Yelly Eats

Salt and chilli belly pork

Yelly

I used to buy salt and chilli belly pork from the supermarket prepacked.  The pork was lovely, and the flavours were simple, uncomplicated and delicious.  There is nothing more enjoyable than straightforward goodness.  I looked at the ingredients list one evening and thought I could actually make the ingredient list a bit simpler.  The taste reminded me of rotisserie pork that was readily available in the Philippines, so I started from there.  Salt and pepper were the mainstays of this lovely Filipino “fast food” option.

There are only 5 ingredients to this lovely no-fail recipe.  Of course you can change the herb of choice added (I’ve tried dill and it works!), remove the chilli and replace it with just pepper, add soy sauce instead of salt…the permutations can go on forever!  Feel free to customise this recipe according to your tastes!  The beauty of this is that you can make it ahead of time and just store it in the fridge and take it out when you’re ready to cook it.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:Salt and chilli pork belly

  • 500g pork belly strips, rind removed
  • 1 heaping teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon dried parsley
  • 1-2 teaspoons chilli flakes (depending on how spicy you want it)
  • 3-4 tablespoons vegetable oil

Directions:

  1. Mix salt, spices and oil together in ziplock lock bag (other brands of resealable bags are acceptable!).  Add the belly pork slices and marinade for at least 2 hours, even better if marinated overnight.
  2. Preheat oven to 200C.
  3. Line a baking tin with parchment paper and lay the belly pork slices.  Place in the middle of the oven.  Bake the belly pork slices for 30 minutes, turning the belly pork slices halfway.
  4. The belly pork slices will come out lovely and brown.  Cut into bite-sized chunks and serve.
  5. This is great with rice and greens — or if you’re watching carbs like me, just greens (like wilted kale or cabbage, or steamed pak choi or choi sum).

Salt and chilli pork with greens

Yelly Eats

Pecan and chocolate banana spice muffins

Yelly

I’ve been looking back at the first 53 days of the year, I haven’t really baked much.

So the first bake for 2014 is banana muffins.  I love banana loaves and treasure my banana bread recipes.  My favourites are those that translate into wonderful muffins.  Most cake recipes will be great cupcake or muffin recipes anyway, with a little ingredient tweaking and oven watching as cupcakes and muffins, obviously are smaller and will bake quicker.  I’m sharing another one of those “tweaked” recipes.  This recipe happened because I was a little too enthusiastic with random inclusion of ingredients.  I was a bit worried about how the spices would work with the dark chocolate, but according to my lovely taste-testers at work, the chocolate studded spiced mixture works!  Hurrah!

Now, if you’re brave enough to give my little concoction a try, here’s the recipe!  What’s great about this recipe is it’s a little lighter because I don’t use butter but vegetable oil.  This also makes exactly 12, count em, 12 regular sized cupcakes.

Ingredients

  • 220g plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powderPecan and choccie banana spice muffin
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 3 bananas (preferrably at least medium sized), mashed
  • 100g chocolate chips
  • 150 g chopped pecans
  • 150g caster sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 75ml vegetable oil

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 190°C (180°C fan).
  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt together and set aside.
  3. In a mixing bowl, mix oil, sugar, eggs, vanilla and the mashed banana together until the mixture is smooth.  I love my mixer (my nearly 3-year old Kenwood Chef) because I can just bung everything in (including unmashed bananas! the lovely machine does it all for me!) and it gets mixed beautifully!  Add the chocolate chips, pecans and the flour mixture and mix until well-incorporated, scraping the sides of the mixing bowls occasionally.
  4. Spoon the mixture into a muffin tin lined with muffin cases.  For more evenly sized cupcakes, I use an ice cream scooper.  Bake for 18-20 minutes.  The muffins will be ready when a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
  5. Take the muffins out of the oven and leave to rest in the muffin tray for 5 minutes before letting them cool completely on a wire rack.
  6. Makes 12-14 muffins, depending on the size of cupcake cases that you use.
Yelly Writes

Catching up — the nth installment!

Yelly

The last entry on this blog was a post for the New Year.  And then nothing.

I haven’t written anything on the blog for 52 or so days.  Mind you, it’s not as if I’ve had nothing to write about: I’ve had gripes about commuting, stresses at work, an interesting phone call (that’s all I’m saying about it because that particular phone call must remain a secret!  Ha!) a trip back to Manila (yes, I finally went home for an awfully short 11-day vacation!), Korean food discoveries, a weird tummy illness and other health issues and several beauty freebies!  Yes, I’ve had a lot of things to write about.  But I’ve been too lazy to switch on the ‘puter and start tapping on the keyboard to write about them.

I could actually take myself off the hook and say, “Oh well, you know, real life gets in the way of blogging!” but that’s a major cop out.  I used to work a full time job in the Philippines but managed to write entries at night!  In hindsight, which we all know is 20-20, I probably should not have deleted any of my old blogs.  It might have been a good writing exercise to look at an old blog entry and rip it to pieces!  I am, after all, my worst critic!

I’m certainly glad I haven’t written a New Year’s resolutions list.  One of the things on that list would be to blog more — and we all know what a rip roaring success I would’ve been on that one!  Ha!

I’ve got loads to catch up on…so I guess I’d better get typing eh?

Yelly Snaps

Happy 2014!

Yelly

2014 New Year

May Light always surround you;
Hope kindle and rebound you.
May your Hurts turn to Healing;
Your Heart embrace Feeling.
May Wounds become Wisdom;
Every Kindness a Prism.
May Laughter infect you;
Your Passion resurrect you.
May Goodness inspire
your Deepest Desires.
Through all that you Reach For,
May your arms Never Tire.
~D. Simone

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!