Yelly Writes

For the love of Spam!

Yelly

I injured myself yesterday and Spam was to blame.  No, not that spam, not the one of the emailed variety.

Spam

Yesterday was all about turkey (yes, I’m still trying to rid myself of the leftover turkey that was languishing in the fridge and not preserved cryogenically in the freezer)  fried rice and Spam.  All my joy and anticipation (turkey fried rice was a favourite) melted away when my forearm was splattered with hot oil from the frying Spam.  It hurt.  A lot.  And if I’m honest, I was more worried that my arm will look more speckled than usual because of the Spam battle scars!  My mom warned me yesterday to take care of the blisters as they might be infected.  So I will be careful…or at least, I will TRY to be careful!

But there it is.  Me injured (again) in the name of food and cooking!

cooking injury

Yelly Eats

Lamb kofta kebabs

Yelly

I am certainly fond of my takeaways – even while I lived in the Philippines, takeaways were a regular occurrence in our household.  I may be wrong, but we seemed to have a better variety of takeaways available for home delivery.  One of my favourites were barbecued squid, stuffed grilled fish and spit-roasted suckling pig with amazingly crispy skin.  Yes, you phoned in and they delivered it to your home wrapped up in a banaa leaf (properly packaged in aluminum foil and a takeaway box of some fashion, of course!)!  Is it any wonder I miss Philippine food?

Tonight I made lamb kofta kebabs and paired it with roosterkoek breads using Andy Bates’ recipe.  It’s a lovely way to make one’s own takeaway-style food with the comfort of knowing exactly what’s in the food!  I’d like to share with you my recipe for the lamb kebab.  It’s my version of a kebab recipe that I found in a book called The Takeaway Secret.  I’ve modified the recipe so that it’s made up of ingredients that I’ve found in my cupboard!

Ingredients:

  • 500g lamb mince
  • 1 heaped teaspoon garlic powder (or 1 large clove of garlic, very finely chopped)
  • 1 medium onion finely chopped (or 2 heaped teaspooons onion powder)
  • 1 heaped teaspoon chilli flakes (or 2 red finger chilli peppers very finely chopped)
  • 1/4 teaspoon allspice
  • 1/2 teaspoon paprika
  • 1/2 teaspoon cumin
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoon finely chopped coriander (including stalks)
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 1 egg

Directions:

  1. In a bowl, combine all ingredients.  Mix the ingredients but try not to overwork the mince too much.  Allow to marinade for at least 2 hours, or overnight if possible.  TIP: You can adjust salt to taste, increasing or reducing the amount by half a teaspoon.  I haven’t tried this recipe using beef, but I think if you’re using beef, make sure you DON’T use lean or extra lean beef mince because you need the fat in the kebabs so that they don’t dry out.
  2. Divide the koftas into 9-12 pieces.  Shape the pieces into cigar-shaped pieces and flatten slightly.
  3. These koftas can be fried in a griddle pan or frying pan with a little oil.  My favourite way of cooking them is under a grill though, set to a medium-high heat.  Cook the kofta pieces (whether fried or grilled) for 6-8 minutes each side, or until the meat is cooked through and golden.
  4. Serve with pitta, salad and a tzatziki sauce if you like.  Will also work with hummus!

Kofta kebabs

Yelly Eats

Chilling on a Saturday

Yelly

I’ve told myself that I need to write more.  And I am.

My idea of chilling on a Saturday is working in the kitchen — at the pace that I set for myself.  I’ve managed to clear the dishes from the meals of the past few days (yes, I can be quite the slob when I have my über slow days!) bake a batch of chocolate cherry cheesecake brownies and bake a small cheesecake (leftover batter from the brownies!).  The next item on the list of things to do today is make lamb kofta kebabs for dinner.

I had a lovely lunch though.  No cooking involved at all.  Just opening packets.  Packets of delicious goodness!  My lunch was a cheese plate lunch.  It was filled with all my favourite things: pâté, chutney, Stilton cheese, Red Leicester cheese, a mature Cheddar cheese, Milano salami and cream crackers and oat biscuits!  It was yummy and relatively lighter than any lunch I’ve had the past few weeks leading up to Christmas and the bonus bit was this was all under £10 (plus I have enough leftovers to feed at least 5 more people – you gotta love post-Christmas food sales!)!

It is now after 5PM and I need to start on my kebab mix!

I hope everyone’s had a brilliant Saturday!

Cheese plate

Yelly Writes

Christmas post-mortem

Yelly

After early morning phone calls to catch a family lunch in Manila, a hurried breakfast after present opening, the mad dash to cook the turkey with all the trimmings, recovering from a food coma, watching the requisite Christmas TV shows (and the Queen’s Christmas message, of course!), and watching the regeneration of the new Doctor, I am now relaxing and taking advice from her Majesty.  She said that “we all need to get the balance right between action and reflection. With so many distractions, it is easy to forget to pause and take stock.”  And that’s exactly what I’m doing , pausing, reflecting and taking stock — while watching the Downton Abbey Christmas Special.

Christmas has always been wonderful because it has always been magical.  It is a season filled with joy and wonder and most of all, love.  Because it is love that is the real reason for the season.  God loved us so much that He sent his Son to be with us.  And because of Jesus’ birth, we have Christmas and we have a wonderful excuse to celebrate (in a big way) faith, love, family, friends, lovely fattening food, and most of all life (with all its joys and sorrows).  I hope everyone had a smashingly spectacular Christmas filled with wonderful moments!  Merry Christmas everyone!

Yelly Writes

Breaking the silence…again!

Yelly

This is becoming a blog-a-month kind of thing.  I’m not happy about that though.  I seem to have lost my writing mojo.  I love writing but life seems to have overtaken my writing aspirations.  What to do?  What does one do?  How does one conquer writing block?!?  How does one climb over the writing wall?!?

Sometimes I look at the social wasteland that is my social life and I wonder what in the world has happened?!?  I used to go out for coffee with friends, go window shopping, blog loads and be interesting!  Now I only have thoughts that never get written down, that never get expressed.  I have become a jumble of insecurities and unrealised dreams.  I am completely homesick and I feel like I haven’t achieved anything at all!

I’ve tried everything:  post-a-day, post-a-week, post-a-photo, post about food, post about cooking, post-a-whinge, post-a-peeve, deadlines for posts (this particular attempt at encouraging more blogs reminds me of a quote from one of my favourite movies of all time, Julie and Julia,Julie Powell’s husband Eric said about deadlines — “I love deadlines, I love the sound they make as they go whooshing past!”).  These tools don’t seem to encourage the blogging juices!

Frustrated am I!

Whinge over.

Yelly Eats

Jubo Chicken

Yelly

My friends from the Philippines and the US have been posting photos of their Korean fried chicken experiences and I’ve been so very jealous!  The chicken looked so amazing that I was feeling very left out.  Unfortunately, the Bonchon Chicken chain hasn’t made it over the pond and until very recently, the UK was completely unaware of how good Yangnyeom Tongdak was!

Enter Jubo London.

It’s a little Korean canteen that’s installed in the Bedroom Bar in Shoreditch.  It was a little bit of a trek to find the Bedroom Bar but let me tell you, if you love chicken, this is definitely worth the trip!

Jubo Chicken, Shoreditch

The chicken is fried twice with a choice of 2 lovely syrupy glazes: soy garlic and hot and sweet.  You can choose between getting wings or getting strips.  There are also other things on the menu, bulgogi subs and steam buns filled with slow cooked belly pork.  But we didn’t try those on our visit.  We came for one thing alone: the chicken.

I apologise for the grainy photos but the lighting in Jubo wasn’t conducive to food photography.  It is, after all, in a bar!  The photo of the chicken dinner platter (8 wings, 8 strips and 3 sides – if you get this ask for half-and-half so that you get both the soy garlic and the hot and sweet!) doesn’t do the chicken justice.  I’m not a chilli junky but I love the hot and spicy best because there is a perfect balance of heat and sweetness and, pardon me for using someone else’s chicken reference, but the chicken, in my opinion, is meant to be eaten by hand and is, very definitely, finger-lickin good!  Mind you, the soy garlic does give the hot and spicy a run for its money because it’s equally tasty.  There are no words to describe how lovely the chicken is.  Despite the fact that the chicken is twice-fried, it was so moist and succulent!

Jubo chicken platter

The staff are friendly and love their product so they’ll help you with the menu.  Mind you, there’s not a lot but what they do have on the menu is the best of Korean “pub” fare.  Make sure you have the kimchi (I love kimchi!).  I’m of the persuasion that it’s homemade!

Eat your heart out Bonchon!  You missed a trick.  Jubo London has claimed London!

Yelly Writes

Mourning my curtains

Yelly

I am still smarting from the sabotage of my curtains.  I have left a message on the Danes’ Launderers and Dry Cleaners answerphone but, of course, as I expected, I have not had heard back from them.  I am waiting for my anger to subside before I write an email so that my email is concise and sensible and not anger driven.

I need to look up what my rights are.

I know I signed an Owner’s risk waiver but I don’t think that completely obliterates my consumer rights.

I will find out what I am entitled to.  I am good at research so I’m going to find out what options are available to me.

Yelly Writes

Danes ruined my curtains

Yelly

Curtains ruined by DanesDO NOT USE DANES LAUNDERERS AND DRY CLEANERS!

I think a picture paints a thousand words and I think this picture says it all.  The blackout lining in BOTH my curtains were melted.  I am absolutely livid but I understand that they think they’re off scot free because I signed an Owner’s Risk waiver.  But I am not going to let this go.

On their curtain cleaning page they say that “All curtains are carefully processed then hand pressed and wrapped so they are returned to you in immaculate, crease-free condition.”  As you can see, my curtains were not “carefully processed” because BOTH the curtain panels were ruined.  Oh and my curtains weren’t inspected.  They accepted my curtains and told me how much I had to pay and that was it and to sign the Owner’s Risk waiver without explaining it to me.  There was no inspection for care instruction labels.

To add insult to injury, I didn’t find out my curtains were ruined until I got home and excited unfolded my curtains only to find that the blackout lining was completely ruined.  All I had was a letter saying they applied the cleaner and everything started disintegrating.  That’s not really what I’d call “immaculate and crease-free”.

This was not “an excellent personalised service alongside high quality laundry and dry cleaning.”

Yelly Writes

My keys are…where?!?

Yelly

I locked myself out.  I forgot my keys on the dining room table where they were of absolutely no use to me!  And this instance of my dreadful forgetfulness was an expensive one!

So I called a locksmith and after watching the poor man work on what was, apparently, an amazingly secure lock for nearly an hour and a half, I am £75 poorer but am happily inside my lovely and warm flat!  I can now say that the stairs in the stairwell outside my flat door weren’t made with comfortable lounging in mind!

Lesson learned: Make sure your keys are where they’re always supposed to be, in your purse!

Yelly Eats

My ode to The Duffin

Yelly

After the obvious success of the cronut™ (aka croissant-donut, dossant, doissant, dosant, frissant, faux-nut), people wanted to contribute to the rising pastry hybrid trend by inventing delicious sugary-doughy mutations.  Apart from the trademarked cronut, no one else, to my knowledge, attempted to copyright any of the hybrid pastry creation names.

Until Starbucks, through Rich Products, did just that.  Early this month, Starbucks announced that, after sitting down with their bakers to discuss how to take their muffins one step further, they came up with the duffin.  I found out about this from a tweet from Bea’s of Bloomsbury that I read on 5 October.  I felt outraged on Bea’s behalf because earlier this year, around July, I had gone to the St Paul’s branch of Bea’s of Bloomsbury specifically to try the duffin.  I even tweeted about it!  I was even more incensed to find out earlier this week that Starbucks’ pastry products provider Rich Products copyrighted the name “duffin”.  They claim to have done extensive research about the name.  That surprises me because if you type “duffin” on Google, one of the top search results is Bea’s product.  Starbucks and Rich Products have magnanimously declared that they wouldn’t stop Bea from selling her duffins.  Gee thanks Starbucks, how generous of you, considering that Bea had her duffin recipe in a book that was released in September 2011!

In a tribute to Bea’s duffin, I baked my own batch of duffins from a recipe that was posted on the Channel 5 website.  The recipe was reprinted from Bea’s book Tea with Bea with Bea’s permission – How do you make a duffin?

Have a go at making this!  The recipe is amazingly easy to follow and the lovely duffins are ever so rich and decadently delicious!

The Duffin