Down From London in Brighton

I was visiting my Brighton-born friend Vicky in her territory yesterday, and finally got around to taking some food snaps. There are so many amazing food places to choose from, from all around the world and catering for every dietary requirement, and in particular has a great variety of choice for vegans and vegetarians. Cliché as it sounds, there really is something for everyone in Brighton when it comes to food.

In the three times I've visited my friend in Brighton, we've always started off the day in the same way: by having a cup of coffee at The Coffee Counter.

This place is pretty much the height of hipster cool. A tiny place tucked out of the way and surrounded by arty things for sale, books to read, games to play (including an old Atari), and really good coffee, cakes and treats (including gorgeous vegan sweet treats that you wouldn't even guess were vegan if you tasted them).

For lunch, we went to a little Korean restaurant called Namul. Look at the cute bunny!

Their main speciality is bibimbap: a rice bowl with various toppings of your choice, for example bulgogi (marinated grilled beef), kimchee and veggies. When you opt for bibimbap, you choose the type of rice you want (I chose black sticky rice), the fillings, and the sauce.

I promise, it was beautifully presented when it came to the table: each colourful section placed in its own section. Alas, I was so hungry and eager to get stuck in I mixed it a little before remembering to take a picture! I'm more used to it in the Malay dessert pulut hitam, but it was lovely in savoury bibimbap too. Here's a pic of the black rice up close: it looks black when uncooked, but turns a lovely deep purple colour:

Later on, we had cream tea at Blackbird Tea Rooms. The inside is a real treat in itself: just the right amount of retro kitsch and shabby chic.

The real treat though, was the cream tea itself. The scones were generously sized, with a fluffy but satisfying texture, and served with clotted cream and raspberry jam.

Phoar.

They also had some very, very tempting-looking cakes, and of course a full afternoon tea on offer.

I didn't take many pictures of this next place, the Twisted Lemon (or as I keep mistakenly calling it, the 'spinny lemon'), but it's definitely worth a mention as a pretty awesome cocktail place. They have a great menu, and really seem to know their stuff. I had a cocktail called a killer zombie: as I remember it, it had Captain Morgan Rum, spiced rum (can't remember which label), pineapple, orange and pomegranate juice, and it was garnished with lime, a brown sugar cube and SET ON FIRE. I wish I took a picture of it when it was aflame, but I was too entranced (it didn't mention being set on fire on the menu, so I got a nice surprise).

I ate the sugar cube before taking the picture. It had been soaked in rum, set on fire and caramelised. Of course I was going to eat it straight away.

A Short Adventure in Brussels

This weekend I visited Brussels, which was my prize for being a finallist in Godiva's Chocolate Challenge earlier this year. Brussels being Foodie Heaven, I took plenty of picture and ate plenty of food.

I decided to write about it in my baking blog instead of on Where I Like to Eat since that's where I originally wrote about the competition and where I published the recipe, so head on over to Tashcakes! for the full photostory.

Here is a 'taster' (geddit?) of what I experienced.

Find out where I ate all of these, and why I ended up speaking in languages- English, French and Mandarin- during my short stay in this wonderful city. Also, look! I met a kitty!

His name is Moka, and he's the restaurant Mokafe's resident cat. Isn't he sho shweet?

The Malaysiafiles: Part 5- Ice, Ice, Baby

The final part of the Malaysiafiles 2014 and another of my favourite things: iced drinks and desserts. Perfect for when the sun is shining and it's hot enough outside that you could physically cook yourself by midday.

I've mentioned things like cendol and ice kacang before, but no-one does it better than the Indonesians and Malaysians, which is where these things come from (there is apparently quite a fiery debate about who did what version of which dessert first, but I'm definitely not qualified to comment on that one).

Ice Kacang and Cendol are similar in the way that they both involve shaved ice (the best kind being snow-soft ice), with sweet syrups (often palm sugar syrup and condensed milk). Now here's where the variations come in: Ice kacang is almost always a mish-mash of delights such as agar jelly, grass jelly, sweet red beans, sweetcorn, palm seeds and fruits, like these:

Cendol, though, is named after the green, pandan-fragrant strands of jelly that's added to the shaved ice dessert. They kind of look like worms, but that's part of the fun.

Cendol seems to come in two different forms, each with its own region of origin (again, hotly debated). One of them is basically like ice kacang with added 'cendol', lbut my favourite way is simply cendol jelly with coconut milk poured over ice and palm sugar syrup:

I did giggle a bit at the sign.

There are simpler icy drinks to cool you down on muggy days though, like iced lemon and sea coconut drinks:

And other mixed ice drinks (this one was cendol and grass jelly with milk and golden syrup- strange but good!)

And of course, sweet red bean ice drinks:

This one came in a small JUG. <3

Last but certainly not least, there is iced Milo, and even better: Milo dinosaur.

It's quite obvious that Milo is quite a big thing in South East Asia.

It's quite nostalgic for me: I always associate the chocolatey, malty drink with visiting my cousins in Australia or Malaysia when I was little. However it was only relatively recently I discovered the existence of the Milo dinosaur.

This is a normal iced Milo:

And this is a Milo dinosaur:

It comes with EXTRA MILO on top. Best. Idea. Ever. Something that's easy to re-create at home, too (which has very dangerous implications for my waistline).

Well kids, that's it from the Malaysiafiles 2014.

Want to try making the wormy green things that are cendol for your own icy dessert adventures? Of course you do! Head on over to my blog Tashcakes! for my cendol recipe and to find out how it's done.

The Malaysiafiles: Part 3- Kuih and Sweets

One of my favourite, favourite foods of all time: nyonya kuih.

Nyonya refers to the fusion of Chinese and Malay-style cooking in particular, but can also include fusions from other areas in South East Asia. 'Kuih' is Malay for 'cake', although rather than the spongy cakes we're used to, they're often made from glutinous rice flour and are dense and custard-y.

This is kuih talam, my favourite of all the kuihs: it's got a sweet green pandan custard layer, and a white coconut layer that's slightly salty as well as sweet on top: the flavours balance each other out perfectly.

Some other kuis include kuih lapis ('layer cake'), which is made of many colourful layers,  and kuih dadar, a pandan-flavoured crêpe rolled up with gula melaka (palm sugar)-sweetened coconut inside. I've actually made my own versions of kuih dadar and kuih lapis on my blog Tashcakes!, although I'm working on a more improved recipe for kuih lapis.

(The centre sweet it a glutinous rice ball with sweet peanut filling)

The test of a good kuih lapis is if you can peel the layers apart from each other- I need to work on that when I improve my recipe!

As you can see on the plate above, there were also more Chinese-y style glutinous rice sweets, such as the peanut-filled ball in the middle. There were also banana-flavoured ones with red bean, green pandan or pink food colouring in the middle, and one very strange one...

The strange one I'm referring to is the dark grey sticky rice cake at the bottom left of the last pic up there. It's dyed that colour by the herb that's used to flavour it. It had a bland, herbal taste to it, and wasn't helped by the fact that the herb is affectionately nicknamed 'chicken poo leaf'. Still, an interesting thing to try, and of course there were plenty of other personal favourites to eat such as pisang goreng (fried bananas: banana fritters):

There were also purple sweet potato fritters, look at how pretty!

Something else I had never tried before was honeycomb cake, so-called because of the air bubbles that become trapped in the cake batter during baking. It was delicious and caramel-y, and really soft and light.

One more unusual but awesome thing I tried seemed like a standard Western-style pastry at first, but it turned out to have a twist:

Cinnamon swirl danish pastry, right? Well, not quite. It is sweet like a danish pastry, but instead of danish pastry, it's a deep fried doughnut-type affair; and instead of cinnamon, it's five spice. Surprising if you're not expecting it, but it worked very well.

Finally, we also ate durian pancakes: thin, delicate crêpes filled with sweetened fresh cream and fresh durian. True to durian form, you could smell these things from tables away (a signature pungent smell of custard, caramel and rotting onions), and also true to form, they were absolutely delicious.

Next time, during Part 4 of the Malaysiafiles, I'll be continuing with sweet food to explore delicious shaved ice desserts and drinks.

The Malaysiafiles: Part 2- Aeroplane Food

Dun dun dun.

Outgoing

Dinner:

Nasty, nasty olive potato pepper salad, school dinners chicken and gravy and mass concoction with weirdly posh but overcooked romanesco cauliflower, surprisingly good Victoria sponge and obligatory cheese + crackers + roll + butter. My God though, that salad... the memory of how it tasted will stay with me for quiet a while.

Breakfast:

Fruit (can't go wrong with fruit), yogurt, nasty-looking but actually pleasant nasi lemak and a croissant boulder. I could have knocked someone out with that croissant.

There was also a sandwich snack after the stopover at Kuala Lumpur, but I didn't much feel like photoing a sandwich. It looked and tasted like a sandwich.

Return

What I thought was dinner:

Curried weirdly uniform cubes of some white fish or another (cod or coley I thought). I thought it was weird that it didn't come with the obligatory roll and dessert, but I was too tired to care. The curry was surprisingly good.

Actual dinner:

After the Kuala Lumpur stopover and once we got on the plane for the longest part of our flight, they rolled out the food- to my dismay. But we'd already eaten! There was a pretty inoffensive sweetcorn salad, crackers and cheese... lord knows what the main was, I can't even remember. Something that started off as being chicken and then went horribly wrong, I think. Also, I had never met a cheesecake I didn't like until this meal: the cheesecake was like an old, dry bathroom sponge. Very disappointing for a dessert enthusiast.

Breakfast:

The usual yogurt and fruit (covered by the foil in a fit of jetlagged pique), along with another boulder of croissant, plus an alright omelet, alright chicken sausage, inoffensive vegetables and soggy potato things. By now I was so zombified by the flight back west that I could barely taste anything, anyway.

Overall Verdict

On average, it all tasted exactly how it looked.

Such a shame every holiday has to end this way- at least, when you're flying 'cattle class'. In any case, I had a very good enough innings during my time in Malaysia- which you have caught a glimpse of in Part 1... and there is more to come.

The Malaysiafiles: Part 1- Unique Eats from Sabah

2012 brought you the Australiafiles: this year I bring you the Malaysiafiles!

I visited my jiapo, aunt and uncle in Kota Kinabalu this month (I got back three days ago and I'm STILL jet lagged as hell). From the UK came myself, mum, aunt, uncle and two cousins. From Texas came another aunt, and from Australia came another aunt and uncle (the parents of my cousin who got married during my trip to Oz). It was more of a mini reunion this time round, but I assure you no less food was eaten.

For the first half of the trip, mum and I stayed round my jiapo, aunt and uncle's house in KK, and for the second we stayed in a hotel. Not only is my jiapo an amazing cook, but my aunt and uncle made sure we ate lots of local delights too. In fact, the very first thing my uncle Herbert plonked down on a table as soon as mum and I arrived was something I've never seen (or smelled!) before in my life.

(Mum on the left, aunt on the right)

This fruit is called a 'tarap', and is native to Borneo. It's related to the breadfruit and jackfruit, and has a distinct, pungently sweet smell. The strong smell can be off-putting for some, but honestly, compared to the slightly rotten smell of a durian fruit, it's like a lightly fragranced bouquet of flowers. I didn't even think the tarap had a particularly bad smell- it sort of reminded me of the way a really ripe banana smells, only stronger.

The outside feels like a stiff wire scrubbing brush, but on the inside are lots of soft, plump kernels of fruit, each with its own large seed inside.

To open it, you just have to grab it and tear it open with your hands- no knife necessary.

It tasted amazing, I'm sad that I won't be able to find it anywhere else- it was sort of like a tropical fruit salad, a cross between bananas, lychees, pineapples and vanilla ice-cream. In fact, if I had free access to these fruits, I'd love to try making tarap ice-cream! I think it'd work really well.

Next on the Unique Eats menu are Sandakan cow pat tarts (also known as UFO tarts). These were originally made in Sandakan and are only really found there, although they are starting to catch on in nearby areas within Sabah.

This one's a UFO shape, with a circular ring of piped meringue and a piped cross in the centre. You can just about see the rich custard filling in the centre, and the base is a light sponge cake.

This one was a 'cow pat' shape, with a swirl of meringue piped all the way around and up from the custard.

I've actually made this before on my blog Tashcakes! In fact, this weekend I had another go at fashioning a recipe for cow pat tarts in an attempt to make them more authentic. I came really close this time- next time they'll be perfect! Head on over there for the recipes I have so far. At least these are easier to create than trying to grow a tarap tree in London!

Last of all on the Unique Eats menu are pineapple jam pastries: flaky, light pastry filled with a rich pineapple jam (a similar pineapple jam you'll find on Chinese-style pineapple tarts). These I've not made before, but I can't wait to get experimenting in the kitchen.

The pastries are at the front of the photo. Behind are two coconut tarts (enriched with egg yolks to make them extra moist and delicious), and behind you can see an intact cow pat tart. =D

As you might have gathered, this will be a series of parts like the Australiafiles. Tomorrow, I'll be posting about the worst food of any trip ever: aeroplane food.