Fish Soup

Went to the fish monger today and was introduced to this fish called Heg... I tried googling up on the internet but couldn't find anything quite near it. Must be a local slang for it or I must have heard wrongly. Anyway, the monger gave me the carcass and jsut when I was at a lost of what to do for dinner tonight, a brilliant idea sprung on me to cook some fish soup. hmm..

Ingredients
-------------------
Fish
Superior Fish soy sauce
1 spoon of chicken stock powder
pinch of MSG
ginger
tomato
spring onion

Basically, marinate the fish in the soy sauce for about half an hour with the ginger. Bring some water to boil, throw in the powder and the MSG. When the water is finally boiling, throw in the fish and tomato and boil for a couple of minutes. Serve immediately with some fried shallots.
Makes quite a hearty soup and certainly has been added on to my list of soup remedies for the sick soul.

Steam Chicken Rice

I was alazy again. haha. This is not the chicken rice that you get back home but it will suffice for now. Those of you who know me must know that I love chicken rice. What did today's basically steamed chicken in a soy sauce drizzle with some chicken flavoured rice.

Steamed chicken

1 Packet Chicken wing or whatever chicken part u can find
2 Tbs Light soy sauce
1 Tbs Sesame seed oil
2 Tbs Shaoxing wine
1/2 Tbs Sugar
Ginger
Garlic
Spring onion

Marinate the chicken in the sauce, ginger, garlic for at least an hour. I tried it without marinating before and it really was qutie bland. Lay the chicken in a steamer and place spring onion on top. Steam for about 20mins.

Chicken Flavoured Rice (1 person portion)
----------------------------
1 Cup Rice
1 level spoon full of Know Chicken stock (I am talking abtout the spoon in the container)
Drizzle of sesame oil
some garlic some ginger.

Give it a good stir and cook as you normally would cook rice.

Nandos Chicken

This chicken is solid man. First time I discovered this chicken in 2nd year I knew I had fallen for it.. Grilled to perfection and bast in a nice chill soury sauce. It wasn't as hot as I hoped for it to be but it will do fine. If you've never had the nando's experience, please head down to one of their many restaurants soon.


P.S: flash your NHS card and get a 20% discount... Only have to pay 8 pounds for this really satisfying meal.

Nandos, originally uploaded by jiapui.

Pork Cutlet

Wah kao... Swine flu still eat pork... er.... what's the link honestly? If you can say that eating pork will give u swine flu, I can also say my DAD say all food that is cooked will be killed off all its bacteria, and maybe the viruses haha.

Well.. after a long day's work and feeling rather tired, I wondered how I managed to muster enough energy to do some shallow frying (deep means alot of oil, shallow means not pan fry and not as much oil used in deep frying. Yes I Coined the term) lol. Actually, this was part of an experiment to see if I was able to baked a piece of raw breaded pork cutlet in an oven. However, the grill stand was dirty and I was too lazy to wash it. Therefore, ended up shallow frying instead.

I don't like deep frying stuff for a couple of reasons. 1) It waste my oil 2) I get oiled up after that. Not too good for socialising eh? ..But for some special reasons which will be revealed in due course, I needed to run some trials so see if I was still able to shallow fry my pork.

What I did was to slice some pork cutlets into 2mm thick slices. Marinate it, then dip it in an egg mixture and finally, frying it. It did not take long as it was thin and the use of a non-stick pan prevented it from being charred.

The verdict: Technique wise it wasn't as much of a hassle as i thought. However, I'll need to work on the taste. Something's still missing.


P.s : Getting there...

Pork Cutlet, originally uploaded by jiapui.

Tofu with Prawn

Had dinner with girls and guys after the Manchester Trip. Once again, the scarcity of authentic chinese restaurants in Glasgow left us opting for Asian Gourmet. Not complaining, food is cheap here and tasty as well. This is one dish which really caught my attention when I tried it. Its basically just stir fry toufu with prawns. Any TDH can make this but the outstanding part of this dish was the savoury seafoodie, toufu sauce. Cannot describe la. U must try to know haha.

P.S: Its been a really busy week so post have been slow coming in, but stay tuned ;)

Drinks at Cloud 23

Here's the Hilton Deansgate built recently. As you can see halfway up , the floor juts out. THat's where we are went on Saturday night!!.

View of Deansgate from Cloud 23. Kel's favourite Atas chill out place for his visitng friends.

Had a couple of drinks.



Hilton Hotel
----------------------
303 Deansgate Manchester
Greater Manchester
M3 4LQ
Tel: 0161 870 1688
Open Mon-Sat 9am-6pm

PS: sorry very tired tonight.. haha so fewer sentences.. Enjoy the pics...

Carluccio - Dinner with Kel

Dinner was meant to be a light affair after the huge lunch that we had. After much wondering around, we stumbled into Carluccio at Spinningfields. Pretty nice quiet location and there wasn't much of a crowd either. ( A bad sign? or A good one ?)

We started off with some foccaia bread and calamari. The bread was over salted and wasn't as piping crispy hot as I had previously. Calamari was nice but I can't comment more about it.

I had Spaghetti vongole. Seafood pasta has to be my favourite of all pastas. Its almost impossible to beat the seafood sauce that comes from the juice of all that crustacean which was used in cooking. Well... to be honest,.. i was slightly dissapointed by the execution of this dish... The sphagghetti was overcooked ( too fat liao la ) hahaha...the Clams however were pretty sweet. Overall.. ok lor... Kel had the lagsana. shuld have tried la but I was too full to even attempt a taster..

What really entice me was the 1 pound coffee that you get after the meal however, we've got something planned after dinner lol.... stay tuned..


PS: food wasn't astounding but the banter was . and i din use the right lens and my colour balance lagi off... hahaha



Carluccio
----------------------

1, 3 Hardman Square,
Manchester
Tel: 0161 839 0623

Red Chill - Lunch with Kel

Hi All, I am back and really well fed this weekend. Met up with Kel whom I haven't seen in 2 years. He brought me to this sichuan place for lunch at 3 pm!!!!!!..... hahaaha. Thankfully, the food was good especially this fiery fearsome looking soup of lava hahaa. It was damm yummy and went really well with my favourite white rice. On a scale of 0 to 10, I would rate the heat at 7.5. It wasn't tongue burning hot but i reckon you will be in for a good one if u bite into one of this chilli paddis. hahha.

In addition, Kel ordered pig stomach upon hearing that I didn't mind eating anything.. Ok... I thought it was a bad choice but it din turn out that bad really.. I quite like this dish. Texture was like a rubbery meat. Did not taste of innards and the chilli sesame garlic drizzle that came along with it made me craving for more and more hahaha.

I strongly recommend this place . Do check out the website http://www.redchillirestaurant.co.uk/manchester_menu.asp


Oh HAPPY MOTHER's DAY MUM!!!!



Red Chilli Restaurant
------------------------------
70-72 Portland Street
Manchester
M1 4GU
Tel: 01612362888
http://www.redchillirestaurant.co.uk/

BeetRoot Salad

There's just something about beet root that I don't like.. I've never tasted it and i don't intend to anytime soon. The dye really turns me off. Oh well.. Aa can enjoy it on his own lol.

P.S: won't be posting for the next 3 days. I'll be heading down south. heehe

BeetRoot Salad, originally uploaded by jiapui.

Southern Fried Chicken

Southern Fried Chicken, originally uploaded by jiapui.

Eh got southern fried chicken means got northern fried chicken issit?? What exactly is southern fried chicken then??
Apparently there is some Scottish influence to it. People have been frying stuff for ages especially the Scots who are so famous for frying almost anything from your fishes to my creative ones like mars bar and to really bizarre items such as can Dog Food....
So when the Scots migrated to the Southern States in the US, they brought their habit along as well. However, as most of you would know, UK food can be rather bland at times and apparently the Africans who were working in the southern states plantations decided to incooperate the technique of deep frying together with their habit of marinating meat in spices.. So that's how southern fried chicken came about... You don't believe me right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_chicken <-------- Read this Anyway, Aa introduced this simple, comfort and most definately unhealthy food to me in second year. For 2.75 pounds (abit of inflation factored in, used to be 1.99) you get 7 pieces of thigh and drums. Throw in the oven for 30 mins at 220 degress C and in the meantime, go do more reading hahaa.. I decided to be a bit healthier by having some salad.