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

Yelly Eats

Crispy belly pork!

Yelly

One of my favourite Chinese restaurant dishes, probably of all time, is crispy belly pork.  I’ve seen fairly complicated ways of preparing it.  I’ve heard someone say that you had to hold up the piece of belly pork and bathe the skin side with heated oil.  Another version said you bathed it with boiling water.  All these instructions sort of turned me off even attempting to make crispy belly pork.

Mind you, I made a fairly good roasted pork joint and made amazing crackling, if I do say so myself!  It’s very simple.  Take a pork shoulder joint, pre-heat oven to 200 ºC, score the skin, rub salt and pepper and pop it into the oven for at least 1 hour and 45 minutes.  To make perfect crackling (and this is faffing about really, but the crackling turns out so crackingly beautiful and that makes the faffing about absolutely worth it!), after cooking the pork, take off the skin and cook for a further 30 minutes at about 220 ºC.  Considering my success with roasting pork and making crackling successfully, you’d think I wouldn’t be afraid of making crispy belly pork.  But I’ve had really good crispy belly pork from my favourite Chinese and I didn’t want to make it and be disappointed in something I’d prepared!

A few weeks ago, one of my friends shared a Youtube video with me.  I share a lot of my baking photos on Facebook so people know I love to bake.  Cecile, my friend from Manila, said I should take a break from baking sweet things and attempt the belly pork recipe.  I watched the video maybe 5 times to work up the courage to attempt it.  But attempt it, I did.

I followed the video instructions but used a Stanley knife to score the skin instead of using skewers.  Also, I found that when I first checked on the skin it wasn’t crispy enough so I cooked it for a further 25 minutes.  The skin came out so well that I had to record for posterity how crispy it was.  I posted the video on Instagram because I was really pleased with myself!

Crispy belly pork on rice with pak choi

Yelly Reads

Welcome back Bridget!

Yelly

I am still reading Kate Mosse’s Citadel, the last of the Languedoc trilogy but I am so very excited to start the next book that’s on my book list!: Helen Fielding’s much-awaited addition to her Bridget Jones’ series, Mad About the Boy.

The book is now downloaded onto my Kindle and is now waiting for me to read it.

I do know one thing though:  Mark Darcy is dead!

Now before you raise your fist at me, shouting “Spoiler!” this has been discussed to death, with Helen Fielding making appearances on TV shows, ostensibly, to defend her decision to kill off the lovely Mark Darcy.  This was revealed to me by a cousin on Facebook who thought I’d already heard.  Just to underline the point that Mark Darcy’s death was publicized before the book was even released for sale, my cousin lives in the Philippines and she heard before me!

I am struggling with finishing the last installment to Kate Mosse’s trilogy because I am fairly desperate to read about Bridget!  But I am determined to finish Citadel properly and then move on to find out what 51 year old Bridget is up to now.

Fingers crossed I finish Citadel soon, eh?

Helen Fielding's Mad About the Boy

Yelly Writes

The irony of it all!

Yelly

After my post on the 12th of August (Breaking the silence), I did anything but!  I haven’t written anything for over a month!

I’ve been quite good at journalling (actually writing in the journal that I lug around everyday)  and writing my random thoughts down via an iPhone app called Day One.  But I’ve been neglecting my blog, and that is the understatement of the century.

I’m going to go away for a while and I’m going to have a rethink about the blog.  I might rework and tweak a few things.  I keep looking at the blog and I keep thinking something needs to be done to it!

Watch this space folks!

Yelly Writes

Breaking the silence!

Yelly

My excuse:  I’ve been busy.

Life has a way of interrupting writing.  Which I find really annoying!  I must find time to write because when I don’t vent, I become grouchy and grumpy and ornery!

I tell myself it’s all the writing muses’ faults.  They have abandoned me again.  But that’s not entirely true.  If I really want to write about things (ANYTHING!), I should make time to write down my thoughts.  Even my exercise in journal writing has ground to a halt because I don’t make time.

I have been busy in the kitchen though.  I’ve been making bread completely by hand!  I’ve discovered that kneading the dough helps my carpal tunnel syndrome.  I’ve made pan de sal several times now and now I know that the perfect cooking time is 11.5 minutes!   At least in my oven, it’s 11.5 minutes.  I’ve also found the perfect blondies recipe.  I’ve made it about 4 times now and each time it’s been a success…and have managed to add a few tweaks to the recipe enough that I can now call the recipe my own.

I’ve set myself a challenge for the next few weekends.  I am going to

  • make profiteroles
  • make puff pastry
  • make a roulade

I also need to start using my Goldilocks Cakebook.  Goldilocks is an iconic chain of bakeries in the Philippines and I want to try the recipes so I can bring a little bit of the Philippines to my little corner of England.

I’ve got most of everything under a semblance of control.  Now all I have to do is discipline myself to write regularly!  Big ask, you say?  Not really.  I just need to push myself to write.  Because the excuse that I can’t find the words isn’t quite true.  I talk enough for 2 people, so all I just have to do is to close my mouth and let my fingers do the talking for a little bit!

Here’s to hoping the next entry isn’t too far away!

Yelly Eats

The Adobo Challenge

Yelly

Adobo is arguably the national dish of the Philippines.  Each family will have their own take on the adobo recipe that is passed down through generations.  I wrote about it once, and shared the recipe.  But I thought I’d post it again because I’m determined to introduce more people to Philippine cuisine.  One of my favourite TV moments was on The Voice, when Filipino soul singer and semi-finalist Joseph Apostol brought Sir Tom Jones adobo that his mother cooked!

Filipino flavour combinations are an amazing fusion of East and West because the wonderful amalgamation of our Southeast Asian and Chinese food traditions and the Spanish flavour influences (the Philippines was a Spanish colony for over 330 years!).  The best introduction to Filipino cuisine is adobo because it is a marinading meat dish.  It is best eaten over a bowl of boiled rice but is also a good sandwich filling.  The recipe is versatile and you can use either chicken or pork.  And believe you me, it is the easiest thing to prepare!

I challenge you to cook adobo!  I’ve tried to be very detailed in writing the cooking directions and I’ve posted as many pictures as I possibly could.  This is one of the most basic versions of adobo.  Try the recipe and let me know how you get on!  Tweet a photo of your attempt at my adobo recipe to @yellywelly with your blog address or your Twitter username and I’ll  post your photo on my blog!  Please make sure you use the hashtag #adobochallenge.  Or if you don’t have Twitter, leave your details on my message board, tell me you’ve got an adobo photo to send me and I’ll reply to you so you can send me your photo! 🙂

To make ADOBO you will need:

Adobo and greens650g of pork belly or pork shoulder steaks cut into cubes or chicken thighs
5 tablespoons of soy sauce + 2 tablespoons for cooking
2 1/2 tablespoons of vinegar + 1 tablespoon for cooking
3 large cloves of garlic crushed (or 3 teaspoons of garlic granules)
1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar + 1 tablespoon for cooking
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon of whole pepper corns (or 1 heaping teaspoon ground pepper)
1 meat stock cube (chicken or pork, whichever meat you’re cooking) – optional
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
400 ml water

Directions:
When making my adobo, I like using a ziplock bag because using a ziplock bag allows me to “massage” the marinade into the meat.  Place the meat in the ziplock bag.

Adobo1

Add the the soy sauce  to the meat.

Adobo2

Add the vinegar.

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Add the pepper and sugar to the meat.

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In a mortar and pestle, make sure the  garlic is ground to a paste and add to the meat and other marinating ingredients.

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The longer you marinade the meat the better, but a minimum of two hours (with a maximum of massaging!) will do.

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Heat the oil in a stir-fry pan and add the meat pieces, making sure that you keep the marinating liquid.  Brown the meat on all sides.  Once the meat has been browned, add the marinating liquid.  Add the soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, the stock cube and water.  Make sure that the stock cube and the sugar are dissolved well and make sure that all the meat are covered by the marinating liquid.  Cook for about 30-45 minutes or until the fat (if cooking pork) has rendered a little bit.

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Tear the bay leaves and add to the pan.  Allow the liquid to reach a rolling boil, turning the meat pieces occasionally.  Cover with a lid.

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Allow the liquid to simmer for 30 minutes, at which time it would have thickened slightly (without you adding anything to thicken it!).

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This is my little step: after the 30 minutes are over, keep the lid on and keep the pot over the hot plate (if you’re using an electric stove, or over the ring, if you’re using a gas range) for 5 minutes without lifting the lid.
Serve over boiled rice, and voila!  You have my version of adobo! 🙂

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