Tastebud-talk

Holiday Foodsteps: Ipoh Central Kopitiam

2012-02-12T05:45:00.000-08:00

These are the ingredients to the perfect weekend breakfast: a good cup of local white coffee, toast (kaya is a bonus) and perfectly done eggs. If those are the ingredients to your perfect breakfast too then Ipoh Central Kopitiam is going to make your morning.

We spotted the kopitiam as we stepped out of Foh San and despite being absolutely stuffed from all the dimsum, we couldn't resist the pull of the coffee so across the road we went, because that's just what tourists do in Ipoh - eat. One sip and we were sold - we knew we'd have to come back the next day.

Frothy, and with that lovely flavour that only local coffee seems to have - the perfect pick-me-up.

A gorgeous runny yolk on light, crisp toast.

The coffee shop doesn't only serve coffee, eggs and toast, of course (though I would have been equally happy if that was all it served).

Apom balik - the soft, fluffy sort.

Curry chee cheong fun

Hor hee, for the ones who prefer a warm, soupy start the to the day.

I'm always on the look-out for a good cup of local white coffee (the places that get their coffee right almost always get their eggs and kaya toast right, too) - so if you happen to have a favourite coffee shop in Kuala Lumpur or Petaling Jaya, I'd love to hear from you, one kopitiam lover to another.

Holiday Foodsteps: Top Wok, Ipoh

2012-02-06T01:13:00.000-08:00

It was meant to be, Top Wok and us - destiny, if you may. It had been an eventful day involving a trip to the emergency unit (be very, very careful - steps in the caves can get extremely slippery) and all we wanted was to settle down to a good dinner to laugh it all off. After discovering that our first choice restaurant was closed for the day and that a wedding was being held in our backup restaurant, we kept our fingers crossed that the third time would be a charm.

TOP WOK SEAFOOD RESTAURANT
No 12-1, Lebuh Perajurit 3/1,
Taman Ipoh Boulevard Timur,
31400 Ipoh,
Perak, Malaysia.
Telephone : 605-547 6392, 6012-506 1503

Salted fish topped tofu. A perfect golden brown on the outside, soft on the inside and paired with a delicious gravy that hinted of salted fish and crunchy fried onions - this went right up there on my list of favourite tofu dishes.

Tung Po Yuk - slow cooked pork, served with steamed mantou. The tong po yuk here is a bit of a house special and it truly didn't disappoint. It brought back happy memories of a 5 year-old me, deeping strips of soft, steamed mantou into that deep, dark gravy that we all know and love.

Otak otak. I'm always a little apprenhensive about otak otak served at restaurants - there's always a tendency to go a little overboard with the gelatin so what you get is not the rich, velvety fish paste but a fish jelly of sorts. The flavours from Top Wok's version were delightful and while the consistency wasn't quite spot on, it still made for an addictive, satisfying dish.

Sizzling Nyonya squid. Sweet, spicy, sour, and with that tantalising sizzle. Enough said.

Steamed grouper tail. Fresh fish, a generous amount of garlic and steamed for just the right amount of time - check, check and check.

Buttermilk mantis prawns. Contender number two in the buttermilk mantis prawn challenge was a pretty strong one - a drier dish than the one in Leun Fong, this one was a little more to my liking.

To wash it all down - a nice cold (eye-opening) glass of umbra juice.

Top Wok serves the sort of warm, comforting food that makes families happy. Looks like the third time really was a charm for us.

One Bowl Chocolate Cake with an Orange-Chocolate Glaze

2012-02-05T03:23:00.000-08:00

Everyone needs a good chocolate cake recipe - it's like that Little Black Dress in our closets, a secret weapon, a safety net. I realise that I don't bake chocolate cakes very often (in fact, I do believe that I've probably never baked a chocolate cake before - I know, shame on me) but I've stumbled upon a recipe that's going to be my LBD from now on. I tweaked the recipe I found on my go-to site for recipes, allrecipes.com and thought I'd experiment a little with some orange-chocolate glaze just because it was Chinese New Year.

Adapted from shirleyo's One Bowl Chocolate Cake III Recipe

Ingredients:

Cake
2 cupswhite sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup boiling water
1 teaspoon instant coffee powder

Orange-Chocolate Glaze
1 cup chocolate chunks
2 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons milk
Rind of 1 orange, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Grease and flour a nine inch round pan.

Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking and salt.

In a large bowl, stir together the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Add the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla, mix for 2 minutes on medium speed with an electric mixer.
Stir instant coffee powder into the boiling water and stir into the the cake mixture.
Batter will be thin.
Pour into the pan and bake for 70-80 minutes (or until a wooden skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean).
For the orange-chocolate glaze, melt the ingredients on low heat, stirring constantly, until ingredients are well combined and the mixture has a smooth, silky consistency.
Allow the cake to rest overnight before glazing and serving.

This is truly one of those moist, decadent chocolate cakes that the inner child yearns for, definitely a crowd-pleaser. I recommend serving it warm (perhaps 30 seconds in the microwave) with a generous helping of ice cream.

Enter the Dragon

2012-01-24T06:27:00.000-08:00

Gong Xi Fa Cai - May the Dragon bring much love, happiness, good health and prosperity.

Orange Yin Yang Cookies

2012-01-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

It's about a week until Chinese New Year, my first back home in three years. You know that Chinese New Year is around the corner when those plastic cookie jars with red lids start popping up everywhere - oh, how I've missed the love letters and almond cookies! When I thought about what I wanted to make to contribute to the ever-growing collection of cookies in the kitchen, I decided that we had to have some orange cookies this year because nothing says Chinese New Year festivities quite like oranges and mandarins.

Adapted from the Monte Carlos recipe featured in The Malaysian Women's Weekly, January 2012

Ingredients:

Orange Cookies:

185g butter, chopped at room temperature
1/2 cup brown suggar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups self-raising flour
3/4 cup plain flour
Rind of 4 oranges
Juice of half an orange

Chocolate Glaze:
250g dark/cooking chocolate
3/4 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp instant coffee powder

Preheat oven at 180 degrees Celcius. Line oven trays with baking paper.
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla.
Sift flours together and fold into creamed mixture.
Add orange rind and orange juice, mix well to form a smooth dough.
Refrigerate dough for 30 minutes or pop in freezer for 15 minutes.
Form cookies (I used cookie cutters) and bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden.
To make chocolate glaze, melt chocolate with oil over low heat. Take of heat and stir in coffee powder, making sure that powder dissolves fully.
Deep cooled cookies into the hot chocolate glaze and allow chocolate to cool and set.

The cookies are surprisingly light and when dipped into the chocolate glaze, remind me of those addictive Jaffa cakes. I also love what they represent - a balance of chocolate and orange, and hopefully a balanced, wholesome year ahead.

Holiday Foodsteps: Completing the Foh San Experience

2012-01-05T05:44:00.000-08:00

The last time I was at Foh San, I was vegetarian for the day, so while the sights and smells definitely tempted me, I dutifully stuck to the vegetarian-friendly dim sum dishes. This time, I was very much my omnivorous self and very eager to tuck into the very dishes that had tempted me so. It probably shouldn't come as a surprise that the restaurant was full at 8.30am - we thought we were rather early but were proven quite wrong. After the table-scouting-pressure-applying routine that eating out in just about anywhere in Ipoh seems to entail, we went straight for the counters where piping hot little morsels of dim sum were being dished out.

Restoran Foh San
51 Jalan Leong Sin Nam
30300, Ipoh, Perak

I must say that dim sum is definitely more for the omnivore, with the variety of meat-laden dishes available. Here, you'll catch a glimpse of some of my favourites.

Char Siu Sou (Barbecued pork pastry). These unassuming looking little pastries were absolute stars in my book with the char siu filling just right and the pastry light, crumbly and baked to a perfect golden brown.

Wu Kok (Deep fried yam dumplings). Yam dumplings are one of those dim sum staples - every outlet has a version of it and sometimes, just sometimes, you get some truly outstanding ones. The dumplings are Foh San are not outstanding but manage to do the trick with their slightly lighter coloured char siu filling.

Siu Mai (pork dumplings). I'd never seen wolfberry-adorned siu mai before.

Century egg-topped dumplings.

Steamed pork ribs with black beans. I liked that the Foh San version wasn't overly salty (as black bean dishes often are in danger of) and that the ribs weren't simply all about the bones.

I was on the look out for the lotus paste filled glutinous dumplings that I'd fallen in love with the last time I was there but they were no where to be found. I suppose that's the thing about a restaurant that doesn't have a menu - then again, it also means that there's a little element of surprise at every visit. Some other dishes that were table favourites include the loh mai kai (steamed glutinous rice with chicken and Chinese sausage) and fried radish cake.

So yes, the Foh San experience feels a little more complete now that I've sampled some of their non-vegetarian dishes. Sure, one can argue that better versions of some of the dishes can be found elsewhere but there's something about joining the legions of happy dim sum eaters on a Sunday morning in that hustley, bustley atmosphere that gets you coming back time and again.

Holiday Foodsteps: Luen Fong Restaurant, Tanjung Tualang

2012-01-01T19:22:00.000-08:00

All it took was the mention of the word "prawns" and we didn't need anymore convincing. We hopped onto the bus we'd charted for our little food trip to the Malaysian food hotspots of Penang and Ipoh and went in search of Luen Fong Restaurant in Tanjung Tualang.

Luen Fong Restaurant

No 19, Market Street,
31800 Tanjong Tualang,
Perak, Malaysia.

We caught a glimpse of the live prawns at the entrance of the restaurant - larger than your usual prawn and with what looked like scaled down versions of lobster legs. Settling down at the table, one gets a sense of how popular the restaurant is from the newspaper clippings on display. We ordered, and waited in anticipation.

Simply steamed with egg white, the prawns looked almost too good to eat as they arrived at our table in all their sunset coloured glory. I appreciated how succulent and juicy the prawns were but found that they lacked the sweetness that I usually associate with prawns.

Deep fried soft shell crab - these crunch little bits of crab are always a crowd pleaser and this time, it was no different.

Steamed soon hock - well liked for the delicate flesh that belies its less attractive physical features, this freshwater fish is quite hit-or-miss as a lot rides on the freshness of the fish. This one was on the hit end of the scale with the flesh still firm but delicate.

Kam Heong Clams. I love a good clam dish and this not only had the oomph of a good kam heong dish, it also had the freshness of the clams going for it.

Buttermilk Mantis Prawns - this marked the start of a whole array of buttermilk mantis prawn dishes that we were going to have over the course of of trip. These ones were crunchy and had just the right amount of flavour, making it no surprise that it instilled the desire to have the same dish at every subsequent meal.

Kung Po Frog. A little meat to provide some balance to all the seafood we were having. Sure, the choice of meat was rather unusual but it was one of the better frog dishes that I've had.

I must say that the prawns left me disappointed as I had been looking forward to that gorgeous prawn flavour - ahh, to think of what could have been. Seafood at the restaurant is fresh (as evidenced by the live prawns at the entrance) and one could tell that the dishes had much experience behind them. Unfortunately, the cleanliness of the restaurant left much to be desired and as such may not be everyone's cup of tea.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T20:42:00.000-08:00

It probably comes as no surprise that my favourite Christmas song begins with the words "chestnuts roasting on an open fire" - some things one just cannot deny. So whatever it is that Christmas makes you think of - friends, family, food, presents - I hope you have a very merry one with lots of love, joy and yes, goodies.

Pictured above: Gingerbread shapes, adapted from the BBC Goodfood's Simple Gingerbread House recipe

A little note about the recipe - if you're after something with a little more of a ginger kick, add a little fresh ginger to the mixture.

Holiday Foodsteps: Cafe Sperl, Vienna

2011-11-07T00:22:00.000-08:00

If I had to draw parallels, Cafe Sperl would be the more opulent, Viennese equivalent of a traditional Hainanese kopitiam. A kind looking man seated at the counter with the cash register looks up from his ledger to greet you as you walk in, cakes and pastries are laid out by the counter, not in glistening display cases but atop simple trays - you get a sense that nothing much has changed for decades.

Cafe Sperl

Gumpendorfer Straße 11

1060 Vienna, Austria

Like it says on the menu, the cafe has been around since 1880 - it's one of those places with a colourful past and some reminders of the grandeur of days gone by can still be seen in the chandeliers and marble-topped tables. We skipped over to the cafe after lunch at a nearby restaurant, just to put a picture to the cafe that we'd heard so much about since we got to Vienna.

The sachertorte was one of the first things that caught my eye as we settled down in our plush booth (which was conveniently located right by all the cakes and pastries). We had quickly come to recognise the sachertorte as one of the most iconic cakes in Vienna and were eager to sample Cafe Sperl's version of the chocolate sponge and apricot jam concoction. I hadn't been impressed with the slice that we had in Aida and was a little perplexed as to why the cake was such a favourite. Thank goodness for Cafe Sperl - the contrast between the slight tartness of the apricot jam with the bitter-sweetness of the chocolate sponge was much clearly highlighted in Sperl's softer, moister version of the sachertorte.

While I missed out on giving the sachertorte and both Cafe Demel and the posh Hotel Sacher a go, I'd say that at least I came away from Cafe Sperl with a better understanding of what it was all about.

A slice of peach tart, in all its shiny glory. I love a good tart - one where the base isn't undercooked and where there's a good topping to pastry ratio. While it may not look as gorgeous as those one can find at a French patisserie, this had all the indicators of a satisfying tart.

Let me tell you this - it's really not easy having to sit right by a tray that looks like this and not want to reach over for second and third helpings.

This was a recommendation by the proprietor - the special of the day, a brownie-like dessert made out of chocolate and nuts. Tasting very much like a homemade treat, this turned out to be the favourite at the table.

There's a novelty that comes with digging into cake at a place which has been part of the city for as long as it has, a place that has survived World Wars and still stands as a part of the city's rich history. If you're expecting excellent service, the place will disappoint but I suppose very much like our traditional Hainanese kopitiams, we go not for the service but for a taste of our childhoods. A tip, though, if you're heading to the cafe for the first time - do not get off at Gumpendorfer Station. We found out the hard way that Gumpendorfer Street is immensely long and the station is situated about 100 doors away from the cafe. A better option would be to get off at Museumquarter.

Coffee is good, the cakes and pastries are lovely and really, one doesn't get to dine in a 131-year old cafe very often.

Holiday Foodsteps: The Treat Trail

2011-10-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

I think that no matter where you go in Europe, you'll find something to satisfy a sweet tooth - this is just a little collection, a photo trail, if you may, of where I took my sweet tooth when my family came to visit.

Macarons in Paris

Absolutely gorgeous, aren't they?

Little tubs of joy in Switzerland

Those guys over at Movenpick really know how to make espresso flavoured ice cream. Amazing.

Ice cream for breakfast in Vienna

Zanoni & Zanoni

Burgring 1

Wien, 1010

Because being on holiday means you can do whatever you want.

Iced coffee at a 72 year old cafe

Cafe Hawelka

Dorotheergasse 6

1010 Wien

Pricey, yes, but there will always be a special place in my heart for my very first Viennese iced coffee.

Holiday Foodsteps: Ribs of Vienna

2011-10-26T01:08:00.000-07:00

After getting a taste of ribs on our very first day in Vienna, the brother wanted just one more round of ribs before saying goodbye to Vienna. That meant consulting the all-knowing guidebook again. It was one of those "Bingo!" moments - there's no better outcome than actually finding a place called "Ribs of Vienna" when looking for a place for a place for ribs in Vienna

Ribs of Vienna

Weihburggasse 22

1010 Vienna, Austria

We started off with a platter of three different kinds of spareribs - ribs of Vienna (naturally), hot and spicy Diablo ribs and Dijon ribs. The ribs of Vienna became a favourite very early into the meal and we ordered a serving of just those ribs even before we were done with our mixed platter. The other two types were good but at the end of the day, the simplicity of the Viennese-style ribs kept us coming back for more.

Barbecue platter for two persons - spareribs, pork, turkey, mushrooms and two dips. It's a barbecue platter for two that can feed four or five. The pork and turkey were very much like schnitzels but without the crunchy breadcrumb coating with the breadcrumbs choosing instead to appear on the mushrooms.

It wasn't all meat for us, we had a large mixed salad and a variety of soups to make us feel just a tiny bit better about all the meat that we were ingesting. Out of the trio of soups that we ordered (Hungarian goulash, French onion and a simple Bouillon), the French onion was my favourite.

I think ribs are the perfect thing for a family meal - the whole concept of sharing and being comfortable enough to get your hands dirty. Ribs of Vienna definitely has satisfying ribs, spareribs with a bit of bite and a lot of flavour. I must say though, that after a meal made up almost entirely of spareribs, I'm still partial to baby back ribs, something that Ribs of Vienna unfortunately doesn't have on their menu.

The little brother, with a satisfied grin.

Holiday Foodsteps: Gulaschmuseum, Vienna

2011-10-17T07:41:00.000-07:00

"It's a Goulash Museum!"

I couldn't help but exclaim as I came across the name in our trusty guidebook. Having had both the Hungarian and Czech versions of this dish earlier in the summer and finding them to be quite different from each other, I was eager to experience the Viennese interpretation of the popular dish. I thought - where better to sample goulash than at an eatery called the Goulash Museum.

Gulaschmuseum
Schulerstraße 20
1010 Vienna, Austria

The restaurant is located a short walk away from Stephansplatz - the great thing about is that it's situated on one of the smaller, quieter streets so it's got great accesibility and a pleasant, less touristy atmosphere. Armed with our map, we found the restaurant with no trouble at all and soon, we were comfortably seated outdoors, skimming through the menu and enjoying the lovely weather.

A nice variety of rolls arrived at our table soon after we placed our orders and it took quite a bit of willpower not to completely devour our little basket of rolls before the main dishes arrived.
My personal favourite was the sesame seed-topped brown roll, but then again, I'm always partial to sesame seed-topped anything.

Goulash of pork mixed with sauerkraut, "Szeged style. The first of our two goulash dishes arrived and let me tell you, holding off on the rolls is worth it - they are the perfect vessel to get all that flavourful gravy from the plate to your tastebuds.

Goulash of turkey with boiled salted potatoes. This was my favourite of the two, another one of those dishes that hints of curry power. We all know that's the key to any Malaysian's heart.

Dad regaled us with stories of how he used to dunk hot, crispy fries into goulash and how they made the perfect pair. The little brother was so taken by the yummylicious descriptions that he decided the meal wouldn't be complete without a serving of, yup, you guessed it - fries. Fries and goulash are definitely a guilty pleasure, terribly addictive whether quickly dunked and taken out to retain crispiness or left in the gravy to soak everything up.

I love the concept of a goulash - just simple, hearty, comfort food. The ones that we had at Gulaschmuseum were exactly that, great for a family meal. I have to say that out of all the goulash dishes (and soups!) that I tried over the summer, these ones were my favourite. Perhaps it was the hint of curry spices, or the fact that they fit my idea of how a goulash should be - whatever it is, Vienna did the trick for me.

Holiday Foodsteps: Aida Cafe, Vienna

2011-10-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

Think about Vienna and images of classical music, history and beautiful architecture get conjured up. It really is all that they say it is and if you love music from days gone by or if one of your favourite composers is Mozart or Schubert (like me), it's an absolute haven. My favourite spot in the city, though, isn't Stephansplatz or The Schonbrunn Palace, it's a huge pink cafe right by Stephansplatz.

I remember walking past the cafe on our way to lunch and being immediately attracted - I put it down to the girlish pink that called out to me. We fueled up at Wienerwald and asked the waitress for a recommendation on where to go for dessert.

"Aida! Many, many, many types of cakes!"

I was sold.

Aida Cafe

Singerstr. 1
1010 Wien
Neighborhood: Innere Stadt

If you've never sat at a counter at a bakery or patisserie with too many cakes to choose from right in front of you, I highly recommend that you try it sometime - trust me, it's fun. We sampled a variety of cakes and pastries and these are some of my favourites:

Mozart Cake. Created in memory of the musical genius on the 250th anniversary of his birthday, this is a simple chocolate cake made intruiging by the layer of pistachio marzipan in the middle. I noticed that all confectionery with Mozart's name on it had this common pistachio-marzipan theme running through, even the little chocolate balls in the supermarket. As much as it is a novelty, you probably can't go to Aida without ordering a slice of this.

Apple strudel. I'm always a bit apprehensive when it comes to apple strudel - there has been far too many a time when the strudel pastry has been rubbery and rather unpleasant. This one had nice layers and could easily be cut with a fork, always a good sign!

I'm a nutty nut-lover so when mum picked out a walnut-topped hazelnut slice on one of our visits to the cafe, I was thrilled. I had high hopes for this one, and I wasn't disappointed. Light, fluffy, and yes, nutty - it was the perfect foil to all the choclate that we'd been having.

This is why Vienna will always have a special little place in my heart - iced coffee. Say "iced coffee" anywhere else in the world and you get well, coffee and ice but in this city, you get 2 shots of espresso and a generous amount of creamy vanilla ice cream. I daresay that out of all the iced coffees that we had while we were there, my favourite one was Aida's. You'll probably recognise it as affogato and really, that's the only form of iced coffee that the Vienna knows. My dad attempted to order a glass of black coffee with ice and our poor waiter was rather confused at the concept. I'm all for iced coffee being just the way it is in Vienna. In fact, I think they should make a little amendment in the dictionaries: iced coffee = affogato!

The cafe also serves some light savoury snacks but you'll know at once that the cakes and pastries are the real stars. Oh, and the coffee, of course.

Holiday Foodsteps: Wienerwald, Vienna

2011-09-28T08:17:00.000-07:00

Settling into Vienna didn't go exactly as planned - checking-in involved a construction site for an entrance and a bathroom that started flooding so yes, not great. We left the apartment in search for lunch, with hopes that we'd return later in the day to find that everything was sorted. While we eventually had to move to a hotel (situated right on the shopping street so it really was a blessing in disguise for us), we did manage to sit down to a nice lunch right by Stephansplatz.

Wienerwald

Goldschmiedgasse 6,

Vienna 1010, Austria

We found a whole row of restaurants on Goldschmiedgasse, all promising a good, traditional Viennese Schnitzel. We decided on the brightly (green) coloured Wienerwald. Hungry from our travels and from the drama that came with trying to check-in, we found a table on the lively terrace and quickly got down to the business of ordering.

Our first encounter with the Wiener Schnitzel in the city it was named after was a good one. The dish is a simple one, equivalent to Britain's fish and chips but breaded, less greasy, served with slim fries and not fish, of course. The dish seems unassuming but I suspect that there must be a great deal of skill involved to making sure that the flattened meat is even so that it's perfectly cooked.

Roast pork with gravy, dumplings and sauerkraut. The pork was moist and flavourful - paired with the sauerkraut (which I always absolutely love) and you've got a winning combination.

Wienerwald also gave us our first taste of Viennese Ribs - nicely roasted and served with those curry-flavoured potatoes that I fell in love with at the German pub in New York City, we knew that we'd have to have more ribs before our holiday was through.

Wienerwald is located right in the heart of the city, close to a lot of the spots that you're likely to end up in if you are a tourist. Sure, the prices are not to lowest in town but food is satisfying and with a location like that, it's hard to complain.

Holiday Foodsteps: Going Fudge-Crazy in Edinburgh

2011-09-16T23:53:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Edinburgh not knowing that fudge was such a big part of their food culture - if not for the joys of mobile internet, we probably would have missed the fudge altogether. The weather had been rather unkind to us all morning and the thought of possibly having to brave more rain to get to the fudge store was a little daunting. Still, we took deep breaths and went for it - the fudge was so good that we ended up going to not just one, but two different stores.

A Lesson at the Fudge Kitchen

Fudge Kitchen
The Royal Mile
30 High St
Edinburgh EH1 1TB

A batch of sweet fudge concoction was enjoying its last few moments of being stirred over a hot stove when we walked into the store. While the stove area seemed like a good place to be on a gloomy, rainy day, I'm pretty sure constantly having to stir the fudge is no easy feat.

The liquid fudge is transferred from the stove onto a table with a marble top to cool. We were told that relative temperature is key in the cooling process - as such the temperature at the store has to be kept very low in winter, so much so that even with the huge stove in the main area, the staff have to bundle up for work.

The fudge is allowed to set a little before any extra little bits, like nuts or raisins, get thrown in. The mixture seems to gain a little elasticity as it sets, which is interesting because the finished product is far from elastic.

After our little lesson, we moved on to where to the treasure trove of goodies, eager to sample the fudge. We paid for our fudge, a block of rum and raisin and a block of chocolate-orange, stepped out into the cool air, contemplated saving the fudge for the train ride back to Carlisle for all of three seconds and gleefully took our first bites.

It's difficult not to fall in love at first bite. Crumbly but incredibly smooth, it was the texture that completely blew me away. I always thought that fudge was a synonym for toffee or caramel, meaning that it would share that soft, sticky, pliable texture - I couldn't have been more misinformed. Both flavours were rich, creamy (but in a non-creamy way, if that makes sense) and very, very yummy. We couldn't believe what we'd been missing out on.

What's funny is that as we were strolling along the streets of Edinburgh, enjoying our chunks of fudge, the skies cleared and the day became a lot more pleasant. You may put it down to unpredictable weather but I say that there's just a tiny bit of magic in fudge.

Fancier Fudge

We continued exploring the area after our first fudge-stop and stumbled upon another fudge store. A little fancier than the first one, this store had a display counter reminiscent of a French patisserie with the carefully arranged, smaller chunks of fudge sitting in long glass cabinets.

The Fudge House of Edinburgh
197 Canongate, Royal Mile,
Edinburgh EH8 8BN

We had a little more trouble deciding here as they had a sightly larger range of flavours and everything looked extremely attractive. I finally settled on the house special, coconut-chocolate and for easy comparison, the orange-chocolate.

The Final Verdict

Those huge blocks of fudge from the Fudge Kitchen won my heart. The ones we got at the Fudge House were pretty good but they just weren't quite up there with the ones from the Fudge Kitchen. The ones from the Kitchen also got some bonus points for surviving the journey back to Carlisle a lot better - the ones from the House were sticky, melty and looked a little worse for wear when we arrived.

You know how when you were 5 and your mum told you not to finish the whole bar of chocolate but you did anyway and felt sick after that? Well, fudge makes me feel like that kid again - it get's a little sickeningly sweet after awhile but you can't help yourself anyway. It probably also helps that all that sugar leaves you happy, giggly, and yes, feeling like a 5 year old.

Holiday Foodsteps: (Not so) Little Novelties in Budapest

2011-09-09T06:30:00.000-07:00

Part of the fun of being a tourist is being able to get lost in the novelty of things. As a tourist, you're usually up for something different, especially if you get to come away with an interesting story to tell. To me, these two spots in Budapest had that element of fun - afterall, how often do you get to sample cakes from a 153 year old establishment or have a food tower come to your table?

Gerbeaud Cafe

Gerbeaud Cafe

1051 Budapest

Vorosmarty Ter 7, Hungary

I had read about this iconic cafe on the train-ride to Budapest. Expecting a tiny shop tucked away in a little corner, I was completely blown away by the sheer size of the actual Gerbeaud Cafe. Perhaps it's the Malaysian in me that automatically associates anyhing old and famous with something tiny and tucked away. The strategically located cafe is all elegance with its ornate chandeliers and old-school charm but it wasn't the beautiful interior that caught our eye, it was the large "50% off with the purchase of 5 slices of cake" sign that immediately got our attention. We picked out our slices of cake, hopped on our bicycles and rode carefully back to the hostel with our precious cargo.

The display counters are full of pretty, yummy looking desserts that aren't cheap so the 50% off promotion really helped keep our cake shopping within the student budget. Not quite knowing which cakes to go for, we picked the ones that had the most interesting names and came away with a variety of cakes including the famous Dobos and Esterhazy Tortes. My favourite, though, was a lemon basil slice that I thought was absolutely divine even if my holiday pals didn't share the same sentiment. I don't often come across basil in desserts but I'm a convert - I thought the herb lent a lovely flavour to the otherwise common dessert.

I have to admit that while the cakes were well-made and quite delicious, they didn't quite live up to our expectations but I suppose that's that thing about expectations - it's always nicer to go unprepared and be pleasantly surprised. Still, it's a must-visit for every tourist - it's not often one gets to enjoy a taste of traditional opulence and in a place that has seen the likes of Franz Liszt, no less.

Fatal Etterem

Fatal Etterem

Vaci utca 67., Budapest 1056,

Hungary

We had walked passed the restaurant many, many times on our way out of the little lane that our hostel was located on but it wasn't until we saw a huge platter of food being delivered to one of the tables that we thought it might be worth a visit. It was our last night in Budapest and we wanted something quick but memorable before we set on on our cruise down the Danube.

Vetrece soup - cream of chicken with tarragon, served in a crusty bread roll. As you can probably gather from the picture, the bread roll isn't really a bread roll at all but more like a loaf of bread. I love the use of herbs in soups in this part of the world and this soup was no different - the clever use of tarragon cut through the richness of it.

The Fatal platter - for the child in all of us. Made up mostly of sinful, indulgent, deep fried chicken, potatoes and mushrooms, this isn't for the faint-hearted and definitely not to be tackled alone. The greasiness of it all gets to you after awhile but it still doesn't stop if from being a "wow" worthy, fun platter to share between friends. We saw couples trying to tame the beast of a platter, envying their skill and stomach capacity - we struggled between the four of us and were ultimately defeated by the mountain of potatoes.

The restaurant isn't all about their humongous portions (though I can imagine that to be part of the attraction), they serve up some nice traditional Hungarian dishes as well. The key is just to share, share, share.

Holiday Foodsteps: Alfoldi Etterem, Budapest

2011-09-08T01:15:00.000-07:00

We were on the lookout for a cheap, hearty meal in the heart of Pest and the words "homestyle cooking" jumped right out at us from the pages of our travel guide.

ALFÖLDI ÉTTEREM

4th Kecskeméti street,

Budapest

I like a good roll to start off a meal and these were really something different. We thought they were put on our table by mistake, these interesting looking Alfoldi scones, but when no one came to take them away, we decided it would only be best to dig in. We found out later that these paprika scones are an Alfoldi specialty. I usually try to refrain from filling up on starter rolls but these spicy, slghtly cheesy-tasting scones were so addictive that it was quite a feat not to go for "just one more little bite". My only gripe was that the scones weren't served warm.

Deep fried cheese on a bed of rice - mistaking this for the foie gras risotto, we happily dug in, commenting that what we thought were deep fried slabs of cheese and foie gras didn't taste like foie gras at all. It took us more than a forkful each of the delicious crunchy-on-the-outside-melty-on-the-inside cheese to realise that they had messed up our order.

Fisherman's soup - a spicy, paprika based fish soup that was hearty and appetising. Had I been blindfolded, I would have said without a doubt, that they had brought us a bowl of laksa. Who would have thought, laksa in Hungary. I always find it funny when I find dishes halfway across the world that resemble something from home - similar flavours, different cultures.

Hekkfile Dorozsma's Style - fish in a tomato-paprika sauce, served with egg noodles. This dish really drove home the homestyle cooking concept for us. A simple dish of fresh fish and soft, silky egg noodles, no fancy presentation - it felt as if we had been invited into someone's home for dinner.

Goose-liver risotto with cheese. Having sent the deep fried cheese back, the dish we'd been eager to try finally made its way to the table. Not quite knowing what to make of it, we gave the dish a cautious once over before taking the plunge. The flavours were surprising - cheesy, and with a well-balanced hint of goose liver, this was a good introduction to goose liver for this bunch of foie gras novices. The combination of risotto, cheese and fatty liver is an extremely filling one - how the dish made it to the starters section of the menu still escapes me.

With free wifi and good prices, this is a cosy, stripped down restaurant serving cosy, stripped down food.

Holiday foodsteps: Street Food in Budapest

2011-09-04T06:48:00.000-07:00

"Ahh, you have to try Lángos!"

As soon as we heard a description of the popular Hungarian snack from our friendly receptionist, it slipped right to the top of our list of must-eats. As eager as we were to put a face (for lack of better word) to the description, we had to contain our excitement for the duration of the weekend - we were told that the best version of it could be found at the Great Market Hall which is closed early on Saturdays and all day on Sundays.

The market hall itself is probably the envy of most other market halls, with its gorgeous tiling and architecture that had us guessing that it was a train station initially. It's got the usual atmosphere of a market - the hustle and bustle, the fresh produce, the smell of baked goods, a few eateries and some stalls selling clothes and the like. What you probably want to head straight towards is the row of stalls on the 1st floor where you can get your fix of traditional Hungarian food-to-go.

Yes, that's where we found our little Lángos stall.

It was the only stall with a queue, a good thing when you are faced with a whole variety of different toppings. Deciding if I wanted to go for something sweet or savoury was a task in itself, what more trying to narrow down the exact toppings. I went with a simple ham and dill in the end - the dill providing the perfect foil to the decadence of the fried bread. Imagine youtiao (Chinese doughnuts) but shaped like a wheel and as large as your head topped with anything your tastebuds fancy and you've got Lángos.

Consuming it requires a little bit of skill, especially if you go for a drippy, flowy topping. Those huge dough wheels look extremely filling and trust me, they are.

It was the Hungarian funnel cakes though, that left us feeling sad that we had to leave. Having discovered the stall (Ground Floor) 20 minutes before we were scheduled to leave for the airport, there was a little bit of a mad dash to go back for seconds after our first round of funnel cakes. Crispy on the outside and slightly softer on the inside, these funnel cakes were unlike anything I've ever had before. Shaped like a funnel, a "cake" is really a long strip of dough - there's quite a bit of fun in slowly unravelling the funnel and crunching on little sections of the strip. I chose a cinnamon one and was absolutely blown away. To think we almost left Budapest without having had these. The horror.

The market hall is a little bit confusing (well, we found it confusing anyway) but stick around, explore a little and you'll find these little delights. Look out also for the Danish pastries the size of your head (see a trend here?) going for all of 50 pence.

Holiday foodsteps: Ruben, Budapest

2011-08-27T21:24:00.000-07:00

The train that we boarded for our 6 hour journey from Prague set the scene for the next part of our Eastern European adventure. Unlike the more modern bullet trains of the rest of Europe, the train connecting Prague and Budapest has a slightly more traditional interior, everything you would have imagined train travel to have been like as a child - all those images of steam-filled platforms and passengers waving their hankerchiefs from their cabins. Once you get there, it doesn't take very long to realise that Budapest is breathtaking, especially when you discover that you'll be staying right by the Danube.

We were on the hunt for a good meal as soon as we got there. Our kind receptionist gave us a comprehensive run-down of the popular spots in the city. First on our list of restaurants - Ruben.

Ruben
Budapest Magyar utca 12-14,
Budapest, Hungary
36-1-266-36-49

We were told that Ruben runs a very good lunch deal but we decided that we couldn't wait until the next day for lunch so we dropped by for dinner instead. Eager to start tucking into some Hungarian specialties, we combed the menu in search for the "traditional" section, placed our orders and waited in eager anticipation.

Left - spicy beef goulash soup. Right - rabbit soup.
The goulash soup was a fiery red concoction, served with a dish of what looked (and tasted) like sambal belacan. There were great expectations for the goulash soup, having read so much about Hungarian goulash but it was the rabbit soup that won (and warmed) the heart. With a tartness that I can only describe as quite like the flavour you get from gherkins and capers, there was an intriguing blend of flavours that was unlike anything I have ever had before.

Lamb served with mushrooms and a vegetable strudel. I've always got a soft spot for lamb, whether it's a stew, a curry, a roast - I'm sold. This one is right up there with some of my favourite lamb dishes, a simple roast that didn't comprimise the texture or flavour of the lamb.

Grilled pike perch with mushrooms, peppers and sour cream sauce. We didn't expect a whole fish to arrive at the table so it was quite a delight when it did. Living in London, one gets quite accustomed to having fish appear in the form of fillets - none of the joy of enjoying a fish from head to tail. The fish was nothing fancy but was a nice change from all the meat that we'd been having.

Home-style roasted rabbit ragout with tarragon sauce, soft ewe's cheese and bread dumpling.
What appeared to be multiple blobs of colour on on a plate turned out to be the star of the show. The lovely sauce that was both sweet and savoury was a lovely complement to the soft pieces of rabbit. Truly "home-style" comfort food.

After declaring that we were far too full to move, we proceeded to order a trio of desserts, one of which involved a delicious chilli chocolate souffle. I would share the photos if I could but we got a little too caught up in tucking in that the camera was completely forgotten for awhile. As if dessert wasn't enough, we decided to take a slow stroll along the Danube to cap the night off. I'll let the photo do the talking.

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri - May it be filled with much love, ketupat and rendang.

Holiday Foodsteps: More duck in Prague

2011-08-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

While we didn't have anymore accordion-accompanied meals while we were in Prague, we still sat down to some good food. I love that food there is honest and hearty - dishes that truly warm the heart and satisfy. I remember having dinner at a rustic beer house on our second night there. Smoke filled and with wooden furnishings, it felt a little bit like being in a log cabin up in the mountains. We had taken a chance with this place, having stumbled upon it on the net - it promised authentic food and a local feel, away from the more touristy spots. Unfortunately, it was so off the beaten track that I cannot seem to recall the name of the restaurant or which road it is on - it's funny because I can still imagine sitting in our booth at the corner of the restaurant, tucking into some amazing food.

Potato pancakes topped with goat's cheese.

Ribs. Enough said.

Yes, more Bohemian duck. We knew we had to have the duck one more time before we said goodbye to Prague but were afraid that after the lovely duck we had at the Plzenska Beer Hall, any subsequent ones would pale in comparison. I don't know if Prague as a city just really knows how to cook it's duck or if we were twice lucky but this topped even the one we had the previous night. Half a duck appeared at our table - more tender and served with red cabbage that was even more addictive than before. While props still goes to Plzenska's duck in terms of skin-crispiness, this one wins in terms of flavour and texture.

After all our main courses, we were stuffed but couldn't resist dessert (it goes into a separate section of the stomach!). We went with crepes an ice cream, something that seemed to be a local favourite.

I find it amusing that I remember the meal so well - the smell of the place, the childish delight we all felt when our little mountain of food arrived at the table, the conversations that we were having, the way the duck-dumpling-cabbage-gravy combination tasted. I just cannot seem to remember the name of the place. I suppose that's the power of a great meal.

Holiday Foodsteps: Plzenska Beer Hall Restaurant, Prague.

2011-08-24T00:40:00.000-07:00

We were this close to giving up on trying to find the restaurant, having walked passed the restaurant a few times before realising it was there. It isn't that it's hidden in a little corner on a quiet street - far from it actually. We just didn't expect a restaurant that had been described as "affordable" to actually be in the gorgeous Municipal House itself.

Plzenska Beer Hall Restaurant
Republic Square 5
Old Town, Prague 1
Czech Republic

After a day spent in the day exploring Kutna Hora and experiencing the simultaneously fascinating and disturbing bone chapel first hand, we were eager to settle down in a less gruesome setting to sample some of the Czech Republic's tradtional fare. The beer hall is a lively place - an accordion duo provides some happy folk tunes, entertaining customers as they tuck into their meals in the rather lavishly decorated hall.

We ordered with our eyes - taking a bit of time to survey the table-tops of our neighbours before deciding what we wanted. A basket of rolls appeared at our table together with the beer the solitary guy in our group ordered - to whet our appetites before the main dishes arrived.

Roasted Pork Joint - arriving at the table in all it's glory, the joint was a huge chunk of meltingly tender pork that was absolutely delicious when eaten with gravy made out of its roasting juices and a selection of dips and sauces.

Bohemian duck - roast duck served with braised red cabbage and dumplings. Crispy skin, tender duck, delicious gravy and the most addictive red cabbage - this was our first encounter with the famous dish, and what an incredible introduction it was.

Our meal at the Plezenska Beer Hall Restaurant pretty much set the tone for the rest of our Eastern European holiday. So the place has a name I still cannot pronounce but with a lovely setting, good food that's affordable and huge portions - the restaurant is definitely worth a visit.

Holiday Foodsteps: The last bits of the States

2011-08-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

I'm going to cap off my trip to the States with a few more random bits and bobs, the last of it, I promise.

Mexican food after the adrenaline high

When you're in Orlando, food becomes a bit less of a priority (unless it's butterbeer and gigantic turkey legs, of course). It's difficult not to be sucked into the the theme park madness - I arrived rather apprenhensive about all the rollercoaster rides that I would inevitably have to go on but was completely caught up in all the excitement one ride in. It's only upon leaving the theme park, after a whole day on a cycle of feeling anxious, screaming your heart out then grinning from ear to ear, that you think about settling down for a proper meal. We found a tiny cafe serving Mexican fare opposite the Wet 'n' Wild park, beside a large souvenir shop and decided that it would be far better than another round of theme park food. The lunch menu involved rice with your choice of a main dish. The food was simple and hearty - a nice amount of spice and yes, far more interesting than any of the fried stuff that's on offer at the parks.

Feeling intellectual in Peet's Coffee & Tea

Peet's Coffee & Tea
100 Mt. Auburn St
Cambridge, MA 02138

They say that Harvard is a must-see if you're ever in Boston and I say that if you're visiting Harvard, Peet's Coffee & Tea in Harvard Square is a must-not-miss. Our guide in Philadelphia was quite adamant that we pay the coffee house a visit for the Godiva Dark Chocolate Raspberry Freddo and I'm glad we listened to him. The freddo is really more of a dessert than a drink - chocolate that's not too sweet (though I'd preferred if it was a little more bitter) and swirls of raspberry that add a welcome zing to the concoction.

Indian cuisine in Niagara.

This tops my list of the holiday's biggest surprises. I remember arriving in Niagara overjoyed that it wasn't pouring - we'd had a bout of terrible weather at our previous stop, Boston. The failed attempt at having a lobster meal in Boston still stung a tiny bit and while we were extremely excited at the thought of finally seeing the falls, we were also craving some food-related satisfaction. While on the bus from the airport to the guesthouse, we spotted an Indian restaurant with a huge sign promoting an all-you-can-eat buffet. We knew immediately what we wanted for lunch and upon checking in, quickly ventured out on the hunt for the restaurant. What we quickly discovered was a whole host of Indian restaurants offering an all-you-can-eat buffet and pretty soon, we were spoiled for choice.

Sardar Sahib
421 3rd Street

Niagara Falls, NY 14301-1505

We finally settled on Sardar Sahib, a wise, wise choice. While the spread is not extensive, there's a good amount of choice and a there's something for everyone. The delicious flavours and aromas awakened our tired senses as we tucked into perhaps one of the most satisfying meals of the entire holiday. We returned later that day for dinner to escape the rain (and after having no luck in finding a place to eat) and were happy to find that they offered a different spread for dinner.

"You make a hole in the puri and fill it up with some sour water"

I'd heard many accounts of Sapna's favourite Indian street food, something I'd never come across before and something she believed could only be found in India. To say that we were taken aback when we spotted a van selling pani puri (previously known as puri with sour water) while on a late-night stroll back from the falls is an understatement. With much anticipation, we ordered a serving of pani puri, a helping of papdi chaat and a cup of hot chai to wash it all down. The pani puri, pictured on the right, was quite the interesting dish with its cold, tamarind-chilli-spiced water and crisp little puris. I loved the papdi chaat which had a lovely mix of textures and flavours. Finish off with some hot, flavourful chai and you've got a winning supper.

Frozen yogurt, frozen yogurt and more frozen yogurt

I'm a huge fan of frozen yogurt and was eager to sample the American version of the popular dessert. While most frozen yogurt outlets in the States have the same fun concept as the ones in London, I found the frozen yogurt to be quite different. The flavours were a lot stronger and the frozen yogurt generally a lot sweeter over there than in London - one can be easily fooled into believing that the frozen yogurt was really ice cream. Perhaps it's a matter of familiarity but I definitely still prefer the lighter, more tart version of the dessert that we get on this side of the world.

There we go, the last of my American food stories - I have to admit, it really is quite like what you see in the movies but I suppose we wouldn't have it any other way.

Holiday Foodsteps: More Philly

2011-07-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

So, in my previous post, I gave you one reason why Philly was one of my favourite stops - I've got three more:

Funnel Cake by the Pier

We caught a whiff of funnel cake being fried as we walked down to the pier and were immediately curious. Were they conventional doughnuts or would they taste more like youtiao, the Chinese version of doughnuts? In pure tourist fashion, we promptly got ourselves some and settled down by the river to dig in. The sugar-topped dough was a hybrid between Western and Eastern doughnuts - on the sweet side like a usual doughnut but crispy like a Chinese one. Like all doughnuts, though, funnel cake makes for a highly addictive snack.

Frozen Custard from Rita's Italian Ice

I know that Rita's is available not just in Philly but in a whole host of other locations around the United States but because we had our first (and only) taste of that delicious frozen custard in Philly, I'll always associate it with the city. We opted to share a cup of vanilla frozen custard and mango ice between the four of us after having had far too much Bassetts ice cream for lunch a few hours before. It was another first for us as none of us had ever had frozen custard before and it's a shame really because it's got such a wonderful, smooth, slightly jelly-like texture that's quite unlike anything we'd ever had. My only regret is that we didn't give any other flavour combinations a go that day and didn't have time to go back for more.

Sunset along Schuylkill River

I know that this isn't a food-related reason but a girl needs her sunsets and this one was the cherry on top of all the funnel cakes and Philly Cheesesteaks. None of us got the name of the river right the first time (why do they spell things not like they're pronounced?) but that didn't matter as we took a slow stroll along the river, recapping the day, enjoying the outdoors and ultimately being in awe of the beauty of the setting sun.

Character - that pretty much sums it up for me. Philadelphia has character.

Holiday Foodsteps: Reading Terminal Market, Philadelphia

2011-07-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

Philadelphia was in many ways the mid-point of our journey. In the most literal sense, it was truly the halfway mark of our American holiday but more importantly, Philly was where we could take a break from the map-reading and researching because we had the pleasure of staying with a friend who was not just the perfect host but also the perfect tourguide. There are definitely perks to being shown around the city by a local - they know where to go for food. No dodgy I-don't-care-where-we-eat-I'm-just-desperate-for-food stops, no angry Chinese women screaming at you in Chinatown.

There are all sorts of reasons why Philadelphia was one of my favourite cities on our holiday. Reason number one has got to be Reading Terminal Market.

51 North 12th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107-2954, United States

You've got to love a city where there's a food market right in the centre of the city. It's pretty much all under one roof here - fresh produce, hot food, dessert, confectionery and cookbooks. A couple of things not to miss:

Philly Cheesesteaks from Carmen's Famous Italian Hoagies

I've begun to believe that places like these use the tantalising smell of fried onions as a marketing strategy and kudos to them, really, because that's one effective strategy.

As my friends waited in queue for their order, we noticed a little newspaper cutting of President Obama's visit to the stall - let's just say that expectations became pretty high after that. We came away with two huge sandwiches - a traditional steak with cheese whiz combo and a chicken with American provolone one. I always thought that a cheesesteak would really just be a conventional steak with cheese melted on top so it was quite interesting that that's really not what it is at all. The sandwiches were worth the queue, though - indulgent, with tender, juicy, punchy meat, they really delivered. It's no wonder 'Famous' is part of their name.

Po' Boys from Beck's Cajun Cafe

"Trust me, they're even better than the ones I tried in New Orleans. They're a lot cheaper, too"

We were intrigued by the thought that a dish could be better outside its place of origin so with eager anticipation, we placed our orders, deciding to go for a mix of shrimp and oysters.

Like all American sandwiches, these were huge. A generous portion of fried seafood was stuffed into a soft baguette and topped with some lettuce, slices of tomato and mayonnaise, making for a very satisfying sandwich. The shrimp and oysters were deliciously fresh though the grease does take a toll on you after awhile. While I cannot say if these were better than the ones in Louisiana, I say they are definitely worth a try.

Gyros from Olympic Gyro

While this isn't exactly a must try, it's a pretty good option for something a little lighter. My souvlaki was satisfying and had the fresh crunch of vegetables that I had been craving.

Pie, pie and more pie at Beiler's Bakery

There are doesn't of bakery stalls in the market but the one that caught our eye was an Amish one whose counter was just a sea of pies. The sheer amount and variety of pies really makes decision making almost impossible. We came away with some key lime pie which was a creamy, vanilla-lime dessert that reminded me of the (surprise, surprise) vanilla-lime ice cream bars we get in Malaysia.

Bassetts Ice Cream

"Next on our tour, ice cream from America's oldest ice cream company"

Bassetts serves up some good, creamy ice cream with peculiar names for flavours. We narrowed down our choices to the ones on the feature flavours board and came away with a scoop of Gadzooks!, some Guatemalan Experience, a scoop of green tea and a cup-full of the WHYY Experience. Our collective favourite was the green tea which had that lovely, smokey flavour of the tea and not just little hints of it. The WHYY Experience was a little treasure trove of flavours - pockets of saltiness, some caramel bits, crunch here and there. The Guatemalan Experience which had a coffee based flavour was second on my list after green tea.

There's no better way to enjoy some good dessert than with some downtime at the little square opposite the market. We settled down on a bench with our cups of ice cream to enjoy some live music and (clearly) animated conversation.

Cookies from the Famous 4th Street Cookie Company

The cookies were so good, I didn't get a chance to photograph them. Seriously. We picked a cinnamon raisin walnut cookie and a simpler butter almond one and fell hopelessly in love with each bite. The cookies had a fluffy, almost cake-like texture that's rather unconventional and neither one was too sweet.

Holiday Foodsteps: The other bits of NYC

2011-07-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

There's food everywhere in New York City - hotdog stands and gyro trucks at every corner, little cafes, huge barbeque eateries. For me, they were all part of the experience, like pieces of a big puzzle. While they don't warrant a post each, these little snippets are still part of the story. So what you're going to get is a summary, in a way, of what else I was up to in the city.

Dinner in Little Italy

I remember how beautiful the weather was as we took a walk through Chinatown and into Little Italy. The sun was still out when we decided to settle down in one of the many restaurants in the area for dinner - we dined al fresco, enjoying the slight breeze and the atmosphere in Little Italy. Lobster pasta in pink cream sauce, a seafood salad and sunset - it seemed like the perfect end to the day.

Saying hello to (a different sort of) Lady Liberty

M&M's World
1600 Broadway
New York, NY 10019-7413, United States

We were taking in the view in Times Square on our first night in New York City when we spotted M&M's World, tucked in one of the corners of the square. I loved how you smell chocolate as soon as you walk in, how there is a wall with rows and rows of M&M's in any colour you can think of and how you just feel like squeezing those adorable M&M cushions.

Sharing a humongous ice cream float over a barbecue lunch

Famous Dave's BBQ
171 West 47th Street
New York, NY 10036-1503, United States

One thing's for certain - in America, food portions are huge. At Famous Dave's BBQ, it really was no different. For one, the ice cream float came with its own jug (yes, I kid you not) of rootbeer and my serving of Dave's Sassy BBQ Salad with Georgia Chopped Pork was so big that I had to have it over two meals. The tender, flavourful, chopped pork and crispy shoestring potatoes made them two very good meals, though. I have to admit, after catching a glimpse at how much people on other tables were wolfing down, the fact that I had to take away more than half my salad made me feel a tiny bit like a wuss.

Lunch at a German Pub

Hallo Berlin

744 9th Avenue
New York, NY 10019, United States

We had close to a whole day to kill before our flight back to London and after checking out, we wanted to grab a bite some place close. We stumbled upon this quiet German pub with a little beer garden at the back and thought that we might as well enjoy some sunshine out in the beer garden while we dug into lunch. Food turned out to be surprisingly good - for me, a lunch special of a currywurst, german fries, red wine cabbage and a roll and for my two travel buddies, rollmops with similar sides. I fell in love with the German fries and red wine cabbage almost immediately - those delicious little morsels of potato that taste like they had been cooked with a dash of curry powder and the soft, slightly sweet cabbage made a good pairing. While I opted for a tall glass of cold cranberry juice to wash down my lunch, the other two decided to give one of the recommended beers a go and judging by their reactions, it was a pretty good recommendation.

There we go - the other little bits of my New York City adventure. Ahh, New York, New York.

Holiday Foodsteps: Ben's Kosher Delicatessen, NYC

2011-07-12T16:29:00.000-07:00

Paying a visit to a New York Deli was pretty high up on the list for us - what with all the constant references to them on TV (The Nanny!). Turning once again to our free guide, we picked the deli located closest to where we were staying.

Ben's Kosher Delicatessen
209 West 38th Street
New York, NY 10018, United States

The size of the place really caught me by surprise. Whilst I'd been expecting a tiny outlet quite like the kebab shops in London, Ben's Deli is really a full-fledged restaurant with a deli counter on one side and a spacious dine-in area on the other.

You know you're in completely foreign territory when you look at the menu and realise that you have never heard (and can barely pronounce the names) of most things. What do you do when you have absolutely no idea what to order? You go for a mixed platter, Ronnie's Mixed Platter to be precise. The huge platter of a stuffed cabbage, a slice of derma, meatballs and some chicken posed quite a challenge, even shared between two people. While the chicken and meatballs were fairly conventional, the stuffed cabbage and derma (beef casing stuffed with matzo meal or flour) were a different story altogether. For some reason, perhaps having had far too much sauerkraut over the exam season, I was expecting the cabbage to be on the sour side so to say that the sweet cabbage caught me off-guard is a bit of an understatement. The derma left us a bit intrigued as we spent most of the meal trying to figure out what it was - the stuffing tasted a lot like chickpea flour but when we asked our waiter what it was stuffed with, he just gave us a shrug and told us that if we knew, we probably wouldn't eat it. Upon returning to London and consulting our dear friend Google, it seems that we weren't so off the mark afterall.

The platter came with a choice of two side dishes. Our waiter strongly recommended a serving of fries but we decided to be a little more adventurous by getting egg barley and mushrooms as well as serving of Kashe Varnishkas (buckwheat groats with bowtie pasta). Both side dishes were rather bland and dry, leaving us somewhat disappointed. As the meal progressed, I was beginning to think that there was a reason why our waiter was so adamant about us ordering fries.

Something that seemed quite obvious from the menu was the fact that meat is pretty high on the priority list at these delis. There were still some vegetarian options, though, and the pescatarian among us decided to go for a simple Fresh Veggie Omelette served with potato pancakes and apple sauce.

I have to admit that no other meal has left me quite as perplexed as this one - I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about the food. Some of the flavours were completely new to us and while we enjoyed quite a bit of it, some of the dishes left much to be desired. Perhaps it was more a case of the deli letting us down and not giving us a good representation of what the cuisine is really like. A part of me wishes we had a little more time in the city for a stop at a different deli, just to put things into perspective.

I suppose that's what travelling is all about - new and sometimes perplexing experiences. Also, if you do ever happen to be at Ben's, be sure to look out for the joke that runs along the top of the wall, just for a little laugh.

Holiday Foodsteps: Dylan's Candy Bar, NYC

2011-07-08T14:29:00.000-07:00

So you've managed to get your name on the waiting list at Serendipity 3 and have a bit of time to kill before your time slot, you could head to Bloomingdales or you could be like us and head to Dylan's Candy Bar instead.

Dylan's Candy Bar
1011 3rd Avenue
New York, NY 10021.
United States

If Willy Wonka had a Chocolate Factory in this day and age, I'd expect it to look a bit like Dylan's Candy Bar. Just a stone's throw away from Serendipity 3, it's the perfect place to get warmed up for all the desserts that you're bound to have at the restaurant.

It's every kid's dream really - three floors of confectionery, some conventional and some just a little bit quirkier. The interior is fun and whimsical, just the sort of thing you'd want a candy store to look like.

For the people who absolutely cannot live without their meat, I suppose. Probably best paired with the bacon flavoured chocolate.

These are what some dreams are made off - a bathtub full of gumballs.

If fudge is more your style, there's a fudge bar on the lowest floor which has something for everyone. Trust me, those swirly, colourful chunks of fudge are pretty difficult to resist.

The top floor houses a little cafe which serves up cakes, ice cream and other little desserts.

The candy bar doesn't just carry store-brand confectionery but a whole host of other brands as well so it does take awhile to get through the store (not that there are any complaints there, of course). I think there'll always be a kid in everyone of us, no matter how old we get and if you take a look around Dylan's Candy Bar you'd see how true that really is.

Holiday Foodsteps: Serendipity 3, NYC

2011-07-07T07:14:00.000-07:00

If you have a sweet tooth, there's a street in New York City just for you. Armed with a trusty little (free) city guide, decided to spend our very last day in the city going on a bit of a food hunt. We'd all watched Serendipity at some point in our lives so we thought it would be a shame not to pay the iconic little restaurant a visit. To say that it is popular is a bit of an understatement - trying to get into Serendipity 3 involves a registration process in which you queue to get your name put down on the waiting list after which you are assigned a time (ours involved a wait of an hour and a half) to come back. The restaurant is surprisingly tiny and trying to get onto the right queue in the narrow space at the entrance involves some maneuvering.

Serendipity 3
225 East 60th Street
NYC 10022

The place has a bit of an eclectic feel to it - funky lampshades, an assortment of picture frames and other little quirky knick knacks make up the interior. The menus are playful as well, with their little illustrations and larger-than-normal sizes. On hindsight, the huge menus should have been the first clue to how big the portions at Serendipity 3 are.

We knew that we absolutely had to have their signature drink, the oxymoronic Frrrozen Hot Chocolate. This is one serving of (frozen) hot chocolate that comes not in a mug but in a bowl and is really more of a dessert than a drink.

After taking a quick look around at the other tables, we made the (wise, wise) choice of ordering just one other thing to be shared. We couldn't decide on whether we wanted pie or ice cream so we did the best thing we could - we ordered one of their sundaes, a huge serving of ice cream, fruits and delicious lemon box pie.

There's a type of warmth that comes from quirky little dessert places like these - they provide little pockets of happiness in your day. There are probably a couple of things worth keeping in mind when visiting Serendipity 3, though:

There's probably always going to be a queue so go a little earlier to get your name registered for a time slot (or just make a booking)
Don't bother with dinner if you want to have dessert. (Who says you can't have just dessert for dinner, anyway?)
Share, share, share.

On the whole, Serendipity 3 is a lot of fun. The keyword here seems to be indulgence - it's probably not the type of place you'd want to go to on a daily basis but it's definitely good for when you want to just let yourself go and be a kid again.

On holiday!

2011-06-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering why the blog has been a little quiet of late, don't worry, I've not lost interest in food (far from it, really) - am currently doing a lot of travelling, trying to make full use of my last summer as a student.

I'm stocking up on those food stories and I'm looking forward to sharing them soon!

Rootbeer Tiramisu Cake

2011-06-07T19:30:00.000-07:00

The little brother turned 15 last weekend (okay, maybe not so little anymore) and I told him that he could have whatever cake he wanted for his birthday. A Rootbeer Tiramisu cake, that's what he decided he absolutely had to have - I suppose boys will be boys.

I had heard of a beeramisu (thanks to an episode of Australian Masterchef) but ROOT-beer tiramisu seemed just a little too strange in my book. Still, I'd promised him he could have whatever his almost-15-year-old heart desired so the rootbeer cake it was.

Adapted from Mitch's Rootbeer Tiramisu

Ingredients:
250 g soft cheese (cream cheese)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 egg yolk
1 egg white
1 packet ladies fingers
1 can root beer
grated chocolate

In a large bowl, mix soft cheese, vanilla and brown sugar - mix well.
In another bowl, whip egg yolk until stiff peaks form.
Fold egg white into the soft cheese mixture.
Cover the bottom and sides of a 9 inch, square cake tin with a layer of ladies fingers.
Pour some rootbeer onto the layer on the bottom of the tin until the ladies fingers become soft.
Spread a layer of cheese mixture on top of the layer of ladies fingers.
Sprinkle a generous amount of grated chocolate onto the cheese mixture.
Add another layer of ladies fingers and repeat the process.
Pop into the fridge and leave in there overnight.

The original recipe called for whipped cream but after a little bit of a disaster involving the whipped cream (trying to whip cream in the middle of the day in Malaysia is not a good idea), we decided to do away with the cream, take a chance, and just go with only the cream cheese.

All fears about the strangeness of the flavour combinations were put to rest as soon as the rootbeer hit the sponge fingers. There's a slight fizzing before the delicious aroma hits you - and you know that you've got something good to look forward to. Once you let the fridge work its magic, the sponge fingers turn into a soft, light, rootbeer-tinged sponge cake which seems to go just perfectly with the cream cheese.

I'd say the experiment was a success - this recipe is definitely a keeper (the quirkiness is a bit of a crowd pleaser too).

Judging from the big smile on the birthday boys face, I'm willing to bet that he was more than happy with the outcome too.

Wahaca Canary Wharf

2011-06-06T02:33:00.000-07:00

Masterchef was one of the few things that kept me sane during the exam season - it was an escape of sorts, a reminder that there was life outside the numbers and formulae. I discovered Wahaca last summer, way before I had begun seeking solace in those episodes of Masterchef. Back then, it didn't mean very much to me that Wahaca belonged to Thomasina Miers, winner of Masterchef UK 2005. I did however, understand the phrase "slow-cooked-pork" and really, that was all I needed to know about the place.

Wahaca (Canary Wharf)
Park Pavilion, 40 Canada Square,
Canary Wharf, London,
E14 5FW

Vibrant. That was the first thing that came to mind on my first visit to the Canary Wharf outlet. The interior is simultaneously colourful and laidback - smaller tables by the floor-to-ceiling windows that sport beaded "curtains" and a section with larger, higher tables that are reminsicent of a school tuckshop.

The Slow-cooked Pork Burrito, the dish that got me there in the first place. It came highly recommended by a fellow summer intern and she was spot on with her recommendation. It's a hugely satisfying meal, one I'd highly recommend myself. If you're more of a beef person, the British Steak Burrito is an excellent alternative - it's always a hit with the boys.

For the fickle minded, there's the Wahaca Selection, smaller portions of a variety of their favourites to share.

Black Bean Tostadas

Pork Pibil Tacos

Chicken Tinga Tacos

The Canary Wharf outlet also has a bar area on the second floor, a small, cozy area offering some impressive views of Canary Wharf. It's a great place for an after work (or after dinner) cocktail with friends, especially in the summer when the weather is kind enough to let you to take your drink out to the open-air balcony. The place serves up some pretty good tequila-based cocktails - the hibiscus inspired ones are always a crowd pleaser though if you're looking for something a little more exciting, give the tamarind margharita a go.

Prices are decent, considering the location and the fact that it's got some Masterchef novelty attached to it - definitely worth a visit.

More birthday cheer at Kettner's Soho

2011-05-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

"Too far"
"Too expensive"
"That just looks strange"

We had a bit of trouble deciding on a birthday place - trying to strike the balance between good food, a nice atmosphere and reasonable prices is tough stuff. After sifting through pages and pages of Toptable restaurants, we thought it would be wise to consult the all-knowing crystal ball, the oracle that is Facebook.

Friends dropped comments on my S.O.S status update almost immediately and one recommendation stood out: Kettner's. (The fact that the description of the restaurant included the words "Oscar Wilde" and "pudding bar" definitely helped).

Kettner's
29, Romilly Street.
London, W1D 5HP
020 7734 6112
reservations@kettners.com

The interior is pretty, clean lines, a little frill here and there and the atmosphere inviting, with the low din of happy chatter.

Crotin of Goats Cheese, Roasted Beetroot, Balsamic Glaze - our vegetarian's choice.

Steamed Cornish Mussels - a generous portion and beautifully flavoured.

Poached duck egg on asparagus, my pick for a starter. If there's something I have to perfect over the summer, it's definitely how to poach an egg. I love a good, creamy yolk and this one was done just the way I like it.

Sapna with her Maldon Oysters with Shallot Vinaigrette, right before she polished them off. They were so good she wasn't in the mood to share though she did stop to tell us that the shallot vinaigrette was fantastic.

Crisp Duck Confit, Spinach, Sarladaise Potatoes. I have a soft spot for duck so picking my main was a bit of a no-brainer for me, and I do have to say that my gut instinct was right on the money. The duck was tender and had a lovely, crispy skin. The soft spinach and thin layers of potato provided a delicious balance to it all.

Some other noteworthy dishes include the roasted vegetable tart (the tart of the day), the crispy seabass and roasted cod as well as the Beef Bourguignon which came with some excellent mashed potatoes.

We couldn't help but notice the plates of pudding that were making their way around the room while we enjoyed our first two courses, including a fantastic looking mille-feuille. Dessert came in the form of a white chocolate and passion fruit mousse cake from Patisserie Valerie, a delightful end to the meal.

Kettner's is a good place for special occasions - the food is generally well cooked, the atmosphere warm and the service excellent. It's definitely a place I'd happily go back to, if only to pick out the mille-feuille from the pudding bar, because really, any place with a pudding bar is worth more than one visit, with Toptable's 50% off promotion (valid on Mondays and Tuesdays), of course.

One for the album - the May babies and the housemates.

An early birthday at Jamie's Italian Canary Wharf

2011-05-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

I promised the shortbread-lover that I'd start this post with a little shout-out, so here goes:

"Hello, Dominic Lam!"

May has always been a big birthday month for us -three girls, three birthdays, three bulls. Ever since I can remember, May has also always been the month for exams so birthday celebrations have always been a bit of a jigsaw puzzle for us. One of my pieces of the puzzle this year was a rather early birthday celebration at a little Italian place that I had been wanting to visit for awhile now.

Jamie's Italian
Churchill Place Mall,
Canary Wharf,
London, E14 5RB

There's definitely a novelty that comes with eating at a restaurant owned by a celebrity chef. The travel and food channel has always been a favourite of mine and I remember when it started airing some of Jamie Oliver's cooking shows - unlike most other cooking shows that time, these episodes featured a laidback, rather scruffy looking Englishman that made cooking look incredibly easy. Nothing ever seemed overly complicated with him. I suppose I identified with that, being someone who loves the freedom of just tossing anything and everything into the pan to see what happens.

The first thing you'd notice when you step into the restaurant is the relaxed vibe that it exudes - it's warm and inviting but without any of the stiffness that sometimes comes with the fancier restaurants.

After a rather extensive session of "hmmming" and "harrring", we finally order, some of us choosing to start with some antipasti.

Pumpkin and burrata with chilli, sage and herby shoots.

Truffle Salami - artisan salami, mildly flavoured with truffle and black pepper

Diana and I couldn't resist ordering some crsipy fried squid with garlicky mayo, something we picked out even before it was recommended by our waiter. We both loved the "really garlicky mayo" that was an excellent complement to the crsipy squid. My only gripe is that I wished the portion of squid was a little larger.

Rabbit Ragu Pappardelle. I have to admit, I'm the type of person who likes to take a quick look at a restaurant's website before I visit it and this was the dish that stood out for me when I took a look at the menu on the website. I wasn't disappointed - the slow-cooked rabbit was tender and flavourful but not overpowering and one cannot help but be a little amused by the curly pasta.

Seafood linguine. The restaurant also runs a daily specials menu and we picked this one off it.

The very aptly named Fish in a Bag

Truffle Pasta.

Some other pasta dishes and mains that made it to our table were the wild truffle risotto and the lamb chops.

Nothing, however, prepared me for dessert.

When they brought out this gorgeous looking cake, I couldn't believe that it was homemade. I cannot think of anything better - a cake made out of frozen yoghurt in my favourite flavour (green tea!) and some of my favourite toppings (strawberries and chocolate brownies!). Absolutely perfect. The fact that my friends had thought up something like that (and proceeded to produce such a divine cake) made me feel extremely loved. I'm probably not the most sentimental person by nature, but oh boy was I touched.

Jamie's Italian is good for special occasions - food is of a high quality, service is pleasant and while it's perhaps a little pricier than the average Italian restaurant, there's that added novelty of sitting down to a meal at a celebrity chef restaurant. The menu seems to be seasonal as the last time I checked, some of the things we had aren't on the menu anymore but any form of seafood linguine or ragu pasta would be a good way to go. What I'll remember most about the visit though won't be the food or the service but the way good company managed to take my mind of a less-than-pleasant first final exam and make me feel like I was queen of the world.

Very Berry Shortbread

2011-05-07T13:01:00.000-07:00

After our black forest cake adventure, we had a little extra berry filling left. While it sat in a little bowl at the corner of the refrigerator, I toyed with the idea of making a berry pie and even entertained the thought of attempting a swissroll of some sort. In the end, it was the simple shortbread cookie that won out (after a housemate not-so-subtley hinted that he could really do with some shortbread cookies).

I made a lemon-orange-less version of the shortbread cookies and topped them off with the berry filling from the summer black forest cake.

I'd call them a lazy person's version of scones - it's got all the buttery goodness of the scones, without the extra technique involved in producing them.

Another one of those perfect late-night-study snacks.

A Summer Black Forest Cake

2011-05-03T08:19:00.000-07:00

Cake and ice cream - they were real treats growing up, only making appearances when birthdays came around. Back then, before the days of indulgent mousse-filled triple-decker cakes from large chain bakeries, the black forest cake was the crowd pleaser. In some households, it was probably second only to to the equally crowd-pleasing jelly-topped pandan cake. The black forest cakes of my childhood were probably more a celebration of whipped cream than anything else - I can picture in my minds eye, the marachino cherries and the chocolate curls adorning the thick layer of cream on top of the cake. With that said, I still absolutely loved how the cream would give way to the soft chocolate sponge. Yes, I was all about the chocolate, often scooping out the cherry filling and leaving it at a little corner on the plate.

"What would boys like?"
"Chocolate"

We were going through some cake recipes, trying to pick one for Hanad's birthday and the black forest cake came to mind. Chocolate for the boys - check. Fruits to help the girls feel just a little bit better about having cake - check.

We decided to add a little summer spin to it because we simply couldn't resist those lovely strawberries that we get this time of year.

Based on Linda Greer's Black Forest Cake I Recipe

Ingredients:

Cake:
2 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Filling:
2 cans black cherries
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
juice of 1 lemon
8-10 strawberries
whipped cream

Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Grease and flour two 9 inch cake tins.
In a large bowl, combine flour, 2 cups sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add eggs, milk, oil, vanilla and beat until well blended.
Pour and equal amount of batter into the prepared cake tins and bake for 35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Allow the cakes to cool before removing them from the tins.

Drain cherries, reserving 1/2 cup juice.
Combine the reserved juice, cherries, sugar, cornstarch and strawberries in a saucepan. Cook over low heat until thickened, stirring constantly.
Stir in vanilla and add lemon juice. Allow to cool before using.

Spread a generous layer of berry filling on one of the cakes before topping it off with the whipped cream. Gently place the second cake on top of the first one, creating a sandwich.

We made it a little easier on ourselves by only having two layers of cake - horizontally splitting the cakes to create more layers seemed a little too ambitious for us. The strawberries gave the filling a freshness (and a little something to remind us of the better weather) that I loved while the slight zing from the lemons provided a foil to all that sweetness.

"But where's that whipped cream topping?", you say.

We decided to use a simple chocolate frosting to finish off the cake (yes, even more chocolate for the boys!) and let everyone have free rein of how much cream they want with their cake. I think the birthday boy enjoyed this little interactive bit - treating the can of whipped cream like a weapon and taking joy in completely covering his cake with a mountain of cream.

So there we go, my grown up Black Forest Cake - less cream-laden, marachino cherry-less and absolutely delicious.

"Lord of all Biscuits"

2011-04-25T08:41:00.000-07:00

The rich tea biscuit is everything that a decadent chocolate chip cookie is not - it's light as a feather and is perfectly capable of just blending into the background. They are probably just a step up in terms of standout ability from cream crackers. In fact, until about a year ago, I always thought that rich tea biscuits were made from tea extracts or something along those lines.

It's funny how these things quietly sneak up on you - one day after having my very first rich tea biscuit out of lack of choice, I fell helplessly in love with the simple wallflower of a biscuit. To think that I had been missing out all this while.

So if you, like me pre-rich-tea-enlightenment, always pick the more attractive looking cookies from the middle shelf at the supermarket over the plain janes stacked in the bottom row, I say give those plain janes a go - you might be pleasantly surprised.

Queen Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

2011-04-23T08:33:00.000-07:00

"I'm coming over to bake cupcakes"

And that was that - another Wednesday afternoon spent in the kitchen with Ju Vern attempting to turn out adequately attractive cupcakes for someone's birthday and a charity bake-off. The cupcakes came from a simple recipe from her mum, quirky-ly titled "Queen's Cupcakes". While it slipped my mind to get the recipe from her, I did manage to find a similarly named recipe with the help of good old Google (really, what would the world do without google?).

Queen Cupcakes, taken from Bake Space with a cream cheese frosting

Ingredients:

Cupcake:
100g flour
75g butter
75g castor sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
milk to taste
50g raisins

Cream cheese frosting:
75g butter, softened,
75g cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract
sugar to taste

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celcius.
Sift flour and baking powder.
Cream butter and sugar until light and creamy before adding the lightly beaten egg to the mixture.
Add vanilla essence and fold in flour and baking powder. Add milk until the batter has a soft dropping consistency. Mix in raisins.
Fill 3/4 of each cupcake shell with the batter and bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.
To make the frosting, cream butter, cream cheese, vanilla extract and incremental amounts of sugar. Adding sugar a bit at a time and tasting as you go along gives you control of how sweet you want your frosting to be.
Allow cupcakes to cool before spreading the frosting.

The cupcakes are a breeze to make - the perfect recipe to fall back on when you need to make a quick dessert. It's also a good basic recipe to play around with (I suspect that adding some lemon or orange juice in place of milk would be a good twist). The bit that we didn't find so easy, however, was the decorating of the cupcakes. While cream cheese frosting is absolutely delicious (yes, even on its own) it's quite tricky to work with. Colouring doesn't mix very well with it and it doesn't have that stiff consistency that usual frosting or icing has.

So some lessons learnt that afternoon:

Mixing more and more food colouring into cream cheese frosting does not make it look better - in fact, what you get is crazy looking, psychedelic frosting.
Cream cheese frosting dissolves makeshift paper funnels.
It may be a good idea to invest in a basic cake-decorating kit.

The thing about the cream cheese frosting, though, is that it's so good that you forgive it for being difficult.

I've come away from the experience wanting more than ever to spend some time experimenting and learning how to make my food look gorgeous. Perhaps I've watched one too many episodes of Masterchef or read far too many amazing food blogs - whatever it is, I think it's time I learnt a thing or two about presentation.

Any suggestions on where to begin?

Apple Crumble Pie

2011-04-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

Before moving to the UK, apples were well, just apples. I could never tell one variety of apple from another, all types just merging into one. To be completely honest, apples were never really my thing. The thing is, you can't help but know your apples (at least some of them) in this country and after three years, I've decided that apples are in fact, my thing especially those lovely, sweet gala apples. So it doesn't come as a surprise when I decided one afternoon that the only cure to the brain-muddling that came with trying to decipher equation after equation was apple pie.

Adapted from LEHOUX's Apple Crumble Pie Recipe and B1BMOM's Easy Pie Crust Recipe

Ingredients:

Pie crust:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons milk

Filling:
5 apples, thinly sliced (I used gala, of course)
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Crumble:
6 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup white sugar
3/4 cup all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius.
Place all pie crust ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
Pat mixture into bottom and up sides of a 9 inch pie pan. Using a fork, pierce the bottom and sides of the crust lightly.
Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until light brown.

Once the baked pie crust is sufficiently cool, arrange the apple slices in the shell.
Mix 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon; sprinkle over apples.

Mix 1/2 cup sugar with flour and mix in butter until crumbly (your fingertips are the best tools for this).
Spoon the crumble mixture over the apples and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until apples are soft and crumble is a golden brown.

Alright, so it's not really your traditional apple pie but I love how the crumble adds that extra texture to it (and really, who doesn't love toasty, slightly crunchy, crumble?). I have to admit that (yes, another admission) before I came to the UK, I never truly appreciated the the magical powers of custard. I reckon that this could be due to the Malaysian rendition of custard always being a tad too sweet and tasting too much like condensed milk. I discovered in my time here that smooth, creamy custard can be extremely addictive and is often the perfect complement to dessert. So, while warm apple pie with a generous side of vanilla ice cream will always be the winning combination for me, I highly recommend giving the pie-custard pairing a go.

And yes, apple crumble pie does wonders for the muddled brain.

Orange-Lemon Shortbread Cookies

2011-04-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

Some time during the peak of the chocoholic's chocolate chunk cookie baking madness, I decided that we needed something, anything, to break the all-consuming chocolate cycle. I was craving something a bit lighter, something with a bit of acidity and zing to it.

I scouted around for something simple and quick to whip up and thought that lemon shortbread cookies sounded absolutely perfect.

Adapted from Debster's Lemon Shortbread Cookies Recipe

Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
2 cups sifted flour
zest of one lemon
zest of one orange
juice of one lemon
castor sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 325 degrees celcius.
Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer.
Add lemon juice, zest and flour. Mix well on low speed.
Drop cookie dough balls on an ungreased baking sheet.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until cookies are light brown
Sprinkle some castor sugar onto the tops of the cookies as soon as they are removed from the oven, while they are still soft.

Some of the comments about the original recipe involved the cookie being not lemony enough and because I really wanted something with a punch, I increased the amount of lemon zest and juice. After deciding that I would use the zest of two lemons, I discovered that we only had one lying around in the kitchen so I thought some orange rind would be a good substitute and it was - the orange zest gave the cookies a more well-rounded flavour. Sprinkling some sugar on top of the cookies while they were still soft let the sugar set a little - the sweetness of the slightly crunchy sugar was a lovely complement to the sharp, bold cookie.

Light, buttery, uplifting - perfect with a cup of tea.

So there we go, the antidote to too much chocolate - orange-lemon shortbread cookies.

Of dogs and horses

2011-03-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like the smell of fried onions coming from a hotdog stand - that intense, intoxicating, "oh-so-yummy' aroma accompanied by the equally tantalising sound of the onions sizzling on the hot grill. There's always a stand by the Palace Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue that makes me stop to entertain the idea of getting a hotdog no matter how full I am from a meal in Chinatown. I suppose that's great publicity for you.

While I've always managed to resist temptation with the Shaftesbury Avenue stall, munching on a hotdog piled high with sauteed onions and oozing brown sauce and ketchup seemed like just the right thing to do at the racecourse.

And so there we were, hotdogs in hand (the meat-lover uncharacteristically decided on fried noodles for some reason), squinting, cheering, soaking up the atmosphere.

I love how hotdogs are one of those comforting, universal things that seem right for any occasion - even a day at the racecourse.

Carluccio's Canary Wharf

2011-03-24T03:51:00.000-07:00

I suppose it was wishful thinking on our part - attempting to get a table at Jamie's Italian in Canary Wharf on a Friday night. Perhaps on any other occasion, we would have been accepting of the 30-40 minute wait for a table but on that particular Friday night, we were far too hungry to stand around waiting for our remote-control-like devices to beep. We decided to head to Carluccio's for our Italian fix instead.

Carluccio's Canary Wharf
Docklands
Reuters Plaza
London, E14 5AJ

The thing that strikes you first as you walk into Carluccio's is the feeling of warmth that greets you - the buzz of activity provides a lively atmosphere while still allowing you to enjoy a good conversation. This seems to be the general feel of all of the Carluccio's outlets that I've ever visited.

Penne Giardiniera - Pugliese penne with courgette, chilli and deep fried spinach balls with parmesan and garlic. I decided on this almost immediately, having enjoyed the dish tremendously at the Bicester Village branch. It was love at first bite then - the slight crunch of the spinach-parmesan-garlic balls offset by the soft courgette. While extremely similar to the Bicester Village rendition, the Penne Giardiniera in Canary Wharf didn't quite hit the spot. I cannot put my finger on what exactly was different about it, though. Perhaps bags and bags of shopping make all the difference.

Pasta con Funghi - egg pappardelle with a mix of shiitake, oyster, porcini and button mushrooms. Like the Penne Giardiniera, this dish was ordered based on our visit to the Bicester Village branch. I remember marvelling at the delightful mushroom flavour that was simultaneously strong and subtle.

Bistecca di bue con patate - 10oz bone in rib steak, chargrilled and served with rosemary potatoes and red pepper sauce. After some soul-searching, our meat-lover simply had to order the steak. While he enjoyed the red pepper sauce, he found the steak to be overdone.

Tiramisù - Savoiardi biscuits soaked in strong espresso coffee and coffee liqueur with mascarpone and chocolate. I've always had a very soft spot for tiramisu - the intense flavour of coffee, the creaminess of the mascarpone and the sponge that soaks it all up. Carluccio's does a very good version of this classic. It's definitely worth saving some space for.

For some reason, the Carluccio's in Canary Wharf didn't quite live up to expectations. It might have been the chaos that comes with a Friday night dinner service or simply that the quality of food isn't as good as the Bicester Village branch. Nevertheless, the restaurant is still worth a visit, especially if you stick to the pasta dishes and remember to end your meal with some tiramisu.

Cream Puffs

2011-03-18T13:53:00.000-07:00

My earliest cream puff memories involve trips to the neighbourhood bakery with my grandmother whenever she came to visit. We'd take a stroll down the street to see what the bakery had to offer for the day. If we were lucky, we'd come home with a dozen or so mini cream puffs - I absolutely loved every light, fluffy, custard-filled bit of those little treats.

I was always under the impression that making cream puffs would involve complicated techniques - the need to whip eggwhites a certain way or the need to get the oven temperature just right. On retrospect, it seems likely that I may have somehow managed to associate cream puffs with souffles. So when the housemate suggested that we make cream puffs, I immediately imagined us in full project mode - deciphering a complicated recipe, whipping countless eggwhites and fashioning some sort of make-shift baking device that we needed but didn't own. When I saw the recipe she had pulled up on our favourite recipe site, I couldn't have been more surprised. No crazy techniques, no complicated procedures - I'd say that making a batch of cream puffs would be easier than turning out a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

Based on Shellie Wendel's Cream Puffs Recipe

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 eggs

Custard powder
50g plain chocolate
Milk

Make custard as per instructions on the packaging (we used about 2 tablespoons of Bird's custard powder to make a pint of custard), adding the plain chocolate to the mixture.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
In a large pot, bring water and butter to a rolling boil. Stir in flour and salt until the mixture forms a ball. Transfer the dough to a large mixing bowl. Using a wooden spoon or stand mixer, beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto an ungreased baking sheet.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown. Centers should be dry.
When the shells are cool, either split and fill them with the custard mixture, or use a pastry bag to pipe the custard into the shells.

I have to admit, we did have to fashion a utensil that we needed but didn't own - a piping bag. We've come away having learnt that while a ziplock bag generally does the trick, it really isn't the cleanest tidiest way to go about it.

I marveled at how the bits of dough transformed into gorgeous, golden brown puffs in the oven, almost as if by magic.

Who would have thought - cream puffs, easy as ABC.

Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2011-03-06T04:36:00.000-08:00

It's one of those days - it's warm, the sun is out, the iPod has managed to pick just the right songs, buses and tubes seem to be arriving at exactly the right time and you've decided to ditch your packed lunch to enjoy the all-day breakfast at your favourite little cafe. Yes, it's one of those perfect spring days.

These chocolate chip cookies, while amazing on any day, are especially perfect for those not-so-perfect days. There's nothing like the smell of cookies in the oven to perk you up, even on the rainiest and gloomiest of London days. I stumbled upon this recipe after our resident chocoholic hinted (rather strongly) that he would really like my next baking session to involve chocolate chip cookies.

These cookies should come with a warning: CAUTION - HIGHLY ADDICTIVE.

Adapted from ELIZABETHBH's Best Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 cups dark chocolate chunks

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.
Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.
In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended.
Stir in the chocolate chunks by hand using a wooden spoon.
Drop cookie dough onto cookie sheet. Be sure to space cookie dough balls about 3 inches apart from each other.
Bake for 15 minutes, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

It was love at first bite for the chocoholic. After begging me to teach him how to make them, he's made at least one batch almost every night since I made the very first batch of cookies almost 2 weeks ago. I find that using chocolate chunks instead of chips gives you those wonderful melty pockets of chocolate that really give the cookies character. The chocoholic has experimented with different types of chocolate and we've come to the conclusion that nothing beats dark chocolate. Also, be sure not to overbake the cookies - it's soft and chewy that you're after, not rock-hard and crunchy.

Best eaten right out the oven, swapping stories with your housemates after a long day.

Amazing.

Banana and Carrot Cake

2011-02-26T12:59:00.000-08:00

"Can I come over to use your oven?"

Ju Vern spends her first crutch-less afternoon in our kitchen, determined to turn out a birthday-worthy banana-carrot cake after having hobbled her way through half of London with a backpack full of ingredients. I, unsurprisingly, couldn't think of a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

As a child, I never liked carrot cakes, often wondering why anyone would want to make a cake out of vegetables and not chocolate. I think it's one of those things that has grown on me, the same way fruitcake has - nowadays, I'd rarely say no to a slice of carrot cake, especially if it's topped with some of that delicious cream cheese frosting.

The chosen recipe that afternoon was one from the Waitrose website, the Banana and Carrot Cake Recipe, an incredibly simple recipe that gives you a beautifully moist cake and a cream cheese frosting that's so good you'd want to eat it with a spoon. The bananas give the cake a natural sweetness that complements the subtle flavour of the carrots wonderfully. We followed the recipe through and through, only swapping the walnut pieces for almond flakes as the supermarket had run out of walnut pieces. Definitely birthday-worthy - in fact, we couldn't help but shortchange the birthday boy a little by nicking a portion of the cake for ourselves.

I always love baking with company - there's nothing like the shared triumph of a successful venture.

Vanilla, Lemons, Apples and Spring.

2011-02-24T03:01:00.000-08:00

It's officially spring, or at least on some days it feels like it is and with the days getting warmer and sunshine becoming more evident, I'm all for embracing the lighter, fruitier cakes. I seem to have fallen into a sort of rhythm of late, needing to break the mid-week monotony with some after-dinner baking.

I think, much to the chagrin of my housemates, I spend far too much time trying to decide on what to bake - often going through page after page of recipes online before settling on something. I did, however, find a simple, basic vanilla cake recipe which is brilliant as a starting point for a fruit-fueled cake.

Taken from Anela's Lemon Cake with Lemon Filling and Lemon Butter Frosting recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1 1/4 cups white sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celcius and grease one 8 inch pan.
Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy before beating in the eggs one at a time and stiring in the vanilla.
Add flour mixture in alternately with milk, mixing until incorporated.
Pour batter into the prepared pans and bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out completely clean.

I love fiddling around with the recipes I stumble upon - a little modification here and there and wait to see what happens.

Adding the juice and finely grated zest of one lemon gives you a bright, zesty dessert while the addition of one apple, chopped finely, and a dash of mixed spice gives you a warm, moist apple cake that goes perfectly with some cool custard. It's important to keep in mind however, that adding ingredients to the basic recipe does change its cooking time a little. For example, the denser apple cake would need about 50 minutes in the oven. Relying on the 'skewer test' (rather than just the timer) always works for me and if you're afraid that the top of the cake would brown just a tad too much, cover the top of the pan with some foil once you've achieve the desired shade of brown.

Happy experimenting!

Chicago Rib Shack

2011-02-16T08:54:00.000-08:00

An hour and a half before dinner and I am sitting at the Slug & Lettuce, nursing a mug of hot, fruity, ginseng tea, trying to resist the urge to dig into the oversized sharing platter in front of me. I try to focus on the conversation at hand as my friend wolfs down his dinner Willpower, I tell myself - it would all be worth the wait.

Chicago Rib Shack
145 Knightsbridge,
Knightsbridge,
London,
SW1X 7PA

I am beyond hungry by the time I arrive at the Rib Shack and every minute spent waiting for the rest of the party to arrive feels like an eternity. A bright, neon pink "Exhipigtion" featuring a full-length display of minature pigs greets me as I walk in and I immediately feel as if I have been transported to the television stereotype of an American joint.

Milkshakes and smoothies to keep us happy while they work their magic on those ribs. Choices range from the malty, chocolatey classics like the Oreo milkshake to lighter, fruitier alternatives like this banana-based smoothie that Sapna is enjoying.

The Rib Shack Sampler - a combination of baby back, St. Louis and beef ribs, perfect for when you absolutely cannot decide on which type to order. I settled on a half rack of baby back ribs - served with corn on the cob and coleslaw, the ribs were the type you'd want to savour slowly, taking time to lick the juices off your fingers.

The Big 'C' - tender pulled pork wrapped in smoked bacon on mashed sweet potato with a spicy BBQ sauce. This came highly recommended and it did not disappoint. The generous portion of creamy mashed sweet potato was the perfect complement to the tender, (sinfully indulgent) flavourful pulled pork and smoked bacon.

Organic Buffalo Chicken Wings - chicken wings marinated and coated with spicy hot sauce (there is also a choice of sweet BBQ sauce) and served with blue cheese sauce and celery.

The Onion Loaf - deep fried battered onion rings. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, both in terms of size and flavour. The loaf was more than enough for our hungry party of 7 and the battered onion bits tasted a lot less like your conventional Burger King onion rings and more like the Malaysian version of deep fried onions.

We ordered a host of sides, far far too much in fact. We definitely underestimated the portion sizes. Some noteworthy sides include the sweet potato wedges and smoked butter mash. I would recommend that you stay away from the cream spinach which was disappointingly bland and had a less than pleasant texture. We were told that it's worth keeping a little section of your stomach empty for dessert but this time around, despite being very, very tempted by the thought of something warm and chocolatey to end the meal, we were absolutely stuffed. You know how they say that there's always room for dessert? They lied.

Ribs - good. Portions - huge. The 50% off offer on Mondays? - now, that's the best part. You can take advantage of some pretty good offers if you book ahead: 50% off on Mondays, 33% off on Tuesdays and 25% off on Wednesdays. I'd say that you'd definitely get your money's worth with the special offers but perhaps not too much without them.

Bone Appetite! Kuhan, all bibbed up and ready to go.

Holiday Foodsteps: Crusing Through

2011-02-11T09:42:00.000-08:00

They say that when you go on a cruise, you get fed all day, everyday and they weren't kidding. It starts early with breakfast - brought to your cabin, served at a restaurant, self-served at the buffet line or if you're feeling particularly hungry, all of the above.

Lunch often means food that reflects cuisine from the nearest docking country or if at sea, some rather quirky themes.

Oktoberfest in January.

Ah, but it's dinnertime that really lets you indulge - 7 course meals at one of the ships fine dining restaurants for 11 nights, definitely something that's hard to beat.

We walk into the restaurant on our very first night and get shown to our table, a lovely booth in a rather private corner. With a huge smile, our head waiter, Jose, welcomes us and places a large menu in front of each of us - we are bewildered at the thought of 7 courses and think that there must be something about that menu that we have failed to fully understand.

Two nights in and we finally accept the concept of it all (yes, you can actually have every single course of the menu) and a comfortable routine begins - the friendly conversation with the waiters, the anticipation of the night's choices and dipping delicious bits of bread in a balsamic vinegar-olive oil concoction while waiting for appetisers to be served.

Clockwise from top left: tuna carpaccio; shrimp salad; prosciutto with melon pearls; moorhen on a puff pastry wafer

Clockwise from top left: a savoury flan; gratinated escargot bourguignon; gratinated shrimp and scallops; crispy swordfish

If we've had a full day out and are in need of some serious refueling or if there's simply something that looks too interesting to pass up, the appetisers would be followed by soup and pasta to share.

Clam linguini; tomato-based tortellini

It's all about pacing yourself because ultimately, you wouldn't want to spoil your appetite before your main course arrives.

Clockwise from top left: scorpion fish with creamy lettuce; fish topped with fried fennel, roasted whole seabream, steak

Duck a l'orange; roast pheasant

One of the mains that really stood out for me, roast lamb shank - flavourful, meltingly tender and deliciously comforting.

When I think about dinnertime on the ship, my memories of well-cooked dishes and beautiful presentation are peppered with little moments like dancing around the restaurant with our head waiter and cheering on the waiters as they bust a groove to "Volare" in between courses - dinner was not just about about food, it was a complete experience.

The customary cheese course before we went on to our favourite part of the meal - dessert.

With a desserts that would tickle anyones fancy available each evening, this is when the tough choices have to be made.

Clockwise from top left: rum baba, millefuille with mascarpone cream; strawberry mouse cake; frangipani flan with pistachio sauce

Italian cream cake to put everyone in the celebratory mood.

Lemon delice - perhaps my favourite dessert of all. On our very last night on the ship, I decided to leave the dessert-picking to Jose who very cleverly chose this delightful pairing of shortcrust pastry and that refreshingly tart lemon cream.

You know you're spoilt when you expect a round of ice cream after dessert. What started out as a lovely surprise at the end of one meal quickly became part of the routine and oh, how we looked forward to our ice cream! Creamy, smooth and with delicious flavours, this was the life.

It's a great way to travel - knowing that after a day out, you'd come back to some familiarity, great service and of course, good food. Now that's what I call a holiday.

A Seafood-y New Year

2011-02-09T08:55:00.000-08:00

"You know, this might be the last year we'd all be together, trying to do something crazy to feel festive"

It's true, that, and while it means that we'd all be home with our families, the thought still leaves me just a little bit sad. We've had our share of kitchen triumphs and misadventures (the crab shower of 2010!) and in a way, it's been the 'I'm going to try to do the way my mum does it' moments that have been the greatest source of entertainment.

This year, after taking the easy way out with dinner at a restaurant on the eve of the Rabbit Year, we went down the relatively easy path of making everyone cook their own meal for the customary Festive Cookout at No. 42. With the difficult bits out of the way pretty quickly (it does help that the boys have oyster shucking down to a science by now), all that was left to do was to gather around our pots of bubbling soup to have round after round of sweet, fresh seafood.

"Nian Nian You Yu" (May there be abundance year after year)

You probably would have guessed from the pictures that we took another trip to Billingsgate Market to stock up for the occasion so it would come as no surprise that we did in fact have lots and lots of fish to go around.

We attempted two types of soup; one a simple broth of chicken, prawn shells and Chinese cabbage, left to simmer over the stove for the most part of the evening and the other a Korean-hotpot inspired kimchi, chicken and prawn broth. The best thing about a steamboat meal is how the flavours of the ingredients slowly get infused into the broth as the meal goes on, leaving you with just the most amazing soup at the end of it all.

Little tidbits from the Chinese New Year care package - those addictive sugar-coated twisty biscuits and peanut brittle.

In that slightly cheesy, cliched sort of way, the Forever Friends Madeira sponge summed it all up for us. I hope that wherever you may have been over the festive season, you had wonderful people to share the festivities with.

I know I did.

Chinese New Year On a Boat

2011-02-08T09:30:00.000-08:00

We've spent a whole week indulging in the name of Chinese New Year - yes, I love how festivals give you the excuse to (over) indulge. This would mark my third Chinese New Year away from home and while it definitely doesn't get any easier in terms of feeling like you're missing out on everything that's going on back home, the advent of technology (those wonderful camera-equipped Blackberry phones) has really helped made me feel as if I was part of it all somehow.

So while my family gathered in Kemaman for Reunion Lunch, we decided that we'd have our version of the Reunion Dinner at our favourite floating restaurant this year.

The Lotus Chinese Floating Restaurant
5 Baltimore Walk,
Poplar,
London, E14 9FB
Tel: 020 7515 6445,020 7515 6445
Fax: 020 7515 6446
Email: lotus@lotusfloating.co.uk

Roast Duck

Kangkung Belacan. Water spinach fried with spicy shrimp paste - a little on the mild side but definitely something to satisfy the Malaysian tastebuds.

We had never had anything other than dim sum on previous visits to Lotus and while I would still pick dim sum over anything else at the restaurant given the choice, we came away from the meal content and satisfied. Like with the dim sum, copious amounts of water is was not needed after the meal, a side-effect of many Chinese restaurants, and portions were a good size. Other note-worthy dishes include the salt-baked chicken, steamed eel and braised mushrooms.

Complementary "Nian Gao", taken literally to mean "a higher year", the cherry on top of the cake. Nothing like some fried sticky, sweet rice cakes to welcome the new year.

Us, all decked out in red.

If there's an occasion that warrants two visits to Lotus in a week, it's Chinese New Year. The best way to catch up with your singing buddies over the festive season? Story-swapping over delicious dim sum on a Sunday afternoon.

Clockwise from top left: Egg tarts, steamed custard buns, fried prawn dumplings, glutinous rice in lotus leaves.

The restaurant does some lovely renditions of dim sum classics like pork and prawn dumplings as well as porridge and custard buns. What I really look forward to on each visit, however, are the less conventional dishes like their cheung fun-wrapped fried dough-wrapped prawns and mushroom-filled fried bean curd rolls.

Nicole, sinking her teeth into one of those crispy beancurd rolls that I love so much.

I've always thought of dim sum as the perfect social meal - food comes in bite-sized portions and there's plenty of sharing to do. With food that has never let us down, a good selection of dishes, lovely views and the novelty of eating on a boat, I daresay that this would be my go-to for dim sum in London.

I hope that you've been enjoying welcoming the Year of the Rabbit as much as I have. Here's to a happy, prosperous year ahead!

Holiday Foodsteps: St. Cruz de Tenerife

2011-02-02T08:21:00.000-08:00

St. Cruz de Tenerife is like a dream - gorgeous mountains, palm trees, sidewalk cafes and winter temperatures of 27 degrees celcius. Yes, extremely difficult to beat. We spend our time wandering around the small town centre, just a short (well marked) way from the marina. The town is a mix of new and old - on one hand, a market square that offers a lovely selection of fresh produce and on the other, a chic shopping area where we happily indulge in some retail therapy.

The market square is a celebration of colours, with impressive displays of fresh fruit and vegetables. Papayas larger than rugby balls - it took all of my reserve not to bring one back onto the ship with me.

Racks of spices that range from exotic to medicinal.

Of course, Spain would not be Spain without the ham.

At some point during our time at the market, faced with the many freshly baked pastries on display, Sapna and I rather foolishly think that we had found torrijas, those remarkable doughnuts that we had in Madrid. Alas, it was wishful thinking on our part as we discovered that we had really just purchased a custard-filled doughnut.

We wanted to move away from the usual Spanish tapas to see what else the island could offer - perhaps not exactly the best decision. We ended up in what (after settling down and placing our orders) appeared to be a fast food outlet of some sort that probably didn't quite provide a good representation of Tenerifian cuisine.

My starter - you guessed it, mushroom and scrambled eggs on toast. We had a good laugh about this as this would really be a typical lunchtime dish for me back in London.

Cuban Rice - rice with a fried banana, chips, tomato sauce and two runny eggs.

Crispy calamari with an interesting coleslaw-mash potato side.

Swordfish for the pescatarian.

So, another one of those life lessons:
Do not accidentally walk into a fast food outlet, even if rather cleverly disguised, just because "it was there".

Less than great choices aside, I have nothing but happy, sun-filled memories of St. Cruz de Tenerife.

Holiday Foodsteps: Rome, the Second Time Around

2011-01-30T06:54:00.000-08:00

We stepped off the train at the St. Peter's Square Station, drowsy, bleary eyed, in need of a pick-me-up and with an embarrasing lack of enthusiasm for the very last stop of the holiday, Rome. We wandered through the Vatican City trying to drink in the sights but mostly looking out for a coffee stop.

It's funny how the best way to enjoy something that looks too pretty to eat is to get downright messy.

There's something about the aroma of Italian coffee that says "Good morning!". A cup of strong, deliciously flavourful coffee each and a delightful cream-filled pastry to share left us feeling brand new and ready to take on Rome.

When you have less than a day to explore one of the most historical cities in the world, you know that a good strategy is in order. We targeted the most iconic of spots - and yes, that included Gelataria Giolitti.

Giolitti
Via degli Uffici del Vicario, 40
00186 Rome, Italy
066 991243

Underground: Spagna

Open Daily 7am-2am

You know it's a good holiday when you're standing out in the sunshine, sunglasses perched atop your head, digging into a cup of gelato from a gelateria that has seen the likes of Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. All that, and the fact that it's the middle of winter.

Tough choices await at Giolitti, with numerous flavours to pick from. As always, I like to leave these decisions to the people who know best, the friendly people behind the counter and I must say, it's a strategy that has never let me down - the recommended marrons glacés (glazed chestnuts) was divine, even if our limited Italian meant that we couldn't quite identify what flavour it was then. I would also recommend the dark chocolate, bittersweet and a good foil to the other sweeter flavours. The quaint interior of the gelateria is a throwback to days gone by and so is the rather strange payment system of pre-purchasing an empty cup (or cone) at the cashier before heading to the ice cream display counter. Still, the best way to enjoy some good gelato is in the sun, surrounded by the all gorgeous architecture that Rome has to offer.

Rome, twice in a year - I'm a lucky, lucky girl.

Holiday Foodsteps: Funchal

2011-01-24T08:57:00.000-08:00

This is what happens when you book a holiday during the exam season - chances are (well, for us, anyway), you wouldn't have had time to put in the approriate amount of research into the places you would be visitng. We knew close to nothing about Funchal except that it was named after fennel and that fish and bananas, no matter how unconventional it sounded at that point, was a popular local dish.

The weather wasn't promising upon arrival - slightly overcast and significantly gloomier than any of the other ports that we docked at throughout the cruise. What it lacked weather-wise, however, was more than made up for by the food and the people. A quick chat about food with our friendly cab-driver-tourguide confirmed what we had read about fish and bananas so we knew what we would be on the hunt for come lunchtime.

Espada and bananas - essentially battered black scabbard, a fish that (after some post-holiday googling) is definitive of Madeira cooking, with fried bananas. The dish is simple, relying very much on the freshness of the ingredients. Fresh fish and sweet, deliciously ripe bananas, I'm really not sure how we've only been introduced to this pairing now.

Also ordered upon recommendation by the cab-driver-tourguide, espetada - grilled skewered salted beef cubes. Yes, we did notice that the two dishes had incredibly similar names. Served with a healthy portion of fresh salad, the beef-enthusiasts at the table gave the dish a thumbs up.

After discovering that Funchal was a wine-producing region and being shown the wineries, our pick of wine for the meal seemed very appropriate - a lovely complement to the food.

No amount of research can beat actually being there in person and I have come away knowing not just about the incredible volume of banana crops that Funchal has, or that it is home to Cristiano Ronaldo or that it has the second highest cliff in the world - I have come away having seen the lush greenery that is Funchal as well as met the people who can put a smile on your face despite the pouring rain.

Holiday Foodsteps: Casablanca

2011-01-23T09:20:00.000-08:00

I have been away at sea, being absolutely spoilt for 12 days, living as if it was summer and leaving the real world behind for a little while. New landscapes, new faces and of course lots and lots of food.

"I'd imagine it to be colourful, and to smell like spices cooking"
"Definitely colourful, and drapey"

En route to Casablanca, we wondered aloud what it would be like. Most travel sites talk endlessly about the romance that is Casablanca, perhaps more because of the movie than anything else. What we knew for sure, however, was that we simply could not leave without sitting down to a tagine meal.

We were drawn to them very early in the day, as we bargain-hunted our way through the Old Medina Bazaar - rows of clay pots on hot stoves that look as if they were wearing party hats. Despite the language barrier, we very quickly got our point across: We wanted tagine, every sort that they had.

A generous serving of bread, crusty but soft, and four portions of lentils quickly made their way to our paper-lined table. Little complements to what was to come.

What caught me by surprise was how light everything was. I suppose somewhere at the back of my mind, I had imagined the little pots to contain thick lamb or chicken stew. Instead, what we got was meat, potatoes and a mix of vegetables cooked in a delightful broth-like gravy.

The crowd favourite - the fish tagine. Cooked a little differently from the lamb and chicken, this one reminded me of a Nyonya-style gulai tumis but with the zing coming from the more Mediterrenean influences of olives and tomatoes.

It would come as no surprise that we wanted more of the fish tagine. Sadly, they had run out of it but the kind, kind owner of the restaurant who probably thought we wanted more fish, regardless of how it was cooked, brought us a plate of fried fish. All shapes, all sizes and all textures, the fish was sweet and addictive the way only fresh fish can be. While not the fish tagine that we had hoped for, we still happily cleaned off the plate before ending the meal with a pot of mint tea.

We ventured out of Old Medina in search for the Moroccan almond pastries that we'd heard and read so much about, stopping at every shop that looked remotely like a bakery to try our luck. After a few failed attempts (in which a kind local thought we wanted coconut cookies and upon finding out that we wanted something involving nuts, took us to a shop selling nuts intead), we hit the jackpot.

With platters and platters of all sorts of almond pastries on display, we were spoilt for choice. We thought it would be best to leave the decision-making to the woman in charge of packing up the goodies with us only making sure she included the ones we thought called out to us. We left the patisserie with a whole box of pastries for the house and a little paper bag to tide us over. I would call them the Moroccan version of baklava - some a little more nutty than others, some crunchy, some soft, some with a syrup coating but all hinting of marzipan. My favourite was probably the almond briouat - almond paste wrapped in fillo pastry, fried and dipped in honey.

French influences are strong in Casablanca, from it's mix of languages to the croissants and mille-feuille slices that are on display in the patisseries.

So yes, Casablanca is romantic. Not in the conventional lets-fall-in-love manner but in that dusty, smoky, colourful, chaotic and slightly mysterious sort of way. We were all right with how we had each imagined it to be, even the drapey bit.

Bidding Casablanca goodbye at sunset.

From home, with love

2011-01-06T13:25:00.000-08:00

"Is this your annual Chinese New Year package?"

The housemates filter into the room this morning to find me peering into a large box, bubble wrap, newspapers and brown paper strewn across the room. Yes, the annual Chinese New Year care package.

This is my version of Christmas morning - eagerly tearing into the package to see what my parents have decided to include in this year's installment. Oh, how I love a good surprise!

Cookies (if you could call them that) galore.

As always, the contents of the care package are somewhat random and I can almost imagine my family picking up little tidbits here and there to build the package. I suppose, in a way, most things are atypical - none of the usual packets of curry powder or quick sauces. Instead, one would find munchies that remind me of my childhood and of course, the little things that belong on the cookie table during Chinese New Year.

Sometimes I forget how well my family knows me.

Care packages - don't you just love them?

Here's to a nice, round year

2011-01-05T06:11:00.000-08:00

Just before the Christmas-New Year week rolled around, we had another reason to celebrate - the Dongzhi or Winter Solstice Festival. As a kid, my favourite part of the festival was the making of the glutinous rice balls. Always done just before bedtime the night before, we would gather in the kitchen, large round stainless steel dishes laid out, and proceed to shape the balls out of different coloured rice flour.

"Make sure it's nice and round!"

I remember my mum telling us how the shape of the ball would signify the coming year, and how we would want the new year to have a good beginning and end, nice and complete, a beautiful full circle.

I always had plain, fillingless rice balls growing up and was only introduced to the filled ones a little later in life. The balls, nicely arranged on the stainless steel dishes, would be placed into the refrigerator until the next morning when I would wake up to the delicious aroma of ginger and pandan leaves simmering in the kitchen. Then, gathered in the kitchen once again, we'd dig into our bowls of delighfully soft and sweet rice balls, picking out the ones we think we made.

This year, in the midst of exam preperations and Moroccan visa issues, I decided that we absolutely couldn't do without those glutinous rice balls. We cheated a little by picking up frozen ones at the Oriental Supermarket but kept a little of home by cooking them in the sweet ginger-pandan syrup we all know and love.

"For good luck", I told my housemates, as I served up the rice balls to each one of them.

We had many, many servings of glutinous rice balls that day - peanut filled and black sesame filled. 2011 looks to be a big year - and I'm definitely hoping it would be a nice, round one.

Happy 2011!

2011-01-01T06:26:00.000-08:00

2010 has been a year of adventure, of new discoveries and of life lessons. As we sat around the table last night, sharing a huge Lebanese meal, I couldn't think of a more appropriate way to give 2010 a good send-off - good food with the people who made my 2010.

Here's to an amazing 2011 - to more culinary adventures and many, many more stories to share.

A Frankie & Benny's Christmas

2010-12-29T15:18:00.000-08:00

We started off dreaming big - grand plans to roast a whole turkey (after discovering that we had purchased a turkey crown and not an entire turkey last year) and much talk about hitting the supermarkets to load up on the Christmas goodies. Ah yes, such dreamers we were. The reality of studying for exams started setting in a few days before Christmas and we realised that perhaps spending the day in the kitchen whipping up Christmas Eve dinner wasn't such a good idea afterall. Some web-browsing and a few phonecalls later, we ended up with a dinner reservation at Frankie & Benny's, one of the cheaper options available for Christmas Eve.

Frankie & Benny's, Surrey Quays
The Mast Leisure Park
Surrey Quays Road London
SE16 2XU

Frankie & Benny's was running a special Christmas Menu with three courses for GBP 17.95. With everything pre-ordered, we were looking forward to spending an evening away from the books.

BBQ Chilli Wings; Onion and Cider Soup;

To kick off the night, I opted to start with the onion and cider soup - creamy, hearty, slightly tangy and extremely satisfying. Some other appetisers that made an appearance that night were the chicken and sage pate and breaded camembert.

The most popular picks for the main course - Frankie's Festive Turkey Dinner; Slow-roasted Short Rib; Salmon Fishcakes

White Chocolate Brownie Trifle; Sticky Toffee Pancakes

I have to admit, I was feeling pretty stuffed after the main course but you know what they say about dessert - there's always, always room for it. I loved every sweet, sticky, crunchy spoonful of my pancakes and by the looks of it, the brownie trifle was quite a hit as well.

A human cracker-pulling chain, far too much food, good company, plenty of story-swapping and no cleaning up after - just the Christmas Eve that we needed. I suppose sometimes it's best to leave it to the professionals.

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas.

Christmas Bars

2010-12-25T13:36:00.000-08:00

Inspired by another Great Cookie Swap recipe on Serious Eats, these were quick to make, very quickly polished off as well.

Recipe adapted from Serious Eats' Toffee Bars

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp mixed spice
1 cup soft butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup chocolate chunks, a mix of dark cooking chocolate and Cadbury's Fruit & Nut
1 cup chopped mixed nuts and raisins
Desiccated coconut

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius and grease a 9x9 baking tin
Cream butter, sugar, vanilla and yolk
Mix in mixed spice with flour and combine with the butter, sugar, vanilla and yolk mixture.
Spread evenly on the bottom of the baking tin and pop into the oven for 20-25 minutes or until a light golden brown.
Remove from the oven and sprinkle with chocolate chunks, mixed nuts, raisins and desiccated coconut.
Return to the oven for 5 minutes to melt the chocolate.
Remove from the oven, spread chocolate and sprinkle with more desiccated coconut

The lightly spiced bottom half of the bars harden slightly upon cooling, so you get a little bit of bite to go with the decadent chocolate-nut-coconut topping. I initially wanted to make them on Christmas eve, just so we'd have some leftover treats on Christmas day but I simply had to give in to temptation so we had Christmas Bars two days before Christmas and they were completely gone by lunchtime on Christmas Eve.

So much for restraint.

Though it's been said many times, many ways,
Merry Christmas to you.

I hope you have a fantastic one.

Frosty the Gingerbread Man.

2010-12-23T11:25:00.000-08:00

I'm a religious reader of Serious Eats, a little bedtime reading if you could call it that and absolutely love that they have put up recipes for the Great Cookie Swap just in time for some Christmas baking. This will be the first of a few attempts to recreate the yummy-ness that is the Cookie Swap.

I'm an addict - hopelessly addicted to the smell of something baking in the oven, the delicious combination of butter and sugar, chocolate and spices. I've been on a bit of a baking spree lately, not just because I constantly need a break from studying but also because I have an overwhelming need to fill the house with the smell of Christmas.

When I saw the recipe for Spicy Gingerbread Cut-outs on the Serious Eats, I knew I had to make a batch because really, what's Christmas without some gingerbread?

I tweaked the recipe very slightly by using honey instead of molasses (1/4 cup honey as a substitute for 1/2 cup molasses) simply because I didn't have any. Honey works perfectly with the recipe, changing only the colour and texture of the end product very slightly. I also decided to top the cookies of with some nuts.

The end result - a lovely spicy, salty, chewy cookie from what is probably one of my favourite baking recipes so far.

Ginger, cinnamon and spices - it's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas.

Grill Kabilla

2010-12-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

We trudged out in the snow on a Sunday afternoon with a little slipping and sliding along the way, in search of lunch. We thought it would be about time we paid Lahore a visit since quite a few people have brought it up whenever it comes up in conversations that we live just off Commercial Road. Perhaps it was fate that stepped in that Sunday afternoon - too long a wait for a bus, pavements that were a little too slippery for our own good and the fact that Lahore 2 was closed. On the verge of giving up, we stumbled upon Grill Kabilla - bright, warm and with the 50%-off posters cheerfully displayed, we didn't need any convincing.

Grill Kabilla
Commercial Road
Nearest bus stop: Watney Market

Hungry and glad to be out of the cold, we quickly got down to ordering. (Oh, the joys of ordering knowing that everything on the menu is half price!)

Sag Paneer, my must-have at any Northern Indian restaurant. Creamy, with chunks of paneer, this version had a very slight sour twist to it.

Lamb curry - tender pieces of lamb in a curry that was flavourful and had just the right amount of kick. This provided a nice balance to the milder, less spicy Abdul's Butter Chicken.

From the tandoori menu, grilled fish with onions and bell peppers. We watched from our table as they pulled out a skewer of fish, onions and peppers from the tandoor, with the onions slightly caramelised and the fish a lovely smokey flavour.

Vegetable dumplings in yogurt. For our second vegetable dish, we decided to go down the path less taken (for us, anyway). I have to admit that for awhile before we were served, I had visions of delicate, Chinese-style wantans in a creamy yogurt sauce. I suppose you simply cannot take the Chinese out of a girl and yes, what we were actually served made a lot more sense. The expert among us remarked that the dish is usually a lighter colour, something a bit closer to the natural colour of yogurt. I did quite enjoy it however, and would order it again.

One of our three naan selections that day, the onion naan. The perfect complement to all things spicy and flavourful.

With the 50%-off signs cheering us on, we decided to go for a whole jug of mango lassi. Deliciously thick and creamy, it felt almost like dessert.

While not as good as Mirch Masala, the food at Grill Kabilla is still pretty satisfying, particlarly if you get everything at half price. I love a meal with variety and when you can get variety like this for less than 21 pounds in total, I'd say it's a pretty good deal. The servings are rather small, however, and I wouldn't think that there would be good value for money without the half price promotion.

My advice? Get there while the promotion is still going. While it doesn't say when the 'Opening Promotion' will last until, it may be worth trying your luck if you happen to be along Commercial Road.

Curry and spice - that's what you need to chase the winter blues away.

A Starbucks Christmas

2010-12-17T14:15:00.000-08:00

'Tis the season for the Christmas coffees and I think that Starbucks serves up the yummiest ones around. I remember being very much amused when the usual coffee outlets started advertising their Christmas-inspired beverages in my very first year in London - I suppose coming from Malaysia, it never occured to me that at this time of year, anything and everything can embrace the Christmas spirit.

This time around, Starbucks has done away with the Dark Cherry Mocha as we've been introduced to the Peppermint Mocha. I have to say, I'm glad we were introduced - the peppermint-chocolate pairing is a classic one and the bitterness of the coffee complements it perfectly. The other usual suspects are around for the holiday season as well - the Gingerbread Latte and the Toffee Nut Latte, both equally delicious. Oh, the choices one must make! The only Christmas beverage that I have yet to try involves eggnog and while I cannot comment from personal experience, I have been told to stick to the other three.

A hot drink, warmth, some light music and a comforting background din - it's difficult to resist walking into Starbucks (or any of the other coffee outlets for that matter) during the gloomy winter months. I've always loved the smell of coffee that hits you as you walk into a Starbucks outlet, how it invites you in and envelopes you - add a dash of Christmas spices to the mix and you've got a winning combination.

Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland

2010-12-12T08:57:00.000-08:00

The first sign that Christmas is approaching is the sudden appearance of the Christmas-inspired coffees but it's not until you head on to the Winter Wonderland over at Hyde Park that you know for sure that Christmas is on its way. It's a lot bigger this year, more rides, more stalls and a circus to top it all off. They've kept the fundamental idea - German Market, ice rink, rides and general happiness. It still gives you that familiar feeling, the feeling that just for a couple of hours, you can fully unleash the kid at heart.

The booth that I was on the lookout for - the one with the gingerbread hearts and candied nuts. I think after a couple of years, you start recognising some of the faces behind the counter and this one, I definitely recognised. Nothing like taking a stroll around the fairgrounds with a bag of candied nuts in one hand and a bag of gingerbread squares in the other.

We were missing Spain a tiny bit so when we saw Churros, we knew we had to have some.

Even Jamie Oliver decided to leave his mark at the Winter Wonderland this year. Food, and a little area where you can decorate your very own gingerbread man.

One simply cannot leave the Winter Wonderland without having had a round of Bratwurst. Topped with sauerkraut and settled in nicely in a roll, it's definitely not easy to just walk away from this one - not when one can hear the sizzle of the bratwurst cooking on the grill. Bratwurst, a cup of mulled wine or German beer and a space by one of the wooden barrels and you're set.

Sweets, for kids of all ages.

Sure, everything's just a tiny bit more expensive at the Winter Wonderland but with the sound of children (and adults) gleefully (and sometimes not so gleefully) screaming, the smell of candied nuts and roast pork, the bright lights, the elves and the familiar music, you cannot help but forgive it. In fact, you'll find yourself soaking up the Christmas spirit with a silly grin on your face.

AhKing Bar & Restaurant

2010-12-04T03:52:00.000-08:00

There are not very many options when it comes to brunch on a Sunday morning in central London. We stumbled out of the flat into the dreary weather, eyes still a little bleary and voices not completely recovered from the Goo Goo Dolls concert, to find that unlike us, the rest of London was mostly still asleep. We finally decided on AhKing after a quick call to the restaurant to make sure that it was open (Oh, the joys of mobile internet!).

AhKing Bar & Restaruant
31-33 Bloomsbury Way
London
WC1A 2SA
Tel: 020 7404 8359
Open Daily: 11 am - 11 pm

We resisted temptation and decided that a hotpot meal would be far too much for the both of us, even if it seemed perfect for the weather. Instead, we opted for the set lunch - a choice of a main meal with either sweet corn soup or the soup of the day.

Seafood Loh Mein

My pick - Roast duck and rice (although, to be fair, what I really asked for was roast duck and noodles but when you're that hungry on a Saturday morning, you just take whatever comes your way). While the duck couldn't rival the more well-known Bayswater versions, it was good enough. I also really appreciated the side of vegetables that came with it.

The soup of the day - carrot and preserved vegetables, just the thing for a gloomy day.

With pretty good food, decent prices and a student discount, I feel like I really should have been introduced to AhKing a lot earlier. I suppose it's a case of it being better late than never.

The 100th Post: Baked tuna cutlets

2010-11-18T02:14:00.000-08:00

I fell in love with fish cutlets over the summer while at a family friend's dinner party -head over heels in love. Served initially as an appetiser, it soon became part of the main course as I couldn't help but make multiple trips back to the kitchen for more. I had never known fish cutlets to be so addictive. At the end of the night, after rather sheepishly admitting how many I had eaten, I realised that I couldn't leave without getting the recipe. When Deepavali came around this year, I knew that I had to give the recipe a go, but using canned tuna instead of fresh fish.

Ingredients:
Tuna in brine, 5 185g cans
8-9 (depending on size) potatoes
3 large onions, chopped
Ginger, finely chopped
Chilli, chopped
Coriander leaves
Mustard seeds
Garam masala
Curry powder
Chilli powder
Fennel seeds
Fenugreek
Soy sauce
Salt
Pepper
2 eggs
Breadcrumbs

Boil the potatoes until soft and make a mash out of them.
Pre-heat the oven at about 180 degrees celcius. Line a baking tray with foil and drizzle some oil onto the foil.
Saute the onions, chilli, ginger and spices (except the coriander leaves) until the onions are soft and the spices fragrant. Add the tuna into the mixture together with the rest of the seasoning and allow to cook. This is where discretion becomes key - I would suggest adding the chilli powder, curry powder, garam masala and soy sauce a little at a time.
Take the tuna mixture off the stove and combine with the potatoes and coriander leaves.
Add the beaten eggs into the mixture and mix well.
Form small patties out of the mixture and roll the patties around in the breadcrumbs before placing them onto the baking tray. I personally like the patties to be on the thinner side as they crisp up quicker.
Place into the oven for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown.

While most fish cutlet recipes call for deep frying, I decided to go down the healthier (and easier) path by popping them into the oven instead. To cater to the vegetarian diners that night, I made a vegetarian version by omitting the tuna and just using potatoes as the base.

It definitely helps when you've got a spare potato 'masher' in the house.

Deepavali at No. 42

2010-11-11T15:09:00.000-08:00

You know how much we love our festivals and special occasions, especially when they give us the excuse to have a cookout. No matter how hard we try, we always seem to go just a tiny bit overboard with the amount of food - I daresay it's really a subconscious choice to do so since it means not having to worry about the next couple of meals. Ah yes, the joys of waking up to a buffet.

Our excuse this time? Deepavali - possibly the most deliciously aromatic of all festivals.

What started out as something small turned into quite the operation when our lack of foresight in terms of groceries turned into a 'let's see how much we can pile into this shopping cart!' last-minute spree. Needless to say, the kitchen was in a bit of a frenzy as we realised how much we had to cook and how little time we actually had. Clad in your bathrobe with your head in the oven while the first of your guests arrive - not exactly the look one would be going for.

The Deepavali must-have, chicken curry

Indian-style cauliflower and potatoes

Spicy tomato chicken

Spinach and cottage cheese - the absolutely divine sag paneer that was the only dish that didn't make it to the next day.

Potato puffs and tuna cutlets

To complement everything, vegetarian biryani.

I've probably said this countless times but the thing I love most about Indian cuisine is how the flavours are always so robust. As someone who is a lot more confident cooking with oyster sauce and soy sauce than say, mustard seeds or garam masala, cooking with the housemates can be quite the educational experience in terms of spices and new flavours.

Of course, the joy isn't simply in the cooking but in the sharing of a meal with good company. Conversations, failed attempts at ice cream making, laughter, chocolate that wouldn't melt, sparklers and far too much eating - oh yes, we were more than content.

I hope you had a delicious Deepavali too.

For the bittersweet tooth: a quick tiramisu dessert

2010-11-06T14:17:00.000-07:00

The new housemate is quite the happy cook, and when he announced one afternoon that he was going to make "a little treat for the house", needless to say, the house became quite the happy house as well.

With a prep time of about 20 minutes, this is the ideal student recipe and absolutely perfect for potlucks.

Ingredients:
300 ml double cream
300 ml cream cheese
Trifle sponge
300 ml black coffee
50 g sugar
Cocoa powder
(optional) Kahlua or Amaretto, to taste

Whip the double cream, cream cheese, sugar, liqueur and half of the coffee until smooth.
Line a baking tray or dish with clingfilm and arrange the trifle sponge to form the base.
Pour the remaining coffee evenly over the trifle sponge before spooning the creamy mixture onto the base.
Sprinkle some cocoa powder over the top and pop into the the fridge for at least 45 minutes to allow the dessert to set.

The result is a satisfying, creamy, coffee-infused dessert. It's one of those desserts that tastes better the longer it is kept as the flavours take time to get fully soaked up by the sweet sponge.

I've always been a fan of the quick and simple recipes - this one is definitely a keeper and a crowd pleaser.

Tiramisu

Stuffed Courgettes

2010-11-03T05:39:00.000-07:00

"What in the world am I going to do with these courgettes?"

On a whim. Yes, that's how it happened. You know how they say that you only end up buying things you don't really need when you're shopping in-store? Well, that's not entirely true - browsing on Tesco's online grocery site presents the same sort of temptation with the added bonus of not having to carry anything home after that.

Anyway, after a quick chat with mum and some online recipe-hunting, I decided to give stuffed courgettes a shot. The idea seemed simple enough and appeared to be quite popular within the online cooking community.

Ingredients
Courgettes
Eggs (one for every courgette)
Mushrooms
Tomatoes
Celery
Onions
Sage
Basil
Coriander
Black pepper
Soy sauce
Salt
Olive oil

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius
Chop the mushrooms, tomatoes, celery and onions
Cook the courgettes whole in boiling water for about 4 minutes
Slice open courgettes lengthwise and using a spoon, scoop the flesh out. Chop the flesh up.
Saute the onions in some olive oil and add to that the chopped mushrooms, tomatoes, celery, onions and courgette.
Add a little soy sauce and let the ingredients soften.
In a bowl, mix the cooked vegetables with the egg, adding pepper and herbs to taste.
Put the mixture into the courgette cases, lay them onto a foil-lined baking tray and pop into the oven for 15 - 20 minutes.

Having never really been a fan of cucumbers or courgettes, I armed myself with a myriad of sauces, anticipating the stuffed courgettes to lack strength of flavour. I cannot be more glad that I was wrong - the courgette cases had taken on a delightful soft, slightly springy texture after spending time in the oven and the simple recipe really allowed the delicate sweetness of the vegetables to mingle and come through. Needless to say, the sauces went right back into the cupboard.

I love how the dish can be tweaked to suit your fancy - next up, curried stuffed courgettes, perhaps?

"But how did the soup get in there?"

2010-10-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

"You know, this is where we had dinner right before you got onto your first flight to London"

It was more for old times than anything else that we decided on Dragon-i for my last Malaysian meal for a year. It was the easy choice back then - we were staying at the Royale Bintang Damansara, had no desire to battle the city traffic and I was quite certain that my last meal had to be Asian. This time around, a lot calmer and without the excitement and anticipation of moving to a new country, it was all about settling down to soak in one of life's simple pleasures - enjoying a meal with the family.

Dragon-i
Lot 136 & 137,
First Floor,
The Curve, Mutiara Damansara

Xiao Long Bao or Shanghainese steamed meat dumplings, what Dragon-i is perhaps most well-known for. Filled with minced ham, pork, ginger and clear broth, the dumplings were a source of much amazement when I was first introduced to them. My eight or nine year old self simply could not comprehend how they managed to get the soup into the delicate dumplings. Best enjoyed with some black vinegar and slivers of ginger, the dumplings are still a delight now and Dragon-i serve up a good version.

Steamed rice with pork chop. While Dragon-i may be better known for its noodle dishes, we thought we should give some of their rice dishes a shot as well. Mix well and you get delicious mouthfuls of tender, well-marinated pork chop strips, steaming hot rice and gravy. If noodles are more your cup of tea, the variety of fried la mien dishes is a good place to start.

Stir fried string beans with minced meat - nicely seasoned, simple and flavourful.

Chicken soup. Beautifully clear and with the wonderful flavours of fresh chicken taking centre stage, this is my kind of comfort food.

Pan-stickers - perhaps my least favourite of all the dishes that night. In my book, pan-stickers should have nice, brown bottoms and these didn't look like they were stuck on any pan (pardon the pun) at any point of time. I've always loved how the brown, slightly crispy bottoms added texture and flavour to the dumplings so these just didn't hit the right spot.

Food is generally quite good though Dragon-i is on the more expensive side. Still, it's worth a visit, especially if you're craving those delicious little "Dragon" dumplings.

Sweet and sour roast pork ribs

2010-10-14T04:01:00.000-07:00

This space has become, for me, not just a spot to share my favourite food stories but also to serve as a recipe book of sorts. Where our grandmothers had recipes flowing through their veins, our mothers newspaper clippings and recipes scrawled on little pieces of paper, I'm building a collection of a slightly different medium.

I suppose it's all about moving with the times, isn't it?

This is probably one of my favourite dishes growing up - a simple recipe with remarkable results.

Ingredients:

Pork ribs
Ginger
Garlic
Tomato sauce
Chilli sauce
Oyster sauce
Soy sauce
Pepper

Putting all the ingredients together, marinate the pork ribs for 2-4 hours. This is one of those recipes that requires a little bit of discretion (which is why I have not specified quantities) but roughly equal parts of sauces and seasoning would be a good way to go.
Pop into a pre-heated oven and allow to roast for 1 and a half hours at 200 degrees celsius, flipping the ribs after 1 hour.

I love recipes where most of the cooking can be done without much supervision - and when a recipe like that turns out moist, slightly tangy, very flavourful ribs, what's not to love?

But aren't they simply adorable?

2010-10-10T09:09:00.000-07:00

We pulled over by a row of shophouses in the little town of Bidor on the way home from our extensive eating holiday and I couldn't help but marvel at the rows of beautifully made Chinese "biscuits". Ranging from simple flowers to intricate dragons and filled with red bean or lotus paste, I couldn't resist taking a few home with me.

It did take us awhile to finally get round to eating them (because really, aren't they just too pretty to eat?) but we were definitely glad we took them home with us. Soft pastry and a generous amount of filling - they were not too sweet and moist, even after a few days.

This is probably one of my favourite reasons to take trip up the west coast - Chinese biscuits and pastries that tempt the kid in all of us.

Holiday Foodsteps: Grandview Cafe, Kijal

2010-10-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

If you ever find yourself in Kijal, Terengganu, there's a good chance you'd be staying at the Awana Kijal Resort. There's also a good chance that despite the variety of food outlets available at the resort, you'd want a change of scene at some point during your holiday.

Grandview Cafe, situated within walking distance of the resort serves up the good old Chinese staples, the sort of food you know you can always count on.

Deep fried squid - dipped in a spice-laden batter and fried till a delightful golden brown, I loved how they had put a new spin to this dish. With the crunchy outer layer giving off hints of curry spices, their version of deep fried squid is definitely one that stands out.

Chicken chop, oriental style. It may be that just because I'm Hainanese, my favourite version of this classic dish is the Hainanese one. There's just something about the crunchy chicken thigh in that quirky tomato based, mixed vegetable-filled gravy. Unfortunately, while Grandview Cafe is a Hainanese-run restaurant, they decided to go down the more popular path of serving their chicken chop with a choice of black pepper or mushroom sauce. With that said, they do a really good oriental style chicken chop just by keeping everything simple.

They say that one of the most basic performance measures for a Chinese restaurant is their Cantonese fried (insert noodle preference here). Coated in thick, egg-y gravy, the nicely browned kuey teow and crispy noodles were just what we needed after a morning spent cycling in the sun.

Fish head curry - a little more sour than your typical fish head curry and highly reminiscent of the Nyonya gulai tumis. While slightly on the oily side, it was still rather satisfying.

Like quite a few other Chinese restaurants in Terengganu, baked crab is a feature on the menu. Filled with a good amount of crab meat, the baked crab rivals some of the more famous ones in Kemaman.

Another dish worth mentioning is the egg Fu Yong (omelette) - cooked to a lovely, fluffy texture and with slightly browned edges, it just goes to show that sometimes, you really don't need fancy. That's really thing to remember about Grandview Cafe - it's best to keep things simple - you'll definitely come away from the meal hugely satisfied and with your wallet intact.

It's the little things: Tea by the sea

2010-10-03T01:25:00.000-07:00

Living on the eastcoast, I grew up on a healthy dose of salty sea air, keropok (fish crackers and sausages) and the typical Malaysian fare of fried bananas and sweet potatoes for tea. No fancy cakes, or tea in dainty cups - it was the outdoors, watching the mak cik expertly fry the tasty treats.

Keropok lekor (fish sausages) - usually judged by the amount of fish to flour in each keropok, this is a family favourite. The best ones have a high proportion of fish, naturally, are fried till crisp on the outside but still soft on the inside and are carefully made to exclude any bones. Served fresh out of the wok and with some sweet-sour chilli dip, this is what living in a seaside town is all about.

Fried bananas - my favourite of the Malaysian all-things-fried series. For me, the ultimate fried banana is the smaller, soft and sweet variety encased in a light, crispy, flaky outer layer. As a child, I'd used to request scoops of the crunchy flakes to be added on to my order of fried bananas.

Deep fried fish - best eaten fresh and again, dipped in the sweet-sour chilli sauce.

Whether it's fried bananas, fish, crackers, curry puffs or just an ice-cold glass of teh tarik, there's something about the beach that makes everything taste a little better and with landscapes like this, I'm not surprised.

Holiday Foodsteps: Foh San, Ipoh

2010-09-21T23:07:00.000-07:00

Foh San isn't a restaurant, it's an institution. It's an impressive structure and from what I've been told, a far cry from the small, crowded outlet that it used to be. With a setting not unlike a traditional Chinese teahouse, it's open-air concept really helps keep it from getting too stuffy.

Restoran Foh San
51 Jalan Leong Sin Nam
30300, Ipoh, Perak

Chin Toi

Yam Cake

This, I was completely taken by - lotus paste encased in a soft, chewy, glutinous shell.

I can see why Foh San enjoys such popularity - a wide selection of delicious morsels to be shared, well-made dim sum and an incredibly inviting atmosphere. With it's clever mix of traditional dim sum carts and self-service counters, there's almost no waiting time - good news for a bunch of hungry breakfast-seekers. I have to admit, they seemed to have everything covered - a take-away counter just outside the restaurant and lifts for the elderly. While a little more expensive than some other dim sum places, Foh San is well worth a visit.

It's the little things: Super-duper-yummy

2010-09-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

It was an instant reconnection - the colourful toffee and caramel flavoured sticks of ice cream and me. Upon tearing open the packet, you get a whiff of that sweet toffee-caramel, something that you get only if you pay very close attention, and something that I associate only with the Rainbow. I remember Wall's undergoing some rebranding some years ago, replacing the familiar lion with Mat Kool, the monkey and for some reason, the Rainbow wasn't quite the same. It's back though, and hopefully for good.

Oh, how I could go on and on about the delights of the Rainbow, but I'd suggest picking one up at the supermarket instead - trust me, it's the stuff that turns days around.

It's funny how despite all the fancy tubs of ice cream and copious amounts of Italian gelato that I've had since the days of the neighbourhood Paddle Pop ice cream man, nothing beats the comfort of a Wall's Paddle Pop Rainbow.

I guess that's because it's "Super, duper, yummy" ;)

Holiday Foodsteps: Hot Wok, Penang

2010-09-19T21:45:00.000-07:00

We thought it would be nice to step away from the chaos that comes with hawker food to sample some Penang Nyonya delights. Having grown up thinking that all grandmothers wore either sarongs or wooden clogs, I've always been a fan of the eclectic mix of flavours that Nyonya cuisine presents and so when we stumbled upon Hot Wok, we thought we'd take a chance.

Hot Wok
124-E & F Jalan Burma
10050 Penang, Malaysia.
Telephone: (604) 227 3368

I love how Nyonya cuisine seems to be a marriage of cultures - Chinese cooking with a dash of Malay-influenced spices.

Inchi Kabin - crispy on the outside and deliciously succulent on the inside, this dish is a childhood favourite. Coupled with the slightly tangy "ang mo tau eu", the Nyonya version of Lea & Perrins sauce, it had such an addictive quality that we ordered seconds.

Assam prawns. Coated with the dark, sticky assam sauce, the prawns were fresh. However, I would have preferred the sauce to be a little less sweet and little more sour.

Gulai tumis - the spicy-sour fish curry that's always a crowd pleaser. With a rather generous amount of brinjals and long beans, this dish goes extremely well with a bowl of steaming hot rice. While the dish had to be sent back the first time for being slightly undercooked, it came back well-cooked and with a nice balance of flavours.

The "Hong Bak", with it's gravy on the slightly thicker side, was quite enjoyable as well, reminding me very much of the version we get at home. Despite the rather large meal, we couldn't resist dessert and our selection of cendol, mango cendol and honeydew sago seemed to be spot on.

With the grandmother and aunts in tow, it was a pretty tough crowd to please but I'd say that Hot Wok managed to hold it's own.

Holiday Foodsteps: The streets of Penang

2010-09-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

"Left!"
"Right!"
"No, left!"
"Wait, isn't this Burmah Road?"
"Argh, I knew we should have turned right!"

That's Penang for you, well for us anyway - a maze of roads, too much to eat and too little time. With hopes of leaving the directions to the GPS navigator shattered very early into the trip, we had to rely on the age-old practice of winding down the window to ask for directions from the neighbouring car at each set of traffic lights. It's amazing how many times in a row one can take the same wrong turn - on hindsight, perhaps having 4 women scream directions in the car isn't exactly ideal.

Needless to say, we were an extremely hungry crew by the time we found our hotel and settled on a place to eat. Ah, but the delicious smell of laksa and the sound of the kuey teow being expertly fried was worth every wrong turn.

I've always thought of Penang as the land in which the hawker is king. With stalls that have been around for generations and hawkers whose names my grandmother remembers, it's a matter of getting to the right places to eat, or in our case, trying to stumble upon them. While I will not attempt to advice on the best places to eat in Penang (I expect that much debate goes on about that), I will share with you some of my favourite hawker dishes.

Clockwise from top left - char kuey teow, prawn noodles (or Hokkien mee, in Penang), laksa, loh bak

Char kuey teow is a little lighter in colour in Penang than it is everywhere else in Malaysia but it's lack of colour definitely doesn't translate to a lack of flavour. My brother is a big fan of prawn noodles and after getting over the initial confusion of it being called Hokkien mee in Penang, he promptly gave the Penang version a thumbs up. I'm all for assam laksa as well because really, how can one resist the robust flavours of the tangy broth? I'm a loh bak lover, true and true - the spice-laden pork rolled in crispy beancurd skin, the other little crispy pieces that get piled on top and the slices of century egg that add that extra bit of texture. Dunked into that special sauce, I could have it as a meal on its own.

Clockwise from top left - chee cheong fun, pie tee, sar hor fun, yam cake.

My absolute favourite, however, is the cendol. There's something about the cendol in Penang that is more flavourful - perhaps it's the more generous helpings of gula melaka, or the creaminess of the coconut milk. The cendol and ais kacang never failed, no matter where we went. While not pictured, the muar chee sold in the hawker area along Gurney Drive get's a special mention as well. Penang, with Gurney Drive in particular, was where a 5 year old me first fell in love with the soft, sweet, peanut-y, chewy delight that is muar chee. Cut into tiny pieces, rolled in the peanut-sugar mixture and served warm, it's different from the usual muar chee balls that we tend to get and oh-so-good.

The choices seem endless with everything from oyster omelettes to mee rebus. Decisions are tough and we somehow always ended up with far too much to eat. With that said, it's key to pick the right places to go though as some of the hawker areas aren't the most hygenic of places and the last thing you'd want is for a bout of food poisoning to put a damper on your holiday.

They say that a family that eats together stays together. I think we've definitely got that covered.

Oriental Pavilion

2010-09-14T04:13:00.000-07:00

To kick off our little trip up the west coast of Malaysia, we decided that it would be nice to sit down to a dainty meal of dim sum. A far cry from the hustle and bustle of London's tiny Chinatown restaurants where dim sum is sometimes served as an all-you-can-eat buffet, our first official vacation meal stop was a picture of serenity.

Oriental Pavilion
1st Floor ,Jaya 33, Jln Semangat, Section 13,
Petaling Jaya, Selangor,
Malaysia
Tel: 03- 7956 9288

With soft piped-in jazz, the pre-noon scene was a rather quiet one with the restaurant starting to fill up only as we were leaving.

The favourites were all there, and very well represented.

I found the yam puffs particularly enjoyable - with a light crispy outer shell and a generous filling, they weren't overly oily or over-fried.

We also enjoyed a small portion of roast pork and roast duck that came served rather unusually, with some soft steamed tofu.

While the dim sum was definitely decent, it was the ambience that I enjoyed most - a Chinese restaurant with the classic set-up only perhaps missing the gentle sounds of the gu zheng coming from a corner.

Tea, anyone?

Char Siu

2010-09-13T00:36:00.000-07:00

Call me biased, but I think my mum makes the best char siu. None of the dry, reddish-pink tinged fare, this is the real deal - slightly sweet and sticky, moist and deliciously soft from the slow-cooking. The best part is that it's really a whole lot easier to make than I thought, a simple recipe that requires some patience and a little love.

Ingredients:

Streaky pork
Soy sauce
Pepper
Honey

The best cut of pork to use for this is the streakier bits as the thin slivers of fat between the meat will keep everything moist and lend it that melt-in-your mouth texture.
Marinade the pork in soy sauce, pepper and honey for 2 to 4 hours.
In a deep pan or wok, heat a small amount of oil (mum uses olive oil) and add to the oil the pork, marinade and all.
On medium heat, allow the marinade to start bubbling before turning down the heat to slowly cook the pork for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, keeping a close eye on it to ensure even cooking.

It goes to show that sometimes, it's the simplest recipes that are the best. I've never found anything to top this version of char siu yet. I'm beginning to think that I'm never going to and I'm definitely not complaining.