Yelly Eats

This cake happened today!

28 Sep 201629 Sep 2016 Yelly

I bought a bowl of plums from the Friday Market for £1 last week with the intention of consuming them purely for my 5-a-day. Usually the fruit that I get from that particular market stall is sweet and perfect (yes, really!) but surprisingly, these plums were very tart. I tried eating the fruit but it was REALLY tart (bordering on acidic sourness).

I have written a draft of the recipe for the plum cake. But I need to work on it because the plums were still so tart even after laying them on a carpet of brown sugar. I’ll have to tweak the recipe first and make it a few times to make sure it’s a recipe that works. I promise to share it as soon as I’m satisfied.

Watch this space!

Yelly Eats

Chocolate crinkles

24 Sep 20168 Aug 2017 Yelly

Over a week ago, I gave in to the urge to finally make chocolate crinkles. It’s a popular cookie in the Philippines. It’s rich, indulgent and fudgy. It’s something that might just make you go mmmmm. I approached the idea of making crinkles with a little trepidation. I always worry that my memories of what things taste like in Manila is different from reality. But I did manage to work up the courage to finally make crinkles!

I’ve written a recipe that I’ve tweaked below and I know that it works. I would love for y’all to make chocolate crinkles and let me know if the recipe works for you.

Ingredients:

150g unsweetened cocoa powder
280g caster sugar
150ml vegetable oil
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
300g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ salt
150g icing sugar

Directions:

In a bowl, using a balloon whisk, mix the flour, salt and baking powder together and set aside. In a mixing bowl, combine the cocoa powder, sugar and oil. To mix, I’ll use a free-standing mixer.

With a paddle attachment, on the lowest setting (just so that the cocoa powder doesn’t fly all over the place), start mixing the cocoa powder, sugar and oil for about 2 minutes. Once the mixture forms a thick paste, increase the speed and mix for a further 2 minutes. The mixture should turn shiny and smooth. Add each egg individually and mix until the mixture is again shiny. Once all the eggs are added, add the vanilla.

Add the flour mixture and mix until well-incorporated and the mixture is smooth.

Cover the mixture and chill in the fridge for at least 2½ hours (I initially only chilled it for 1½ hours and it seemed to be okay), the longer you chill it, the better.

Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Line your baking sheets with parchment paper. I like to use a small ice cream scoop or a 1 tablespoon measuring spoon.

Scoop a generous 1 tablespoon of the mixture and roll it into a ball. Coat each ball with icing sugar and place on the lined sheet.

Bake for 10-12 minutes. Once the cookies are baked, take them out of the oven and allow to cool on the sheets for about 5 minutes before transferring them onto a wire rack to cool completely.

The cookies have a recognisable cracked surface and that’s how you know it’s a chocolate crinkle!

This recipe makes about 40 crinkles.

Yelly Eats

The friendliest fish and chippy on the Soho block!

21 Sep 20168 Aug 2017 Yelly

We’d walked past Poppie’s in Soho several times during our recent trips to London. The Soho branch is on Old Compton Street and Poppie’s in Soho has taken over what used to be Bobby Chin’s House of Ho. Whilst the signage is mostly black and white, the bunting strung across the signage makes it very cheerful, and, dare I say it, very British!

My friend Ally was visiting from Singapore and this was the only opportunity we had to meet with her. I’d asked previously if she’d already had a fish and chippy meal since she arrived in London, fish and chips being quintessentially British, to me anyway. She said no so I thought it would be good to have fish and chips because it would be a substantial enough meal if we were hungry but light enough because, well, it was fish. While I am partial to the fish and chip shop where I live, there was no way I was going to haul my friend up to Harwich to have just a fish and chip meal and push her back onto the train back to London Town. It was our first trip to Poppie’s but we’d heard a lot of good things about it online. It was convenient because it was close to where we wanted to go to in London.

When you turn into Old Compton Street , Poppie’s will be easy to find because it will be hard to miss the bright red Mini parked in front emblazoned with Poppie’s logo. We popped our head in the door and asked for a table for 3 and we were greeted pleasantly and promptly showed to a booth. The dining area was bigger than I thought. Since the shop had a food prep and cooking area and a take away counter separate from the main space, I didn’t expect the space to be comfortable. I thought that they would’ve tried to stuff as many tables as was possible. But I was very wrong. We had enough space to wriggle around very comfortably. There was a certain charm to the diner/shabby chic decor of the space.

The staff is friendly and cheerful. My friend thought we were regulars because of how the serving staff interacted with us. I daresay you won’t find a friendlier group of people in the food service industry! They were really nice and happy. Some people might think they might be overly familiar, but it was nice to have friendly service that felt really genuine and welcoming. The Poppettes, as the servers are known, know their food as well and can answer your questions about food really well.

Our food came out fairly quickly and piping hot. You knew that the fish was fried to order. The portion of chips was a great ratio to the regular portion of fish. The fish was fresh, sweet and cooked to perfection. The service was great and they looked after us without us feeling like they were forever hovering. When we finished, they cleared our plates away efficiently but we didn’t feel like they were hurrying us up to free up the table. We were allowed to sit and chat and finish our drinks. The bill was also a surprise because it was very reasonable for what we ordered. Great value for money as well!

I chose to order the cod because cod is always a safe option when eating at an unfamiliar chippy. But I am definitely going back and ordering rock for my next fish and chip meal at Poppie’s. It is definitely worth it! When you’re in Soho, pop into Poppie’s for the best fish and chip meal! You won’t be disappointed!

Yelly Eats

The power of the crinkle

15 Sep 20168 Aug 2017 Yelly

I comfort eat. Now I know psychologists and nutritionists and every healthcare professional reading this will be gasping and tutting and shaking their head right now. Comfort eating is a terrible coping mechanism and will have far reaching consequences. Ha! How highfalluting and technical-sounding is that sentence, eh? Mind you, I am very aware my comfort eating has allowed me to balloon and gain a whole child in terms of weight since I moved to the UK.

Apart from the comfort eating, I’ve been comfort cooking and comfort baking. I’ve been trying to recreate in my kitchen the food that was readily available to me in the Philippines. My favourite English proverb (which helps me justify my kitchen sessions) is: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Mind you, the food that I produce in my kitchen aren’t necessarily my own inventions. Sometimes it’s a result of me trawling the internet for tips on how to cook Filipino food. Since Filipino food isn’t readily available to take away or to buy at the nearest convenience store, I’ve got to learn how to make things myself if I miss eating them. I’m quite pleased that I’m able to make things that I would normally just go out and buy if I was in the Philippines.

I finally gave in to a long-standing baking to-do: making chocolate crinkles. Chocolate crinkles will feature in most Filipinos’ top 10 list of their favourite cookies. I’m not entirely certain whether it is a Filipino invention but it is certainly readily available in the Philippines, everywhere. Say the phrase “chocolate crinkles” to a Filipino and you more often than not will hear them say “Awww chocolate crinkles!”

For those of you who don’t know, chocolate crinkles are soft, fudgy chocolate cookies that are slightly firm, almost crispy, on the outside and moist and cakey on the inside. It’s covered with a generous coating of icing sugar outside and when you bite into the cookie, it’s rich and indulgent.

I’m going to share the recipe here once I’ve tried another test run, just to make sure that the recipe works properly. Any taste testers available?

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Yelly Eats

Fruitcake oatmeal cookies

17 Aug 20168 Aug 2017 Yelly

I was craving cookies.

I knew I had enough ingredients in the cupboard to whip up drop cookies. I leafed through my cookbooks for inspiration and decided on oatmeal raisin cookies as the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook was making my tummy growl in anticipation! I started to get the ingredients together and found a bag with about with still a third of the mixed dried fruit and peel languishing in my baking supplies basket. So instead of following the recipe in the cookbook, I improvised and put together what I call a cupboard cookie recipe – because you’re basically using ingredients you find in your cupboard!

Ingredients:

135g unsalted butter, room temperature and softened
80g soft brown sugar
80g caster sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
190g plain flour
80g oatmeal (I used wholegrain rolled oats, but quick cooking oats work too)
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
110g of mixed dried fruit and peel
70g ground almonds, optional

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 170°C
In a bowl, mix flour, oats, dried fruit, salt, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and ground almonds (if using), until well-incorporated.
Because my hands get tired really quickly, I now, more often than not use a mixer, but this can be done by hand (it’ll just take a lot of elbow power) first with a pastry blender (which I will always call a pastry cutter) and then with a balloon whisk. Cream the butter and sugars until the mixture is smooth and a light brown colour. Add the egg and the vanilla and mix until well-combined.
Add the flour and dried fruit mixture to the sugar and butter mixture until combined and you can no longer see the flour.
Drop batter, a heaping tablespoon at a time, onto a lined baking tray (Useful tip: if you’d like more uniform-sized cookies, use an ice-cream scooper. I use a 45mm one.). Make sure the cookies are evenly spaced. I bake 6 cookies per tray.
Bake in the preheated oven for 11-13 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to sit in the baking tray for about 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Makes 24 cookies.

Yelly Eats

Where chicken is not a laughing matter: Absurd Bird

7 Aug 20168 Aug 2017 Yelly

A version of this review was published on TripAdvisor and my other blog Panasian Kitchen.

I haven’t forgotten about my chicken bucket list. Alan and I have been working our way through the list, I just haven’t actually sat down to write my thoughts on the visit. Thankfully I have photos to remind me of the visit. With my memory, it would’ve have been difficult to write a review!

Absurd Bird is found on 54 Commercial Street, near Spitalfields Market, in London. The buses go through Commercial Street so the location is commutable. I’m not too certain about the parking, but I’m sure there is a way to find space for your vehicle.

You come into an interesting space with the bar in front. The seating spaces are interesting. There are interesting booths and long tables with homey upholstered benches. The space is great because one wall is made up of huge glass panels allowing the natural light to come in. The light fixtures are very interesting – gilded bird cages!

The food is definitely no laughing matter. I’m thankful Mr Hyde sent me a mailshot that featured a discount for Absurd Bird. It was the prompt Alan and I needed to go pay Absurd Bird a visit!

Alan ordered the fried chicken sliders with a side of sweet potato fries. The sliders have the same crispy on the outside and succulent on the inside chicken in them. Every crunchy bite of the chicken was amazing!

The sweet potato fries are yummy with a capital Y. They were so crispy! I very rarely find crispy sweet potato fries. It was heaven in every crunch!

I ordered the chicken and waffles with a side of coleslaw. The yummy sweet-sour coleslaw is more a salad sized serving instead of a side-sized serving and is a perfect side to the chicken.

You get 3 crispy on the outside and succulent on the inside pieces of chicken and 3 fluffy pieces of sweet waffle. You also get a small pot of maple syrup and (HURRAH!) a small pot of gravy!

It is excellent value for money and what we ordered was delicious! While we ordered on main meal and side each, I think what we ordered would have fed 4 people. The servings are generous and they are certainly worth every penny you pay for.

We didn’t order any alcoholic drinks but they serve lagers and cocktails I think. If you’re attempting to limit the amount of calories and keep hydration simple, you can opt to just have tap water for the table. They’re happy to do that for you as well.

The staff are amazing and very attentive without being helicopter servers (i.e. they don’t hover!)! I found it refreshing that they knew their product and our conversations with them were natural and they were very helpful with suggestions. I loved it that we got a chance to relax and enjoy the food that we ordered.

I am definitely going back for more of their chicken and waffles!

Yelly Eats

A gem off the beaten path: Coleman Coffee Roasters

14 Jun 20168 Aug 2017 Yelly

We came across this lovely café quite by accident. We were exploring Lower Marsh and the rain started to come down quite heavily. We were also looking for a place to have breakfast because our usual cheap eat favourite Marie’s on the same street was closed.

We took shelter and the smell of coffee wafting from the beautifully gleaming vintage espresso machine was amazing! We were greeted with a really welcome “Hello guys!” so we went further in and looked at the menu. We were intending to be polite and just have coffee and possibly cake. But they served Staffordshire oatcakes or “oaties” and there was quite a choice from sweet to savoury fillings for the oat pancakes. We’d never had oaties before so our curiousity was piqued! We chose to have bacon and stewed tomatoes. The aroma of cooking bacon was amazing, and boy were the oaties oh-so-fabulously good! It rated an “oh-my-God-this-is-amazing!” with my mouth full of oatie-bacon-tomato goodness! The oaties were light but surprisingly filling. I expected to feel full and bloated after, but I didn’t. It was heaven on a plate.

Now. let’s get to the lovely brew! I opted for drip coffee because it’s what I do when trying out a new coffee place (my better-safe-than-sorry coffee measure). I was offered a choice between the Guatemalan and another blend (I think it was Costa Rican blend) and I chose the Guatemalan. It was very nostalgic for me because it was served on a Duralex looking cup, which reminded me so much of the French coffee cups that my father favoured. At first I was worried because the drip coffee looked light and watery. But oh no, was I VERY wrong! The coffee was rich, comforting and oh-so-flavourful.

The staff are lovely, very friendly, so very helpful and they know their products. They’re happy to explain what they sell, what you’re options are and they give you lovely recommendations. They also love what they’re selling. That’s key!

This isn’t quite on the main road from Waterloo Station, but this is definitely worth a visit. The space is small and there are only a few seats, but that’s part of the charm. If you have the opportunity to wander around Lower Marsh, pay the lovely folks at Coleman Coffee Roasters a visit. It is DEFINITELY worth it!

Yelly Eats

Brownie points

30 May 201630 May 2016 Yelly

Who doesn’t like chocolate? Apart from chocolate cake, one of my favourite chocolate consumption delivery systems is the good old chocolate brownie. And after trying all the ways to make a brownie, looking through so many recipes, I have finally settled on my own. Because I’ve made the brownie this way several times now and it comes out with that thin, shiny, crackly film on top, which I firmly believe is a sign of a good brownie! Of course, other opinions are welcome.

So, if y’all are interested in trying it out, my brownie recipe is written down below.

Ingredients:

200g dark chocolate (at least 56%), roughly chopped
175g unsalted butter
3 eggs
250g caster sugar
150g plain flour

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 170°C (350°F). Grease and line a brownie pan with parchment paper and set aside.
Place the chopped chocolate and butter in a heat-proof dish and place the bowl over boiling water, making sure the boiling water doesn’t touch the bottom of the bowl. Melt the chocolate and butter, stirring occasionally to make sure the butter doesn’t burn. Once butter and chocolate are melted, take off the heat and set aside. Allow to cool to room temperature, making sure you stir occasionally (I usually add the paste made from 1 heaping teaspoon of instant espresso powder dissolved in 2 tablespoons of hot water at this point when I want to add a slightly different flavour to the chocolate).
In a free-standing mixer with a paddle attachment (you can also do this by hand with a wire whisk, but it’ll take a bit longer), beat the eggs and sugar together until the mixture becomes a very pale yellow mixture (will usually take about 7-10 minutes, depending on the mixer, about 15-20 minutes by hand).
Add the flour in three additions, making sure that the flour is incorporated each time. Add the melted chocolate mixture to the batter ensuring that you scrape the sides of the bowl to make sure that everything is well-combined.
Pour the batter into the prepared brownie tin and level with a spatula. TIP: I place a baking tray (or cookie sheet) in the oven whilst it pre-heats and I place the brownie tin on it so that the brownie cooks evenly (raw brownie batter is lovely but bad for the tummy!). Bake for 30-35 minutes. Brownie is baked when a crackly film forms on top and a skewer/toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Serving suggestions:

Plain, just sliced into squares (sized definitely according to preference)
Topped with caramel and salted roasted peanuts
More melted chocolate
A sprinkling of icing sugar (if you can handle even more sweetness), add a little coffee or cinnamon to add different dimension to the taste

TIP: Caramel cheat – in a deep saucepan, boil water and add a can of unopened condensed milk (sans paper label), yes the whole can. Boil for 3 hours. When you open the can (after it has cooled enough to touch), the caramel will be ready to spread on anything!

Yelly Eats

Celebration plate!

27 Mar 201613 Apr 2016 Yelly

I love Southern food. I think it’s because I did stay in Atlanta with my relatives for an extended period of time. I loved it when I had my first taste of collard greens and ham hock. I loved it when someone served sweet potato mash. I loved the pies too…especially pecan pie.

So to me, Southern soul food, proper Southern fried chicken is a dish to be served when one is celebrating something. So I decided that I needed to serve a very Southern plate on a very special day: Easter!

For Easter lunch, I made Southern fried chicken, coleslaw, biscuits (they’re like savoury scones) and sausage gravy.

Yum!

Yelly Eats

BIRD is not the word

18 Mar 20168 Aug 2017 Yelly

Given the choice between beef, poultry, pork and seafood, I would choose poultry over pork, then seafood then beef. Beef is probably the best source of protein, but I would chicken over most meats any day.

In the last quarter of 2014, I wrote about my Chicken Bucket List. It was a list of up-and-coming places to eat that specialised in chicken that I wanted to try (the London food scene is alive, well, vibrant and varied!). I must admit, the underlying criteria was that the places needed to serve some sort of Southern fried chicken-style dish.

It was their claim that they “served the best free range fried chicken you’ve ever tasted” that drew me to wanting to try their food. I mean it’s a very brave and bold claim certainly. The people at Bird must trust their food that much to make that sweeping generalisation.

I went to the Shoreditch restaurant and got there fairly early (I had misjudged how quick it was to walk from Liverpool Street station to the Shoreditch location – clearly I did walk faster than I thought). So anyway, I was cool with having to wait outside and sit on the benches situated outside the restaurant. It was fine. Besides, Shoreditch is a very interesting place and there will always be something to see.

So when the restaurant finally opened (nearly 45 minutes later than what was on the doors), my tummy was rumbling excitedly. I love Southern fried chicken, and while I cannot claim to be an expert, my Spit and Roast-inspired buttermilk fried chicken is really good. Bird was one of the very few places at the time that served chicken and waffles. I was hoping to get gravy and maple syrup.

The space was okay. Nothing too styled, it was clean and not cramped, if a little dimly lit (it was located right next to a bridge, almost under it, so I wasn’t expecting a space awash with light!). The decor was kitschy but cute, with framed caricatures of chickens.

The staff were nice enough, seating us in one of the table-chairs-banquette spaces that was nearer the Bird doughnut hatch, on the left side of the restaurant. It was quiet and I loved the fact that it was the quieter side of the room. I was ready for a relatively spiritual experience. After all, we were talking about chicken and waffles here! So orders (from slightly smudged menus) were taken and I ordered what I came to order: fried chicken and waffles (I was disappointed that it didn’t come with gravy as I’d wished, but that was my fault because I didn’t check out the menu online before I went. They didn’t have any gravy on the menu).

The service was friendly and efficient and soon, plates of chicken pieces and fresh waffles were slide in front of us. I’m not sure whether it was just that it was the early hour or if it was just the location. But my chicken looked wrong. I know that they battered their chicken and they didn’t bread it, but I found it a bit awkward that the chicken piece I was given had a scaly bit exposed – don’t get me wrong, it didn’t affect the flavour, it was just not pleasant to see. We do eat with our eyes as well.

It went downhill from there. I visited their website that evening and it does say that their chicken isn’t Southern fried chicken. It’s fried chicken. Granted it is fried, but you do get succulent fried chicken. My chicken was dry and overdone, painfully so. I’m not too certain how the chicken is prepared, whether it’s brined or marinated in buttermilk, but my piece of chicken wasn’t battered very well. The batter had a bitter aftertaste, probably signalling that it had been left a little too long in oil that was a little too hot. Mind you, I’ve incinerated enough chicken so I wasn’t too fussed so much. It was just that the chicken was so dry that it was quite a struggle to adequately make a dent in the two pieces of chicken that my two waffles were served with.

The waffles were really nice, if a little on the light and thin side. I loved that it was more savoury than sweet with the addition of spring onions. Usually the waffles, in my humble opinion, provides the sweet element, to the sweet-salty flavour combination (the salty element provided by the chicken). It was a refreshing change to have a properly savoury waffle. It was great to be able to drench it in proper maple syrup. I must say that I would probably happier just having the savoury waffles and the maple syrup instead. But the restaurant is meant to specialise in poultry (its name is Bird).

I realise that everyone has their opinions and food is a relatively subjective experience. But I was disappointed. It wasn’t the chicken experience I was expecting, and for me, it wasn’t the best free range fried chicken experience. I probably won’t go back to any of the other Bird locations.

Sadly, for me, BIRD was NOT the word.

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