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There Will Be Stock (Part II): Cheat’s Chicken Enchiladas Poblanas


Sep
19

Finding good Mexican food in the UK is a feat that will give you both a headache and a belly ache. There are now a handful of good, cheap places around, such as Tortilla and Poncho No. 8 (or so I hear, I haven’t yet been able to take a trip to one of their stores, but they sell barbacoa! Win), but finding authentic Mexican grub? Not bloody likely.

What other choice do we have, then, but to make it ourselves? Exactly. Not only is this recipe easy and tasty, it uses up all of that lovely chicken you saved from your stock (if you used fresh chicken pieces) – double win.

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There Will Be Stock (Part I): Ham Hock & Pea Risotto


Sep
09

Food has always been incredibly central for my family. Every major event has been told over a dinner or a lunch, every holiday celebrated with a spread that was enough to feed a small army, though there were usually only four of us at the dinner table.

Life for my mother consisted of an early start to feed my father, my brother & I, a mad dash into school where we’d be dropped off and collected by car every day, a small snack to help us through homework, a martini or other cocktail for my father when he returned home, and dinner on the table every evening by 7pm (sometimes on little tables in the TV room, if we were lucky). Every single day growing up, this was the way we operated. It was routine; it was synonymous with family.

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I Heart My Friends: Chicken, Goat Cheese, Tomato & Arugula Galette by Eat.Live.Travel.Write.


Jul
29

The world of Twitter has brought me into contact with many wonderful people. It has also brought me into contact with many porn bots, but thankfully Mardi from Eat.Live.Travel.Write falls into the former category and not the latter.

Friends for just under a year now, Mardi has become a great friend. She is well travelled and loves to eat and write, just as her blog would suggest, and I was lucky enough to share a meal (and a few drinks – or perhaps a few too many in my case) with her very recently when she was in London. This kind, talented and wonderful lady has pulled out yet another superb looking dish for her guest post, a fabulous chicken, goat’s cheese, tomato and rocket galette; my mouth’s watering again and I only just ate my dinner! Thank you lovely Mardi – so happy and honoured to host you here at my little blog and with such a wonderful recipe! Give her some love and hey, if you get to see Mardi more than I do, give her a huge hug from me, eh?


I am thrilled to be visiting my dear friend Jackie over here at I Am A Feeder. Not only have we been friends online for many months now, but I had the pleasure of meeting her in real life at the beginning of the month when I was in London for a conference and we went out to dinner with the lovely Sarah and Helen. A good time was had by all and you can read about some of it here!

When Jackie asked if I would like to write a guest post, I was stumped at first. After her two recent guest posters – Russell and Brian, I felt like I had big shoes to fill! Jackie told me to be inspired by what was around me – Paris right now (I’m on a bit of a work and vacation trip in Europe) – and so I present a dish that was born of late night blog reading (hello jet lag!) and what struck my fancy along the rue Montorgueil where I am staying right now.

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I Heart My Friends: Grilled Pizza Two Ways by Chasing Delicious


Jul
22

Just under a year ago I was trawling through food blogs, as you do, bookmarking recipes and researching new foods, when I stumbled across Russell and his lovely little blog Chasing Delicious, based in Texas. It was a brilliant name and the more I read Russell’s stunning prose, gazed upon his beautiful photography and laughed heartily at his wit, the more I came to realise that his blog name was entirely apt for his being.

Over time Russell and I have become great friends (though we missed each other when I was in Texas, sadly), I’m even a contributor now for the new format of Chasing Delicious. He is charming, gorgeous and downright hilarious, and I’m absolutely thrilled that he offered to write me a guest post today, as well as incredibly honoured that this is the first one he’s ever written. And you know what? Russell being the way he is couldn’t just give you one recipe, no, he’s given you two different variations of his grilled pizza with room for more! That’s just the kinda chap he is! So, I’ll leave you in Russell’s more than capable hands – thank you, my dear!


The bright glare of the eager morning sun begins to break through the curtains in my small, cozy hotel room highlighting the hundreds of years of blemishes and scars the walls hold dear. The busy sounds of shops opening and tourists gallivanting about on the narrow, foreign street below seep in with the burgeoning sun. I resist the urge to join the masses. I’m on vacation. I can afford to sleep in. The curtains, now failing at keeping the sun from my room, simply diffuse the bright morning light bathing me and the ancient room in an idyllic glow. The smells of cured meats and baking breads begin to waft in to my room perched not far above a collection of delicious shops. Each wave redolent of delicious perfection tempts and tantalizes my virgin nose. Suddenly a smell so very familiar and comfortable dances its way to me. I am enveloped in the beautiful aromas of bread, strong scents of melted cheeses and the just slightly pungent, acidic fragrance of a perfected-over-the-generations tomato sauce.

I can no longer resist. I leap from my not-so-comfortable hotel bed and throw on whatever clothes happen to be on top of the pile so delicately stashed in my suitcase. I run to my brother’s room seeking a partner for my culinary journey and to my astonishment the king of sleeping in is already awake and sporting the same eager, excited face as I. Clearly he has smelled the pizza as well. We run to the stairwell, leaping down three steps at a time taking little care to hide our anticipation. Our gallop comes to an abrupt stop as we reach the open hotel doors, beyond them is the pristine, perfect-in-all-ways, better-than-a-post-card venetian street. Our looks of excitement change to pure flabbergast. We are two foodies obsessed with pastas, pizzas and soccer, and we’re in the motherland. With little more than a thought we merge into the human traffic flowing down the narrow streets weaving our way in and out, up and down, through and past one small street after the other. Our noses do the work. We simply glide along waiting for the smell of perfection to bring us to our first pizza shop.

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Releasing My Inner Foodie Communist: Food For The People By The People #10


Sep
18

Finally getting round to posting the last entry from my foodie competition, details of which can be found here. I know, I’ve been terribly behind with posting recipes and entries of late – what can I say? I’m a working girl, my time is not my own. And the time that is my own is usually exhausted and passed out in a corner somewhere. Anyway, I will pick a winner and announce it by the end of the month, so keep your eyes peeled!

If you want to remind yourself, the other entries are as follows:
Entry #1
Entry #2
Entry #3
Entry #4
Entry #5
Entry #6
Entry #7
Entry #8
Entry #9

If you missed out this time, never fear, I probably will be running this again, but have a couple of other projects I want to get underway first. Anyway, enough blab about all that. On to the submission: baked cured salmon.

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Where My Truffles At?


Sep
07

Truffle Pasta, originally uploaded by jaxies.

As the (lack of) Summer draws to a close I can begin to turn my attention more fully to comfort food. Creamy sauces, rich meals that make you fall into a food coma shortly afterwards… nothing short of wonderful. Winter is the time to get fat. At least if you’re around me, that is. Well, let’s be honest, around me you’re going to get fat no matter the season…

This particular recipe, then, was my last hurrah to summer. I was lucky enough to stumble across some truffle butter and summer truffle at bargain prices, so I could finally make one of the recipes that was screaming out to me from Ina Garten’s Back To Basics – a book I had purchased on a whim and then completely and utterly fallen in love with. Truffle butter tagliatelle was finally going to be on the menu, baby.

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The Thyme Is Now


Sep
04

Lemon & Thyme Roast Chicken, originally uploaded by jaxies.

Today has been my completely indulgent and utterly useless day. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to have a full weekend to myself of doing nothing whatsoever, since I’ve been working every Saturday (and some Sundays) for the past month and a bit. Yesterday I had decided that today was going to be dedicated to sleeping and recharging my batteries, and you know what? I didn’t get out of bed until 5pm and it was good. Sometimes you just need to say ‘screw it’, and just take that totally lazy day. When I did finally roll out of bed I felt refreshed and happy, totally at peace with the world – just as it should be.

With cooking, too, you should have a little book of go-to meals that are easy to whip up with nary a thought, and for me roast chicken is just one of those meals. What, after all, is better than a golden crispy-skinned bird with soft, succulent flesh that practically melts in your mouth, accompanied by little baby patooties, all buttery and delicious? Very little, my friend. Very little indeed.

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The Queen of Simple


Aug
28

Pasta Is The Food of Champions, originally uploaded by jaxies.

It’s been an odd week. On Tuesday night I found myself rushing to A&E (that’s ER to you Amurikan folks) because the contact lens in my left eye had broken whilst I was removing my make-up for bed, and gotten stuck. Cue much panicking and being convinced that said remainder of contact lens was stuck at back of eye. Luckily the doctor down at the Great Western Eye Hospital sorted me out in five minutes (told me that lenses can’t slip round the back of the eye and I was being silly, dropped anaesthetic in eye, used what looked like a cotton bud to swab out the offending article, checked surface of eye for damage, gave me antibiotic drops) and we went home. The following day at work a very old, rather senile and incredibly deaf lady who’d been in two weeks previously came back in and proceeded to yell at me for forty-five minutes. Not because we’d done anything wrong, per se, but because she is old, senile and deaf, and had bought the wrong product, then was blaming us. The whole episode left me rather shook up (even though I managed to sort it out) and all I wanted to do afterwards was curl up in a ball and go to sleep.

So that’s been my week. A week not very conducive to cooking particularly elaborate meals, one more for simple. And besides, very often I like to throw meals together that require minimal effort. I very rarely blog these meals because they are so minimal effort that I just end up scoffing the whole lot down without photographing it, and without photography there may as well be no point to the recipe. At least not on a food blog where the main pleasure is gazing upon food porn, salivating and imagining eating it. Or something like that. But this one I just had to share.

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ARIGATO GOZAIMASU!


Aug
12

Tonkatsu, originally uploaded by jaxies.

So let’s get one thing straight: I am Chinese. I am not mixed, nor am I Filipina, Hawaiian, Japanese, Taiwanese, Malaysian, or any other brand of “Oriental”. I am full-blooded Chinese. My family are from Hong Kong. This is me.

However… I think I love Japanese food more than I love Chinese food. Sorry heritage. That’s just the way the panko crumbles.

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Releasing My Inner Foodie Communist: Food For The People By The People #8


Jul
20

It’s entry #8 in my Foodie Competition, innit blud. BOOYAH. If you’re new here and you’re wondering, ‘foodie comp? What foodie comp?!’ then you should familiarise yourself with this page and get submitting! And if you’re a regular round these here parts then you should still re-read the rules and get submitting. Boom-diddly-boom.

So actually, before I give you this entry, I’d like to use this opportunity to give myself a little self-promotion. Unheard of, I know. When I went down to Soho to interview the Mooli’s boys last month, I took a few interior shots. The other day the lovely Mathew sent me an urgent request asking if I could send them those shots as they are being featured in the Metro, a nation-wide free publication, tomorrow. That means that my photos (along with, hopefully, my credit) are being featured in a nation-wide publication tomorrow. Can I get a ‘booyah beeatch’? So anyway, if you’re in London you should definitely pick a copy of the Metro tomorrow (Wednesday 21st). I’m actually going to be in Nottingham getting my Grad-u-a-ti-on (read that outloud, spelling it out; oh yeaaaah) but the boyfriend has promised me he’ll pick up a couple of copies. YOU SHOULD PICK UP COPIES TOO :D Okay, enough of that, now onto the meat (ha) of this post…

This particular entry is brought to us by Spammed over at Kudocities and is a lovely little summer-time dinner recipe. It’s also incredibly easy, requiring minimal effort with maximum flavour results. What is it? Easy Cajun chicken.

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