The Big Easy

We went to yet another posh street, Kings Road for M to do her weekly obligatory window shopping although today she managed to break through the window, into the shop to purchase a couple of items. For lunch, (the only thing I am interested in today), we went to The Big Easy, an American restaurant on Kings Road. This restaurant came strongly recommended by a number of food guides. (http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/reviews/516.html) Its also said to be one of the top five restaurants to have steak at in London



I had the The Classic Chophouse Burger "prepared from the Finest Prime Chopped Scotch Beef with French Fries & House Made Coleslaw. Aberdeen Angus beef burger char-grilled & served with lettuce, tomato, red onion & a pickle." I can say that my craving has been satisfied. It was a good burger. For me, the beef has to have that char grilled taste, it must not be dry, it should be moist and juicy and it must be savoury obviously. The burger does meet all these criteria and so I am a happy camper. I don't mind coming back again to try their steaks.

M had the Bar-B-Q Home Smoked Ribs "Hand trimmed, extra meaty ribs, slow smoked & finished on the char-grill with our special recipe Bar-B-Q. sauce." Her favourite ribs is the one at Tony Romas and she said that the one we had today compared favourably to it. It was meatier than the ribs at TM but the sauce was not as good. Therefore, she considers it a tie.

Tuscan chicken

With this dish, we finally used up all the peppers we bought from Borough market, a grand total of 6. Basically, we made roasted peppers and tomato soup on monday, the tuna pasta with red pepper sauce on tuesday and the tuscan chicken today. We did not take a picture of the soup as it looked too much like tomato soup. (M: it was tomato soup, just that there's pepper inside it), Are we sick of peppers yet? M says no but thats from someone who's not planning the cooking. Anyway, Tuscan chicken, a recipe from my Chicken the best ever recipe collection cookbook. Brown chicken portions on both sides in olive oil and remove from the pan. Saute onions and red pepper till soft and add in crushed garlic. Return chicken to the pan and add in white wine, a can of tomatoes, sun dried tomato puree and oregano. Bring to the boil and simmer till the chicken is cooked. Sprinkle breadcrumbs on top and put it under the grill till the breadcrumbs are golden.

Oh almost forgot, I was supposed to add cannellini beans into the mixture but as M can't stand beans (in general, actually), I didn't do so.

Chinatown / C and R restaurant

Singaporean / Malaysian food is quite difficult to locate in England but we managed to find a restaurant for it. Its called C and R restaurant and its located close to the infamous Wong Kei in Chinatown. I decided to treat D and his gf to a meal there to celebrate the completion of my phd thesis. I have eaten there on a number of occasions previously. D and I had Singapore fried prawn noodles (sotong mee), His gf C had the hainanese chicken rice while M had the Prawn noodle soup. All in all, we were quite happy with the food as the cooking was at least equivalent to that of the average hawker stalls in Singapore. In addition, we had teh tarik, kopi tarik and ice kachang for dessert. For a bunch of people who have been away from Singapore for some time, this was truly heavenly fare.



Subsequently, we did some shopping in Chinatown, specifically, I bought more cai sim. Its practically impossible to find cai sim in the British supermarkets here. They do have pak choi but for a very exorbitant price. So, I normally go to Chinatown to stock up on such green vegetables. M needs some greens in her diet. As we wanted to have udon soup tonight, we bought udon and japanese chilli powder. M bought some strange flavoured crisps. I hope its nice.



So for dinner, I added sukiyaki sauce to chicken stock to make udon soup. I also marinated some pork in teriyaki sauce and grilled it for a while before adding it to the noodles. And the white stuff is tofu.