OK, so I didn’t bake this cake for the occasion but instead took this back in February when I baked this chocolate cake for a friend’s birthday. But this is also a birthday – my blog’s birthday! I can’t believe it’s been two years already. I thought this might be a good occasion to feature a few posts from the past that have proved very popular as well as a few of those for which I have a soft spot.
Top Posts
- Budae Jjigae = Army Stew – This Korean stew with Spam and hot dogs and ramen has proved to be the most popular post on the blog!
- Pork with Basil and Chili – This recipe is straight from a cooking school I attended in Chiang Mai. This is a perfect one dish meal when served on rice.
- Byron’s Burgers – I visited the first Byron’s burger restaurant in Kensington soon after it opened.
- Loco Moco – again, a slightly trashy combo of white rice, hamburger, fried egg and gravy has set everyone’s tastebuds tingling!
- Banana Leaf Rice at Samy’s Curry, Singapore – One of my favourite things to eat in Malaysia and Singapore is banana leaf rice and I even went on a search for a dal recipe that matched what I ate there.
- New Orleans Style Barbecued Prawns – A recipe for grilled prawns (in the oven) that’s great for a starter.
- A Tribute to my Mother – This post, written about six months after my mother passed away, received many responses. I featured a recipe for lemon squares that I used to bake with my mother when I was a teenager.
- If I Had to Choose One Fruit… – That would be the mangosteen! I adore its luscious sweet-tangy flesh.
- Kimbap-ba-doo-wap! – This post features one of my most popular photos on Flickr. Who can resist a maki sushi-like roll filled with lots of goodies?
- Tomato and Egg, Chinese Style – This classic Chinese dish requires only a few ingredients and is very budget friendly!
I Like These!
This isn’t an exhaustive list – it’s hard to choose favourites amongst one’s blog posts!
- Red-Cooked Belly Pork – Here’s a classic Hunan pork belly preparation and it’s the first recipe I ever posted on the blog!
- Bánh Mi for Me – Shame I can’t get the right kind of light baguette for these Vietnamese sandwiches. Still, the flavours are all there!
- An Indian Fakeaway – I ran with the idea of a “fakeaway” when I first heard the word coined on a BBC article written when the recession was starting to affect many people’s lives and their everyday eating.
- Llet Merengada -I’ve never seen this milky concoction outside Spain… I could use some of it in this heat!
- Sprattus Sprattus – I have good memories of that time I fried up so many tasty little sprats, thus stinking up our flat for a good three days!
I’ll be updating my About page soon too so keep watch over that! A big thank you to everyone who’s dropped by! I love reading your comments and emails and do drop a line to say hi if you haven’t before! And once again, I hope to meet (or “meet” online) more of you in the future!
SheSimmers fries up perfectly spherical Thai sweet potato balls. These look like a great snack.
I feel like diving into this bowl of ham and lentil soup over at Closet Cooking.
As I’m never without a packet of Chinese sausage in the fridge (I would encourage everyone to do this as it keeps forever in there), I’ve bookmarked a recipe for a Thai-style sausage salad over at EatingAsia.
Why haven’t I watched the latest Star Trek film yet?! I was a huge Trekkie when I was still in school. Of course, it should follow that I read the Serious Eats Primer to Star Trek Food and Drink with my full attention.
I made this curried cauliflower and chickpea stew that I saw at bitchincamero. It was comforting but a bit dull the first day but after a night’s rest in the fridge, the flavours of the leftovers improved greatly.
A couple weekends ago, I purchased two large bunches of asparagus from our farmers’ market hoping to have one bunch on the Saturday and the other on the Sunday. However, the deliciousness of the asparagus scuppered all my plans and we gorged on asparagus on the Saturday. I think the beautiful green spears must have been cut that morning as the flavour was so sweet and green and we couldn’t get enough! In the afternoon, I roasted the first bunch and served it with fried eggs, pork rillettes and a baguette for lunch.
For dinner, I put together this simple spaghetti dish with what I had in the flat. I sauteed asparagus and tossed the spaghetti with the cooked vegetable and lashings of butter and Parmesan and black pepper. It’s very similar to the classic cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper), the Roman dish of pasta with Pecorino Romano and pepper. It’s exactly as you expect it to taste – creamy cheesey strands of spaghetti with the slight bit of coarsely ground black pepper – and I think with some tender asparagus, it’s enough for a meal.
Cacio e Pepe with Asparagus
serves 2.
One bunch asparagus
2 tbsps olive oil
250g spaghetti
3 tbsps unsalted butter
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Set a pot of water to boil for the spaghetti.
In the meantime, prepare the asparagus – peel and trim them (peeling instead of snapping saves a lot of the delicious vegetable) and then cut each spear into four pieces. In a frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat and saute the asparagus until tender. Take off the heat and add the butter. Stir through.
The water should be boiling by now. Salt it and add the spaghetti to boil. When it’s al dente, set aside about a cupful of the pasta water and then drain the spaghetti and add to the sauteed asparagus. Scatter over the Parmesan and black pepper and toss all together, adding some of the pasta water as needed (when it all feels too dry). It should all be hot and creamy – serve immediately!
Note: I’m submitting this post to Presto Pasta Nights, hosted this week by Sara of I’m a Food Blog.
I was craving potato wedges one night when Blai wasn’t around and so gorged on a pile full of homemade ones (recipe here but minus the paprika). However, instead of reaching for my usual chilli sauce, I first remembered that I had some wild garlic left in my fridge and thought of making some kind of condiment from it.
I grabbed a handful of the leaves and whizzed them up with some olive oil and this gently garlicky result was drizzled over the roasted potato wedges. Garlic goodness! I imagine this would be lovely drizzled over any potato product or warm bread (like dough balls!) or even risotto.
However, if you’re unable to find wild garlic (I’m a little late on this post and I wonder if the season has finished), a picada is just as good! I whipped up this garlic and parsley oil from instructions from Blai, who said that he used to eat it as a child. This basic Catalan sauce usually has nuts and bread incorporated as well and is added to dishes while they’re cooking but this version can be eaten by itself, on top of various foods. We had it on grilled octopus (the picada was a success but the octopus was way too tough) and dipped our bread into it and Blai says it’s good on fried mushrooms too.
Of course, you might want some mints after this meal…
Wild Garlic Oil
Take about five wild garlic leaves, wash and dry them well. Tear them up into a mini chopper or a blender and top with about 1/4-1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil. Pulse until blended – little pieces of the wild garlic still make it attractive though!
Picada
In mortar and pestle, pound one clove of garlic and then scrape that into a bowl. Add 1/4-1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil and a good handful of chopped parsley (chop it quite finely). Stir to combine.
I can’t say that my feeling was one of joy when I drew this out of the bag proffered by Andrew Webb on Thursday night:
I was sitting somewhere in the BBC Television Centre in White City with a group of food bloggers, all of us watching the second round of semifinals of the Eurovision Song Contest. After the last finalists were announced, we each drew the name of a finalist country and find that cuisine in London for Eating Eurovision, a London food blogger’s event hosted by Andrew.
I have to say I’m now actually quite thankful to get a challenging country – I could barely point out the country on a map on Thursday. It made for an interesting challenge (though if we’d had a week rather than a day or two, I would have made a better hash of things!) and led us to try a new cuisine last night.
How about a little background on the little country? Moldova‘s official name is the Republic of Moldova and was originally part of the Principality of Moldavia (note the slight change in the name!) before being taken over by the Russian Empire. There are a few steps I’m going to leave out due to Moldova’s complicated political history but the current country was formed in 1991. Location-wise, it’s fully landlocked and situated between Romania and Ukraine. It’s official language is Moldovan (I think it’s a dialect of Romanian). Sadly, Moldova is considered to be the poorest country in Europe, which might explain the difficulty I had in finding its food in London.
Thursday night, after I got home, I sent out all the emails and tweets I could to get as much information as possible. Friday morning, I called the Moldovan Embassy in London and asked about Moldovan cuisine and possible restaurants in London. The nice woman at the end of the line said she’d been looking for years… Oh dear. She suggested trying Romanian food as the cuisine was similar. As for food shops, she said that Moldovans in London tended to shop at the Russian shops to get a taste of home. I also received one email reply on Friday from Vadim, a Moldovan computer blogger based in London, who confirmed that there weren’t any Moldovan restaurants proper save for one mediocre restaurant serving Moldovan food pretty far out in East London.
After a bit more research on the net, I realised that one couldn’t classify Moldovan food easily as the cuisine encompassed various elements from Romania, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Russia and even Turkey and Greece. I thought I’d try a Romanian restaurant and eat the dishes that were also common in Moldova. After a brief search, I settled on 32 Old Bailey, a Romanian restaurant near St Paul’s. After calling to confirm opening times, I asked about their online menu which also featured Italian food – the man at the other end was resigned to the fact that no one wants to try Romanian food and that Italian food just sold better, quite sad and now I’m determined to try to get everyone to try some Moldovan/Romanian cuisine!
32 Old Bailey was not at all what I expected. Firstly, it was a basement restaurant which is fine but this restaurant took up a huge cavernous space that included a dancefloor! The decor was decidedly Transylvanian (read: I expected a vampire to appear at any moment). When we got there at 8pm, it was also very empty. Apart from us, there was a small group of women tucked away in one of the corners.
This turned out to be advantageous to us as we had lots of time to discuss Moldovan and Romanian cuisine with Chris (Kris? Sorry, I didn’t get how to spell his name!) who turned out to be from Moldova (the Romanian part) as did the cook! Excellent! He hijacked my list of Moldovan dishes I’d found on the internet, went through them and dismissed a few of them and got very enthusiastic about others. He pointed out dishes on their menu that could also definitely be found in Moldova and we embraced many of these. He also tempted us with a description of a donut-like dessert that we decided to order in advance of the meal itself! And after we got our drinks (a Romanian “juice” for me and a Romanian beer for Blai), he came back and kindly presented me with a gift of a Romanian cookbook!
Onto the food (finally)! Blai and I both started with ciorba (soup) – one meatball (ciorba de perisoare) and one sour beef (ciorba de vacuta) to split between us. Two large bowls came to us along with a basket of white bread and a bowl of sour cream (smintina) with fresh green chilies (this surprised me!). Of course, we had no idea what to do with the sour cream and, upon asking, were told that some people just like it in the soup. The soups both had a sourish flavour to them and both were quite different. The sour beef soup had many vegetables and potatoes alongside the big chunks of tender beef. The meatball soup had pork and rice balls swimming in a soup with lots of chopped tomatoes. Both were quite tasty and very filling (they were big portions).
We also split the mains. A plateful of mititei and chips was highly scented and gloriously meaty and uh…chippy. The chips were nothing to shout about but the mititei were delicious: minced meat (I think beef and pork) mixed with various spices and lots of garlic (we had the garlic burps all night), grilled.
The sarmalute were meat and rice filled cabbage rolls, topped with a little sour cabbage. We were instructed to eat this with more of the sour cream – and I totally forgot to. Oh well, they were good enough by themselves. The yellow mash to the side of it is considered to be one of the national dishes of Moldova (and Romania) – it’s mamaliga, a corn mash similar to polenta, though ours had a much lighter, almost custardy texture. Chris (Kris?) told us about the way mamaliga was made in the past – in a cast iron pot, left to set and then upturned to reveal the glorious yellow dome. String was used to cut the mamaliga and it would open up like a flower!
Dessert time! The promised donut-like dessert showed up and we learned its name: papanasi. I was in love with its cuteness:
A brioche-looking donut construction sitting in a pool of cream and lots of slightly tart cherry jam. The donut itself was not cakey as I expected but slightly sticky and this was explained by ricotta in the batter (ok, we looked up the recipe in the cookbook while we were eating). We each got one of these, two apparently make a whole portion and Chris (Kris?) had suggested (and very wisely too) that we split that. While adorable to look at and delicious (how can you not like cheese and deep fried and cream and jam?), these filled us up to no end – especially after the soups and main courses we’d already consumed. Still, it was a good dessert and a good end to a hearty meal.
When we were about to leave, who should show up but Patrick (Romania!) along with his mates. I wonder if he liked the food! Anyway, at the same time, a live band (complete with keytar! Soooo 80s!) showed up – I think the real crowd starts trickling in much much later and a search online afterwards confirms that the restaurant only closes at 3am on Friday nights.
Our meal totalled £40 (including service) – not the cheapest meal but by no means extortionate for the fun evening we had! I’m now very keen to cook from my new cookbook but you can also find Moldovan recipes online.
32 Old Bailey
St Pauls
London EC4M 7HS
References:
http://www.acd-systems.co.uk/milaliles.com/Food.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldova
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_Moldova
