Credit crunch cooking

I am right now officially unemployed (well, at least until May anyway), and apparently there is a global economic downturn right now, so some frugal cooking today. Actually, I had a lot of fun making a shepherd's pie out of the scraps of my fridge today, it challenged my cooking, and I tried to have everything 'homemade'. The pies are sitting at the counter cooling right now, so this is a very 'live' blog indeedy.

I cooked a roast leg of lamb the other day, and somehow we didn't eat it all, and yesterday, I cooked some pan-fried cod with aioli and mash, so deliberately made too much mash. There is a big mash potato fight right now amongst my London foodie community. My mash secret is to add creme fraiche, copious amounts of it, and to use a masher, none of those ricer things. Dave always taught me to do shepherd's pie with Bisto (yes, shocking for a foodie, but I must say it is essential), but I've run out today, so it's a little more challenging...

Leftovers shepherd's pie (serves 1 hungry Connie at lunchtime, with potential leftovers for her brother later on)
Half an onion, sliced
Half a carrot, finely chopped
Stalk of celery, finely chopped
Frozen peas
Slosh of red wine (I used rioja today)
Worcester sauce
Cornflour
Leftover roast lamb
Leftover mash

1. Fry the onions very slowly in some butter until it's all nice and soft and slightly burnt around the edges - minimum 15 minutes! Then add the carrot and celery and fry for a further 5 mins
2. Add the slosh of wine (be generous!), and mix about a teaspoon of cornflour with water and add that too. Slosh in some worcester sauce. Simmer until sauce starts to thicken
3. Add frozen peas, and simmer until the meat starts to break down a little
4. Assemble into pies in cute little ramekins

And here they are, sponsored by my lovely Le Creuset ramekins!

I'm tucking into one now - very very very nice. And all for free (kind of).

I also read today about this little dining club where this bloke in East London opens up his house to strangers and cooks for them every Wednesday, in return for a £10 donation. Check his place out on Facebook, it's called Secret Ingredient. It's such a lovely idea, I shall suggest something similar to Eugene for Uncle B's dining club I think...

Agra and Rajasthan

To be honest, I got sick of Indian food very quickly on the two-week trip. Plus all Indian food looks pretty much the same, so I also gave up on taking pictures very quickly - one curry really does look very much like another I'm afraid. That is not to say we didn't have some great food, but I did feel like I gained 2 stone in 2 weeks with all the heavy sauces and buttery naan.

We were extremely P, and really didn't have a plan until we reached Delhi. Our route turned out to be a trip through the Golden Triangle, with more of Rajasthan tacked on the end - we had been previously more ambitious, thinking of also meeting up with Meghana in Goa and also maybe Kerala, but the inefficiency of the transport system in India really doesn't allow for that much ground to be covered in two weeks.

Agra was our first stop - I'd been before, so I enjoyed the pool whilst Carl went off to see the Taj Mahal and the Fort. Here are a few photos from my 2007 trip when I went to India with work with Norby, Edwin and Jonny - partly due to popular demand that I post some non-food pictures, but mainly so I can post a gratuitous photo of Jonny. Agra Fort is seriously underrated, definitely the most beautiful fort I visited in India:


We also went to Fatehpur Sikri on the way from Agra to Jaipur - I had agreed to go to Agra again so that I could go to this place, only to realised I'd been there before in 2007 - duh! Getting up at 3am to see the Taj at sunrise meant I really wasn't awake the first time round.

Given that we were visiting a mosque, Jonny had to do a David Beckham:

But anyway, back to food. In Agra, we treated ourselves to a dinner at Peshaweri, a restaurant owned by the ITC group in India, with many similar branches around the country (both Carl and I had eaten from the same menu in Mumbai and Bangalore respectively). Most of what's on the menu is pretty ordinary, but their prawns (again, fist sized) and their leg of lamb is unusual and out of this world. Their dal murkhani will just clog your arteries, but is sooooo good:


Moving on from Agra, we spent a few days in Jaipur, the so-called Pink City. Personally, I thought it was the least interesting place we visited - being the capital of Rajasthan, it is crowded, congested, and not really that pink - but we did have one of the most memorable meals here.

I have learnt not to trust Lonely Planet for restaurant recommendations, but this time it did good! Four Seasons (not the Four Seasons of course) is a pure-veg place, and the dishes were much more interesting to the usual Butter Chicken menus we were used to. It is also conveniently very close to an Ayuvedic massage place, where we learnt we didn't really like Ayuvedic massages. The chef special is probably the dish I remember most from the whole trip - paneer, mushrooms, pineapple in a creamy sauce - don't be put off by the pineapple, it worked:

After Jaipur, we went over to Udaipur, where Octopussy was filmed, and apparently Nicole Kidman was there a few days after we were to film at the famous Lake Palace. After that was Jodphur, the Blue City, and then Jaisalmer, the Yellow City famous for its sand dunes.

Unfortunately, as we ventured further and further out of the Golden Triangle and into areas not reachable by plane, the food did get steadily worse. The 'highlight' possibly being the hotel in Jodphur which boasted an international menu containing prawns, fish, pork chops, lamb chops, duck (which got us very excited), but only had chicken available the night we were there. Miraculously, however, I managed the whole trip without any Delhi belly - Carl wasn't quite so lucky.

So I end with a picture of one of the hotels we stayed at. Being P, we were very haphazard in organisation, but ended up staying at some very cute places with a lot of character. This one below is a little haveli (a traditional Indian rich man's house) in Jaipur, in the middle of being renovated into a hotel. The outside was literally crumbling with pigeons pooing everywhere, but inside was really quite nice. Look at the size of the bed!

All in all, fascinating trip. Such a shame I will not be able to stomach Tayyabs or Indian food for a while though.

Delhi - without the belly

Monsoon Wedding is one of my absolute favourite films in the world, and one of the few times when I bought a soundtrack to a film (Slumdog's soundtrack pales in comparison, trust me), so when Carl invited me to be his date at an Indian wedding, I just had to go, naturally. We thought it would also be nice to incorporate it with a bit of travelling around India.

As a world first, I'm uploading a video on my blog (albeit pretty bad quality - my blackberry camera just doesn't really work in the dark)! One of the bride's cousins is a semi-professional dancer, and more weirdly works for one of my ex-clients back in London. Here she is in action!



In all, we spent about 4-5 days in Delhi, and I was very pleased to see the standard of the food is really very high here. Carl's friend Sonali invited us to The Indian Accent at the Manor Hotel in the Friends Colony district of Delhi, a newish restaurant, whose chef also cooks at the Tamarai in London. Its Asian fusion menu was by far the most interesting food we had on the whole trip, and for once I thought that the fusion worked. We started with an amuse bouche of paneer wrapped in rice paper, served very cold:


The highlight of the dish was the mekong basa fish, with a saffron infusion. Beautifully presented, I loved loved the green paste on the fish - for once I thought the spice complemented the fish rather than hid it. Superb.

I had some incredibly big prawns for my main (think size of fist!), good if not very exciting. More exciting was the dessert - a chocolate bombe with flames! Even my rubbish camera managed to capture the excitement!

The other big highlight of Delhi was actually on our last night, when our lovely host Gemma took us to Stonehouse, an uber-trendy bar/restaurant. Carl and I were so sick of Indian food by this point, so a decent Modern European place was just what we needed.

The food really was good, if you steered away from the weird combinations - my main of seabass with squid ink risotto and porcini sauce was just too much, the seabass also a little overcooked. But my starter of tuna and beef carpaccio with a sesame and kalonji sauce was just simply delicious. The perfect antidote to the thick Indian curries!

Unfortunately, I really can't recommend the restaurant simply due to the service. I'm not normally too fussed about these things, but it really reminded me that Asia doesn't really do good service.

But talking of service, by far the most fun meal was when Gemma had the genius idea of getting a sushi chef to come cook at her house. It is just such a nice idea, and the prices are really pretty reasonable (less than £20 a head). The sushi wasn't super exciting, but then we were in India - being able to have raw fish is good enough!

Given that the last time I was in Delhi, it was in a mad-rush case where we ate a lot of hotel food, I was mighty pleased with this time's food. However, things took a bit of a nose-dive when we started travelling - posts coming soon!

Tofu

Well, it is my last night in Kunming, and I'm getting rather upset. I will especially miss the people - my teachers 涛涛，龙飞 and 飞飞 (for once I will use simplified Chinese for them!), and of course my wonderful, wonderful host family. They have been absolute diamonds to me, and my homestay mum made me all my favourites for my last supper: 夫妻肺片 (Husband and Wife lung slices), and a simple tofu stirfry.

Tofu is probably the most underrated and misunderstood Chinese foodstuff there is. Foreigners only seem to eat it if they are vegetarian, but it is the most wondrous wondrous stuff. I was brought up on tofu mixed with rice, the thought of it immediately fills me with cosy warmth.

However, I did want to warn people about the tofu in Yunnan and Sichuan. I first came across it on the trip to Chengdu with Caris and Rosy: after a few hours of wandering around in the mountains, we thought we would go and have a nice bowl of '豆花' which appears to be available everywhere, thinking it is just like the lovely dessert 豆腐花 common in Hong Kong (and which happens to be my mum's 拿手 dish). How wrong we were!!!

豆花 in both Sichuan and Yunnan are savoury, naturally served with chilli. In Chengdu, it appeared to be just a big slab of slightly wobbly tofu, with chilli on the side, presumably to be mixed with rice. A Kunming specialty is 豆花米线, which I definitely do not recommend: rice threads are quickly boiled, then drained, and topped with chilli sauce, preserved vegetables, peanuts, and then a big 'pet' of wobbly tofu on top. Even a tofu fan like me struggled through my bowl - bleugh!

Only in China

My time in China has been immense. I came with the intention of improving my Mandarin (which has come on leaps and bounds), but the big thing I am taking away is how easily I feel I fit in here, how it's so nice to understand why things are, even all the annoying inefficiencies of living in a Chinese city. I will stop being emotional though, and share some funny moments during my time here:

Right, seeing as I am supposedly learning Chinese, some of the more 'educational' phrases I've come across - the first three are all from my textbooks:

• 如果畫家是個男的，老漢一定會把畫家請到家裡，喝上兩杯。畫家是女的，老漢只能用毛巾包上幾個新雞蛋，給女畫家送去。(this comes from a story, from a contemporary Chinese story book no less, about an artist who comes to a little village and changes the perspective of all its inhabitants, the phrase talks about how one of the old villagers plans to invite the artist round for a few drinks if he's a bloke, but will give the artist a few eggs if she's a woman. It's not so much the sexism, but why eggs?!)

• 元元在幼兒園上著美術班和體操班，星期六在外面學電子琴，星期天學書法，所以一到周末比平時還忙。吃過苦的人才知道什麽是甜呢。(an illustration of how competitive Chinese childhoods are nowadays - this describes how a kindergarten kid already goes to art class, fitness class, piano class, and calligraphy class. Apparently kindergarten kids needs to learn what is the bitterness of life before they can learn what is sweet (!) I feel for both the parents and the kids)

• 咱們一起去 OK 一下兒怎麼樣？(literal translation - let's go 'OK' for a little while, i.e. go sing some karaoke - I just love the phrasing!)

• 輕輕一按就 OK! (more gratitious use of the word OK)

And there were just some moments where (as Yinne has pointed out to me before), you just think 'only in China':

• Man riding his motorbike wearing slippers (the pink fluffy kind)
• Woman riding her motorbike with a bowl of noodles between her legs (soup noodles at that!)
• Man carrying a big box of fireworks with a fag daggling from his mouth
• Child pooing on the side of the pavement (mum had kindly laid out a crisp packet for him to poo on)
• A pirate DVD shop located right next door to the police station
• Staff at the local restaurant doing their exercises en masse right at the beginning of their shift

• Man wearing Hello Kitty apron - I just love the fact that men are masculine enough here to unashamedly declare their love for the kitty
• Me getting very excited upon finding another sit-down loo in Kunming - in my 2 months here, I have found a total of 2!

Shilin

This is officially my last weekend in Yunnan, and I shall treat everyone by doing a few posts that have nothing to do with food! It's partly due to the lack of camera, but also I'm truthfully getting a little sick of the repetitive food here now. Plus I've been trying to avoid chillis because it gives me 熱氣 (hot air, apparently it makes me cough), which means there's not a lot of new stuff I can eat anyway!

Today I went off to 石林 Shilin, literally a stone forest about 2 hours out of Kunming. There are literally acres and acres of karst stones poking through the earth, some as tall as 30 metres high:

Although it's well known in Yunnan, I'm surprised this place isn't more well known in China. I was rather mesmerised by the place, helped by the fact that the cherry blossom is just blooming here, who needs Tokyo eh?

That is not to say that Shilin hasn't had its fair share of the Chinese tourist trail treatment. The entry fee is ludicrously expensive at Y140 per person, the paths are beautifully pathed, and there are tour groups lemminging behind those compulsory little tour group flags. There is also the fun of going round 'famous' stones which have been given silly names like 'Moon-Gazing Rhino' and 'Wife Waiting for Her Husband', which really does test the imagination.

But if you just walk a little past the tour groups, it is amazing how easy it is to be completely by yourself with not a soul insight. It reminded me of the slightly eerie quiet of Ayers Rock, but I thought it was a lot more charming (I will stop dissing Australia sooner or later). I also really like the folklore story about how the place came about. Geologically, the area of Shilin used to be a big mountain range, and the story goes that the gods broke up the mountains in order to give lovers a labyrinth of privacy. Aaaaah...

Yunnan noodles

I have made the fundamental mistake of breaking my blackberry whilst in Kunming. The good thing is that I will have to kick my crackberry habit, but the bad thing is that I can't take any photos right now, and all the photos I did take before are stuck on the memory card. I've been wanting to do a post on Yunnan noodles for a while, and have been diligently recording my noodley efforts, but I've had to cheat and google some pics here instead. But at least you'll be treated to good quality pictures for once.

You can't avoid noodles in Yunnan, it's appears to be the premier choice of snack here, and when I first got here, it was frankly a bit boggling. If you go to one of the local places, the 'menus' are only taped to the wall, and are highly unhelpful - normally just stating what how much a small or big bowl of whatever your choice of noodle is, no idea what comes with it.

Anyway, here is my little guide to Yunnan's noodles, with the caveat that I probably have no idea what I'm talking about.

First off, the easiest of all is the 麵條, which is the most recognisable for those of you used to Sharwood's back in Blighty. A simple yellow wheat noodle, often containing egg, often round, with a slightly chewy texture. Made well, I consider this still the king of the noodle:

Next up is what Kunming is noticeably famous for, the 米線, literally rice threads, made of rice flour, and round in appearance. Texture is very soft, and often likened to overcooked spaghetti - not very exciting in my opinion, but the most oft eaten noodle in Kunming:

Next up is the 粉片, flakes/squares of wheat flour, kind of like eaten wonton skins without any filling. Ironically, my homestay mum made it for me one day, with minced pork in the soup, which was just a bit like eating wontons that had unwrapped themselves:

卷粉, literally rolled noodles, is wide rice noodles, very like the 河粉 we have in Hong Kong, to the extent that I'm wondering whether they are actually the same thing:

The next one I really haven't seen anywhere else, and is apparently a Dali specialty - the 餌絲, which I really can't translate. It's actually long shreds of a big rice cake 年糕 (imagine a big round of rice flour cake), making the texture really quite stodgy, such that you feel as though it will get stuck in your teeth. The Kunmingese like to have it stir-fried as well as in soup, but I haven't really been converted:

Finally, there is what the Kunmingese call 粉, which appears to be very transparent rice noodles, slightly thicker than 米線, but even less chew in the texture. It normally appears as part of a 酸辣粉, sour and hot noodles, which I think is from Chongqing 重慶:

I have noodles every day here, sometimes for more than one meal, but my absolute favourite thing to eat at lunch is the humble 餛飩, or wontons! I found this little local stall on 文林街, round the corner from my university, which make the most incredibly simple but incredible 酸辣餛飩, wontons in a sour and hot sauce. I've never really had wontons that are not in soup before, but what they do here is to put the wontons quite a thick sauce, it's highly, highly addictive:


I watch them make it everytime I have it, and still haven't quite figured out what is in it. Something like chilli oil, soy sauce, vinegar, sesame seeds, 韭菜 Chinese chives, and some special dark thick sauce that I can't figure out. I've tried this exact dish in other places, but nowhere does it quite so well. The woman laughs at me now when I go there, mainly because my pronounciation of 餛飩 is less than perfect, I need to take her back to London with me for this dish.

Only one more little week left in Kunming! I am starting to get sad :(