The Australiafiles: Part 2- Aeroplane Food

I wanted to blog about other more interesting things, but I really don't want to leave aeroplane food until last- so let's just get this over with, shall we?

Before I start, I'll admit that I was impressed with the quality of the food mains on the outgoing flight. Homecoming, not so much.

Outgoing meal 1: Red wine lamb stew with mash and veggies

Cons: It literally looked like a dog's dinner.

Pros: It actually tasted really good, the mash was done just right, as were the veggies- and the lamb was tender and lean. Go figure.

Came with: Standard bread roll and butter (untouched- too much stodge), salad starter, a bit of cheese and crackers and Singapore Sling flavour ice cream (we were flying with Singapore Airlines since we stopped over at Singapore Changi airport)

Outgoing meal 2: Pan-fried fish wish pesto velouté, potatoes and Mediterranean veggies

Cons: The veggies were disgusting- mushy and weirdly sour.

Pros: The fish was awesome and not overcooked, the potatoes were actually cooked through and, to my surprise, the velouté was actually a velouté and not some random sauce that they decided to call a velouté to make it sound fancier.

Came with: Standard bread roll and butter (again, untouched), potato salad starter, a bit of cheese and crackers and a Cornetto (I freaking love Cornettos so I was pretty happy).

Breakfast happened at some point when I was too exhausted to properly note (we travelled for 24 hours and I didn't sleep for one of them), and involved an omelette, chicken sausage, some fruit somewhere, a pot of yogurt and a banana muffin. And the standard bread roll and butter (again untouched), with a bit of jam to make it more breakfast-y. I may have used the jam on the muffin.

Homecoming meal 1: Beef and stirfried noodles.

Stirfried my arse. Sorry, no more pictures, I was shattered for the whole journey back and sat like a zombie for most of it. But I remember no pros with this meal. None at all. The noodles tasted like instant, the beef was tough and slimy, and that's all I can remember. So I just stuck with the pasta starter and standard cheese and crackers (again giving the roll a wide berth). Dessert was another Cornetto, so at least I was a happy zombie by the end of it.

Homecoming meal 2: Fish curry with rice

Cons: It was spicy enough to make my nose run- make everyone's noses run. Not pleasant when you're stuck in a crowded tin can several thousands of feet up in the air. It also looked a bit like pet food (again).

Pros: It was worth it- the fish was tempura-ed and the curry sauce was good, and the rice was neither soggy nor chewy.

Came with: Standard bread roll and butter (ignored), salad starter, cheese and crackers and chocolate mousse cake.

Homygosh the chocolate mousse cake. I really did want to photo it but it wasn't really presented well- sort of crammed into its container- but it was the kind with three thin layers of light chocolate sponge, with chocolate mousse in between, and glazed with a glossy chocolate ganache.

Breakfast was obligatory noodles. I would have chosen the omelette option after my previous noodle let-down, but it ran out way before the trolley got to me. The noodles were again awful. But the fruit salad was nice, as was the return of the banana muffin and jam. The bread roll and butter were, again, lonely and abandoned. There was also cereal, but I think I drank the milk, forgot about the actual cereal part, and went back into zombie state.

That's pretty much it.

The Australiafiles: Part 1- How a Chinese Family Eats

Family food time. <3

For the past two weeks I was in Sydney, Australia, having made the long journey from here in the UK for a cousin's wedding. I took the opportunity to document some cool food experiences, from aeroplane food to fancy restaurants. I think I'll start with the latter!

Quick background: My mum's side of the family is Chinese, and scattered over Malaysia (where her generation was born and raised), the UK, the US and Australia. The only place I haven't been to is the US, and all others I've either lived in or visited a number of times to see family (luckily this time around my relatives in the US made it to Oz for the wedding so I got to see them too). A high percentage of Australia's population is Chinese or otherwise East Asian, so that will probably reflect in the food I post about here.

Now, onto Chinese eats, and with a very traditional type of food: dim sum.

See that round thingy in the middle? It's called a Lazy Susan: the multiple dishes are placed on it and the diners at the table can spin it around to try a bit of everything on offer (which is quite a traditional Chinese way to eat, rather than Western-style where stuff is plated up for you). In the case of dim sum you order what you want off of trolleys of food that are pushed around, and it's added to a tab thingy that's added up at the end of your meal. You often also get a pot or two of green tea.

The gold sparkly thing in the middle was because we were celebrating my jia po's 80th birthday.

You can get all sorts in dim sum: jiaozi dumplings, baozi dumplings, egg tarts, choi sum, beef balls, noodles... and, of course, chicken feet.

One of two things I find too fiddly to eat: the second being cherries without a pitter.

I'm not grossed out by chicken feet (more poetically called 'phoenix claws' in Chinese), but I find them so damned difficult to eat. You're supposed to just pop them in your mouth and (look away if squeamish) suck the skin and sinew off the bones, spitting the bones out, but this is a way of eating I just haven't inherited from that side of my family. (Noodle slurping I can do, though.)

A beef ball: tender and flavoured subtly with things like ginger, garlic and spring onions

Mum and I, with me showing off my mad chopsticks skills.

Afterword: We went to a really nice restaurant for dim sum on this occasion, but dim sum isn't usually a formal thing. I've also noticed that a lot of Chinatown restaurants in London only do dim sum at lunchtime to 5pm (and it was indeed lunchtime when we went to this place)- so I guess it's more of a lunch/ brunch thing.