Remember what I said about things being busy? Well, they’re still busy and hectic and hopefully it will all be over in a week or two. There definitely hasn’t been much cooking and we’ve been resorting to takeaways and frozen pizzas and rotisserie chicken. Once in a while there’ll be a lovely treat, like these oeufs mayonnaise.
I came across a mention of them in a book I was reading and suddenly all I could think about were hard boiled eggs with generous blobs of creamy mayonnaise. Last Sunday, I had a couple eggs to use up and this was the result. No, the mayonnaise isn’t homemade - it’s Kewpie!
This winter hasn’t been very cold in London but there are the occasional nights where you just want to lock yourself indoors with a hot bowl of something steaming up your face. And if that bowl of something is healthy as well….well, it doesn’t hurt, does it? Especially when your trousers seem a little tighter than usual after all the holiday and um…post-holiday eating.
Once again, I turned towards my trusty donabe (I hope this blog doesn’t read like one endless love letter to this wonderful clay pot). Oh goodness, I wish I’d noted down my recipe when I’d made this dish - the recipe you see below is totally from memory!
Chicken Meatballs (Tori Dango)
200g chicken
1 egg
1-2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp grated ginger/ginger juice
1 tsp cornstarch
salt and white pepper
For meatballs like this, I like to place the ground meat on a chopping board and chop it with my cleaver for a good minute or two to get a smoother paste. Place it into a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients and mix it all together by hand. Refrigerate until use.
Chicken Meatball Nabe
serves 2.
1 recipe of the chicken meatball mix above
1 large handful of button mushrooms, cut into bite sized chunks
3 spring onions, cut into 2 inch pieces
1 carrot, peeled and sliced
about 1/4 of a large Chinese cabbage, trimmed and cut into bite sized pieces
dashi - I used stock powder
2 tbsps soy sauce
salt to taste
Arrange the vegetables in a donabe and pour soy sauce overtop and enough dashi to cover all the ingredients. Set over medium high heat to boil. When it does start boiling, use a couple of teaspoons to drop ballfuls of the chicken mixture into the pot, making sure to separate them. Lower the heat to medium and let it bubble until everything is cooked to your liking. Season the broth if necessary and then serve with rice on the side.
If you have other vegetables to use up, do put them in there. I can imagine spinach being particularly lovely in there.
There’s a narrow shopfront directly across the street from the Ealing Common tube station that always looks like it’s closed, thanks to it’s whited-out windows. Look carefully, and you’ll see a little display of plastic sushi in the front (and a sign that says Cash Only). Behind that door is an adorable sushi restaurant that serves some of the best sushi in London.
We were looking for a light lunch one weekend when I suggested Sushi Hiro. It has been on my radar for a while and this was finally a chance to go.
We ordered two sushi platters - the first and third sets on the menu (were they A & C?). Together, they came to about £17, very reasonable for sushi of such high quality. The fish was extremely fresh and watching the sushi being made was highly entertaining and made the long wait feel much shorter. Mmmm… I love all the silky smooth fish: tuna, mackerel, salmon… I’m not fond of the slimy squid though. If I had to complain about one thing, it would be about how they spread the wasabi under the fish - it wasn’t spread evenly and so sometimes you’d get a big lump that would cause your eyes to water a lot! Green tea was brought for us to drink and soon after our platters were brought to us, bowls of miso soup were also presented.
I’m already keen to go back to try their maki sushi. There’s one with huge lumps of crab meat and another with gorgeous grilled eel (they dab the sauce on so gently with a brush) and there’s even futomaki, the giant sushi roll filled with many goodies.
They are closed in between lunch and dinner and last orders for lunch are taken at about 2pm. Reservations are also taken and are recommended.
Sushi Hiro
1 Station Parade
Uxbridge Road
Ealing
London W5 3LD
When I go to Southall for my regular Indian food fix, I make a point to stop into Ambala for some delicious savoury snacks. I first discovered the shop when I wandered round looking for a good place to buy some samosas to take home. Of all the sweet shops (most also sell savouries) on the Uxbridge road, this one consistently had a queue and a queue of locals is always a good sign.
Inside there’s a glass case full of colourful, milky Indian sweets and behind the counter, behind the men clad in white, there are even more sweets, but those are more difficult to see. They (the men) are very nice there and are always happy to answer your questions. But say you’re like me and these sweets don’t get your heart a-thumping - I much prefer the savoury, crunchy things all studded with lots of cumin.
At the far end of the counter are baskets full of freshly fried delights. Samosas and pakoras make their home there. Their samosas are some of the nicest I’ve had, mainly because of the delicious, flaky pastry encasing them. If I don’t feel like having a whole samosa, I buy these nimki, little diamonds of flour pastry, the same pastry used for their samosas.
Thanks to Planethalder, I’ve recently discovered their Ambala mix, a mixture of fried gram flour crunchies and raisins and nuts and fried peas and fried lentils and sugar and spice and all things nice. It’s very addictive. Very very additictive. It comes in both handy tubs or bags.
Of course, if you really like the sweets, they’re pretty well known for that too! But don’t take my word for it, look to the queue.
Ambala Foods
107 The Broadway
Southall
Middlesex UB1 1RP
There are branches across the UK and one in Paris.
Not food related but the salons in Southall do good and cheap eyebrow threading too - only £2.50 compared to the £17 charged at Blink.
I hope everyone had a nice Valentine’s Day. We didn’t do anything special though we cooked together and made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. We stuffed the meatballs with mozzarella cheese and they were reasonably successful though the cheese tried to make an escape during cooking - so no recipe until I get a chance to try it again.
On another note, yesterday, my first Shoot and Eat post at Londonist went up and it’s about the food court at Oriental City. Go on, take a look!
