Fish soup

M doesn't like a lot of things. Vegetables, beef, lamb. The list goes on. Sadly, fish is one of them. Specifically, the cooked fish should not have any bones, it shouldn't taste fishy and she won't eat salmon or trout. Cooking for M requres adherence to a long list of rules and guidelines.

Anyway, fish soup is what I cooked for dinner. All it involves is frying some diced onions, celery and garlic. Add some white wine and simmer for 1 minute. Add canned tomatoes, a bay leaf and fish stock and simmer for 8 minutes. Finally, add diced fish ( I used a mixture of cod, haddock and tuna) and simmer yet again till the fish is cooked. Add some shredded basil and serve hot with bread.

Marcus Wareing at The Savoy Grill

We had a lovely lunch at The Savoy Grill, another one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants. The weekend menu is quite good value. 25 pounds for three courses. M had the foie gras parfait, the wild mushroom risotto with poached egg and parmesan shavings and the blackberry trifle. I had the Scottish smoked salmon and gravadlax, served with classic accompaniments, roast rib-eye of Scottish beef with Yorkshire pudding, roasted vegetables, potatoes and beef sauce and the royal chocolate cake.

M really loved her foie gras. She said that it was light but with no concessions to the richness of the foie gras. The prune and raisin compote and the salad were excellent complements to the sweet taste of the foie gras. Interestingly, there may be some japanese influence on the dressing for the salad as we can detect some Japanese sesame oil in it. There's definitely a whole lot of mushrooms in the risotto. It was literally bursting with mushroom goodness. The risotto was light as well. Normally, you get a heavy cream-based risotto and after you eat it,you can't eat anything else. But this risotto was definitely light on the stomach. M actually finished all of it. The poached egg went very well with the risotto as the egg yolk gave a silky texture and an additional complexity in taste to the sauce. The dessert came on a trolley, with everything on the dessert menu laid out for all to see. Its perfect for M as it allowed her to choose the most aesthetically pleasing dessert of them all. Her blackberry trifle was made with real fresh blackberries, not the processed ones you see even in a pot of Marks and Spencer trifle pudding.

My Scottish smoked salmon was sadly nothing exceptional. Perhaps, my tastebuds are not developed or it could just be that they have been messed up by copious quantities of smoked salmon i have had at buffets in Singapore. I can't tell the difference between the smoked salmon you buy at the supermarkets and the ones smoked by the cooks themselves. Of course, we don't really know whether they smoked it themselves. Still, I always enjoy smoked salmon and the potato salad went well with it. My roast beef however was exceptional. The beef was tender and juicy. When you have a bite of it with the sauce, you could tell the difference between the beef gravy and the taste of the beef itself. Its quite possibly one of the best roast beef I have had in my life. Its certainly comparable to the ones I have had at Lawry's in Singapore. My royal chocolate cake was brillant, not too sweet, just the natural taste of the cocoa and dark chocolate.

M considers this her favourite restaurant in London so far and I have to agree with her for the price and the quality of the food

Chicken stew

M cooked today! (I am checking whether there's a blue moon outside.) Ok, there is an actual valid reason for this. Its my birthday and she decided to cook dinner for me as a gift.



Once upon a time, in our nottingham days, when we were still young and she, particularly carefree as she was a student then, she was a better cook than me. And this chicken stew with dumplings is what she used to prove her point then. That and her magnificient mushroom soup. So it is nostalgic for me to have this again. It has been 6 years since she has last cooked a proper meal for me. Hopefully,it doesn't take another six years for her to cook next as she is actually still pretty good at it.

Fish! Borough Market

Its back to Borough Market again. Its my birthday today and M decided that we should go to one place in London where we will both enjoy ourselves rather than go to yet another designer warehouse sale where I will be left bored and cranky in a corner, kicking at dust bunnies.



So we spent the afternoon browsing through the wares at the stalls. We bought more escargots, eggs fresh vegetables, onion bread and extremely expensive French cakes picked out by the extravagant one herself. There's really so much here for foodies, olive oil, wine, truffles, cheeses, organic juices, fresh pasta, tofu and meats everywhere. Its one place I will definitely bring my parents to when they visit me.



For lunch, I wanted to try out this fish and chips stall I saw at the corner of the market. On closer scrutiny, I realised that they had a restaurant next to it, serving seafood. (what else?) And being in "I don't feel like walking around and eating my food" mood, M and I decided to try the food there. As you can see from the picture above, the restaurant is called Fish! Borough Market.



M had the grilled scallops wrapped in pancetta on a roasted mushroom with salad and roasted cherry tomatoes. The scallops were fresh and well cooked with a strong grilled taste. I love that taste. (M: not bad.) The only problem with it was the price, an exorbitant 17 pounds but I guess that's the price you have to pay for scallops and M really loves scallops.



I ordered the fish and chips. The cod was competently cooked with a light batter. Nothing really special about it. It could do with a bit more salt and the fish, I suspect, wasn't that fresh as it had a slight fishy taste. The chips on the other hand, were excellent and you could tell (hopefully, I am right) that they were freshly cut. The best part of the meal was surprisingly the mushy peas. I am not a big fan of mushy peas but today, i finally found one that I really enjoyed. Savoury with a hint of lemon and mint. I don't mind going back here again just to try out the rest of its seafood dishes. I have this strong suspicion that the rest of their dishes are much better than their fish and chips

Summer tray baked salmon

M has to work overtime tonight and thats why salmon is on the dinner menu. (M doesn't like salmon, not even smoked salmon). This is another of Jamie Oliver's recipes, from Jamie's dinners to be precise. Cook some mixed vegetables, such as peas, beans, cauliflower and carrots for about 5 minutes. For me, I just used a packet of Bird's Eye frozen vegetables. Drain and place the vegetables in a baking tray. Add some butter, olive oil and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Mix well. Place the salmon steak, seasoned with salt and black pepper, on top of the vegetables. Sprinkle some dill and basil over the fish and vegetables and cook in the oven for around 10-15 minutes at 230 degrees.

Potato, rocket and cheese soup

I first had a bite of rocket/roquette at the No 5 Bistro in Bath with my parents and I have fallen in love with it ever since. I just love its peppery taste and the sensation of oils released onto your tongue when you chew on it. Sadly, M isn't a great fan of it and so I don't get to eat it that often. But there's one of M's rules that I managed to exploit which is that if she can't see the vegetable in its full solid glory, it is more likely than not that she is willing to eat it. And so the end result is this soup, potato, rocket and cheese soup where the rocket has been dissolved into. It tasted just like broccoli and stilton soup but thats probably because I chose to add cheese to the bbc recipe. We had it with Waitrose ciabatta. Wonderful dinner for a winter night.

Oyako-don

When I was rummaging through the dark recesses of my kichen cabinets, I came across a bottle of dashi that M's mother had left. Alarms bells started ringing when I saw the expiry date: 8/12/2006. I decided to use it immediately. So I went online to check out what I can do with the dashi and Oyako don was the answer. Its really simple and easy to prepare, especially suited for quick dinners since M is coming home late these days. As a preliminary note, each bowl of oyako don should be prepared individually. Mix 40ml of dashi with 60 ml of chicken stock and bring to the boil in a pan. Add in diced chicken and diced onions and simmer till the chicken is cooked. Add mushrooms and simmer for around 2 minutes. Add in some spring onions and pour in beaten egg. Cook accordingly depending on how cooked you want your egg to be and pour over some cooked japanese rice. Serve with japanese chilli powder.

And to think I used to make oyako don without the dashi sauce...

Chicken and butternut squash casserole

Praise to the Powers that be for the BBC food website! I am really running out of chicken recipes to cook but thank goodness, I managed to find something interesting to cook from it. That said, the recipe does seem strange. It would not normally occur to me to make use of butternut squash and red wine in the same dish. But it turned out alright. I wouldn't say that the taste was heavenly but it it was quite savoury; the mixture of red wine, chicken stock and butternut squash. [M: "quite good, quite good, the stock is quite good."]

Oh and I added mushrooms to make the meal a more balanced one.

Bayswater / Gold Mine

We went to another warehouse sale. This time, its at Portobello and again we are reminded of how small M is. She found a few items that she liked but as she is simply not as big as her caucasian counterparts, none of them fitted her. Thankfully, I have no such problems but I didn't buy anything in a show of solidarity. (M: Liar!) Ok, its because I didn't feel like spending money on clothes when I don't need them till next year September.

As Bayswater is close by, we decided to go there for lunch. M had a craving for Peking duck and so we went to Gold Mine, a Chinese restaurant recommended by her sister. I honestly can't stand Four Seasons even though their duck is pretty good for Chinese duck in this country but their service is just atrocious. These days, I have little patience and tolerance for bad service. Thankfully, the service at Gold Mine was pretty alright. We can't really expect Chinese waiters to be friendly/cheerful/amicable but at least we got unobstrusive service. And the food was quite good as well



We ordered salt and pepper squid and we are pleased to announce that we have found a successor to the Nottingham version. It was just good. A light batter, not overly floury. Not too fried, not too oily and definitely savoury. The only problem I see with it is that its a bit too salty. But M has no problems in that aspect. She says that such squid is supposed to be salty. Thats why its called salt and pepper squid. Duh.



The Peking duck was delicious too, again for the standard of Chinese food in this country. I have definitely had better in Singapore but still it was good. M really likes it. The meat was tender but could have been more succulent. More importantly, the skin was thin and crispy and that is enough to satisfy M's tastebuds.

Just one note: the photos are smaller because I am using my mobile phone to take the pictures of the food. I still feel very self conscious using a camera in a restaurant.

Seafood pasta

Another one of Waitrose's recipes. I had the urge to cook it after eating the marinari at Picasso last saturday. I wanted to compare a tomato based seafood pasta with a garlic butter based one. Fry garlic with butter, add in diced spring onions and chilli. Add in your seafood selection. I used a mixture of haddock, prawns, crab sticks and mussels. Cook for a few minutes till the seafood is piping hot. Place cooked spaghetti on top and mix well. Serve with parsley and black pepper.

Conclusion: I think I prefer the tomato based seafood pasta as the taste is richer with the tomatoes and white wine. This is fine as well, its just that the taste is not as complex. Furthermore, do not use wholewheat spaghetti with this dish as the taste of the pasta itself will overwhelm the garlic butter sauce. [M's view and I concur]

Egg noodles with creamy egg sauce

D is here again. Well, he was here for the last few weeks, its just that the things I cooked weren't good enough to post on the blog or I have already done so previously. For example, two weeks ago, I made fish curry. Unfortunately, it was not from scratch, it was from a packet mix. Anyway, today, I made egg noodles with creamy egg sauce, the kind you see listed on takeaway menus. Its really simple, just stir fry an assortment of meats, mushrooms, vegetables and seafood, pour in some chicken soup and crack a few eggs into the mixture. Pour over cooked egg noodles. The trick to making the creamy egg sauce is that while the egg is stirred into the soup, it should only be half cooked when you pour it over the noodles. Oh and you need quite a huge number of eggs. Very cholestrol laden meal. Serve with crispy onions on top of the noodles.

Salt and pepper chicken

I am officially running out of chicken recipes to cook, from my cookbooks that is. I think I need a new cookbook. *explicit hint.* After an afternoon wracking my brain, poring over these books, I finally settled on this dish, salt and pepper chicken with M's favourite porridge. When M and I were at Nottingham, one of our favourite chinese dishes was the Szechuan salt and pepper chicken wings/prawns/squid/ribs at HK Hse, the best Chinese takeaway in Nottingham. Sadly, they have since changed their management and the standard of their food is nowhere near its once giddy heights. We are still searching for a takeaway/restaurant to replace it but sadly to no avail. So I guess its up to me to make an attempt to replicate it. Unforunately, i am missing one key ingredient the szechuan peppercorns but I thought I'd try making it without it just to see whether its alright.

To cook it, mix flour, salt, white pepper and 5 spice powder. If I had the szechuan peppercorns, I would add it here. Coat the chicken pieces in the flavoured flour and deep fry them till golden, crisp and cooked. It turned out pretty well, the taste obviously wasn't right but still, it is crispy chicken after all and its hard to not like it.

Mediterranean chicken

I love the natural flavours of this dish, the tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, celery, onions and red peppers combining into a rich vegetable sauce, healthy yet delicious. M was literally salivating to this dish, Mediterranean Chicken. She kept gushing about how the chicken skin tasted just like the chicken skin she loves at KFC, crispy and savoury. I think the secret is paprika as I sprinkled quite a bit of it on top of the chicken before I baked it in the oven. So to cook it, first saute onions and garlic in a pan for 4 minutes. Add in the red pepper and celery. You can include courgettes in the list of vegetables. Its in the recipes in my Chicken cookbook. Its not in my cooking as I hate it. Cook for 5 minutes and add in the tomatoes, sundried tomatoes and some balsamic vinegar. Place the vegetables in a oven proof dish. For the chicken, stuff some cream cheese into the space between the skin and the flesh. Put the chicken on top of the vegetables, drizzle some olive oil, sprinkle the key ingredient, paprika and bake in the oven for 45 minutes at 180 degrees.



Serve with pasta and you get a happy beaming M.

Potato and mushroom soup

When I first saw this recipe, I thought it was some strange fusion soup as it required soya sauce and after our fiasco with our carrot cake, we were both expecting and wary of another culinary disaster. M was practically shaking in fear that our dinner would turn out to be a mess. But I persevered, refusing to take the easy way out by making a soup that I am familiar with. Furthermore, I haven't cooked any new soup recipes for some time and so I was determined to discover the next brillant soup. Thankfully, it worked out well. M ranks this soup third behind tomato soup and fish soup. The soup looks exactly like cream of mushroom soup but once you try it, it tastes of potatoes, shallots and mushrooms, a more complex tasting soup perhaps.

Welsh rarebit

So its Sunday Brunch again. We made Welsh rarebit, a recipe from the BBC website. At first, I thought that it was a recipe for rabbit stew, rarebit and rabbit, the two words just sound and look alike. But on closer scrutiny, I discovered that its actually an egg and cheese recipe. According to the dictionary, rarebit: a dish of melted and seasoned cheese on toast. Its simple to make and excellent for lazy Sunday lunches. Just click on the title of the entry for the recipe

Picasso

Kings Road is not a good place to have a meal without proper planning. If you went there on a Saturday, with no idea where you were going to have your lunch, you would be just like us, wandering up and down the road like a bunch of lost sheep. At some point in time, we got so sick of the search, we just went into the nearest restaurant and had our lunch. The place was called Picasso and even though, it was situated along the bland row of fashion chains populating Kings Road, it was surprisingly good. Home cooked Italian food, rustic, simple and wholesome. I had the marinara, spaghetti with clams, prawns and squid. It had a rich tomato sauce, a sauce with actual depth unlike the stuff they serve at Cafe Nero and an enormous helping of seafood. M had the penne ragu. She said that it tasted just like the way her mom cooks it. So I assume thats good. So a good discovery in the middle of exorbitant shopping land. Unfortunately, the food left me extremely thirsty while I waited for M; she was doing her usual window shopping so I guessed they must have added a great deal of salt into the food. When we got home and ran an Internet check on the restaurant, we were amused to find that it is one that Gordon Ramsay frequents.

We also went to the Chelsea Farmers' Market. I was expecting something like Borough Market but as M puts it, its not even a real market. Its just an area with some shops and thats it. We went to an organic supermarket there(L, you will love it) and bought some organic icing sugar and caster sugar for our planned attempt to make carrot cake tomorrow. (Fingers crossed(Edit: sadly it didn't turn out that well, we will try again next week) I bought some white tea as well. I am really going into a tea craze, I have green tea, white tea, some flower tea and earl grey in my cupboards and I even bought a teapot today from Habitat. It was quite a good bargain, 6.80 pounds for a Bodium teapot with a detachable compartment for the teabags/tealeaves. Oh and I finally bought a coffee mug to replace the one I broke for my coffee machine.

For dinner, we ordered takeaway. Our very first takeaway meal at our London apartment. Not too bad, we actually resisted getting any takeaway for almost three months. But the craving for greasy Chinese food became too much for us to overcome and so we ordered it. I was also too lazy to cook anything for dinner after our day out. So we ordered from this restaurant, Taste of China, Chicken fried rice, King prawns and broccoli on crispy noodles and salt and pepper prawns. The chicken fried rice was good, the classic taste of takeaway fried rice. M had a huge craving for it. The crispy noodles was unfortunately not crispy anymore but the sauce was alright. Similarly, our prawns weren't crispy but again, the taste was the one we were looking for. Conclusion: the food is alright if you have a craving for greasy chinese food but the delivery time was too long for it to be a really good meal. That said, we might order from this takeaway again, dishes that would not be affected by the delivery time.

Pork chops with tomato sauce

Strangely, this week, I have been cooking food which I messed up the first time round for this blog with the use of the wrong ingredients. The last time I tried making this French dish, pork chops with tomato sauce, I used basil and that really had an adverse effect on the taste of the sauce. This time, its the right herb, tarragon and yes, the sauce is finally acceptable to both M and my tastebuds. The picture looks better too.

Mashed carrots / Spaghetti with chicken and tarragon sauce

This time, I got it right. The use of single cream instead of creme fraiche does make a huge difference to the sauce. Its now thick, with a smoother consistency as compared to the last time I cooked this. To make this more of a pasta dish rather than a chicken dish, I deboned the chicken portions, mixed it into the tarragon sauce before pouring it onto the spaghetti.

I wish I could take all my photographs in daylight as it really does make a difference but as long as one of us is working, its hard to do so. What I can do now is to take close up photos of my food as the surroundings can look very drab at night.

Chocolate fridge cake

Sunday is going to be our pudding/dessert making day (hopefully) from now on provided we can finish eating whatever we have made the sunday before. Instead of going out, we will just spend the day at home, messing up the kitchen with flour, digestive biscuits and syrup to produce (hopefully) something decent. Beginner's luck prevailed for us or perhaps the recipe we used is easy (lesson 101: pick easy dessert recipes), our first stab at making a cake was a success. We made chocolate fridge cake, a recipe we found on the bbc webpage (once again, click on the title of this entry for the recipe.) I first heard of such a cake, a flourless cake from my mom. She had seen it on the Jamie Oliver show but didn't manage to write down the details of the recipe.

The chocolate fridge cake tasted just like brownies with apricots and raisins within.

Sunday lunch: Souffle omelette with fresh herbs and cheese / Baked tomatoes

Food photographs tend to look the best in the daytime. Natural light just gives it a certain glow and its impossible to replicate it using a camera (I think). So today, we decided to make use of the fact that M doesn't have to work on Sunday to cook something nice and to make full use of the sunlight for our photos. As its sunday, brunch food is well in line with the day, we made omelettes with tomatoes. I said we as M actually did the most difficult task of all for the omelette, whisking the eggs BY HAND till they are stiff. I can't whisk. I honestly can't. I just can't master the strange circles I have to make with the whisk. She spent 20 minutes whisking it, heh and I only then realised that we had an electric whisk hidden in the depths of our cupboards. She wasn't exactly happy after that. Anyway, this is no ordinary omelette as you should have already guessed from the fact that M has to whisk the egg. I got the recipe from the bbc website, so you can just check it out yourself. Just click on the title of this entry. For the tomatoes, I drizzle some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, seasoned the tomatoes and baked them in the oven for around 10 minutes.