Archive for the 'Food and Drink' Category

I don’t know what it is about the breakfast menu but for some reason, whenever someone who can’t see the point of blogging talks about blogs, they always say, “I’m not interested in what someone had for breakfast” as if that and all the other dull minutae of life is what bloggers blog about.

Well, out of my hundreds of posts now here on this blog, I’ve only blogged about my breakfast only once before (see My Favourite Breakfast) and I’m now going to blog about it again - sorry, if you’re not interested…!

Most of the time during the week, I have my breakfast when I get to work as I leave home very early. I usually have a bowl of cereal at my desk as I scroll my way through emails and my tasks ahead. The great thing about Sundays is having the time to make ourselves a cooked breakfast and to take time eating it.

The other Sunday, I had a full English with as many of the trimmings I could muster from the provisions in the kitchen. The only things missing were mushrooms and black pudding - and maybe hash browns, though they are not a traditional accompaniment to this meal. And although I would have liked fried bread alongside the bacon, sausages, baked beans, tomaotoes and fried eggs, I had toast instead - my one minimal gesture to healthy eating…. I’d been obsessing about a fry up all week for some reason - perhaps the weather getting cold again all of a sudden in spite of it being the spring had got me hankering for comfort food!

The thing about blogging is that in many ways it is the minutae of bloggers diverse every day lives that is what can draw you in. If you were reading a novel that went into such details, you’d say of it, !My, how wonderfully well-observed this novel is!” Similarly, for me, the small things of people’s lives can paint for me a picture of who they are and help me make that connection with them online. Which is why, I think, I enjoy the so-called trivia of Twitter and Facebook as it helps me glimpse, say, my cousin’s daily life as she takes the kids swimming or goes to boot camp or watches Lost with her husband.

Of course a diet consisting solely of trivia and banalities would be as unhealthy for you having a fry up every day. I supplement it all with books (fiction and non-fiction, physical, electronic and audio)and news (online) and magazines (print and digital) as I supplement my full Englishes with fruit and veg and lean, grilled meat and fish - as well as curries, stir fries, pasta, soups…

This is a very quick and simple but yummy recipe if you are short of time but a nutritious and tasty meal.

My partner created this recipe for lunch one day when we were clearing out the dining room and preparing it for redecoration. We had been doing physical work all morning and were tired and hungry. This recipe appeared out of the ingredients we happened to have in the fridge.

The preparation time (eg chopping garlic etc) takes 10 minutes and the cooking also takes 10 minutes - so if you multitask, you should be able to sit down to eat in 10-15 minutes.

Ingredients:

Pasta
Olive oil
Cooked and peeled prawns (available that way from most supermarkets)
Courgette
Cherry tomatoes
Garlic
Fresh coriander
Coriander pesto
Fresh lime
Lemongrass puree

What to do:

1. Heat a little olive oil in a wok
2. Stir fry the sliced courgette for a couple of minutes
3. Add the prawns
4. Add a teaspoon of pureed lemongrass (eg Bart’s Lemongrass in sunflower oil)
5. Stir fry for a couple of minutes.
6. Add the halved cherry tomatoes and a bunch of chopped fresh coriander
7. Stir fry for a further few minutes
8. Add chopped garlic just before you take it off the heat.
9. Meanwhile, you’ve been boiling your pasta, which would usually take about 10 minutes.
10. When the pasta is ready, put it in large serving bowl and mix in a tablespoon of olive oil and 3 teaspoons of coriander pesto.
11. Add the stir-fried prawn mixture to the pasta and mix in well.
12. Dish up onto plates or bowls, garnish with fresh coriander and a squeeze of lime juice. Season with black pepper, if required..

This week’s blog posts seem to be themed around food and restaurants. I guess they’ve been on my mind…!

For some reason, occasionally, a number of people say to me, “Oh, you don’t eat meat” or “You’re vegetarian, aren’t you?” - eg when we’re arranging to go for a meal or when we’re talking about gyms we go to, running and health and fitness.

“What makes you think I’m a vegetarian?!” I find myself crying out in horror.

These people don’t know me very well, clearly!

My instinctive reaction is to be insulted. No offense to my friends who are vegetarians (and some of my best friends are!) or to anyone else who is a vegetarian. It’s just that I don’t see myself as one and my self-image and identity is tied up with being a Malaysian ominvore with a hearty appetite for meat. So for me, the possibility that others might see me as anything but that upsets my sense of self!

But then I calm myself down by telling myself that what these acquaintances probably mean is that I seem healthy and fit and I don’t drink. Perhaps in their eyes, I have an “alternative” or non-establishment air about me - and maybe even an aura of loving-kindness?. So, maybe in their thinking, someone like that must also have a very healthy and pure diet that excludes dastardly deeds done to living creatures but focuses on lush, juicy, wholesome fruit and veg. That’s a compliment, right?

Well, the funny thing is that I may be half-way to becoming more vegetarian. I started at a new gym the other week and had my first personal training session. For some time now, I’ve been trying to lose what my sister calls my “muffin top” that peeps out over my jeans. However, despite much running and huffing and puffing on the cardio machines and weights at my old gym, the muffin is still defiantly there. The new personal trainer has recommended that I cut out carbs after lunch to solve this problem.

So I am trying out a new habit of substituting loads more veg and salad instead of rice, pasta or potatoes with my evening meal. He said that I could have as much fish or meat as I wanted so I’m leaving my usual portions of protein as they are. The idea is that I don’t go to bed loaded down with carbs that have nowhere to go but round my tummy and other such undesirable locations while I sleep - in contrast during the day, carbs are burnt off as energy while I move around etc.

It hasn’t been too arduous so far as it’s only one meal a day that I have to tweak. By having extra portions of veg instead of rice etc, I’ve been nicely full and that’s one of the main priorities for me in the evening - to have a feeling of contentment and satisfaction after a long day rather than going to bed hungry and craving more food. I think it will be fairly easy to follow, too, when I go out for meals with friends in the evenings if we go to a Western restaurant where the meat and veg offerings are fairly bland. But it’s going to be a challenge when we go to Malaysian or other Asian eateries for dinner where the spicy dishes need rice to blend and dilute the strong flavours….

So for those of you who might see me with a plate piled high with vegetables at dinner time, before you assume I’m a veggie look again and you will see the meat lurking underneath. I’m not a vegetarian, ok?

Photos:
veg - thanks to Muffet from flickr.com (CCL)
muffin - thanks to yomi955 from flickr.com (CCL)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Malaysian must be in search of a good meal. Malaysians will travel far and wide at any time of the day or night to find the best and tastiest dishes. I’ve known people who would drive for three hours on a Sunday out of town to go to a coffee shop in another state because that coffee shop made the best noodle soup. While the Brits might go on pub crawls, my pal Kenny Mah over at Life for Beginners tells me that he and his friends would go on food crawls, going from restaurant to food stall to cafe over an evening to eat different courses of their meal - and more!

So is it any surprise that when Malaysians discovered blogging a mass of food blogs sprung up!

What impresses me about these food bloggers is that they have the self control to set up their cameras to take photos of the food with loving care before tucking in! When they go out for meals together, it must be an amazing sight when they whip out their arsenal of high end digital cameras and start clicking away. The results I must say are almost pornographically mouth-watering…

Here are some that I’ve been enjoying - and salivating over. (To find others, simply check out their blogrolls which will reveal a whole new world of food.)

A Whiff of Lemongrass - a delicious blog by an accountant, would you believe, who writes beautifully and goes under the moniker Lyrical Lemongrass. She is of mixed parentage which means she has a wide cross-cultural taste. Based in Shah Alam, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, she and her husband make a feast of their lives wherever they are, taking luscious shots of their meals with a pretty serious camera.

Precious Pea - a Malaysian based in Melbourne (we get around, you know), she blogs about her two passions, dogs and food, as well as sharing some glimpses into the people in her life. I enjoy the fact that this isn’t purely restaurant reviews and that we can get to know Precious Pea’s life a little bit. But the food photos are again the highlight!

Dad, Baker & Chef - The title says it all. He’s a dad and he bakes lovely cakes and desserts for his family and friends. Click on this pic of the dessert he made for his wife and girl friends who came round for a meal and swoon - at the food but also at his loving generosity and creativity. What a guy!

Photos: from the food bloggers’ respective blogs, with thanks

Some friends and I met up for dinner the other evening at Tukdin, a Malaysian restaurant in the Paddington area.

It was recommended to me by Zaharah Wan, aka Kak Teh, so it was a great bonus that she and her husband Wan Hulaimi, aka Awang Goneng, the bestselling Malaysian author of Growing Up in Trengganu could join us to introduce us to what turned out to be their “home from home”.

We were also joined by my good pal, Ingrid Beazley, blogger and co-editor of Dulwich OnView, the online magazine of the Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery and my partner, web designer Angie Macdonald.

We did a podcast review of the restaurant and also got the opportunity to meet Tukdin, the man himself. Check it out via the player below.

You can subscribe to the Fusion View Mobile Podcast by clicking on the “Subscribe with iTunes” button - it’s free and new episodes will be downloaded automatically to your iTunes application.

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If you’re tempted by our review to try Tukdin for yourself, the address is 41 Craven Road W2 3BX Tel: 020 7723 6955. Please mention Fusion View if you do.

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!