Sometime’s we all need a little treat - and what better occasion than a birthday! To be specific, two birthdays, as both my and Blai’s birthdays fall in the month of July. I’d been wanting to try La Trompette for a while after reading such marvellous reviews online, and the fact that they were recently awarded their first Michelin star didn’t hurt either, and so I booked a table for the two of us last Sunday at 7pm. We turned out to be the second couple in the restaurant, following close at the heels of the first couple. The restaurant did fill up throughout the night with many groups coming in at about 8pm.

After ordering, the bread basket made its way to our table and we were presented with a choice of three breads; there was a walnut bread flecked with bits of raisin, a heavily speckled black olive bread, and a white bread heavy with olive oil. Needless to say, throughout the course of our meal, we managed to try all three. All three were extremely delicious and perhaps we ate more than we should have. Upon inquiring, we were told that they baked all the bread daily on the premises.

I started with the Confit sea trout, crab and cucumber salad, crab croquettes, vichyssoise and pea shoots:

There were two generous slices of soft, melting fish sat in a bit of vichyssoise, acting more as a sauce than a soup. Inside the lettuce parcel was the crab and cucumber salad - just lots of crab meat with a bit of diced cucumber in a mayonnaise dressing. While the salad contained white crab meat, the crunchy crab croquettes were made of brown meat. I loved this dish.

Blai had the Soft polenta, English asparagus, cured ham, poached egg, black truffle and olive dressing:

While everything on the plate was very well cooked and delicious, Blai did not feel that all the ingredients worked altogether as a single dish. This was the only minor thing we could quibble about. Of the bits I did try, I very much liked the truffle and olive dressing and thought it worked well with the egg and polenta. I can understand though - I feel that some hams can be too assertive when combined with other ingredients.

For my main, I chose the Breast of duck, pastilla of confit leg, hot foie gras, cherry compote and caramelized endive:

The breast was cooked as I requested (pink inside) and sat on a bed of spinach. It was incredibly meaty and the cherry compote was beautiful with it. I never would have thought of caramelizing endive as they had here but its bitterness combined with just about everything on the plate, especially the foie gras and compote. A gorgeous dish.

After much deliberation, Blai settled with the Braised legs of poulet noir, with potato gnocchi, leek hearts, vin jaune and tarragon:

I tried a bit of everything off his plate and I can vouch that that chicken was as soft as it looks. It just fell off the bone and the sauce that went with it….mmmmm. We ended up having a discussion about what “yellow wine” was and we thought it was perhaps a typo and should be vin jeune, a young, not aged wine. However, it turns out that there is a vin jaune that is similar to sherry. Whatever it was, it made that sauce so wonderful! The gnocchi was chewy and potatoey and reminiscent of a German potato dumpling.

All the desserts sounded good but I chose the one that really stood out for me. This was the Fresh citrus fruits, banana sorbet, passion fruit jelly, Earl Grey tea, financiers:

Rarely does a dessert make me sit up and say, “Wow!”, and this one did. The photo doesn’t do this dessert justice - it doesn’t show that underneath that Earl Grey tea granité was a layer of citrus fruit segments, and under that was a scoop of banana sorbet, and under that was the passion fruit jelly. While all the ingredients sound disparate, together they blend together: the creaminess of the banana, the citrus note of the fruits and the tea, the zing of the passion fruit. Gorgeous. The financiers were equally fabulous, but I knew they would be after the quality of the bread!

Blai opted for another dessert that sounded just as refreshing, the Iced coconut parfait with lime granité, tropical fruits and lychee sorbet:

With the creamy coconut parfait sitting on a pastry base, his dessert was more substantial than mine but still very light and summery. I again only tried a bit of it and it was very good and judging by the way Blai cleaned his plate, I would say that he adored it too!

After dessert, I had an espresso, while they offered some hot water steeped with lemon to Blai as a refreshing alternative. Or as my brother so eloquently put it - “it sounds like you kinda drank a finger bowl”. But honestly, it was nice and really helped us relax and it possibly aided digestion; who knows? Alongside came these chocolate truffles:

Looking at these photos again is killing me; I cannot wait to return to La Trompette! Of course, this is unlikely to be very soon as all this deliciousness comes at a price; I would never try to convince anyone that this place is a budget restaurant! Two three course menus, 1 bottle of sparkling water, 1 glass of a red Bordeaux, 1 espresso, 1 hot water with lemon (no charge!) - this all came to £100 for the two of us.

La Trompette
5-7 Devonshire Road
Chiswick
London W4 2EU

We had a friend over for dinner last week and what a perfect excuse to put that dulce de leche to use, no? Since it was on a weekday, I resorted to making a one large dish instead of a starter and a main and then followed that with banoffee tarts. How can one go wrong with bananas and toffee and cream? Again, I took a shortcut in the form of ready made tart shells but I’ll have you know the cream was hand whipped! They went down pretty well though I think I overdid it a little with the cream!

Now I have two more tins of caramelised condensed milk… and one friend who says that I’ve so far offered him a tin every time I’ve seen him since I made them. Huh - my memory’s going, I think. Anyway, he keeps refusing - why does it scare people? It’s delicious!

Banoffee Tarts

4 individual tart shells
1/2 tin dulce de leche, (my tin was 397g)
1 large, ripe banana (can be increased to 2)
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 tbsp icing sugar

Whip the whipping cream with the icing sugar until your liking. Divide the dulce the leche between the tart shells and spread on the bases. Slice the banana(s) thinly and divide among the tart shells, arranging them in an even layer. Top each tart with the whipped cream.

The original banoffee recipe also includes a bit of freeze dried coffee granules in with the whipping cream. You can add it, of course.

When I heard that this year’s Korean Food Festival was scheduled for this past weekend (thank you, London Korean Links!), I cleared my calendar, called my brother who came down for the weekend and took along a couple more friends for an afternoon of eating. We arrived at about 12:30, and by the time we wove our way through the high street, filled with loads more stalls in the same kind of New Malden Day as last year, the garden of the Fountain Pub was absolutely packed. I believe it was much busier than last year - word has spread! Children’s shouts came from the presentation area as they went though the paces of their tae kwon do demonstrations but we ignored all these presentations for a good two hours as we plonked ourselves on a table on the other side of the garden and just started eating.

And boy, did we eat. Two orders of the Korean snack food of ddeokboggi, thick chewy rice cakes mixed with thin fish cakes and a spicy gochujang based sauce. This was very good, with some shredded carrots and onions mixed in and the sweet and slightly spicy sauce bringing it all together.

Smoke was wafting from the many charcoal grills and we followed our noses to a galbi so nice we had it twice. Actually, we had it three times but the second order had a disappointing marinade and so we had another order from the first stall. That marinade was so tasty it had us all gnawing away at the bones and licking our fingers.

We had some crossed wires between us which resulted in two different orders of spicy fried chicken but we took opportunities such as that to sample the fried chicken from various stalls. Shame the last one wasn’t as good as the first. Compare and contrast the colour of the first two examples with the last. The last was more like a sweet and sour sauce - not right. The best was the first as the sauce was the richest and had the addition of ground peanuts.

We also ate kimbap (always good),

and lots of chicken skewers (yummy!),

and fried vegetable fritters (just ok),

and extremely heavy, fried rice cakes that looked like marshmallows on a stick (too heavy! so sticky!).

We ate so much that we barely had any dinner later that evening. We did stick around to watch some of the tae kwon do demonstrations. Some of the kids were obviously very talented; I wouldn’t want to meet some of them in a dark alley. Rather luckily, we were just in time to watch this guy break a whole lot of marble sheets (I think that’s what the kids said). Very impressive! Will eating lots of grilled meat and kimchi make me this strong?

All my photos (and gosh, we ate a lot) can be seen in this Flickr photoset.

Dulce de leche. Do those words make you drool yet? Thick, brown, sticky, caramelised condensed milk is all that it is and it’s awfully easy to make. I finally got around to making some when I saw tins of condensed milk at my local budget supermarket (Netto, if you must know). I bought three, as I estimated that was what my largest pot could hold, brought them home and then nervously watched them all night. And that’s without even boiling them yet!

You see, I had read a few horror stories online about how unopened tins exploded while being boiled, spattering hot brown goo all over kitchen and ceiling. Of course, I started to wonder how exactly did that goo escape? Through a small puncture or were there sharp metal shards all over the place?! Upon careful rereading, the exploding only happened when the boiling water evaporated enough to expose the tins to air, whereby the risk of their exploding increases exponentially. Other techniques for making dulce de leche involve pouring the condensed milk into a pan and then baking it slowly in the oven. Nah, I was going to risk it.

The next day, while watching the men’s Wimbledon finals (which incidentally, lasted longer than the boiling!), I placed the three tins on their sides into my stockpot and covered them with lots of cold water; they were covered by at least an inch or two. If your tins have paper labels, remove them; mine had the labels printed directly onto the tin, something I’d not come across before. The pot was set to boil for three and a half hours. Every half hour or so, I would top up the pot with boiling water direct from my electric kettle. Do make sure the tins are always covered! I checked on mine nervously every five minutes at the beginning but then realised that half hour checks were going to be ok.

After they’ve finished their 3.5 hour stint in water, turn off the heat and let the tins cool in the water. Don’t be hasty and open the tins while they’re hot as they’re still likely to spray molten goo all over you and your kitchen. When we finally opened a tin, this was what greeted us:

Oh yeah. Thick, sticky, caramelly goodness. It’s very thick and we tasted first on teaspoons. It’s sweet and slightly milky and gosh, it’s hard to describe it but you ought to try making it too since it’s so easy! I like my caramel with a bit of salt and so we next had some on crackers; salt and caramel are just perfect bedfellows.

The best part of boiling directly in the tin is that you can take those unopened tins and put them straight back into your storecupboard. I’ve read that the sugars might crystallise a bit but it’s supposedly a good thing as you get a bit of crunch.

Now I still have 2.5 tins of dulce de leche left… what shall I do with them?!

Oh, and if you’re reading this in time, tomorrow (Saturday, 12 July 200 is the Korean Food Festival at the Fountain Pub in New Malden. More info over at London Korean Links.

Finally, all the Vancouver posts are done! Thanks for bearing with me and I promise some “nice food at home in London” posts for the next couple of months (save perhaps one or two posts on a weekend away I have planned in August!). I can only promise a couple of months as I’m going to be in NYC for a week in September! Do you have any recommendations for a first time visitor?

Now onto the web roundup:

Will it be cold in New York in September? I mean, will it be too cold for ice cream sandwiches?

Mark Bittman does it again - 101 simple recipes for picnics!

Robyn over at The Girl Who Ate Everything has a wonderful guide to Parisian patisseries in three parts.

Steamy Kitchen has posted on four different kinds of fried rice, each featuring a different processed meat. I’ll admit here that I have cooked with two of those processed products!

It’s only kind of related to food but this anatomy of a gummy bear over at Serious Eats just cracks me up!

I’d been down Denman in Vancouver many times before and had passed the quaint little ramen shop by the name of Kintaro Ramen each time and I had glanced at the menu, with its cheese ramen (apparently, “the ladies loooove it!”), but I’d never bothered to get into the queue. It was only this year, when my brother’s friends gave it the thumbs up, that I managed to finally head over there.

After meeting a group of friends at the corner of Denman and Georgia, and then watching a massive bicycle rally go through that exact corner, we strolled down towards the tiny restaurant where there was already a queue outside. The deal seems to be as such: you take your place at the end of the queue and everyone in your party must be there at the time. The queue works on a first come, first served basis - if there are 2 seats available, but a group of 4 in front of your party of 2, you’ll have to wait until they are seated first. Fair enough. To hasten things, you’re given the menu (in both English and Japanese) to pursue and your order is taken while you’re waiting outside. We queued for about half an hour at around 7pm on a Friday night.

When you’re finally seated, there’s still quite a wait while your order is prepared. Luckily, we didn’t have to wait too long for our gyoza.

These gyoza were fried very nicely and separated easily, something that I’d never seen before. Most gyoza I’ve had tend to be stuck together and so there’s always a bit of ripping of skin as we pry them from each other. The flavour was very good - quite porky but these were also the first I’ve had where the filling is quite finely minced, almost like a mousse.

After we scoffed the gyoza, it was still quite a wait until we received our bowls of ramen. As I’d never been there before, I went quite middle of the road with my order. I chose the miso ramen (their special recipe) with medium strength broth (rich and light broths also available). Their broth is pork based and vegetarians are not catered for - keep that in mind if you’re planning to visit! Each ramen also comes with a serving of pork, available in both lean and fat versions. Of course, I chose the fat!

And this is what arrived - it was a massive, and heavy, bowl of noodles. The broth was opaque and you could see from the globules of fat and tiny particles of meat in the broth that it is very pork based! It’s so rich that I don’t even want to imagine what the rich level of broth is like. But it was delicious. The miso flavour is not as strong as in regular miso soup but adds a lovely creaminess to the broth.

Fatty pork is also the way to go - you get this Swiss roll of pork belly that has both tender meat and melting fat. A friend of my brother had the lean pork and they were drier slices of pork loin. My brother had their shoyu ramen, with soy sauce in the broth, and this was just as delicious, with lots of pepper to flavour it.

We were in and out of the restaurant in under 35 minutes, excluding queuing time, which shows how fast we slurped it all up. Now I’m keen to return again to try their cheese ramen, which comes topped with, you guessed it, a big pile of cheese. It’s supposed to go very well with the broth!

Kintaro Ramen
788 Denman St.
Vancouver, BC
Canada

And what good memories they were! I expressed to my best friend that I had never had all-you-can-eat sushi in Vancouver before and immediately, she sought to fix that. One night, we headed to Kisha Poppo on Davie that has an AYCE menu and we went prepared (read: empty stomachs). All the fish was very fresh and came in generous portions and the sushi was noticeably lighter on rice than at other places I’ve been. It’s not just sushi either as there are various tempura and bbq items on the menu and even ice cream for dessert. We ordered, and got through, a lot of food and here are the highlights.

OK, those of you in the UK will just about faint when I tell you the price - $18.95 per person. That’s less than £10! What a deal!

The rest of my photos from that dinner at on my Flickr photosteam.

Kisha Poppo
1143 Davie Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada

There’s another branch in Richmond, BC.

My brother and I were wandering around the downtown Vancouver area thinking about dinner but not wanting anymore Asian food. After wandering around for a bit (and passing many an Asian restaurant), we recalled a couple of burger joints on Denman near the beach at English Bay. We chose Fatburger over Vera’s Burger Shack. Orders are placed at the counter and your food is brought to your booth.

I had the Fatburger (a 1/3 lb burger) while my brother had the Kingburger (1/2 lb of beef!). These were fully dressed and were moist and very more-ish.

The onion rings were excellent! The rings were coated in a breadcrumb mixture that made them seem less oily than their battered brothers. And of course, proper onion slices, not those fake reformed rings of chopped onion.

The fries too were good - crisp with no hint of sogginess.

Would I return? You bet! This is fast food I can get used to! (And I want to try their chili dog next.)

Fatburger
1101 Denman St.
Vancouver, BC
V6G 2M7
Canada

There are other locations around Canada and the United States.

It’s becoming increasing apparent that some of the best food in Vancouver is Asian. Dim sum, anyone?

This was all eaten at Sun Sui Wah, one of the best Cantonese restaurants in Vancouver. The dim sum quality was top-notch and the price was much lower than we all expected. The only sad thing was that I couldn’t eat one of my favourites - wu kok - as they had run out! All the photos from our lunch can be found on my Flickr photostream.

Sun Sui Wah
3888 Main Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada

Perhaps surprisingly, excellent Vietnamese/Cambodian food can found in Vancouver’s Chinatown at Phnom Penh. It’s even Anthony Bourdain approved, as the signed menu on display attests. As for me, well, I’ve eaten there once already and I hope to make another visit before I leave. For our first visit last week, we chose a number of their “greatest hits”, their most famous dishes.

First up, garlic fried chicken wings - I think they’re dusted with cornstarch before frying and they’re so juicy and crispy on the outside. But what really sets these wings apart is the dipping sauce on the side. It’s mainly lime juice and black pepper and that spicy zing goes so well with fried foods.

We had to have our usual order of their delicious Trieu Chau fried rice. I have no idea what they put in there in terms of seasonings but it’s great. Oh, and the addition of lots of tasty Chinese sausage doesn’t hurt as well.

Some marinated butter beef? Sure, why not?! This is again one of their signature dishes of rare beef (almost a carpaccio) layered with butter and a delicious sauce of I don’t know what and fried garlic and cilantro on top.

I also tried their dry egg noodles, with soup on the side. There was minced pork, pork slices, kidney slices, liver slices, fried garlic, cilantro, and their special sauces (that’s what their menu says!). This wasn’t my favourite on the table but it was still good.

I couldn’t leave there without trying one of their many desserts. As I hadn’t had a flan in a while, I ordered their version of it - the caramel custard. It had a lovely flavour and I gobbled it up pretty quickly (and by myself too as no one else at the table liked sweets).

If you’re in the area, and not looking for Chinese food, I highly recommend this place! It does get very busy as it’s not a very large restaurant but it does take bookings for groups larger than four.

Phnom Penh
244 E Georgia St
Vancouver, BC
Canada