Hungry the Ate | a Cambridge food blog

Bibimbap House, Cambridge

2011-12-15T14:39:00.003Z

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Pork Bulgogi Bibimbap (£9.50)

When I wrote about going to Little Seoul a while back, I had incorrectly thought that it was the only Korean restaurant in Cambridge. In fact, there's another restaurant on Mill Rd with an interesting approach to Korean food...

N and I decided to pay Bibimbap house a visit for lunch recently, and were pleasantly surprised to find only one kind of item on the menu - Bibimbap! (not surprisingly) In some way, I almost prefer a restaurant that does not offer many options because it means they have confidence in whatever it is they specialise in serving.

Bibimbap House only do 7 different kinds of bibimbap, from your standard bulgogi bibimbap to japchae bibimbap and even the infamous ham (read: spam) and kimchi bibimbap.

We order the regular bulgogi bibimbap and the pork bulgogi bibimbap which both come as a nice set with miso soup and two of my much beloved sides. Unfortunately, they weren't my favourite sides - a mash potato salad and some vegetables - I'd much prefer some kimchi, or those fish cakes, or the jelly things, or those marinated potatoes... yum yum. I should probably learn their names.

The bibimbap itself was tasty and sizzling hot, full of gochujang goodness, although the rather large looking bowl was actually deceptively shallow. I very much liked the two bulgogi types, more watery than I'm used to at other Korean restaurants and not so sickeningly sweet, which made it better than usual!

And to top it all off, (presumably) the son of one of the chefs was at the table next to us, wolfing down a meal himself whilst playing his DS.

Yes, I like this place.

Bibimbap House
60 Mill Road, Cambridge, CB1 2AS
01223 506800

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Simple Doughnut Balls!

2011-12-09T01:13:00.001Z

Hi I'm Francis, the host of this show, "Cooking with Dog".

It's not what you think.

Today, we are going to prepare simple "doughnut holes" following a youtube recipe from Francis.

Sift 100 g of plain flour and 2 tsp of baking powder into a bowl.

In a separate bowl, whisk 1 egg, 2 tbsp brown sugar, roughly 1/4 cup milk and 1 tbsp melted butter. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and mix to form a batter.

The milk/flour ratio is important - you can adjust it so the batter is liquid enough to be mixable, but not runny.

(I tried this once with the 2 tbsp milk in the original recipe and ended up with what looked like dry chicken nuggets...)

Heat oil to 170 deg C. Drop a little bit of batter into the oil - it is the right temperature if it bubbles but not too vigorously. When ready, take a half spoonful of batter and scrape it into the oil to form small balls.

A little misshapen sometmies - the batter was slightly too runny.

Once the dough balls have grown in size and are browned on the outside (a few minutes), leave them to cool on a rack.

These doughnut balls are delicious when still warm and crisp on the outside. Eat as many as you like at this stage - they taste surprisingly like those asian fried dough things "haam jim beng???" (咸煎饼) or even "you tiao".

Once cooled completely, place them in a plastic bag and shake together with your desired coating (sugar, cinnamon, matcha etc.)

Identify the magazines for 10 points.

Serve with your favourite ice-cream!

Matcha doughnuts with black sesame ice-cream.

For a black sesame ice-cream recipe, it was basically the same as my green tea ice cream recipe, except with ground toasted black sesame seeds.

Trinity BA Feast, Michaelmas 2011

2011-12-08T01:21:00.003Z

Good old Harry has his Christmas ~~pants~~ trousers on this evening...

BA Feast - the highlight of the Trinity culinary term. Five courses, sparkling cocktails in the Master's Lodge, ample wine, £22. Really £22???

I've always been sceptical about the cost of BA Feast, given that a normal Trinity BA formal costs £8.25. Does the food quality and overall experience really justify a more than doubling in the price? At my first ever BA feast, I decided to find out for myself.

Trinity College engraved knives... I'd seen the TCK silver cutlery, but this was new to me.

Starting with a collection of prosecco-based cocktails in the Master's Lodge was not a bad start at all - bucks fizz, bellinis and kir royale all went down well (bar a rather major scheduling error, ahem).

Fennel veloute (amuse bouche)

Upon arriving in hall, first off the bat was the amuse bouche of fennel veloute, served in (my favourite) charming little blue and gold Trinity coffee cups. Whilst there were claims of "this just tastes like chicken" from some, the soup was a very warm welcome opener after braving the cold Cambridge winter weather outside. Quite mild, very light on the fennel to be honest, but definitely pleasant and almost reassuring.

Tuna carpaccio

The starter was a tuna carpaccio - startingly large, beautifully thin pink slices layered on the plate topped with a Trinity's standard leafy garnish thing. I don't think this is standard for carpaccio, but the tuna was lightly seared at the edges with a herb/salt/pepper crust which worked really well. I was expecting more lemon and oil marinade, but actually the fish on it's own was great quality and best enjoyed as is! A rarity for Cambridge...

Beef wellington ; Honeyed baby carrots, roast kumara, green beans

For main course was beef wellington, which I've actually never had before. The meat was tender enough, perhaps slightly too well done, although with differing degrees of cooked-ness, depending on which cut you got. Still pretty delicious, although from all reports, it was more tender last year and with a more significant layer of pâté.

Molten chocolate souffle with strawberries and whipped cream

Inspired by the Shok's doppleganger, I decided to put molten chocolate souffle on the menu for dessert! Nitpicking slightly, the centre could have been even more molten, but I think the kitchens did a great job here, especially having to make 110 of these in one sitting.

After a special request to the Catering department, we managed to get a pretty nice selection for the cheese course. Of special note was the Saint-Marcellin cheese which was very mild but had a beautifully creamy texture almost like goats cheese. General consensus was that the black cheese platters were most impressive!

And to finish, coffee and chocolate truffles - definitely beats the regular chocolate mints they provide at regular formals.

Wow. Whilst the regular BA formals strike me as better value for money, the feast was definitely worth the money we paid for it. One major contributing factor was the atmosphere of the dinner - with a significantly lower number of people (110 vs 190), it really felt far more comfortable and relaxed, with no rush or competition for food and wine.

Definitely a great night, and still a little tipsy whilst writing this!

SMBC Season 1 Finale - Homemade Pasta

2011-11-22T01:03:00.000Z

All good things must come to an end.

Move aside Epic Meal Time, this has to be the most epic video of pasta making you've ever seen.

This is SMBC time and we're making pasta from scratch. The Shok's bringing along a few of his mates and we're going to rock Blue Boar R top floor kitchen with some serious dough rolling. Wholemeal style.

There are no bacon strips in here.

Starting with 800 g strong flour (high protein content for pasta), 8 eggs and salt, we smash it all together into a proper dough. Easy as pie. Or pasta. PC can't find regular pasta flour so he goes for strong wholemeal flour instead. It's good for you.

Homage to Xinmei at Pudding Pie Lane

We're rolling Rick Astley style because we're students and never gonna give up. Who needs a rolling pin when you have empty wine bottles? In Cambridge, there are always empty wine bottles. And empty port bottles. And empty sherry bottles. And empty gin bottles. But gin bottles aren't cylindrical, and so would be bad for rolling dough.

When the wine bottle is useless, we throw it out the window. Defenestration is the only way to dispose of wine bottles. Then the dough goes through our brand spanking new pasta roller, increasing the settings until it's the right thickness.

Then we cut the dough like a boss. Are we finished? Think again. We cut the dough once more, this time with the pasta roller. Like a boss.

This is pasta madness.

It only takes a few minutes to boil as fresh pasta cooks quicker than the dry stuff. In the mean time, we blitz a ton of basil, extra virgin olive oil, parmesan, pine nuts and garlic into submission for a smooth pesto. We also heat through some passata for extra variety.

But wait, I bet you didn't see this coming.

It's the motherquacking Italian flag... buon appetito.

Next time on Epic SMBC, we roast a pig on a bonfire.

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If you were wondering why there hasn't been an SMBC in quite a while, it's because with the new academic year, the three of us (PC, Hangman and The Shok) have moved into separate housing...! OK so it's only like 3 minutes walk between all of us. We'll do something again soon!

Petrou Brothers, Cambridge

2011-11-18T19:30:00.003Z

You can't get more British than a dreary grey sky and a plate of fish and chips.

The thing I never understood about fish and chips is why this dish is so strongly associated with British food. There's nothing about it that strikes me as particularly British.

On a similar note (that The Fastest Food Blogger also noted recently), it strikes me as unusual that Cambridge should have at least two dedicated fish and chip shops, yet it is so difficult to buy good fresh seafood for cooking...

Anyhow thanks to a tip from LL Cool J, n∈R and I decided to head to the mall outside the Grafton to lunch at a fish and chippie called Petrou Brothers. What were we there for?

Oh yes. When LL mentioned last week that you could get a "mini" (read: maxi) fish and chip meal for around £3, this was an opportunity that could not be passed up.

Objects in photo may appear smaller than actual size.

Maxi alright, he wasn't kidding. Out comes a rather generous portion of fish and chips, slopped with a pretty damn huge ladle of mushy peas.

The fish was actually pretty well fried, with a good crunch and not at all sogged with oil. I have to say I wasn't the biggest fan of the chips - they were quite good for British fish and chip standards I think, but still there was less golden crunch and more of a hardened skin to the outside of them, needing quite a bit of salt & vinegaring. (I miss Uni Bros chips for any usyd people out there. Mmm chicken salt.) Mushy peas are mushy peas ie. tasteless green volume that counts as one of your "5-a-day".

Verdict? Pretty tasty fish, reasonable chips, um yeah peas, and a bloody good price.

Petrou Brothers
12 Burleigh St
Cambridge CB1 1DG
http://www.petroubrothersfishandchips.co.uk/

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Lemon and Blueberry Cake

2011-11-16T18:41:00.001Z

My goodness it's been far too long since I did this blogging thing. Life is busy etc, you all know how it is. Just a fantastic little recipe I found at Joy of Baking which I whipped together (literally) at 12am today, since I had two spare lemons and Wednesday is Problem Session day (aka Cake day) in our research group.

Despite not having a bread-loaf tin, I have a cake tin of the same volume as described in the recipe, except far flatter and wider... still came out lemony and delicious! Joy of Baking is amazing. (It's like the Organic Syntheses of the baking world)

Protip: I made extra of the lemon glaze - strangely delicious on vanilla ice-cream

Ingredients:
Cake Batter:
1 1/2 cups (195 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (85 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
1/2 cup (120 ml) milk
1 cup fresh blueberries

Lemon Glaze:
1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated white sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Recipe:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place the oven rack in the center of the oven. Butter (or spray with a non stick vegetable spray) the bottom and sides of a loaf pan (9 x 5 x 3 inch) (23 x 13 x 8 cm). In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter until softened (about 1 minute). Add the sugar and continue to beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in the vanilla extract and lemon zest. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture (in three additions) and milk (in two additions) alternately, starting and ending with the flour. Mix only until combined. Gently fold in the blueberries.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 55 to 65 minutes, or until the bread is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, bring the 1/4 cup (50 grams) of sugar and the 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. When the bread is done, remove from oven and place on a wire rack. Pierce the hot loaf all over with a wooden skewer or toothpick and then brush the top of the loaf with the hot lemon glaze. Cool the loaf in the pan for about 30 minutes then remove from pan and let cool completely on a wire rack.

This bread is best served on the day it is made.

SMBC #7 - Homemade Pizza

2011-09-28T22:09:00.000+01:00

After the ridiculous excesses of our previous SMBC, M&M decided that it would be a fantastic idea if we ~~all made him pizza~~ all made pizza together from scratch. As our usual kitchen didn't have an oven, we packed our things and headed to the communal BA kitchen to bake up a storm.

Going on a recipe from PC's mum, the pizza dough was made by mixing:
- 600 g flour
- 1 cup milk
- 1/2 cup lukewarm water
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1 sachet of dried yeast (or cube of fresh yeast if available)
- salt

Disclaimer: PC says this isn't the traditional Italian recipe for pizza dough - the real thing has a specific type of flour and no milk... apparently you can google it.

Once the dough has risen, it can be rolled out and shaped to your hearts desire.

We tried two different methods after this:
- either baking the bases first, then adding the toppings and rebaking, or
- adding the toppings to the raw bases and baking all at once
The first resulted in a crispier lighter base, but the second is easier, so I can't recommend one over the other.

Baking the pizzas bases first really makes them puff up, almost like lebanese pita bread.

The tomato sauce was simply a mix of tinned tomatoes, lots of garlic, rosemary, oregano, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Our collection of toppings included traditional ingredients like mozarella, basil, olives, red onion and ~~peppers~~ capsicum, as well as some less typical ingredients such as tuna, feta cheese and (heaven forbid) sweet corn.

Baked until brown, then best eaten immediately! Few things are better than melted mozzarella straight from the oven...

Here are some mugshots from the pizza gallery:

The old favourite, the margerhita.

A few more toppings: olives, zucchini, capsicum, red onion, capers.

Tuna. Is that weird?

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We haven't had an SMBC post in ages - we actually did this quite a while ago, plus one other thing that I'm going to post up next in a back-to-back of SMBC posts! And this next one is going to be the last SMBC for the academic year 2010-2011, so don't miss it! (especially the awesome video in the next one, courtesy of M&M...)

Munchin' in München (Part 3)

2011-09-27T01:20:00.001+01:00

"Why are most of your holiday photos just food?" - a complaint I commonly receive.

Leberkässemmel at the Viktualien markets - contains neither liver (leber) nor cheese (käse) - Germans really know how to make meat products taste good.

Roast pork from Hofbräuhaus - so tender with really crunchy crackling.

Sausages from Hofbräuhaus with sauerkraut and mustard.

Hofbräu Original Helles (left) and Weißbier (right).

The beautiful Schloss Nymphenburg where we ate...

...far too much cream in this mutant oversized profiterole thing.

Delicious pork knuckle at Bachmaier Hofbräu - a little overpriced. Beware the heaviness of potato dumplings. So good, yet so filling.

Goulash with buttered spätzle at Gasthaus zum Erdinger Weißbräu - hearty and full of flavour.

Watching Bayern Munich tear Villareal apart at Atzinger near Universität...

So they're just wedges, but with quark! Great substitute for sour cream.


Ratatouille! A welcome relief from the meat overload that is Bavaria.

Kaiserschmarrn with apple sauce - oh my goodness, this was heavenly, especially the ovened-top-bits.

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So ends the posts about Munich - we'll return to normal programming next time!

Munchin' in München (Part 2)

2011-09-27T00:38:00.002+01:00

And so it begins.

Misleadingly starts in September...

Oktoberfest - the world's largest piss-up. Forget the Cambridge Beer Festival, the British have nothing on the Bavarians. At least that's the impression I had from the photos I'd seen of drunken masses and well-endowed ladies carrying an incomprehensible number of giant beer mugs full of liquid gold.

The statue of Bavaria looming large over the Theresienwiese.

After all the fun of our scientific Oktoberfest experience, The Flavour and I decided to head over to the Theresienwiese to see (and drink) for ourselves whether this was indeed just a giant drunken affair dominated by eager tourists, or whether there was something a little more than that.

Lowenbrau tent at 11 am.

We arrive at the Oktoberfest grounds at around 10:30 am on the first day, following a steady trickle of people wearing lederhosen and Bavarian dresses walking from the nearby underground stations. The grounds are less busy than expected, although inside the beer halls, the seats are almost completely filled already as the keenest have staked our their spots for the day.

Too bad that no beer is served until the mayor taps the first barrel at noon. However, the kitchens are already in full gear preparing for the hungry masses.

Chickens. Lots of them.

Instead of joining the crowds in the halls, we decide to watch the opening parade and the arrival of the beer hall owners. Magnificently adorned horses parade down the main thoroughfare of the Theresienweise, drawing behind them carts of beer barrels, as well as entire families from the youngest children up to the grandmothers and fathers, all waving and cheering with the crowds.

Although the parade was well worth watching, the price we consequently paid was the inability to find a spot in any of the beer halls after it was over. After fighting our way through several full halls, we had to settle in the end at the Nymphenburg Sektzelt, which isn't strictly a beer hall as it sells wine and other drinks. Outrageous was the price of the drinks - more than 7 Euro for 500 mL of Paulaner is highway robbery!! Nonetheless, the atmosphere was fantastic thanks to the hyperactive live band wearing cow-patterned shorts...

Drinking on an empty stomach is never a good idea, so we decided to go outside to find some food. Instead of going for the multitude of exorbitantly priced large meaty dishes on offer, I opted to go for a flammkuchen instead (ok, so not Bavarian as far as I know, but beer makes me full...). Not as light and crispy as I've ones I've previously had, but everything tastes really good when you're starving.

Flammkuchen (€7). Interestingly I thought I'd been ripped off when I paid €10 and got no change. Actually there's a €3 deposit for the wooden board it's on, which is returned when you finish eating.

Again, we were unsuccessful trying to weave our way into the Augustiner beer hall...

Try speed stacking these...

GET OUT OF MY WAY

... finally finding a spot in the beer garden of the Hacker-Pschorr beer hall, rewarded with (slightly less than thanks to a massive head) 1L of thirst-quenching goodness. Success!

Beer! One litre is the smallest size (€9.10, but basically €10 when the waitress doesn't give you change)

Despite all it's inebriocentric (new word of the day) tendancies, the Oktoberfest is a lot more than just a plain lashfest. The atmosphere is definitely that of a big carnival, and surprisingly family friendly! Add a lot of funfare games, massive rollercoasters, food stalls and amazing costumes, and the Oktoberfest is definitely a great experience which goes beyond the fountains of beer and passed-out casualties.

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So you might be saying, "This is a food blog, where is the food?". Yes, the Bavarians really do amazing things with meat and potatoes, not to mention bread. And all in unashamedly large portions.

Looks like I'll have to do a Part 3 to finish this one off...

Munchin' in München (Part 1)

2011-09-23T01:31:00.002+01:00

So that's where the research funding goes! (I'm just being facetious, please keep funding us. Pretty please?)

The food. And this is only for one day. Insane. (click to enlarge)

So I mentioned last time that I was in Munich for a certain very well known festival. That's right, the Festival of Chemical Biology!!! (Who is Oktoberfest? Never heard of him...) As you might know, funding is pretty dismal in academic research, especially with the austerity cuts due to rather poor economic times. One country that appears to be bucking the trend and investing in science is Germany and it shows...

This was a seriously amazing conference! Not just some amazing speakers but hands down the best food I have ever had and possibly will ever have at a conference. I don't mention this lightly.

There was literally so much food that there were multiple trays of leftovers on offer after the final talks on each day. On a related note, we literally stuffed ourselves silly thanks to seriously addictive Laugenstange (straight pretzel-like bread) sandwich things. If there's one German thing I wish they had here in the UK, it would be their bread. So good!

Ok, time to roll the photos:

Sallow thorn curd - unusual, but the fruit itself is quite nice.

Rosted Donau-Waller filet on leek vegetables with fresh grated horseradish - a great match of condiments with the fish.

Tolzer smoked salmon trout and samlet filet on rucola tips with cranberries - this tasted AMAZING. Full of flavour from the smoked fish, working beautifulyl together with the cranberry sauce.

Vegetable terrine on fennel-carrot salad in shallot vinagrette - unusual one, not bad, slightly jelly like in texture. Salad was quite sour I have to say... well pickled I suppose.

Carpaccio from smoked lamb with shaped mountain cheese and tomato oil - quite salty, but the meat was quality stuff.

But wait, there's more! Here comes the hot food:

Professor Chris Chang doesn't realise the peril he is in...

Veal prime boiled topside with Sacher-chive sauce and root vegetables - rather innocuous looking, but wow my damn! This was the most tender meat ever - how do the Bavarians do it...

My stash. The wild mushrooms were so good...

And then for dessert:

Fruit cake galore!

Carrot cake with a little fondant carrot on top.

Bavarian cream with raspberry - deceptively light, not so deceptively delicious.

Caramelled Kaiserschmarrn with apples and cherry-picks - not bad, great vanilla custard, but we had better on the trip.

Well what can I say about the science and about the food? Best conference ever.

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Part 2 will continue tomorrow with a taste of the non-scientific Oktoberfest!

Here are more food photos courtesy of photographer Oliver Baron (www.oliverbaron.com) - hope he doesn't mind:

Seven Days, Cambridge

2011-09-16T21:56:00.003+01:00

Somehow the name "Week" doesn't roll off the tongue as well...

Hello Mr Chilli, nice to meet you.

PC, The Shok and myself manage to score a free meal off M&M, and whilst there are some strong suggestions for Midsummer House, it is decided in the end that we should do Chinese and go to Seven Days for dinner. Always on the ball, The Shok calls ahead to make a booking as it's a Friday night, and Seven Days is notoriously popular, especially amongst the Chinese student crowd in Cambridge.

Fish flavoured fried eggplant.

The first to arrive is the 'fish flavoured' eggplant, with the tender eggplant chunks cooked with a generous amount of oil, seasoning and serious wok hei. Perfect with rice, this dish is immediately PC and M&M's favourite, so much so that we don't hesitate to order a second portion. In my opinion, the sauce is a little too strong on both sweet and salty levels, but still delicious and superior to the rendition I had previously had elsewhere.

Fish fillets in hot chilli oil.

The next to arrive is a pile of dried chillies bathing in a giant bowl of scalding hot oil. And this is the small size. Underneath the layer of chilli lies slices of incredibly tender and silky fish fillets, thanks in no small part to all that oil. Right at the bottom of the dish is a bed of bean sprouts, which I find to be a little on the salty side.
This dish is also a clear winner, and everyone seems to enjoy "fishing" for the small remaining pieces of fish until the bowl is completely cleaned out of everything but chilli and oil.

I'm surprised that this Sichuan cooking technique (shui zhu) is one that has only become popular relatively recently, so the internets tell me.

King prawn fried with salted egg yolk.

Next is the prawns fried using salted egg yolk, something which I pick because M&M wants king prawn and I haven't had the taste of salted egg in a while. Reluctant to get their hands dirty, and perhaps a little uncomfortable with prawn heads, this dish unfortunately ends up being a little neglected. I get superlazy and start eating the shell... although after getting colder, this becomes a little bit unpleasant and I revert to peeling them. In my opinion, this actually isn't bad at all, although it does get too greasy and heavy when it cools down.

Tofu with fish mince in chilli oil.

Last but not least is the tofu which is basically like mapo doufu except with fish. Standard and does the job.

At the end of the meal, I feel like I've eaten several bricks, probably because of eating far too many of the prawns in a desperate (and successful) attempt to not waste them. Everyone is most definitely satisfied, but not requiring food for quite a while. Or at least until an hour later when we scoff down a blackforest cake between the four of us...

Seven Days is one of the best Chinese restaurants in Cambridge, with authentic flavours that don't compromise for a foreign palate. Perhaps a little too heavy on the oil to be eating regularly, but that's how the cooking style goes. At around £55 for 5 big dishes and rice for everyone, it's decent value too.

And by the looks of the crowd it attracts every night, we're not the only ones who likes the place.

Seven Days
66 Regent St
Cambridge CB2 1DP
Tel: +44 (0) 12233 309559

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I've been in Munich this week for a certain festival. Take a wild guess what I'm referring to...

Of course, the CIPSM Festival of Chemical Biology! Oh apparently, there's also some other festival on at the same time that has something to do with beer, but I mean who on earth would be interested in that?

Zhong qiu jie kuai le! (中秋节快乐!)

2011-09-13T01:10:00.006+01:00

So I bought some overpriced mooncakes today for the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Clockwise from top left: Five nuts/seeds, lotus paste, red bean (double yolk), black sesame (double yolk).

Always eager to educate and expand horizons, I asked M&M and PC to come over to share some of these strange-chinese-cake-things with a decent amount of scepticism. I mean, who puts whole salted egg yolks inside a cake?

Asian protip: It is highly recommended to buy mooncakes after the mid-autumn festival date. They often go on sale for half price.

The insides, same order as previously.

The reactions were varied to say the least...

PC: "For your blog, you can say I liked it... but not the egg."
M&M: "I have stomach pain now. Man, this is probably horseblood mixed with lead and stuff..."
YH: "No way, that would be too expensive to make."
PC: "My nose is bleeding now."
M&M: *knowing glance*
YH: "I like tendon... pause... a lot."

I have to say, despite all the fancy types you can get these days, I still prefer the plain old lotus paste ones, and of course with the egg. So what are your favourite (or least favourite) mooncake flavours? And do you like egg yolks in yours?

Happy mid-autumn festival everyone!

Yim Wah Express, Cambridge

2011-09-11T15:38:00.005+01:00

There are two good signs in this picture.

The first is that you can see the chef at work, meaning that they have nothing (or less at least) to hide. The second is the racks with hanging roast duck and pork - whilst some people apparently think it's unhygeinic, but for me it's always a reassuring and slightly mouthwatering sight at a Chinese restaurant.

After our last after-lab-dinner trip, this time YST and I decided to try out Yim Wah Express, the new Chinese place on the corner of Lensfield Rd and Regent St. Together with Golden House and Lan Hong House, this now makes a trio of Chinese restaurants on this corner. Unlike it's take-away style neighbours however, it looks like they've spent quite a bit of effort to make the place look nice, with shiny new furniture and a decent sized seating area.

I had initially intended to go for something with roast duck in it, since they had it just hanging there, but upon reading the MASSIVE menu (over 200 food items, a logistical kitchen nightmare... how do they do it? lots of frozen stuff?) I decided to go for something a little different...

Marinated beef tripe ho fun in soup (£6.80)

In my opinion, most non-muscle cuts of meat taste pretty good, and most people don't give it a fair go because they are turned off by the mental distress of eating a cow's stomach lining.
So I was delighted to find my tripe soup noodles turned out to be more than just tripe (stomach), but also liver, kidney and tendon.

Does anyone find this too hard to STOMACH? Get it? Damn I'm funny.

Tendon and tripe are my favourites - tendon is wonderfully thick and gelatinous in texture thanks to lots of collagen, a little similar to the texture of fat except without all the guilt. Tripe on the other hand is more chewy, but it really soaks up flavour!

Kidney wasn't bad either, with a mix of meatiness and jelly-like consistency. Liver however was my least favourite - it was a little gritty and had that characteristic livery taste which I'm not the biggest fan of (although I do like pate).

Chef's special mixed fish balls and vermicelli soup (£7.20)

YST's fish ball noodle soup was a little disappointing I have to say, with just a few balls and a bit of chinese cabbage as the only toppings.

Frog legs with chilli (£6.20)

We also split a dish of frog legs, which were deep fried and slathered in a generous amount of sticky sweet chilli sauce. Sensory overload but pretty bloody addictive!

Overall this restaurant seems like a welcome addition to the Chinese restaurant scene in Cambridge, with the generally milder flavours a good counterpoint to the more fiery style of Seven Days (which will be the next blog post!). I'm keen to go back and have some of the roast meat dishes, as that seems to be their kind of speciality.

Yim Wah Express
2-4 Lensfield Rd
Cambridge CB2 1EG
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 309530
http://www.yimwahhouse.co.uk/

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The Big Bake-Off (Part 2)

2011-09-09T14:44:00.001+01:00

Last time on The Big Bake-Off...

Tasting and Judgement
On the panel today we have eight mathematicians including The Shok, a physicist (PC) and the chairman M+M himself.

Cakes can be awarded a maximum of 100 points: 50 for taste, 25 for creativity and 25 for presentation.

And now for the verdict. In this chocolate, fruit and cream cake battle, we've seen both chefs go at it for hours to create M+M's dream dessertland. Will it be the defending champion, the express precision of the TGV, or does the food blogger steal a win from left field? Who takes it? Who's cuisine reigns supreme?

...

And the scores for YH are as follows:
Taste = 423/500
Creativity = 188/250
Presentation = 191/250
Total = 802/1000

Now for the TGV:
Taste = 452/500
Creativity = 233/250
Presentation = 216/250
Total = 901/1000

The winner is TGV with her amazing croquembouche!

The Twist
But wait, did I not say that there were 8 mathematicians on the panel, including one statistician? A quick t-test on Excel revealed that in fact the results were not statistically significant (p > 0.05).

Does this mean TGV didn't win/I didn't lose? Well, even if statistically there's more than 5% doubt about the result, it was quite clear to everyone that TGV definitely won the day, no doubt about it! Although clearly this calls for further experiments (ie. bakeoffs!) to increase the sample size and get a statistically significant result...

The Recipes
Alrighty, enough fooling around... here are the recipes for the different parts of the cakes, mostly adapted from a bunch of different food blogs!

The Secret Picture [kinda like the Secret Sound on old radio shows]... What is it? (10 points)

1. Chocolate Cherry Cake based on Not Quite Nigella
Melt 180 g butter, 140 g dark chocolate, 1 cup water, 3/4 cup vegetable oil and 60 mL coffee in a pan until melted.

Mix 3 cups flour, 3 cups caster sugar and 3/4 cup cocoa. Add melted chocolate/butter mixture to this dry mixture.

Mix in 3 eggs, one at a time. Then add 3/4 cup buttermilk (I used regular milk + juice of half a lemon)

Fold in a splash of vanilla essence, 2 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, pinch of salt and 20 chopped cherries.

Pour into baking tin and bake for ~50-60 minutes at 180 deg C.

(If I had 2 baking tins, it would be easier to split the batter into two tins rather than have to cut the cake into layers layer. Plus, the amount is too much for one tin - it overflowed in mine!)

2. Buttercream Frosting from Sweetapolita
Place 5 egg whites and 1 cup caster sugar into a very clean (any traces of grease will kill the egg whites) mixer bowl. Heat over a pot of boiling water whilst whisking until the sugar dissolves and the foam is hot. Keep whisking until thick and glossy.

Then with 450 g butter softened at room temp, add it in small chunks whilst whisking until a silky smooth texture is achieved. Add a splash of vanilla essence and pinch of salt. Refrigerate.

3. Candy Floss from Cooking Books
Add 400 g sugar, 1/2 cup water, and 1/4 cup honey in a saucepan and heat the bejeezus out of it.

Meanwhile, set up two skewers over the edge of a table, weighed down at one end. Place some newspaper or similar on the floor to catch the mess...

When it starts becoming thick and very bubbly, test it out by dipping a fork into the caramel. Bring it over the skewers and shake it back and forth. If the dripping liquid caramel forms strings which solidify over the skewers, all good!

4. Chocolate Cherries
Heat 125 mL cream in a saucepan until almost but not boiling. Pour over 250 g of chopped up dark chocolate. Mix with a fork until smooth. Leave in fridge to cool.

When cooled but still workable, take a spoonful of ganache, stud with a hazelnut, shape into a ball around the nut. Roll the ball in icing sugar. Stick a cherry stalk into the top.

Heat chopped cherries and sugar in a saucepan until reduced to a thick liquid. Use this liquid to coat the fake cherries.

5. Raspberry Jam
Heat raspberries and sugar in a saucepan with a squeeze of lemon juice until reduced to a jam consistency.

6. Ganache Drizzle
Same as the ganache in number 4, except use equal amounts of cream and chocolate (1 cup, 250 g).

7. Assembly
Cut the top off the baked cake so that it is flat. Then cut cake horizontally into 2 layers (difficult!). Coat the first layer with raspberry jam, then sandwich with second layer. Coat the whole thing with some of the frosting. Refrigerate for 10 minutes. Then use the rest of the frosting to do a second coat. Refrigerate again for 20 minutes.

Drizzle cake with ganache until it drips down the sides. Top with fruit, chocolate cherries, candy floss and some chocolate shavings (scrape a chocolate block with a knife).

Breathe a sigh of relief.

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Hope you enjoyed this two-part Bake-Off series!

On a totally different note, I'm in the process of writing BA dinner menus for the Michaelmas term. If you have any ideas, let me know!

The Big Bake-Off (Part 1)

2011-09-07T23:55:00.002+01:00

Allez cuisine! The heat will be on...

The Intro
Five weeks ago, a man's fantasy became reality in a form never seen before: Pearce Hostel Kitchen Stadium, a giant cooking arena. The motivation for spending his fortune (*cough cough*) to create Kitchen Stadium was to encourage others to bake cakes for him, true artistic creations which he would then devour himself. To realise his dream, he started choosing the top student chefs from all Cambridge, and he named his students the Iron Grad Students, invincible grads of culinary skills.

The Contenders

In the red corner, we have yours truly, food blogger with Hungry the Ate, and a self-confessed novice at baking. Quite the expert at eating though. Semper Eat'em!
Pre-bakeoff quote: "The last thing I put in an oven was some round bottom flasks in my lab which needed drying."

And in the blue corner, it's the defending champion, known only as the TGV. She's travelling at the speed of light, baking at 200 degrees, that's why they call her Miss Farenheit. Reputed to be able to execute a recipe perfectly the first time she ~~tries~~ dominates it.
Pre-bakeoff quote: "Tell him I'm using tomatoes. Tomato is a fruit. Psyche!" (may be fictional)

The Theme Ingredient
Chairman M+M unveils the theme ingredient for this battle... kyo no tema wa, kore desu:

As it happens, blackforest cake is vetoed as a theme for being too restricted. So the theme is reannounced:

Any cake with chocolate, fruit and cream!

The Battle
It's 3pm on a Saturday, so bang a gong and we are on in this epic cake battle! The early going seems to be a little rough for the challenger. It appears that YH has underestimated just how much his cake will rise - it's like a little vomcano giving rise to a second smaller cake at the base of the oven. Incredible!

YH: And then I just chundered everywah... disgusting.

Meanwhile on the human bullet train, the TGV appears to be making plenty of noise with an electric mixer. Out comes some wonderfully coloured raspberry panna cotta:

TGV panna cotta in a box

Back to the challenger, and he seems to be making faux cherries! I can report that the 'seed' is a hazelnut, hidden within chocolate truffle ganache and coated with cherry glaze.

Faux cherries by YH

Returning to the other side, it looks as though TGV's plans are starting to become clear after a serious profiterole manufacturing task. The choux pastries are filled with the panna cotta we saw before, and coated in chocolate. My mouth is beginning to water already...

TGV is a profiterole-making machine

In YH's kitchen, some serious layer action going on - it looks like a coating of raspberry jam is going down.

YH lays down the law, and the raspberries

TGV is almost done with her croquembouche, assembling the profiteroles with fruit and caramel.

TGV's tower of yum

The last minute decorations are happening on YH's side as well. It's a case of situation substitution with the candy floss, using honey instead of corn syrup, but it looks like the bet has paid off!

Shiny sugar strings on YH's side

And that's it, the cake baking battle is O-VAH!!!

The Final Products!
The challenger YH presents a dark chocolate cake flavoured with a hint of coffee, cayenne pepper and cinnamon, sandwiching a layer of fruity raspberry reduction. The whole affair is coated in vanilla buttercream frosting, doused with liquid chocolate ganache and topped with a sugar nest of faux cherries.

TGV counters with an immaculate croquembouche of chocolate profiteroles filled with a raspberry panna cotta. The entire profiterole stack is studded with cherries, raspberries, mulberries and strawberries, and wrapped up together in golden strings of caramel floss.

The Verdict
What do you think the result will be? You'll have to wait until next time, on Part 2 of the Big Bake-Off!

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I figured this was pretty long so I've split it up into two. Part 2 will have the judging criteria, scores, statistical analysis (yeah baby) and recipes for my cake at least (I don't have TGV's recipe unfortunately).

Apologies if you aren't familiar with the original dubbed Japanese Iron Chef. Wait, why am I apologising? Shame on you! Go watch it now. It's awesome, I promise you.

Stay tuned!

See you in four days...

2011-09-05T23:12:00.002+01:00

Cryptic photo, which station am I at? (10 points for a correct answer)

Show me, show you! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz-mJed_bP0)

I was in London a couple of weeks ago when I happened to stumble across a small takeaway stand selling Japanese rice balls (onigiri), which was a pleasant surprise. Whilst found in every single convenience store in Japan, you rarely find onigiri outside of Japan. At least in Sydney you don't, despite there being no shortage of sushi shops selling regular rolls...

What's the big deal about a ball of rice in seaweed? I dont know how, but they taste so good! The perfect on-the-go snack, or even a fully-fledged meal. Very handy.

The problem is I can never open these properly. No.1 is fine, the strip down the middle. No.2 is fine as well. It's No.3 that's the problem - the plastic corner always gets stuck in between nori and rice. Is this meant to happen?

The salmon filling in this one wasn't setting the world on fire, but the seaweed and rice was pretty good. Again, I just can't explain why.

The shop is a chain that seems to operate in London stations. Shame they didn't have any adventurous flavours. Only things like tuna and mayo, or teriyaki chicken... I wish there was stuff like spicy mentaiko. Mmm.

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It's been far far too long since I've last blogged... I was lying on the beach in Italy (valid excuse?) Apologies to the estimated 1.5 people that may have missed my absence. I do intend to blog regularly from here on (unlike a certain communitychannel) - I literally have 20 folders of photos for 20 blogposts I mean to write. Stay tuned!

Stickybeaks Cafe, Cambridge

2011-08-03T16:56:00.001+01:00

There's quite a number of restaurants that I'd been meaning to write about for quite a while but never got the chance. Blog procrastinating, who would have thought... anyway here's one of them.

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Looks like they print a new menu every day!

I'm very much biased in favour of independent restaurants and cafes. So when I saw Stickybeaks Cafe on The Fastest Food Blog, I had to try it out.

Sausage and butterbean casserole with apples and leek (£5)

The casserole was simple but hearty and satisfying, less a casserole and more of a soup almost, and definitely a good thing because I was suffering from a bit of a cold at the time.

SWN went for the chicken wrap which was pretty neat looking, although I didn't steal a bite to check! The salad however was quite unusual, and altogether not bad. The yoghurt sauce was a decent match with the meaty ~~aubergine~~ eggplant chunks, although the pomegranate didn't seem to fit in. Maybe I'm just not the biggest fan of pomegranate in dishes, as I do recall saying the same thing before here. The whole thing was topped with a dash of herbs to make a pleasant side salad.

Bang bang chicken wraps with mango and mangetout (£5) ; Roasted aubergine with pomegranate yoghurt and cherry tomatoes (£2.50)

I'd definitely come back here, mainly because the menu changes, and a changing menu is always exciting! And of course the food seems quite nice also... good for a light lunch type meal.

Stickybeaks Cafe
42 Hobson St, Cambridge CB1 1NL
http://www.stickybeakscafe.co.uk/

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The Tim Tam Slam

2011-07-28T00:41:00.001+01:00

Minor disaster. I ran out of Milo today.

Milk expiring soon, but no sugary chocolatey powder to make pre-sleep beverage. Uh oh, what to do?

Things you will need...

Ingredients:

- a cup of milk (or more usually coffee/tea)

- a Tim Tam (don't listen to people that speak of strange things like "oreos" or "penguin biscuits")

High tech digital editing software, oh yeah! (it's a straw)

Procedure:
1. Bite off two opposite corners of a Tim Tam.

2. Pour milk into a cup. (heat if you like)

3. Use the Tim Tam like a straw.

4. Just before the biscuit disintigrates into mushy crumbs, eat it.

Crisis averted.

Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Tam_Slam

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My first year viva is on tomorrow (tecnically today as it's past midnight), then I'm off for a few days. We'll be back soon with the finale of SMBC Season 1, and we'll also be puttin' on the Ritz if you know what I mean.

Oh and another Cambridge food blog, yay!

QED: Lemongrass Pork on Vermicelli Salad

2011-07-22T18:43:00.001+01:00

Cold noodles are refreshing and perfect for warm summer weather. Hiyashi chuuka and zaru soba are two of my favourites! But today I decided to try out my own version of Vietnamese cold vermicelli. It turned out alright, although the pork wasn't as good (pan fried) as it could have been on a barbeque. Mmm burnt bbq bits...
Hmm in hindsight, a bit of ginger and garlic would have been good as well, but I was feeling lazy =P

Ingredients:	Marinade/sauce:
any cut of pork, sliced stalk of lemongrass vermicelli a carrot half a cucumber a few leaves of butter lettuce	fish sauce lime sugar light soy chilli

Firstly, combine lime juice and sugar to get a good balance, then add a generous amount of fish sauce and a touch of light soy. Use some of this to marinate the pork. Keep the rest for later. Smash up and chop lemongrass finely (remove the hard outer layers), then add to the pork marinade. Fry the pork til cooked through, then leave to cool.

Boil vermicelli, drain and wash to cool. Chop up carrot, cucumber and lettuce. With the rest of the sauce marinade, add chopped chilli and then mix it through the vermicelli. Top with the salad vegetables and cooked pork.

All done!

Formal Feedback

2011-07-15T02:02:00.003+01:00

As some of you might know, I've somehow got myself involved with catering for events run by the Trinity BA society (ie. graduate society). No, this doesn't mean I do any sort of large scale cooking for 200, nor does it mean I wash the 800 dishes every Friday night (phew!), but it does mean I get to write all the menus for our BA formal dinners.

Apologies in advance to our many non-Trinity and non-Cambridge student readers, although I hope it does give somewhat of an insight into the rather, um, special world that is Trinity college!

Sometimes, one type of sherry is just not enough...

I was always under the presumption that college kitchens had a set list of dishes they knew how to do, and as catering representative, you simply pick which ones you want for which day in what order. Oh was I wrong! To my surprise, I've been allowed to make up whatever names I like for dishes within reasonable limits of sanity (starting from previous years' menus as a guideline) and run it by the catering department who give feedback and such until a menu is agreed. Very cool, right?

So tonight was the first BA dinner of the long vacation term, and the very first based on menus that I had written. It's hard not to feel a significant amount of responsibility for the quality of the dishes, especially when the enjoyment of so many tastebuds and stomachs is at stake!

At first, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to document this on the blog, but I think this would be a really interesting forum to get feedback (both positive and negative!) about the dishes, any potential suggestions/improvements, and new dish ideas. I hope nobody in catering minds that I've done this.

I was overall happy with how this first dinner went.. here are my retrospective and inherently biased thoughts:

Beetroot and goats cheese salad with balsamic glaze

I had initially wanted the starter to be a 'stack' with alternate layers of cheese and beetroot, but the word 'stack' got cut from the final menu wording. Anyhow, I thought that extra effort went into the presentation and this was really great to see. I'm also a sucker for any type of balsamic reduction. On the down side, the slice of cheese was disproportionately large - thicker pieces of beetroot and less cheese would have improved the balance.

This was compounded by an error of judgement in my menu planning... I had forgotten that this week was 'cheese week' (post-dessert cheese + port which occurs every second dinner), and the dinner ended up with a slight cheese overload.

Seared tuna steak with wasabi aioli ; Soy, sesame and citrus salad ; Saute potatoes

I was a little apprehensive about this main - firstly I wasn't sure if the kitchen setup was able to do 'seared', given the logistics of serving hot food to large groups. Secondly, I wasn't sure what kind of take the kitchens would do on an asian twist.

I'm happy to say that the tuna was done right, not overcooked at all, and if I were to be finicky, perhaps slightly undercooked on the sides. The salad was a surprise too - definitely not what I had imagined when I wrote those words, but the sauce actually tasted pretty good.

If I were to be superfinicky, then I would say the tuna was a little sinewy, but I've probably just been spoilt by too much sushi grade tuna with beautiful texture. Ootoro. *sigh*

Lavender-infused creme brulee

Desserts (aka 'pudding' as they say in the UK, don't know why!) at Trinity are generally really good. I have to say this time I was slightly disappointed, even if 2 out of 3 ain't bad. Basically the flavour was fine, burnt sugar is always yum, but the texture was incredibly dense and far more solid than I'd expect for a creme brulee. Clearly they did something different from the famed Trinity Burnt Cream, where the texture is much better!

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Now the important bit. For anyone that went to the dinner, what did you guys think? What was good, and what needed improving?

And even if you weren't there or have nothing to do with Cambridge, any suggestions for good formal catering menu ideas? Especially vegetarian main meals - I'm really bad at this!!! I might steal ideas off Yotam Ottolenghi's stuff in the Guardian...

Michaelhouse Cafe, Cambridge

2011-07-11T14:02:00.004+01:00

How much would you pay for this quiche of the day (asparagus and pine nut), rosemary roast potatoes and three types of salad?

£6? £8? Maybe even £10?

I'm meeting DW, the pirate and Lady G at Michaelhouse Cafe after a nice swim at the outdoor pool at Jesus Green, and whilst I'm pretty sure the menu at the counter says £7.85, I only get charged £3.95 to my surprise.

"They probably just made an error." is the conclusion we come to.

But no, the receipt reads "CHP LATE HT SPEC". Translating from receipt-world-language, that reads cheap late hot special. Michaelhouse has a "hungry student deal" from 2:30 - 3pm, where all remaining hot food goes for £3.95. Amazing! And delicious too...

Too bad I'm usually working at 2:30 - 3 pm. (don't ask me why I wasn't this day)

Michaelhouse Cafe
Trinity Street
Cambridge CB2 1SU
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 309147
http://www.michaelhousecafe.co.uk/

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Mississippi Mud Pie

2011-07-05T23:02:00.001+01:00

Firstly, two foodblog posts you should read, polar opposites yet both incredibly awesome.

1) Becasse Chef's Table from Grab Your Fork
Class. This is what separates the men from the boys.
http://grabyourfork.blogspot.com/2011/07/becasse-chefs-table-sydney.html

2) The Stoner Degustation from Yo Levins
I only recently heard about this guy, but I mean, wow. Perhaps the very definition of awesome.
http://yolevins.com/post/2492239247/half-baked-the-stoner-degustation

And that's why I love Sydney.

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Dark chocolate + cream + butter + sugar + eggs must taste good right? Here's a recipe I found on the BBC Food website for Mississippi mud pie. I made a few changes here and there, like replacing bourbon biscuits with digestives (supermarket only had bourbon creams). Plus I completely ran out of time making this, so I slightly underbaked it and didn't have time to let it cool, which resulted in a warm gooey cake. Still good though.

Cake Filling:	Fudge Topping:	Base:
85g dark chocolate (70%) 85g butter 85g sugar 100mL double cream 2 eggs	150g dark chocolate (70%) 150mL double cream 175g icing sugar, sieved 3 tbsp honey/golden syrup	300g digestives 150g butter

Procedure:
1. Start by crushing the digestive biscuits into fine crumbs (easy to do in a plastic food bag). Melt butter and mix into biscuit crumbs. Press into base of a 23cm springform tin. Chill in the fridge for a few minutes.

2. For cake filling, melt dark chocolate and butter together (microwave works great). Meanwhile, whip together eggs and sugar until thick and creamy. Fold cream and melted chocolate/butter into beaten egg mixture.

3. Pour chocolate mixture into biscuit base and bake in a preheated oven for 40-50 min at 180 deg C, or until set.

4. Let the baked cake cool (actually I didn't have time...). In the meantime, combine all the fudge ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat until melted and smooth. Let cool for 5 min and pour over the cake.

5. Stud with fresh raspberries. Chill in the fridge for a couple of hours. (again, I didn't have time)

Bill's, Cambridge

2011-07-04T14:06:00.000+01:00

There's something new on Green St.

Where the old Slug and Lettuce used to be, there's a new cafe/restaurant/store and it looks a little something like this:

Some cute salt and pepper shakers.

Stumped?

That's one busy interior...

This is the new Bill's restaurant that opened up recently. Actually I blogged about this a while back when I got confused between this Bill (Collison) and a certain Bill Granger of Sydney-egg-fame.

Anyhow, this self-proclaimed 'foodie heaven' has been on my to visit list, as any establishment that takes such a keen interest in food must be a good thing for Cambridge.

The writing is on the wall: a recipe for haloumi burgers, written in that cafe font.

Did we mention we sell stuff?

The first thing you notice about this place is the density and intensity of colours. Jars, cans and bottles lining the walls from top to bottom, large bundles of dried chilli hanging from the ceiling. It's borders on sensory overkill, and is rather heavy on the merchandise, but definitely far far better than the ordinary bland atmosphere of some British cafes. Plus, fantastic for taking photos! Foodie heaven indeed.

Hedgerow fizz: sparkling wine, elderflower cordial and blackberry (£3.95)

Upon arrival, we are greeted with enthusiastic service and a very welcome complimentary Hedgerow fizz, a sparkling wine cocktail. Nice touch for opening week =) Perfect to kick off a late evening get together.

Crispy fried calamari rings with paprika, served with garlic mayo (£5.75)

As it turns out, we're only here for a drink and a few nibbles. AD needs to fulfil her deep-fried cravings and goes for the calamari, whilst together with Peekabou (sorry, I couldn't help myself), Mr Always-smartly-dressed and the Robust Lady, we also pick the mezze board.

Bill's mezze board: hummus, olives, babaganoush, guacamole, slow roasted mediterranean vegetables with pesto and goats cheese, served with grilled bread (£8.95)

Everything comes out nicely packaged - the pile of calamari rings, whilst not outrageously crispy or anything, has been fried well and is light rather than greasy, and comes with a nice topping of sliced chilli which also suits AD just fine.

The mezze board is a mix of a few dips: the hummus is especially thick and fibrous (but in a good way) with a wonderful colour thanks to a good amount of paprika. The babaganoush on the other hand is very creamy and smooth, although it lacks the smoky burnt hint that comes from roasted eggplant. Guacamole likewise smooth, not too much impact. The roast vegetables are great, but none of us quite figures out how you're meant to 'dip' bread into them... a small dish of olives, capers and pickled onions accompanies.

I know much less about wine than I'd like, but everything washes down well with a Syrah from France.

La Garenne, Syrah, France

Overall, I'm impressed. A lot of effort has gone into setting the place up, and the atmosphere is something you definitely can't find elsewhere in Cambridge - a good compromise alternative to the pub and bar when you're looking for a place for drinks but also nice food. Yes, despite all my biases against restaurant chains (I don't know if this counts, there are a small handful of Bill's around in the UK), I have to admit that this place is pretty sweet.

The most interesting part for me though is the opening hours. This place goes from 8am breakfast all the way until the late snack round at 11pm. Fantastic for us, as we basically live next door!

Bill's
34-35 Green St
Cambridge, CB2 3JX
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 329638
http://www.bills-website.co.uk/Home.htm

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Green Tea and Red Bean Layer Cake

2011-07-02T01:15:00.000+01:00

A while back I made some green tea ice cream using a stash of matcha I got from a recent trip to Hong Kong (which I'm yet to blog about!). I was looking for some other matcha dessert recipes and found this one here and here. Don't be fooled by it's appearance... green tea and red bean is a great combination in desserts!

Anyway, I'm not great at baking (I think I'm too careless in terms of measuring things), so the cake turned out a little messy, but overall the recipe worked great!

Here's the recipe, although it basically comes straight from Sugar & Everything Nice:

Ingredients:
2 eggs 60 g icing sugar 60 g almond meal 1 1/2 tsp matcha 30 g all purpose flour 30 g melted unsalted butter	2 egg whites 1/8 tsp cream of tartar 30 g caster sugar 1 cup whipping cream 1/4 cup sweetened canned red bean

Procedure:
1) Preheat the oven to 200 deg C. Line a half sheet pan (about 30 x 40 cm) with a sheet of baking paper.

2) Combine the 2 whole eggs with the icing sugar and almond meal and whip until light and about double in volume.

3) Add in the matcha powder and combine.

4) Sift the flour over the egg mixture.

5) Whip the egg whites in a different bowl until they start to froth. Then add the cream of tartar and whip until stiff peaks form. Add the sugar and whip to incorporate.

6) Scoop about 1/3 of the egg whites into the egg mixture and fold in gently with a spatula. Add the remaining egg whites and fold in until uniformly mixed. Pour the melted butter over the batter and fold in to incorporate.

7) Pour the batter into the pan and distribute it evenly, making the layer as level and smooth as possible. Tap the bottom of the pan to get rid of some of the air bubbles.

8) Bake in the oven for about 6 to 8 minutes, until the cake is just firm and lightly brown but not completely brown. (I found it seemed to need longer to dry out properly - maybe my cake slices were too thick?)

9) Remove from the oven and run a knife around the edges of the cake to loosen it from the parchment. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

10) Flip the cake over, then carefully peel the parchment paper from the back of the cake. Then flip the cake back on it's right side over a clean piece of parchment.

To Assemble:
1) Trim off the edges and slice the cake in along the short side into 4 equal-sized pieces

2) Whip the cream to soft peaks. Leave aside 1/4 of the cream for the topping. For the remaining cream, fold in the red beans gently until evenly distributed.

3) Taking one layer of the cake, cover the top with 1/4 of the red bean cream. Then lay the 2nd layer on top and continue with the rest until the last layer is in place. Try to keep the layer even.

4) Top the last layer with the 1/4 plain cream.

5) Cover the cake and refrigerate overnight.

6) When you are ready to serve, trim off the sides of the cake to make them nice and even. Dust the top with some matcha powder.

Trinity BA Society Garden Party

2011-06-30T22:02:00.000+01:00

Fellows' Bowling Green, Trinity College, Cambridge

Twenty-nine degrees and not a cloud in the sky. Perfect summer weather for a garden party!

Trinity College, and well Cambridge in general, is a completely unrealistic place. Our beds are made for us daily, we wear academic gowns to dinner every week by choice, 15 minutes walk is a terribly long distance, and a nice day out involves champagne and strawberries whilst punting along the river. It's a ridiculously decadent lifestyle, totally unsustainable, and yet you so easily get sucked into it's charms... I guess being a beneficiary of it all, it's hard to complain!

An assortment of cakes, cupcakes and macaroons from Tom's Cakes

The recent BA garden party is a prime example of this completely surreal lifestyle. A year ago, I would have never pictured myself sitting in a place like this, drinking Pimms and bubbly whilst enjoying a few cakes and nibbles!

A very small portion of the cheese on offer - two types of goats cheese, aged cheddar and Cambridge blue

For those who aren't familiar with the BA society, it's the graduate society at Trinity College. Run by students, they organise a bunch of social events and formals, orientation events and generally look after the welfare of graduate students.

The humongous brie. AMAZING. From the Cambridge cheese company.

Anyway, onto the food! This is a food blog after all... we had a wonderful assortment of cakes from Tom's Cakes (they have a stall in the market square on Sundays), a range of cheeses from the Cambridge cheese company including a massive massive brie, a few savoury nibbles from catering: smoked salmon and parma ham squares, asparagus rolls and cheese straws.

Everybody likes pink.

And of course, lots of drink! Sparkling white and rose, Pimms, G&T, as well as orange and apple juice, and elderflower cordial.

A stupendous amount of ice cream and strawberries.

And it wouldn't be a garden party without a trolley full of strawberries and ice cream: brown bread, pistachio and mango!

Top it off with a classy four-piece band and there you have it: a classic Cambridge experience. Totally unrealistic, yet you wouldn't want it any other way.

Alimentum, Cambridge

2011-06-30T02:01:00.006+01:00

Kind of like Midsummer House, but cheaper and slightly less nice...

OK that's a horrible and unjustified oversimplification. Yet it's difficult not to draw comparisons between Alimentum and it's more famed and Michelin-starred older brother on Midsummer Common. Yes, the chef patron Mark Poynton used to work at Midsummer House. But of course it's unfair - there shouldn't be any sort of comparison - they are two different restaurants and both making an invaluable contribution the Cambridge food scene.

I can't help but compare though. Starting with the location, one could almost walk straight past Alimentum on the very busy Hills Rd without realising that this gem of a restaurant exists. The trucks storming by outside the window don't help with the atmosphere, but I'm sure at dinner time it is a little more peaceful.

The food in Alimentum is a combination of the best of classic British with a few French touches added here and there. Peen and I were here for the three-course fixed price menu - an absolute steal at £22.50 (after service charge) at lunchtime and Mon/Wed evenings.

Sage and Orange Bread

Er, 'sejanoise' bread? I'm sorry, could you repeat that? As it turns out, I had a bit of trouble understanding what was actually 'sage and orange' in a heavy French accent! But the bread itself was so good... still warm, moist and just slightly savoury. I've really grown to love bread in Europe. Especially free bread.

Rabbit terrine, summer vegetables and asparagus pesto

Peen started with a rabbit terrine after not realising the menu said 'terrine', deciding the combination of ingredients sounded appetising, only then to realise that aforementioned ingredients would come packaged in a squashed little circle wrapped in fat. Apparently, he has accidentally ordered far too many terrines in exactly the same manner.

Not a big problem really, as terrines are awesome. This particular one was beautifully presented, and came with a wonderfully creamy asparagus pesto generously smeared onto the plate.

Mackerel, anchovy toast, tomato, lemon and caper

I decided to start with the mackerel - a really fresh tasting combination of flavours. I'd also never seen capers on stem like that before (only ever in jars I'm afraid).

Baked ricotta, wild mushroom, walnuts and blue cheese

For main, I went with a baked ricotta parcel, which was delightfully crisp despite sitting on a bed of amazing sauted wild mushrooms. Despite being chock full of ricotta, the parcel was surprisingly not heavy at all.

12 hour lamb breast, peas, mint and jersey royals

Whilst I'm not 100% sure what the 12 hour in lamb, 12 hour breast quite means (cooked for that long i presume?), the meat was seriously seriously tender. Slow cooking is just amazing. Lamb and mint is a classic combination, and the fancy twist on mushy peas was clever.

Lemon meringue, lemon and soy sorbet, vodka

Dessert time! The meringue was really designed with diehard citrus fans in mind. Lemon in the meringue, in the sorbet, in the foam puffs, and to top it off, a sprinkling of pretty sharp lemon sherbet crumbs. Luckily, I happen to like lemon! The flavour was definitely not homogenous - each different element had a slightly different balance of sweetness and tartness, whilst the range of textures was fun.

Peanut and banana, biscuit glace, caramel and chocolate

If I didn't know better, the peanut and banana dessert would have looked like chocolate and coffee flavoured dessert actually. No mistaking the serious peanutty flavour bomb though. Again, fantastic presentation. Yum.

All in all, I think Alimentum is a fantastic restaurant (if you couldn't tell already). And for that price, it really stands tall next to the giant that is Midsummer House. Yes, that means you should all go.

Alimentum
152-154 Hills Rd
Cambridge CB2 8PB
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 413000
http://www.restaurantalimentum.co.uk/

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After a slight report-writing hiatus, we're back! Expect some serious blogpost spammage soon =)

OH AND... did you know Pembroke College kitchen has a food blog? AMAZING!!! My mind was blown when I found that out. You should definitely check it out.

In sickness and in health

2011-06-14T23:44:00.003+01:00

No I'm not getting married, but I have come down with a bit of a cold... in the middle of "summer". What's going on with that? And, first-year report + cold is a bad combination.

One does needs to eat however, regardless of how unwilling they are to cook. Hello congee.

Normally I do like congee, with pork and century duck egg, or 'sampan' congee (艇仔粥) or even pig's blood congee =). And I especially like congee with those deep-fried bread sticks (油炸鬼).

However in my current mood I am extremely reluctant to leave the building. So this is all I could muster (it's health food right?):

Perhaps not the most appetising looking thing.

Poor Man's Congee
1. Wash 500 g of short grain rice several times in water, then add lots of water and bring to a boil.
2. Boil more.
3. And more. If it starts getting dry, add more water. Stir so it doesn't stick to the bottom.
4. Throw in whatever ingredients you want (all I had was some sliced shiitake mushrooms, dried tofu skin things and ginger. Add soy sauce, salt and pepper. Dash of sesame oil.
5. Regret that you used 500 g of rice, as the thing threatens to overflow from the pot.

Serves far too many. (I'm probably going to eat this 6-7 times this week. Oh dear.)

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There are so many things I still have to write about but haven't had the will power/time/sanity of mind. After this busy period is over, look forward to a bunch of restaurant reviews, some yummy dessert recipes, my attempts at Japanese fusion and perhaps less insanity.

Things you shouldn't do with sushi leftovers

2011-06-09T01:11:00.002+01:00

The problem with making loads of sushi is what to do with the excess. No, I really mean it. The dilemma went as follows:

Me: "I'm hungry. Hey that sushi we made yesterday is sitting in the fridge..."
Peen: ...
Me: "Oh wait, it's probably a bad idea to eat day-old raw fish, right?"
Peen: ...
Me: "Hmm but it's only a day. I mean I wonder how long pre-packaged sushi sits in those boxes for..."
Peen: ...
Me: "But but, that fish was out at room temperature for a few hours."
Peen: ...
Me: "Oh but you shouldn't waste fish right? Fish is expensive stuff, so I shouldn't throw it out (cue Asian parent threat about starving kids in Africa) ."
Peen: ...
Me: "What if I get salmonella? Oh but isn't wasabi meant to, like, kill the bacteria? Maybe I can just add lots of wasabi. Yeah. But I might get diarrhoea, and that wouldn't be nice. Hmm maybe I could, like, microwave the sushi... eww microwaved sushi. But at least nuking it will kill anything nasty, I think. Gah, that's stupid, what a waste of fish. If only I had a blowtorch, you know, like how those sushi chefs sear the top of the salmon? But I don't, so that's totally useless to think about. NGAHHHHH!"
Peen: "We're never going to make it to the beer festival today."

But we're Cambridge students right? We can't so easily be defeated by the perils of day-old sushi! Or at least we're not supposed to. Solution?

I did not get a stomach ache after eating this. Success!

Moral of the story: When in doubt, make fried rice.

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So after writing the previous post, I started to get paranoid that nobody actually caught onto all the Inception references, after I'd spent far too long writing it... you guys did, right? Right?

Haha I'm going insane at the moment, but I promise a return to normal programming at the end of the month, after I hand in my first-year report!

Oh and on a serious note, please be careful with food hygiene. I don't want to have inadvertently caused anybody reading this a bad case of gastro...

SMBC #6 - Asia - Epic Sushi Night

2011-06-05T02:54:00.006+01:00

This is the second part of our SMBC quest to make something from every continent. You can check out the first installment here!

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You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away.

It was a few weeks ago during SMBC when M&M planted a simple idea into our heads:
"Make sushi."

An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. The smallest seed of an idea grew and drove us mad...

...well mad enough such that PC and M&M found themselves sprinting to Tesco at 4:45pm for one piece of raw salmon, whilst I found myself buying half a kilo of flying fish roe. Not an everyday occurrence.

Fish roe within a sushi within a Trinity gyp room? Three layers... that's too unstable!

Three hours later and the result? 83 pieces of awesome sushi (not including everything we ate along the way). But not only your regular maki-zushi...

But also prawn and tobiko ship sushi, inari-zushi...

You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.

Plus some nigiri-zushi, 5 bowls of miso soup, green tea and a few butter-soy and miso yaki-onigiri for good measure:

But hold on, this kind of food can't be possible in a Trinity gyp room...

Paradox.

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Sushi Madness

Sushi is actually pretty easy to make. I hope this blog post is proof of that! Really top notch sushi however requires skill though... and really fresh ingredients. If you ever get the chance, go eat chirashi sushi at Tsukiji Fish Markets in Tokyo. Mind-blowingly amazing stuff.

Before anything else, I highly suggest reading my favourite Japanese website Just Hungry where I got a lot of my information from, and my favourite Youtube channel Cooking with Dog (where I got the inari-zushi from).

Ok, so to make this:

we need to start with this:

It looks like a lot of specialist ingredients that you wouldn't normally have in the kitchen but for the basic sushi, you only need a few of these:

Seaweed (nori) - Thin crisp sheets of green goodness. It tends to go soft and discoloured if you store it for too long though.

Japanese rice - Not the same as regular supermarket rice, this is a specific variety which tends to be a little sticky. Good for all sorts of Japanese dishes, not just sushi.

Rice vinegar - Combined with sugar and salt, you mix it into the rice to make it actual sushi rice. They also commonly sell pre-mixed sushi vinegar (which is what we bought)

Soy sauce and wasabi - self-explanatory?

Bamboo mat - For rolling the sushi up. Basically a bunch of sticks tied together with string.

The Rice...

Sometimes you just have to work with what you're given...

Given that rice is the main ingredient, good sushi starts with good rice. For full detail, see this thorough description, but a couple of important points:

- Make sure you wash the rice properly several times before use... you don't want gluey mush at the bottom of the rice-cooker/pot
- After it has cooked and absorbed all the water and rested, put it out onto a large (I mean large) plate - the rice needs to be fanned whilst the sushi vinegar is added and the rice is mixed in a cutting motion. We used 3 plates and a makeshift fan...
- Once done, cover the rice with plastic wrap so that it doesn't dry out

We ended up using a whole kilo of rice. Hard to say how much water we needed or how much vinegar. Follow the instructions on the packet of rice (if they exist), and as for the vinegar, keep tasting the rice until it tastes nice!

The Fillings...

Left: Prawn, mayo and tobiko ; Right: Tuna, mayo, spring onion and shichimi spice

In addition to the regular stuff like strips of cucumber, avocado, carrot, and salmon, we also made a couple of fillings for the ship-style sushi.

Option 1: Mix together flying fish roe (tobiko), Japanese mayonnaise and chopped up bits of cooked prawns.
Option 2: Combine canned tuna with mayo, salt and pepper, Japanese "shichimi" mix and chopped spring onion.

Rock 'n Roll...

The picture below is nowhere near a perfect example, but it roughly goes like this:
- Place seaweed on mat, shiny side down
- Lay out a reasonably thin layer of rice over the seaweed, leaving a strip of bare seaweed at the top
- Place ingredients in a row closer to the bottom
- Roll away from you towards the top
- Cut the roll into bite sized pieces

The Other Stuff...

Firstly the miso soup (I've written briefly about this before here):
- Soak kelp aka kombu and bonito shavings in water for ~30 mins
- Bring to the boil, remove kelp, and strain away the bonito shavings through a sieve, squeezing out the liquid
- Place miso in a ladle, add a bit of hot broth to ladle and mix around until miso breaks up evenly, then add it back to the pot. This just helps to avoid the miso clumping and not mixing properly. Don't boil the miso!
- Add cubes of silken tofu and top with spring onion!

Next the inari-zushi (See this video! Ok, so the filling we had wasn't the right thing, but oh well):
- Halve fried tofu skin pouches, then sit in boiling water for 5 mins. Gets rid of the oilyness...
- Squeeze out excess liquid, then boil in a dashi (kombu and bonito) stock with sugar, mirin and soy sauce until the tofu absorbs the stock.
Now they are ready to stuff with rice and whatever else you like!

Onigiri are perfect if you have leftover rice! Basically you just shape the rice into triangles... and for yaki-onigiri, you can fry them with butter and soy, or coat the sides with miso and fry. Yum!

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Gosh, that was a long post. Anyway, we had a fantastic sushi feast whilst watching Wall-E! After getting beaten into submission by sushi, M&M swore he couldn't even look at sushi for at least a week... two days later, and who brings in takeaway sushi for dinner?

Haha, big thanks to M&M anyway for making that awesome video!

Oh and apologies to anyone who hasn't seen Inception...

Cambridge Beer Festival, Jesus Green

2011-05-30T01:14:00.003+01:00

Last week we visited the Cambridge Beer Festival, the 3rd biggest beer festival in the UK where over 35000 people drank over 90000 pints of real ale, cider and mead. It's altogether an incredible collection of local brewers with a myriad of unique brews, and a testament to how much the British love their drink.

Coming from Australia where the beers are generally quite light, I'm still getting used to the whole obsession with heavy, low-fizz, strongly-flavoured British ales. However, the beers at the festival were definitely tastier and more interesting than the regular sometimes muddy-water stuff you get off the tap in the pubs around Cambridge.

Some of the more interestingly-named beers we tried included Golden Pippin, Beijing Black, and my favourite: "Comrade Bill Bartram's Egalitarian Anti-Imperialist Soviet Stout". Trust the Russians... well, they produce bird-eating pelicans and all, so nothing surprises me now...

Except this:

I have only one acronym for this. It begins with a W and ends with "TF".

Yes, it's an egg, wrapped in "meat", coated in batter and fried. Oh my damn... apparently they call it a scotch egg, and it is a common picnic food in the UK.
Mind you, I did eat it all. Well I guess you should always be open minded when trying new foods! And at the beer festival, the glass is always more than half full. Cheers everyone!

Beer festival tip: Buy half pints. 1) You get more. 2) You try more types. 3) You win.

The Red Lion, Grantchester

2011-05-25T01:17:00.002+01:00

There are a million things we've meant to blog but just haven't had the time! Super-epic sushi, a trip to Alimentum, my Hong Kong trip, homemade smbc pizza... just to name a few. But I realised we hadn't done a restaurant review in a while (since this one), so...

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Nothing says an English summer quite like sitting out in a beer garden with a cold refreshing jug of Pimm's.

Gosh that sounded like an ad... but Pimm's tastes incredibly good after two hours of serious punting all the way from the Trinity punt shed to Grantchester.

Swans outside the Trinity punt shed.

Is it the Amazon? No, just a shady segment of the River Cam...

It is a beautiful Saturday in Cambridge when Uncle Tobys, Peen and I decide to make the trek to Grantchester (apparently home to the highest concentration of Nobel prize winners) by possibly the most inefficient form of transport known to man.
A tip: If you ever find yourself trying to escape from water-based ninjas, a punt is not a wise choice. This is purely hypothetical of course, as you'll never see them coming.

After soaking in the sun and pushing a large stick against a riverbed for two hours, we moor alongside the Grantchester Meadows and head to the nearest pub we find: The Red Lion.

Pimm's is a gin-based liqueur which is typically mixed with lemonade and topped with fresh ingredients such as strawberries, oranges, lime, cucumber and mint. Tastes and looks a bit like lemon, lime and bitters. So refreshing!

Artsy shot. Glass of Pimm's, top view.

The three of us just about manage to polish off the whole pitcher before our food arrives, which is testament to how thirsty we are, or perhaps the speed of the service... always good to know the food is being cooked fresh though!

About the food, I'm always a little sceptical about pub food in the UK. I think I was scarred the first time I sat down in a pub, looked at the menu and realised that it was exactly the same as the last pub I'd been to. The only thing different was the pub's name! This was before I realised that most UK pubs are franchises owned by large companies like Greene King. Sad but true.

Avocado and crayfish with a marie-rose dressing, salad, brown bread and butter (£5.75)

I am so ravaged that I decided to go for a starter and main. The avocado and crayfish is pretty much as described I guess? Marie-rose dressing is a fancy way of saying ketchup + mayo! You learn something new everyday...

Steak strip, mushroom and onion baguette (£5.75)

The steak baguette is actually really well toasted, nice and crisp on the outside but soft and warm on the inside. Contents were an old favourite, steak and mushroom - perhaps a touch greasy on the whole but I have to say I did enjoy this one.

Farm assured 'smothered' chicken breast with grilled bacon, goat's cheese and a tomato Provencal sauce (£9.29)

What on earth is farm-assured chicken? Uncle Tobys asks the waitress, who tells us something that sounds like free-range chickens to me, although she is also unsure why they can't just call it "Chicken, chips and salad". Agreed.

Hand-battered cod and chips with mushy peas and tartare sauce (£8.39)

Peen's fish and chips look decent, at least from across the table, although he reports that it is a little disappointing. I've also yet to find a place for fish and chips in the UK where I've been really satisfied afterwards...

Whilst the food was average, The Red Lion does have a great beer garden and quite a nice pub feel overall, perfect for a summer's day.

The Red Lion
33 High Street
Grantchester CB3 9NF
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 840121

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Ice-cream updates...

2011-05-20T15:56:00.006+01:00

The green tea ice cream I made a couple of weeks back was such a success, I had to try making more... but this time chocolate! Yum.

Basically just substituting the matcha powder with cocoa seemed to do the trick, although the ice-cream texture turned out a little more dense, rich and icy than the green tea version. Not sure if it's because you need to add more powder-flavoury-stuff (cocoa/matcha), or if it's because I didn't stir it enough whilst it was freezing because I fell asleep...

Cocoa and Walnut Ice Cream (with a splash of brandy)

Ingredients:
1/3 cup cocoa 1/2 cup sugar 300 mL milk 300 mL cream	capful of brandy 4 egg yolks handful of walnut pieces pinch of salt

Pretty much the same as the previous green tea recipe. Warm milk (don't boil) and dissolve the cocoa. Mix egg yolks and sugar and then add to the warm cocoa milk until dissolved, followed by salt and brandy. Strain through a sieve and let cool to room temp.

Someone told me once that salt draws out the full flavour of chocolate. Surprising but true!

Lightly whip cream and add to the chocolate mixture. Cool in fridge for a couple of hours then put in freezer. Stir the mix vigorously every hour, scraping down the frozen sides as you go. When it gets to a slushie stage, add the walnuts.

I googled salt and chocolate, and what did I find? This. OMGBACONYUM.

Around the World in 7 Posts: Part I - Africa (SMBC #5)

2011-05-15T12:00:00.027+01:00

Welcome back to another post in the SMBC series. This time we thought we'd try something a little different, so we've started an SMBC subseries: Around the World in 7 Posts! Each post will feature a dish from one of the seven continents. And starting from our evolutionary beginnings, our first post features Africa.

The dish chosen was Chicken Yassa. Here's what Wikipedia had to say about it:

Yassa is a spicy marinated dish prepared with poultry or fish. Originally Senegambian , yassa has become popular throughout West Africa.

And if that explanation was too vague, here is a photo of the dish:

We started with these ingredients:

Ingredients:
7 Chicken Thighs/Drumsticks
3 lemons
6 cloves of garlic
4 onions
black pepper
white pepper
dried chilli flakes
2 tablespoons of mustard
groundnut/peanut oil
nutmeg
vegetable stock
couscous

To prepare the chicken:

We marinated the chicken for 1.5 hours first before frying. Pretty much all the ingredients went into the marinade: onions (coarsely chopped), garlic (crushed), lemon juice, black pepper, white pepper, dried chilli flakes, 2 tablespoons of dijon mustard, and a generous drizzle of groundnut oil.
Oh, we also added some nutmeg and a cube of vegetable stock.
Mix everything thoroughly with the chicken.
Fry the chicken until golden brown. Also fry/cook the onion-marinade-mixture in a separate pan until the sauce has been sufficiently reduced. Finally, combine both the chicken and the onion mixture into one pan and heat for a while. Here's the story in photos:
We served the chicken yassa with couscous, which was incredibly easy to prepare:
And there you have it! Stay tuned for the next post in this subseries where we sample the cuisine from another (as of yet, undecided) continent!

Homemade Green Tea Ice Cream (no machine)

2011-05-10T20:14:00.000+01:00

When I found this recipe on Sabra's amazing food blog Spoonful, it sounded way too good not to try. I'm a real sucker for good green tea ice cream, and surely the idea of being able to generate your own ice cream at will is the sweet-tooth equivalent of being able to grow money on trees, or turning water into wine...

Somehow here the lighting balance dulled the green a little - it looks more vibrant green in real life!

Poor similes aside, I've had this recipe stuck on the brain for a while now, and so I bought some Matcha during my recent trip to Hong Kong. Matcha is amazing stuff. Delicious with sweet red bean paste in cake, strangely concentrated and foamy when served in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, and killer as an ice cream flavour.

Best matcha ice cream experience? Soft serve matcha ice cream from a shop on the walk up to Kiyomizudera in Kyoto. Tangents aside, here's the recipe, and it works so well that I've almost directly copied it straight from Sabra's blog (hope it's ok, thanks!):

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons green tea powder (matcha)
2/3 cup sugar
3 egg yolks
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup heavy cream (aka whipping cream)

1. In a small bowl, mix the green tea powder with 2 tablespoons sugar.

2. In a separate bowl, mix together the egg yolks and remaining sugar.

3. Pour the milk into a small pan and gently heat taking care not to let it boil. Remove the from the heat and mix a few spoonfuls of the warm milk with the matcha/sugar combination. When you have a smooth paste, add it to the remaining milk in the pan, then gradually stir in the egg yolk/sugar mixture.

4. Return mixture to the stove and heat slowly over low heat (taking care to not let the mixture boil), until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. Remove from the heat, strain through a fine sieve, and allow to cool completely.

5. Lightly whip the cream and then add it to the cold green tea-milk mixture.

6. Chill mixture for an hour or two in the refrigerator and then put it in the freezer. As ice crystals start to form, remove, and mix vigorously and thoroughly with a fork to break them up and return the mixture to the freezer. Repeat this a few times as it freezes to ensure that the ice cream is smooth.

Tips:
- As a few people have commented on Sabra's blog, I'd recommend adding a little more matcha and less sugar to bring out the green tea taste more.

QED: Bill's Famous Scrambled Eggs

2011-05-08T14:21:00.010+01:00

I got so excited about Bill's scrambled eggs that I'm writing this as the title dish is slowly digesting in mah belly. Or perhaps I need to get this out before I die of a heart attack thanks to 80 mL of heavy cream.

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Fate is a funny thing. Take Bill Granger, an art student/part-time waiter who chanced his arm by opening a restaurant in Darlinghurst in Sydney at the age of 22. Now he's an internationally renowned chef with three Sydney cafes, two in Japan and very soon a new joint in London.

And all because of scrambled eggs. I'll leave you to read up on his story.

The new Bill's gourmet food shop in Cambridge, right outside my house. But it's not Bill Granger, but some other Bill it seems.

As fate would have it for me,
1) I recently noticed that a new Bill's shop is opening up just outside the bike store gate on Green St, right next to where we live (I thought it was the same Bill but actually it isn't);
2) I had 80 mL of spare cream in the fridge thanks to yesterday's Matcha ice-cream exploits;
3) Sunday morning.
---> Perfect time to make Bill's famous scrambled eggs.

Bill's scrambled eggs (with blue cheese wilted spinach)

I couldn't resist putting up another photo of the same thing.

Ingredients:
2 eggs 80 mL cream pinch of salt a sliver of butter	100-150 g baby spinach small wedge of soft blue cheese black pepper

It's all too easy, 5 minutes is all it takes.

Starting with the spinach, throw a chunk of blue cheese (I use Castello Blue, mmm creamy goodness) and a lot of spinach into a pan over medium heat. When the cheese has melted and the spinach has just wilted, add some cracked black pepper and set aside.

For the eggs, mix with cream and salt until just combined. Melt butter in the pan, and when it bubbles, add the eggs and let the bottom cook for 20 secs. Using a wooden spoon, draw in the edges to the centre and let the eggs cook for another 10 secs. Draw the edges in again, take pan off the heat and serve immediately. The eggs will continue to cook with the residual heat, so be careful not to overcook them.

Toast some bagels, get some parma ham. Mentally prepare for deceptively light but seriously artery clogging deliciousness.

All I need now is a good coffee...

Tips:
- I read somewhere Bill says it works best with a non-stick pan (that's the only one I own...)
- I also read don't do more than 2 eggs at a time otherwise it won't cook properly

Sydney, Australia - the Good, the Fat and the Uhhh... (Part 2)

2011-05-06T00:32:00.001+01:00

Following on from Part 1...

The Uhhh...

Cafe Ish, Surry Hills

I'm going to have to choose my words carefully here. Cafe Ish is one of those places that has been hyped up by so so so so so so so so so so so so many food blogs, but at the same time causing a minor foodblog controversy regarding taking photos and such. I don't really want to weigh in about this issue, but I do want to talk about the food!
At the risk of triggering major anger here, I have to say the food was... confounding? Let me explain...

I've seen all the pictures of the wattleseed cappucino and it does look fantastic. Also the breakfasts do look awesome. But we were there for dinner, after finding some internet offer thingy which was for a $30/pp degustation.

Top: Cabbage with wattleseed miso mayo ; Bottom Left: Cucumber salad with chilli, soy, garlic ; Bottom Right: Edamame with Murray river pink salt

Surprise is an understatement for what we thought when the first plate came out - a large pile of raw chopped cabbage with a pot of mayo. Unconventional? I was plenty skeptical until I had snacked my way through most of it without realising. The cabbage was fresh, crunchy and sweet, and this perhaps was my favourite dish of the evening.
The cucumber salad was a little reminiscent of chinese-style pickle, whilst we weren't able to finish the veritable mountain of edamame on offer.

Left: Two types of sake ; Top Right: Miso soup ; Bottom Right: Potato and feta mochi with Davidson plum sauce

The potato mochi were a great idea, kind of like a cross between regular mochi and tater tots with a cheesy centre except a little classier.

I couldn't really pin down what it was about the miso soup - it was rather light in flavour and had a different taste to usual. Only after coming back home and looking at the menu, it seems to be that the stock is made from mushroom (+ konbu) rather than bonito.

Skewer plate (foreground to background): Crocodile tail panko crumbed with Japanese curry sauce ; Tofu, shittake mushrooms & spring onions with wattleseed teriyaki ; Grass fed “Mirragong” waygu with wasabi and soy

Up next were three different kinds of skewers. The crocodile tail tasted pretty much like chicken (everything tastes like chicken right?), so to me the whole thing was basically like chicken katsu curry on a stick! I have to say the wagyu was pretty tough and there were no clues as to the wagyuness of it all. Didn't really make sense with soy and wasabi either. I have to say I just don't get all the wagyu stuff you find these days - I never see a single bit of marbled fat?

Left: Okonomiyaki with pumpkin, spinach, wasabi mayo and melted cheese ; Right: Karaage crab and avocado omelette with garlic, chilli, soy, ginger dressing

It was at this stage that the knockout blow was delivered. To our stomach capacity. Having already dealt with surprisingly large portion sizes (the photos show the serving size for two people), the super-rich mayo + cheese + gooeyness of okonomiyaki absolutely sank the ship. I do like melted cheese though.

By this stage, we used up our napkins, finished out drinks, packed our things ready to leave, but alas we were mistaken! One more dish swiftly arrived on our table - the oft-raved about soft shell crab omelette. It was seriously massive, bulging full of super-generous chunks of crab and avocado, garnished with a fantastic almost sambal-like sauce. The photo simply does not show how huge it was. Stomach pains ensued.

Verdict? Let me get this straight. I have plenty of respect for the boldness in combining native Australian ingredients with Japanese influences. Also some of the flavours were great, if not particularly refined. Part of me says "Hey, this is a cafe, so for cafe food it's pretty different and awesome, plus seriously good value". But at the same time, I must say I left slightly dissatisfied with the experience. It just felt as though whilst each dish was interesting on its own, the flow of the degustation was kinda wrong.

Perhaps if I haven't offended too many people, I ought to go again for breakfast and coffee instead?

Shady Pines Saloon, Darlinghurst

Left: Trumer Pils ; Right: Lord Nelson Brewery 'Three Sheets' Pale Ale

Looks are deceiving. From the outside, the unremarkable lane on which this bar is situated appears little more than the back alley of some dodgy rundown student apartments. No signs, no posters, nothing... except a line growing outside an unmarked door.
Inside is what I'm told is currently one of Surry Hills' trendy spots - a Western themed bar which tonight (a regular weeknight) is full to capacity. They do a range of interesting beers, as well as wine and a bunch of cocktails. Pretty nice spot, although I'm not entirely convinced by the decor...

Agave, Surry Hills

Clockwise from Top Left: Frijoles refritos ($13) ; Queso fundido ($15) ; Croquetas de pollo ($16) ; Enpanadas ($14) ; Pulpos al ajillo ($16) ; Flautas de pollo ($14)

When you're out with some mates from uni and you need a place for 20 people at short notice, you'll take whatever you get. Luckily we managed to find Agave, a Mexican restaurant on the popular eat street Crown St.
We ordered a bunch of tapas (do they even do tapas in Mexico?), all of which were very visually appealing, taste satisfying but nothing special, and a little steep given the small size... but remember we're in Surry Hills here.

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So ends my Sydney food rant. Actually there were plenty of other places I went but didn't bring my camera to. Of particular interest was the food level in the flashy new Westfield Town Hall, where they've brought together some pretty happening restaurants and let them set up shop in the food court. Exciting! Although $9 or something along those lines for a cheese and ham croissant, Becasse or not, is highway robbery.

Anywho, next stop Hong Kong!

Sydney, Australia - the Good, the Fat and the Uhhh... (Part 1)

2011-05-04T23:29:00.006+01:00

There are plenty of fantastic places to eat and drink in Sydney. And thankfully there are plenty of fantastic posts by Sydney food bloggers to tell us where to find them!

This blog post is not one of them.

Ok that was a little self-deprecating, but what I really meant was that during my recent all-too-short trip back to Sydney, I kinda got lazy and didn't really do my usual foodie thing. That is, I didn't trawl through all the food blogs to hunt down the latest funky cafes and trendy restaurants, nor did I find my way into any of the one, two or three-hatted institutions littered throughout the CBD.

The result? Judge for yourself!

The Good

A Little on the Side, Darlington

Left: Mushroom, feta, kumara and dukka open omlette with sourdough toast ($12.50) ; Right: A proper cappucino ($3)

I would never have known about this cafe if it weren't for my good friend the Wangka who seems to be utterly devoted to this place. And for very good reason. Dukka goes great on omelette... gotta try to do this myself sometime.
And after getting off a plane at 6 am, nothing really beats a good cup of Campos coffee. Hooray for real coffee! Oh plus they have free wi-fi too.

(An aside: There are so many good cafes near Sydney Uni... let's see... Cafe Ella, Tripod, The Shortlist all in Redfern, then there's Badde Manors and Clipper Cafe in Glebe. For coffee, there's Toby's Estate on City Rd, but the best is the original Campos on Missinden Rd in Newtown.)

The Red Door @ Foveaux, Surry Hills

Red: 'Foveaux Cosmo' vodka, gewurtztraminer, hibiscus syrup, lime ($17) ; Orange: 'Old Cuban' rum, lime, sugar, mint, bitters, champagne ($16)

Whilst I'd heard of Foveaux (one of the increasing number of fancy degustation restaurants in Sydney), I didn't know they also operated a cosy little underground bar next door. Really nice place. Thanks YY!

The Fat

Kentucky Fried Chicken, Town Hall

The Double: Two Zinger chicken fillets, two slices of cheese, bacon, SUPERCHARGED sauce ($7.95).

"OH NOES!" I hear you say. I would too, but at midnight on a end-of-week-night, that 'oh noes' becomes a 'hell yeah'.

Caution: May cause salivation, hallucinations, bowel irritations and/or death.

I still do not know what "supercharged" tastes like.

JJ's @ the Mouth of the Hawkesbury, Brooklyn, Central Coast

Family Pack Thingy: 2 x Fish, Calamari, Prawns, Potato Scallops, Chips

Greasy. Heart-stopping. But what would you do if you weren't able to catch a single fish after half a day on the Hawkesbury river?

Central Coast humour.

Landsdowne Hotel, Broadway

Steak and chips with pepper sauce ($7)

Student hangout. (In)Famous for their $5 $6 $7 meal deals. The steak was much better than I expected/remembered. And actually medium rare! I suspect I got lucky with the cut of meat, as everyone seemed to have a rather different looking piece... no complaints from me!

The Uhhh...

Cafe Ish, Surry Hills

Hmm, I sense this next bit might be long. So you'll find out the rest... after this commercial break.
I'll post the rest tomorrow as Part 2! Muhahaha...

SMBC #4: Pseudo Pancakes Part 2 - Kaiserschmarrn

2011-04-18T01:00:00.001+01:00

A loooong time ago we promised here that there would be a second post to explain the phenomenon that random people would stop at our kitchen window to try our food creation. Well, it finally digitalised…

The dish in question is called “Kaiserschmarrn”, a simple but delicious Austrian dish made with pancake batter and combined with the subtle sweet-sour taste of home-made cranberry jam. Even though this popular dish is sweet, it is often eaten as a main course for dinner. Its name is a bizarre combination of the German word for emperor, “Kaiser”, and the word “Schmarrn”, which means nonsense or rubbish in the Viennese dialect. While it is confirmed that Schmarrn is a simple poor-mans-dish, first mentioned in a document in the 16^th century, there are many different legends on the origins of its noble sibling, the Kaiserschmarrn.

The Kaiserschmarrn was most probably invented at the court of the Austrian emperor Franz Josef I (1830–1916). According to one legend, this delicious dish was created in 1854 for the emperor's wife, duchess Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie of Bavaria, commonly known as Sissi. Obsessed with maintaining a thin waistline, Sissi directed the royal chef to prepare only light desserts for her, much to the consternation and annoyance of her husband who loved pastry. Upon being presented with the chef’s confection, she found it too rich and refused to eat it. With a smile Franz Josef tried to safe the situation and replied, “Now let me see what "Schmarrn" our chef has cooked up”. It apparently met his approval as he finished his and even his wife's serving. Thereafter, the dessert was called Kaiserschmarrn across the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Lets now come to the preparation of the Kaiserschmarrn. On the internet one can find many complicated procedures involving baking in an oven and subsequent glazing with caramelised sugar, but this recipe is really simple. For four portions you will need:

2 tablespoons of butter
4 eggs
4 tablespoons of sugar
a pinch of salt
120 g of flour
about ¼ litre of milk
raisins at pleasure
1 packet of vanilla sugar
some good cranberry (or plum) jam
icing sugar

Destroy it! The pancake is torn into bite-sized pieces.

And here is the preparation:

Separate the yolks from the egg white. Whisk the yolks with the milk, the salt, the sugar and the packet of vanilla sugar. Add the flour and give it a good mix to obtain a smooth batter. Finally add the raisins.
Whip the egg white till it is nice and firm. Carefully stir it in the prepared batter. Don’t overdo it, too much stirring lets all the small air bubbles escape from the batter.
Melt a little butter is a non-sticky pan and pour in some batter. The Kaiserschmarrn has to be quite thick, about double the thickness of a pancake. Bake the Schmarrn on small heat till it is golden brown on the bottom, then turn and bake till the other side is ready. The finished pancake is brown and crisp on the outside and still relatively soft inside.
At the end comes the fun part: use your pancake turner to tear the pancake to bite-size pieces, giving the Kaiserschmarrn its characteristic shape. Finally melt a small piece of butter to the pan and toss the pieces of Kaiserschmarrn in it.
Serve the Kaiserschmarrn on a large flat plate, strewn with icing sugar and a few spoon-full of cranberry jam to the side. Traditionally this dish is served with a glass of cold milk.

PS: Don’t worry if the Kaiserschmarrn doesn’t turn out perfect the first time. Some say even good cooks struggle with the preparation of this seemingly simple dish, they don’t know how to make it good and fluffy. Kaiserschmarrn is a dish that is often served in alpine huts, a typical mountain food. And up in the mountains they really know how to make a good Kaiserschmarrn!

Reality Check: Stir-fried Chicken and Beans with Sichuan Pepper

2011-04-13T00:31:00.001+01:00

It's all well and good to spend several hours on a weekend shopping for, preparing, and making photogenic a dish to put up on a blog. But what about the rest of the week?

For those that might have an unnaturally keen interest in this blog, you might have noticed that we haven't had an SMBC for a while. We could probably blame it on The Shok who is currently back home in Malaysia, however, the truth is that we're all actually getting ridiculously busy with work (long weekends in the lab and such).

One still does need to eat though. PC's go-to food seems to be risotto and pasta. Mine is plain rice cooked in a pot with something stir-fried in a pan... because a) rice cookers are banned in college, and b) I only own one pot and one pan!

So to put up some 'normal' food as a reality check for this blog, I've decided to write up what I made a couple of days ago (and will be eating for the next few days).

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I've been craving the taste of ma-la (麻辣) for a while. Ma-la comes from the Sichuan province in China, ma being the tingly tongue-numbing sensation from Sichuan peppercorns,and la being the heat of chilli. Top it off with an excessive amount of chilli oil and you have the basis for many a Sichuan dish.

I recently bought some Sichuan peppercorns at Sainsbury of all places, plus a bottle of Lao Gan Ma (老干妈) chilli sauce at one of the asian shops on Mill Rd. I shall not explain the awesomeness that is Lao Gan Ma, but instead direct you to their website for you to appreciate their amazing Engrish. I particularly like the part about an ″aircraft carrier″ of chili processing industry. Old granny's gonna call some airstrikes if you don't finish every grain of rice in your bowl...

Everybody loves granny sauce. She must be filthy rich, so the question is, why does she look so angry?

Ingredients:
12 deboned chicken thighs 400 g green beans 2 cloves garlic Lao Gan Ma sauce (the black bean type) Dried chilli flakes	2 tbsp light soy sauce 1 tbsp dark soy sauce 1 tsp sesame oil handful of Sichuan peppercorns

First, cut the chicken into bite sized cubes and marinate with the soy, sesame oil, a couple of good dollops of Lao Gan Ma, and some crushed up Sichuan peppercorns.
Whilst marinating, chop the green beans into 3cm-ish lengths. Mince garlic into small pieces.

***Stir-fry tips when on a college hob***
Make sure the pan is really hot (this may take 5 minutes...). Cook the meat in small batches, otherwise all the heat will be sapped away, leading to watery steam-'fry' and tough meat.
I used a bit of canola oil for the first batch, but after that, there was plenty of oil in the marinade (thanks to Lao Gan Ma) so there was no need to add any more.

After frying the chicken and putting it aside, fry the minced garlic, more Lao Gan Ma, Sichuan peppercorns and chilli flakes (I had no fresh chilli) briefly, then add the beans. After a while, put a lid over the top to help cook it through. Add a dash of light soy if not salty enough.

Finally add back the chicken and heat through. All done! Best served with plain rice!

Om nom nom nom.

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I'm heading back to Sydney in a week's time! Going to knock down some serious food cravings, plus fill up on some home cooking =)
Oh yeah, and stock up on Tim Tams.

Riverside Restaurant, Cambridge

2011-03-29T02:16:00.000+01:00

Lent term is over and Spring has arrived, so it's time for lunch.

In our research group, it seems to be a tradition to visit the Riverside Restaurant at the end of Lent term for group lunch. Situated in the University Centre, the Riverside serves as the official posh restaurant for the university as a whole.

I imagine that people on official university business would take their guests here, and the place lives up to its billing, with a tasteful and well organised interior combined with picturesque views of the punts on the Cam.

The restaurant serves what they term to be "modern British" cuisine, which is a surprisingly accurate and far more concise description than what I could come up with ("several-courses-involving-small-amounts-of-fancy-food-artistically-displayed-on-large-plates-using-local-ingredients").

Left: Rather tall and skinny glasses ; Top Right: You know you're at a fancy place when... ;
Bottom Right: Olive and raisin bread - addictively sweet and salty.

They offer a seasonal lunch menu with the choice of two courses (£19.45) or three courses and a glass of wine (£23.95), although this wasn't much of a choice as we naturally all went for the full three courses.

Seared scallops, chicory, pomegranate finished with pomegranate reduction.

Winner for the Most Popular Entree award was the seared scallops, expertly browned on top. Whilst the beads of pomegranate and reduction sauce were rather pretty, the consensus from Electric Frye and G'mma was that they were somewhat superfluous. Not quite the plump juicy scallops I had at Midsummer House, but then again you'd pay double there.

Warm salad of pig cheeks, black pudding croutons, roasted apples, cam valley cider reduction.

I went for the warm salad of pig cheeks because I was intrigued by a) pig cheeks, b) black pudding croutons, and c) cam valley cider. OK so that's the whole thing basically. The pig cheeks were meltingly tender, a perfect match with the amazing roasted apples. My favourite part however was the little deep fried cubes of black pudding - whoever came up with the idea deserves a medal.

Goats cheese and red onion tart, toasted walnut and pear compote, mixed cress salad.

Lined with a generous amount of pear compote, the goats cheese tart was met with murmurs of definite approval from FS (I can't think of a pseudonym for you), who was too busy enjoying it to give me any adjectives to work with...

After such fantastic entrees, the mains were no disappointment either!

Sea bream, baked with fennel and tomatoes, tarragon butter sauce.

The sea bream was an excellent lunch main - satisfying but not too heavy. I actually enjoyed the vegetables the most. Check out the char marks on that spring onion!

Roast partridge breast, slow braised leg, partridge and redcurrant stuffing, casserole of baby vegetable.

The most interesting presentation of the day belonged to the roast partridge breast, almost deconstructed, with two parts of the partridge prepared differently, plus the stuffing on the side. Mmm stuffing.

Pan fried fillet of beef, chateau potato, buttered kale, parsnip purée, parsnip crisps.

Parsnips are the perhaps the best food thing I have discovered in the UK. Roast parsnips with honey are so good. Anyway, the pan fried fillet of beef doubled down on the parsnip quota, with some seriously awesome looking crisps (damn British and their incessant use of the word crisps) and a puree. G'mma kindly informs me that the green is kale, which is apparently in fashion at the moment.

Vanilla pannacotta, tuile biscuit.

Desserts! YST opts for the pannacotta. Note the mint leaf and chocolate decoration. We'll see that again soon.

Cardamom parfait, brandy snap basket.

When I chose the parfait, I was expecting a layered dessert with cream and other delicious things, so what arrived was a pleasant surprise. The cream/ice-cream thing was strangely delicious - it really was like ice cream but not cold. Bizarre. Plus, you can't go wrong with a brandy snap basket! Note again, mint leaf.

Chocolate and orange torte, cointreau cream.

Did anybody mention mint leaves? Anyway, FS and G'mma won the dessert competition decisively by ordering the chocolate and orange torte. Needless to say I was jealous.
"Like Terry's Chocolate Orange but 100 times better." Enough said.

Carnage. And it's not even 2pm yet.

We all thoroughly enjoyed our lunch at Riverside, although this may have been because the boss was shouting (not literally), and quite possibly due to the amount of alcohol we demolished.
No smoke and mirrors to be seen here, just good quality food. I think the entrees and mains were a notch above the desserts. All in all, a definite recommendation when feeling like a little splurge!

Riverside Restaurant
University Centre, Granta Place
Mill Lane, Cambridge CB2 1RU
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 337759

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QED: Chicken and Vegetable Clear Soup

2011-03-23T22:10:00.004Z

OK so this is not particularly glamorous, but for me it's comfort food because its warm, fully of chunky goodness and it's home cooking in a sense (except that Mum is much better than me). Plus it's really healthy.

If there are any organic chemists out there, this soup is awesome because:
- It's a one pot reaction
- Done in aqueous solvent
- On kilogram scale
- No workup or purification needed.

Ingredients:
5 chicken thighs or drumsticks 10 potatoes 10 carrots light soy sauce	6 tomatoes 3 onions generous handful of dried wolfberries

Procedure:
1. Trim the fat off the chicken. Immerse in half a pot of cold water. Add wolfberries (you can find these at most Asian stores)

2. Bring to a very low simmer and skim off the oil and foamy stuff that floats to the surface.

3. Whilst the chicken is simmering, chop vegetables into relatively large chunks. Add first the potatoes and carrots. Keep skimming if oil/foam accumulates. Simmer on low for a while (~30 min) then add halved or whole tomatoes and onions. Add a dash of soy sauce.

4. Put a lid on it and go do something else for an hour or two. I went to the graduate BA rooms to watch the latter 2/3 of Hot Fuzz. Good movie.

5. Add salt/pepper/soy sauce to taste.

That's pretty much it. Dinner for the next 4 days...

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On other things, you should all check out this fantastic food blog also from Trinity! Plus this food blog just mentioned a cafe in Cambridge that does lamingtons - now added to my wishlist =P

Little Seoul, Cambridge

2011-03-16T22:25:00.005Z

Saturday evening in the lab... Bibimbap anyone?

As far as I know, Little Seoul is the only Korean restaurant in Cambridge - a far cry from the endless supply of Korean places in Sydney's Chinatown. It's already 7:30 pm when our group's token computational guy YST and I head out for dinner. Luckily the restaurant is just around the corner.

(Edit: I've recently been told about another place on Mill Rd called Bibimbap House... read the review here)

It all feels a little strange. The restaurant is situated underground, so you have to walk down a flight of stairs to get in. The inside itself is rather bare, with no-frills plain beige walls. However, the most bizarre part is the layout, with far too many walls segmenting the building into several mid-sized rooms. Reminds me of dodgy karaoke places in Chinatown... except without the smoke-filled aroma, severe lack of ventilation and generally low visibility level. OK perhaps that isn't a fair comparison.

Anyway forget the decor, we're here to eat.

Dolsot bibimbap (£8.50)

We have bibimbap on the brain, so YST opts for the hot stonebowl dolsot bibimbap version whilst I go for the regular which is cheaper by £1. Oh yes. My ingenious money saving scheme is unfortunately more than offset by my inability to resist Korean seafood pancake.

Seafood pancake (£5.70 I think?)

I'm slightly disappointed that my beloved banchan or unlimited-free-refill-side-dishes aren't on offer here, as they are one of the best things about going to Korean restaurants! There is the option to purchase sides like kimchi and namul however.

The pancake is a little softer than I'd hoped and lacking seafood despite its name, but I still scoff it down in a hurry. The dipping sauce does seem a little strong on the soy hence slightly too salty.

As for the bibimbaps... well honestly you can't really go wrong with a mishmash of rice and random ingredients smushed together with dollops of chilli sauce. Yum. Or maybe I've watched Full House too many times (not the US sitcom).

Verdict? Hard to say having only really eaten a couple of things, although the menu choice is not so large. I get the feeling it's pretty solid Korean for what they do offer, minus the free side dishes, but wait... did I hear lunch special?

They do a main and a free side-dish at lunch for cheaper, so I'm pretty sure I'll be back sometime soon!

Little Seoul
108 Regent St, Cambridge, CB2 1DP
Tel: +44 (0) 12233 308681
http://www.littleseoul.co.uk/

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SMBC #4 - Pseudo-pancakes Part 1 - Okonomiyaki!

2011-03-13T13:14:00.007Z

Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake Day was this week, so we thought we'd do a pseudo-pancake themed SMBC! Here's Part 1 about Okonomiyaki, with Part 2 about Kaiserschmarrn coming soon =)

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How do you describe okonomiyaki (お好み焼き) to the uninitiated? It's like a pizza, but the toppings are inside? A pancake which is savoury? Does it even matter?

Okonomiyaki is often literally translated from Japanese to mean grilled (yaki) as you like it (okonomi), and its home is Osaka as one of the many delicious creations from the Kansai region. The Hiroshima region also has its own style of okonomiyaki which is layered and has soba noodles in it. Yum.

Given the incredibly sorry state of Japanese food in Cambridge *cough cough Teri-aki cough Wagamama*, there was no chance I'd be able to satisfy my okonomiyaki cravings dining out, so the only thing to do was to make it!

There are a million recipes for okonomiyaki which have pretty much the same basic ingredients but in widely varying proportions. We decided to very loosely follow this recipe by Maki from Just Hungry (my favourite Japanese food website!)

Ingredients:	Optional Fillings and Toppings:
70 g grated Japanese yam 4 medium eggs 1 to 1 1/2 cups plain flour some dashi stock 1/3 of a Chinese cabbage pinch of baking powder a stem of spring onion	thin strips of pork belly kimchi Kewpie mayonnaise Okonomiyaki sauce Dried bonito shavings

There are lots of ** stars! I'll try to explain stuff as we go through =P

About the ingredients:
I'm going to go through this relatively briefly... you can read all about it in detail at Just Hungry.

Grated Japanese yam... it's known by several different names in Japan: tororo, nagaimo, yamaimo, it's all the right stuff, but it's not the same as regular yam. I had a hard time finding it in shops, so all I could manage was this frozen yam already grated from Seoul Plaza on Mill Rd.
There are lots of recipes without yam, but according to Maki the yam is critical for the wonderful moist bitey texture. I've yet to do the control experiment without the yam to see if this is true, but I'll believe it for now.

*Update*: I tried the recipe again replacing the yam with cornflour and it turned out way too heavy and dense. Conclusion - grated yam is definitely necessary for a good okonomiyaki.

Dashi stock is the basis of so much Japanese cuisine. It's usually made by soaking and heating dried kelp (konbu) and bonito shavings (katsuobushi) in water. Full of umami. Problem is, bonito shavings are really expensive outside of Japan, so I only used kelp, which is totally not the same but whatever. You can also buy instant stock powder, although I have an irrational disliking for it.

Okonomiyaki sauce tastes kinda like BBQ sauce or brown sauce or HP sauce, but not exactly. Japanese mayo is thicker and sweeter than regular mayo, and once again Maki has a recipe for it =) I'll try it one day.

As I mentioned before, bonito shavings are expensive. Usually you top okonomiyaki with the shavings and the rising steam makes the shavings "dance". We decided just to substitute it for furikake which is used as a rice flavouring/topping in Japanese cuisine. This one contains dried seaweed, fish flakes, sesame seeds and other goodies.

Kimchi is Korean pickled cabbage. Delicious. I hear it's very hard to make it right yourself though, and can go rotten and stinky if you try.

Top Left: Cheapo dashi stock ; Top Right: Regular batter ; Bottom: Kimchi batter

Procedure:

0. Make dashi stock. Usually you'd soak kelp and bonito shavings in water for a while (30 mins at least) then just bring to the boil and strain out the shavings and kelp. My poor man's stock was just kelp soaking in hot water for 5 minutes...

1. Combine grated yam, eggs, flour, baking powder in a bowl and splash in enough dashi stock to get a nice not-too-runny consistency. We only ended up using maybe 20 mL it seems. If it's too watery, add more flour. If it doesn't bind, add another egg...
Protip: You can make impromptu miso soup with the remaining dashi stock by simply adding miso paste. You could go all out with some tofu cubes and spring onion too.

2. Slice the cabbage into small strips and add as much as you like provided there's enough batter still to combine everything. Add chopped spring onion.

3. Mix in any fillings you like except raw meats. We made a plain one, and a kimchi one. Mochi works really well. Fried batter bits called tenkasu are awesome. Really, anything goes here.

4. Add a small amount of oil to frying pan over medium heat and add the batter and flatten out. Layer pork belly slices on top. We couldn't find any decent pork belly slices so we resorted to pancetta which is really too fatty and strongly flavouring. Oh well, still tastes awesome.

5. Check when golden brown and flip! Put a lid over it to let it cook through for a few minutes, then it's ready to be sauced up.

6. Top with okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise, followed by bonito shavings or some furikake.

This seriously tastes like what you get in Japan... just crisp on the outside but still with enough gooey bite on the inside. So so good. Must do this again.

Here's a preview of Part 2... something so delicious that people are coming through our window to eat it??

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On a serious note, our thoughts are with everyone in Japan dealing with the aftermath of the earthquake a few days ago. Please give them your support in whatever way you can.

SMBC #3: Greek Week

2011-03-06T20:27:00.003Z

Welcome back to the third edition of SMBC. This belated post (we had this for lunch Saturday before last) documents our exciting venture into Greek cuisine. We were helped by our Greek friend, Chef K, who came armed with several recipes in her native tongue. And while they were all Greek to us, under her instruction, our kitchen was transformed into the very definition of efficiency (or a close approximation of).

A quick google search of Greek Cuisine revealed the following interesting fact: The Greeks did not only give us Pythagoras, Archimedes, Euclid, Socrates, and Plato, but also Archestratos - the author of the very first cookbook! So we will now follow in Archestratos' footsteps and write down what we did.

We made a quartet of Mezes (Greek for appetiser/starter) and finished it off with a traditional Greek dessert of yoghurt, honey, and walnuts. The four mezes that we made were:

Meze for drunk people*
Kolokythokeftedes**
Halloumi wrapped in red pepper with lemon & chilli
Greek salad

*I assure you that none of us were drunk whilst making this.
** We had great fun trying to pronounce this word!

These were the ingredients that we started with:

Mezze for Drunk People:	Kolokythokeftedes:	Halloumi in red pepper:
450g diced pork half a mug of red wine 1 mug of creamed tomatoes 1 teaspoon of mustard ginger garlic oregano allspice	500g of courgettes 1 onion 150g feta cheese 200g melba toast 2 cloves of garlic mint salt pepper flour olive oil for frying	Red pepper 100g block halloumi cheese 1 red chilli olives oregano half a lemon

Greek Salad:

Dessert:

cucumber
tomatoes

capers
feta cheese

Greek yoghurt, honey, and walnuts!

Meze for Drunk People

Put the 450g of diced pork into a large bowl. Mix in a teaspoon of mustard and add some sliced ginger and crushed garlic (to taste).
Fry the pork, adding the red wine a little at a time and allowing it to evaporate.
Finally add the mug of creamed tomatoes and flavour with oregano and allspice.

Kolokythokeftedes
This roughly translates into Courgettes/Zucchini "Meatballs". Here's what we did:

Grate 500g of courgettes and then drain the juice from them.
Add one chopped onion and two cloves of garlic (crushed) to the courgettes.
Crumble in 150g of feta cheese.
Crush 200g of melba toast into a (relatively) fine powder and add it to the mixture. (With our limited kitchen facilities, we crushed the melba toast using a glass and several plastic bags)
Crumble in some dried mint. Add salt and pepper to taste as well as 4-5 teaspoons of olive oil.
Use the mixture to make many small balls. Cover them with flour then fry in olive oil.

Halloumi in red pepper

First, roast the red peppers until they are fairly soft. (We used our microwave to do this - apparently it has an oven setting!) Make a long cut down the side of each pepper and open them out. Trim around the tops and bottoms so that you get one flat piece.
Slice the halloumi into several thick pieces.
Juice half a lemon, chop some chilli and olives.

Place a slice of halloumi in the centre of each piece of red pepper. Sprinkle the lemon juice, the chilli and the olives over the cheese. Add oregano to taste.
Roll the red pepper around the cheese and secure it in place with a cocktail stick.
Finally, grill the peppers for about 5 minutes on both sides until the cheese starts to soften. (Apparently our microwave has a grill setting too!)

Greek Salad

Basically just throw chopped cucumber, tomatoes, and olives into a bowl, add cubes of feta cheese, capers and you're done! (Add salt and pepper and dress with olive oil too if you like)

And here we have our four mezes all together!

Dessert

Greek yoghurt + walnuts +honey =

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Hope you enjoyed The Shok's debut on Hungry the Ate. Have a good recipe idea for SMBC? Let us know!

Seriously Foolproof Brownies

2011-03-01T00:20:00.002Z

I'd always been under the impression that brownies were relatively easy to make. But not this easy... I found the same awesome recipe here, here, here, here, here and here. This many people can't be wrong.

This was made for the poorly-equipped student: no electric mixer, no beating of eggs, no double-boiler. Just a saucepan, a spoon, a baking tray and an oven.

And they taste amazing. But hey, you can't go wrong with tons of butter, sugar and cocoa.

Ingredients:	Optional Extras:
150 g unsalted butter 225 g sugar 80 g cocoa powder 2 eggs 75 g plain flour pinch of salt	an orange (for a bit of zest and juice) a few oreos white chocolate chips chopped walnuts

0. Preheat oven to 160 deg C.

1. Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat. When melted, add sugar and stir. Then add cocoa and stir until mixed properly.

2. Add salt and eggs and mix to get a lovely smooth chocolatey velvety mixture. Resist the temptation to eat it.

3. Add flour and gently fold in until just combined - don't overmix. At this stage, add whatever extra flavourings you like. Be creative!

4. Transfer mixture into a baking tray (~24 x 12 cm). Probably easiest if it's lined with baking paper so it doesn't stick. We didn't have any but it worked fine anyway. Bake for about 50 mins (very roughly). The top/edges should start to dry out, and when you stick a skewer in, it should come out moist but not covered in chocolate goo.

5. Cool and cut. Dust with icing sugar. Decorate. Devour until you and your friends feel guilty. Repeat.

Midsummer House, Cambridge

2011-02-24T03:10:00.008Z

Midsummer House occupies a quiet spot overlooking the River Cam, a world away from the bustle and noise of central Cambridge.

It's hard to imagine a place like this exists, merely fifteen minutes walk from the town centre. A small rather unassuming cottage on the edge of Midsummer Common, the restaurant's exterior gives very little indication of the culinary powerhouse that lies inside.

Yet it's no secret to most Cambridge residents that Midsummer House is unquestionably the most highly reputed restaurant in the area. Headed up by chef Daniel Clifford, the restaurant proudly declares its status as "the only 2 Star Michelin restaurant in East Anglia".

It is a quiet Wednesday evening when I set out for Midsummer Common for a 7pm appointment. My excitement and anticipation are somewhat dampened by the time I finally arrive fifteen minutes late, thanks in no small part to my usual navigation aid which has conveniently lied about the restaurant's location. Nonetheless, I am swiftly seated, greeted and offered the menu.

Most of us decide to go a la carte (£76 for three courses) whilst Miss N next to me goes for the four-course set menu (£39.50).

Nibbles on the table... Left: Green olives ; Right: Gougères (choux pastry with cheese filling)

Several minutes of introductions and pleasant small talk pass before we realise the first of several amuse-bouches has already arrived and is melting as we speak. The sorbet is an unusual combination of sweet and savoury - slightly unremarkable on the whole, perhaps since it is unfortunately almost soup by the time we notice it.

Mystery sorbet... perhaps watermelon combined with some other green savoury stuff. Oh dear.

This is where I have to admit guilt for being an irresponsible food blogger, as for the most part, I didn't manage to keep track of what exactly it was we were eating... In my defence, the waitress serving us had such a thick French accent that none of us could really decipher more than about a fifth of what she was saying, although I do regret not asking her to repeat.

Next to arrive is an apple and raspberry foam, which is pumped out into amusing round-bottomed plastic coloured cups. The foam is incredibly light whilst managing to carry through reasonably strong flavour of fruity tartness balanced with sweetness, combined with a touch of something alcoholic. Definitely an interesting texture and an effective palate cleanser.

The final appetiser is a cauliflower velouté with cep and some kind of jelly. Once again, the soup is deceptively light in texture, yet with a wonderfully rich creamy flavour, covering over small cubes of both mushroom and a savoury jelly which I can't quite pin down. Not the most remarkable looking dish, but seriously amazing in both taste and texture.

My entree is seared hand dived scallops, celeriac, truffle, granny smith and caramel. I'm a sucker for good seafood, and the scallops are wonderfully large and plump, seared to a golden brown on the outside whilst remaining juicy and tender inside. The slivers of apple add a nice crunchy texture, although the truffle topping has surprisingly little impact. I am amused by the display of apple jelly cubes which provide a few sweet bursts of flavour. However, it is the creamy celeriac puree with truffle and the spot of sticky sweet thick caramel that make the dish my favourite of the night.

Arriving for main course is the slow roast loin of venison, braised choucroute, carrot puree, venison pudding, jus de cuisson. The meat is incredibly juicy and tender with a beautiful shade of pink throughout. I wonder if this has been done sous vide, although the description does say "slow roast". The carrot puree matches well whilst the choucroute (hidden under the slices of venison) isn't much to write home about. If there is only one minor negative for the evening, it is the venison pudding. Consisting of thin pastry encasing what is essentially a venison pie filling, I find the pudding a little heavy, not harmonising so well with the rest of the dish.

We are pleasantly surprised to see a pre-dessert arrive next - white chocolate sorbet with citrus foam. It seems the kitchen is big on its foams this evening, and the zesty foam is a nice refresher, whilst the sorbet hiding underneath is embedded with crunchy biscuity bits.

For dessert, two of us decide to split a pear tart tatin, vanilla, garlic, bay leaf. We soon discover that the "for two people" description wasn't kidding when we are greeted with a seriously generous tart straight from the pan, adorned with cinnamon, vanilla pods and star anise. Our waiter dutifully splits the tart into two, tops each half with ice cream and deposits a rather interesting garlic whipped cream into a smaller container lined with cubes of pear. Garlic with dessert? The subtle garlic flavour actually goes quite well with all the sugar and spices, even though it makes the dessert a little more savoury/heavy. The sweetness of the caramel and pear ooze through the deliciously flaky pastry layers.

So good, but so full now.

I have to say that my photos simply don't do justice to the food. Some of the others' dishes I didn't capture on camera were serious works of art. Whilst I can't say there was anything mindblowingly strange or out there Heston Blumenthal style (the foams came closest), each course was very well thought out and there was definitely no shortage of creativity. More importantly, every dish was solidly executed and the flavours and textures were fantastic.

Simply put, Midsummer House is a world-class restaurant, and in my mind deserves all the accolades it receives. There will always be haters and people who are disappointed. Don't expect explosions and liquid nitrogen pouring out of your dishes. Do expect seriously good food. Given the quality of the restaurant, their £35 three-course set lunch and £39.50 four-course set dinner are exceptional value.

I will definitely be going back sometime for lunch.

Midsummer House
Midsummer Common, Cambridge, CB4 1HA
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 369 299
www.midsummerhouse.co.uk

Warning: The map LIES. It's actually further west along the river, closr to Victoria Ave.
Update: It looks like somebody fixed up the location on the map!

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New Series -- QED: Zucchini omelette

2011-02-19T13:31:00.001Z

This is the first post of a new series called QED. No, it is not quantum electrodynamics and we don’t prove a mathematical theorem in cooking science. With this series, we want to show that it is possible to cook Quick, Easy and Delicious meals with the limited kitchenware and fridge space available to the average student in college. The QED series shall become a collection of simple recipes that doesn’t necessitate a load of fancy ingredients or hours of cooking.

This dish is one my mom used to cook in summer with the fresh zucchini from our garden. I like this dish so much because of its taste of gently stir-fried zucchini and because, apart from the zucchini, usually I have all the ingredients in my kitchen cabinet. For two people you will need:

2 zucchini
2 eggs
1 cup of milk
flour
herbs (e.g. rosemary, oregano, provencial herbs)
a clove of garlic
salt and pepper
oil
parmigiano cheese

Whisk the two eggs with the milk and add the flour a little at the time, trying to avoid the formation of lumps. Add as much flour as needed to obtain nice omelette batter, not dense and not too liquid. Press the garlic into the mixture and add the herbs, salt and pepper to taste. Fresh herbs are preferred but any dried herb you can find in your kitchen will do. Don’t be afraid to use quite a bit of herbs, it makes the omelette more savoury.

Cut the zucchini lengthwise in half and then into semicircles. Gently stir-fry them in a hot pan with little oil. Don’t cook them to death, they are best when they start to get just slightly brown but they are still “al dente”.

Fry the omelette on both side till golden brown and top one half of it with the zucchini. Fold over the other half. Finally place on a nice plate and serve with some grated parmigiano on top. Bon Appétit!

PS: If you like you can add small pieces of cooked ham to the batter, which makes the omelette even tastier.

PPS: As I child I loved to eat it with ketchup. It might sound outrageous, but it tastes quite good. Try it. The noble alternative is to decorate the plate with halved cherry tomatoes.

Grease is the word...

2011-02-19T13:15:00.003Z

When work gets you down, it's a Saturday and you wake up at midday, the only thing left to do is demolish a plate of french toast and bacon slathered in leftover maple syrup.

Disgusting or delicious?

Cocum, Cambridge

2011-02-15T23:09:00.390Z

Before I start about Cocum, just a few random bits and pieces I wanted to mention. Firstly, why the knife and fork? Well the Dancer brought her DSLR camera to dinner to take some decent photos, rather than using my little old point-and-shoot. The result? Pretty sure I'll need much more practice handling such serious equipment, although I was not helped by the fact that the lights above our table were broken. I now have seven 20mb (raw) photos of the same set of cutlery on my computer, so I thought I should use at least one of them.

So actually I've been contemplating buying a new camera for food photography amongst other things. I've mainly been looking at the expensive compact range - the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 has been recommended to me, whilst PC says there's a better Olympus which has just been released (this one perhaps). Do you guys have any suggestions?

Two other exciting things:
* This blog might see something from the other side of the Atlantic in the near future;
* Last night I paid a visit to what is (theoretically at least) the best restaurant in Cambridge... oh yes, will get blogging soon

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Pre-movie dinner? It's good for you. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d-qENAaNbM)

Cambridge has so many Indian restaurants, each offering a disconcertingly large number of options, making for a rather mind-boggling number of Indian (and other subcontinental) dishes. However when you take into account that they mostly serve similar variations on North Indian style curries, naan and this so-called Balti cuisine which apparently is a Birmingham invention, the choice is not as expansive as it might seem.

Given this, a few of us were keen to try out Cocum, a Keralan (southwestern) Indian restaurant suggested by Lady G all the way back during our gnocchi-making fest. We finally got around to trying it out one evening before going to the Arts Picturehouse for a movie.

Someone clearly had a lot of fun writing this.

We arrived to a find a reasonably peaceful and subdued Sunday evening unfolding in the restaurant. Upon reading the menu description however, it became apparent that this would be a life-changing experience. Nothing wrong with a little hype! The four of us on one side of the table decided sharing was indeed caring in order to maximise the number of dishes we each could try.

The Pope's requests for 'the one with butter' were met with the paneer butter masala, whilst the vegetable kootu was a recommendation by the waiter after the Dancer's aubergine thiyal wasn't available.

Left: Vegetable Kootu (£4.75) ; Right: Paneer Butter Masala (£5.50)

The servings were modest in size but reasonable given the price. To be honest, the kootu was a little reminiscent of Trinity curries, where rather unfortunately the dominant spice is salt. The paneer was a little more to my taste, with precious few cubes of the cheese in a thick creamy sauce. However I do think that butter chicken/paneer is one of the most generic and over-popularised dishes, and most definitely North Indian in style. The Pope didn't seem to mind (and rightly so I guess), because it has butter in it, and butter makes everything taste good.

Left: Kerala Paratha (£1.95) ; Right: Appam (£1.75)

Strangely enough, the breads were more exciting than the curries themselves. My only prior experience with parathas are the frozen kind you buy in supermarkets which turn out slightly crisp like puff pastry when cooked. This one was still full of delicious pastry layer goodness but with a soft texture, perfect for scooping up curry sauce. The appam was wonderfully light and spongy, and I probably could have gone through quite a few of them if we hadn't ordered rice too.

Chicken Shashlick (£7.95)

The chicken shashlick was solid if not inspiring, with generous cubes of barbecued tandoori chicken and onion. Again I think tandoori cooking is more of a North Indian thing, although I'm no expert. Also I'm curious about the origins of shashlick (Wikipedia says it's spelled shashlik) as it was basically chicken kebab with indian spices - perhaps for the naming of this dish, the word has just been borrowed from Russian.

Lamb Masala Dosa (£7.95)

By far and away, the star of the show was the lamb masala dosa - a giant larger-than-plate sized crepe filled with spiced lamb and potato, accompanied by sambar (a lentil curry) and coconut chutney. The crepe itself was thin, light and crisp, with a generous amount of satisfyingly starchy lamb masala in the middle. Whilst overpowered by the lamb, the sambar and chutney worked better with the plain unfilled dosa sections flanking either side of the plate. Based on sheer size, a thumbs up from me!

On the whole, I suspect that it would have been a more enjoyable experience if we had chosen some of the more unusual or authentic Keralan dishes. We also weren't helped by the time pressure which comes from needing to finish eating before a deadline, like the start of a movie! All that remains now is to try that other Keralan restaurant in Cambridge, The Rice Boat...

We'll save that for some time later.

Cocum
71 Castle St, Cambridge, CB3 0AH
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 366 668
www.cocumrestaurant.co.uk

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SMBC #2 - Broccoli Lemon Chicken with Cashews; Chilli Tofu with Chicken

2011-02-13T17:21:00.013Z

Here's the second edition of our SMBC series, this time courtesy of PC.

Ingredients:

General:	Seasoning:	Extras & Decoration:
450g deboned chicken thighs 300g tender stem broccoli 400g rice	1 tablespoon cornflour 1 tablespoon honey 2 tablespoons sesame oil 2 lemons (preferably organic) 1/8 cube of vegetable stock 1 tablespoon soy sauce 2 large garlic cloves pepper and salt	canola oil for frying fresh chilli if you like it hot thin strips of lemon zest handful of cashew nuts

Start with roasting the cashew nuts in a non-stick pan at medium heat, flipping them over repeatedly so that they don’t get burnt.

Next, peel off a few pieces of zest from the lemon using a sharp knife or peeler. Avoid the white part of the rind, it just tastes bitter. Cut the zest into very thin strips, set aside some for decoration.

Chop the remaining lemon rind and put it into a bowl together with the finely chopped garlic, the juice from one lemon, honey, soy sauce, sesame oil and salt and pepper to taste. Mix the seasoning thoroughly and add the chicken meat, cut into lengthy chunks, give it a good stir and put it to rest for 10 minutes.

In the meantime, wash and cut the broccoli if too large. To obtain a nice tasty sauce with the right consistency, dissolve the cornflour and the vegetable stock in a little water and add the juice from the second lemon. Cook the rice in a separate pot.

Fry first the marinated chicken in a well heated pan with some oil until golden brown and set aside on a plate. Subsequently stir-fry the broccoli with the chilli in the same pan. If the broccoli starts to become brown, add some water. Don’t overcook, the broccoli should retain a nice green colour and remain crunchy.

Finally combine the chicken meat, the broccoli, the cashew nuts and the corn flour-lemon juice mixture in the pan and heat gently till the sauce thickens.

A nice way to present the dish is to press the rice into a scoop. With the help of a spoon, arrange the rice hemispheres on the plate and top them with the chicken and some sauce. Garnish with some more cashews and spice it up with the lemon rind strips.

____________________________

Ingredients for the Tofu:
400g firm tofu 150g deboned chicken thighs 2 large cloves garlic 4 spring onions	oyster sauce fresh chilli sesame oil	light soy sauce dark soy sauce canola oil for frying

Mince the chicken and mix it with the soy sauce and the oyster sauce and a few spoons of sesame oil in a bowl. Separately, mince garlic and chop the spring onions and chilli.

Drain the tofu and cut it into cubes of about 2cm edge length.

Fry the garlic in a pan with little oil, followed by the chicken mince. When cooked, add the tofu, followed by chilli and spring onion and fry for another 2-3 minutes. Serve in a bowl as garnish for the rice.

And SMBC proudly presents the end result...

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Join us next week when we take on Greek cuisine, minus a grill or oven of any sort. And as always, let us know if you have a recipe suggestion! Have a good week =)

PS. No we did not have this for breakfast.
PPS. We went to 3 different supermarkets in an attempt to find silken tofu without going to Mill Rd. We failed.

Hey Pesto!

2011-02-12T03:38:00.002Z

I am the proud new owner of a coriander pot plant. Her name is Catherine. Setting me back only £1, she seemed to make far more financial sense in the long run when compared to the regular packaged stuff. Whether she survives to fulfil her potential is uncertain however, considering I just savaged a significant percentage of her foliage to make pesto.

Death by a thousand cuts, and yet she still smiles at me.

Actually I was going to make a regular basil pesto, but as fate would have it, Sainsbury had none of the pot plant variety in stock. I had actually only ever heard of basil pesto until recently, when I had a ton of leftover coriander after making rice paper rolls and no idea what to do with it. Coriander pesto is more gentle in flavour, which might be surprising considering it usually has a strong distinctive smell which some people can't stand.

The following recipe is somewhat plagarised/butchered from something Dr C cooked this one time a while back...

Fusilli with Zucchini and Coriander Pesto

Coriander Pesto:	Everything Else:
large bunch of coriander extra virgin olive oil several cloves garlic 1 small chilli handful of pine nuts parmesan cheese, grated	400 g fusilli pasta 2 large zucchinis, sliced into batons 100 g pancetta or bacon, cubed 20 cherry tomatoes, halved

Serves 3-4

For the pesto... firstly, look mum, no blender! College accommodation rules don't allow them, but a knife is perfectly sufficient.

1. Finely chop the coriander, followed by garlic and chilli.
2. Combine in a bowl and add oil until paste-like consistency is reached.
3. Add pine nuts then grated cheese until you're happy with the taste. A little salt might help too, or perhaps a squeeze of lemon juice. The pesto will probably get a bit dry after adding cheese, so top up with oil as you see fit.

I was deliberately vague with the amounts because A) I don't actually remember how much I used; and B) it's up to personal taste. By the way, here's a video of Jamie Oliver telling you how to use a knife. If you never really learnt basic skills in the kitchen (like me), this video is really informative. I first saw it at this food blog!

For the pasta...
1. Boil fusilli until almost cooked. Meanwhile...
2. Fry pancetta without oil (it's fatty enough) for a minute or two.
3. Add sliced zucchini and fry until they start to soften.
4. Add tomato and pesto and fry for another minute. Hopefully the pasta is done and drained by now!
5. Add pasta to the sauce and stir until mixed evenly and everything is heated through. Add salt/pepper/cheese to taste.

Translations:
* Strange people from some country called "America" call coriander "cilantro". Crazy folks.
* Even stranger people from this "United Kingdom" place call zucchini "courgettes". Don't be influenced by their madness.

Charlie Chan, Cambridge

2011-02-10T02:47:00.007Z

"My palate has been stunted from all this Trinity stodge."

Having eaten in hall once too often this week, Pope JP decides that we (Dr C and myself) should go out for dinner tonight. Given his recent cravings for Chinese food, we decide to head to Seven Days on Regent St, which serves pretty authentic dishes and seems to be especially popular amongst the local Asian contingent. True to form however, the restaurant is completely full when we arrive at 7:15 pm.

Given the queue growing in front of the counter, the decision is made to adopt plan B and try out the other Chinese restaurant just down the road - Charlie Chan.

Try as I might, I can't help but associate the name Charlie Chan with a really dodgy bottle shop in Sydney CBD. So it is with trepidation that I enter the restaurant, not helped by the slightly cringeworthy musak and neon lights which adorn the foyer. While the Pope and Dr C aren't bothered at all, I am a little relieved when we head upstairs to be greeted by a more comfortable dining area.

The three of us decide to order one dish each to share, although The Pope and Dr C both want aubergine with ginger and garlic. Always the gentleman, The Pope changes his mind and goes for beef with chinese mushrooms in oyster sauce, whilst I go for the barbecued belly pork with yam in clay pot.

Beef with Chinese Mushroom in Oyster Sauce (£8.50)

First to arrive is the beef, which as expected is pretty standard fare. The beef is tender and there are mushrooms enough to satisfy The Pope's chinese mushroom cravings.

Barbecued Belly Pork with Yam in Clay Pot (£12.50)

Next is the pork, which for some reason I thought would be this, turns out to be a rather generous serving of this (I should have read the word "barbecued'). Nonetheless, the streaky slices of pork belly match quite well with the yam, and the whole cloves of garlic are actually surprisingly tasty!

Aubergine with Garlic and Ginger (£8.00)

However the aubergine is unanimously the favourite dish of the three - you can taste the heat (temperature) retained in the eggplant from the braising (literally 'red cooked' in Chinese i think...), plus we all lap up the sauce in all its oily goodness.

The overall consensus? Perhaps not the most original or ground-breaking Chinese food, but at the end of the night we are three very definitely satisfied stomachs.

Charlie Chan
14 Regent Street, Cambridge, CB2 1DB
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 359336

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Saturday Morning Breakfast Club #1 - Buttermilk Pancakes with Berry Compote

2011-02-05T23:29:00.030Z

We're very proud to present the first meeting of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Club (henceforth known as SMBC). If you don't know what SMBC is all about, find out here!

Actually, this regular weekend cooking event was initially meant to be a lunch/dinner thing, after being inspired by a great Chinese New Year potluck party earlier this week. As with all spontaneous ideas formed in the wee hours of the night, we only realised several days later that The Shok would be busy during lunch/dinner on Saturday, plus I would be out of town all Sunday. Desperate not to fall at the first hurdle, it was decided that we'd do a Saturday breakfast instead.

This recipe is adapted from Mum's recipe. Thanks Mum! There are so many occasions that I've wanted to make buttermilk pancakes, only to realise that I don't have buttermilk in the house. Apparently you can make your own buttermilk by adding something acidic (lemon juice or vinegar) to milk, but I'm yet to give this a try. Now that I'm in Cambridge it's not so much of a problem, living about a two minute walk from the supermarket...

- YH (aka Hangman)

Buttermilk Pancakes with Berry Compote

Pancake batter:	Berry compote:	Extras:
2 cups (280 g) white flour 2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 4 tbsp caster sugar 2 eggs 2 cups (480 mL) buttermilk* 6 tsbp butter, melted	200 g blueberries 200 g strawberries sugar to taste lemon juice (optional)	icing sugar maple syrup bananas sunflower oil

Makes roughly 20 pancakes (~8 cm diameter)

Procedure:
For the berry compote...
1. Cut strawberries into bite sized pieces, and add to a pot together with blueberries and a liberal amount of sugar. The amount of sugar varies depending on the fruit - add enough to balance out the tartness of the berries. You can also add lemon juice for an extra kick.
2. Reduce over medium heat until the juice starts to thicken.

For the pancakes...
1. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt in a large bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, lightly whisk together the eggs and melted butter followed by the buttermilk.
3. Pour the liquid mixture over the flour and gently stir until just combined. Be careful not to overmix, otherwise you will squeeze out all the bubbles and your pancakes will not be fluffy!

4. Place a generous spoonful of pancake batter on a well heated pan with a little sunflower oil. Cook until small bubbles appear on the top of the pancake, then flip and cook until other side is golden brown.

Homage to this.

5. Make a pancake stack and top with berry compote, followed by a dusting of icing sugar.

Pan-fried banana halves with maple syrup also makes for pancake deliciousness...

Some tips:
* Be warned... we were slightly confused when the buttermilk we bought was surprisingly thick and yoghurty. As we consequently found out from a reliable source, buttermilk comes in two types. Instead of the more runny traditional buttermilk we had expected, it turns out we had bought cultured buttermilk. To counteract the extra thickness, we added a little milk/water until the batter consistency was less like bread dough, and more like pancake mix, and everybody lived happily ever after.

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Stay tuned until next week when PC or The Shok will bring you new culinary breakthroughs using the infamous toaster-microwave-kettle combo. Ok, maybe the hob too.

Do you have any recipe suggestions for our weekend cooking expeditions? We're always looking for new ideas, so leave us a comment to let us know!

Delicious beginnings... Gnocchi alla Sorrentina

2011-02-03T01:48:00.014Z

It's happened. After much procrastination, months of good intentions and unfulfilled promises, this blog finally exists! For far too long I've been ranting about starting a food blog, so I'm both relieved and excited that it's gotten off the ground.

I was contemplating writing some sort of introduction here, this being the first post and all, but in the end I hope the food speaks for itself. So without further ado...

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Home-made gnocchi seems like a daunting task. Getting the right balance of potato and flour is a strange and mysterious art. My first and last sojourn into gnocchi-making ended in soggy oversized and misshapen mushballs, which was why I was so excited when the Dancer informed me that she'd enlisted our Italian friend Dr C to help us make the real thing.

We organised a dinner party and invited a few friends to join us for an impromptu cooking lesson. As it turned out, our Doc had only made gnocchi a couple of times before, but she assured us it wouldn't be very difficult, with the only problem being the amount of time it would take.

In the end, she was spot on about the time - 2.5 hours from potato-peeling to pasta-on-plate, which was subsequently demolished in ten minutes. Ten minutes of cheese-meltingly delicious heaven mind you. And even for the preceding 150 minutes, I had plenty of fun rolling the dough and shaping the gnocchi.

Here's the recipe; it's actually ridiculously simple in terms of ingredients, so it's definitely worth a try if you have an evening to spare and friends to enslave...

Gnocchi alla Sorrentina

Gnocchi:	Pasta Sauce:
1 kg white flour 1 kg potatoes salt to taste	1 large jar (~750 mL) passata 1 block (~ 400 g) mozarella cheese basil to taste

Serves 5-6

1. Boil the potatoes for roughly 20-30 minutes, until they are just cooked enough to mash. Skin the cooked potatoes whilst hot.
2. Create a well of flour and add the skinned potatoes to the centre of the well, and then thoroughly mash the potatoes.

3. Bring in the flour from the sides of the well and knead until a dough forms. The dough will probably be sticky and too wet, so keep adding flour and kneading until a nice and elastic dough forms. The amount of flour can really vary - we used around 600 g probably. Whilst kneading, add salt to taste.

4. Once the dough is ready, take a handful and roll it into ~2-3 cm diameter cylinders. Then cut the cylinders into small ~1 cm wide chunks. Shape the chunks by rolling against the end of a fork. A bit hard to describe, so see the picture to get the best idea.

5. Leave the gnocchi out to dry for 30 mins.
6. Boil the gnocchi until they float, then take them out with a slotted spatula and transfer to a pan. Using a strainer might be a bad idea because the gnocchi are quite delicate.
7. Add passata to the gnocchi and heat until warmed through.
8. Cut mozzarella into 2 cm cubes and add to pasta, followed by torn/chopped basil and stir through briefly to get yummy melted strings of cheese.

Some notes:
- I'm actually not sure what varieties of potatoes are the best for making gnocchi. The ones we bought said "ideal for mashing" and they were floury and seemed to work just fine.