Yelly Eats

Eating at Yipin China

29 Jun 201520 Apr 2018 Yelly

I first heard about Yipin China while browsing through Time Out London’s website and finding about it there. While the Time Out rating gave it a 3 of of a possible 5 stars, the user reviews were much more favourable. I did some more research and found a review by Jay Rayner on the Guardian website and he loved it! As we love finding new places to eat (especially Chinese food) we thought we would give it a try.

The website for Yipin China features their menu along with all the pictures of the dishes in glorious technicolour which enticed us even more us go along to eat. The restaurant serves traditional Hunanese, Sichuan and Cantonese dishes so there is plenty of choice for everyone. Be warned that some of the dishes are very spicy as they contain a lot of chilli. Do not let this put you off though as there are still plenty of dishes there that contain no chilli at all.

The restaurant is located in Islington, London and is about 10 minutes walk from Angel underground station. We went along on a Friday lunchtime and were the first ones there. This was not a problem for us as we had a choice of seats and it also meant that we didn’t have to wait long for our food to arrive. We looked through the menu and all the dishes had a photograph of the dish next to it. This was both a blessing and a curse as we know what dishes looked good but the problem was that everything looked great. We finally settled on the Deep Fried Beef With Cumin, The Chairman Mao’s Red Braised Pork, Stir Fried Broccoli in Garlic, boiled rice for two and Chinese tea for two.

The Deep Fried Beef With Cumin was delicious even though we found the chilli to be quite hot for our tastes. The texture wasn’t too chewy and even though it had a lot of chilli, the burn didn’t last long and you could still enjoy the flavours of the cumin and beef.

The Chairman Mao’s Red Braised Pork was the star of the show. It is a slow cooked pork belly that has a subtle sweet aniseed taste and melts in the mouth. The colour of the pork is a glorious red that comes from caramelising rock sugar and then cooking the pork in it. It is one of the most tastiest dished I have ever eaten and I could quite easily eat this all day.

The portion sizes at Yipin China are quite generous so you would normally order one dish per person plus rice unless you are really hungry.

The service at Yipin China was friendly and not too obtrusive and our bill came to just under £40 including service charge. We will definitely be coming back for more of the Chairman Mao’s Pork and to sample some of their other mouth watering dishes.

Yelly Eats

Hopia

11 Jun 201520 Jun 2015 Yelly

I’ve always been proud of Filipino food. I’ve always believed that if people tried the food that we Filipinos ate on a daily basis (ably prepared by our mothers and titas), people would be addicted too! Filipino cuisine is influenced by the food cultures from China, Malaysia, Indonesia, China and Spain. We also have a very pronounced American influence. These influences are due to the fact that the Malays an Indones were the early settlers on the Philippine islands and it has been historically proven that we traded with the Chinese very early on. The Spanish (and largely Mexican food tradition) influences came because the Philippines was a Spanish colony for over 300 years (the Philippine islands were named after King Philip II of Spain). Then after the Spanish, we had the Americans with us…for a while.

I am so thankful that there are enterprising individuals (who may or may not be Filipino) who have identified an opportunity to sell to Filipinos living overseas the food staples. I’ve been able to cook Filipino food here in England and it helps the homesickness.

But nothing compares to the satisfaction when one is able to make something that isn’t always available in the Oriental or Filipino supermarkets. A few days ago, whilst I was recuperating from a really bad migraine (I was signed off for a week), I told myself that I would make hopia. I had been watching various YouTube video how-to’s and I felt that I was ready to attempt the Filipino treat. I even risked eating store-bought hopia in the name of research! Mind you, it was a tad disappointing because the hopia I bought seemed to have shrunk! For what I paid for, well, it was an exhorbitant amount of money for 4 minuscule hopia pieces – not at all what I remembered eating when I was growing up!

Hopia is also known as bakpia (in Chinese). It is a bean paste-filled pastry that was apparently introduced by Fujianese immigrants in the Philippines. It is usually filled with mung bean paste (either red mung bean or yellow mung bean), or purple yam and there is a variant that is filled with candied wintermelon (called kundol in the Philippines). Apparently, in other countries (apparently this is a popular Indonesian treat as well!) the fillings can be pineapple, durian, cheese, chocolate, coffee and custard! I’ve never had a cheese hopia, but it certainly sounds interesting!

I painstakingly wrote down the recipe from all the YouTube videos and translated it into metric measurements. Then I set about making my hopia!

I was quite excited about how they looked like. Even more excited when they came out of the oven. I loved the smell that wafted out of the oven. I was definitely in hopia heaven!

I need to practice some more. I think the pastry is nearly there. A few more tweaks with the procedure and a few temperature adjustments will help. But what I’ve been allowing myself to eat is hopia. It’s not as sweet as the store-bought ones, but it is, already, hopia!

Yelly Eats

Ensaymada!

5 Jun 2015 Yelly

So because I have been at home, housebound because of illness and experiencing cabin fever, I once again cracked open the Goldilocks Bakebook and baked something familiar and comforting. I made ensaymada. It’s a sort of soft brioche-y type of bread that’s slathered with creamed butter, slightly sugared and smothered with cheese.

And just like that I am comforted. The recipe needs tweaking because the dough was unbelievably wet! I’m going look up other ensaymada recipes and see where improvements can be made. I am thankful for the ability to bring Manila to me…even if it was through several cheesy-buttery-bready mouthfuls! What can I say – baking is like medicine!

Yelly Eats

Mongo bread!

31 May 2015 Yelly

It has been quite the stressful few weeks. Mostly because of the changes in my work environment. When I get really stressed I get really homesick. And when I get really homesick I bake something that I can eat from home.

I’m really grateful my sister has bought the Goldilocks Bakebook for me. I have had feedback from friends that the book has been discontinued due to the errors and omissions in the book. I must agree that the book could do with a few editorial tweaks so that it will read smoother. The recipes and baking instructions need a little reworking so that the procedures are clear, so that the users and bakers know exactly what to expect from the recipes and the steps. But I am still thankful for the book. It has allowed me to bake things that are familiar, things I grew up eating. It has helped me with the homesickness, because even the act of simply reading the book makes home a little closer.

This weekend wasn’t any different. I’ve been planning the baking of mung bean bread for a while. Mung bean is mongo in Filipino (pronounced mong-goh). Mongo bread is a bakery staple and most local bakeries in the Philippines have a version of this bread. The Goldilocks Bakebook recipe called for red mung bean and red mung bean isn’t exactly something you can pluck from the shelves of the local supermarket. I had to go to a supermarket in Chinatown in London to find red mung beans (and even now, I’m not quite certain what I picked off the shelves were actually red mung bean, but hey, they worked!). So after having purloined the main ingredient, I studied the recipe and made certain tweaks. After following most of the directions, I have made notes and am ready to try the recipe again with my additional tweaks. But the first attempt has produced quite a pretty loaf! Hopefully, when I attempt the recipe again (and post it on the blog!), it will still turn out like the first loaf. Fingers crossed!

Presenting, my mongo bread —

Yelly Eats

Mackerel and vegetables

23 May 20154 Jun 2015 Yelly

One of my current favourite supermarket buys is mackerel fillets. I am thankful that Iceland has frozen fillets for £4 for a pack of 5 or you can buy 3 packs of frozen fish for £10. It’s a brilliant buy because fish is always healthy. This isn’t an advert for Iceland mind you. I thought it would be nice to share my supermarket find! I used to poo-poo buying things from Iceland but now that they’ve expanded their offerings and the food range is so much better, I always go by Iceland to see what I can get!

Back to the fish, a quick way of prepping the fish is to rub olive oil over the frozen fillet, salt and pepper it and grill for 7 minutes on each side. I usually have the fish with leftover roasted veg and sometimes, when I want some carbs, I have a few pieces of baby new potatoes (also roasted!).

Yelly Eats

The Owl Cake

13 May 201526 May 2015 Yelly

I bought over 3 kilos of fondant icing because I intended to make beach huts for a bake off fundraising do at work.

But I think I overestimated my capabilities and my fondant confidence. So instead of wimping out and wasting the fondant that I lugged all the way back to Harwich, I had to think of an alternative way to use the fondant that I purchased. I wasn’t giving up on the cake with fondant dream! Besides, it was my birthday and bringing cake would be for a good cause. So I had a think and regrouped.

I had a brainwave and thought, “Oooooh owls!” I did a bit of googling and found the easiest way to make owl cake toppers. I knew the cake would be okay (it was a vanilla sponge with a Nutella filling with a vanilla cream frosting), I just had to make it pretty.

The owls weren’t too difficult to make. I just needed a round cookie cutter and a smarter way of looking at owls. I must say, what a treasure trove Google can be! After doing the cutting and a little shaping, the ingenious use of a fondant embosser and artful food colouring dotting, my owls looked cuter than I thought it was possible!

So here it is, my owl cake! It was, truly, a hoot to make!

Yelly Eats

Hudson New York Bar and Kitchen, Colchester

26 Apr 20158 Aug 2017 Yelly

I’m not much of a beef eater so I hardly order steaks. If I do order anything made from beef, it would probably either a salt beef sandwich or pastrami (the more kosher, the better!). So imagine my delight when I found out you could get a salt beef bagel from an American-inspired bar in Colchester!

I read through the menu and wondered what the food would be like. It looked promising with club sandwiches, salt beef bagels and hotdogs on offer. With a claim that they served fabulous Atlantic cuisine and that they were inspired by downtown Manhattan, I was looking forward to tucking into my salt beef bagel.

Well, I’ve had my salt beef bagel and I was a tiny bit underwhelmed. The salt beef was a tad on the dry side but I guess I’ve been spoiled by the Bell & Brisket and Monty’s Deli because they made REALLY good salt beef from scratch and each sandwich would be prepared as ordered from a batch that was probably made the same day. The space was amazing and it was big and airy. But the concept confused me a little bit because it felt like I was walking into a southern restaurant instead of a Manhattan bar.

Will I be going back to Hudson? I’m not sure. Maybe their other offerings are okay, they may even be really good. But it’s quite hard to get a salt beef sandwich wrong — if you have great salt beef to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, the food looked okay and the coleslaw and fries that came with it were really nice. I’m just really picky about my salt beef. And unfortunately for them, I wasn’t too impressed.

Yelly Eats

Saturday night non-takeaway: Chicken Karaage!

21 Mar 201525 Mar 2015 Yelly

So tonight I finally made chicken karaage and it was good!

Well, when I say karaage, I use the term very loosely. Karaage is a Japanese dish of chicken marinated in ginger and garlic, soy and sake, and is fried to lovely crispy pieces. I don’t have sake in my cupboard on a regular basis (I’ve never had sake in my cupboard, ever!) but I do have shaoxing and sherry (as I cook more Chinese dishes than Japanese). So I tried substituting the sake with the shaoxing. I think it works. I will save up for sake, but for the meantime, shaoxing in the recipe works. And works well, if I say so myself!

Oh, I didn’t have potato flour (aka potato starch) as well, so I’ve substituted it with cornflour.

Ingredients:

500g chicken thigh fillets, cut into large-ish bite-sized chunks
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine
4 tablespoons soy sauce
3 heaping tablespoons cornflour
vegetable oil for deep-frying

Directions:

In a ziplock bag, combine chicken, ginger, garlic and soy. Carefully massage the chicken through the bag and marinade for at least 1 hour (better if you let the chicken marinade overnight though).
In a bowl, fish the chicken out of the bag and mix with the cornflour until all chicken pieces are well-coated with the cornflour
In a frying pan, heat up the vegetable oil. When the oil is hot enough, carefully drop chicken pieces and fry until golden brown (should take about 3-4 minutes).
Serve with a slice of lemon or a teriyaki sauce, on its own or over a bed of fluffy steamed rice! Speaking of rice, I wrote a post on how to cook rice perfectly (I’ve been cooking rice since I was 11 so I like to think I know what I’m talking about – way before there were non-stick pans!).

Here’s a little recipe on sticky sauce that goes well with the karaage.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons honey
4 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
200ml water

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a rolling boil, stirring constantly. Once boiling turn the heat right down and allow to reduce until there is only half of the liquid, making sure that you stir occasionally so that none of the sugar burns. This is brilliant as a little sauce to be sprinkled (sparingly) on steamed rice if you’re having friend chicken or fish.

Yelly Eats

An Ode to Gallus

8 Mar 20158 Aug 2017 Yelly

I love chicken. If you ask me what I miss most from the Philippines, it will probably be Chickenjoy from Jollibee (a fastfood restaurant in the Philippines) and fried chicken from Max’s (am not quite sure this is a fastfood restaurant but it is Filipino and I grew up going to Max’s!). So it follows that when I moved to the UK, I would look for a chicken place to go to. And I thought I’d found a great chicken place.

We discovered Gallus, Empire of Chicken on Timeout. They were offering a £10 voucher for a £25 food spend. Alan said that as it was £10 for £25 of food, you couldn’t really complain. So we looked on the website and thought, what the hey, it’s something new. So on our next trip to London, off we went to Gallus! And let me tell you, £25 bought you a lot of food!

Gallus offered a lot of chicken choices – you had chicken skewers, chicken burgers, salad with chicken, sides (there were chips, side salads, coleslaw…and a lot more that I can’t remember!), desserts and a good selection of drinks!

We went back several times because the chicken was genuinely good. Because the chicken was marinated in several ways, you never really got bored of the chicken choices. You could go Mediterranean, Oriental, South Asian or Latin American. You could go mild, spicy, or umami. The servings were generous and it was excellent value for money. The staff were polite but very attentive and they knew their product – we never felt there was a question too silly about the food they served!

But if you notice that I keep talking in the past tense, it is, sadly, because Gallus has closed. We walked past the Charing Cross Road restaurant to find that all the windows were papered and the sign has been removed. I know that they didn’t really have a lot of footfall whenever we went (I think we managed about 4 trips – it was conveniently close to the theatres so it was brilliant for pre- and post-theatre meals) but I had hoped they were more popular and that people would cotton on to the fact that they were good.

It is sad that in the wonderful melting pot of wonderful places to eat that is London, Gallus was eaten up, swallowed and spitted out like, dare I say it, chicken bones. If you didn’t get to eat at Gallus, you missed a great chicken place that served succulent chicken pieces that offered a better option than KFC for almost the same price.

I have high hopes that Gallus will rise from the ashes like another fowl of myth. And maybe this time, their marketing will be much better and people will flock to the empire of chicken!

Yelly Eats

Tabbouleh is yum!

25 Feb 20158 Mar 2015 Yelly

I am completely obsessed with tabbouleh!

It’s a lovely green salad with a LOT of herbs (parsley and mint), bulgar wheat, tomatoes, cucumbers, spices and lemon. It’s a Middle Easter salad that is usually served as part of a meze. It’s really simple because it’s really just all the ingredients chopped up, mixed with the salt, pepper, garlic, oil and a squeeze of lemon, but it’s really amazing. It’s a bit prep-heavy because you’re chopping veg and the herbs into tiny bits and having to cook, drain and cool the tabbouleh, but it is certainly worth it. Once the salad has been cooled and you take a mouthful, it’s a party in your mouth! It’s a great side to a kebab meal or grilled or roasted meats or on its own.

I am all for simple, no-fuss, minimum prep dishes, but give me a chopping board and tabbouleh ingredients and I will happily mince the ingredients because the prep is so worth it!

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