My extraordinarily ordinary life!
Everything and anything about food, cooking, baking, and recipe-testing
I’m absolutely exhausted today! I found myself dozing off while on the train this evening, on my way home tonight. It wasn’t too dangerous because my stop was the last stop on the line anyway. But I think it’s a lot safer if I stayed wide awake during the journey home.
I did, however, manage to bake a lemon and poppy seed cake tonight. All in the name of baking!
I grew up drinking some sort of tea. Tea was a part of the Filipino diet, but I remember that it was mostly for medicinal purposes. Ginger tea was for sore throats and laryngitis. Peppermint was for muscle aches and pains. My dad had this plant called kumis kucing that everyone swore helped kidney issues and kidney stones.
Being an Anglophile at a very young age, I always had tea, with lemon and not cream, although this was probably not very British in the afternoons while I was studying. I had tea in a cup and a saucer (most probably with my pinkie in the air too!). I felt very grown up with my tea and my slice of lemon (which was actually a wedge of calamansi, the indigenous citrus fruit from the Philippines). It wasn’t until I saw this film about a little girl, all dressed up, going to a posh looking restaurant being served tea, dainty sandwiches and being asked by a waiter to choose cakes from a heavily laden trolley that I started reading about “proper” afternoon tea.
Afternoon tea is a small meal typically eaten between 3PM and 5PM. The Duchess of Bedford is rumoured to have transformed afternoon tea into a late afternoon meal rather than just a simple way of getting refreshment. As far as I understand it, there are 2 types of afternoon tea: high tea and cream tea. High tea is also known as a meat tea where one is served savoury and sweet dishes. Cucumber sandwiches and smoked salmon sandwiches are usually a staple. And of course one gets the cakes and the scones, clotted cream and jam. Another kind of afternoon tea is the cream tea. Cream tea is usually tea served with scones and clotted cream.
Since moving to the UK, I’ve been wanting to go to afternoon tea. I wanted to go to a proper high tea with silver service but they were quite pricey. Since I quite enjoyed baking, one aspect of afternoon tea that I knew I was going to enjoy was looking at all the pretty cakes served on those pretty cake stands. I first attempted to find a place serving afternoon tea somewhere near me. But I couldn’t really find anywhere suitable. The London locations were fairly expensive but I really wanted to try it so to me, it was a matter of finding the right place and making the appropo reservations.
Funny how the most wonderful experiences are the most unexpected. The Delaunay Counter was a restaurant that I often saw but never really considered. It looked terribly posh from outside so I automatically assumed that the prices would be way beyond my budget. But a few weeks ago, I actually looked at the prices and found them quite reasonable and I made a mental note to go back there for afternoon tea because £11.75 per person was a reasonable price to pay for afternoon tea (I promptly lost that mental note!).
When I finally remembered to go (after Alan reminded me!) I wasn’t expecting much. The Delaunay Counter was mostly a self-serve and take away part of the The Delaunay Restaurant and if you wanted to eat in, you went to the counter to place your order. But the staff were lovely and absolutely friendly, and when the tea was brought to us, I thought the price we paid was more than reasonable!
You get a pot of tea, enough milk for your tea, 5 different types of sandwiches, 2 different cakes, a scone and clotted cream and jam. Everything is presented very beautifully on a 3-tiered cake stand and glass tea pot. You get to choose your tea. I love a good strong tea, but apparently, traditionally (and I could be wrong!), you should choose Earl Grey or English Breakfast. Only recently have I learned that Assam is also a good tea to choose for afternoon tea as its strong flavour compliments the savoury and sweet elements from the food served.
If you are looking for a place to have tea, head on to the Delaunay Counter on 55 Aldwych Street (it’s near the theatre where Mamma Mia is) in London. The place is lovely, with a lot of quirky Austrian-themed posters in lovely wooden frames. The staff are lovely but efficient. Apart from the afternoon tea, there is a lovely (and very tempting) selection of cakes. They, apparently, have the best Sacher Torte in London and I am quite inclined to agree having sampled it myself. They also serve salads and hot sandwiches and they do a daily roast too. According to the menu they also serve breakfasts from 7AM on weekdays. There is a distinct Austrian feel to the menu with the schnitzels and the gugelhopfs on offer. But it is definitely worth the visit. You won’t regret it!
Photo credit:
The Delaunay Counter – http://www.facebook.com/DelaunayCounter
Rachel Khoo burst into the TV cooking scene early this year with her little Paris kitchen exploits. When I first saw the TV adverts for her show on the Beeb, I wondered if it was all too good to be true. Everything was neat, tidy and oh-so-trés-Français. But I was very (very!) curious so I made sure her show was sky-plussed.
I loved everything about the show. It somehow de-mystified french cooking for me and seemed to make it more accessible. I’ve got Julia Child’s Mastering The Art of French Cooking, but have never tried any of the recipes. French cuisine is, really, quite daunting (to me it is, anyway). I’ve cracked the book spine by reading it but haven’t really had the courage to actually try one of the recipes (yes, I know I really should!).
Because I enjoyed the show and the recipes that were featured (and thought I’d be a dab hand at trying out the recipes) I bought Rachel’s book and it really is quite adorable. The illustrations in the book are completely hers (and considering her visual arts background, I wasn’t surprised that the little illustrations were good, and really quite refreshing to see in a cook book!). 
The first recipe I’ve tried and have always come back to in the cookbook is the recipe for croque madame muffins. They are simple to make and they taste absolutely scrummy. There are only 6 ingredients: bread, butter, eggs, ham, cheese and bechamel sauce! If you are considering buying this book, do, if only for the croque madame muffin recipe! They’re wonderfully tasty and oh-so-easy to make. And, they do, come out quite beautifully. When you pull them out of the oven and see their lovely golden bakedness, you can’t help but say, “Oh wow! I made that!”
Figs are my fruit du jour.
My favourite dessert at the moment is baked figs with Greek yogurt and honey. It’s a quick, comforting dessert. And very easy to prepare: cut the figs into quarters and roll them in sugar. Then place them in a baking pan and bake them at 200°C for 20 minutes. Serve with yogurt and honey. Figs will give out a syrupy juice so make sure you spoon the syrup onto the yogurt too. Makes for a very tasty dessert!
It’s been quite the tough week, this week. I’ve got a lot on my plate in terms of the day job. So it was fitting that today, of all days, I cooked adobo for dinner. Nothing fancy. Just adobo, rice and braised sliced greens in a bowl. I had prepped the adobo earlier and it had been marinating for a few days in the freezer. I brought it down a couple of days ago so that it could thaw in the fridge until I decided to cook it. There is nothing better than making a dish that reminds you of home when you’ve had a relatively rough day.
Yum!
I went out today to look for things to buy…in other words, I went on a shopping spree (mainly for the kitchen: I got 2 spatulas and a cleaver! How exciting!).
I went into Starbucks for an afternoon coffee break treat. I used to go to Starbucks all the time because there were Starbucks coffee shops everywhere in Manila. Not the same here. If you don’t live in London, Starbucks coffee shops are few and far in between. I remember going through a really bad Starbucks withdrawal period when I first moved to England because there wasn’t a Starbucks coffee shop near enough to visit every other day. Anyway, I digress. I saw the little advert signs about this drink at the beginning of summer but have never had the opportunity to try it.
I had a eureka moment! I love this drink already! I love hibiscus-based drinks and this drink just hit the spot. I am in love with the Starbucks Berry Hibiscus Refresha drink. Now available at a Starbucks near you!
I found something wonderful in the supermarket! Shredded carrots! And when there are shredded carrots available, a carrot cake will be baked! Anything to save my hands from doing the grunt work!
The recipe needs perfecting and I may have to work on adjusting the measurements as this makes a VERY big cake. But the cake has turned out pretty well! I’m bringing this to work tomorrow to share it with my coworkers so I can get feedback!
We’re having a curry lunch at work tomorrow and we’ve been asked by the work colleague hosting the curry lunch to bring anything that we think will go with curry. I’ve decided to bring roti bread (shop bought as I haven’t learned how to make them yet!) and pistachio, coconut and cardamom burfis.
I’ve always liked Indian food, but I must say that I’ve never really had proper Indian food until I moved to the UK. One of the consultants who used to work for the government corporation I used to work for in the Philippines used to bring us Indian-inspired dishes and she introduced me to roti bread which I am now in love with!
Anyway, apart from the adorable roti bread, I’m bringing pistachio annd coconut burfis to work tomorrow. A burfi (or barfi or burfee, or borfee) is a sweet confectionery from India. It is usually made with condensed milk cooked with sugar until it solidifies. I saw this version being made about 5 or 6 years ago on a food-related channel on the Discovery Travel and Adventure channel. It wasn’t until about 4 years ago, when I moved to England, funnily enough, that I had the opportunity to try making this recipe. On the programme I was watching, it looked easy to make, and it was—very, VERY easy to make. Most burfis ask for the condensed milk to be cooked in sugar until they harden, but as I am diabetic (and very lazy), I thought I’d try it without the long cooking process and the added sugar. The condensed milk is sweet enough!
Here’s my recipe:
Ingredients:
Directions:
The burfis can be eaten as soon as they are made but it’s much nicer if you refrigerate them for at least 2 hours before you serve. These keep in the fridge for about a week. Although, I very much doubt that they’ll last that long as they’re very moreish (moreish, or more-ish, is a word I learnedafter moving to England. It means causing one to want more–usually food!)!
Mother Nature has blown hot and cold fairly regularly in the past few weeks. Last Saturday was the hottest day ever in England. I was in London on that day and boy, did I feel the heat! I’m Filipino so I should be fairly used to hot weather. But even I was struggling in the muggy heat. I was cursing the decision to wear jeans. I should’ve work something lighter. Even the dreaded leggings would have saved my poor legs and allowed for better air circulation!
Yesterday, as we journeyed to London, the sky was painted a slate grey. Rain clouds were racing across the east Anglian sky and I was hoping against hope that I could get through my London trip without getting drenched! That of course was a pipe dream. As we dodged the raindrops throughout the day, by the time we got to Soho, it was quite evident that we had to take shelter. We were trapped on Berwick Street!
When the rain finally let up (very temporarily), we thought it would be best to take shelter in the nearby Gelupo on Archer Street. Gelupo is this lovely little gelateria in Soho. They have lovely flavours and a lovely bright, crisp and clean interior that always seems to invite you in, whatever the weather. I heard about Gelupo from Helen, who is a food blogger that I follow on Twitter. Based on her recommendation, I went to London and looked for Archer Street. It’s that street that is behind the Gielgud Theatre in Soho on Shaftesbury Avenue.
Gelupo is primarily a gelateria and serves the most wonderful flavours! But as you walk through the shop past the gelato counter with its lovely gelato and Italian pastries, past the freezers holding lovely gelato-based treats and frozen Italian pantry essentials (you will, on occassion, find a frozen baby octopus!), towards the back of the shop there is a lovely deli section that is filled with wonderful Italian treats, from arborio rice to bottles of extra virgin olive oil!
If you’re in London, going to Gelupo for a gelato fix is a must. The staff are lovely and ever so friendly and they very generously let you taste the ice cream before you make your choice. You also get a wafer with your gelato with the Gelupo logo on it that is too cute! My absolute favourites are the bonet for its rich chocolatey rumness, sour cherry and ricotta with its lovely balance of creamy and tart, stawberry yumminess and, of course, hazelnut which is like having Nutella in ice cream form.
I had the stawberry and peanut butter gelato this time and it was sooooooo good! It was like having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich flavoured ice cream treat! Going to Gelupo is a treat each and every time and definitely recommend going there, whether the weather is gelato weather or not! Any excuse for a Gelupo gelato fix is a brilliant excuse!
I love chicken. I love it fried, braised, barbecued, stewed, roasted. Chances are as long as it’s chicken, I will eat it and I will love it. I could probably eat chicken all year without complaining. You could probably say I am slightly pollo loco!
I’m lucky that most of the fast food restaurants in the Philippines serve chicken. While it may sound weird to some people, chicken is almost always served with rice and some sort of gravy or sauce. But most places that serve fried chicken will almost always have mashed potato and gravy on the menu as a side. It probably seems very American but there you go. Fried chicken and mashed potato in gravy is, in my opinion, a match made in fried chicken heaven!
When I lived in Atlanta for a while, my love for Southern fried chicken grew. Chicken in the South was so much better than KFC (and don’t get me wrong, KFC in the South seems to be even better than the usual, but that may just be me!) and the mashed potato was even more amazing than the mashed potato that you got in those little styrofoam tubs that you got from fast food restaurants. I was in chicken heaven. Every single element of southern fried chicken made me smile: from the crispy fried chicken batter to the juicy chicken pieces! To borrow KFC’s slogan, PROPER southern fried chicken was of the finger-lickin’ good variety.
I moved to England nearly 4 years ago and I think I spent nearly that much time looking for great fried chicken. Don’t get me wrong, the various southern fried chicken take away places do have their merits, particularly the ones near us. They’re okay, not amazing, but okay if I needed a fried chicken fix. But obviously, it was chicken and chips (I used to call them fries) and not chicken and mash…and I almost always had to make my own gravy. No one seemed to think that mashed potato and gravy was a good flavour combination. I even went to my old standby KFC, expecting to see the same things on the menu but boy, was I disappointed! There was no mashed potato and there was no gravy and the chicken wasn’t as good as I thought it was. And so began my quest for the perfect southern fried chicken.
I’ve bought chicken from lots of places, from different supermarkets, had meals in a lot of restaurants but I’ve never really found the kind of chicken that I really enjoyed: crispy, flavourful batter, slightly salty and juicy chicken. Until that fateful day in July. Alan had read about Roost who served chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. And not just any chicken, it was chicken marinated in buttermilk, battered and fried! It was proper southern fried chicken, the way southern fried chicken is supposed to be made! Or at least that’s what it said it was. After looking for nearly 4 years, I think you wouldn’t blame me for being slight skeptical.
We made our way to the Dalston location Friday after work where that week’s Street Feast London was happening and ordered a serving: 2 pieces of buttermilk chicken with gravy and mash. I was prepared to be disappointed. But as I stabbed my fork into that crispy batter, the crackle that I heard calmed my doubtful heart. Batter that sounded like that had to be some sort of good! And bite of juicy chicken with a little bit of batter made me smile. It was SO good! The next bite had to be a fork-full of chicken, batter, mashed potato and gravy had me closing my eyes in absolute enjoyment. I’m salivating while thinking back to that first mouthful of chicken-mash-gravy. The chicken was perfect and the mash was creamy-buttery. I made the decision to share a 2-piece chicken meal with Alan (yes, I have been known to demolish a 2-piece chicken meal with gravy and rice in the Philippines!) because we were at Street Feast LDN and there were other food places to try (and, if I’m honest, because I had prepared for disappointment, I didn’t want to have too much of the chicken left over if I didn’t like it! I am, apparently, a fussy eater!). But as we walked away from that parking lot in Dalston, I was thinking about the chicken. I wanted to turn around and order another chicken with gravy and mash to take back with me! It was THAT good!
We had our next taste of chicken when Eat Street was at Exhibition Road 2 weeks later (a little thing called the Olympics had descended on London). This time we each had a 2-piece meal, absolutely no sharing! And I’m very glad to report that the chicken and gravy and mash were as perfect as I remember.
If you’re ever in London and in a street food market, and you spy the Roost truck, run, don’t walk, to it and ask for a 2-piece chicken meal with gravy and mash as a side. You won’t regret it! To find out where Roost are, follow them on Twitter. They are @weareroost.
I cannot wait until the next Roost fix!
Yellywelly 