Merrrry Grrrrrrrsmas and a Roasted Sunday

Merry Grrrrrssmas and a Roasted Sunday.

Gritting cold today as the British weather suddenly decided to serve us some frozen rain for our Christmas dinner. Its snowing on and off and tonight it actually did settle. White Christmas it is.

My Christmas cards had been done and dusted and delivered by my trusty hand, as the Royal Mail had been sort of the grumpy reindeer for the last year. Postal strikes since last October has affected the flow of mail and everything else in the country, not that snail mail is my main form of Mayday but when you are waiting for a visa stamping invitation letter, I guess it would be a top priority to check if the British Postal Force have really gone on coup.

Going rogue seems to be the order of the day, as the Daily Mail Headlines reads Brit Airways Strike. Sigh. Double sigh. I say the recession is the Grinch who Stole Christmas. But nonetheless, it would keep 1 million Brit travellers grounded home. What’s so bad about that? Aside from the fact that it would mean wrecking long before laid out plans of meeting up with Santa on the sunny beaches of Thailand sipping an Iced Chai and nibbing on a cold Som Tam Salad?

Pub’s been prepping up for a couple of Christmas parties. Office is off season as the restaurant we’ve been working on finally open its doors. And the Takeaway is on a downtime too as people opt to have a proper night out. So my December life is pleasantly laid back. But a Culinary Circus.

I have received my first Christmas pudding on the first few days of this month, a tiny little sugar oasis. And we’ve been serving up turkey roasts in lieu of chicken every Sunday at the pub. I work in the kitchen of the pub every Sunday, and boy do I love it. The regulars don’t mind that their Sunday All British Roasts were handled, plated and served by a black haired 5-foot of a pure-pedigreed Asian. Lily, my boss do all the roasts and sauces anyways so it is still technically Brit. I plate up and do everything. Prolly the unofficial Sous Chef (I wonder if that would be too ambitious). But most of the time, Lily trust me enough not to pour Mang Tomas Filipino Ketchup on her roast and decides to leave me on my own on the kitchen. She taught me how to do the roast potatoes which is heavenly with its texture and flavour but the recipe is trade secret so I reckon blogging about it would not be a good idea. Nonetheless, I look after the cooking of the roast potatoes and make sure that they come out in their best complexion and seasoned well. I discovered that if you occasionally checks the pan and cleans up the fallen off crumbles as you roast along, the potatoes would cook better and it would prevent the uneven burning as some of the granules tend to arson its way and stick to your potatoes. Yorkshire pudding is best to be roasted upside down, and broccoli should only be cooked on boiling water to retain its color, simple fundamentals I hold dear to.

Gravy is best done with the roast drippings, and a proper stock which should be slowly simmered through all morning. I did have some butchering lessons too as Lily rattles on about topside fillet and pork loin cuts every Sunday.

Dessert is my favourite. I love plating lily’s homemade bread and butter pudding and apple and blueberry crumble, half-drowning it in custard and adding a touch of mint leaf garnish. I think our roasts and dinner are rustic. It’s the sort of thing that you eat by a fireplace. And good thing, we do have one.

I’ll try to sneak in some pictures next week. I will be making my own first roast at home on Sunday as well as some sweet potatoes and all trimmings. And I will start to cook a healthier interpretation of all the food I could find in our pub menu. Wish me luck. Loads of it. P.S. Santa: Could you please turn off your air conditioning for awhile, cos its snowing frantically here. Everybody could use a bit of a warmin up. Thanks :)

In Beer We Thrust

This is not a mockery of the very respectable caption of Uncle Sam’s quarter. But an ode to my Beer Festival, my first one last October, after missing 2 consecutive annual events in UK. I took Sonia, my elderly British friend as my beer connoisseur accompaniment; along with our free pass (working in a pub has its great perks and motivational package) we hailed into an Odyssey of Authentic English Beers and Authentic English Drinking.

First Stop. Buy or hire your drinking apparatus. Which in here comes in a half a ton of glass shaped in a mug. I doubt if I will be able to physically hang on to this on my third pint, with my body mass and my locomotion abilities post-alcohol, but we’ve no choice, so I chose the half-pint and so did Sonia. We grab the program, which is like a Graduation Ceremony Booklet with the list of the beers and its description, origin, and alcohol content, and a tick box right next to it. Something Like an Alcoholic’s Guide to Being Drunk, systematically. It runs for three days, and I really really wonder if anyone hands-in a perfectly and completely marked, ticked program -consciously. Ah, enough wondering, the beer’s getting cold. I was never a beer drinker, but Im looking forward to my initiation into the culture of English Beer Festival.

2nd Stop. The Grand Hall. The Grand Hall looks like a lobby with a stage but hundreds of barrels of beers and ale and perry on the walls, arranged in alphabetical order. Well, I guess people could still read A,B,C and manoeuvre their way in a tricky 3-Floor Beer Festival under the influence, but I wonder why they can’t drive. We start off with an ale. A Real Ale from my Beer 101 Program according to the Campaigners of Real Ale (what would Campaigners of Not so Real Ale would say?) is a “beer made from natural ingredients: malted barley, hops, water, and yeast which, after primary fermentation in the brewery, is put into casks where it continues to undergo a slow secondary fermentation, then produces a gentle carbonation, it is unfiltered and unpasteurized, and is a living product”. Its antithesis (probably this is what campaigners of not so real ale would drink) is keg beer or as the industry would call it “brewery conditioned” which after primary fermentation is filtered pasteurized and sold freezing cold using extraneous gas to produce the excessive fizz and little taste (Beer Festival Guide et al, 2009). I was reading this while holding my first half pint of the day, a Devon Dumpling Bays, 5.1% of the unpasteurized living thing from Devon. It was a strong bitter taste when it first hit my senses, but I unusually love the undertone of hop and barley, and the way it plays at the back of my tongue. I am not particularly keen with the smell or the main tang of it, but I was looking forward to gulping it because the aftertaste was a good-natured lightness of hop and barley that was lost in the fizz of my usual lager of Carlsburg. Tick the box, 200 to go.

3rd Stop. The Stage Bar. We decided to go for cider next. Tumbling through my Beer wikipedia, it defines cider as fermented apple juice. One adult rating higher than the breakfast liquid accompaniment, two adult rating higher than the thing that keeps the doctor away. Me and Sonia looked at the towers of kegs confusingly as we try to pick our cider. Then an intervention came in a form of a veteran Englishman that picks for us a 7.1% Hertfordshire Brewed-Cider which is amazingly deceitful of its ABV. It has that lovely stink of a fresh brew, It’s non-fizzy, and bordering on medium dry. Hands down the best cider my rookie palate came across. Quarter of a pint later I managed to carelessly tumble my stranger seatmate’s beer with my hand bag. I am quite disappointed with myself as I knew my tolerance for alcohol has been fine-tuned and trained by the more lethal cheap Uni vodka and half-filtered tequila. Nonetheless, I profusely apologized and asked the gentleman if I could buy him the same drink. He said I don’t have to, but I insisted and he seems genuinely appreciative of the gesture. Anyway, me and Sonia discussed my absolute disability to pass the UK Practical Driving Test, I will not embarrass myself with how many tries I’ve done but as of this writing I am still trying. My hands-eye coordination is normally within the median bounds, and I’ve never failed anything in school, so this is a humbling experience, bordering on annoying and frustrating. Sometimes I just wanna scream discrimination. I did try all the moves though, dressing up a bit more sexier than one would in a driving exam, begging, reasoning out, laughing it out. Oh well. Me and right-hand driving don’t get along well, no actually I always say that every time it get jinxed (excuses). Nonetheless, my failure as a driver and my inability to stop trying was our cider topic. Then we decided to go to Germany, at least for a beer, which is a flight of stairs away.

4th Stop. Germany. At least where the beer was from. We got a bottled 500ml of “Oktoberfest Beer”- a gigantic bitter fizz that is a tad too macho for me. We sat and talk about my other work, and a call from a supplier from my office work cuts in, I have to excuse myself from Sonia and find my sobriety. Quite confident that my alco tolerance didn’t betray me this time, I picked up the call and manage to book a meeting with him and my boss the following week. When I put down the phone, I asked myself in panic if I booked a Wednesday or a Thursday. I dropped my doubts and carry on Oktoberfesting. We struggled to finish this German concoction but still we decided that we could carry on with one for the road, from the topmost floor.

5th Stop. I could just remember a few notes from this one. I knew it’s on the top floor and that we had a stout that I could also remember I don’t like it and I had mixed too much of too many different drinks that my usual 40% threshold is slumped by a quartet of single-digit ABV potions. I didn’t finish the drink and neither did Sonia. But I could remember going to the loo and meeting my mishap victim along the way, the English gentleman whose drink I have managed to spill on my 2nd half pint. I first looked at him confusingly and so did he, and he laughed and he asked if I remembered him, and I smiled and beg for a salvation of memory, and he said that I bought him a drink today and he sincerely thanked me for that. Chivalry lives on. Let’s drink to that.

We cap off our little trip by buying Lily, my pub boss, one mug Glass with a souvenir program just in case she wants to check out the list of the guilty liquids that put our town in a drunk state for 3 days. I came home with a lovely feeling that even though I will always be Asian, today, my quartet of half-pints had taken me into an afternoon of being English and English gentlemen who manage to multi-task drinking and niceness, and it was bloody fun.

Ran. Rain. Ran.

I ran today. My contact lenses could prolly use a wiper, 2 seconds interval. And could somebody please get that backpacked heater invented, stat. Nonetheless, I do love running in English weather, in the rain, in the cold, amongst the swan, and dogs, amongst umbrellas and prams, amongst boots and walking sticks. I have a lake. Its not mine nor its not in my backyard, it’s at the backyard of the God, of a very very old (when they say old in UK, it meant really old) Abbey Church where I threw my toga and hats off last year. I kid my guy at that time that since the ceremony would be at 9 am, I could still go for an hour run at the lake and go straight to the Church for a quick sprint to my diploma.

I call it my lake, because the lake is where I go to when things happen in my life. I ran there every morning last winter, hopping off slates and ices just to tire my lungs off the appetite of smoking, I ran when I quit smoking, I ran when my grandmother died, I ran when my extension visa first got denied, I ran again when my appeal was granted, I ran when my guy, the “guy” who had been my housemate, my workmate, my tennis partner, my Manchester United Memoirs Lecturer, my lover, and my bestfriend all in one Thai boy baby face went away-for good. But I don’t call him my boyfriend, because we were never official, because I'm always afraid to put a label and a commitment to a relationship that could easily be cut off by Immigration rules and visa expirations. Not that the British Home Office is liable for my relationships fiasco.

Anyways, so I ran. I ran because I felt I may fly. Because I felt I may actually run so fast that I might even escape time. I ran in the rain when Im upset because it merges with your tears making you look less scandalous and less awkward in public. I ran during Sundays because I like smiling at the kids who got no problem smiling back at a galloping Asian girl, and I like looking at families, and though it made me miss mine more, it made me feel that though the culture here is reserved and private, people are really kin-tight and are kind enough to give me a bit of way and an encouraging smile as I dash and excuse myself from the swans and the ducks, and yeah the humans too.

I ran during British summers because it’s the only time of the year I reunite with the sun, a few minutes of reconciliation, and it gives me the forgiving half-cooked blush. And I love looking at ice cream vans, and kids and not-so-kids lining up for a mile. And then I found myself joining the queue. I forgot about my calorie meter and the next half mile I’m suppose to finish. But then I forgive myself for this is the only time my anatomy could take in an ice concoction.

I haven’t seen this much of the whole town gathered in the lake for an afternoon of the very timid British sun, and I think only one event topples the attendance, the Beer Festival. Though, Beer and Cider cans makes frequent appearances too during summer afternoons, along with all English Strawberries and Cream, Wimbledon, and BBQs of bangers, Lincolnshire sausages, and Irish steaks.

And then comes autumn, when you ran into a cushion of leaves, when your clothes are thicker and heavier, and your shorts turn into trousers. Then it rains. And you need a hood and a scarf, and probably a plastic coated-body. And then it snows, then now you need a miracle to run or a tefal coated skin.

I ran and smell and see and breathe Britain in all weathers. Sometimes I run to runaway from England itself, sometimes I run to runaway from myself. But nonetheless, I ran. And it felt really good.

My Cuppa Tea

Lily, my English boss, teasingly told me to drink up my tea as I may be contributing to global warming by letting it go cold. There are enough cows farting around. We couldn’t afford to melt more ice bergs, British tabloid says, or as everyone amusingly interpret it.

I think here in England, the tea automatically freezes as soon as you put it down, as if the magic wind sweeps through and takes my heat away to Antartica. Prolly Santa Claus is working too much that’s why Antartica’s melting. Oh, where does he live again? Damn, Im old.

Better drink my cuppa before they blame me for destroying the earth or blaspheming Papa Santa.

I stopped ashort and start to think how many ways could a tea be done?

Do you put the milk and the teabag together before pouring in His Hotness? Do you take the teabag off or do you let it mull and procrastinate its way into caffeinating your senses? I wonder if its illegal to put sugar on my English Breakfast Tea. Not many I know do, oh well half I know are vodka drinkers, quarter on beer supplements, but everybody seems to have their own cuppa.

And the most interesting part is that the array of creative reasons why people have tea. Default and obvious are to make them warm, to go with their scones and shortbread, and of course to take a break.

Also unorthodox reasons, amongst hearsay is to cut an awkward conversation. Eg: “So you’re gay?” Dad asks, Mummy cuts in and dutifully asks everybody “Anybody wants a tea? (pats Daddy on the back) its getting a bit cold here my love. Everybody could use a tea”. Wouldn’t it seem weird if she asks if anybody wants a coffee, as if she would be putting the whole awkwardness into overdrive with a Starbucks. But with tea it seems calm and polite, it seems like a very sociable and graceful way of saying let’s drop the topic.

Also, I think tea is more engaging, remember when people used to drink from one big teapot small and stout, here is the handle, here is the spout? I think even though that people now drink in separate tea cups individualized into skinny, decaf, white or chai, the idea of having a tea takes us back to tea parties and nursery rhymes of big tea pitchers parallel to partaking, sharing, mingling and socializing. Hence when you asked somebody for a cup of tea it’s more of an occasion to chatter, catch up or probably tone down a pace of a situation. Sometimes when you asked somebody if he wants a coffee, its either he thinks you’re seeing sleep in his eyes or you want a cigarette break buddy. That’s our code in college when we’re all at the library. Once my bestfriend says Im getting coffee downstairs, I go in my autopilot “me too”, and another smoker echoes a “me three” as coffee meant ciggie break too. But that’s just for me, or for us.

Tea meant a lot of things to a lot of people, I think it had become our sweet little deed of kindness in the pub, it’s our code for “are you ok, I’ll make you a cuppa so you’ll feel better”. She makes tea for me after a hard shift or early on to give me a break after prep up, I make tea for her when I think she’s having those knee problems again or when the sales are not good, or when we have a hard day. Maybe the tea ethos is about the effort not the drink, it’s about the offer, it’s prolly just about having somebody remembered that you could really use a break. So you want a cuppa?

Dressing Britain (This is not about fashion)

Dressing Britain (This is not about fashion)

English cuisine. British culinary. What comes to mind?

Fish and Chips? Full English Breakfast? Steak Pies and Cornish Pastry? Slow Cooked Stews and Heavily worked out oven with our long list of roasts dinners. And a country full of potatoes- Crisps, Chips, Mashed, Roasted, and Adored.

Some regarded it as unassuming bordering on uncreative, sidelining on boring(quoted), others say its nonexistent. Look it up on the wiki and comes a snappy and nonchalantly short article turns up.

I beg to disagree with boring and uncreative. It’s probably just too practical, too convenient, and too sensible. But it’s not synonymous to nonexistent and nonapealling.

Imagine all cuisine coming to a gala. The French comes in the exuberance and elegance of a tuxedo with a Champagne that magically tops up itself, Italians on loafers and Armani, Americans come in a dressed up Abercrombie and Fitch, Indians come in their beads and spiced colored sarong and kurta, and Thai comes, well, in Chilis, no Thai comes in their zen outfits. The English Cuisine comes in a simple coat and black tie, not forgetting his overcoat/mac as it might rain or snow, or probably it’s just one of those days we have 4 seasons in 24 hours. It’s neither showy, nor luxurious.

He’s one of those who you know have weathered a storm or a hail. He’s reserved and simple. He’s not without depth, but he reacts to certain situations, and when he opens his mouth it’s of something very important and salient. He’s not the life the party, but he’s the season of the crowd. And I lost you there didn’t I. Now you’re thinking of an Englishman than my roast dinner metaphor.

The English cuisine have to battle great depression, recession, and rationing, not that the rest of the world didn’t, but the rest of the world have better climates, more choices of ingredients, and a less destructive weather. Raw ingredients, food, and wine have been more generous to other nations, they have it at default. They inherited it. They have trust funds of ingredients, and vegetations, and vineyards, and plantations, and rice terraces.

But Britain dig deep and cultivated cuisine based on its means, not on the glorious expectations of the world to an Imperialist. A Cuisine that specializes on food that is filling, succulent, and supplementative, flexible and durable to the whips and lashes of mama nature. Hence comes, the substanstial and stodgy stews and steak and ale, bangers and mash, full English and monty. Hence comes the fish and chips wrapped in newspaper for practicality and mobility of a workforce behind a country that fought for peace and for pride. Hence comes the beautiful cocktail of summer greens and vege and the warming and then comforting winter roots. Hence come the Jersey new potatoes at the start of the season, and the big sister maris piper of the colder months.

We change dress for the weather, but not as sensitive as the British cuisine. It is in their blood, in their markets, in their household talks, it’s in the paper, in the pub. And it stays, “it’s indeed passed on, love” as what a kind Englishman would say. It may have had adopted the curry as its co-national dish but this is an exemplification of its good nature to take steward of a foreign food of a country it helped developed.

The British cuisine in a gala is the one you go to when you need something reliably stuffing and fresh, one that you would eat with unassuming appetite but with grace. Whether it’s chips in your hand or curry in a naan, or roast on your fork.

The charm of the British Cuisine is in its heritage, reliability and its dignified weathered stance, it has provided for a country and a culture a food ethos that would definitely weather a hundred more recession, great depression, and rationing. It is a veteran. And with that British Cuisine indeed deserves respect, recognition, and a longer Wikipedia entry.

Comes the end of the gala, the French are elegantly tipsy, Italians have 2 buttons down their gorgeous Armani, the Americans on their Hoodie, but the English Cuisine is still Dressed in Crisp White and Black Tie, a trench coat on its hand in case his darling needs the shed from the storm. Even though the Gala is in Africa.

Living it 'Thai

Living it 'Thai.

One of the trio of jobs Im juggling involves weekend evenings of phone stuck on my ear, getting orders for a thai takeaway that my former workmate opened a few months ago.
I actually adore that job aside from the homey feeling of being with fellow Southeast Asians, I endearingly and teasingly call my boss Mom, she worked in the first restaurant I worked with in which our other boss there had been eventually my boss in the third medley of my working life - the office.
Small world.

Anyways, I got a few hilarious orders for the past few months.. and underneath each is my invisible replies, double underline invisible, cos I gotta hold on to my mouth and just smile my way through if I still want my job next week.

“Can I please have a portion of Chicken Cashew Nut without Cashew”
–Can I please take the order, without you saying the order? Prolly sign language would do?

“Can I please have a Nugget and Chips”
– Right we do that best, since we’re a thai takeaway

Three people came in, me jumping for joy for extra business, one of them call out the order: “Can I just have one portion of chips please?”
-I think the chicken shop next door do that better.

“Can you please just knock softly on the door and don’t ring the bell? My baby’s sleeping
-Maybe we should start whispering on the phone too.


But sometimes, I get the lower hand.

Me: Can I take a name and a contact number pls?
Customer: Mr Ascot. 077********
Me: Ascot? Like the Royal Ascot? (Royal Ascot = Royal Horse Sprints/Races)
Customer: Yeah, you made that joke last week.
Me to my mind: Glad to know you’re a regular sir :)

Holy Chutney.
Anyways, Chef Thaibool (my endearment for him) usually makes this homemade salad for everyone, it's not on any of the restaurants menu, rather, it’s an authentic salad from Northern regions of Thailand, and its damn good. And so easy. It’s a chutney of some kind. I call it Holy Chutney because I reckon its so healthy and its really tasty.

Aubergine, Garlic, Tomatoes – originally best to roast in a tandoori oven, but I don’t have a restaurant in my backyard so the grill/oven would do. Usually, I slice the auberigine/tomatoes horizontally first to exposed a lot of flesh to give it color/caramelization. Authentically, Thaibool would pound it on mortar/pestle to make it as a mach but then you sliced or mashed according to choice. I like mine strips.

Ground Green Chilis

Fresh chopped Coriander Leaf

Lime Juice

Nam Pla/Fish Sauce.

It got this sweet and spicy feeing playing in your mouth with different textures from the vegetable (crunchy and nuggetty from the roasted skin, and mushy from the flesh), the roasted garlic makes it more rustic, and the coriander leaf aromatize everything to freshness, the lime juice cuts through and gives the fish sauce a good marriage. Love Living it’Thai.

Tesco Treasures

Tesco Treasures
2 years in UK and I was trying to prove to myself that I could sort HEALTHY recipes out of the shelves that wouldn’t hurt my pocket. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t plan on starving myself, its actually cheaper and easier to buy junk and ready to go. But I don’t like junk and ready to go. I like food that stares at you and the flavours are just jumping. Bloody ambitious isn’t it.
The thing with this challenge is that you sort of get the most basic one, its cheap and basic, its up to you to do the makeover. You gotta see the white swan in the ugly duck. Blimey.

So my Top 5 Tesco Treasures.

Tesco Lights Baked Beans - 25 pence per 150 gram small can. With its lower sugar content, low GI, its definitely a filler. I have it with wholemeal toast, then lay my half fat cheddar slice on it, and let my 2-minute microwaved beans melt the cheese on top. Topped off with drips of hot sauce to wake up my tastebuds.

Spices-Oregano,Basil,Parsey,Rosemary, Five Spice, Garam Masala. Nitrate. Sulphur. Oxalic. Lover’s Quarrel. Cold wars. Name it they have in this tiny cute little bottles that would make a battalion of a spice if made to stand in a line. I actually like investing in spices. It’s quite cheap at 50-80 pence a bottle.

Olive Oil- EVOO says Rachel Ray. Whether it’s a branded one or just the generic Tesco self-named one which its still a good buy from £1.80 for the goddess of oils.

Balsamic Vinegar – here I draw the line of my frugality. It’s my Achilles heel. I love proper Italian Balsamic Vinegar as it definitely takes roasted aubergine, roasted courgettes, and salads from commoners to Buckingham-goodness. You could get a decent one from £2 or less.

Basil Infused Tomato Sauce Packs – at 50 pence for a medium tetra pack, its not bad at all. It’s a good base for making Ratatouille or any red pasta, or any red sauce, or well you could have it as a soup. Liven it up with your spice rack, served with wholemeal toast dipped in Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar. Then shave an invisible white truffle over it. There goes my Pobre Molto Mario Recipe. Who says you cant have gourmet below £1?

Brown Wholemeal Wheat Spagghetti – 80 pence per 500 grams. King of Bargains. Its carbs, its non perishable, but considering it’s made from durum, hence protein-packed it would have lower GI than bread, and it taste good with a nutty undertone. It cooks al dente, and its, say "one second thinner" than the usual spaghetti (pardon me for measuring it by seconds, my bestfriend back home influence this rascal mathematics)