Villandry - Bicester Village

I went to Bicester Village the other week. If you like your designer goods, don't mind that designs are a few seasons out and may be sorely disappointed that you probably won't get anything in your size, then it's the place for you. Actually, I probably made that sound very negative considering I had a good day walking around the shops and splurged on a pair of jeans (which I still haven't worn), a dress for work (worn twice) and a lovely cut pair of trousers (worn once). I even got fed at Villandry -  weighing the fact that I quite liked my visit to their London branch when I was there a few years ago, I was more than a little disappointed.

Queues were long (understandable since it was bang on lunchtime on a Sunday afternoon but there were so many tables available it boggled the mind why there was even a queue to start with!) and the service was slow (which probably explained the long queue).

My Dining companion decided on 2 starters to make up a meal - tomato soup served with bread and butter. A little too tart for my liking but overall it went down well. The 2nd of the two starters, prawn and mango salad. I was imagining green mango salad and a little surprised at the ripe orange mango slices that arrived with the salad. But overall the taste was fine.

The real let down was my grilled chicken and avocado mayonnaise salad. The chicken was dry, cold and tasteless. The dish was unseasoned and the leeks ............... what in the heck were they doing on my plate? It was totally and utterly out of place. It was a dish that really shouldn't have been on the menu.

I would give it a very middle of the road 5 out of 10. Half the meal was fine (my companion's) and the other was bad (mine). It's a pretty fair score.

Villandry
50 Pingle Drive  Bicester, Oxfordshire OX26 6WD

Village East - Bermondsey

 

Sometimes there is nothing better than an incredibly lazy Sunday lie in followed by a hearty meal, all really chilled out because I cannot handle another drop of alcohol before the weekend is out. A quick Google search zooms me on to Village East, with its better than good reviews and the possibility of gorging myself silly on delicious brunch goodies – big fry ups, smoked salmon and wobbly eggs, golden French toast …. buttermilk pancakes!!!!

Orange and Ginger Presse

Short of a skip and a hop (or jumping into the car for the drive to Bermondsey), we arrive in good time but spend another 20  minutes driving around in circles because there’s no bloody parking. I get terribly savage when I’m not fed on time and doesn’t SM know it! SM suggests I’m dropped off to get a table to which I bark it’s bloody pointless since we’re having a fun day out or are supposed to be having one anyway.  Bless SM’s little heart for putting up with me all these years :) We do finally get parking, make it to Village East, are seated at a front facing corner table and then informed by the bemused waitress that the kitchen stopped serving brunch about an hour ago as it was past 3PM. No amount of pleading would get Chef to change his mind, she added. Damnit, it’s bloody Sunday! It should be mandatory that brunch be served all day on a Sunday!

Grudgingly, I settled for Grilled Chicken Sandwich with smoked bacon, flat mushroom and Gruyère cheese (£7.40) and double grudgingly I admitted I was pretty damn happy with it. It was hearty, tasty and just what I needed to take the edge of my Sunday growl.

My side chips (£3.60) were hot, crisp and most importantly skinny. I’m willing to turn a blind eye to the extra calories.

I never thought I’d have such good memories about a salad but there was something so yummy about this one. Thin slices of baby radish, little carrot matchsticks, fine cliced salad onions, small chuncks of tomato, sliced skinless and seedless cucumber on the diagonal tossed with the usual suspects of the green leaf salad bag - baby spinach, chard and rocket. Lightly dressed in a vinegrette. So simple but yet utterly refreshing not just fed green leaves straight out a ready washed bag of leaves.

 

SM was in the mood for a roast and went for the beef Lyonnaise potatoes, veg and gravy.It was rather good despite it looking slightly too pink (for SM) with too thick a border of fatty wobble (for me).

For a sweet treat I manage to convince SM to share a Hot Fudge Sundae with me - really just a ploy to take the edge off my guilt for eating ice cream. And to eat those pesky little marshmellows - chewy little disrruptions to an otherwise perfectly good ice cream dish.

 

I've never been to New York (ok ... so shoot me) but I'm told that places like Village East are in abundance over there (East Village - geddit?). It's cool, it's chilled out. I'm a bit of a fan.

Village East

71-173 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UW

Lazy Sundays with a Touch of Italian - Rocca Di Pappa

Pescatore - fresh pasta with Fresh clams, cockles, wild mussels and a touch of chilli £8.95

London at it's best? The first basking of wonderously warm sunshine over the city with just just the slightest twinge of breeze to make life all that more bearable. And then it all goes downhill from there (there's that happy cynic in me resurfacing again!). But I stand by what I say. After that 1st day of lovely weather and happy Londoners .... the heat in the underground starts getting unbearable, you start to notice that the person whose armpit your faced is jammed into at rush hour has never heard of deodorant, then the train comes to a standstill in the middle of a long dark tunnel because some wise crack decided to steal the copper wire on which train tracks in Britain are so reliant on ....

Americana - pizza with Tomato, pepperoni and mozzarella £7.35

Alright, so there's me thinking that 11 years in this country has earned me a little bit of a right to have a right moan every now and then. But there truly are some lovely bits to this city. Like that first basking of warm sunshine with a light summer's breeze that allows for a lazy weekend's al fresco dinner.

Insalata - house leaf salad £3.25

I like Dulwich Village but it can sometimes be totally yummy mummy and happy daddy overwhelming for me. That and the very grown up £1million plus houses and the Land Rovers littered. It's still a nice place - it's what I aspire to when (if?) I grow up. Rocca on the main street adds a nice touch to Dulwich Village (it has an older sibling of the same name in Kensington, with a slightly larger menu and bigger price tags too). Think lots of warm, light woods with dashes of cream/off white and tarnished bronzes (another look I would love when I grow up and set up my million £ home complete with a lazy ginger tabby and slightly bonkers chocolate brown Lab).The staff are friendly, the food is very acceptable (stay off the bread though ... it was a tad doughy and heavy for my liking) and the prices are very reasonable. And best of all, for those balmy summer days there's outdoor seating out front or in the rear garden, as well as lovely big windows that open up in front of the restaurant.

Rocca Di Pappa
75-79 Dulwich Village, London SE21 7BJ

Sunday Lunch - Comptoir Libanais, Marylebone

Sunny Sundays mean late leisurely lunches and long walks. Last Sunday was relatively quiet - shoe trying and bag admiring at Selfridges before a late lunch/early dinner at Comptoir Libanais on Wigmore Street.

There wasn't much to fault my mixed maze plate - the food was nice, I enjoyed it and I thought I got myself a pretty good deal - a falafel, a spinach and cheese pastry, houmous, baba ghanoush topped with pomegranate, tabbouleh (too coarsely chopped in my opinion), mujaddara (rice and lentils), pickles (lurve pickles!) and topped with bread. Veggie goodness.

But complaints I do have (unfortunately). What is it with their menu at the counter? Half the items on their printed menu isn’t even on the board (I would later find out after I’ve been seated) and what is on there doesn’t make much sense. It was the same thing at their other branch at Westfield … ooops, no… I forget. They don’t even have a menu. Doh, silly me! Another moan would be directed at some of their staff – let me paint you the scenario: I walk in and there are 2 guys behind the counter who greet me and then leave me to it. I’m standing there studying the menu board (if you recall is really not the best written) for what must be a few minutes and they are blatantly not interested. They’re chatting and stock taking (or something like that). When I do get their attention they fob me on to another colleague who’s just appeared from the depths of the restaurant. Gee, thanks guys. Good thing this new guy seemed ok – compared to the other 2, I like him. Within seconds he’s told me that if I want to sit in they do table service. Oh, well…. Good thing the 2 guys were nowhere to be seen when I left with a full belly. I have been told that my evil stare is quite deathly.

Here’s to lovely, sunny Sundays!

Comptoir Libanais
65 Wigmore Street, W1U 1PZ

Dubai with a Bang!

The impressive Burj Khalifa, previously known as the Burj Dubai

The equally impressive dancing fountains at the base of the Burj Khalifah

My twenty hours in Dubai was a whirlwind of big brand madness. Glimpses of the Atlantis, Mirage, Armani and lord knows how many other gazillion star hotels, browsing through the stores of big fashion labels crammed into the Dubai Mall and chowing my way through some delights offered by some well known high street names of the foodie world.

Fro-yo at Red Mango - a small original with 3 weenie scoops sliced strawberries and a scoop of dark chocolate chips

It started with Pinkberry on my way out to Colombo. On the way back it was Red Mango (triple servings of strawberries and one of dark chocolate chips), a red velvet cupcake from Magnolia Bakery at Bloomingdale's and salad on the terrace at Joe's Cafe overlooking the dancing fountains (Joe's as in fashion brand Joseph).

Breakfast! A red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting from Magnolia bakery

I have to say Dubai was a real eye opener. Luxury dripped off the silk lined walls and money (or the seemingly oodles of it) screamed from the rooftop of every skyscraper. It's almost expected of me to say that I hated it but I didn't. Quite the opposite in fact. I think I could quite happily live there. Sure, everything is man made and more than just a little superficial but life can be comfortable. And I think I'll happily go for comfortable.

Salade Niçoise at Joe's Café

Man made - every inch of it and yet surprisingly tranquil when it wants to be

Falafel Sandwiches and Belgian Fries - Maoz, Soho

A late appointment in Soho a few weeks ago led me to Maoz for a bite to eat. Despite having walked past on numerous occasions I've never been in. There's always somewhere I would have preferred to eat like ... well, Chinatown. Think of all those yummy crisp skin roasted ducks, wobbly soft braised pork belly, crunchy sautéed greens coated in minced garlic ... This time I wanted cheap and fast and NOT McDonald's so Maoz it was.

The Maoz Sandwich combo meal is priced pretty decently (around the 5 or 6 quid mark or thereabouts) and it consisted of a falafel sandwich with houmous and grilled aubergine, a side of Belgian fries and a drink. There's also a free reign of the salad bar. To be honest I'm not sure what they mean by a free salad bar ... would I be whacked on the hand if I went back for more? I wasn't about to find out so I made just that one sweep at the bar. It's not so much fun since they cunningly stuff the pita pretty full in the first place. But no worries ... Woolworth's (in the days of old) pick and mix taught me valuable lessons on how to get as much sweeties into a tiny little bag and not having to upgrade to a bigger bag. But under the eagle egg of the girl behind the counter and the guy next to me at the salad bar who kept getting in my way, I didn't pile on as much as I would have liked. I managed a few pickles, red cabbage, lots of fried cauliflower and a great big splat of garlic sauce. Verdict? All the top bits were yum but the bread was dry and just got in the way of the serious eating. On a scale of 5 it was probably a 2.5-3.

I'd been looking forward to the Belgian fries (yup, that's what it's called on the menu) but they were seriously disappointing. I've always salivated when I saw photos of the fries from Maoz - crunchy golden nuggets of deliciousness. They were instead the exact opposite of how I imagined them to be. A solid fry with a limp-ish exterior. Also, drinks wise don't bother with the fresh lemonade with mint. It unfortunately sounds and looks better than it tastes. I'm a big fan of ice and Maoz doesn't do ice or chilled either it seems. The lemonade was lukewarm and incredibly sour.

Maoz is actually pretty decent. The food's not bad for the price and the next time I stop by I'm definitely going for the salad box. I've worked out that the salad container is sturdier (better) for the purpose of fried cauliflower and garlic sauce overload. And minus the whimsy bit of pita. Happy days!

Maoz
43 Old Compton St, London W1D 6HG

Summer Dinners

Tom Yum Mussels with Garlic and Chili Pasta

The mussels were a spur of the moment purchase from a Chinese supermarket one weekend. I cooked them up with a tom yum spice mix I had brought back with me from Malaysia and tinned tomatoes. Loads of herbs I also picked up from the Chinese supermarket went in - coriander, dill and mint. Served with pasta simply tossed in olive oil, garlic and chili.

Chedder Stuffed Burgers with Courgette Crisps

I stupidly didn't consider the size of my roll when I shaped out these patties. Amateurish mistake! I was so focus on getting the meat to encase the ball of cheese I forgot about everything else. The patties turned out pretty darn good though - oozy melting cheese. Yum. The meat was flavoured with a myriad of different things I found in my cupboard, which is possibly why none of my food ever tastes the same twice :) The courgette crisps were made by deep frying thin long strips of corgettes coated in cornflour.

Full English

Well, not really a full English since I decided against eggs and bread but I got the hash browns that I had been thinking about. I won't take any credit for this meal as Stuart knocked it up in about 10 minutes flat.

Bacon Fried Rice

I had some rice sitting in the fridge, a pack of bacon I couldn't find room for in the freezer and a whole load of bits and bobs lying around. So fried rice it was and bacon just goes so well with just about anything, doesn't it?

Sweetcorn Fritters with a Tomato and Cucumber Salad

Someone mentioned sweetcorn to me in passing one day and I just knew I had to have sweetcorn fritters for dinner that very evening. I mixed up a batch of batter of flour, corn flour and an egg, seasoned it and added some cayanne pepper. I then added as much sweetcorn as the batter could hold. On hindsight I should have defrosted the sweetcorn before I added it to the mixture to avoid the huge sweetcorn clump. Yes, I know it's summer with an abundance of sweetcorn but sometimes I just want a pain free evening that frozen food offers. Served with a simple salad of chopped tomatoes and cucumber topped with olive oil and chili pepper flakes.

Roast Teriyaki Chicken Legs

I marinated a batch of chicken legs in teriyaki sauce, honey, black pepper and spring onions overnight. All I had to do the next day was to shove it all into the oven and dinner was ready 40 minutes later. Served with steaming hot rice, of course.

Grilled Mackeral with Thai Inspired Salad

The mackeral fillets were quickly grilled (about 3 minutes each side) and served with what I like to call a Thai inspired salad (thinking along the lines of the Thai papaya salad, som tam). Long shreds of courgette, carrot, red onion, tomatoes and coriander tossed in a dressing of fish sauce, chili, lime juice, sugar and garlic.

Macaroni in a Fresh Tomato Sauce with Burger Patties

I love summer for it's abundance of fruit and veg and none makes me smile more than the tomato. My tomato love affair is intensely passionate and if I could, I would probably add tomato to all the dishes I cook. I bought a huge batch the other week and I'm desperate to eat them before they go bad. What better way than a fresh tomato sauce with olive oil, garlic and basil. I also added some spinach to my boiled macaroni and fried up some sun dried tomato burger patties (cut up into bite size chunks) to serve with it.

Fried Kway Teow (Thai Style)

My food is frequently Thai style but never truely Thai. I just like borrowing elements from Thai cuisine - I love the freshness, the herbs, the flavour. This is a lot like phad thai but minus quite a few of the essential ingredients like tamarind juice, crushed peanuts, lime juice, etc. I boiled up some flat rice noodles (which I love over and beyond any other kinds of noodles and know it as kway teow or hor fun), fried up some chinese leaf, thinly sliced tomato, spring onion, shredded chicken, prawns and egg. I added the softened noodles to the mixture before flavouring the dish with fish sauce, oyster sauce and my secret ingredient, ketchup. I guess I'm just a big kid who never outgrew her taste for ketchup with almost anything :) Some rough torn basil leaves went in just before the final toss of the noodles for extra flavour.

Sunday Salad

I'm an odd creature - I crave salad in winter and dream of soup in summer. On this particular sunny autumn's Sunday, it was crispy thin slices of chorizo with beetroot (I love the stuff in vinegar, which I believe quite a few people detest), leftover boned roast chicken thigh, black olives and mixed salad leaves. I made a quick vinaigrette with grain mustard, white wine vinegar, sunflower oil, salt and pepper.

Back Again

After a lovely break back in Malaysia, I'm finally back in London. Struck down with a cold bug whilst on transit in Dubai, I'm still feeling like a miserable little bunny but life has to go on - work to go back to, work to slack off from ;)

There is of course the matter of my blog, which has sadly not seen an ounce of my attention in the last few weeks. To be honest, I lost much of my enthusiasm for updating it after I found out that someone had stole my photos and blog entries. However, now that I've had a little time to think things over.... I've decided that I'm not going to let some petty thief take away my enjoyment of writing my blog or taking photos of food. Hey, it sure didn't stop me from stuffing myself all this time :)

Whilst I leisurely go through my photos from my holiday, I will leave you with something I ate before the Christmas holidays. A rather delicious hot smoked honey salmon mousse.

Quite excellent served on individual baby gem leaves. Not at all salty with just a hint of honey coming through. Finished with a slight squeeze of lemon juice over each leaf.

Roast Chicken Legs with Rice Salad

I'm quite fond of chicken legs - lots of moist meat, especially when it's left on the bone. My fondness for this bit of meat has even rubbed off on Stuart, who was a confirmed white meat eater until I started cooking for him :) What's even better is that it's so much cheaper than buying chicken breasts in the UK. Yay - even more of a reason to love dark meat!

Roasted Chicken Pieces
I used a dry rub on the chicken pieces (I cut the legs in half - thighs and drumsticks) of English mustard powder (Colman's, of course), black pepper and garlic and coriander powder that I picked up from the halal butcher down the road. The chicken went into a hot oven set to 180°C for about 30-40 minutes, or until the meat is cooked and the skin is golden brown.

Rice Salad
Leftover rice is pretty good for this salad or if you don't have any sitting around, boil some up and leave it to cool to room temperature. You don't really want stone cold or boiling hot rice for this dish. I then cut up some cucumber, tomatoes, avocado, blanched baby corn and snow peas into chunks and added them to the rice. I also added some blanched sweet corn kernels and some freshly cut mint and basil from my plants on the balcony. I made a quick dressing from sunflower oil, lime juice, black pepper and equal measures of soy sauce and fish sauce. A quick shake in an old jam jar and poured it over the rice and vegetables. A good mix and it's ready to serve.

Good food, bad food and food I miss...

Here's a sight I miss when I go to a supermarket in London - the abundance of greenary in the vegetable section! Vegetables in Chinatown don't really match up ... mainly because I'm going to have to pay a bagazillion times more for one measly bunch :)


I know I was on holiday but I couldn't resist cooking. I was actually looking forward to it...itching to get my hands on some raw ingrediants and creating a mini feast...a nice salad ;) There Jo and I had been in KL all of 3 days and we had eaten our way through quite a lot of food. And I mean ALOT of food! Big Chinese meals with my father, meals with my mum, snacking with friends, secret cake trips to Delicious... hehe... well, it had taken a toll on us and I just wanted a nice, 'clean' salad. So here we have it - Thai inspired seared beef salad.


The usual salad greens with de-seeded tomatoes, cucumber, red onion and lots of herbs - mint, coriander, Thai sweet basil, lemon grass. The dressing was made with lots of garlic, lime juice and zest, Thai sweet chili sauce and oil. Pretty simple stuff but lots of cutting. The beef was a thick juicy rump steak ... my sister laughed when I told her I had bought rump... what do people have against rump? I rather like it..price wise ;) and taste and yes, even texture wise. I seared the beef in a hot pan without any oil... perhaps I could have cooked it a while longer as it was still rather red in the middle. Yes, red as in the cow has JUST moo-ed it's last 'moooooooo' :D Red enough for my sister to stick her portion in the microwave for a few seconds...

Bad food.... McDonald's nuggets! I like McDonald's nuggets...just not these ones. Feeling a little peckish after our 'clean' salad, Jo and I headed to a 24 hour McDonald's at 2am. Food-wise...what a waste of time!!! If they keep a store open the whole day, they could at least serve some semi-decent food! The nuggets had obviously been cooked some time ago and had been sitting around for some time. The fries were limp and dry and cold... but I wasn't up to complaining and just ate it..haha...I wasn't going to leave it!!!

Yup, the next day we just went and stuffed ourselves even more with my sister :) It was a 'bit of this and a bit of that' lunch, which means we end up with wayyyyyyyyy more food than we can ever eat. Some yong tau foo, which means stuffed beancurd but today translates to ... anything you can stuff with fish paste. Here we can see some (left-right) bittergourd/bittermelon, pork balls below it, deep fried tofu, deep fried fresh tofu and aubergine/brinjal/eggplant below.

I can never resist pork balls (which aren't actually stuffed with any fish paste but it's always to have some non-stuffed food on the menu) and just had to have some. The non-fried tofu in the soup was to make us feel better about ourselves. Cheating our little brains into thinking that we were eating good, healthy food ;) And of course some good deep fried beancurd sheets..to make up for our portion of healthy tofu! Don't worry... we did also have a 2 person portion of wat tan mai fun (deep fried rice vermicelli with an egg-y sauce of vegetables, meat and seafood) and some 'side dishes' from the 'mix rice' stall. Those photos came out really blurred so I won't bother posting them.

With all that food we just had to go walk it all off, so off we went shopping at Pavilion. I'm still sore from the fact my beautiful old school was pulled down for this monstrosity but the shops are rather good and makes for good browsing, espcially when there's hardly anyone around. But energy levels do drop and for a 'little pick me up' we headed to a little cafe specializing in matcha (Japanese powdered green tea). I'm not a 100% certain but the cafe might actually be called ... Matcha :) I had a matcha ice-blended which tastes exactly like green tea ice-cream and my sister had the same thing but with extra azuki beans (red beans) added before they blended the drink. I have an intense dislike for red beans and stay well away from it! My 6 year old nephew also came along and he was surprisingly well behaved throughout :) His treat? Hot chocolate with no matcha in sight.