My extraordinarily ordinary life!
I love being able to just put a rub together and putting it on a joint of meat and then just leaving it to cook in the oven low and v-e-r-y slow.
I wanted to do something TexMex inspired and I think I might have hit on something amazing. I saw a carnitas recipe that I tried to replicate. I think it just needs less salt and more of all the spices and a heck of a lot more sugar!
My next thing to do is to write down the recipe!
Is anyone up for another wet rub recipe?
So, this is my first entry for 2019!
New year and new (recycled) resolutions. Have you written written down yours?
I’ve said I would, this year, do the following:
I’ve been busy with real life and the past few weeks have been quite the challenge. I have been adjusting to my new meds (that’s another blog, in itself. But it takes courage to write it down for all and sundry to see. I’m not quite that brave yet!), and they make me really sluggish. But I’m trying to find ways to deal with the sluggishness and the excuses I make for being stuck in the inertia of inactivity.
The week started with me hitting the ground running. It was a short week, but was it ever so busy. The work just kept running and I just felt that some of the people I worked for were throwing stuff at me because they wanted to hold my attention for longer. I used to work for just one person but now that I’m working for 3 directors, someone feels a little less looked after. Bless! I can be magnanimous now but at times this week, I’ve had to bite my tongue and sit on my hands and give in to my desire to say, “Hey, I know what you’re up to, and I’m not falling for the rank-pulling! What are you, five?!” But I didn’t…and I am proud of myself.
I’ve put together a book list and I’ve started with a humdinger of a read. I’m reading Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions. Have you read it? What are your thoughts? Unlike some people, I don’t mind spoilers because I do get stuck in and despite knowing the end, I still, somehow, get surprised (if there is an unexpected twist). Opinions are welcome! Oh and if you are reading something, what are you reading? I’m curious!
The kitchen in my tiny little flat has been busy this weekend. I’ve actually managed to make banana jam. Why banana jam, you ask? Because Alan and I went to Yotam Ottolenghi’s Spitalfields restaurant and I fell in love with the banana jam (it’s slathered on that lovely piece of sourdough on the the left in the picture below).
Alan found the recipe and I couldn’t believe something delicious only had 5 ingredients and it was so easy to do! I’ll have to remember not to scarf down my banana jam-laden piece of toast and take a photo for the blog (and my food IG account @yellyeats…yep, I’m not ashamed to self promote!). I’m told (by the blog I read it from) that this recipe isn’t in any of Ottolenghi’s books so if you’re interested in making it, the recipe I used Belleau Kitchen’s measurements and it’s ever so yummy. I will, however, take a page from Dominic’s book and tweak it so that it becomes my version of the recipe. I do have a few more bananas left so I guess that means I’m baking banana bread again!
In terms of health, I am going to charge up my Fitbit again and start counting steps again. I’m going for 10,000 steps or more every day. Fingers crossed!
I’ve got to stop now as I do need to finish washing up and making a fish pie for supper. It’s been a lazy weekend but a busy one too! What have you been up to?
We’re not exactly party animals, Alan and I. What did we do the entire bank holiday? Stay at home, cook our meals, sleep in, rest, get over our individual viral infections (it sounds a lot worse than it really is) and suffer hay fever in silence.
But when I have the time (and the inclination), I try recipes I’ve been wanting to try for absolutely ages. I’ve been looking for an easy Chinese steamed sponge cake recipe for ages. Ever since I impulse bought a slice of steamed sponge cake from Kowloon Bakery in London Chinatown.
By absolute chance, because there was nothing on telly last Wednesday (nothing we wanted to watch anyway), we turned the telly to the Food Network and saw an episode of Poh and Co, Poh Ling Yeow’s cooking (and lifestyle?) show that’s produced for Australian TV. But you do get weird and wonderful shows on the Food Network so because it sort of reminded us of Chinese cooking, we just left the telly on the Food Network. As luck would have it, Poh Ling made her version of Chinese steamed sponge cake and it looked so easy I had to try it.
And try it I did. The recipe is fairly straightforward and easy. It consisted of 5 ingredients that any baker would have in their larder – just flour, baking powder, eggs, and vanilla extract. I think I benefitted from watching Poh make the cake so I knew exactly what I was doing. But I was so pleased at how it’s come out: so soft and pillowy and so very light! It’s so deceptively light that Alan and I managed to consume more than half of one of the two cakes that I made!
I’m making it again and tweaking it to add my little twists to the recipe. I am over the moon as this is an absolutely amazing recipe! Thank you Poh for sharing this!❤
There are a few things that make this life so much better. One of them is barbecue pork on sticks Pinoy style. I’m going to find out how to make barbecue Grill Queen style. Grill Queen is a small independent chain that sells barbecued meat – pork, chicken, seafood…you name it, they probably barbecue it.
I haven’t quite cracked it, but the recipe I’m tweaking is nearly there. I’ll be posting the recipe on the blog soon.
But for tonight, I am eating something comfortingly Filipino: barbecued meat, rice and sautéed vegetables!
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!
This should go wrong…even when I was making it, it felt absolutely wrong. The batter didn’t look like it was going to set at all. But let me tell you, whoever invented magic custard cakes is an absolute genius!
This is going on my must-bake-all-the-time list!
For those who have missed this growing trend, magic custard cakes are cakes is a cake with three layers, a spongy-meringuey top layer, a custard center and a pudding bottom layer. The magical bit is that all this happens with JUST ONE BATTER!
Don’t ask me how because I have no idea how it works…but it does and it’s so good!
Recipe in development!
Char siu in puff pastry…in my head it was going to work. But I think I need to read up on how people do this so that I can see where I went wrong and adapt my recipe.
The filling works though so that’s one thing that went right!
This is a recipe in development and I’m quite excited about it. Alan and I may have found the best milk bread recipe. It’s easy to make and relatively easy to handle.
We’ve been able to bake hotdog buns with it. Now, when I say hotdog buns, I mean Chinese hotdog buns which are also known as caterpillar buns. They’re hotdog slices encased in bread topped with cheese, mayo, ketchup and spring onions. This is a Chinese bakery staple and all the different bakeries in Chinatown have their own version of it. This is our version of our favourite.
I need to find a good recipe for char siu filling so that I can make char siu buns!
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!
I’ve almost always bought the potstickers (which are similar to the Japanese gyoza), whether cooked and ready to eat or frozen. I’ve never really made them myself. Mostly because I thought the pleating would be a difficult thing to do. I’m a perfectionist so anything that doesn’t look good to me is a disappointment (reminds me of the mini-melt down I had when I first made carrot cake whoopie pies. It involved a quiet scream and the throwing of the poor, innocent ice cream scooper!). To avoid the disappointment, I just don’t do things.
But lately, I’ve been fairly adventurous (helped along by Alan’s encouragement!). Last week, I made siomai. This weekend, it was Chinese pork potsticker dumplings. I must have watched a lot of “how-to-pleat” videos on youtube to mentally prepare myself for the exercise. The dumplings turned out really well and has (probably) been given the Alan seal of approval. I used store bought dumpling wrappers – the next time I’m doing it, I’m doing EVERYTHING completely from scratch!
Ingredients:
Directions:
Yellywelly 