Matcha Fortune Cookies

Fortune cookies -- make them and they will a) make you very popular amongst your friends and, b) make you lose all sensation on your fingers.  You need to bend and shape them while they're still hot and they are very hot.  I do it with the oven door open, with the silicon mat still in the oven because these cookies cool and harden faster than you can imagine.  And on a side note, did you know that fortune cookies aren't Chinese?  Give a Chinese person a fortune cookie and she/he will wonder why you put paper in her food.

Miso Braised Cabbage

Yes, I am aware, cabbage times are gone.  After months of gale, showers and achromatic vegetables, Britain has eased into Spring.  It's time for asparagus, for wild garlic, for morels - exciting produce and here I am still eating cabbage.  Braised, too.  Not even shredded and tossed with a zesty dressing served as a slaw in a spring picnic. 

Best Eats This Week: Seeded Scone with Vegemite Butter (Grain Store, London)

As much as I love London's prolific food scene, the sheer number of options for a simple meal can be painfully overwhelming. Take brunch, everywhere does brunch, and everywhere serves the same pancakes, fry-ups and porridge. So when convenience and cost are taken out as factors, how does one choose? Restaurants must make themselves stand out with something different, some imagination, something that makes your eyes light up in anticipation --- and with Grain Store, its brunch menu was just a beautiful list of exciting and original dishes.

Sweet Potato Chips with Curried Aioli

As a child in China, roasted sweet potatoes were a favorite street food of mine.  They would be sold out of big barrels, with the skin charred and crispy and the flesh soft and sweet, they were just the most comforting thing to have in the winter.  Later on I discovered that most of the barrels were stolen from factories and contained lead residue #childhoodruined.

So I no longer buy them on the streets and just make them at home. 

Roasted Cabbage with Spicy Salsa

Spring has hit us quite abruptly - the days have suddenly been stretched out with all this blinding sunlight and high temperatures.  The gales have stopped.  The rain has taken a break.  The chill is gone.  It's mid-April and it's Spring and it's sunny and it's warm and it makes you realize that the harshest thing about the world is that it moves on without you.  That you're not as connected with nature and humanity as they say we are.  The sun won't stop shining, people won't stop celebrating, and good things won't stop happening just because you're sad.

Similarly just turn on the news when you're having a good day. 

Salted Ginger Millionaire's Shortbread

It's a Friday night and I have just finished having dinner with a friend.

“Let’s go out for a drink now?”

I look at my watch – 21:00.  I hesitantly say yes. We go to a bar where the general clientele is in their 20’s and early 30’s, well-dressed, heels, suits, beautiful.   The drinks list is too elaborate,  the music's too loud and the lighting's too dim. After one drink and too many desperate attempts at trying to talk over the music, with a hoarse throat and exhausted patience, I say I need to go home. I’m back at 11pm and with all the energy in the world from the coffees I've had in the afternoon, I decide to bake, finishing at 2am and I go to bed.  That's a Friday night.

Best Eats This Week: Vietnamese Pesto and Bánh Mìs (Whaam Bánh Mì, London)

I’m quite good with table manners in public. Even with burgers, shell-on prawns and chicken wings -- I can neatly eat with grace. However, there are times when I’m just shamelessly picking things with my fingers and licking the plate like a starving child in an effort to not waste any trace of the food. That was the case with this Vietnamese pesto that accompanied the summer rolls at Whaam Bánh Mì – the new Vietnamese joint in Soho.

Persian Courgette Frittata (Kuku Kadoo)

Weekday brunches are just a pure luxury.  I'm currently on holiday and my days have been made up of job-applications and too many coffee breaks in the sun.  Yesterday, after lying awake in bed for a good couple of hours until it was a reasonable time for the holidays, I got up and spent a a significant part of the morning making brunch.  That's what holidays should be about, right?  Waking up each day with too much time on your hands and not enough to do.

Eggs are great for breakfast - this is a a frittata with a luxurious make-over. It's got ginger, garlic and a ridiculous amount of onion -- it was a lot of emotional chopping at 9 in the morning.

Grits with Braised Spring Onions and Fried Garlic

As a vegetable, onions are often overlooked.  It's my favorite vegetable - red, white, shallots, spring onions - I like them roasted and braised so they're all soft and sweet; I like them raw, thinly sliced, so they're crunchy and spicy.  And it's got to be one of the cheapest vegetables to get. 

I also love garlic.  That's got to be the biggest plus of being single - I can shamelessly have all the garlic I want.  I love roasted garlic smeared on some toasted sourdough with a healthy drizzle of olive oil and flaked sea salt. Mmmmm.

Tofu with Peppers and Spicy Oyster Sauce

As I write about this tofu dish, all I can think about is meat.  I have been very good these last few weeks in avoiding meat for a variety of reasons and right now all I want is something bloody and preferably with bones attached -- like a proper steak or a roast.  That's all my carnivorous side craves for at the moment. 

BUT.  Everyone should reduce their meat consumption, as we all know.  I try to limit it to once a week when it comes to red meat, so here's another one of those meatless recipes for you, and tomorrow I'm going to the butcher's.