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Beef roast – The only roast worth making
Sunday, 15 November 2009
We’d been wanting to make a roast for a while now. Not just any roast, but a beef roast, also known as The Only Roast Worth Making. Chicken fits in this category too, and so does lamb, and pretty much anything else that tastes nice roasted, but for the purpose of this post, let’s just imagine for a minute that roast beef is the only roast worth making. Otherwise, it won’t seem as spectacular.
So, with the intention of making a roast, and having leftovers from it for the next week, we set out to buy a large chunk of good quality meat, no expense spared (it was to be eaten over many meals, you see). Turns out we finished it in 1.5 meals, but never you mind about that now.
With beef in one hand, oven glove in the other, I set about marinating it with nothing but the best quality salt and pepper. Oven set at 220 degrees (no scientific reason, mere estimation), we set Boast Reef (clever? no) in the middle rack of the oven. Ten minutes later, and lots of excited peeks through the door, we turned down the temperature slightly as Jamie Oliver (that famous guy, you know him) said that meat should be roasted at very high temperature at the start, and then turned down to let the meat cook. So, we did that.
Seems it worked, and the meat that came out of that oven was one of the finest we’d ever cooked. Told you I prefer cooking to baking. It’s all about estimating and guessing. Easy.
What did we eat it with?
Asparagus, and some potato dauphinoise-wannabes.
Satori Robata, 28-30 Knightsbridge London, SW1X 7JN (Taste London)
Monday, 9 November 2009
We’ve had the Taste London card for a while now, but not used it much so decided to give it a go. For those of you who don’t know, the Taste London card can be used to get 2-for-1 meals, or 50% off food prices at participating restaurants. You have to pay to be a member and to get the card, but we managed to get it for free when they were giving it out some time ago. Although there are quite a few restaurants on there, the ones we wanted to try never seemed to feature on the listing. Anyhow, we felt like having Japanese food, and Satori Robata featured as one of the restaurants on the list, so we decided to give it a try.
The restaurant is located close to Harrod’s, which, to those in the know, usually mean higher prices. I say usually, as there are some high street stores which obviously can’t raise their prices (too much). The interior of the restaurant is really nice, and the seats are also designed to look as though you’re sitting on the floor, even though you’re not (a good thing). With that much space, you would have thought that they’d make it so that more customers could be accommodated during one sitting, but it seems they prefer using that space for decoration instead. Maybe it’s something to do with that ambience thing (the places I go to don’t usually focus much on ambience).
Squid and octopus sashimi, £3.55 a portion (a portion is 2 pieces)
Being more used to the sushi-from-the-counter type shops, which usually charge about 50p for a piece of sushi, this seemed quite expensive to me. Perhaps it’s quite reasonable to most people (the ones who shop at Harrods), but certainly not to us. For that amount, I expected the portions to be huge (or at least singing and tap-dancing their way to the table), but the pieces of squid and octopus we had were just OK, and nothing more different than other sashimi I’d had before, for that price.
Prawn tempura temaki, about £3
This was something I ordered instead of a portion of rice with my main meal. Unconventional, I know. It was again, just OK. The prawn tempura was fresh, and the batter was light and crispy. The seaweed was slightly soggy by the time it got to the table, which meant quite alot of chewing before I could actually bite a piece of the temaki off, but it tasted nice.
Beef rib eye teriyaki £16.95
Fresh, tender beef cooked very well, with lovely tasting teriyaki sauce. Would have said more about it if not for the price. Why? Because, for the price, you almost expect it to be so fantastic and so unlike anything you’d ever had before. Sure it was nice, but it wasn’t great value for money, or nicer than any other beef I’d ever had.
Pan fried venison steak with sake and garlic soy glaze £19.50
Cooked to rare perfection, just as requested, and very tender. Didn’t taste much of venison, in fact, it could have been beef as far as taste was concerned. Comment about price as before. Could it just be me who thinks this is expensive???
Jumbo prawn yaki (whole jumbo prawn flame grilled with yuzu and garlic ponzu) £14.95
‘What’re you going to have?’, I asked my friend.
‘The jumbo prawns’, she said.
‘Prawns?’, I asked. ‘I think you meant prawn.’
‘No … surely they mean the plural version of it …’
A quick check with the waitress confirmed that uh huh, it was one prawn, and one prawn only. Wooo hooo, that’s one expensive prawn! Not a lobster or anything in even similar in size. Fresh, as with the other dishes, it has to be said but very expensive, like the other dishes also.
Seafood tempura moriawase £10.90
This was perhaps the option which was best in terms of value for money. The portion was acceptable, the pieces of seafood were fresh, and there were different types of fish included in the selection. I enjoyed this very much, but it didn’t come with any rice or side dishes so this alone does not make a filling meal.
Free salad that came with the venison. Free! Something that is reasonable priced. (such a cheapskate hey)
Would I recommend this? Well, we dined here on the Taste London 50% off promotion, which made the price per person just about reasonable. Without that, we most certainly wouldn’t have had considered this as an option for dinner, because there are lots of other Japanese restaurants in London (more central) with food that is just as good in terms of quality, at more reasonable prices.
Google Maps to here!
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Lina’s Store, 18 Brewer Street, Soho, London
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
What a marvellous find. We were scuttling through Soho, like mice in a field one Saturday, when we found this shop. As the motto for the day was ‘Try something new’, we decided to venture into the shop.
My motto is usually ‘Why try something new’ so this was quite a remarkable change of motto.
From the outside, this resembles a hardware shop. Perhaps I was standing too far away, but something about the window display made me conclude that this place sold paint.
A closer peek at the window and I saw pannetone. Now, everyone likes panettone.
I like panettone.
With that, I had to check this place out.
The first impression of this place is that it is a rustic, charming, traditional-styled Italian mini-mart. It sold almost everything Italian I could come up with (food-wise, of course), and being someone who really likes Italian food, I had to buy something.
The first thing that took my fancy was the garlic and parsley, but I didn’t buy them.
The guy at the counter was nice enough, jumping in and out of my pictures.
Behind the guy, there were shelves full of spices, condiments and lots of herbs. I’m not sure how these herbs are different from the ones you get at the supermarket, but when they’re sold in an Italian shop, with many other Italian things, it must absorb some sort of authenticity. You just don’t question things like that.
Italian sausages chilling out, absorbing the Italian air, slowly transforming from Cumberland sausages to salami.
The most Italian thing I bought from this store was the 3 packs of instant risotto (tried one out, tasty). There were lots more I could have bought. In fact, while we were in there, customers came in to the deli which seemed to be the most popular bit of the store, but as I didn’t see how walking around Soho carrying sausages and garlic would be a good thing to do, perhaps I’ll do that another time.
Google Map to here!
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120509 Ipoh Jalan Gasing Chicken Rice
Thursday, 29 October 2009
(This was eaten quite a while ago, but I hadn’t posted it till now. I’m quite hungry now, so I might as well make you hungry also.)
This restaurant has been one of our favourites pretty much all along, as it used to be located along the way from Petaling Jaya to Kuala Lumpur. These days, it has expanded to 2 shoplots, across 2 floors so it fits quite a few people even during busy lunch hours. Both floors are air-conditioned, but previously, only one side of the ground floor restaurant was air-conditioned.
When we walked up to the first floor restaurant, we thought we’d walked into a school canteen as it was filled 90% with kids in blue uniforms. Guess it beats the school canteen option, since the restaurant is just across from the school.
The menu is quite small, with only few things to be ordered, but all the dishes are good so where there is quality, you don’t need quantity (only kidding, you need quantity all the time).
There were 7 of us at lunch, so we decided to order plain bowls of noodles and rice each, and also ordered dishes to be shared.
The noodles (known as ‘chai’, as in, plain noodles with just soup) came also with some complimentary pig skin and ‘taufoo pok’ (fried beancurd). Pig skin, you ask? It’s quite a delicacy, but a cheap one thus it’s given free in the noodles. The texture is chewy, and slightly like jelly. You say yuck, I say yum.
Steamed chicken – half for about RM20
See how almost half the portion looks like it’s breast meat? Over here in South East Asia, chicken breast is seen as the not so fantastic part of the chicken, because it’s drier and tougher than the other bits. When we called the waiter over to complain, it seemed as though complains are quite regular as he was very well-versed with explaining how although it LOOKED like we had alot of breast meat, it was actually half the chicken, because see here, there’s the wing, see there, that’s the chicken leg.
Not convinced? Neither were we.
Roast pork – siew yuk RM24 for this portion
Nominated most expensive dish of the meal, it was also the majority’s favourite as the skin was crispy, the meat was well-flavoured and tender.
Chicken gizzard, skin and others RM1.50
This was slightly chewy and very flavourful, went well with the noodles and rice as it was a slightly salty dish.
Hakka stewed pork with mui choy (preserved vegetables) – Mui choy kau yuk, about RM15
This is a home-cook favourite, and is one dish that is not easy to master. When cooked well, the pork becomes melt in the mouth, and the preserved vegetable blends well to make it a salty, sweet and very delicious dish with rice.
Plain curry noodles (‘chai’) RM1.50
The usual price for a bowl of curry noodles elsewhere, with other things in it such as chicken, costs about RM4.50. Here, for RM1.50, you get a reasonably large bowl of curry noodles with tofu pieces, very delicious soup, and very smooth noodles.
Ipoh beansprouts RM4
If for one moment you thought these were ordinary beansprouts, think again, buddy. These are Ipoh beansprouts, which means they are immediately superior to the more inferior non-Ipoh ones. How do you know if you’ve been tricked into paying for Ipoh beansprouts when you’ve received the other version? The Ipoh ones should be short and plump, which means that they’re crunchier and juicier than the longer versions which tend to be stringy (and get stuck in my teeth a fair bit).
These weren’t quite up to the usual Ipoh standard, but still OK.
Pork meatballs RM1 for one
Made with pork, these meatballs are quite bouncy and chewy, but slightly pricey for one.
At the end of the meal, the air-conditioning went off, the school kids left the building, and so did we. Would we come back to this restaurant? I’d like to, as I really enjoyed the food here.
The Red Velvet experiment
Monday, 26 October 2009
One of my friends recently mentioned that she was into baking cupcakes. Now, call me stupid or something, but it’d never occurred to me that you could do these things. Sure, I like cupcakes, but seldom buy them because they were so expensive. Those lovely little cups of cakes with icing on top, colourful and delicate. And so very expensive.
At about £3.50 per cupcake (my favourite being the Red Velvet from Hummingbird), it was one of those little luxuries which, once I bought one, meant I couldn’t have dinner that day (slight exaggeration).
When said friend mentioned that she could BAKE Red Velvets, I was astonished, mouth open with half chewed pizza (how uncouth, I know) as I quizzed her on how she achieved this unimaginable feat.
So, a week later, I decided that I too, shall try to do this crazy thing called baking. And so it was, the bf and I decided to bake some cupcakes to take along to a friend’s BBQ as we were tasked with bringing something sweet. Something sweet it was gonna be.
A bit of Googling, a bit of common sense, and alot of not so good cupcakes later (all lovingly eaten, of course), we had the final product.
Here is, ladies and gentlemen, the home-baked, not so stylish, somewhat pitiful looking, complete opposite of Hummingbird version of the Red Velvet.
We took it to a party the next day, in some containers, and someone actually said to us, ‘I thought you’d bought it from the store, and then put it in the container to pretend that you baked it.’
That was pretty much the best compliment anyone could have given, aside from the fact that the person who said it said it before actually eating the thing. She looked kinda worried after eating it, not sure what that says about our baking.
Could we have used incorrect measurements? Maybe. Could we have beat the mixture too much, resulting in too much / too little air? Possibly. Could we just be really bad at baking? Most probably.
