Archive for the 'Food and Drink' Category

For much of last year, I was not as healthy as I would have liked to have been. The main reason was being too busy. Too busy to exercise properly, too busy to eat sensibly… But as the year drew to a close, I made a conscious effort to clear my schedule and to identify the things that enhanced my life rather than just doing things ‘cos I had to do them or ‘cos I was obligated to others. There were two key themes that emerged - I wanted to focus on being creative and active.

Over the Xmas period, I was glad for the time out to recharge my batteries and think about how I was going to make sure these two themes could underpin 2010.

Creativity for this year means: making sure I have time for blogging and creating online media such as photos, podcasts and video. What I love about blogging is that my blog is a blank canvas on which I can create anything, using the people I meet, the art I see, the films I watch, the books I read, the thoughts that may pass through my mind. I love how I can use it to connect with people by inviting them to share their stories or views on the blog or by writing up an event that I’ve attended or pondering more deeply on a conversation I may have had with someone. It’s also a fun way to capture quirky or interesting images that have caught my eye and to play with making videos or podcasts about the world around me.

Being active this years means: picking up on the running that I’d started to enjoy last year but had not had time to improve on. Not being very athletic at school, I had never thought I’d enjoy running but taking the time to build up my stamina and speed over the last few months, I’ve really come to thrive with it. I’m still not very fast compared to other people and I still can’t run for much more than an hour - but for me, it’s been a real breakthrough! As a result of running - and seeing my running improve over time - I’ve become more aware of the need to eat more healthily as well as generally looking after my health. And being fitter means that I have more energy, feel more cheerful and positive (especially important through these last long dark winter months!) and more alert and creative!

One of the things I used to be rubbish at was making sure that I ate healthy portions and at regular intervals. Here’s an example. I’d have lunch around 12.30 and then not eat again till dinner at 8, by which time I would be grouchy, tired, headachey and generally unbearable. Then, at dinner, I would eat way too much because I was starving and I’d feel stuffed for the rest of the evening, storing up all that weight to make me chubby over the next few days.

So what to do? The answer is to snack with healthy snacks in between the main meals, which has the advantage of making sure I have a regular supply of good fuel so I’m not running on empty and also of making sure I don’t wolf down excessive amounts at meal times. One of the best snacks I’ve discovered so far is roasted pumpkin seeds. Apart from being packed full of good stuff that helps with depression, cholesterol etc, they are also pretty tasty when they are roasted.

Well, I say roasted. But in fact, I dry fry them. Here’s how:

1. Heat a non-stick pan on the stove.
2. Pour some pumpkin seeds onto the pan - about enough to cover the bottom of the pan plus some. Do not add anything else: no oil, nothing.
3. Stir fry the seeds dry till they start to pop and jump around.
4. Take the pan off the heat/ turn off the heat when a few have started to pop, but continue stir frying. The reason for this is that if you keep the pan on the heat, it will be too hot and they will burn. The heat you’ve already got will keep popping the seeds so keep stirring.
5. They will make a lovely rustley sound when they are ready, which means that they have expanded and popped. They should look a mixture of green/ khaki/ brown.

You can eat them on their own like you might eat nuts. Or sprinkle them over salad - or even fruit salad. Or sprinkle them over pasta. They have a nutty flavour that goes perfectly in any of these situations.

When it comes down to it, it seems to me, it’s the little things that make the difference. When I’m feeling down and overwhelmed and exhausted and plummetted into an existential crisis, it’s most likely that I’m have a low blood sugar moment and when I’ve had a healthy snack, it’s amazing how I seem to perk up and life all seems worthwhile again! It’s the same with the running - just having a go and then making it into a habit and before too long, I have more stamina and feel more energized. And as for blogging, it helps me take notice of the people and world around me and makes me curious and thoughtful - and perhaps a little bolder when it comes to making a connection with someone I might not otherwise get to know.

I wouldn’t say that pumpkin seeds have changed my life, but they certainly have helped me make the changes I want to make.

Pictures:
Painting, thanks to seeminglee from flickr.com (CCL)
Runner, thanks to Hamed Saber from flickr.com (CCL)
Pumpkin seeds - my photo

If you’ve never tried dim sum, the best place to go in London for the full-on rough and tumble of the dim sum experience is CCK in Wardour Street, right in the heart of Chinatown. Dim sum is best described as “Chinese tapas”, small servings of different savoury dishes that you share round the table, and literally meaning “little pieces of heart”. We always prefer CCK because it’s one of the few, if not the only, dim sum restaurant in London where the dishes are on a host of trolleys which constantly patrol the tables and as diners, you simply stop one of the waitresses and select what you want from the trolley. It’s great fun and very exciting for foodies as you see the stream of different dishes pass up and down the restaurant like taxi cabs full of yummy goodies.

It’s not ideal for conversation though. The noise, especially at peak lunch hour times, is ear splitting with all the diners calling out for what they want and the hostesses calling out what they have to offer. It’s also very disruptive as every few minutes a new trolley passes by your table and you have to break off your discussion to see what’s in the cabinets to make your choices. And if you’re after one particular favourite dish, you have to be constantly on the lookout for the trolley with it on - or call out to each passing trolley if they have that particular item.

So what’s on offer? Steamed balls of pork or beef mince flavoured with different garnishes. Steamed or fried spring rolls, some stuffed with prawns. Little parcels of meat wrapped in pastry - rather like Chinese samosas, either fried or baked. Fried yam dumplings filled with meat and vegetables. Chickens feet braised in soy sauce - for the more adventurous. Noodles, roast pork, roast duck, congee (a savoury rice porridge) with chicken and vegetables. Mmm, even writing this list is making me hungry!

The trolley system also means that you eat way too much. It’s so exciting to choose all the little selections as they trundle by in their glass cabinets or in stacks of bamboo steaming trays that you will choose too many too fast. So it’s ideal if you go with a huge gang of ravenous friends, without having had any breakfast. That way, you’ll make the most of the experience and be able to try as many dishes as humanly possible.

My family and I usually waddle out of CCK completely stuffed and exhausted by the whole experience. Time then for a taxi home and an afternoon spent lolling on the sofa with belt buckles and trousers undone, like fat and decadent Romans…

If you have another favourite haunt for dim sum, please add a comment and let me know - much as I enjoy CCK, I’m always game to try somewhere new, especially if the food is good!

When I visit a different culture or country I like to make sure I eat the local food as much as I can — and if I possible, immerse myself completely by not having any meal that comes from my own British or Malaysian culture.

I spent a few days in Strasbourg recently with my mother and sister. It’s my mum’s 70th birthday this year and my sister and I took her on this trip as a birthday treat. We were all curious to try the local Alsatian specialities as Strasbourg is right on the French/German border and the French cuisine there has a heavy German influence.

We were immediately charmed by the city of Strasbourg when we arrived. The old city is essentially an island encircled by canals and River Ill. It is largely pedestrianised in this area with most people walking, cycling or using the very quiet and efficient tram system. Many of the buildings date from the mediaeval period, with lots of timber framed houses that seemed to me more Bavarian than French. The main cobbled streets are punctuated by quaint little alleyways where we discovered many little boutique shops, cafes, restaurants and winstubs, the Alsace region’s equivalent of British pubs or Holland’s brown cafes. Everyone was very friendly and helpful — and we were struck by how most people easily switched between French, German and English.

On our first day, we came across what seemed to us a typical winstub down a side alley near the cathedral. It was a bright sunny day and it is a moment to adjust to the gym light when we stepped through the heavy wooden doors. It reminded me very much of a typical British pub, with exposed wooden beams, wood panelling and coloured glass in the windows — but with a more rugged roughhewn ambience. We excitedly chose three platters from the Alsatian specialities section of the menu. I had confit de canard while my sister chose the knuckle of pork and my mother had the selection of smoked meat: sausage, belly pork, ham and some kind of meatball pate. When the dishes arrived, they were completely enormous and loaded with piles of sauerkraut and boiled potatoes. We dug in with relish as we had not eaten since very early in the morning and we thoroughly enjoyed the first quarter of the meal as the unfamiliar tastes of smoked meat and sour cabbage gave us the sense of having arrived in a foreign and exotic place.

However, the novelty began to wear off as we realised that we were already full and still had a mountain of meat and sauerkraut to wade through. It was not long before we were soundly defeated.. We waddled out into the bright alleyway, blinking in the sunlight and feeling rather like battery pigs that had been forcefully stuffed with food and were now being momentarily released into the exercise yard.

I don’t know whether we were just very un-lucky or whether it’s just that Alsatian food is ultimately not to our taste but after a couple more meals in the local restaurants, I was pining for rice and some stirfried vegetables. The smell of sauerkraut seemed to permeate most of the restaurants and brasseries. When we ordered other more specifically French dishes rather than the Alsatian meet specialities, they seemed to be heavily laden with cream and left us feeling solid, stolid and staunch. Even their salads seemed to come sob and in thick, creamy mayonnaise style dressing. We tried the other local speciality, flamenkuchen, which is somewhat like a pizza but with a very thin crusty base and made with sour cream and smoked meats — that also had the effect of making me feel rather queasy and stuffed to the gills afterwards.

There were some wonderful patisserie is and I have to confess that we voluntarily indulged in a mouthwatering pastries filled with custard and cream and sugar and chocolate. These definitely made up for the sauerkraut! But, unfortunately, their effect on our stomachs and waistlines were not filed different from the stodgy main meals…

Some evenings, we were too tired after a day’s sightseeing or shopping, and instead of going out to a restaurant, we had a picnic in the hotel room of onion tart, quiche lorraine, smoked meats and olives. One night, we finally crumbled and dashed to a Thai restaurant and had some lovely rice dishes, to our great relief! Unlike most Thai restaurants in the UK, the portions were enormous and the duck dish that I had was one of the tastiest meals I had all holiday — the dark was done with a spicy prawns with a hint of coconut: an unusual but very successful combination.

I was very relieved to arrive back home to my usual diet of fresh vegetables, salad, brown rice, brown bread and light sauces. Which is not to say that I am vegetarian or vegan or anything other than a hearty meat eater! One of my favourite meals is a nice thick slab of steak. But what the holiday did make me realise is that my general daily diet is pretty healthy. I’m just not used to thick cream sauces, preserved vegetables and preserved meats, overly salted food and sugary things made with white flour. All these things are wonderful treats from time to time and enjoyable for being occasional indulgences - but having them every day and every meal is just way too much for my constitution to bear!

I am now going to spend the next few weeks working of all the Michelin Man tyres that have appeared round my midriff in the last few days. It’s not going to be much fun starting up my running again as I will be lugging this extra weight around with me!

In today’s show:

I check out the live phoneblogging platform Ipadio.com with some live phoneblogs on my mobile phone.

I’m feeling sorry for myself as I have done something to my leg and can’t run - to my great dismay.

But socializing with friends keeps me entertained. Some of the sites and friends I mention are:

# Kenny who blogs at Life for Beginners, visits from Malaysia and tells me about “foodcrawls”, the greedy person’s equivalant of pubcrawls

# An energetic young barrister tells me about adventure racing, a triathlon like sport that’s catching on in the UK

# Lybbe in Canada sends me an email comment about my podcast. Lybbe’s blog “Blah blah blah” is at http://lybbe1631.blogspot.com/ - her bio says, “Life long weight problem. Decided at 308 pounds (or more) that I wasn’t going to let myself slide any further. I’ve lost over 100 pounds and have about 50 more to lose. I feel better than I did 20 years ago, and I know I have lengthened my life expectancy.” Also, check out her new podcast, Fifty Counting Down.

You can listen to the podcast using the grey podcast-player at the end of this post…

…Or, in the main player below, where you can also check out other Fusion View podcasts:

You can also receive this and future Fusion View Podcasts free via iTunes - click on the lavender logo alongside.

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As a child growing up in Malaysia, I would read a lot of American comic books. I loved Archie and Dennis that Menace and, of course, the Peanuts. On TV, there was The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, giving the world and idyllic look inside the idealised American family - and the world lapped it up, together with all the icons of American pop culture. Although I lived thousands of miles away in an Asian culture, I knew all about skateboards, backyards, baseball, bubblegum — and the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The kids in these comics and TV shows seemed to love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that to me, it seemed like a bizarre concoction.

We could get peanut butter from the supermarkets in Kuala Lumpur — it would be the Planters brand, with a cartoon peanut dressed up as a dashing gentleman, I think. My mother would make us peanut butter sandwiches with a sprinkling of crunchy white sugar on top — the best kind of sugar would be the ones with the large crystals! But we never had jelly on top. We could not imagine what jelly would be like in a sandwich. After all, jelly is the cold stuff that you make with gelatine and flavoured water in the fridge. It has a strange rubbery texture and is eaten as a dessert or at birthday parties. I must have been a strange child because I never liked jelly — I didn’t like the rubbery sweetness or the way that melted in my mouth will stop so the idea that it was somehow yummy spread on peanut butter was very alien to me.

It was only later that I learnt that “jelly” is an Americanism for what we in the rest of the English-speaking world call “jam”. Even so, it seemed to me a very strange and un-appetising combination. So I was never tempted to pull out the jar of jam whenever I went to the cupboard to get a peanut butter.

Later in life, being health-conscious, I would only have the occasional peanut butter sandwich — this time, minus the sugar and only spread thinly on top of one slice of bread. It was tasty but nothing to get excited about.

However, since I started running recently, I have been absolutely starving a lot of the time. And for some reason, the only thing that seems to satisfy my craving is a peanut butter and jam sandwich. I have no idea how that combination suddenly popped into my consciousness again after all these years but something in my taste buds or my desperate stomach made me rummage around for some jam. The only flavour we had in the house was raspberry and I spread a thick layer over an equally thick layer of crunchy organic peanut butter on my slice of toast…

And it was to die for!

So now, I am wondering why I am not managing to lose any weight in spite of running about 10 miles week. Do you think that these peanut butter and jam sandwiches might have something to do with it?

Photo: thanks to meganmillscrm from flickr.com (CCL)

I may have become mad keen on running recently, but I am still crazy about good food and good company. This month we seem to be having quite a number of dinner parties at home, with friends coming round every Saturday evening. In my book, there is nothing better than settling down round the table with a hearty and tasty meal, relaxing and laughing with friends.

Last Saturday, my running friend Sue and her boyfriend came over. I decided to make one of my fusion specialities, soy sauce pork chop. This recipe is derived from a family recipe that is similar to a Dutch-Indonesian dish called babi kechap, which I blogged about a little while ago.

In the original Asian version, you chop up the pork in two small pieces so that it is manageable when you are eating with chopsticks. In my family’s version of the recipe, you use the very fattty pork belly cut and stew the dish on the stove for ages — the result is that the pork just melts in your mouth. Or, rather, the pork FAT melts in your mouth!

The version that I have adapted for my Western friends uses pork chops which have not been cut down any further. Ideally, there should be a thin slice of fat but you can trim that down to nothing if you prefer. Place the pork chops in a baking tray and drizzle some oil onto them — enough to oil them without drenching them.

In a regular sized like mug, mix the following ingredients:

• One sachet of miso soup powder. Miso soup is a great way to make stock as it generally does not contain additives or MSG

• 1 teaspoon of honey. I would normally use thick, treacle like soy sauce but in the absence of that specialist ingredient, honey is a good substitute

• 1 teaspoon of chilli oil. You can get this chilli oil from most Chinese grocers — it is made from dried shrimp and chilli preserved in oil. It is very hot and spicy so experiment with how much suits your taste

• Once the above ingredients are in the coffee mug, pour in regular soy sauce so that the total mixture is about one quarter of the mugs volume

• Add ginger wine — up to about half the volume of the mug

• Finally, pour hot water to fill up the mug to the brim

Stir everything in the mug well until the miso soup powder and honey have blended into the liquid.

Pour the mixture onto the pork chops.

Sprinkle chopped ginger and chopped garlic over the pork.

Cover the baking tray with tin foil and cook in the oven for around two hours on a medium heat in total. However, one hour in, turn the chops over, re-cover with the foil and return to the oven. Then 20 minutes before the end, remove the foil altogether - then baste the chops with the juice in the tray and return the tray to the oven - this will brown the chops nicely.

Serve with rice and green vegetables fried with garlic and soy sauce.

By the time our guests arrived, the house was fragrant with the honeyed scent of the pork, with added tones of ginger and soy sauce. Everyone was drooling as we sat down to eat!

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to take any photos of the dish — we were much too focused on food eating to think about food blogging…

Photo: thanks to jere-me from flickr.com (CCL)

When I go on holiday, eating good food is part of the experience. A few weeks ago, I was in Amsterdam, and although the Dutch are not well known for their world-class cuisine, I found the food at a delight. Dutch cuisine is usually associated in the global imagination with pancakes and large, red balls Edam cheese. But these days, what the Dutch are very good at is what might be called “modern European” cuisine. Their style is understated, but tasty, and everything is beautifully presented.

Take for example, the chicken and chips that I ordered at a local brasserie near our hotel on the Herengracht canal. The brasserie was nothing fancy — it seemed to be a local hangout for young professionals and had a cosy, friendly and comfortable ambience. I wanted something simple and I thought that chicken and chips, while not very exciting, would do the trick for me that evening. When you order chicken and chips in the UK, it usually comes as a chicken quarter — probably the wings and an extra bit on the end — that has been oven roasted, with a pile of chips on the side. At this brasserie, the chicken arrived delicately carved into manageable pieces and had a delicious buttery, herby flavour. The chips were crunchy on the outside and fluffy and soft on the inside. A whole dish was beautifully presented, and absolutely delicious.

It was not just this particular brasserie that presented us with an ordinary m eal that felt like a special treat. In most of the restaurants that we ate in, we would come away full, happy and satisfied. I have been to The Netherlands a number of times and that seems to hold true in most restaurants. It seems, in my experience, that it is much more difficult to happen upon a good restaurant in London or the UK by chance - you really have to go out of your way to research the guidebooks or to get recommendations from friends in order to have any halfway decent meal at a reasonable price here. So I’ve always been especially delighted whenever I’ve visited The Netherlands as I know that most the time, whichever restaurant we might pick randomly, we would be sure to end up with a good meal.

On this visit, we didn’t manage to go to an Indonesian restaurant, unfortunately. I am always keen to have at least one Indonesian meal, while in the Netherlands — I have always liked is rijsttafel, a meal for one that which comes with an array of different Asian specialties served in a delicate little bowls around a plate of rice. The multiple dishes is clearly derived from the Asian way of dining, where each person has their own bowl or plate of rice, and then everyone tucks into a range of different dishes such as chicken curry, stirfried pork as well as seafood, beef and vegetables dishes. In the Western way of eating each person has their one meal on their own plate - no sharing. However, in Asia, everything is shared, and the dishes are consequently much larger than the delicate little samples making up rijsttafel!

I was particularly tickled a few years ago, when I was in Delft with my family. The Indonesian restaurant that we loved had a dish that reminded usof a dish that has been passed down through the generations from my father’s mother’s side. It was called babi kichap. Babi means pork.Kichap means soy sauce and is the word that became ketchup in the West, meaning a condiment — and eventually coming to mean specifically, tomato ketchup. The characteristic of babi kichap is that the source is very dark — as dark as black coffee — due to the soy sauce. I don’t seem to have found it anywhere else in Europe apart from the Netherlands. I had always thought of this as a family recipe so we were all delighted to see it served in a restaurant!

Staying with the Oriental theme, I was really taken by a fast food noodle joint in the Leidseplein area. It was called Wok to Walk. The idea is that you choose a base of egg noodles, vermicelli or rice etc and then make a selection from a list of different meats and vegetables. The final step is then to choose the kind of sauce that you want e.g. peanut sauce,, oyster sauce soy sauce etc. They fry it up for you there and then and you can either have it as a takeout (the “walk” part) or you can eat it in. It was amazingly fast and quite delicious. It reminded me of Asian street food and caucused all but with a modern European twist.

There is one Dutch speciality that I tried once a while ago in Delft which was really more of an endurance test than a joy. Raw herring. It may be so some people’s taste - and it clearly is loved by the Dutch - but not to mine. We bought it fresh from a market stall, served in the little pot and garnished with a huge helping of raw onions. As it was a local speciality, I resolved to try it so I took a deep breath and popped it into my mouth. It tasted of the sea, seaweed and the mud at the bottom of an estuary and the texture was cold and slimy. It was horrible! Bleah….

So no raw herring on this last trip to Amsterdam, I’m glad to say. With all the other delicious meals, we came back from Amsterdam very chubby . I am now facing a very rigourous gym regime for the next few weeks to make up for all that overindulgence. Wish me luck!

Photos:

amsterdam by macropoulos (CCL)
babi kecap by zoyachubby from flickr.com (CCL)
maiden with raw herring by riceuriian from flickr.com (CCL)

One of my resolutions for 2009 is to be more creative. And inspired by our friends’ Nasi Lemak Lunch, we have been experimenting with creative creations in the kitchen, with some degree of success.

On Valentine’s Day, instead of going out, we cooked a lovely lunch of Yellow Prawn Curry together. In my book, the couple that feasts together, stays together…

The recipe is very simple and it was all done within 30-40 minutes:

• Mix some yellow curry paste with a can of coconut milk in a pot or wok.
• Add some fish sauce and dash of salt and sugar.
• Simmer for about 10 minutes to reduce it.
• Add prawns and tomatoes.
• Simmer for another 5 minutes or so (if you are using fresh prawn, until they are cooked).
• Serve on rice and garnish with fresh coriander, lime juice and slices of red peppers.

We added some green beans stir-fried in garlic and soy sauce.

Mmmm.

The great thing about being creative cooking is that you can eat it afterwards (unlike creative writing - eating my words is not my favourite pastime…!)