Fish 'n' Chick'n, Bar Hill

As I find myself working today I feel I deserve a rare takeaway, going for Fish and Chips from Bar Hill's Fish 'n' Chick'n takeaway. I find the food from here to be consistently good and today is no different as I feast greedily on freshly battered fish and salted, vinegar soaked chips. Yummy! Much better to seek this out rather than anything at Cambridge Services, a couple of junctions to the west along the A14.

Ham Rolls and a KitKat

I'm quite tired today, so I intend to leave work a bit earlier than usual, have a quick nap and dinner before enjoying an ale or two in the pub. This doesn't happen. I leave work late, have no nap and only have Ham Rolls and a KitKat for dinner before arriving at the pub late. The KitKat is possibly my favourite chocolate bar, but the whole is a less than edifying kind of dinner.

Ham rolls and a KitKat

Freezer Food

One of the beauties of modern living is that the fridge-freezer (thank you Marcel Audiffren!) is often taken for granted enabling that pint of milk to last more than a day or two, and meals to be kept for 2 to 3 months in domestic deep freeze. However being human we, or at least I, sometimes forget what meal is in that unlabelled tub... It turns out to be some kind of lamb tagine with apricot, which is lucky as I only realise this after making the accompanying couscous!

Some kind of lamb tagine

Chicken and Spring Onion Couscous

More culinary simplicity today. Having bought a roasted chicken for lunchtime sandwiches, I have some remaining for a dinner of sorts. I shred it and combine it with couscous with chicken stock and sliced salad onions for a 5 min din(ner). Though the Chicken and Spring Onion Couscous looks a bit anaemic, it has a comforting effect on the tastebuds.

Chicken and spring onion couscous

Steak Sandwich

After all the complexities of Malaysian food, I'm certainly enjoying the simple edible pleasures like a Steak Sandwich. A section of baguette cut in half and toasted. One half slathered with mayonaise, the other half with Dijon mustard. A quick, hot griddle sears some thin cut steak that generously fills the sandwich with fresh lettuce. Mmmm...

Steak sandwich

Griddled Monkfish and Mango Sauce

After many hours travelling, a ridiculously one-sided international football match and a recharging sleep, I wander in a bit of daze through the supermarket to refill the fridge. I find that the reduced items shelf is always worth a rummage and I strike gold today finding a reduced Monkfish tail, such items are usually prohibitively expensive for day-to-day eating, so it is with some glee I stash it.
Being reduced it HAS to be eaten today, so I fillet it, griddle it and serve it with a salad and a sweet mango sauce. The Griddled Monkfish and Mango Sauce has both a pleasing meatiness and richness of fruit.

Griddled Monkfish and mango sauce

Malaysia Review

My original intention was to do a bit of posting while I was on holiday, but lack of time and internet access scuppered my intentions somewhat, so instead I'll cherry pick my dinner highlights over 2 weeks on the Malaysian island of Penang.
Unusually for Malaysia where there is a surfeit of places to eat out in the first proper dinner I have is cooked by my Grandma at my Mum and Dad's house. A second rare event for my Grandma to cook for me as she lives in Australia and it's been many a year since that last happened, the highlight being the chicken that had been seasoned for a day, though the local prawns were good too.

Grandma's dinner

 

 

 The next night I had Roti Canai, a simple dish of a rough flatbread with curry sauce and is widely available around Malaysia. I had this at a coffee shop on Gurney Drive and it was merely adequate, you can get better, but it provided me with a pleasing taster.

Taking on a roti canai

The Friday was taken up my the Mother's 60th Birthday Dinner with just the 8 courses! Unreal! This was a feast for the 30 to 40 people that my Mother had invited. It had no rice with it and was very rich. The strangest item was a cold seafood jelly with prawns and squid, but also contained fruit and was covered with Marie Rose sauce! Very bizarre. My highlight of this spread was the stuffed braised duck.

Cold seafood jelly

Stuffed braised duck

 Needless to say dinners for the next couple of days after that were on the light side. However my next dinner, possibly my favourite all trip was at a Japanese BBQ restaurant, close to Island Plaza called Kan Nichi Kan. I've never been to such a place before with a small pit in the centre of every table with an extractor fan immediately above it. We had one of the set menus which consisted of different plates of thin strips of raw marinated meat and seafood. Ah... so that's what the pit and air extraction system is for! The waiter places a dish of hot coals in the pit and places a mesh over it; everyone's a chef tonight! The meat is beautifully seasoned and fresh; obviously freshly cooked, but the best were the meaty prawns with a certain sweetness to them beautiful! Definitely a place worth seeking out if you're on the island.

Japanese BBQ

Everyone's a chef!

Shrimps on the barbie!

 What's a holiday without an all you can eat buffet? We eat like gluttons to the point of excess at the Park Royal Hotel dinner buffet, serving everything from Roast Beef to a chocolate fountain, I'm so stuffed by the end that I have a little play with my (third) dessert plate...

Park Royal hotel buffet dessert (No 3)

Over the next few nights I realise that I am starting to tire of the Chinese food, there are plenty of multi course meals with the seemingly ubiquitous steamed fish in sauce, which was nice the first couple of times, but by the end of trip I realise I'm actually quite sick of.

The ubiquitous Chinese steamed fish in sauce

However, that's not to say that there were not more highlights before the end of the trip. My Aunt's friend made a home cooked meal of Penang style Laksa, Biriyani and Bacang.

Bacang, Laksa and Biryani

The Bacang, the pyrimid of sticky rice containing a filling of usually savoury items was the best of the lot. The filling in this case being pork and chinese mushrooms.

An opened bacang

One more highlight was in the last dinner before leaving, again at a Chinese restaurant (I'll be off the Chinese food for at least a couple of weeks when I get home!), but this time a crispy duck pancake. All the other components are the same except instead of shredded duck meat, a single piece of crispy duck skin is placed in the rolled pancake. This has an excellent crunch to it; a highlight of the meal.

Crispy duck pancake

In general I've really enjoyed the food on this trip, but I've had my fill of Oriental food for at least a few weeks...

Dining Street Restaurant, Heathrow Terminal 4

Plane food is just really crap isn't it? My Sister seems to have donned the rose tinted spectacles as she says she secretly enjoys it, however I'm taking no chances and have a Steak and Ale Pie and mash at the Dining Street Restaurant and Bar in Heathrow Airport's Terminal 4. Airport food is surely only one notch above airline food if at all, so I step into the union jack festooned dining area with a little trepidation.
I am actually pleasantly surprised. The food and drink is a bit expensive for what it is, but that is to be expected in a captive market situation such as this with limited competition. The pie is a proper pastry-all-around pie with nice chunks of meat in gravy, which sets me up nicely for a 12 hour flight.

Steak and ale pie

Salmon en Croute with Asparagus

A last bit of home cooking for me before I disappear on holiday to Malaysia for two weeks - I'd best not make this a spicy one, as I'll have plenty of that in country! I'm cooking for Her too, so I make something a bit special; my version of Salmon en Croute. I finely chop and season some watercress before putting the resulting paste on top of a fillet of salmon, after which I wrap the each fish and 'cress package in filo pastry and bake in the oven. I accompany this with asparagus and carrots for a healthy pre-holiday meal. Not sure how frequently I'll be blogging over the holiday, but I'm sure I'll do a round up at the end!

Salmon en croute with asparagus

 

The Cambridge Chop House

It's my friend's birthday today and he chooses to go to The Cambridge Chop House. I've always found this place with it's basement main room to be not as good as it thinks it is, which is the case again today. I have cod cheeks with bacon in a cheese and parsley sauce to start, which is decent and nothing more than that and for my main I have a rump steak with mash and peppercorn sauce, served by an unnecessarily rude waiter, not sure what his problem was, but he was quite abrupt to say the least. I ask for a medium steak, but it comes to me closer to well done, which is quite careless. My friend enjoyed it though, but my thoughts that the Cambridge Chop House is slightly overpriced and overrated remain.

Pork Ribs

I definitely have the carnivore coming out in me today, picking up the sticky Pork Ribs and ripping the meat from the bone with my teeth! Rrrarr! Vegetarians look away now! However after each rib I clean up my hands to use a knife and fork to eat the accompanying salad and new potatoes before turning T-Rex again. A time consuming, Jekyll and Hyde process.

Pork ribs

Stir Fried Pork

I try my best to do Stir Fried Pork today, but despite my best efforts, I can't get my wok to stay hot enough. I can get it smoking to start with, but once the ingredients over and above the oil and finely chopped chilli and garlic go in, the smoking ceases, indicating a disappointing drop in temperature. You are supposed to need to keep a stir fry moving at all times to prevent things burn and even use a little water you have to hand to for the same job once the main searing has been done. Not here though. Still tasty, but thinking about what could have been.

Stir fried pork

Kedgeree

I thought I had a decent dinner tonight, but as I write this I have an episode of Rick Stein's recent BBC series Spain in the background. Spanish cuisine and lifestyle are among my favourite in the world, so Stein's romanticised narrative of images of him traversing the Spanish landscape, eating as he goes, has me pretty much salivating. It's no help that I'm watching in high definition. Damn him! Up until then I had thought my Kedgeree of curried rice, fish and egg was a decent dinner...

Kedgeree

Cheese on Toast

A use-up dinner today. Old bread (let's scrape off a bit of mould there...) and some old cheese (let's cut the fur from this Brie; the Port Salut seems fine) and a few drops of Worcestershire sauce for a tang... makes Cheese on Toast.

Cheese on toast

Asparagus with Parmesan Shavings

After eating dinner out over the last 4(!) days it's something of a welcome contrast to cook simply at home again. None simpler than grilled British Asparagus drizzled with olive oil, seasoned and then sprinkled with shavings of Parmesan cheese.

Asparagus with parmesan shavings

 

Indian Summer, Swaffham, Norfolk

You know it's a Bank Holiday in the UK when the rain teems down in an unrelenting stream all day destroying any thoughts of pleasant summer activities, which is exactly what happens today! We leave it late before wandering out for dinner, Swaffham strangely has nothing in between gourmet and takeaways, so we decide to go for an ultimately fruitless drive around the countryside, finding most places closed, before returning to Swaffham and the Indian Summer. We are starving by this point so we could eat almost anything but the fayre as it happens is good. A couple of poppadoms each takes the edge off the hunger before she goes into unchartered territory with a Chicken Bhuna and I have the Chicken Jaljala (both of medium hotness) as recommended by our waiter Alam, who provided us with excellent, friendly service. We have these mains with plain rice, mushroom rice and a paratha between us. Both dishes are decent and warming which is what we both needed on a cold, wet night in Norfolk.

Chicken jaljala

Stratton's Hotel, Swaffham, Norfolk

Today, Her and I have a couple of nights away in Norfolk staying at Stratton's Hotel with it's excellent restaurant, more of which later, but prior to that I must mention that we visited Wells-Next-The-Sea (yes, it that is the proper spelling) for a walk down the beach and an ice cream, though it was a touch bracing. Wells is a lovely seaside village with a couple of excellent fish and chip shops and a large expanse of salt marsh with a massively wide beach at low tide. The row of colourful beach huts against the dark pine trees at the back of the beach is a signature view of the place. It's well worth a visit.

The beach at Wells-next-the-sea

We arrive in the late afternoon with a Jubilee party ongoing on the Quayside and after a short walk up the main drag we find a shop selling Ronaldo Ice Creams. We both go for slightly left-field choices, she has Apple Crumble and I have Toffee and Pecan. Both are excellent, the apple crumble especially, which made us wonder why no-one had done this flavour before! Ronaldo's is Norfolk based so I recommend you be drawn towards an outlet selling them when you're in the county and in need of cooling refreshment.
For this weekend away we stay in the colourful boutique hotel that is Stratton's in the otherwise unremarkable town of Swaffham and after visiting Wells there is just enough time to check in and head down for dinner.
We start with drinks in their first floor lounge admiring the paintings and collages with a sleepy friend while we consider the menu; it's £40 for a 4 course menu on Saturday nights.

Our sleepy friend in the lounge

There is pride in the restaurant and indeed the hotel in sourcing local products and it's a nice touch to name check their suppliers at the rear of the menu. She has the in season asparagus soup to start and I have bread crumbed rabbit with a spicy sauce.

Rabbit starter

 The soup disappears before I can take a photo so it must have been good, so I tuck into my rabbit pieces, dipping it into the jar of sauce. I am to learn later that these little jars are something of a signature of the place. The sauce has a lovely spicy tang about it and the coating on the rabbit is crisp, though disappointingly some of pieces are a bit tough and I make an absolute mess, meaning that I have to go and clean up before the main course. Taste wise though it is very good. For mains, she has slow roasted Mutton and I have grilled Indian style Mackerel.

Slow roasted mutton

Indian style grilled mackerel

She has again chosen well. The mutton has a beautiful pink hue and a melt in the mouth texture over large couscous which has absorbed  mutton stock with shards of meat in amongst it. The plate is finished with pomegranate seeds. However, my mackerel is excellent too. The whole grilled fish is moist and smeared in a spicy paste; the flesh pulls easily away from the bone. On top of fish are three discs of crunchy fried potato in an Indian style and the whole lot comes on a bed of saag paneer. Very good. With mutton and fish we share a bottle of Australian rose wine which has strawberry flavourings running through it. Before dessert are a couple of small cheese tasting plates before she has her choice of a Cheese Slate and I have a Mead Poached Pear.

Mead poached pear

Cheese slate

 The Cheese Slate is a perfect way of showcasing a number of different local ingredients: 3 different types of cheese, quince jelly, an apple, various nuts, homemade biscuits and most intriguingly a pickled walnut. The walnut has a firm, almost jelly like texture and looks like a Frankenstein component though is pleasingly matched with the cheeses. There is plenty on the board and even though I help her out we don't manage to finish. My poached pear is tasty, it's sweetness complemented by the creamy mace cheese and crunchy homemade biscuits.
Overall, the meal was excellent, the best being the mains followed by the desserts. The service was friendly though a bit uncoordinated at times and there is a relaxed atmosphere in the dining room. For the quality and providence on show it is excellent value for money and well worth a stop when in West Norfolk.

Pub Fishcakes

The only way a Friday can be made better is if it is before a 4-day weekend as it is today! Thanks Diamond Jubilee! Food-wise is low key with some decent Fishcakes in The Burleigh Arms, one of my favourite Cambridge pubs. It has good beer, decent food, reasonable prices and friendly staff, not a combination too often stumbled upon in this here city. The low key food approach is on purpose as there should be some good eating for me tomorrow in Norfolk...