my whittard of chelsea obsession

This year, I've really embraced having a hot drink before bed and what better drink than hot chocolate? I thought I'd treat myself to some Whittard's Salted Caramel hot chocolate and it has done a good job of knocking me out at night! Within this order, I decided to throw in some Dreamtime tea and a caddy of White Chocolate flavoured white tea. Whittard is a bit too expensive for my student budget though so this is was a one-time treat but I can definitely see myself setting aside a 'tea fund' in my future salary*!

Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate
Creamy, thick and tasty - the perfect blend for a bedtime drink. I can definitely make out the caramel flavour but the saltiness is really subtle.

Dreamtime Tea
The tin says there are 'flavours of honey, apricot and vanilla' to this tea and I can agree with the first two but the vanilla note must be extremely subtle or my palate is probably just not that refined :) Nevertheless, it tastes sweet but not to a sickly extent (provided you only add two teaspoons instead of the recommended three) and coupled with a bit of meditation before bed, it is a great recipe for sweet dreams. At least, it was for me :)

White Chocolate Flavoured White Tea
This is my first foray into loose leaf tea and I wasn't disappointed. I'm not a big drinker of milky tea and tend to gravitate more towards green tea but on this occasion, pushed the boat out to a white tea. It smells amazing and it doesn't taste too bad either. I'm not sure I'm convinced enough to replenish this tea once finished but isn't the caddy just adorable?!

*by future, I mean in thirty years' time as a junior doctor doesn't earn much here in the UK. Before you all think I'll be raking it in...

homemade burgers: healthy and budget busting

I don't often blog about food because let's face it, I'm no connoisseur. The majority of my meals are as simple as you can get and I'm such a stickler for healthy eating at home, the posts wouldn't be much fun! That's not to say I don't have the occasional treat and I do this by eating out once every two-three months where I choose something a bit naughtier.

Today, I thought I'd share my ridiculously simple homemade burger recipe. Those of you who've been to London or live in London may have come across the many burger chains around. And it is one of those chains that inspired me to make the meal below. It is very quick to cook though the prep time can take a while so this isn't a meal to be made on a regular basis if you're stretched for time. However, it is very healthy - I've used barely any fat/oil and even the beef I used was a lean cut. The only sin in it is a bit of cheese.

HOMEMADE BURGERS, SALAD AND ROSEMARY SEA SALT FRIES

Ingredients - this makes five burgers
For the burger
500g lean beef steaks (or beef from a roasting joint)
1.5 whole red onions
2 garlic cloves
Sea salt and black pepper
1 medium egg
A few leaves of lettuce
Two salad tomatoes
Three gherkins
Burger buns, cut in half horizontally
A cheese of your choosing (I chose Stilton - surprisingly good in a burger!)

Salad
Rocket leaves
Spinach leaves
A small handful of fresh basil
Cherry tomatoes
Balsamic vinegar
Ground pepper
Sea salt

Oven-Baked Fries
Eight Maris Piper potatoes
Fresh rosemary
Sea salt
Olive oil

Method
Oven-Baked Fries
1. Wash the potatoes and cut into 1cm thick fries (I chose to keep the skin on but you can peel it off if you want).
2. Boil the fries for two minutes and then drain.
3. Line a tray with tin foil and place all of the fries on it. Add a dash of olive oil, ensuring that all fries are coated.
4. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for thirty-forty minutes. Keep your eye on it!
5. Meanwhile, blend the rosemary until it is a powdery consistency. Add sea salt to the blender and blend once more.
6. Once the fries are done, toss them in the rosemary and sea salt powder.

Salad
7. Wash the salad leaves and cherry tomatoes and allow them to dry.
8. Place all leaves into a bowl, add a dash of balsamic vinegar, grind some black pepper and sea salt and then mix. Place in the fridge.

Burger
9. Slice the beef and then blend until all ground. Now, cut the onion and garlic and add into the ground beef. Add some black pepper and sea salt too. Remove from the blender and add an egg and mix thoroughly using your hands.
10. Roll the beef into a small golf ball size then flatten.
11. Cook the beef patties according to how you like it done. This can vary so I haven't specified times but a good way to judge is to see how much it shrinks vertically. The more it shrinks, the better it is cooked inside.
12. Wash the lettuce and salad tomatoes. Cut the lettuce so that it's shredded and slice the tomatoes.
13. Toast the burger buns prior to building the burger.
14. Building from the bottom of the bun up: add the shredded lettuce, sliced tomato, then the beef patty once cooked to your choosing, add some cheese, sliced gherkin and finally the top of the burger bun.

15. You're now ready for dinner!

healthy eating with a busy lifestyle (& a little recipe!)

Sometimes, after a long day, the last thing you want to do is cook dinner. This can lead to skipping meals and in the long run, this isn't good for the human body. I'm lucky in that, living at home, my mum doesn't mind cooking for me but when she's at work (which she does part-time), I'm responsible for my own dinner. As a result, I've become a bit of an expert in cooking quick meals that require minimal prep time and even less cook time. 

One of my specialties is a potato salad and I've shared my 'recipe' for it at the end of this post. I've called it a recipe but it's so brief and simple, I'm not sure it deserves that title.

For me, the key to quick meals are to have a certain few ingredients in your fridge, freezer and cupboards at all times. These include:

cupboard: rice noodles, spaghetti and pasta, rice, eggs, chilli flakes, paprika, fish sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, dried basil, oregano, salt and pepper and sugar.

fridge: garlic, spring onions, tomato puree, tomatoes, lettuce (it can keep for over a week!) and chinese leaf.

freezer: prawns, sweetcorn, peas, frozen veg, Quorn mince and fish (usually salmon or sea bass).

My list is very South East Asian (with a bit of Italian thrown in!) but you can adapt yours to your own tastebuds. I'm a fan of spice and minimal salt (I tend to use herbs to flavour instead!). With the basic ingredients shown above, I can whip up a meal in less than fifteen minutes. I'd also recommend getting a rice cooker: you can honestly put all ingredients for a meal in there and then leave it to cook. I used to do that during exam time and the meals didn't taste that bad either! You won't gain any Michelin stars but at least you'll be eating fresh food without resorting to ready meals.

Examples of quick meals using these ingredients are:

Rice noodle soup: rice noodles, fish sauce, sesame oil, chilli flakes, sugar, chinese leaf, spring onions and prawns.

Vegetarian spaghetti bolognase: spaghetti, garlic, tomato puree, tomatoes, salt and pepper, oregano, basil, Quorn mince.

Fried rice: eggs, rice, ground pepper, sweetcorn and peas.

Omelette with boiled rice: rice, peas, eggs, ground pepper.

Other things you can do is batch cook things such as chilli con carne, bolognase, paella, etc. and freeze portions for those times where you don't even feel like whipping up something quick from scratch. 

And as promised, here's the recipe to a quick and simple potato salad!

Just a little prelude - I've gone gluten free due to medical advice (and have been for fifteen months now) so lunch is a bit of an issue for me. Hospital canteens are really good at lacing their food with gluten and I've had to bring lunch with me everyday. I try and ensure my lunch is made the night before and quite often, this equates to a super quick potato salad. How much you decide to spend on each ingredient is up to you but this can be a cheap and fast recipe for those on a budget and who don't have the time to spend on making elaborate lunches that require rinsing and rinsing (quinoa, I'm looking at you!).

A QUICK AND EASY POTATO SALAD

Ingredients
Potatoes (baby potatoes work best but you can use baking ones and then chop them up once cooked)
Rocket salad
Other salad leaves of your choice (spinach and lettuce work great here)
Ham/prosciutto/bacon/a meat of your choosing (or not if you're vegetarian)
Mayonnaise (I tend to use the lowest fat one I can find)
Black pepper
Salt (I don't usually add salt and it tastes fine)

Method
1. Wash the rocket, salad leaves and potatoes.
2. Microwave the potatoes until they are cooked to your liking.
3. Chop up the ham/meat. Once the potatoes are done, chop them up too.
4. Put all of the washed leaves into a bowl and add the potatoes once they've cooled down.
5. Add mayonnaise, grind some pepper and salt and then mix!
6. Put in a tupperware box, refrigerate and then remember to take it with you when you leave the house in the morning.

my own version of a baked blueberry cheesecake

I've been wanting to make a baked blueberry cheesecake for quite some time now and I thought my recent week's break would be the perfect time. However, I thought I'd add my own twist to it by adding lemon juice and zest to the cream cheese mixture and using Oreo biscuits for the base instead of digestive biscuits. Although I had looked up a few recipes for a baked cheesecake, this invention is one of my own (I've not seen one with this combination on the internet).

I baked the cheesecake over a tray of water but there was still some cracking visible at the surface. However, the cheesecake had a lovely brown colour at the edges and a lovely golden colour at the top. Being an average novice baker, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it turned out aesthetically.

For the topping, I made blueberry compote and then poured it over the top of the cheesecake before refrigerating it.

The final result looks quite appetising and having to wait overnight before I could try a bite was excruciating agony. However, the wait was worth it and although there was a lot of waiting time involved with the making of this cake, I would do it all over again. Only during uni holidays though - I don't know when else I'd find a free few hours kicking about. Taste-wise, the hint of lemon added something extra to the sweet taste of the blueberry compote topping.

I adapted the recipe from a few I'd seen online - the most notable one being this Philadelphia one.

Baked Blueberry Cheesecake

with a hint of lemon, an Oreo biscuit base and topped with a blueberry compote.

Ingredients: 

for the base: 
22 Oreo cookies - crumbed,
40g of melted butter,

for the cheesecake:
400g Philadelphia Light,
3 eggs - beaten,
1 lemon's worth of juice,
1 lemon's worth of zest,
100g caster sugar,
1 teaspoon vanilla extract,
30g plain flour
a few blueberries

for the compote:
400g blueberries,
100g granulated sugar

Method:

1) Preheat oven to 160 degrees C.

2) Crumb the Oreo cookies in a food processor (or use a rolling pin and bag if you want to relieve some stress). Mix the crumbed cookies in with the melted butter. Once thoroughly mixed, press the mixture into the base of a cake tin.

3) In a bowl, mix together the Philadelphia, caster sugar, vanilla extract, lemon juice and lemon zest until smooth. Add eggs slowly (I added them in thirds).

4) Sift flour into the cheesecake mixture and mix.

5) Pour the cheesecake mixture over the base in the cake tin. Sprinkle over some blueberries (add as much or as little as you want).

6) Put into the oven over a tray of water. Bake for 1 hour 15 - 1 hour 45. I left mine in for 1 hour 45 but ultimately, I think it depends on your oven so keep an eye on it. Once it is a golden brown in colour at the edges, it is done.

7) While waiting for it to bake, it's time to make the compote! Stir half of the remaining blueberries with the granulated sugar in a saucepan, over a low heat. Once most of the blueberries have visibly disappeared, add the rest of the blueberries. Let it cook for 5 mins - you want some of the blueberries to stay spherical in shape.

8) Once the cheesecake is done, take it out of the oven and let it cool. Once cool, pour the compote over the top and refrigerate for at least four hours. I did mine overnight and it was perfect.

9) Enjoy!

Hong Kong - the home of cute food

A few weeks' ago, I posted about some cute confectionary I found in Hong Kong. Here is a closer look at the cute packaging.

I just love how much detail goes into the design of sweets and how cute they can make it all look. You can definitely see who they are targeting with designs like these and to be fair, although I don't think I'm the target market, I was enticed by them all the same!

They are so cute that I make an effort to open the packaging as carefully as possible so that I can keep it intact!

Not only do they have Pocky in interesting flavours, they also have Rilakkuma biscuit sticks. The packaging celebrates the ten year anniversary and is so cute that I don't really want to open them up and ruin it!

And the other side:

A super cute drink's bottle label thing:

And the bottles themselves - they are quite small in size (320ml!) and come in a variety of flavours including strawberry, lychee, peach, orange, etc. They all have jelly pieces in them so the subtext really is true - you really do have to chew!

The cute packaging seen on the Puccho earlier in this post weren't the only chewy sweets to have cute characters on them. These Hi-Chew sweets had a cute chick on them:

Seeing packaging like this makes me wish that sweets in the UK had characters like these on. Moshi monsters (?! Shows just how out of touch I am with UK cartoon characters!) and the like just aren't the same...

some amazing Hong Kong food

Food is something a lot of people talk about when Hong Kong is mentioned. Or at least, it's something my friends and I talk about a lot! As a result, I thought I would share a few pictures of some of the amazing food I had the pleasure of eating when I was there but I forgot to take pictures of street food and bowls of noodles from cha chan tents.

Anyway, the first picture I have to share is of the vegetarian feast we had with my mum's side of the family. The fish was made of taro, the 'roast pork' was made of a quorn-esque food, as was the 'roast duck' and the crayfish was also made of taro. Tofu was a component of quite a few dishes (deep-fried tofu, water tofu... just tofu in many forms) and taro was also a common ingredient. 

It was a very good meal and also a very healthy one (I avoided all of the deep fried dishes!).

 

Something I tried for the first time was Korean hot pot. I went to Korea-town in Tsim Sha Tsui with my cousin (her recommendation) and it was one of the spiciest meals I have ever had. The side dish had spinach, bean sprouts, kimchi and something else that I can't remember. The hotpot itself had a variety of meats and vegetables. We ordered some glass noodles to add to the hotpot too and as a lover of glass noodles, this suited me just fine!

Having a burger in Hong Kong sounds like a stupid idea but when the burger is from Triple O's by White Spot, I knew I had to try it. As far as I know, White Spot is Canadian and I have yet to stumble upon it in the UK. The burger was so big that after devouring that beast, I could barely eat any of the chips! And this was when I was absolutely starving. It was a pretty good burger though... but it also came with a pretty big price tag.

Haagen Dazs was where I met up with a uni friend. I hadn't seen her for over a year now (as she had opted to do her masters in Canada) so it was nice to see her and just catch up. The way we were chatting felt like no time had passed though and in terms of the food, I wish I hadn't ordered hot tea with a cold dessert. Talk about a recipe for stomach ache!

Whilst on the subject of desserts, Hong Kong has a lot of bakeries. I decided to give some of the cakes a try after finding myself drooling over their very appealing appearance. However, the cakes were quite an anti-climax, considering how amazing they look.

Now, onto the bulk of this post. I was invited to a wedding and the banquet was amazing. This was my first ever wedding and I loved every single second. From the photo-taking with the bride and groom to the mingling with family, there was not a silent moment in the restaurant. The decorations were also amazing:

The dinner had about eleven courses (I can't remember the actual number) and the first one was of a roast piglet. The eyes had lightbulbs in and these bulbs were flashing - I just happened to take a picture of when they were off!

Next up, scallops and prawns stir fried with vegetables:

Mushrooms and 'hair' (I have no idea what it is called in English!):

Crabmeat and other seafood meatballs:

Shark's fin soup (don't judge me - I didn't make the menu!):

Abalone with lettuce:

A massive steamed fish (one of the best fish I have ever tasted):

Soy sauce chicken:

Stir fried noodles and a rice dish with two different toppings. These two weren't very popular as by this time, everyone had filled up on the previous dishes.

Dessert: sweet soup.

More dessert: a fruit platter (not shown) and some other sweet treats in the form of jelly and biscuits.

Apart from all this food, I also sampled some Vietnamese food, various noodle soups, the cheapest McDonald's meal ever (a large McDonald's meal for less than £2?! Had to be done!) and macaroni soup (a personal favourite). All in all, my belly had a very good time in Hong Kong.

the best foods are found in Hong Kong... confectionary edition

If you thought Hong Kong had cute stationery and stickers, then you will probably like the fact that snack foods are wrapped in aesthetically well-designed packaging too. I will be doing another post focussing entirely on cute sweet packaging soon too so keep your eye out for that.

First up, some Japanese soda candy. If you've ever tried Japanese soda, you'll know that it can come in glass bottles with a marble top where the marble keeps the air in and to open the bottle, you have to press down the marble. The sweets on the right of the image below taste the same as the soda and although the bottle is the same design as the drink, there is no marble top so they are very easy to open. I don't really know what to compare them to (in terms of sweets you can find in the UK) so I won't even try.

In the image below, there are chewy sweets, chocolate crisp sweets (kind of like crispy M&Ms) and oreo wafers. The boxes at the bottom are also chewy sweets but don't you love how adorable the packaging is?!

If you've ever tried Meltykiss, I found a cheaper version from the Edo Pack brand.

I looked all over the place for pretzel M&Ms but to no avail unfortunately (maybe I was looking in the wrong place) but I did find peanut butter ones. How I wish they had these in the UK!

I also found Goldfish in some interesting flavours: Vanilla Cupcake, Grahams S'mores and Graham's Fudge Brownie. Can I get a 'yum'?!

In the UK, you'll be able to find Pocky but most probably only in more 'boring' flavours, such as chocolate or strawberry. There were a lot more flavours to choose from in HK though:



They also have biscuit sticks from other brands in other interesting flavours:

But best of all, I found some Hershey's chocolate!

They also had Hershey's Kisses... something I found I couldn't leave a shop without:

Hong Kong is definitely a haven if you love food as much as I do. I wouldn't say I have a particularly sweet tooth but the sheer array and variety of snack foods available in Hong Kong is something I sorely miss since my (what felt like) brief two week trip.

stuffing myself with dumplings / gyoza / jiaozi

Since moving down south, we're so near to a Chinese supermarket that we've been making more Asian foods from scratch than we used to. One of the things we made were dumplings. Dumplings are also called gyoza (if you're Japanese) or jiaozi (if you speak Mandarin Chinese) or gao zi (if you speak Cantonese Chinese). 

Dumplings are a good accompaniment to congee (Chinese rice porridge) or stir-fried noodles but on this occasion, we made so many that we feasted on just dumplings. 

Dumplings / jiaozi / gyoza: made with circular dumpling skin, spinach, minced pork, king prawns and one egg.

So, how do you make these? Well, it's quite simple. Choose a meat (pork or chicken work best) and mince it. Add one egg yolk to the meat (save the egg white for later!). Now, choose a vegetable (spinach or pak choi work best) and boil it. Run the cooked veg under some cold water or leave it to cool before mixing it thoroughly with the minced meat. Finally, cut the prawns so that they are in 1cm-1.5cm pieces in length.

You don't need a lot of ingredients to make these dumplings - and you can chop and change what meat and vegetable to use to suit your tastebuds.

With all these ingredients ready to use, take one of the dumpling skins and place it flat on your hand.

Add some of the meat and veg mix, one piece of prawn and then using a finger, wet the edge of the dumpling skin with some egg white. Fold the dumpling and seal. You can seal them in any manner/pattern you want. Just make sure you don't overstuff them as they might burst when being cooked.

Here are how ours turned out (my mum's are at the top and my, more simplistic, ones are at the bottom of the picture. 

Now, onto the exciting part - the cooking of the dumplings!

In a non-stick pan, add some oil and heat that up before swirling it around the pan. Turn the heat to medium and add the dumplings. Turn from time to time so that each side becomes a bit brown/orange in colour. 

Brown each side of the dumplings by turning them after a few minutes on each side.

Once each side of the dumplings are browned, add about 150ml of water (doesn't matter how much you add; I used half a bowl) and then cover with the lid.

Once the water has all evaporated, the dumplings are done!

The dumplings in water.

Arrange them in a nice pattern on a plate (if you are serving them to others) or just plate them up in a manner of your choosing.

How I arranged the dumplings...

You can dip these dumplings in sauce to add a bit more 'zing'. My favourite dipping options are:

- hot chilli oil mixed with worcester sauce (as recommended by a friend)
- hot chilli oil mixed with teriyaki sauce.

To be fair, you could dip them in any sauce but using one with a bit of a spicy kick with chilli oil is probably the most popular option for people who eat dumplings.

One good thing about these dumplings is that they can be frozen. To cook from frozen, just follow the same procedure, but maybe leave them for a bit longer in the pan :)