Sunday is the perfect day for Yum Cha with good friends and my husband, and Royal China has some of the best in London.
Pork Buns.... YUM!
Deep-friend Yam dumplings - the husband is a fan, I am not.
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
Dinner at Eaglevlei, Stellenbosh
I was in Cape Town recently, and had the opportunity to attend a 4 course dinner & wine tasting at Eaglevlei Wine Estate in Stellenbosh. The food was pretty delicious, and with 2 wines to match each course, plus the wine makers from both Eaglevlei and the neighbouring wine estate on hand to offer their comments on the wine before each course, it was a fantastic experience. (Warning: photos aren't great!)
Watercress salad with roasted beetroot, goats cheese grapefruit & pomegranate seeds.
Was feeling a bit under the weather, so when deciding what to cook for dinner last night, I decided I needed some superfoods.
Watercress salad with roasted beetroot, goats cheese grapefruit & pomegranate seeds.
Clean a bunch of beetroot and cut into cubes. Season with sea salt, black pepper & fresh thyme. Coat with olive oil, and roast in the oven.
Take a healthy bunch of washed watercress and lay on a flat platter. Let the beetroot cool slightly before putting onto the watercress. Dot the goats cheese over the beetroot - best to use is the soft, creamy goats cheese & not the one with the rind as the flavour will overpower the salad.
Remove the seeds from a pomegranate and in a bowl, combine with the flesh from a red grape fruit which has been cut into rough 1 cm cubes. Take this mixture and put on top of the salad. Sprinkle with some toasted seeds and sprinkle with walnut oil.
I served this with a nice rare rib-eye steak, as the pepperyness from the watercress and the flavours nicely complemented the steak.
Watercress salad with roasted beetroot, goats cheese grapefruit & pomegranate seeds.
Clean a bunch of beetroot and cut into cubes. Season with sea salt, black pepper & fresh thyme. Coat with olive oil, and roast in the oven.
Take a healthy bunch of washed watercress and lay on a flat platter. Let the beetroot cool slightly before putting onto the watercress. Dot the goats cheese over the beetroot - best to use is the soft, creamy goats cheese & not the one with the rind as the flavour will overpower the salad.
Remove the seeds from a pomegranate and in a bowl, combine with the flesh from a red grape fruit which has been cut into rough 1 cm cubes. Take this mixture and put on top of the salad. Sprinkle with some toasted seeds and sprinkle with walnut oil.
I served this with a nice rare rib-eye steak, as the pepperyness from the watercress and the flavours nicely complemented the steak.
Friday, 31 August 2007
Pham Sushi
I'm back on the foodie path this week, starting off on Tuesday night with sensational sushi from Pham Sushi in Old Street. This gem of a place is rather off the beaten track, with about 90% of the customers being regulars. Everything looked so good that my dining partner and I actually felt stressed at the inability to make a decision and we both wanted to order absolutely everything on the menu. In the end I settled on a sashimi bento box and we shared some delicious vegetarian bits to start. The tuna was melt-in-the-mouth, and normally I am not keen on octopus sashimi, but this was just sublime. I could have done with some soft-sell crab as well as perhaps some eel rolls. But that would just have been greedy.
Sunday, 12 August 2007
Summery chicken breasts with quinoa salad
I took a stroll down to the farmer's market yesterday, and picked up some lovely organic apple cider. I was in the mood to cook a light summery meal after getting back from Spain. I had some delicious smelling fresh nectarines, fresh mint and organic chicken breasts (from the brilliant butcher - Moens in Clapham). I marinated the chicken breasts in the cider, thyme, lemon and garlic and then put it in the fridge for about 45min. I first seared the chicken breasts in the pan before baking them in the oven. The salad: quinoa (leave to cool before mixing in with the other ingredients), courgette ribbons, fresh mint, a mix of pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and pine nuts and, of course, the diced nectarines. Served with a yoghurt and mint sauce and washed down with a crisp white wine. Delicious.
Monday, 16 July 2007
Coming soon
Here are a few of the dishes I whipped up recently. I'll post the full recipes once I've written them out. I might even have to cook them again just to take photos...
Baked Cod, cherry tomatoes and pea, courgette and broccoli puree, served on wild rice with pumpkin seeds and chopped almonds.
Roast butternut (so good with so many things... but recently pomegranate seeds and very good quality feta cheese.)
Baked chicken fillets, wrapped in parma ham, filled with wild mushroom and aubergines
Sweet potato and trout fishcakes
Gnocchi with roast butternut, fresh cherry tomatoes and mozarella
Sunday, 15 July 2007
Discharging the Electric
I was discussing my blog with a friend last week, and his suggestion was that I needed to find a bit more focus and direction - have a theme, so to speak. Initially I set up the blog so that I could post my recipes online rather than emailing them round after a dinner party. But like all things, it’s evolved and become more of a restaurant critique than of my cooking, but that is indicative of my current lifestyle. The balance will come back, and I should hopefully get more recipes as well as photos on the site soon.
It’s been a week of interesting turns food-wise. Dinner at The Electric in Notting Hill (where you can normally count on a decent meal) was good for the company but the food wasn't quite what I remembered it to be. I’ve eaten at all it’s sister restaurants too - Cafe Boheme in Soho, Balham Kitchen and Bar and of course the Electric many times. My dinner companion ordered steak tartar to start, and unfortunately he was rather disappointed. He’d been expecting steak tartar in the style one would get in Paris where the egg comes raw and the capers are on the side. While I found it tasty, it was only my second helping of steak tartar so I do admit to being an absolute novice. The other occasion, incidentally, was in Paris last year and I cannot recall if there was raw egg severed with it or not. We shared a bottle of Pinot Grigot, which was pleasant enough, but admittedly nothing too special. I ordered the Duck Salad as my main (feeling very confident after ordering duck at Lantry’s) and my companion ordered the pork belly.
The duck salad was not what I expected. It was an interesting combination of wild rocket, mandarin segments and the shredded duck; however, I found it to be a little bland. The pork belly unfortunately got cold due to us being too wrapped up in our conversation, and the chef was unwilling to warm it up again due to contamination issues.
The Electric has that buzz about it, although perhaps it is becoming more of a has-been with the number of other great eateries competing in the neighborhood (take Food@The Muse or any of Tom Conran's offerings - Lucky Seven and Bumpkin included). I would say that to have a truly fabulous evening perhaps one should be ordering the Lobster and chips or the Chateaubriand, but then I’d prefer going to The Cow and ordering their full seafood platter.
It’s been a week of interesting turns food-wise. Dinner at The Electric in Notting Hill (where you can normally count on a decent meal) was good for the company but the food wasn't quite what I remembered it to be. I’ve eaten at all it’s sister restaurants too - Cafe Boheme in Soho, Balham Kitchen and Bar and of course the Electric many times. My dinner companion ordered steak tartar to start, and unfortunately he was rather disappointed. He’d been expecting steak tartar in the style one would get in Paris where the egg comes raw and the capers are on the side. While I found it tasty, it was only my second helping of steak tartar so I do admit to being an absolute novice. The other occasion, incidentally, was in Paris last year and I cannot recall if there was raw egg severed with it or not. We shared a bottle of Pinot Grigot, which was pleasant enough, but admittedly nothing too special. I ordered the Duck Salad as my main (feeling very confident after ordering duck at Lantry’s) and my companion ordered the pork belly.
The duck salad was not what I expected. It was an interesting combination of wild rocket, mandarin segments and the shredded duck; however, I found it to be a little bland. The pork belly unfortunately got cold due to us being too wrapped up in our conversation, and the chef was unwilling to warm it up again due to contamination issues.
The Electric has that buzz about it, although perhaps it is becoming more of a has-been with the number of other great eateries competing in the neighborhood (take Food@The Muse or any of Tom Conran's offerings - Lucky Seven and Bumpkin included). I would say that to have a truly fabulous evening perhaps one should be ordering the Lobster and chips or the Chateaubriand, but then I’d prefer going to The Cow and ordering their full seafood platter.
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