Rice, as we all know, is an Asian thing. Rice noodle, rice flour, fried rice, rice porridge, glutunious rice…the list goes on. The one thing that I could never get used to is sweeten rice - and in Malaysia this comes in the guise of pulut hitam.

Rice pudding is a traditional dessert here in the UK, something that I had always sworn off. Hey, I rather go for a trifle anytime if you ask me. Strangely enough, it can also be eaten warm or cold. Bacon made this once, and it consists of milk,rice, milk,cream and flavourings like vanilla pods or cinnamon. I think the one bacon made had vanilla essence (eh, we were poor then ok - I rather stick with vanilla pods any time). We had it hot, and it was like a strange sweeten rice porridge…bizzare.

I’ve never had it ever since, and it must be 2.5 years since bacon made it. Bacon still has it occasionally, as it is sold in the yoghurt shelves here…he eats it for breakfast instead of yoghurt. I was starving today as I was walking into the train station, where this woman was handing out rice pudding samples. Yes, one of the great things of working in town is getting free samples handed out to you all the time…I love it!

Yes they come prettily packaged as well. In case you’re wondering wtf is rhubarb, it looks like a red-stalked celery. Sour tasting, I never understand the English craze for rhubarb. Saying that, I have planted one in my garden so we shall see when it grows. Anyway, it is usually so sour, it is only made into a jam like consistency with tons and tons of sugar.

Decided to give rice pudding another try, seeing that I left my banana at home and was really starving. Strangely enough, I enjoyed this creamy confection. Tasting something between ice cream and nasi lemak (its the cream in it I swear!), the glob of rhubarb jam that comes with it made a whole lot of difference. Bacon has his with custard on top as well, but that’s really way too creamy. Dangerous food for breakfast as it is full of cream and carbs (200 calories per pot) but it did keep me full until noon.

Will definately go for it again - yum.

I had always been very adventerous in exploring new foods - and growing up in KL with its plethora of foreign cuisines definately helped. It is very rare to find a type of cuisine unrepresented in KL, I daresay most cuisines are represented in some shape or form in twin tower land. There is, however, a missing piece in the great KL food puzzle - West Indies food.

No, not Western India. More like Jamaican, Bahamian and the likes. The soul food of Bob Marley. I had tentatively heard of the existence of such food, but had not come across it before. So I was pleasantly suprised when I discovered it nearly two years ago at the V Festival, then again at the Notting Hill Carnival and then Glastonbury

Today, we both woke up in the morning and suddenly decided that we were craving for Carribean cuisine. Yes, we read minds and we are extremely greedy. We have no idea of any Carribean restaurants in Leeds, but a rough idea of the ghetto where there might be West Indian restaurants. So we went a-searching.

We drove around for about 15 minutes in Roundhay/Chapeltown ghetto where alot of immigrants had made their home; Indian, Polish, West Indians, Jewish ect. After nearly giving up, we spotted Maureen’s

A sight for sore eyes.

A small checklist on carribean cuisine:

Ackee & Saltfish: Salt cod is sautéed with ackee (Ackee is a fruit from a tree that bears bright orange/red fruit), onions, peppers, tomatoes, herbs, and may be garnished with crisp bacon and fresh tomatoes
Curried Goat : Curry made with goat, carrots, potatoes. Slightly like the mamak kurma
Rice & Peas: A misnomer, this means rice cooked with red kidney beans - a staple like white rice is to chinese food. Coconut milk is used as well, making it slightly like nasi lemak without the pandan smell.
Jerk meat : Chicken, pork or beef rubbed with a spicy spice mix made of peppers and allspice and grilled.
Plantins : Huge mostly tasteless bananas, grilled, deepfried or stewed
Festival: a slightly sweet, deep fried dumpling stick, eaten with jerk.
Patty: Made from a slightly crusty, pastry dough formed into a semi-circle envelope/turnover and filled with hot and spicy ground meat filling. Like curry puff and eaten everywhere
Cow Foot: Erm…soup made out of cow’s feet. Recipie here
Blue Drawers/ Tie Leaf: Boiled green banana pudding
Gumbo: Like the Creoles make it, but not as spicy and thicker.

It’s all seriously weird and wonderful isn’t it?? Even the guy inside Maureen’s looked like he was stoned out of his head …and of course I had the pleasure of being the only yellow person there and bacon the only white one. How exciting. However, as we had not have Carribean cuisine since Glastonbury in June, so instead of picking some adventerous unknown item, we went with what we love and missed -

Bacon had Jerk chicken with rice and peas. Comes with macaroni and cheese as well which is slightly weirdly American. And a side salad. £5.50 for a large

My curried goat with rice and peas as well. Can you believe this is the small version at £4.50. Large version comes with boiled cabbage

erm….fried chicken. Heheh. I really wanted some fried chicken, and this was 1/4 of a huge chicken. So much nicer than KFC.£1.80

When we went to pay, bacon calculated that the total came up to £12.45. The stoned looking cashier said, “Around £12 man”. So we paid £12. Hilarious. And not to stick to the stereotype, but all they listened to inside the small cafe was reggae and more reggae. Not many pictures due to me forgetting cameras of any kind, so this was taken with bacon’s phone. Being the only yellow and white in the scene did not help as the endless trail of customers stared at us whilst waiting for their food.

Well, we definately don’t belong there. But love it we did, and return we shall. The next time we return we will go for all the weird and wonderful sounding food - no more jerk chicken or curried goat even though it was so beautiful….symphony…sighh…And next time, when I am off my antibiotics, we shall have lashings of carribean rum punch as well.

Maureens West Indian Restaurant
105 Roundhay Rd ,
Leeds, LS8 5AJ

2007 was the year that I bore my readers with recipies of dishes that no one ever cooks..I honestly cannot say that I had a response to one of my recipies that mentioned that they’ve tried it and it’s delicious. So unless I need to keep the recipie here so that I won’t go searching for it again, I will try not to post up recipies, only pictures ya….recipies will only be made available on request.

2007 is also the year that I made a whole christmas dinner by myself. Growing up with a maid and a kitchen-proud mother, all the cooking that I did was just literally popping stuff into the kitchen, all the pounding,grinding and peeling are premade before I even step into the kitchen. So Christmas 2007 is very special indeed,with yours truly slaving away in the kitchen..

Setting the scene.

starting off with bacon wrapped turkey

Orange topped raw ham joint

Pigs in blankies - hotdogs & sausages wrapped in bacon

The star - gobble gobble

Orange glazed ham

Mulled wine cabbage & swede carrot mash

Brussels sprouts with melted butter topped with crispy bacon

Roast potatoes with turkey fat, pigs in blankets & sausagemeat stuffing

The feast

My plateful

Ham was unsalty and slightly sweet, like it should be. Turkey was tender with a slight saltiness, not at all dry and flaky like how it is usually served - I have my secrets of course ;). This was my first proper ‘dinner party’, with decorations and all. Impressive, if I might say so myself. Of course, after two days of endless slaving away at the stove, the least I could have done was produce edible food.

Hope your Christmas was as delicious as mine!

Following up on the last post…welcome to the Buffet Box, at the corner of the Merrion Centre.

the smallest kitchen in the world…I swear its smaller than the one I had in my old apartment!Yes, we were on one enf of the restaurant/cafe and the kitchen was on the other end. That was how small it was.

For those not in the know..this is the Leeds version of the Malaysian nasi lemak. Hmm.Seriously, beggars cant be choosers. The sambal is a tad sweet,but other than that it was actually pretty authentic. A side of chicken and potato curry that came with it suprisingly does not taste indian (like all curries here) but with the distinctive taste of coconut milk, just like home. The rice don’t taste coconutty..which was pretty strange. But overall it was not bad for £4.50, and beggars can’t be choosers. Will definately go back for lunch as my workplace is only 2 minutes walk away.

Penang Assam Laksa. A little lack of ‘heh-koh’ (shrimp paste) but not bad. May have come out from a Hup Leong packaged powder mix. I think it’s made with flaked canned tuna!! Clever idea - I hate making assam laksa because of the lack of fish here,but now I might just try it out with flaked canned tuna.

Overall, not bad for £10 for two. Not the best best in the world, but totally edible. Would definately return especially towards freezing winter - Bah Kut Teh for lunch…yummmz.

mils: so little pix i take
[09:05] mils: 300 only in total i think
[09:08] audrey: huh!
[09:08] audrey: aiyo
[09:10] mils: tsktsk
[09:14] audrey: yahlor
[09:14] audrey: what man!
[09:14] audrey: hahaha
[09:14] audrey: somemore maybe 15% will be faulty shots
[09:14] audrey: blurry and all
[09:14] audrey: so means only 225 shots u took!
[09:17] mils: yah!
[09:17] mils: is this like kiasu or what???
[09:17] mils: hahahahahahaha
[09:17] audrey: hahaha
[09:17] audrey: abit la

Due to the rainy conditions and bacon overworking my poor walking feet, I did not snap as much as I could’ve - well, try exposing your £600 camera to the rain and see how you feel. So most food pictures were taken with the good ol’ Nikon - by dinner time I was so tired I frankly CANNOT BE ARSED to carry a 1kg camera with me.

Because I’ve managed to only upload pictures from Nikon, today we shall talk about cows and pigs.

I can’t even pronounce the name, let alone memorize it, so this was where we ate dinner on the first night. Located near the Henry tower, just off the main drag of Wenceslas Square (main road of Praha’s New Town/tourist trap)

Looking through the menu, a good mixture of international/continental european cuisine with the more traditional Czech meaty food, something caught my eye immediately.

Not like as if it is much work put into it…

I had not had beef tartare since my days in Belgium - in 2000! For the uninitiated, yes, it is exactly what it looks like - raw minced beef with a raw egg and spices on the side. Although I must mention that I did not exactly realized it was going to be presented this way - the last time I had beef tartare it was already all mixed up and looked more like a tuna salad. This, you can even make out the face of the cow. Oops.

It comes with rock-hard toasts, and you mix everything up on the plate (your choice of spices) and spread it just like pate. But unlike pate, this meat is extremely fresh (you would die otherwise) and there is no lingering liver smell. It is suprisingly flavourless - the flavour is from the spices and it is not very strong indeed. All in all, it looks like meat spread. But I had to have it just this once - its been so long.

My order was funnily enough greeted by amused stares mixed in with horrified faces when other patrons in the restaurants realized what I had ordered.

Guess what did bacon have? No, not foil.

Roast smoked pork knuckle - a czech specialty (sorry for the blurred pictures,low light conditions)

Bacon wouldn’t let me take a proper nice picture of his pork knuckle as he was hungry.

It was the best pork I’ve had in ages. Gently smoked, it was then roasted on spit bone-on when ordered. Measuring more than 1.1kg (it even said so on the menu!) it was an absolutely gobsmacking yummy way of making pork more delicious than ever. And really, it WAS a meal for two, but I just have to have raw meat,stupidly enough. This dish came with bits of cucumber and tomato, with horseradish & mustard. And strangely enough, a slice of kiwi.Oh, and two quarters of a sweet gherkin. All very german.

I was unable to finish my beef tartare as I kept picking the meat off bacon’s pig. But I was happy to announce that I am still well and happy after eating raw meat with raw egg - halfway through I began to doubt my sanity of eating raw meat on holiday in this age of foot and mouth disease.

But seeing the word ‘Marlenka’ on the dessert menu just changed my mind. Before leaving for Prague, I found this excellent blog on restaurants,foods, and all things edible in and around Prague.

What is essentially a layer cake made with honey;it is served with a dollop of cream and a drizzle of chocolate sauce. The top is sprinkled with what I can only ascertain as chopped nuts. Blissfully heavenly - ableit a little dry.

All that’s left..

All in all, a great meal to start the trip, admist all the rain and thunder. The total bill (with two beers) came up to be 489CK = £12 for two. Bloody bargin.

I am addicted to chocolate. Yeah, like that’s a big surprise for those of you that know me. I can finish huge family sized bars of chocolate tabs i.e. the big cadbury type. In one sitting.

Thornton’s is the british version of neuhaus/ Godiva. They are makers of all things chocolate, complete with a chocolate fountain in every retail shop that you can get a choc. shot from or strawberries/toffee/marshmallow coated from the fountain. Their chocolates range from the usual bars to fanciful praline ala godiva to peanut brittle and sugar free treats. And their toffee. Every Christmas, bacon would get a hamper of 2kg worth of toffee. Which is bought for him for the sake that I do not eat toffee - so I wouldn’t steal it from him. Bah humbug.

The Thornton’s that most people know is the simple retail versions hawking all sort of sweeties. But the Thornton’s I prefer is the Thornton’s Café . Very limited location-wise, I believe there is only about 34 pepperred around the country,compared to 1000s of thornton retail store around the country. Its very strange, but the cafes seem to be only open in outlet stores and not actual high streets and shopping centres.

I had never dreamed that my addiction to Starbucks would be compromised - ever. It was the only thing that stayed with me from my days in Fresno to weekday sessions at my local starbucks to here - where the coffee culture is next to non-existant. However, with the discovery of Thornton’s Café, I am now torn between starbucks coffee and Thornton’s. Plus they give you a free chocolate for every drink ordered at Thorntons! And choc flakes on your drink - which is usually topped with a cloud of whipped cream. It’s like all my dreams come true in one place!

Bacon is less loyal to his desserts, and over the months had tried out the Alpini cake, the Victorian sponge,the raspberry cheesecake (fantabulous) and one of the best ever was the Chocolate Decadance. OMG. TO DIE FOR (will take a picture next time). The reason it had taken me so long to introduce you to the world of Thornton’s was that the lighting inside is never conducive for pictures - some of you might have even see similar pictures as the ones below on my flickr account. But with the advent of the big ass camera - I can at last welcome you to the dreamy world made out of cakes, chocolate and puffy white cream.

World’s best carrot cake. Extremely light and airy, it is topped by the smoothest buttercream flavoured with cinnamon. Yum. Have you guessed I did not order this?

Piece de resistance - the Chocolate Seville Orange. With a base of chocolate buttons and a creamy orange-tinged melty chocolate mousse, I am extremely addicted to this. Can’t go on for more than a month without it. I’d imagine if I worked next to a thornton’s café, I wouldn’t have much chance but to turn into a orange roly poly.

One more time, just because it is irresistable. Yummms.I’m in love, I really am. If given a choice of no sex for the rest of my life compared to an endless supply of this dreamy treat, I would be very hard-pressed. I really need to go to Chocoholics Anonymous.

Red Chilli has long been a Manchunian (people/things from Manchester) institution. Being one of the few cities in the UK with a proper chinatown (Leeds has a block of building disguising itself as china town), it is chock full of restaurants with full chinese clientele. They have a branch in Leeds, which means I do not have to go far for my fix of chilli.

Some people dislike Red Chilli due to its ‘commercialization’, but seriously, the food is as authentic Szechuan as it gets. It does call itself a Beijing restaurant as well, but as I don’t know what food from Beijing is supposed to taste, I am not going to comment. The interior is dark, dark wood, one of them modern chinese joints with dark interior design & dim lights. MIL says that its so you don’t see what you order just in case its frogs legs :D.

As there was only 3 of us, we ordered 4 dishes (!!) and rice for two, but it was far too much for us to finish. I must admit that I had not actually ordered according to the four taste or thinking about the best combo of flavours, but randomly picked things out that I’ve missed eating. Thus everything was heavily flavoured and sauced-up.

Kai lan with lap cheung (chinese sweet sausages) and air-dried pork (they called this wind dried; like hairdryer-dried) . A little too oily for my taste, and the kai lan is a little old. However, as kai lan is not native to UK, this was probably flown from China - thus a little old. But seriously, I had not had kai lan in such a long time, this is a blessing. My fav still remains the thai-styled kai lan with salted fish. YUM. Now I gotta go hunt for a thai restaurant that does that…pffft

Sweet and sour deep fried croaker.

When I was young, my parents used to stuff fish down my throat. As there is ALWAYS a fish dish on the table every single meal, I didn’t have much of a choice really. But I do get extremely confused with the names of fishes, as you can see from my last post. I have definitely not heard of yellow croaker before, but as they had ran out of fish to be steamed, we ordered this.

It’s what bacon called an inside-out fish. It has been deboned (to minimize the english scare factor) and is dipped in heavy batter, with skin and all attached. There is not much flesh to it, after all, it IS a small fish. Mostly, its super-crunchy texture sort of put me off, as the batter is so heavy it almost looks like salt baked fish thai-styled. The sweet and sour sauce is OK though, none of the scary pink stuff from takeaways. Maybe its just the extremely dark lights.

PS: Apparently it makes an appearance in The romance of the three kingdoms

They call this the Poets Gongpo Pork. Not sure which part is poetic, but its one of my favourite. Can you see the fat just glistening off the sauce? This was in line with what I’ve had before in Esquire Kitchen in KL. Soppable sauce with steamed buns.I can eat a potful of rice with the sauce.

We had another dish of salt & pepper soft shell crab, but it was devoured before I remembered to snap. Extremely salty, it drowned the delicate flavours that forms the deliciousness of crabs. Bacon & MIL loved it though, but it was too salty for me.Again with the heavy batter, I was a little dissapointed.

I know I’ve kinda complained nonstop, but I do like their food here. I’ve had meals (the mapo tofu is the best!) and noodles (yummy dan dan mien) from here previously, and it’s not bad. No pictures previously as it is always so dark in here. It might not be the best subsitute for dai pai dongs, but it is authentic enough to please me. Beggars cannot be choosers. Oh, and it comes with rude staff that do not speak English, so that’ll be interesting for anyone wanting to foray further than their local takeaway. I love going there on a weekend and watch the amused and slightly shocked faces of the English patrons randomly ordering dim sum or smirking at chicken’s feet & pork trotter.

I had raved about Kasa Rosa many times; my little well-kept secret restaurant (seeing that majority of my readers are from Australia,Malaysia & HK!).My fav restaurant in Leeds;and obviously where I want to be during my birthday. We had been there 2 weeks earlier for a quick pasta,where lobster was one of the daily specials.I was hoping it would be on again,but unfortunately it was all out by then. Shame…but I also knew that nothing on their menu will dissapoint my tastebuds.

Well,maybe the potato dishes..they don’t seem to excel in anything potatoey.

Decor is very low key and unpretentious,with wooden furniture and selected mix of paintings peppered around the restaurant.At 6.20pm, the restaurant was still fairly empty. By the time we left at 7.30,it was completely full. Yes,I eat fast.

bacon’s fuzzy olive starter. Yah,it was the olive that was fuzzy,not my manual focusing.heh.Very simple but well marinaded,none of that ‘dry’ feeling you get whilst chewing on olives sometimes.

The deep-fried machengo cheese makes an appearance again.I love deepfried cheese, deepfried ice cream, deep fried mars bar…and KFC too.

And now,time for the main course. Seeing that I had lost all hope with the dissapearance of ‘lobster’ from the specials board, I opted for the king prawn& scallop over safforn rice. Again, like most of their dishes, mildly yet equisitely flavoured with fresh herbs, seafood stock and loads of tomatoey goodness,the tomato-white wine sauce was an absolute hit. Scallops as big as a ping pong ball impressed me as well, and the sinfully delicious fresh prawns was so gently flavoured I could devour about 2 more servings.

Bacon’s Americano pizza,with spicy chorizo sausage slices and peppers. Love the crust..it was thin you are unable to pick a slice up…needing to fold it into half first.We’ve always wanted to try their pizzas out,its the lovely smell of pizzas baking wafting from the kitchen all the time.

This was probably the first time we were so stuffed we had to skip desserts - their tiramisu is legendary. Sponge completely soaked with coffee liquor,the mascarpone cheese layering that was heavenly.

But another day.

Ibiza, part of the Balaeric Island;Spain. Paying for an all inclusive holiday has put me in a unique position of havin a week long eat feast - I cannot button my jeans anymore:(.

I expected a whole load of crap food from the hotel,seeinng that I would probably eat it irregardless of whether I like it or not. However, a suprising amount of lovely grub were produced by the hotel kitchen - and the one day I did not bring my camera to the buffet was the one day they served Paella. :(. I had 3/4 of a yummy crab - 1/4 must’ve been taken by someone else before I got there.Bleah…

they love their rice and fish - so do I!

…and pork..

…and fresh shellfish..

…and more fish…

This, I freaking love.Unbelievable that the hotel produced this.This is Fideua - paella made with macaroni instead of rice.Typically Spanish, it was chock a block full of langoustines,clams (lala!!), mussels & fish.The sauciness of the saffron flavoured seafood juices it is cooked in made it well worth the 3 platefulls I had.*Burp.

Creme caramel -another spanish fave.They have a sweet tooth - me likes:).

Epanandas - currypuff like with tomato-sardine stuffing.Just like mom used to make:).

We found this whilst meandering in Evissa around lunch time;could not resist the lovely herby aroma wafting from it.

Paella (EU6.50)- need I say more?Best-est ever with fresh-est ever seafood chucked in.

Bacon ordered grilled sardines (EU5).Miles away from my sardine sandwiches my mom made when I was a child. Perfectly grilled,crisp fries, grilled pepper topped with grilled aubergines.

And now, la piece de resistance :

Restaurante Can Pujole, on the way to our fav beach of Cala Bassa

We were greeted with local olives,garlic mayo & fresh bread

Serving Ibicinean cocinna, we ordered the Buillit Pescado - EU28 per person

Made with a selection of fresh sea fish(john dory,grouper,monkfishs ect), it is gently flavoured with safforn, herbs, chilli and generously stewed with flavourful potatoes. Amazingly subtle flavours,it was fantastically fresh and worth the expense.

Poke me poke me!

It came with arroz a banda; a type of paella cooked with cubed squid.Yummers with a squeeze of lemon.

Strangely enough,it came after the fish - you are not supposed to eat it together.Hmm.

Oh, and of course, it came sprinkled liberally with beautiful sunset.

A beautiful night ended with graixonera - delicious cake made with Balearic croissants and come filled with cream, chocolate, sweet pumpkin.Again, subtly flavoured but lovely.

All in all it came to EU63;around 50pounds for the both of us,but it was well worth it. We ended the night with free shots of Hiberanas Ibicinecas - a local moonshine liquor seeped with aniseed and a variety of other herbs.Sigh….nice.