Four Seasons, London

My parents are in town, so we decided to take them to a restaurant famous for its duck and infamous for its service. Four Seasons reportedly has the best roast duck in the UK, and there are now three branches in London. The one we went to was in Bayswater. I tried making a reservation, but no one answered the phone the whole day, so we just showed up with our fingers crossed. The hostess (a dragon of a lady, but reasonably nice enough) quickly took my name and told us to wait. Because we were early, she said we could get a table NOW but must leave within the hour. Since we were still waiting for Bern, we passed on her offer and said we would wait.

The crowd soon appeared, some with reservations and lots without, plus people wanting takeaway as well. It was a really small restaurant, with lots of people crowding near the front door, which was exactly where we were seated after a table became available. I never really felt relaxed and was not able to enjoy my meal properly, especially with the constant stream of people coming through the door and the iron lady/hostess screaming orders, right left and centre.

We quickly ordered, as the waiters kept asking if we were ready. So I decided on the set meal for 4, which included their famous Aromatic Crispy Duck and also their Cantonese Roast duck in a mixed BBQ plate. The meal started with a hot and sour soup and then the crispy duck with pancakes as entrees. The duck was nice, but I actually prefer Peking Duck style. The meat was tasty but a little dry.

The mains were 6 courses- salt and pepper squid, spicy prawns, Lo Hon vegetables, beef with cashews, mixed BBQ plate (with a bit of Cantonese duck) and fried rice. All very standard Chinese restaurant dishes.
Was it the best duck I've ever had? I don't think I could comment, as I only had the Aromatic Crispy Duck. I will need to try out the Cantonese Roast Duck properly... all that crowd and people willing to wait must mean something. But it was definitely not a very relaxed dining experience. They just want you to eat quickly so that they can turn around the tables as quick as possible. So typical.... but the crowd just kept on coming. Siaw... (Hokkien for 'Crazy')

Chocolate Macarons

I love macarons. After tasting too many in Paris, I love them even more. Kinda crunchy but chewy at the same time, it has now become my ultimate comfort food. I decided to make them today, albeit in a very handicaped kitchen and following a recent cake disaster (I blame the recipe...if it looks a little suss, do not try it).

 I do not have a sieve and a food processor here, so I was unable to grind the almond meal into a fine powder and then sieve it to make sure there are no large bits. Hence, my macarons are a bit lumpy on the surface. But still tasty and it also formed the feet! The step that I  read was important was to leave the whites out overnight, so I made sure I prepared the whites last night before I went to bed.

Overall, a good recipe, but next time, I will reduce a little of the almond meal and double  the cocoa powder to get a darker chocolate colour. Will let you know when I attempt it again.... Also thinking of making strawberry-flavoured ones.

The rough little layers at the bottom are known as feet.











By the way, Bern does not like macarons. Weirdo! But I still love him anyway... Oh ya, here is his second-hand bike which we bought for 69 quid. Needed a new tyre after the 3rd day! Cost us another 20 quid for a tyre. Otherwise, a decent bike, and even comes with dual suspension. :)

Chocolate Macarons Recipe

65 grams Almond Meal
15 grams Cocoa Powder
80 grams Icing Sugar

40 grams Icing Sugarr
50 grams Egg White

Heat the oven to 160°C. Line the baking tray with a baking mat or two sheets of baking paper.

 Blend the almond meal, cocoa powder and 80g icing sugar in a processor, making sure the mixture is well blended and fine. Then pass this mixture through a fine sieve, making sure that there are no lumps left.

 For the egg whites: make sure the bowl you use is extremely clean. The egg whites should be at room temperature, before you start beating, add a few drops of lemon juice or a pinch of salt. Beat on a medium speed, and slowly add the sugar (40g in total) spoon by spoon. Increase the speed after a minute, beating on high speed for 4 minutes or untill strong peaks have formed. Make sure that the eggs hold firm peaks, like a bird’s beak!

 Sprinkle the dry mixture spoon by spoon over the egg whites. Blend this mixture very slowly with a spatula, just blend gently and not beat, else the whites will flop over.

 While mixing you should be gentle making sure not to overmix, as you’d rather have an undermixed batter than a cakey overmixed batter.

 Fill in this mixture in a piping bag and use a 8-10 mm round tip. Pipe blobs of batter on the circled baking sheet, make sure you are holding the piping bag perpendicular to the sheet.
 Leave the piped batter in a dry warm place for minimum 20 minutes so as to develop a thin cover. The macarons should be dry to touch before going in the oven.

Place the tray into the middle of the oven.

Within 5 minutes the feet will start forming. The total time should be 10-11 minutes at 150-160°C
Remove the tray from the oven, take off the baking sheet and place on a wet surface for a couple of seconds so as to stop the baking process. You can do so by placing the baking sheet on a wet piece of cloth flattened out.
 
Peel the macarons off the baking sheet.Sandwich two macarons together with some chocolate butter cream filling.
 
 

Before I sandwiched them with chocolate cream.

 
Chocolate Buttercream Filling Recipe


125 grams butter, at room temperature
1 cup icing sugar
35 grams dark chocolate

Whip butter in a small mixing bowl until it is creamy.
Melt chocolate over a double boiler and let it cool for 2 minutes before adding to the butter mixture. Add the icing sugar gradually, whipping as you go.
Pipe mixture into a piping bag and let it set in the fridge for 10-15 mixture until it is solid enough to pipe onto macaron shells.

Banana Cake -Disaster!

Where do I begin? I had a few ripe bananas lying around so I thought I would attempt baking a cake, and I found this recipe on another blog that had so many good reviews that it could not possibly go wrong, right?Wrong....!!!!!! It looks alright, but tasted only so so. The cake is moist, but too dense for my liking and the topping was soooo sweet, I had to scrape it off. This is coming from a sweet tooth. Plus, I thought the cake batter recipe had too much sugar so I even reduced it by 150g. It was still far too sweet after, pretty much diabetic- inducing. And the cream cheese topping recipe was so runny.... Needless to say, I was pretty upset. AAArrrggghHHhh.... I feel like I have lost my cooking mojo. This does not bode well for today, as I was thinking of attempting to make chocolate macarons, Paris style. I'm not sure if I want to anymore....

I'm not even going to bother posting the recipe... and look at the mess I had to clean up. NOT HAPPY.

If someone has a good and reliable recipe, can you please share it with me? Dying to make a good banana cake...HELP! HELP! HELP!

Miss my kitchen back home!!! My Kitchen Aids....

Chinese Style Spicy Pork and Eggplant

My apologies for not blogging for awhile. There are a multitude of reasons, being:

We are moving! Moving is stressful, even when you do not have much to move.

Finally, good bye to Shad Thames.The area has been great, but I really need some decent sleep, and because it is summer, it has been really noisy (even at 3 am). Too many pubs and restaurants around here. Thus, the flat has constantly been viewed by potential tenants, so I try to avoid stinking up the place with cooking smells. Hence, not much cooking recently. Just very simple meals. Also, I have been pretty stressed out trying to sort out some loose ends (agents, landlords, bills, bank etc~ people and things you want to most avoid in life). Having poor sleep for a long time actually makes you quite delirious! Also makes me miss my own bed (and kitchen) in Melbourne :(

Anyway, cannot wait to move to the next place, which will be soon! Much bigger, and a much more inspiring kitchen as well. Plus, it will be closer to work for Bern. Oh ya, we went bicycle shopping and got him a bike. The ride will take him less than ten minutes from the new place.... woopie!

Anyway, I have made this dish quite a few times in the last couple of weeks. Pretty quick and easy, and good to store and reheat.

Chinese Style Spicy Pork and Eggplant Recipe

1 large eggplant, cut into batons
250g mince pork
3 cloves garlic, minced
a knob of ginger, minced
handful coriander, roughly chopped
1 tbsp chili bean paste
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tbsp Shao Xing rice wine
salt and pepper to taste
oil for deep frying

Heat the oil for deep frying. When hot, add the eggplant and cook briefly until slightly coloured, Remove andd place on absorbent paper. (If you think this is too unhealthy, you can brush the eggplant with oil and bake in oven)

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan. Add garlic and ginger and fry until fragrant. Add mince pork and cook until caramelised. Add the fried eggplant and stir. Add the chili bean paste, soy, rice wine, vinegar and sugar. Stir to combine. Add some water if too dry. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve in a dish and top with corainder as garnish.

Market Day, Paris

This will be the last blog about France. If this trip is anything to go by, we are definitely looking forward to the rest of our travels. On our last day, we were tossing up between going to Versailes (another outskirt place with a palace) or just staying in Paris. We opted for the latter as we felt that we had seen enough castles for the moment. So we went to a nearby market which was mostly a fresh food market.

Ready prepared Escargots

I think those are flounders

Then we had lunch...guess what we had? Baguette sandwiches of course! And dessert was never missed... Because it is summer, berries are everywhere. And also at its best quality too... .

After lunch, we wondered what we would do and decided to climb to the top of the Eiffel. You have the option of taking the lift or walk up the stairs. I was pretty sore (from all that cycling and walking) but B, the athelete, was keen to walk. So I thought I better pack in some energy (in the form of something sweet) before the climb. Geez, I'm always making excuses for having sweet things. Oh well, I should just admit that I have a sweet tooth and there is nothing I can do about it!

So walking by one of the thousands of pattiseries in Paris, I decided on a fruit charlotte that is topped with a macaroon. I also love how they package their products. This was the most interesting. The lady serving me artfully folded a piece of paper around the cake into a cone shape -so simple yet it just look so beautiful.

Again, when at the Eiffel, there were further attempts by cons trying to extort money. They would try and tie a string around your finger to show you a trick and then extort money from you. It is best just to say NO from the start. Also, keep a close eye on your pockets and bags. (Thanks for reminding me, DQ).

These are a couple of views from the tower....

Random fact: The steel structure of The Statue of Liberty is smilar to the steel structure of the Eiffel. It was given to the USA by France as a gift when the statue was built.

On the last night, we had dinner at La Galouise, a restaurant not far from our hotel. The tables outside were fully booked but we were able to get a table inside. The interior was actually really beautiful, so we did not mind. It was too hot outside at the time anyway...

Entree

Semi boiled egg with mustard sauce                                                          Pickled mackerel

More baguette and yummy French butter

A really good bottle of Bordeaux wine

Beef boutguignon                                                                       Stewed pork belly (heavenly!)

A large chocolate mousse- TO SHARE! Been to much of a piggy all day..

All good things must come to an end! Back to London we went, and I was already thinking of  planning the next trip. Italia, here we come!

City of Love, Paris

Notre Dame in Paris

The second day was the most interesting. During our walk in the city the day before, we notice there were many bicycle paths and also plenty of people cycling. We also saw alot of bicycle stands every few hundred metres that we walked. Apparently, you could rent bicycles to get around the city and the map given by our hotel shows all the stations you can pick up or drop off a bike. This is the Velib system and it is a cheap and great way to get around (but I was also nervous as I cannot recall when the last time I rode a bicycle). It only cost 1 Euro per day per bike, and if each of your journey is less than 30 mins, then it is free. Otherwise, it is another Euro. Every tourist attraction would have a Velib station, so that made it very convenient.

So off I went wobbling on my bicycle with Bern leading the way. The first stop was the Notre Dame. Be prepared for the crowd out the front. It was a beautiful church but I did not see any hunchbacks.

Hotel Dieu

This photo was taken from the first level of the Eiffel. Do you see the church on top of the hill? That is Sacre Couer, our next destination after the Notre Dame. I am trying to illustrate how far we actually went on our bicycles. This was unbeknown to me prior to starting out, or I might never have agreed.

Initially, I was pretty happy as I was actually doing OK. At that stage, no falls -YET- and did not crash into any pedestrians.  But at the end of the day, I had a mini tumble and I left behind a souvenir in Paris- some flesh from my ankle on some pavement. Plus I also had a few angry bruises the next day.

Anyway, as we got closer to the Sacre Couer, we got hungry. Like the day before, We had a baguette, and of course, dessert for lunch.

We could not ride to the top and had to walk the rest of the way. I was actually using alot of muscles that I never knew existed. If I thought I was tired then, the next day was even worse (The scrape and bruises did not help either! Don't worry Mum, I'm fine).

Steep roads ahead...

Steps??? And more steps!??

Almost there.... more steps! (Note on left bottom corner of photo)

Finally there! Was it worth it.... I guess so.

The day was getting warmer by the minute and we were spending alot of money rehydrating ourselves. So we decided to make Arch de Triomphe our last stop. The down side with the bicycle system was that occasional when you get to a station, there may not be any bikes available, so you had to walk to the next station. Anyway when we finally found ourselves a couple of bicycles (third time lucky), we continued our journey. We stumbled across the Moulin Rouge along the way...

A random fact: almost all the performers at the MR are Aussie imports.

The Arch.... Again, beware of mass crowd

Underneath the Arch

It was a pretty productive day.... The only thing left to worry about was dinner. Rue Cler is a pretty famous street in Paris for outdoor dining and fresh fruit and vegie markets. And since it is only a few minutes by cycling, we decided to go to Rue Cler for dinner.

Rue Cler

While deciding where to eat, a moving  jazz band (sponsored by Ricard -a rum/brandy company, I think) appeared from nowhere and serenaded restaurant patrons. We quickly picked a restaurant- and of all things- we both felt like having Japonois! (Japanese in French). The vibe that night was pretty cool...

I love sushi, and after all the rich meals we have had in the last couple of days, this was a welcoming sight. Finally, some rice. Bern was reaching for it even before I could take a picture....

We also had some skewers and the one furthest to the right was grilled beef with cheese. An interesting combination and twist that actually worked well. This Japanese place was called Oniwa, in case you feel like Jap when you are in Paris. We were glad we were there early as the place packed out with locals pretty quickly.

Me on my bicycle, riding back to the hotel as the sun sets. What a tough day it has been in the office....