Brunch!

Massive Feast

On one of the first days after we moved into our new house we went down the road to get brunch. We saw the size of the meals the other people had so decided to get one to share which was lucky since we didn't even manage to finish it between us.

We ordered the vegetarian breakfast which comes with toast, baked beans, mushrooms, fried tomatoes, fried egg, halloumi, hash browns, chips and spinach. Usually I don't like spinach unless it is fresh baby spinach but this was really delicious, it had been cooked with garlic, and probably butter but who cares!

I have never before had a breakfast which comes with chips and if this is a common thing in England I think I am going to like it here! Chips and hash browns, two of my favourite foods!!

While we were at the café there were people getting all sorts of food and it all looked totally amazing so we will totally be going back there to try some more things, or maybe just to get this breakfast again! I love that it comes with halloumi as well since that is another of my favourite foods.

Actually this has all my top three foods, potato, cheese and egg! What a winner.

Vietnamese in Soho

Bun Sa

On Wednesday night I went out for dinner with Amanda and Vitoria and a few of their friends from London. We went to a Vietnamese place in Soho which is a super interesting place full of eating places, pubs and bars. I am definitely going back there soon to try some more places!

We went to a restaurant called Cay Tre which was really busy at 7.30 on a Wednesday but then again, a lot of places around were really busy. It was quite loud inside but luckily we were sitting close together so we could still hear each other.

We were all having trouble making up our minds what we wanted but the waiter helped us out by telling us what his favourites were. I got some tofu summer rolls to start with which came with a hoisin and chili sauce and also a chili vinaigrette. I forgot to take a photo of them but they were really tasty, they were filled with noodles, cucumber, thai basil and tofu.

For my main I got a dish called Bun Sa which the waiter recommended. I thought it was a soup but it wasn't, it was a (large!) bowl full of vermicelli, lettuce, mung beans, onions, cucumber, fried shallots, fried tofu, chili, peanuts and some sort of sauce at the bottom. When I mixed it all up it was a sort of warm Vietnamese salad.

It was so good, basically exactly the thing I want to eat, although it did have a bit too much noodle for me. I didn't want to fill up on noodles and not have room for the rest so I left some of them to the side, also the large chunks of cucumber. I would definitely get this again though, it is delicious and healthy as well.

There were lots of other things that sounded good as well and they serve pho which I would like to try since it's one of those things people are always raving about. Maybe next time I go.

"Chicken" Pie

Chicken Pie!

Since I have a fair bit of time on my hands while I am looking for work I thought I would make something a bit more time consuming than usual. I wanted to make a pie because Quentin loves pastry, but this pie is also healthy because it has so many vegetables.

Inside the pie is "chicken" fillets made from soy protein, onion, celery, carrot, garlic, potato, sweetcorn, peas, mushrooms, vegetarian oxo cubes, soy sauce, some cheese sauce granules to thicken the sauce and water. I cooked the vegetables first for awhile before adding the stock etc and then cooked it for longer until the potato was tender.

Then I popped it in the pie dish with the puff pastry top and brushed the top with milk and fan baked it. I thought about making smaller pies with pastry on the bottom as well as the top but I don't have all my kitchen stuff here and I haven't bought any yet (apart from this pie dish) because I have to wait until I get a job!

This pie was big enough to be our dinner for two nights, I just popped it in the oven to reheat on the second night. The pastry was totally still good.

You could put other things, or less vegetables in the pie if you wanted, I just used basically every vegetable I had in the house because I had bought too many groceries. Because I chopped up all the veges really small and the sauce was quite creamy it would be good for kids, fussy eaters, or non-veges as well I reckon.

Next time I think I will try a mince and cheese pie, although I might wait until I get the individual pie dishes so Quentin can have more pastry.

English Sushi

Just an average London sushi

This is some sushi from a chain store in London called Wasabi. I have had it multiple times because it is really good! It is a little much for one person but Quentin is usually there to help me finish it so it works out alright.

The small roles are avocado, cucumber, red capsicum and egg. The inari has some flavoured rice inside and the other rolls have avocado, red capsicum, tofu and a couple of other bits inside. The green parts are edamame, green beans and cabbage dressed with an Asian dressing.

All of the sushi is really good, especially the ones with lots of stuff in, and the inari. I don't like inari if it only has plain rice inside but this one is good, I think it has black sesame inside as well which iis delicious. I also love the little edamame salad.

There are a bunch of sushi chains here which I haven't tried yet but plan to. They usually do only have one or two vegetarian options though, with the majority being fish and chicken etc. They even have sushi at the supermarkets although it definitely doesn't look as good as this.

It is a huge improvement from when I was here about 5-6 years ago and I had sushi about once because it just wasn't available here. I have made my own while here as well but that might be the topic for another post.

Belgium

Belgian Waffle!

When we were in Bruges we went into town in the morning looking to get waffles or pancakes for breakfast since they seem to be the things to get in Belgium. Unfortunately everywhere we went only seemed to have them between 2 and 5pm! Anyway we had something else and then got this waffle to try in the afternoon.

The waffle was nice for the first bite, nice and crispy and light but then the second bite revealed a whole bunch of sugar that had been baked into the inside of the waffle! I don't know how they managed that or if they are always like that but it made the waffle majorly sweet.

As you can see we got it with melted Belgian chocolate and Chantilly cream so the whole thing with the sugar in the waffle and the chocolate and the cream was just a bit much. We had one between us and ate about half. In saying that though I don't have much of a sweet tooth but Quentin usually does and it was too much for him.

If they had like a mini version of this about quarter of the size it would probably perfect but I would still prefer it without the sugar inside. Doesn't it look delicious though?

The Netherlands

Croquettes and Chips, so good!

I loved Amsterdam. I wasn't expecting to love it as much as I did but it was awesome. The food was really good as well. I was reading up in the lonely planet on the way there and I found out that their sort of famous foods of the country were basically all deep fried, and that they are huge on chips so I was basically sold before we got there!

One of the first things I did was go to one of the many fry stations and get some famous fries. I thought that NZ could do better but then we went to this place for lunch and I got the croquettes which came with fries and salad. Quentin got a Panini which was nothing to write home about.

The croquettes were delicious! Super soft on the inside with potato and all sorts of delicious bits (some may have been meat though so be careful if you are a vege on holiday!) and the outside was perfectly crispy. I could eat them all day! The chips were good too, better than the ones we got from the famous chip place!

I had never been a big fan of croquettes before but these were amazing. When I go back there I will try many more croquettes and also this other thing which looks like a shop from far away but then it's actually just heaps of vending machines in a sort of shop area where you can get all kinds of fried foods! Amazing!

Germany

German wrap and potato

I didn't know what to think about German food before we arrived in Germany, I knew that they ate a lot of sausage and sauerkraut (which I never got to try) but that was about it! This was something totally different but totally delicious that we got at a campsite we stayed at next to a lake. It was a beautiful place to stay and they had a restaurant and a takeaway/shop on the side of the lake.

We didn't know what we were ordering really because the menu was in German but like most places they had a few words in English so we had a slight idea. Quentin got some sort of German pizza which was tasty but more like a wrap cooked with stuff on top.

This was a wrap which had been grilled, potato, and the sauce reminded me of a raita although I'm sure they have a proper name for it in German. The wrap had something I suspect was chicken inside but also some peppers, chilies and other vegetables (cabbage etc) and it was really good. There was no way I was finishing it but Quentin helped a bit.

The highlight for me (no surprises) was the potato. They don't look like much but they were so good. They didn't taste oily or anything at all, they actually tasted like potato! And they were really good with the sauce.

For some reason I noticed all the food in Germany came with a sprinkling of dried herbs, I'm not sure what that is about, decoration or flavour, but in this case it was oregano. I don't think it was necessary but it wasn't bad either. Overall it was a delicious meal.

Italy

Pizza!

This is the first pizza that we got when we arrived in Italy. We had just come from the South of France and on our first day in Italy we needed to go shopping so we headed to a supermarket. We noticed that they had a sort of foodcourt and thought we may as well get lunch before we got the groceries but because of NZ foodcourt bias I didn't expect much.

The pizzas we got were margarita and the other one has two types of cheese, tomato and rocket (it was one of their specials). In the picture I am trying to cut the pizza but the fork broke immediately so we just ate with our hands.

That is not to say that there was anything wrong with the pizza, which was amazing. As I said, I hadn't expected much from a foodcourt but the sauce on the Margarita was so delicious it was my favourite straight away.

The other pizza didn't have the tomato sauce and had a bit much cheese (am I really saying that?!) but was also really good, just not as good as the Margarita. The base is thinner than we have in NZ (but thicker than the thin and crispy from pizza hut!) but is sort of soft and chewy, it is so good!

I think we ate pizza almost every day that we were in Italy (over two weeks) but I still remember this one because it was the first and I was just amazed by the flavours. We didn't get down to Naples on this trip but we want to go back there for the pizza and to visit Pompeii!

Spain

Potato Tortilla

This is a dinner that we had one night in Spain, sort of a DIY tapas thing. We had discovered these potato tortillas at a supermarket when we first got into Spain and because they were so cheap we didn't think they would be very good. We were wrong.

What we have here is just cherry tomatoes, pitted green olives, emmental cheese, salsa and two types of potato tortilla. The first is a plain one and the second has a layer of ham and cheese in the middle. I actually preferred the plain one because I thought it had better flavour and I don't think that the addition of ham and cheese was necessary.

The tortilla's do contain egg but it is minimal, Quentin who hates eggs said that he didn't notice. The main flavour is potato, it is salty but only in a good way and there is some sort of other flavour in there as well, maybe from the way they are cooked. We just heated these up in the frying pan for a few minutes on each side and they were done.

We had them quite a few nights while we were in Spain actually, and they were really good just by themselves or with some salsa. I have seen them in one supermarket in the UK but they were much more expensive here than in Spain where they were only 1-2 Euro. I might experiment with making my own but we will have to see.

France - Something I Didn't Make

Apple Tarte Tatin

On one of the days that we were visiting Versailles we went to a bakery to get lunch because we got sick of looking at menus we couldn't read outside restaurants! We figured that at least with a bakery you can see what you are getting! Anyway this place seemed like it was probably part of a chain but the food looked amazing.

They had a deal where you get one sandwich type item, one dessert and one drink for a set price so we figured why not. The thing was, our sandwiches were so big we didn't end up wanting our desserts but we had to try them because they were so good looking.

Quentin had a chocolate éclair which was filled with chocolate mousse, delicious but way too sweet and sickly for me. I almost chose another tarte because it looked beautiful but that one was cherry and I don't know how I feel about cherries so I went with the classic apple.

The pastry was nice and crisp on the bottom and the apples were cooked well enough that you didn't pull the tarte apart when you took a bite. The only problem was the glaze. While it was delicious there was so much of it that it was getting on everything! It was also quite sweet but so moreish I kept eating it even though I was so full.

We didn't manage to finish the éclair or the tarte but we both agreed that the French rule at making pastries. Even though I am not really a dessert person I would probably get this again, I might even try the cherry!

France - Something I Made

Big Baguette

This is one of the first things I made while we were in France. It seems like people there don't get bread like we are used to in NZ (sliced etc) but buy their bread fresh every day. It was super common to see people walking around with several baguettes under their arm, or in the basket of their bicycle so we figured that we should get in on the action.

I filled this baguette with some wholegrain mustard, lettuce, capsicum, red onion, tomato and Camembert cheese. It was a bit hard to squeeze everything in but it was worth it! The ends were a bit crisp so I avoided those but between us Quentin and I managed to finish the whole thing (helped by the bottle of wine in the picture!) and this ended up being the first of many big baguettes to come with various fillings.

I would totally recommend doing this at home if you are going on a picnic or something because the baguette bread is less likely to go soggy and you can just cut it up to feed however many people you have. Plus it is delicious. Quentin said it was his favourite food of the whole Europe trip, although he may have forgotten he also said that about the pizza in Italy.

Japan

Beautiful, delicious ramen

In Japan we stayed with Jess and Stu which was awesome because they already knew the good places to eat around the area they live in so we didn't have to risk going somewhere which was actually crap and eating bad food! We went to a lot of fun places and tried a bunch of great food but my absolute favourite was the ramen.

Ramen was never something I thought I would like, I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. A ramen place opened in Wellington and people were raving about it and lining up down the street to get in. Little did I know that it was amazing.

The place we went to in Japan was tiny, with about 3 booths and room for a few people to sit at the counter. By the door is what looks like a vending machine and you push a button to get a ticket which says which sort of ramen you want, and then pass it to one of the guys working there.

Of course everything is in Japanese so Jess told us which one to get, which was a ramen local to the area. I added extra vegetables to mine which was a mistake because I think I got about a quarter of the way through it before I was super full!

The ramen is a base of pork stock with a bunch of noodles in a bowl, topped with things like mung beans, cabbage, seaweed, egg and pork. I never liked pork when we ate meat so I wasn't expecting to like this but it was so good, salty and rich and delicious. They also had condiments on the table like chili flakes, finely chopped garlic, chili sauce, vinegar etc but I don't think it needed anything extra.

I would love to eat ramen again but since settling in the UK and going back to my normal life of vegetarianism I don't think it would be the same. I will keep a lookout for vegetarian ramen though in case it is good.

I wish I had some ramen right now, it is making me hungry just writing about it! If you live near a ramen shop I highly recommend it!

Beginning

So I have decided to start a food blog as something to keep me entertained now that we are living in London and don't know many people yet! Also just because I love food and I think it will encourage me to make more delicious and fun foods and go out to new places instead of just places I know.

I am going to start by writing about a few of the things I ate on our recent travels from NZ to the UK and then I will try and put something up every week, whether it is something I have made or a review of a restaurant we have been to or whatever.

Hopefully it will be interesting but if you have any comments/suggestions let me know!