physalis Coulis

I'm a bit dubious about the World's 50 Best list anyway. I've only been to 6 on the list, and only one of them (lovely Martin of San Sebastian) is the only meal I would say has absolutely blown my mind.

I loved loved the surprise element at Hibiscus, especially as I wouldn't have ordered the best dish of the lot. The stuffed sea bream was a creation of wonder, I could have happily eaten about 5 portions of it. And the other thing I absolutely adored was the so right cheese selection (you can tell I was excited as I didn't even take a picture) - fourme d'ambert, comte, a goatey one and a soft stinky one. I couldn't really have asked for a better place for my birthday.

But obviously, now I have to overanalyse every aspect of my dining experience, there were a few niggly things I have. First, the dining room is really odd, the tables a bit too spaced out almost, and I'm not sure about the minimalist blonde panelling, the room needed more character. I also thought it was weird to have two dishes with morels (the sea bream and the snails) back to back; unfortunately the sea bream dish was so so good, the snails felt like a let down. And finally, I really disliked the dessert. I know I'm not a dessert person, but this was just an odd choice to try and display your dessert talents. Simply not very nice at all!

Berlin

2010-04-18T00:17:00.004+10:00

So yes, it was an awfully long time ago that we had our little visit to Berlin, but work has been incredibly busy, and I am now catching up on all my blogs! Even with my ridiculous OCD memory for food though, I am struggling to remembr the exact ingredients of the food we ate there.

I have a real fondness for German food, even when it is so unfashionable to like it. I like a bit of stodge, and am a big fan of sauerkraut. Unfortunately though during our little weekend away, we never found the opportunity to go and eat any wurst, it does somehow feel wrong, especially as I'd even researched where the best curry wurst supposedly is. But the food we did eat was consistently good.

I arrived in Berlin very late on a Friday night, and as much as we loved our hotel, their concierge was rather rubbish at recommending something that was still open at 10pm, especially as I'd insisted on eating German food. We also insisted that we wanted to walk there, so she pointed us to somewhere near Hackescher Markt.

We loved the walk there, taking in most of Berlin's sights in Mitte, but it was only when we were quite near the restaurant that we realised we were walking right through the red light district. It didn't make us feel particularly uncomfortable, but knowing us, we started to overanalyse their business model and started thinking of ways to improve their sales. For some reason, all the girls had almost exactly the same outfits, with the exception that some boots (all equally patented and shiny) were black, whereas some were pink. Maybe men are just not that fussy.

Anyway, we ended up at a place called Lutter & Wegner, which turned out to be a sort of chain restaurant serving extremely traditional German food. Definitely a lot of stodge and soured cream to be had here! I had a goulash with spatzle, and spatzle has become one of my new favourite foods:

I think we had also ordered some kind of wurst and they got our order wrong, which meant some black pudding with apple arrived instead. I really ought not to try my bad German on actual German people:

All in all, it was good, but not particularly exciting.

More exciting was Moses' recommendation of Monsieur Vuong, also in the Hackescher Markt area, which he had described as being like a Vietnamese Busaba in Berlin. We'd also read it in the New York Times, which meant we knew it would be rammed, and even when we arrived at 4pm for a very late lunch, the place was packed!

And to be honest, I'm not really sure what the fuss is about. I did love the decor, quite utilitarian yet chic at the same time, but the short menu was almost too short (probably 6 main dishes in all with 2 or 3 specials), especially as the things on the menu didn't really excite me exactly. There was no beef pho (not sure whether that is a good or bad sign), so we both went for the chicken pho:

It was fine for what it was, but the soup base was a bit weak, maybe I'm just a bit spoilt for Asian food in London. What I was more impressed with was their setup; they didn't appear to have a kitchen at the back, and did everything in a tiny area by the entrance (boiling the noodles, spooning on the broth etc.), which probably explains the tight menu.

Undoubtedly our most exciting dinner was at Schneeweiss in Friedrichshain, also mentioned in the NYT. It wasn't quite as chic as we had expected it to be, it was definitely very white, but also quite down to earth, including some quite amateurish snowflakes on the windows which quite endeared me to the place. The whole idea of the menu is modern Alpine food, and whilst it won't set the world on fire, it did feel right to eat it in what is supposedly the equivalent of the East End of Berlin.

Starters were a goats' cheese tart and a potato and carrot soup - both humble yet very well done:

My memory is failing me slightly on the mains. One of them was definitely red mullet, very light and fresh:

But the other one was another goulash (maybe?) with some pink stuff on the top.

We really liked the Friedrichshain area actually, with some quite interesting bars including one called the Big Lebowski that served (not particularly good) White Russians, and also a very self-consciously grubby place that played good 60's British music!

Berlin is one of those places I can go back to again and again. The first time I went was with a group of 20 raucous consultants and ended in Berghain, this time, it was a much calmer experience. If only I can go there once when it's not freezing cold! Anyway, here is probably the best memory of the weekend :)

The Glasshouse/ Chez Bruce

2010-04-15T07:58:00.005+10:00

I recently (re)discovered the joys of taking a day off during the week recently: I had a few days' holiday left over before the holiday year ended, and London is such a lovely place before the weather is good enough that it is flooded with tourists, and there is no-one around!

One of the nicest things we did was to go to Kew on a Friday and eat at The Glasshouse. Unfortunately, I now fear for the survival of the place, along with its brother Chez Bruce in Wandsworth. We went to Chez Bruce on a Saturday night, completely on a whim, and managed to get a booking by calling about 4 hours ahead. Worrying. And when we got there, it was definitely not fully booked. I know it is in the middle of nowhere, but I always thought that reputation would sustain a place like that.

Even more worrying was when they gave us a discount voucher for The Glasshouse with our bill. It was for a half price weekday lunch, 3 courses at £11.75. Yes, a Michelin starred, 3 course meal for less than £12. Even at full price it is ridiculously cheap. Thankfully, the place was quite full on the Friday lunchtime that we went, but we were definitely the youngest people in the place by a good few generations.

The worrying goes on too, as the food was such generous proportions, and the wine by the glass list far too reasonable. I had a gorgeous Slovenian white (must look up what it was) for a fiver a glass! This accompanied some great dishes, but enough food to feed a small family.

I started with a chicken raviolo with a garlic veloute. Whenever I read 'raviolo' on a menu, I start thinking it's going to be tiny and would never satiate my never ending desire for pasta. NOT THIS TIME! Look at how big it was!!!:

As big as a Cornish pasty, just this would have been enough for lunch, especially as the veloute is so thick it's the sort you can stand a spoon in. Fil unsurprisingly went for a salad, this time a wood pigeon one topped with a truffled egg. Again, so big you wondered why they thought following this with 2 more courses was a good idea:

And here is a gratuitous shot of the egg, very truffley it was too:

I am guessing they are making some money out of this by using lesser meats and worser cuts, but that logic goes out the window when they serve you nearly a whole rabbit for your main, which also came with a huge potato gratin thing, Bayonne ham, vegetables drenched in butter:

How we managed dessert is a small mystery, but probably helped by how good they were. Everyone knows I'm not a dessert person, but both Chez Bruce and The Glasshouse had me licking the plate. I had a fig roll with almond ice cream and a poached pear. Another good thing about having lunch at The Glasshouse is being able to take colourful pictures:

Fil found out how amazing trifles were with his black forest version:

We went to Kew Gardens afterwards (very nice by the way, even with its very ugly Asian pagoda), the admission for which was about the same price as the meal! I really ought to stop over-analysing restaurant business models and relax and just enjoy the damn food. I've just remembered the main course at Chez Bruce was this veal and spatzle concoction featuring veal tongue which was probably one of the best mains I've had in a long time. But do I mention that first in the blog post? No. Bad Connie!

Just about worth the hassle

2010-04-09T23:50:00.005+10:00

I have wanted to go to Franco Manca, apparently home to the most authentic Napoli pizza in London, for the longest time, but given that it is in the deepest depths of South London (well, ok, Brixton), I knew it would be a trek. But oh what a trek it turned out to be. Obviously Fil and I decide to go when the Victoria line is down, and didn't manage to get our arses ready until about 2pm anyway. Then we had all sorts of fun with the buses, including getting one going the wrong way, so we arrived finally at about 3:30pm. And this place closes at 5pm.

After getting a bit lost around Brixton market, we got there to find this humungous queue, like 30+ people in the queue. Yes, look at it! Fil hilariously went to try and find some sustenance to keep him going, and then bought a plantain without realising you can't eat it raw, hahaha!

We were in the queue for about an hour, I don't really want to think about how much time we spent travelling/queuing for a freaking pizza. And we probably sat down for about 15 minutes whilst we wolfed it all down. F went for the more classic margarita. It was as good as the ones I had in Naples, slightly sweet, slightly sour, a shame that I left it to get a little too cold:

And I should have known better than to order something a little funky. When I first read about the place a few years ago, it only had 3 or 4 very basic pizzas on the menu, and whilst the choice is still pretty tight compared to more commercial outlets, they now have a fixed menu of about 6 with another 4 or so specials each day. The one I went for was probably the most different to the margarita, a non-tomato one with crumbled sausage and some kind of pickled vegetable that I didn't write down:

I must say I struggled with this a little bit, the pickled veg was quite bitter, and I guess I was craving a simple margarita. Trust me to try and get too creative! But even more wondrous was the homemade lemonade:

Yes, looks really dark and oxidised and a bit dodgy, doesn't it, but oh it was soooooooooooooo good.

I hear Franco Manca now have a second branch in an equally inconvenient location of Chiswick. It does hearten me that little places like this get crazily popular, yet they still maintain that 'we don't care that our opening hours are really inconvenient, and yes we do insist on making everything fresh and in our own way' charm.

Unreasonably good (or go there before it closes)

2010-03-08T23:17:00.005+11:00

It really didn't need 3 consultants to rip apart the business model at Giaconda Dining Rooms to conclude that the place defies all restaurant conventions:

1. The place only has 32 covers in a tiny tiny space (Charlie was literally wedged into his seat)
2. They do not turn tables
3. They do not open at weekends
4. Last orders is at 9:15pm
5. They have an unreasonable number of dishes on offer each day, including about 12 starters, 12 mains, and another 6 specials of the day
6. You can probably swing a small mouse in their kitchen, which makes the number of dishes on offer even more incredulous
7. The wine list is ridiculously reasonable, with about 80% of the list under £30 a bottle
8. Cover charge of only £1 a head includes free filtered sparkling water, bread, and olives
9. 3 courses with 2 bottles of wine between 3 comes to under £50 a head

The only way I can explain is it that they must own the property, and that the chef and his team are seriously doing it purely for the love of their work. In any case, I am so scared this place will go out of business soon that as soon as we finished our meal there I immediately booked another table.

I guess one of the ways they make the business model work is to use some cheaper ingredients. As is the vogue nowadays, offal features heavily on the menu, and I think the word 'unctuous' must have been invented specially for their crispy pig trotter 'cake'. Definitely my favourite thing we tried that night:

But the use of ingredients is a bit cleverer than just going back to the offal recipe books. The other stand out dish of the day was their crumble of creamed shallots and wild mushrooms. It will contribute to my future heart attack, but what a great idea for a dish:

Annabel's pumpkin risotto was also really worth trying. Unlike most pumpkin risottos, it was all about the pumpkin, with lovely big chunks through it:

The mains were slightly less exciting I guess, but Charlie and Annabel did choose theirs on the basis of spying on our neighbours. Their rack of lamb sounded boring, but is beautifully presented an a 'tian' of vegetables looking very lovely:

My own main was also quite boring sounding, and looked pub food almost - grilled sirlion of veal with coleslaw - but was perfect. Leon needs to stop messing around with their coleslaw and just steal this recipe. Also very good, rustic, skin-still-on chips:

Puddings were less exciting, but all well done. A pear and chocolate sorbet, iced nougat with raspberries, and another crumble, this time pear, quince and apple with a clove ice cream. That clove ice cream was the only thing I was really unsure about during the meal:

And bless their hearts, we were the only customers left when we ordered another bottle of wine, and they didn't even flinch. But we did feel tremendously guilty for keeping them late. It is that kind of place, real family-run feel, even down to the slightly dodgy toilets that they obviously didn't have the budget to renovate when they moved into the space.

So, we're off there again this Friday! I'm already trying to decide what I am going to eat!

Dean Street Townhouse

2010-02-15T21:04:00.002+11:00

It was the mention that they do scotch eggs that made me want to go to Dean Street Townhouse. And when I got there, I literally wanted to eat everything on the menu, every starter, every main, every dessert, and even the stuff they have for high tea. There is no pretending that it is to appeal to those of us who went to school in this country, everything is nursery comfort food, and I am not at all ashamed to say that I am already pestering my friends to join me for a return visit.

It was pretty quite on the Sunday evening I went, which gave me time to assess the mad interior. The dining room is very cosy (to the point where I think it would be quite oppressive if you were staying at the hotel and coming down for breakfast, no windows at all!), and strangely decorated with some very random art. Over our table was a quote by Lindsay Lohan. I'm also still making up my mind over whether I liked the toilets. Very cosy again, and I liked that there is a sink in each cubicle, but the mirrors were very self-consciously aged, paired with some comedy looking Cowshed toiletries. Obviously this kind of Soho irony is completely lost on me.

But back to the food. As I said, everything is what you would find on a school dinner menu or Little Chef actually, including fish & chips with 'fat marrow peas'(Dave very hopefully thought it came with bone marrow, hahaha!), 'mince and potatoes', and even a mixed grill. And it was all a lot cheaper than I had anticipated. I had read somewhere that their scotch egg was £7.95, completely ridiculous yes, but most mains came in at around £12-15, not bad for that part of town. You can also order from the high tea menu which had things like scotch eggs and chicken livers on toast, all of which were around £4-5 each.

Dave teased me relentlessly for ordering prawn cocktail for my starter. I don't care how old fashioned it is, I really fancied it! And it was a very good one too, only complaint was that the portion is a big too big:

Dave went for a more adventurous grilled octopus with chickpeas, and managed to take a very arty photo of it. It was a bit meh on taste, however, the chickpeas seeming cooked in a tin of tomatoes:

I had been hankering for roast chicken ever since Canteen decided not to cook any for lunch earlier on in the day, so I was most excited to see it on the menu. It is only for 2, and at £32 for 2 I thought it was quite bargainous, given that you get a chicken supreme and a whole leg each! Definitely way too much food, but this might be the best roast chicken I've ever eaten (granted I don't eat roast chicken that often)!!! The roast tatties were a bit rubbish though, even I make better ones :p

I was thoroughly, thoroughly stuffed after eating literally half a chicken, but I couldn't quite resist the pudding menu (and it is definitely a pudding menu, not a dessert menu). Rice pudding with raspberry jam was so right and so yummy, with an individual bit of skin on top. I also need to go back to try their sherry trifle for two:

Oh, and another thing I liked was that there was a long wine by the carafe list, useful as Dave had overdone it (again) the night before and was feeling a bit fragile. That didn't stop us having a glass of port each to finish though. I have gained a real fondness of a little glass of port recently, I asked for one in a pub the other day and they did laugh at me. Oh well, hurrah for Dean Street Townhouse, exactly the sort of place to enjoy a warming glass of port on a winter's evening.

Quick round up of wonderful places

2010-02-15T07:11:00.002+11:00

Quickly before my laptop battery dies, some other lovely places I want to shout to the world about!

First, I probably don't need to tell you about The Eagle, heralded as London's first real gastropub, but I only went there for the first time a few weeks ago, and it does trump even its sisters Great Queen Street and Anchor and Hope. I guess it's because at the two sisters, both of them are deep dark rooms where you feel ever so slightly stressed out from the raucous for a table, whereas The Eagle has gorgeous big windows on two sides, and even on Saturday lunch felt chilled out.

Somehow I managed to restrain myself and ordered only a soup (ok, I did have a pastis de nata afterwards, but you should have seen the menu on offer!). It was probably one of the best soups I've ever eaten in a restaurant, let alone a pub, and so nice to see cheap ingredients turned into something of real glory. Here is their mussel and pollack chowder:

Fil quite uncharacteristically (I thought) went for a pork chop, which came with lentils rather than the advertised black beans, as well as a huge layer of yummy fat along the edge:

Plus, sitting by the window meant I took decent food photos for once :)

Another place I was seriously impressed with recently is Da Mario on Endell Street. When Lindsay told me we were going to an Italian place in Covent Garden for our big girlie night out, I was definitely more than dubious, so what a pleasant surprise to now crave one of the dishes I ate there. It's obviously run by a big Italian family, whose father openly flirts anything female that works through the door, so we us 9 girls were treated to some fabulous Italian hospitality.

Their menu is very very long, which again made me feel dubious, but not one complaint was heard on our table. I started with their stuffed baby octopus on chickpeas: not a combination I would think of, but it definitely worked:

But the thing I was seriously impressed with was their homemade pasta (not sure what the name was, but big fat flat tubes) with a sausage and broccoli sauce. Sounds anonymous enough, but oh my god so so so so so satisfying. The sauce was sparing but very unctuous at the same time, if that makes any sense, the balance of the whole dish was just perfect for me:

Gah, I only ate dinner (a very fat Chinese New Year dinner at that) about an hour ago and I'm salivating again!! Need to go back...

Salad

2010-02-15T06:33:00.005+11:00

Salad has entered my life is rather a big and intrusive way recently, which also partly explains my inability to blog for the last month or so. I do think it is mightily strange for a grown man to be so fond of raw vegetables, but I have learnt to love it. Here's one of Fil's magnificent salad creations (and yes, readers, this is a side salad for 2!):

One of the good things about all this, of course, is that I am rediscovering how I love weird and wonderful combinations of salads, as showcased by our trip to Ottolenghi's. I've read Yotam Ottolenghi's recipes in the Guardian for many months now, and generally they are the sort of recipes that sound so good that I will cut it out, put in a folder, and never revisit again. I particularly like that there is a strong Middle Eastern vibe in his food, and everything sounds very zingy.

The Islington branch we went to was rammed on the Saturday night we visited. We got there super early at 6pm and managed to grab one of the last spaces at the bar in an otherwise fully booked dining room, and all night long the maitre d' was laughing at the hopefuls walking in who then promptly walked out again. I can sneer all I like about Islington-ites, but even I have to admit I have very similar taste buds to them.

Potentially my favourite thing was a very simple salad of pumpkin with manouri cheese, a Greek cheese which I've never had before. I was expecting something quite sharp like feta, but its smoothness and slight citrusiness was totally delicious with the pumpkin:

Less successful was their version of tuna tataki, which came with a soggy breadcrumb and a bit too inoffensive wasabi sauce:

Their pigeon (or was it quail?) was a little unmemorable:

But we loved the chicken livers and mushrooms on brioche toast. I like the fact that they can do the funky taste combinations as well as do classic dishes very well:

So it has inspired me to be a little more creative with my salads, but repeat visits will be quite harsh on the wallet. Each little plate (they recommend you order 4 each) costs around £10-12, which I felt was all a bit expensive for something pitched to be casual (the salads are all sat in big bowls in an entrance, for example). I also saw that they do takeaway salad boxes at a slightly laughable £9.95 each. Obviously I'm not rich enough to qualify to be a trendy yummy mummy type yet, phew!

Worst food trends of the noughties

2010-01-03T22:10:00.001+11:00

This Guardian article made me chuckle, so I thought I'd share. I must say I totally agree on the molecular gastronomy front.

Crisis Christmas 2009

2010-01-02T05:11:00.006+11:00

I had a thoroughly lovely week at Crisis Christmas this year, and overall helped to cook over 1200 meals at the Crisis Quiet homeless shelter. Many people have been very kind about what a commitment it is, but let me tell you, I have so much fun each year that even if it was for a much less noble cause, I would still be there, chopping away. It is a purely selfish endeavour! And it beats sitting at home watching bad Christmas telly hands down.

As ever, our afternoon cooking brigade was led by the wonderful Norman, who turns 70 next year, and it may be one of his last Crisis Christmases. He is not actually a trained chef; both the guests and general volunteers assume that our kitchen is much more professional than it is, but somehow we manage to get on average 200 meals out each day, mainly due to Norman. Our logistical challenges as ever included only having 2 ovens (1 of which normally runs out of gas during service), some incredibly blunt knives, and just about enough room to swing a very small festive cat.

Anyway, here are a few photos to try and convey what an experience it was. This is a typical main course, this time roast beef with lots of veg. I really ought to put less gravy in my food. All the food is donated by catering companies and supermarkets, and it is a daily Ready Steady Cook challenge to try and decide how to feed everyone.

My proudest moment was the baked apples we did for pudding on Boxing Day. We had a lot of Christmas cake left over from the day before, so we stuffed these into the apples, topped with brown sugar (one lonesome bag we found in the store room). These were obviously not meant to be healthy:

Crisis is also when I eat 99% of my annual intake of custard. Our guests and volunteers love the stuff, and we make it almost everyday. Ed started the awful thing of eating huge bowls of just custard, which we all started to follow. Despite all this, we may have gone a little overboard by making 10 litres of the stuff on the last day:

I really did ruin my hands this year, even after taking my own knives and peelers to the kitchen. This may have something to do with the mountains of sprouts we prepped (incidentially the ones donated by Morrisons's were much nicer than those from Harrod's!):

On the last day, we had a frozen block of chicken breasts the size of a large paving slab to try and defrost in time for dinner. It had been out of the freezer since 10am, and by 3pm, it still resembled the arctic. Prying off each breast one by one was probably the thing that really messed up my hands, but oh it was such a satisfying job, perhaps my most favourite.

In proper Christmas fashion, I put on quite a bit of weight even though I was working, probably because Norman kept feeding me little snacks during the shift. I resorted to having a little stash of food in my little corner everyday, even though I kept refusing to take the Wethers' Originals:

And this is the lovely kitchen crew from the last day! Also special mentions for Iain, Sam, Synthia, Charmaine, Ian and Linda who are not here:

The week was rounded off by the traditional karaoke session on the last night. Yes, I was rather surprised to find people other than Asians doing karaoke whilst sober.

I just made my first proper meal since Crisis, and it was all a bit surreal, being able to stop after chopping just one onion and just one carrot. I also feel a bit like one of the Borrowers as the utensil are so small!

Lastly, a big thank you to the green badges and key vols who make it all happen, particularly Lloyd and Sue. I spotted Sue eating this year, somehow I didn't die of shock.

Farewell Eugene

2009-12-21T02:54:00.004+11:00

The series of farewell dinners was so long and varied that it's quite a shock to the system now that he's actually gone. It was a bit too cold to cry when I finally said goodbye to him, but the sentiment is still there. I will of course miss him for his insatiable appetite and disturbingly similar food tastes to mine, but he was also instrumental in helping me through all the recent changes in my life. *stops pukingly sentimental posting*

Somehow along the way, he has never been to Latium, despite all my evangelical rantings about the place, so it was an obviously place to have a final final dinner. Unsurprisingly Eugene became a big fan of the place afterwards, and once again I am plotting to maybe have my birthday dinner in their new(ish) private dining area.

The only slight disappointment is that they have changed their amuse bouches! I can't even remember when I started coming to Latium (2004ish?), but they have always welcomed their guests with a plate of arancini, mini pizzas and mini calzone. Now it seems to have been replaced with a series of crostini-type things. Very nice they are (cured salmon, wild mushrooms, and salami), but somehow it does take away from the magic of the place.

Given it was Eugene's first visit, we stuck to the classics. Both of us started with Latium's version of steak tartare (yes, my second tartare of the week, no wonder I am expanding again), which includes parmasan in the tartare itself, and is topped with some impossibly cute poached quail eggs:

Both of us also had the fish ravioli, which I will not bore you about again, and very competently done fish dishes (monkfish with pumpkin sauce for me, similar to the one at the bottom of this post I had a while back, and scallops for Eugene), and somehow we still had enough reserves for pudding. Now, I have never come to Latium for their desserts, and I rarely rarely order any. But as I've said before, I'm having a funny turn recently, and keep ordering desserts.

And very glad I was too! The rum baba with pistachio ice cream and marsala sabayon is something I would actually consider skipping one of the savoury courses at Latium to have again. Shocking, I know. It is huge (and again, I quite like the fact that Latium's presentation is never quite dainty), but I had no trouble shoving it all into my mouth:

Eugene then declared that their tiramisu is one of the best in London, having told me a story of when he spent an entire day sampling tiramisu's all over a few years ago. How is this boy not fat??!!

So yes, birthday dinner at Latium in the works. Who wants an invite?

Boundary

2009-12-21T02:13:00.003+11:00

It is no longer a surprise that very very good restaurants are starting to pop up within walking distance from my house in East London. Even BA's High Life magazine has declared Tower Hamlets as the place to be, I am told, so it is all official. What is more of a surprise I guess is that Terence Conran is behind one of these, in what seems to be some kind of renaissance for him in 2009. Critics far and wide have loved Boundary in Shoreditch, a small complex including a hotel and a rooftop restaurant. Much praise has also been lavished at Lutyens on Fleet Street, another 2009 Conran opening, and the good experience we had at Boundary means that a visit to Lutyens is pretty imminent.

Let's start with the not-so-good stuff though. The space Boundary occupies is awkward to the extreme. The main restaurant is in the basement, with diners having to navigate some quite industrial looking stairs to get there. They have done their best to paint the space with celestial inspired murals, a theme which continues into the restaurant itself, but it is simply not a nice welcome.

And it also leads me to my second main complaint, and that is the toilets. You walk past them on the aforementioned stairs to get to the restaurant, and the smell wafting through made the welcome even worse. What's more is the fact that all the loos are unisex, which I don't get given that there is no shortage of space, and there was a very suspect puddle on the floor on both my visits. Yuk and ick. Loos should never be unisex if there is space available.

It is just as well then that the food and service was so good that I can get over the ickiness. The menu reminded me of Le Cafe Anglais: British classics with a hint of Frenchiness, I would be happy to eat almost anything off the menu. Most pleasing is that they don't call dessert 'dessert', they call it 'pudding'. Love love love!

I started with a steak tartare, more because I had been craving one than because of the selection on offer. I liked that it was served with a little side of gherkiny stuff, but still needed a little more kick:

Their salads were interesting, and I should have had one of these in retrospect. Lindsay had the Perigourdine, which translates into a salad with lovely ducky bits, including gizzards and fois gras:

A recovering Fil was definitely not ill anymore if he was ordering artichoke and truffle salads:

But starters were quickly rendered irrelevant when our main course came. They have roast special everyday, and we were so lucky that it is suckling pig on a Monday. 3 of us had it, potentially some of the best pig I've ever eaten (sorry Mum). Impossibly soft, although the crackling wasn't quite that crackly. The potatoes they served with it was also very lovely and nutty, like a wintery Jersey Royal:

And onto the very lovely puddings. I have had a bit of a weird turn lately, eating lots of sweet things, and I had real trouble deciding on puddings, the menu for which included Pear Belle Helene and Mandarin souffle. Again, reminiscent of Le Cafe Anglais, I was just pleased to see some stewed fruit on the menu, and shared some warm cherries with pain d'epices with Lindsay:

We also tried their white chocolate tarte du jour, very good in that they got the sweetness just right, not at all cloying, even I would have happily eaten it despite my dislike of white chocolate. Mark declared that it looked like a 'very Conran' dessert when I showed him the picture at work, haha!:

What I also really liked was they had a few surprises for us too, including some candied orange to go with our teas and coffees, nice to see they put a bit of thought into this 'petit four':

And because it is Christmas, they came round with a basket of clementines and nuts to round off the meal. This. however, turned into a bit of a nasty personal surprise. I tried some of their almonds and hazelnuts, and soon after discovered my lips and throat were very swollen, to the extent I had difficulty breathing and swallowing for the rest of the night. Now, I love nuts, never had any reaction before, and this episode really scared me, not for health implications, but because I may not be able to eat nuts again!! I have eaten nuts again since then (probably dangerous, but I wasn't paying attention), with reactions ranging from none at all to slightly swollen lips again. I knew things were going a bit too well lately, a newly developed nut allergy is dampening my spirits a little. I've just made some brownies with nuts in, they just came out the oven. So someone please come and check on me if it's all quiet on the blog front after this :)

New Soho favourite

2009-12-03T21:33:00.003+11:00

Friends and media have been raving on about Bocca di Lupo so much recently, to the extent that I was chatting to a complete stranger about it in a coffee shop the other day (I know, these sorts of things are not supposed to happen in London) but I still haven't managed to go. To be honest, I'm not sure about the concept of Italian tapas. I am a greedy person, and I want big plates of food all to myself!

A friend of Meghana's mentioned though that there was a good new place called Polpo on Beak Street, very good and cosy, the sort of place where the proprietor is in a jumper and jeans and will sit you personally himself. I keep walking past this place recently, and to be honest, it looks very non-descript and unexciting on the outside. But I realised they must be doing something right when I walked in on a Monday evening and it was absolutely packed.

And for once, I quite like the non booking system here, it feels like it fits this sort of place, and turnover is quick enough that we waited for only a few minutes. The place inside is tiny, tables so packed together there is barely an inch between them, but again, I thought it just added to the charm of the place.

Like Bocca di Lupo, it is Italian tapas, and if you read the website, apparently it is based on a Venetian style of eating. I'd actually already eaten staff dinner only a few hours before, so it was actually good to have 'picky' food. And everything was pretty unfamiliar. We had a sausage made of pig's trotters, the name of which escapes me, which was quite reminiscent of spam, but served with pickled cabbage and mustard worked really well. Next to it was some not very exciting but well executed spinach with garlic and chilli:

The dish that worked really well was the cuttlefish in its own ink with gremolata, definitely the dish that jumps out at you from the menu, and very very good. Next to it was again an unexciting but well done pumpkin risotto:

I am finding it hard to convey how lovely this place is though. Lots of little touches that make you really warm to it, for example, wines served in individual carafes that are different on every table (and at £9 or £10 for 500mls, quite a bargain). I was also a little disturbed that they seemed to have stolen my ipod for their music here, everything they played I loved, including PJ Harvey, early Bjork, The Doves, Portishead, glad to see someone else is still living in 1990's Britpop era. I imagine I will come here lots and fall in love with the proprietor very soon.

Hix

2009-12-03T20:53:00.005+11:00

Thanks to bad cookery programmes, I now equate Mark Hix with stargazey pie and silly jelly puddings, and that equation obviously meant that we had to go to newish Hix on Brewer Street as part of Eugene's leaving London eating marathon. And it all started off very well, the bar is very nice (although perhaps the £11.50 price tag on the Hix Fix champagne cocktail which went flat very quickly was not quite so nice), and I liked that serving pork scratchings is now in vogue:

The starter list was inventive, the sort of list that made you want to eat everything. The star of the show for me was the cod tongues with girolles, very flavoursome, very light, I should have had this really:

Eugene's monkfish starter was basically posh fish without the chips, but so well done. Big chunks of monkfish on a bed of just right tartare sauce:

The most intriguing starter was perhaps the 'heaven and earth', no explanation on the menu itself, turned out to be homemade black pudding on bubble and squeak. Very very earthy, but not quite as exciting as the name implies:

For me, I actually had the thought that sticking with simplicity might be the way to go at a place like this. Unfortunately it didn't quite work out. The smoked salmon was the most expensive starter (about £12 IIRC), which signalled that it had to be good. And when it came, you do feel a bit underwhelmed by the four naked slices:

And unfortunately, the taste was also a little underwhelming. I was expecting some taste explosions, but not even a sparkler happened here. And it all went a bit downhill from here really. The stargazy pie has to be ordered in advance, so I plumped for the oyster and beef pie. You gotta have pie! in a place like Hix:

First time I had oysters in a pie, despite the tradition, and what a good addition they are too, but there were far too few, and not well distributed amongst the pie, so you are left with quite a monotonous mount of beef under the pastry, with not even a bit of onion or carrot to balance it out.

But my main gripe was the very liberal use of salt in the main. We ordered a few side vegetables, so heavily salted that you could pick out salt crystals from the spinach and broccoli. My tongue was actually hurting, and I committed the restaurant crime of not finishing my main course. That never happens.

Nevertheless, they had some excellent special potatoes that evening, in the form of battered potatoes. The picture is a bit dark, but they were oh so amazing:

It also worries me when the best course in a restaurant is a dessert. I am not a sweet person, I just don't have the sweet tooth to appreciate desserts. But the desserts were fabulous here, mainly with the inclusion of jelly on the menu, and served in a little shot glass, is just what you need after a heavy meal:

But the winner of the evening was the buttermilk sorbet that came with it (in the lovely metall goblet as above). They laced it with little bits of what I'm guessing is grapefruit or lemon rind, it was sour and bitter, gorgeous gorgeous, my kind of dessert.

Toilets were very nice, no carpets making for a very noisy dining room. I must say I'm not rushing to go back.

Still the best roast in London, just

2009-11-23T09:21:00.004+11:00

When Meghana asked me to pick a place for dinner on a Saturday for some trendy foodies, I was worried. For some reason, I've had a bit of a mental block with restaurant recommendations recently. I've been revisiting a lot of my favourite haunts recently, and feeling quite mentally tired with being creative. Not being tied to a computer all day long wasting my time on food blogs and websites have also contributed I guess, haha!

We ended up at Le Cafe Anglais, whilst weirdly located in Whiteley's Shopping Centre, always has reliably good food in a wonderful art deco space. I thought the quality of the food would win out over something trendy. And it all got off with a good start as I had my normal pike boudin (which I always seem to have as demonstrated here) and also some of their parmasan custard and anchovy toast for the table.

I have always spied the £5 chicken leg at this place, and finally decided to be a little ungreedy and try it. So simple, it must be amazing for them to include it on the menu. However, I had ordered something else instead, and when I told the waiter (before starters were served), I think I confused the poor man, to the extent that the service completely fell apart after this. A good hour past by after our starter plates had been cleared, and mains nowhere to be seen. We ask the waiter, who insisted there was a 'delay in the kitchen', despite the fact that the neighbouring table had had their mains even though they arrived about 45 mins after us. I suspect the waiter had simply forgot to call the mains away until we reminded him. We sat down at 7:45, but mains were not delivered until about 10:30.

I'm not one for complaining in restaurants, being so British and all, but I was squiffy at this point, so I thought I would have a go at the manager. Even I surprised myself in how aggressive I was, but I can't fault the manager for his response. We were ridiculously fussy ordering the free desserts on offer, and I was a little (just a little) embarrassed when a bottle of dessert wine appeared on the table. I obviously need to be much less worried about other people's feelings and more ballsy in my complaints in future.

Very good recovery then in the end, and I am inclined to say this was a slip up than a regular occurence. The chicken leg, by the way, was probably the best main course I've ever eaten there. Laced with a generous portion of girolles and some very very tasty chicken juices, I do plan to return in the future and just order that, with a nice glass of vino maybe.

How to debone chicken wings!

2009-11-13T22:16:00.001+11:00

In response to the most genius idea of boneless chicken wings, Albert sent me this! Too good not to share:

Arbutus

2009-11-12T21:19:00.005+11:00

Annabel had the most exciting idea to get some foodies together to talk about food at Arbutus the other day, and I'm not sure I've received a more exciting invitation in recent times. She's just started an externship at Innocent Smoothies, and wanted to get us together to brainstorm some new product ideas. Somehow, I managed to get slightly evangelical about puddings, even though I don't really eat them as such and would probably never buy them. But that is by the by, we had such a good time we are now trying to make it a monthly fest.

I had only been to Arbutus once before, quite a long time ago now, and I remember it being quite unmemorable. But this time round I was charmed by the very good service. I'd forgotten that they do all their wines by the carafe, and not only that, we were able to try quite a few of the wines before we 'committed' to a carafe, which takes good service just a little too far.

The food was a lot more offally than I had remembered, and unfortunately I was in a bit of a full and bloated mood to really want to go for it. For example, I really wanted to try the 'pieds et pacquets', which was an intriguing sounding lamb's tripe and trotter mix, but needed something light. Not that my starter of smoked eel with chicken wings was exactly light. The chicken wings were BONELESS, the most genius idea I have ever heard:

Annabel had the squid and mackerel 'burger' with razor clams, very interesting combination, more about texture for me than anything:

We also tried the braised pig's head, which I suspect was what I had last time I was here. I have no idea what they add to their purees to make them so starchy that they sit on the plate in such perfect forms:

I was distinctively boring in my choice of main, going for the bouillabaisse. I can't fault it, but at £19.95 a portion, it was also a little dull. And as much as I know it's not traditional, I am always a bit miffed when fish soup comes without shellfish:

We also tried the Atlantic cod:

But the main that provoked the most ooohs and aaahs was the lamb breast. As Charlie correctly noted, breasts need careful loving, and this was a very loved piece of meat indeed. Very tender, fall apart soft:

I had to skip out on dessert, but some interesting things like cold chocolate fondant with salted caramel and quince clafoutis made me regret leaving.

Overall, much more impressed with this place than last time, but I am a little dismayed by the prices nevertheless. All mains were at the £15-20 mark, standard for this type of establishment, yes, but not when they are using a lot of cheaper cuts and so much offal. Also, marks off for the bar not having any idea what a French martini was, and also for the bathrooms, falling apart to such an extent that the toilet seat was almost on the floor. The naughty booby pictures don't quite make up for that.

Alpha Course - week 4

2009-11-07T02:58:00.002+11:00

I nearly didn't blog about this week's Alpha Course. The topic was Prayer - how to do it, and why do Christians do it, and I actually found the topic really rather dull. It really felt like what we were talking about this week had absolutely no relevance to me.

Apparently, 75% of the UK population claim to 'pray' at least once a week. A startling statistic it may seem for such a secular society, but I am definitely in the 25% who don't. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever prayed, or ever feel the need to pray. And that is in the more general sense of praying in a non-religious way too. I guess I'm one of those slightly demented people who talk to myself a lot in my own head, and I've never felt the need to talk or consult or ask for anything to 'someone up there'.

So the topic was a bit dull for me, but what was more interesting was how our Christian hosts have started to be a bit more assertive about directing the discussion. As mentioned before, they have usually been on the backfoot, letting the discussion wonder rather aimlessly. But this was the first week where we were directed to talk more specifically about the Christian interpretation of praying. I'm guessing this is because in previous weeks, us atheists/agnostics keep talking about how religion in general is a human phenomenon, rarely talking about what specifically differentiates Christianity from other religions.

And it may be this more directed discussion which meant I left feeling less satisfied this week. Although each topic begins with a talk, which includes reading passages from the Bible, I am starting to feel that without a more in-depth knowledge of Christian theology, and its semantics in particular, I am not really getting down to the crux of the problem or discussion. For example, in terms of prayer, Christians believe that they have direct access to the Father because of Jesus. We read from the relevant passages to show that, indeed, the Bible says this, and it is repeated several times for us, but what this actually means in layman terms is still a bit of a mystery to me. This is made all the more difficult by our Christian hosts never really giving an direct answer to anything.

But anyway, my work hours may mean that I will find it difficult to go every week from now on, so I'm not sure right now whether this might be my last post on the matter. A shame as the food has been getting better and better! This week, spicy rice with chicken:

Naples and Pompeii

2009-11-05T21:31:00.006+11:00

I have returned from the little weekend trip to Naples not ever wanting to eat pizza in England ever again. Not that I eat pizza much anyway, but it has to be one of the most poorly imitated dishes of all time, just walk round Leicester Square and have a look at those rock solid abominations in cafe windows. On the other hand, I walked past a place called Rosso Pomodoro near the Ivy yesterday, which boasted authentic Napoli pizza, will have to give it a proper look.

So you may have guessed, Naples is famous for its pizza, but more on that in a second. Naples is also very famous amongst Italians for its sfoglitelle (yes, no idea how to pronounce it either), a multi-layered shell pastry filled with ricotta and orange zest:

They are very very crisp, but a little too rich for me to be honest. But if you want to try them, I discovered that my favoured Italian deli beginning with P also has them from time to time. We tried them at Caffe Gambrinus near the Piazza del Plebiscito, recommended to us by the lady in the tourist office, who we also saw coming in for her own espresso, so it must be good. Having read a bit more about it, turns out the place used to serve Oscar Wilde! We loved the atmosphere here, and returned once more for a final espresso just before we left for the airport. Even a non-coffee drinker like me was downing two espressos a day!

Right, pizza time. Apparently authentic pizzerias in Naples have a little sign on the door to say that they are the dogs's bollocks, although apart from using buffalo mozzarella, I'm not sure what the strict stipulations are. We went to Da Michele, so famous that our hostel host knew exactly where we were heading when we mentioned going to try pizza near the train station. It is certainly old skool, and only serves two types of pizzas: margheritas (tomato, mozzarella, basil, olive oil) and marinaras (tomato, oregano, garlic, olive oil, no cheese!):

This was the margherita:

And marinara (and yes, the more observant of you will notice knife marks in both pizzas, we were a little impatient...!):

OH MY GOD! So simple, so good! I think the secret is that their dough was very chewily elastic, very pleasantly so, very morish indeed. Apparently it helps you to digest it. We did eat some more pizza which was a bit more adorned later in the weekend, but once you've had the good stuff, you can never go back...

We did go to Naples for the food, but the main purpose of the trip was to go and see the ruins in Pompeii, and Naples really is an ugly city that you don't want to spend too much time in. As you can imagine, the strip next to the ruins in Pompeii is lined with tourist traps all serving pretty much the same thing, and we ended up trying a little chain restaurant Fratelli la Bufala, which specialised in all things buffalo:

Their buffalo mozzarella and chargrilled vegetables was actually very good, a nice change from the carb-overload of the rest of the trip. Incidentally, I bought back a whole kilo of mozzarella back, and am not sure what to do with it other than to make sexy salads. It's a bit too good to cook with I think, so suggestions please!

But our restaurant highlight of the weekend was during the night when we stayed in Pompeii. Most tourists go to the ruins as a day trip from Naples or Sorrento, so the hotel market is pretty underdeveloped. We stayed at a random B&B called Casa Villa Pompeii, run by Antonio and his lovely wife in the home where Antonio was born. Seriously, if you want to go to Pompeii, I have to give you the address of the place. They were the best hosts, ever. The house is a little bit out of the way of the main strip, so Antonio actually drove us to the restaurant of his friend so we wouldn't get ripped off staying on the tourist strip. And then his friend gave us a lift back!

Hang on!" I can hear you screaming. Surely he ripped us off by taking us to his mate's place, the most classic tourist trick in the book! And to be honest, the food wasn't the best, but the hospitality was so amazing. I think they were a bit shocked to see two little Asian girls being outgoing, and all the restaurant staff ended up wanting photos with us in the end. It was one of those really good nights when you're laughing non stop with the locals, even though you really can't understand each other.

Anyway, food! We actually had pasta in this place, and to be honest, all the pasta we had during this little trip was disappointing, maybe a testament that pasta is done quite well in London. This was their best pasta, ravioli stuffed with spinach:

We also had a very alcoholic rum baba (babas also famous in Naples area):

All washed down with a bottle of local red vino at only €6 each! One of the few restaurants I want to go back to, but not for the food.

Pompeii itself was tremendous. I had studied it a lot in high school during my three torturous years of learning Latin about Caecilius and his dog, but it was nothing like I imagined it to be. Thankfully, because we went during relatively low season, we were still able to get lost enough that no one else was around, and then you could get a real feeling of how it would have been like 2000 years ago. Here are a few photos (yes, I managed to somehow take 50 non-food photos on this trip, a record!).

Herculaneum, a small site near to Pompeii, where you can see Mount Vesuvius in the background:

Beautiful mosaic in Herculaneum:

Pompeii proper, we had amazing weather too, look at the sky!

Vineyards have been recreated to look like what it would have been, again, with Vesuvius in the background:

The oldest surviving amphitheatre in Italy:

The big meat-versus-veg-off

2009-11-04T00:41:00.003+11:00

I've been reading a lot of Anthony Bourdain recently, a man who should be celebrated purely for his very eloquent attacks on vegetarianism. It takes a brave chef to marginalise a whole group like that. And if you don't know how I feel on the subject, this post will make it obvious.

Mildred's on Lexington Street in Soho is one of the celebrated vegetarian restaurants in London, and it was absolutely packed on the weekday evening we tried to visit. Leave your name at the counter, and there was a 30 minute wait. The usual Soho trendy crowd included a children's television presenter whose name escapes me; I've been good at my celeb spots recently (more on that later).

I really liked the variety in the menu at Mildred's actually, I could have happily eaten most of it. I think the secret is that even though it is vegetarian, and they are fans of alfafa here, what they serve is certainly not that diet friendly. Take the mushroom ravioli starter, which was enormous, and very very rich:

I also chose an equally cream and cheese laden main of sun-dried tomato, mozzarella and ricotta cake, served on a bed of spinach in cream sauce:

We also tried their borlotti bean burger special, which we tried to make slightly healthier by having a salad instead of fries:

We had to go and take a walk around the block afterwards because we were so so stuffed. And this was after sharing a starter and not having pudding, which I guess completely negates all the vegetarian arguments about it being a healthy diet. After all, cakes and biscuits are all vegetarian, no?

On the other end of the carnivorous spectrum, I finally made it to the original St John Smithfield this week. Somehow it has taken me this long to go there, mainly because the Bread and Wine in Spitalfields is so close to my house. Again, I was uncomfortably stuffed after the meal, to the extent that I stayed up until 1:30am watching bad telly in order to try and digest. And again, a celeb spot, although this one was way more exciting. All the boys fell in love with Thomasina Miers, who is very pretty in the flesh, helped by a very small skirt.

Anyway, the food! We had the (un)lucky vantage point of having a table right next to the kitchen, with a countdown of how many specials were remaining that night. This led to much over-ordering, including a shared starter of duck hearts and green beans, and braised lamb with white beans, on top of 3 courses each!

Four out of our table of six went for the signature roasted bone marrow with parsley salad. Personally I found it to be much less of a favour sensation than the others, although this might be to do with the fact that I was feeling hard done by because two of my bones contained hardly any marrow. Plus, politeness prevented any sucking of the bones which was what Caris and I really wanted to do!

For mains, we tried to order something different for everyone. I had the roast veal with turnips, first time I've ever really had turnips, but I think this was the best main of all. Mmmm....

Smoked eel with bacon and mash came with some amazing thick-looking bacon, but we found the whole combination to be salty in the extreme:

We liked the brill with leeks:

Mallard with swede:

Grey partridge with braised red cabbage looked impressive, with an impressive price tag too (the most expensive main at over £25 IIRC), but again, not a flavour sensation when compared to other game birds:

We did have several desserts, plus we had birthday cake for Eugene, but honestly, by now, I was finding it hard to put any more stuff into my house. That bone marrow is so so so so rich, you can just eat that for your dinner and already feel tremendously full.

Jesus, I feel stuffed just posting that! I really really need to start that detox soon, if only my friends would stop leaving town...

Alpha Course - week 3

2009-11-04T00:18:00.003+11:00

Alpha Week 3 brought the best food we've had at Alpha so far. Yes, I was lured there by the promise of shepherd's pie served in the Jon Ronson documentary, and finally the promise was fulfilled! I seem to have an endless stomach capacity for shepherd's pie, and I have been known to eat an entire pan of it in one evening before. The lovely people at church even served it with red cabbage, another one of my favourites:

It is potentially misleading to start writing about the food first off, because the discussion this week was excellent. The topic this week to be honest was a bit nebulous: How Can We Have Faith? Summarised down, it was the first week where we were challenged/encouraged to take the 'leap' into believing, and the talk by Andrew the Australian focused somewhat on letting the Holy Spirit become alive within you.

But as always, it is in the discussion that I found most thought provoking. Our small group is also now getting to know one another; Marc is the really staunt atheist who has been dragged kicking and screaming to come, and is a little aggressive in his defense of atheism (which I like!). Georgina's thinking is very much in line with mine: we both feel there is some purpose to our lives, but it is not necessarily Christianity, and we don't necessarily need Christianity to lead a good life. Sonya really wants to believe, in hope to passing on something to her son, but feels restricted by the overly-religious upbringing she endured back home in Austria. Dean normally sits quietly in the corner, in shorts and a beanie. Us atheists/agnostics/not yet converteds are also talking the most now, which I also like!

We raised some big big issues this week, and obviously ran out of time in the 30 minute discussion session. What about other world religions? What does it mean to believe? What is the Holy Spirit? The one topic that I'm most interested in exploring right now is how Christians interpret Christianity for themselves. I am finding it hard to reconcile the fact that each week we have a speaker, who presumably is giving us the 'official line' on each topic, but when we try to refer back to the speech in our discussion sessions, our Christian hosts not only encourage us to interpret it for ourselves, but very often, it seems that they do not believe in this 'party line'. If I learn anything from the course, I would like to change my mind about how I view this.

Just one slightly uncomfortable thing this week. In our little Alpha booklets which outlines the course, there is a section on the Holy Spirit this week, again, directly asking us to take that leap. It has one very odd question:

Which of the following changes have you already experienced in your life?
- new love for God
- desire to read the Bible
- sense of forgiveness
- new concern for others
- enjoyment of worshipping God
- desire to meet with other Christians

The fourth of these really did not sit well with me.

Martin je t'aime

2009-10-28T05:33:00.004+11:00

It has taken me a long time to blog about the wondrous, wondrous meal we had at Martin Berasategui in San Sebastian because I was waiting to get Eunice's wonderful photos of the place. It was probably the best meal I've ever eaten. Sorry mum.

We ended up here by accident I guess. Everyone who goes to San Sebastian tries to get a reservation at Arzak, probably the best known restaurant in the region, but even Peter's concierge service couldn't get us in. Never mind, there were plenty of other Michelin starred places, it's not as if they would be bad, right? I've never heard of Martin Berasatgui before, but he seems to be some kind of mini Basque celebrity; he also runs two of the restaurants in the Guggenheim, and his face endorses several food products we saw in Basque country a la Jamie Oliver.

The restaurant is tucked away in a suburb somewhere outside of the centre of San Sebastian - don't ask me where, Mr TomTom took us. But upon entering the place, you start to sense the magic. There are little stairs surrounded by lovely landscaped gardens leading to the front door. Inside the restaurant itself, I still can't decide whether I liked the decor or not. We decided it did feel as if we were part of a murder mystery evening: the furniture was just a little bit too ornate and too big. But the tables were wonderfully spaced, and it was really nice to see that the majority of the clientele were in big groups of 8+, just illustrates how differently the Basque people like to dine.

It was here that my little foodie crowd decided on a new criteria for marking restaurants: you start with a score of 100, and you take points away for things that niggle, annoy, or are just downright offensive. You can't add points, no matter how good the service is. I will say now that Martin ended up with 96. Of the four points deducted, I think three was for the super super scary maitre d'. It was obvious that he was the culprit of the murder mystery. It was almost like he was daring us to misbehave and not like something.

Like my review of the Fat Duck, I feel like there's no point in me trying to explain the dishes, and instead I will just present them here. What I will say is that Martin manages to deliver such delicious food without all the hocus-pokery that is so trendy with restaurants these days, food that is all about flavour, with amazing combinations. His signature dish of mille feuille of foie gras and smoked eel leapt straight into my top 5 dishes I've ever eaten, and the cooking was consistently good throughout. There was only one 'duff' dish, the warm vegetable hearts salad with seafood, with a jelly concoction which disturbed me somewhat.

As always, thanks Eunice for being able to steal your photos, as well as your format for the menu!

Lightly Smoked Cod with powder of hazelnuts, coffee and vanilla
Mille-Feuille of Smoked Eel, Foie Gras, Spring Onions and Green Apple
Peach Gazpacho with Cockles and txakoli
Squid Soup, creamy squid ink ravioli with squid crouton

Little Pearls of Fennel in raw, risotto and emulsion
Cheese and Carabana Oil Bubble with endives, red onion juice and Iberian bacon
Fam's Egg with beetroot and liquid herb's salad, carpaccio of basque stew and cheese
Warm Vegetable Hearts Salad with seafood, cream of lettuce hearts and idionised juice

Roast Red Mullet with crystals of soft scales and juice of white chocolate with seaweeds
Roasted Araiz Pigeon, fresh pasta with mushrooms and spring onions, touches of truffle cream

Warm and Cold of Apple and Roots
Coal Crumbs with frozen yoghurt and little acid touches of strawberries, lemon grass and passionfruit
As a Cold Soup, banana and vanilla stew, with citrics and ice cream

And if you're thinking that our scoring system is harsh, you'd be pleased to know that Martin had so many little touches that if he was allowed positive points, he would have easily knocked any competition out of the park. Tiny little things like little stools for your handbags, feminine products and toothbrushes (!) available in the toilet, the maitre d' noticing that we were pretty young and therefore not recommending any ridiculous wine... And the biggest plus point is that they take any food allergies/dislikes here very seriously, important given that Eugene claims (hee hee) he is lactose intolerant, and Eunice hates oysters whilst I hate bananas. The substitutes were often as innovative and creative as the 'normal' tasting menu.

The poor man came out to greet all the diners after the dinner, and I fear that our bad and slightly drunk French may mean that I now have a restraining order at the place. Martin je t'aime, oh yes.

Blackspring's Nan's Pork Hock

2009-10-27T23:56:00.008+11:00

This is the stuff of legends, and I'm not kidding. Blackspring's Nan's Pork Hock recipe is probably the most famous recipe amongst the GU foodie crowd, one of those that gets posted again and again because it is sooooooooooooooo good. Even reading the recipe you know it would be good.

I've always wanted to make it, but the difficulty is trying to locate pork hock in central London (Sorcha has mentioned it is sometimes available cheap at the Ginger Pig, but I rarely go to Borough Market). It's one of those cuts that the Chinese love; I remember my mum buying them when I was little and making like 5 different meals out of one hock, which apparently only used to be 50p each. After dim sum in the Docklands, we went for our usual grocery shop at one of the big Chinese supermarkets, and I spotted they had a glorious display of hocks. I dutifully bought a huge one for less than £3.

The recipe, as c&p'ed, is:

"1 giant pork hock (size doesn't matter) -1 lump of ginger roughly sliced -2 tbsp (or more if you fancy) dou ban jiang (chili bean sauce - I use AMOY brand) -2 tbsp brown sugar -3 tbsp dark soy sauce -3 tbsp light soy sauce (I use Kikkoman for giant umami kick) -2 star anise 2-3 spring onions or half a little red onion AND: 2 tbsp rice wine (not essential) 1 tsp 5-spice powder (not essential)

Put all ingredients into a deep pot with enough water to cover the hock completely and bring to the boil, then simmer for 4-5 hours. You will know when it is done when the house starts smelling amazing and the meat falls off the bone. don't worry if the pork hock looks fatty when you buy it, it all rises and you can skim it off at the end. what you are left with is a silky gelatinous amalgamation of very lean shredded pork (almost like Texan slow-cooked brisket) that is melt in the mouth. You won't need a knife. You can cut through it with a spoon. Serve with some simple steamed pak choi on steamed rice, or over thin white rice noodles in a deep bowl with lots of meaty liquor."

It was also a little celebration of the fact that I now have a little Chinese grocery shop at the end of my road (hurrah for Chinese immigrants in East London!). I was able to get tons of star anise (八角), five spice powder (五香粉) and the chilli bean paste (豆瓣醬) at bargainous prices:

OK, to start with, with everything in the pan, it doesn't look too promising:

But after stewing it for 5 hours, the liquid is mostly evaporated, the meat is falling off the bone. My house still smells amazing:

I managed to get so much meat out of the hock. Last night I had it with some panfried tofu and stir-fried spinach, which according to my mum is a lethal combination which will give me cancer. I think I shall die from my arteries being completely clogged up first. As you can see, the meat is just so soft, I am already thinking of experimenting with beef brisket whenever I manage to find some:

I am actually eating my second meal of it right now, and I think there are at least another 4 meals left I can get out of it. It's one of those times when I do need Eugene around to eat up my food, but the horrible person has gone to Tokyo this week. This is obviously revenge for him going to have so much Japanese yumminess :)

Quo Vadis

2009-10-27T21:51:00.007+11:00

Quo Vadis in Soho is one of those places that I walk past all the time, hear about all the time, but never quite manage to go. Even from the outside you can see the beautiful Art Deco windows, I don't know why I never made the effort before. But lovely toptable are doing 50% off their a la carte menu right now on Sundays, so it seemed mighty silly not to take advantage.

I loved the dining room; lots of nice Art Deco touches, and I particularly wanted to steal the door handles from their bathroom. The crowd was somewhat diverse. Several tables of pretty young Soho-ites, several tables of Chinese people (always to be found when there are offers like this I find), and a couple of elderly couples.

We had potentially the sweetest waitress alive. Very chatty in a very un-British way, she caught us talking about the Masterchef finals and told us that Greg Wallace goes there often. For those who don't know who he is, this is the Masterchef judge who used to be a grocer, who no-one likes as he doesn't seem to know anything about food except that he thinks fat puddings are yummy.

It is one of those menus where you like everything and want to try everything. There were about 20 different starters, ranging from traditional ham hock terrine to oysters to several pasta dishes. I went for what apparently is their signature dish, the lobster spaghetti:

This is very reminiscent of lobster noodles, even with a little gingery spiciness. In truth, the pasta was a little overcooked, but the sauce was so rich and unctuous, it almost needed slightly overcooked pasta to soak it all up.

We were a bit more adventurous with the starter and tried the calves brains with tomato compote. Last time I had brains was lamb brains in some market in Kunming where it felt like they'd directly removed it, but it on a plate, and grilled it, such that it certainly still looked like a brain, and definitely tasted like you shouldn't be eating it. I was a little apprehensive to say the least:

But this was an entirely different experience. Deep fried in breadcrumbs, it was creamy and melt in the mouth, like someone had deep fried some meaty creme fraiche.

The mains read very much like Le Cafe Anglais, the other wonderful Art Deco British restaurant in Bayswater: lots of roasts, grills, simple yet delicious stuff. However, the thing Quo Vadis is famous for is their 56-day aged Hereford beef, available as a fillet, sirloin, or rib of beef for 2. Obviously it had to be the rib of beef, which we had with some triple cooked chips and purple sprouting broccoli:

It was only here that I had a little gripe. They are so proud of their beef that they bring the magnificent monster to your table to show you before they carve it at a nearby table. However, this whole process, along with cold plates, meant that by the time we were tucking in, everything was a little cold. And I do suspect sometimes that maybe ribs of beef should be cooked just a little bit more in order to get the fat to run a bit better. Overall, no rib of beef has yet beaten the one at Great Queen Street. The triple cooked chips are fab though, although at normal price of £4.50 a portion for about 12 chips, they really ought to be good.

Somehow we managed to talk ourselves into having some pudding, although it was already beginning to hurt to sit upright anymore. I was more interested in the poached pear that came with the tonka creme brulee, and mentioned it to the waitress, and she actually went and asked the chef to do two pears with our portion (at no extra charge!).

It was mainly because I'd spied next door having this that made me want to try it. I'd never seem a creme brulee served like that before, they are often so boringly in little ramekins, with tons of uninteresting custard underneath. This was probably one of the best I've ever eaten, and I loved the fact that they burnt some of the pear too.

I would definitely go back, just to try some of the other stuff (the steak tartare is apparently amazing), but not sure I would be in a hurry to go at full prices. The food bill came to about £60 for 2 after the discount had been taken off, so at full price it would be quite hefty. Somehow Le Cafe Anglais and Great Queen Street manage to deliver better value I think.

Alpha Course - week 2

2009-10-24T02:36:00.003+11:00

I was disappointed with the first week of the Alpha Course for not really getting into any real issues, so I was very glad that this second week proved to be a lot more thought provoking.

The topic this week was 'Why Did Jesus Die?'. The talk focused on how the cross and Jesus' death are probably the most fundamental parts of the Christian faith, something I hadn't fully appreciated until now. It's strange, as the phrase 'Jesus died for our sins' is so commonplace in Western culture, but the implications I hadn't seriously considered before.

I really enjoyed the group discussion on the topic. Out of the 6 atheists from last week, 2 had disappeared, to be replaced by two who both made it clear they had been dragged along by their regular church going friends. But their contributions were really interesting. One questioned the convenience of having Jesus dying for our sins, whereas the other saw it completely the other way, that full commitment to God and good is anything but convenient. We also raised the question of motivation, potentially the issue I have most difficulty with with Christianity. Shouldn't we do good because it is inherently good, rather than becaus we want eternal life?

During the discussions, the committed Christians are normally quite bland with their replies, often just asking what other people think, but they spoke out quite forcefully on this. It seemed that for most of them, they rarely thought about good/sin in terms of the consequences, in terms of heaven/hell, rather it seemed like a good guide to how they should live their lives. In fact, it almost seemed like they were quite uninterested in the notion of heaven/hell. I'm not quite sure how this ties with the traditional church teachings, but I was interested to see this quite modern interpretation of faith. I also found their lack of absolutism very comforting; just like I didn't want to be a fundamentalist atheist, these were anything like the fundamentalist Christians I was so keen to defeat.

It is a shame then, that the discussions are very short, we had to stop just as I felt we were delving into big issues. It is certainly spurring me to return in future weeks though.

As for the food, I made the suggestion that they need to run some Alpha exercise classes alongside. Again, abundance of chocolate everywhere, and this time, main course was a side-sticking cheesy pasta bake. No one told me you can get fat at Alpha.

Making a mess

2009-10-24T01:33:00.002+11:00

Once again I find myself with a fridge full of stuff, which I'm blaming on Caris and also Saturday night's San Sebastian party. Not that I'm complaining; it has only inspired me to make all sorts of food I've never made before this week, at one stage I seemed to have used every pan in the kitchen.

It all started with the slightly crazy idea of making two different ice creams in one go, neither of which I have tried before. I had 6 egg yolks leftover from making the pavlova, and I'm still wondering whether it is false economy to go out and spend another ton of money on more ingredients in order to use them up. I was going to stick to what I know, ice creams which were essentially egg custard with yummy stuff stirred into it, but I had a special request for something chocolatey, so made my first ever chocolate ice cream. This Nigella recipe is another one of those where you consume a day's worth of calories in one porton.

Baci Ice Cream (makes about 1 litre)

4 egg yolks
100g caster sugar
500ml double cream
100g 70%+ cocoa dark chocolate
25g good quality cocoa powder
1 x 200g pot Nutella
2 teaspoons hazelnut syrup (begged from coffee shop next to tube station)

1. Make an egg custard by whisking the egg yolks with the sugar until pale, thick and creamy; bring the cream to the boil, and add slowly to the egg yolks and sugar, whisking all the time.
2. Melt the chocolate, and whisk this also into the custard. Pour everything into a pan, and cook slowly, stirring constantly, until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Leave to cool, stirring occasionally to prevent a skin from forming.

3. When the mixture is cool, whisk in the Nutella and the hazelnut syrup. Freeze in ice cream maker or use the churn by hand method.

This was more like making a cold ganache than an ice cream, the mixture gets so thick it's almost impossible to churn by hand. But the end result is very very rich and very very good. There is plenty in my freeze for those who want to try! More mess was made as I also made apple ice cream, very simiar to the rhubarb ice cream recipe I make often, but this time with apple puree.

The other big mess I've made this week goes back to my food nemesis. I consider myself an ok cook, I can generally make a good attempt at most recipes, but one thing that has always alluded me is the humble poached egg. I've cried many a time over these horrid things, I have no idea how people manage to get the whites to cling so perfectly without cheating with cling film or moulds. (It did please me greatly to see eggs being poached in cling film at Rousillon on Masterchef recently though, ha!).

I tried again, mainly because I was cooking for myself, with no one around to stress me out. Maybe it's like that philosophical question of whether the tree makes a sound when it falls if no one is there to hear it; if no one is there to see me cry over the sodding eggs, maybe they will work! I used pretty fresh eggs from Waitrose, a little vinegar in the water and the 'whirlpool' method. It was still a mess, egg white all over the place, but at least the yolk was still nice and runny. I also used another trick I learnt off Masterchef by putting some tomatoes on the vine with everything to distract from the ugliness:

In slightly less messy situations this week, I also wanted to record some other new things I tried. Abel & Cole bought me another unwelcomed cucumber in my veg box this week, so I pickled it to serve with some chargrilled mackerel:

I also made a ridiculously luxurious salad with figs, mozzarella from that amazing stall in Borough Market, and parma ham:

This was meant to be a detox week, obviously it has not gone well.

Officially the end of summer

2009-10-20T00:19:00.003+11:00

It's no use pretending anymore; the cold has descended upon London, everyone has been ill recently, and the clocks go back next weekend. The San Sebastian crew tried for one last stab at summer though last Saturday, and I tried to make as summery a menu as I could.

End of summer menu (served 2 slightly overworked consultants and 4 other friends)

Mozzarella with olive gremolata
Quail eggs wrapped in parma ham
Tomato and red onion salad
Razor clams, chorizo and broad bean 'pintxos'
Stuffed squid with chorizo and rice
Chocolate and raspberry pavlova

And most importantly, we were able to use the lovely cider glasses I had bought in San Sebastian. At all the little pintxos places, be it sangria or wine or cider, it would be served in a large, very fragile looking glass. We looked all over to try and buy them, and I was jumping up and down a little when I finally found some in a little artisan food shop. They were definitely the guest of honour, everything tastes just that bit more summery when served in them:

Caris also taught us to make the most dangerous drink, with the Konyagi spirit that she imported back from Tanzania (the bottle you can spy in the photo above). It tastes like there is absolutely no alcohol in it, despite the Konyagi being 35%.

Konyagi cocktail (serves 1)

1 shot konyagi
1 shot water
Juice of half a lemon
Honey to taste

1. Mix ingredients in an attractive San Sebastian cider glass
2. Try not to drink all at once

We'd also initially planned to go and have Sunday breakfast at E Pellici, the only listed cafe in the whole of the UK, only for me to forget that it's not open on Sundays. D'oh! Such a shame, as I love their breakfasts there and haven't been for ages, particularly their make-up-your-own option, where I normally combine carved ham, black pudding, bubble and a fried egg. As a result, we ended up heading to Brick Lane.

I was actually most excited about sharing the wonders of Brick Lane beigels (not bagels) from Brick Lane Beigel Bake with Caris and Fil, but I fear they may have been far too Americianised! They both protested that you can't get your beigels toasted, and that there is only one beigel - no blueberry, no cinnamon and raisin, no chocolate chip, no no no! - and I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one.

Brick Lane has become super-trendified recently. I hadn't been down there for a good few months now, and the slightly run-down market has now been replaced by upmarket food stalls; there was even one that only sold arancini. I'm still somewhat undecided on whether I like this development. It will do wonders for my house price, and I like the fact that I now have so many more eateries to try on Sunday mornings, but I like living in a grubby part of town! Sooner or later, it will no longer be frightening for my friends to come and visit, and that simply will not do.

We did try one of these super trendy places, Story Deli, an achingly cool and self-conscious place in the Old Truman Brewery. Half of the restaurant appears to be some kind of art gallery, and the chairs are actually little storage cupboards (the waitress came and got some coffee lids from one of our chairs). Nevertheless, I did come to love the place. I loved their big communal tables, and their very stripped down, deconstructed decor. Best of all, their pizzas are very very good. We tried the one with parma ham and artichoke:

Disturbingly, it was served to us by a 10 year old girl, but it was super tasty. Summer on a pizza, the base was really really thin and crispy, the whole thing was so light. Caris and I are also going to Naples in a couple of weekends' time, where we will eat even more pizza! Mwahahahaha....

Alpha Course - week 1

2009-10-15T21:04:00.003+11:00

As soon as I stepped foot into the church, the man approached with a slightly over-friendly smile and immediately asked 'Are you Connie?', and I guess it was from that point that I started feeling a bit uncomfortable. I had signed up for the Alpha Course, but I hadn't expected this level of familiarity straight off.

Most of my friends have reacted with shock when I told them I was doing the Alpha Course, the evangelical 10-week course advertised as providing a forum for agnostics to find out about the meaning of life, but really it is a evangelical exercise to convert them into Christians. Most people know me as being quite anti-religion, although I think I have mellowed a bit in my old age. I watched a documentary by the wonderful Jon Ronson about the course (you can read about a similar experiment he did here), and I was most fascinated by the methods used in the Alpha Course. During the documentary, the most staunch agnostic in the group that was filmed, a very rational Oxford psychology student, was the only one to really be converted, which only captured my imagination even more.

I was also interested because of my work with Habitat for Humanity, a Christian organisation. I am often challenged in my position as team leader as to why I wasn't a Christian, yet I lead teams in the name of a Christian charity. I have always defended that I am wholly aligned with many Christian values, and I feel it is more important to have those moral values than to have faith. At the same time, I don't want to become a "fundamentalist atheist", and wanted to learn more about what exactly is the Christian faith. So I'm going in as a curious observer, and I have no real intentions of getting converted, but let's see.

Why am I blogging about this you ask? Well, there is a tenuous link with food I guess, because they feed you at Alpha. Yes, another one of those clever methods to make you think Christians are warm and cuddly. They were having shepherd's pie at the one Jon Ronson went to, and the offering at my church was good but less exciting. Their pasta really was quite comforting though, reminded me of the pasta that was a real treat at high school:

I thought we were going straight down to business, but after the food, there are chocolates all over the table, lollies being passed around, fruit, all supported by lovely, friendly, cosy people. Then it dawned on me that there were actually more members of the church at the meeting than there were agnostics/atheists. Then unexpectedly, we were all asked to stand up and sing some hymns, led by a charismatic Australian with a guitar, with all the appropriate Christian-with-a-guitar jokes. It was like being at school assembly again, only that everyone else seems to be singing.

This was followed by a lecture/talk by the vicar, this week's topic being Who Is Jesus? I actually found the content to be quite irrelevant to my own doubts about Christianity, more about trying to prove he existed, and how the scriptures are an accurate representation of Jesus, things I don't actually question. We were then split into groups to discuss the topic of the day.

I thought this was where the action would start, but disapppointingly, we were instead led through some more fluffy tea and coffee, followed by the usual painful round of ice-breaker games. This was followed by a quick round of 'why are you here', when it became painfully obvious that out of a group of about 15 of us, only about 6 are not already committed Christians. Most of the others seemed to be here because they felt there was 'something missing in their lives', or had been to church as a youngster and felt they had lapsed.

And then it was suddenly time to go home. I still felt quite uncomfortable by the end of it, and I'm not sure I really got anything out of the session, except that Christians are really quite nice, and not strange, honest! They do try extremely hard to come across as non-threatening, non-pressurised, to the extent that you feel quite guilty at not feeling comfortable in the surroundings. But I am going to continue to keep an open mind and see how it goes.

Shocking

2009-10-13T00:39:00.003+11:00

I met a new foodie friend today (Hi Adrienne!) who used to be a pastry chef in San Francisco. She's currently working at Mudchute City Farm, I've been reading about it recently, and thought I would help spread the word. It was a bit daunting choosing a lunch place for someone who is quite so foodie, so in the end I played it safe and ended up by at trusty old Busaba Eathai.

One thing that has escaped my attention somewhat is that it is in fact London Restaurant Festival right now. I'm not sure anything particularly exciting is actually happening, but I noticed that Busaba was doing a special lunch and dinner menu for it.

So I managed to do something quite shocking and ordered something other than Tom Kha Chicken. Their lunch menu for this week is chargrilled chicken or mackerel accompanied by sticky rice and som tom, with lemongrass tea, and some pumpkin cake, all for £10. It is not only bargainous, but I liked the combination of all the things I like to eat.

They really should have this permanently on the menu. The som tom could be spicier, but what a great plate of simple food. I for one and applauding the recent popularity in mackerel in these belt-tightening times, and you can feel so smug about eating too.

I was also surprised that Busaba had broken with their traditon of not serving desserts. The pumpkin cake was actually like a coconut paste (椰子糕) you get at dim sum but slightly flavoured with pumpkin. I guess they were made to add desserts for the festival. I'm not a dessert person, but would be interesting to see whether this stays.

San Sebastian food coma

2009-10-07T03:12:00.006+11:00

In some ways, I shouldn't write this post, because it will encourage people to go to San Sebastian, and I'm not sure I want to necessarily do that. Being the city with the highest per capita Michelin stars in the world (what a good KPI that is!), it is a foodie magnet, but it is a surprisingly untouristy place, and let's hope it stays that way.

Our favourite person on the trip was undoubtedly Miguel, the owner of the small city centre Pension Amalur. Despite the fact that he spoke about 3 words of English, and we relied on the bad Spanish I learnt in South America, his hospitality shone through, and we all wanted to give him a cuddle at the end. We were a bit suspicious when he recommended we go to a hamburger joint round the corner from the pension, as we had arrived around 11pm, but it turned out to be foodie enough to warrant some photos.

We never did note down the name of the place, but it is just off Calle de San Martin in the Old Town. You may also recognise it from the slightly aggressive looking waitress who looked like she would kill you at any moment. No fries, no sides, but you can order more or less anything with your perfectly cooked medium burger. Mine was with mushroom and scrambled egg, a combination which should be in burger joints the world over:

San Sebastian itself is only a tiny little place, we more or less walked around the entire place in a day. The food market we visited at Mercado de la Bretxa was not quite as impressive as the ones we visited in Barcelona, but I really wouldn't complain if I had it on my doorstep:

But getting down to business, one of the primary reasons people go to the Basque Country is to sample their pintxos, the Basque version of tapas. There are literally rows and rows of little pintxos bars all around the Old Town, the tradition being that you have a pintxo and a beer at one, and move on. Now that's what I call a bar crawl! We had much trouble controlling Eugene's enormous appetite, we would always say we will try 1 or 2 between us at each bar, but end up with multiple plate fulls. Honestly I think this was the first time I was literally overwhelmed by food, and I am normally proud of my very unfemale appetite:

By far the best pintxo bar we found was La Fuego Negro right next to the big church in the Old Town. Immediately from the decor you could see it was a trendier version of the traditional bar, with colanders used as lampshades and blackboards and chalk for you to graffiti in the bathrooms. Two other things also set it apart: the pintxos were very inventive, including combinations such as almond coffee with sweetbread fritters and pork with vanilla foam, but most importantly, everything was made to order, a vast change from most pintxos bars which had food sitting there for hours on end. We visited this place 3 times in the space of 24 hours, I think the waiters were starting to get worried that we would never leave:

You can't unfortunately fly direct into San Sebastian, which probably explains the low tourist numbers. Like most people, we flew into Bilbao and did the hour's drive, and we found that Bilbao seems to have given up on food, probably because of its close neighbour's sophisicated offering. We walked endlessly around to find any sort of interesting eatery still open, but we somehow ended our foodie trip in a branch of KFC. Yes, we felt thoroughly dirty afterwards. Thank goodness for the Guggenheim then, which was the only saving grace in our short time in Bilbao.

And yes, you may have noticed that I discovered Picasa in this post. Good way to disguise the photos taken in poorer light!

Julie & Julia

2009-10-07T03:12:00.005+11:00

One of the greatest things about being more permanently back in London is being able to watch films. In the early days at Uncle B, the copious amount of beach time (sorry, current employees, for harping on about the Golden Days) meant I got myself a Cineworld Unlimited card and spent many afternoons watching films. The zero marginal cost meant I started watching a lot of films I normally wouldn't choose to go to, which meant I occasionally broadened my horizons beyond the arthouse foreign language films I'm so fond of.

Even though it turned out to be complete food porn, I didn't really plan to go and see Julie & Julia, the new film starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams on the parallel lives of food blogger Julie Powell and American cook Julia Child. I'd actually never heard of Julia Child until the film came out, apparently she introduced America to French cooking, a kind of Franny Craddock mixed in with Elizabeth David mixed in with Delia Smith, but with much more personality. The film follows Julie Powell's adventure in trying to learn to cook from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by cooking all the recipes within 365 days.

I have come to love both Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in recent years. I love Streep's versatility; she can be the strict nun in Doubt, then the bored housewife in Bridges of Madison County, then a singing harpie in Mamma Mia! I've not seen much of Amy Adams actually, but I did love her precious and innocent performance in Junebug, one of those little indie films I cannot get tired of.

Obviously the best thing about the film is its ability to portray the simply joy of food. I loved the sole meuniere scene, which made me recall the lovely version I tried in Paris. I loved seeing Julie cry in the kitchen when things fail. I also would like to try and bone out a whole duck. I'm not sure how non foodies can sit through the film.

However, I did feel like I was missing a large point of the film by not being familiar with Julia Child. I understand that she was an eccentric, with a funny voice, with funny mannerisms, but not having really seen Julia Child, it was difficult to judge Streep's performance. At times, she came across as a bit Hyacinth Bucket with her pseudo-British accent mixed with random French phrases. Having watched this clip of Child cooking an omelette, I'm still not too convinced.

I'd love for people to recommend me more foodie films though. My favourite is probably Eat Drink Man Woman 飲食男女, extreme Chinese food porn, and a great portrayal of modern Chinese life too. Carl also made me watch Babette's Feast. More please!

Cote

2009-10-01T19:43:00.005+10:00

My new(ish) offices on Wardour Street are right opposite a branch of Cote, which has been ravely reviewed by my fellow GUers, particularly Intown, whose opinion I completely trust. Last night I finally found an excuse to go, and what a nice treat.

You would have reason to walk straight past this place thinking it was a tourist trap, especially given all the other fine eateries in the area. Cote is part of a small and expanding chain, we found out from our Irish waitress, currently with six dotted around the West End, but with quite grand plans for expansion. It is owned by the same group as Strada and Cafe Rouge, and I can only hope that the expansion won't compromise on quality.

The branch on Wardour St is extremely warm and cosy, although I was a bit disappointed to be seated downstairs, as the upstairs space looks particularly spacious yet intimate. Interesting mix of diners from obvious post-work groups to lots of couples. No carpets on the bare wood floor.

As for the menu, it is all simple, French brasserie classics are very reasonable prices. Starters are around £6-8, and feature moules marinere and steak tartare; mains £10-15, including chargrilled Landaise chicken, salmon fishcakes, lamb shanks. You get the idea.

There is also a daily specials menu, and I ended up ordering entirely from that. To start, grilled scallops with pea puree, lardons, and pea shoots:

Very good sized portion with 3 enormous scallops, but I did think there was just a little too much pea puree to balance. Loved the combination with the peas though, why don't more places do it with scallops rather than cauliflower puree all the time? We also tried the warm roqueforte salad with endive and walnut - as classic as you can get:

I had more trouble choosing my main actually. The menu is just a list of everyone's favourite comfort foods, and you have a sneaking suspicion that it would definitely be well executed. In the end, it was the daily special bouillabaisse:

I was a little deflated when I saw this, thinking it to be on the small side, and also featuring no shellfish, but it was so lovely and rich, the portion was plenty enough. I didn't even manage to eat all the croutons. However, I did have slight food envy at the landaise chicken that my friend went for. Posh chicken and chips indeed, but the small bit I did try was very flavourful:

Overall, I thought the food was tremendous at the price - just over £30 pp including a bottle of wine. The nicest touch though was we were the last occupied table downstars, and the waitress brought us 2 complimentary shots of apple liqueur with our bill. Completely out of the blue. The waitress herself was utterly charming. It's her first time in London, and she was meant to have stayed over the summer, but has now deferred a year at uni to carry on working at Cote. Not sure whether that's a testament to the restaurant management, or that she' simply met a bloke in London!

Guardian groans

2009-09-25T23:30:00.003+10:00

For a while now I have been despairing at some of the tosh that appears on the Guardian Unlimited website. It seems that their Comment is Free section, as well as the blogging sections are just excuses for really bad, lazy journalism. Writers seem to take pleasure in choosing a populist topic and try and ram holes through them for the sake of it. Thank god I only really come across them when someone else has sent me the link lambasting them.

I read this article on Comment is Free today, by someone raving on about how much they hate cooking. I did wonder whether it was written in the 1960s by some raving feminist for a while, so violent is some of the language, declaring that cooking is "another chore that highlights the futility of life". To be honest, I am not annoyed by the fact that she doesn't like cooking - I completely understand that some people don't get it, quite like how I don't get gardening, or bird watching. What I am annoyed about is how they have managed to get such dross into a national newspaper website. Who reads this nonsense?

The other, non-food related article that has also irked me recently is this one about apparent racism in British advertising. This one is just simply hilarious, and I loathe to repeat the phrase political correctness gurn maaaddd. Scroll down though and read the amount of abuse that is hurled at the guy! Had me in stitches for ages!

Bedrocks and tumble-downs

2009-09-25T19:37:00.004+10:00

There is a new series on BBC called Economy Gastronomy at the moment, very appropriate for the times, trying to educate the British masses on how to save money whilst still eating well. Apart from the appalling title, the programme has irked me somewhat in how patronising it is. The whole premise of the programme is to have a 'bedrock' recipe, normally a big hunk of roasted meat, from which you can have 'tumble-down' meals from to last you the week. It has annoyed me that they talk about it as if it was some fan-dangled new invention, but I guess this is geared towards people who haven't used their kitchen beyond the microwave.

I am still welcoming the extra free time I have on my hands with my new job, which has given me so much more time to cook at home. This week I have been doing lots of tumble-down meals, mainly as my parents left me with a fridge full of goodies. I had at my disposal some crab, roast pork (燒肉 rather than 叉燒), roast duck, as well as my mum's massive collection of sauces and goodies ranging from oyster sauce to dried shrimp to fermented bean curd. I have always been terrible at cooking Chinese food, but I'm trying to improve at the moment.

Here's what my mum did with the crab:

Crab with spring onion and ginger (serves 4 with leftovers)

2 crabs, still alive
Cooking oil
1 small onion or big handful of spring onions, finely chopped
Glug of Chinese cooking wine
1 egg
Tablespoon or so of ginger, chopped into matchsticks

1. Prepare the crab. Make sure it is still alive when you come to cook - my parents either leave them roaming in the garden and then put them in the fridge for a while for them to go to sleep. Brutally kill them by levering the shell to come apart from the body. Take out the lungs/ladies fingers, take off the legs and claws, and chop the remaining body into quarters. Use the back of the knife to crack open the claws so it is easier to eat later. Set aside the legs as they are a bit hairy for this.

2. Heat some oil in the wok to a high heat, then add the onions. Stir-fry until soft, then add in the crab, along with your glug of wine. Stir-fry to make sure even distribution of heat.

3. After the crab is 80% done (easiest way to check is looking at how solid the brown meat has become in the shell), add in a beaten egg, which will collect up all the good crabby juicyness. Mix well, and finish with the ginger.

It is an amazingly easy recipe really, really letting the gorgeousness of the crab shine. The best bit is scooping out all the cholesterol-ridden brown meat from the shell and mixing it with plain rice. Here it is in all its magnificence (obviously my mum made this, I'm just trying to take credit now):

In an attempt to clear my fridge-full of food, I invited Eugene, Jess and Martin round for dinner. It dawned on me that it would be the first ever family-style Chinese dinner I've cooked for friends, and I was a bit worried. There were 4 things on the menu:

1. Braised roast pork with tofu and broccoli
2. Gingery duck with peppers
3. Morning glory (通菜) with fermented tofu and chilli
4. Leftover crab

The trickiest thing I found was to time everything. The 3 dishes I had to cook where all wok-based, and the challenge was to cook quickly enough to ensure that nothing went cold. I cheated somewhat by having two woks on the go (I am inviting unnecessary jokes about my surname now, aren't I?), and I dirtied a whole load of bowls along the way in an attempt to be all Delia and tidy. But here was the resulting feast!:

The dish I was most happy with was the morning glory I think. It is so prohibitively expensive in restaurants, but a plate cost me about £1.75 to make, helped by the leftover fermented tofu my mum had in the fridge!

Morning glory with fermented tofu and chilli (serves 4 as part of a Chinese meal)

Half a bag of morning glory (I bought a bag from Dragon Gate Supermarket in Chinatown for about £3.25 and got two meals out of it)
Cooking oil
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 small red chilli, chopped small
2 tablespoons of fermented tofu (南乳)

1. Wash the morning glory and separate the leaves from the stalks. Cut the stalks into 2 inch-long pieces.

2. Heat the wok to a high heat with some cooking oil, then add the garlic and chilli, stir frying until soft but not browned.

3. Add in the fermented tofu, with a little water to stop it catching. Add in the morning glory stalks, and stir fry for a minute or so.

4. Add in the leaves, which will reduce down like spinach very quickly. Mix well and serve.

If you have been paying attention, you will have noticed that we set aside some crab legs earlier on. My mum always steams them on top of the rice in the rice cooker, and there are a million things you can do with the meat other than just eating it just like that. I spent almost an entire episode of Economy Gastronomy getting all the meat out of the legs that were leftover:

Lucky I love extracting crab meat, because look at the paltry amount of meat you get at the end of it!:

I was debating what to do with them for ages. One option was to make them into crab cakes with my successful potato harvest (my first ever!), but given I'd just been worked hard by Susan at yoga class (that woman is a masochist in the nicest sense of the word), I needed some pasta.

Linguine with crab and chilli (serves 1)

125g linguine (quarter of a packet)
Leftover white crab meat
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 small red chilli, chopped small
Little bit of grated lemon rind
100g baby spinach, washed
Juice of half a lemon

1. Put pasta on to cook. Put spinach into a colander.

2. In a small frying pan, add the olive oil, garlic, chilli and lemon rind, and fry very slowly until it simmers and the garlic is soft.

3. Drain the pasta by throwing it over the spinach (thereby cooking it), and mix with a fork in the colander to avoid big clumps of spinach.

4. Add the pasta and spinach into the frying pan, along with the crab and lemon juice. Mix well and scoff.

And believe it or not, I still have bits and pieces left in my fridge for me to tumble-down some more! I guess I need to put on more weight though before I can rival the lovely Allegra :)

Addiction

2009-09-22T01:05:00.004+10:00

It was probably the time when I worked in Hong Kong for 6 months that I developed my tea habit. I really did miss the comforts of Britain at times, and I found myself making lots of cups of tea in the afternoon at work, even though I wasn't really a heavy tea drinker at the time. Ever since then though, the addiction has just gotten worse. I get through an average of 8 large buckets of Earl Grey or PG Tips during a workday, delivered in my trusty Guardian thermos mug, and often supplement that with more Chinese or rooibos tea along the way. In fact, one of the things I miss most about living in China is the availability of hot water everywhere, from corner shops to airports, and the little vacuum flask lined with some tea leaves which I took everywhere.

The journey to Nepal started very well, where the Costa in Bahrain airport served me a small swimming pool of Earl Grey, so big it needed two handles!:

But it all was downhill from there. Nepal is a tea-drinking country, and their chiya is just like my much-liked massala chai from India, but I couldn't get over the overwhelming milkiness of it. I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to milk, and Nepali milk is all a bit rich for me. Similarly, when they offer you a cup of 'milk tea', it is literally a mug of hot milk with a weak tea bag dunked in it. Ming ming ming! Whilst in Naranghat, I had to content myself with one teeny cup of black tea in the morning and one in the evening, it's a miracle I wasn't more grumpy that week.

In Pokhara, I did manage to find a substitute. Lemongrass tea was everywhere here, taking me back to lovely Busaba. Their lemongrass is not like the tough stalks we have in England though, but lovely green and leafy, turning the tea into a nice green tinge:

I didn't feel very well in the last few days in Pokhara though, and I do suspect that it was the lack of caffeine. I do have a funny relationship with caffeine - I can hardly drink a cup of coffee without feeling a bit 'weird', yet the vast amounts of tea must mean I am constantly on a caffeine drip. In any case, it wasn't until our last meal in Kathmandu that I found Earl Grey tea in Nepal. Again, it was at my favourite Roadhouse Cafe, it was probably the tea rather than the food that made me like it so much.

Bliss!

This post was brought to you with the help of a cup of Xiamen jasmine tea.