Eggs for breakfast

Here’s something quite stupid. When I was a young kid, I used to associate certain types of meals with certain textures. For example, dinner to me usually looked like something out of a Western; complete with wood fire cackling with a tin of baked beans bubbling away above it. So, dinner was usually beany.

Lunch was usually mash-y in texture (this was in my mind, not in reality, of course). For someone who read alot of Archie comics as a kid, lunch in those comic scenes usually looked like a plate with nothing but mash on it, so for me, lunch looked like a plate of mash.

(It might be worth noting here that I did not have beans for dinner and mash for lunch. It was usually dishes with rice, but still, that didn’t stop me from picturing different types of food to represent different meals.)

Breakfast, now breakfast to me was always eggs.

Eggs in any form was good to me. It didn’t help that I used to be allergic to eggs, so the opportunity to actually eat the round little things became one of rarity. Scrambled, fried, boiled, half boiled, poached, anyway you made it, eggs were my favourite food.

How many eggs are enough for an eggselent breakfast?

Clearly, about four. Served atop buttery crumpets (M&S are the best for those), these lovely little quivering yolks break at the slightest touch of the fork, oozing into the waiting bubbles in the crumpets. Eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Eating in – brekkie

Been so busy that I’ve not been having breakfasts … actually I don’t usually have anything for breakfast so it’s not an excuse. However, that said, one Saturday some weeks ago, we found the leisurely time to have a nice home-cooked breakfast.

Half (more on the hard) boiled egg with soldiers (Western version) vs half (ie hard) boiled egg with soy sauce and pepper (Malaysian version).

Which was better? Well, they were both fantastic as I love eggs in all forms, so can’t really choose. The only difference is that one is more savoury than the other (soy sauce makes it slightly sweet also), and the Malaysian version was eaten on its own where as the Western version was eaten with soldiers (ie toast but cut into little rectangles).

Then I had some peanut butter and strawberry jam on toast. One of the nicest combinations for toast – aside from Marmite and honey which is also nice. I also like Marmite and marmalade, strangely nice with the combination of bitter salty Marmite and sweet citrusy marmalade. Milo and condensed milk, another great option. You gotta try it to believe it.

Then we moved on to smoked salmon and some soldiers (not necessarily eaten together, but we had extras from the half-boiled egg.

OK gotta say, been eating out less than usual, but I still like taking pictures of food. When I start taking pictures of chocolates, you know I’m short of material.

This is a picture of the leftover meatball spaghetti that I had in the fridge. Whilst having breakfast, the lighting was really good for pictures, which is why I took out any food I had, even leftover non-cooked food, and starting snapping away. Looks nice, huh?

Beef roast – The only roast worth making

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.

Home-cooking in London, all the way from Malaysia

My kitchen, if it could speak, must surely think that food either comes in leftover form, or fresh from the freezer straight to the oven. It’s not that I don’t like cooking, because I do. I just don’t seem to have the time, or motivation to cook most of the time.

Which is why when my mom decided to give the stove a good run for its money and cook us a huge meal of curry chicken, I felt the need to take a picture of the meal and write a whole post about it. Avid readers will note that my first post on the blog was about my cooking, albeit one which took more than a day and was slightly burnt and bitter. Despite that, I assure you I can cook. I just choose to blog about the unsuccessful bits, that’s all.

Sure, that’s what they all say.

Here’s what my mom cooked. Having discovered where the spices, pots and pans were kept in my kitchen, my mom and paps decided to cook a huge pot of curry chicken for dinner. Not an easy task, I tell you. Not when it involves trying to get a huge piece of chicken to become little pieces, with a plastic chopping board.

Hours later, we had curry. Very delicious curry with soft and tender chicken. So absolutely fantastic eaten with a ladies fingers (or okra) and prawns in sambal, a fried egg and some rice. A London-style Malaysian meal which really outshone the dishes from most restaurants here.

Eating in (not something I’d cooked earlier) – April 09

Having stood outside the ship windows of Cinnabon many times, sometimes with the bf, sometimes without, but each time with hungry looks, the bf decided to just buy me a bun and stop the silliness once and for all.

As he’s said many times before that he didn’t like cinnamon, I gleefully thought to myself that this bun would be ALL MINE. Thing is, the food is always nicer on the other side, so he can’t help but takes bites of my food, which is when he discovered that he actually does like cinnamon now.

Half the bun for me.

To redeem himself after eating half of the cinnabun meant for me, he also bought half a roast duck from the bril Four Seasons in Bayswater. Once when we were queueing up, waiting for a table (no wait, no table) we heard the waitress-boss say to someone that if he wanted to have more duck gravy in his takeaway, that he should bring along a bottle or container as the restaurant could only give the gravy in small little polystyrene cups.

All along, we had been under the impression that the restaurant was so miserly in their gravy portions because it was a precious commodity (quite like Jimmy Shoes choos, only, free). (Haha)

This time, the bf was well ahead of the game, and brought along his empty M&S water bottle to the restaurant. We had enough gravy for the duck, the dinner the next day, and a stir fry.

Sometimes, when you buy a takeaway, the quality of the food decreases compared to when you’re having it at a restaurant. Some might even say that there is a correlation to this decrease, ie the longer the time between the purchase and the eating, the lower the quality.

This is not the case with the roast duck from Four Seasons. Warmed up in the microwave before eating, this was just as nice as the real thing in the restaurant. With some gravy on hot rice, this made a fantastically enjoyable, delicious dinner.

Nando’s chicken (one) for £10.50 – consumed almost entirely by the bf. Despite what you might think, it doesn’t take that much time, or effort, to consume one chicken by yourself. All it takes is a little bit of perseverance, a large plate and lots of peri-peri sauce.

Me: ‘Is there a limit to the amount of sauce we can have for the takeaway chicken?’
Lady at counter: ‘No.’

10 minutes later, we’re three tubs full. The more the perri-er.

Pickled Chinese vegetable and French bean omelette. One of my favourite dishes, easy to cook and so nice to have. Usually I don’t have the picked vegetable in it, but since I had some to hand, I chucked it in. If you’re looking at this in disgust, don’t. Try it once and you’ll scoff no more. Something about French beans being stir-fried slightly, and cooked with egg that makes it really tasty.

This is what we call ‘oven food’. This is a piece of chicken with some sort of tomato flavoured paste on top of it, purchased from Sainsbury’s as part of a ‘2 can dine for £5’ promotion. The mash potato that came with it was really creamy and smooth, perhaps too creamy to be nutritional. For £2.50 a person, the chicken was actually quite good, and is something I’d consider having again when I don’t to cook.

Last Friday, when we felt like having nibbles for dinner, we went to Marks and Spencer and bought some of their 3-for-2 nibbles. Sausage rolls, meatballs and mini snack eggs (sausage meat with egg filling) came in one pack, the mini Melton Mowbray pork pies came in another.

This is what a mini Melton Mowbray pork pie looks like. See that bit of jelly that holds the meat and pastry together? That is why you DON’T heat up the pies, as I did. When I lifted the pie and had a bite, the jelly came sloshing out of the pie.

We also bought 2 portions of deep fried salt and pepper squid from Tai Won Mein (a noodle house selling very cheap food), some ready-cooked prawns from Marks and Spencer, and hummous to be eaten with … prawn crackers. Fusion food.

Having read this, you might conclude that I don’t cook much, if at all. That’s not entirely true, as when I cook, it’s usually something really easy to make, and doesn’t look that great (or edible). I do cook though, I just don’t blog about it much.

Eating in – Feb 09

As February was a pretty busy month for me, I did what most busy people do when they have no time to cook. I asked the bf to be chef for the month.

This is why most of the pictures below feature meat and chips of some variety, just in a different arrangement on the plate.

The first week we had steak and chips. Usually, we don’t eat much meat, only those used in stir fries or in small bits.

We felt like having something really satisfying for dinner that day, and went to the supermarket to get a piece of steak. Not knowing which bits were best for frying, we spent half an hour looking at each piece of steak on the shelves.

One suggestion for supermarkets all round (if this idea becomes big, you saw it here first).

Why don’t they put up charts of cows, like where the sirloin is, where the T-bone is, you get the picture (pun) so that people who don’t usually buy steak know what they’re looking for? In the same chart, they could have a useful guide as to which bits is best for what.

Like how tube maps are, with lines and everything.

Example diagram

(If Tesco or Asda are reading this and would like a copy, or perhaps my drawing services, you know where to find me)

Asda were offering Birds Eye chicken fillets for £1. Each pack had 2 pieces of chicken, making it 50p per piece of chicken.

Instant risotto from a pack, which was pretty nifty considering all you had to do was add water and it was done. This may sound like how risotto is usually cooked anyway (ie adding water to rice), but we didn’t have to season this as it came with the flavourings!

Eating in (January 09)

Despite many hints, requests and blatant questions of ‘Could I get free food’ from restaurants (kidding), I have not yet managed to get any free meals. This is despite the fact I bring my camera with me to most places in hopes that the waiters might get interested, and perhaps mistake me for some famous food reviewer. So far, this has not been fruitful.

Thus, I resort to cooking some days.

For those of you familiar with my industrial-cooking methods, what I cook on Monday tends to still be there on Friday. No, it’s not because it’s that disgusting that I can’t eat it, but the quantities are enough to frighten even champion eaters away.

This was one of those meals. The beef stew above looks good (compliments to the chef) for one meal, eaten with potato waffles (always bringing the standard down, bit by bit). After the 5th meal of beef stew with something else (variety is very important), it starts to get slightly bland.

After a week of beef stew, it’s time for another week of fish pie. This was made with store-bought mash (no time to make mash, one of the flaws of modern existence, but perks of supermarkets) and lots of store-bought fish.

With store-bought parsley sauce over the fish. It was surprisingly nice, perhaps even more so than store-bought fish pie, difference being although all the ingredients are store-bought (as they usually are), I assembled it myself.

Usually at the end of the week, we enjoy going out to eat in town. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as we’re not cooking it as this is sort of like a break from the weekday routine.

Thing is, when you eat out, you have to:
Fight for space
Fight for food and sometimes
Just watch other people fight (this is London on a Friday, after all).

Thus, it was really nice to discover that the bf had bought some roast pork rice from Chinatown, along with sushi from Yoshino Sushi (new store opened on Shaftsbury Avenue) for dinner, meaning we didn’t have to go out for dinner.

This was the siu-yuk (roast pork) rice from Yeung Cheng in Chinatown, across from Yoshino. For about £5, the portion was huge, and there were lots of roast pork with the impressive amount of rice. Best thing about it was the gravy that came with the rice. I could eat just plain rice with gravy all day.

This was the sushi selection from Yoshino. Although not technically sushi (fish on top of rice), and more, maki and uramaki, not so bothered as long as it tastes nice.

The sushi from Yoshino is always very fresh, and the rice is soft and chewy without having that horrible refrigerated feel to the rice. They also make what you want if there are none on offer, and most of the time, it’s cheaper than buying it from supermarkets (and much nicer).

Until I get those free meal offers, I’ll be posting about my eating-in meals each month.

Some warm easy-going food in winter

When it’s –10 degrees and the heater just doesn’t want to play ball, the next best thing to warm you up is hot food. If you don’t have that, hot water helps too.

Here’s a dish I like to cook, in industrial-sized quantities. Why cook for 1 meal when you can cook for 5? Because no one wants to eat the same stuff 5 days straight, that’s why.

Tough.

I cooked 5 aubergines (eggplant, brinjal) with pork on Sunday, and was still eating it come Thursday. If I’d eaten reasonable portions instead of stuffing myself till the sofa was creaking, it would have gone on till Saturday of the next month.

To cook for 10 diners or more, here’s the recipe.

5 aubergines (about foot-long each, like a Subway sandwich)
2 packs of minced pork (500 grams each pack? Who knows)
Yellow bean paste (like black bean but not)
Oyster sauce, soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, the typical seasoning ingredients

Method to the process:

1. Cut the aubergine into batons, and put them on kitchen towels to dry slightly. When all the aubergines have been cut, they’ll probably take up space in your kitchen and perhaps parts of the couch also.
2. Heat some oil in the frying pan, and fry the aubergine on medium heat until all the aubergine pieces are soft. This process takes a good while since you can’t put too much aubergine in at once, otherwise they just sit there as though they’re at a carnival, refusing to be cooked.
3. Put all the fried aubergine onto plates and couch if necessary.
4. Heat some more oil, and fry the minced pork until cooked. When that is cooked, add in the yellow bean paste (amount varies based on how much aubergine and pork there are) and stir till the pork is cooked. Add oyster sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce and sugar to taste). At this point, your kitchen might smell like a fish-dehydrating factory.
5. Put the aubergine back in the pan, and stir the mixture together, simmer for about 5 minutes on low heat until piping hot.

If this recipe doesn’t work out, and I don’t see why it won’t, resort to this.

Store-bought mozzarella Pizza Ristorante, with a pack of frozen pepperoni thrown on top. Looks almost as tasty as the Domino’s Meteor pizza here.

Kiwi and grapes if the pizza doesn’t work out either.

Domino’s Pizza, Greenwich

Before Pizza Hut changed its name to Pasta Hut (Don’t believe me? See here), it was the main contender for the Pizza Champions League Trophy. However, since the name change, I’m not quite sure what Pizza / Pasta Hut do anymore (Is it a bird, is it a pasta, is it a sweet shop. Who knows.)

When considering where to order my pizza from, there is only one place to choose from. No, not Pizza / Pasta Hut, but Domino’s.

Why? Because the pizza base is chewy and fluffy, the toppings are more creative and generous than that of Pizza / Pasta Hut’s, and the quality is consistent, almost guaranteed. They also do these fantastic dips to go with the pizzas.

This is the Meteor, a frisbee dough holding atop it sausages, meatballs and mince, slooshed in barbeque sauce.

Look, meatballs.

From what the Domino’s guy said, it seems most franchises do their own meal deals (usually for collection only), so you’ll have to call the franchise to know more. The one in Greenwich does a ‘Buy one get on free’ offer, as well as a ‘Any size pizza for £10.99’ which is the deal we used.