Texas Texas Yeehaw

Every once in a while, I get a deeeeeep darkkkkkk craving for some super delicious Texas cuisine. Sometimes, I get super lucky and an American chef in London reads my mind and fulfills my wishes! (Her name is Bea['s of Bloomsbury] and she has great desserts and lunches too). A couple of weeks ago, I went to my 3rd one. A few pictures from all 3 are below. I'm not positive, but from my quick calculations and extrapolations, I think James and I ate about the same number as shooting stars we saw. Each. I definitely noticed that I had improved my technique--these guys were stripped and vanishing in a flash.

Other times, I have found someone in my same predicament: a Homesick Texan. After Sarah found and trialled HT's recipe for migas, we've made it so many more times. It's so delicious and you even make your own little crispy tortillas! (Sidenote: If you're looking for breakfast burritos in London, there are good ones at The Hangover Club on Tooley Street (although, this was a summer 2013 pop-up, so I'm not sure how much longer it will exist). I also recently saw them on the menu at The Breakfast Club in Hoxton (there are a few locations and I imagine they have the same menu) and at Barrio East in Shoreditch. I didn't have them at The Breakfast Club, but I did have huevos rancheros and those were pretty delicious. As were the pancakes with berries. Those were to die for. 

Still other times, there's just a little something you need back in your life, so you have to scour a little harder for recipes. Like a good sausage, cheese and jalapeño kolache. Or a New Orleans style meat pie. The pies they have here are just. not. the. same. The ones you find outside of Nola in the US aren't even the same!! And these two cravings of mine were just not going to be found on the streets of London, no matter how many pop-ups I went to (gap in the market, anyone?). Although...there has been a fried chicken explosion lately (also conveniently pretty soon after I got a homesick craving for a fried chicken biscuit), so maybe kolaches (and meat pies?!) are next???

For both the kolache recipe (I used this one, but next time, might give this one a try) and the meat pie recipe, I made my own dough by hand, because I'm not sure it's worth me investing in a breadmaker at the moment. And...I felt a bit more homemakery and accomplished by doing it myself, so that was nice. I would set aside a good few hours for the whole process for either, but it's definitely worth it. 

Pictures of kolaches, Natchitoches meat pies and crawfish abound below!

I made it up!

I used to be more of a throw-it-all-in-the-pan kind of girl. If I liked the food/flavors, what could go wrong?? But ever since Sarah introduced me to seriouseats.com, I've been a bit of a slave to recipes because there are just so many good ones out there!

But last week, we ate in a bit more and ended up just doing from-our-head recipes. James made us these great salads last week that had pretty much everything I like in them:

Corn? good. Shrimp? good.  Balsamic? goooood. Gobbled it right up! 

Then on the weekend, I made this:

Quail egg, chorizo, gherkin croissant!

Instructions:
1. Go on an 11.1 mile hike and pick up 1 dozen quail eggs from an honor system farm's roadside box:

2. Get a couple of links of chorizo, a few gherkins and croissants.

3. Crack the dozen eggs into a frying pan, but be reeeeally careful if you want the yolks to stay whole! My success rate was only at 33%. Because they are so small, when you put your thumb in to further the crack, you kind of almost always break the yolk, so be careful!

4. Make the chorizo as the package says to. Mine said to bake it? I was surprised, but it was delish.

5. Toast your croissants in the oven for a couple of minutes.

6. Put a few sliced gherkies on there, add the chorizo (easier if it's split in half, lengthwise), and then add half of your giant amalgamation of 1 dozen quail eggs and enjoy. 

The buttery croissant makes it moist enough that you don't really need sauce, but mustard was kind of nice with it on a few bites too :)

Sunbun & Kate, now so cherubic

As you may or may not know, Sunbun and Kate went to Limerick! 

Here are just the food & drink bits:

Day 1:

Lunch:
Fishy Fishy was soooo delishy.

Oysters to start. My mouth is watering again.

Clockwise from top left: Surf&turf--scallops and black pudding;
salmon with basmati rice; pan-seared yellow fin tuna; Hake over beetroot salad

Our trip to Jameson Distillery in Midleton, but this is mostly just to exhibit Google's 'Auto Awesome' feature that gifs your pics when you had multiple takes...
                                   
Dinner: Joan's Thai red curry with rice and Lauren P-D's Kahlua cake. D. licious.

Day 2: 

Lunch: Hog roast at the Limerick Show

A stop off at Molly's Bar before heading up Knockroe 

  

Dinner: Mrs Power's super yummy chicken, potatoes (roast and dauphinoise) and salad, followed by lemon tart AND apple cobbler. Heaven.

  

Day 3: Today we had 5 meals...

Meal 1: Eggs in baskets!

Meal 2: We stopped at Adare Golf Manor (where I'll be joining Eric in a couple months' time!) and just had some ham and cheese toasties, because why not. They weren't great, but they sated our hunger.

Meal 3: Oysters at Durty Nelly's. Oysters. Lemon juice. Tabasco. What more do you need??

Meal 4: Lunch with Mrs Power at JP Clarke's -- Sunny and I split a rack of ribs, but got our own desserts :) White chocolate cheesecake with Bailey's ice cream for me (yummy) and Maple & passionfruit creme brulee with hazelnut ice cream for sunny (also yummy)

Meal 5: Airport pub food. Not the best way to end the day, but oh well.

Oh yes and then actually I got home and ate leftover rice, dal and keema. So yeah. 

Rhubarb Strawberry Pecan Crumbpie (and its pre-course-ers)

This year's Langridge BBQ meal consisted of... 

The delicious monkfish-shrimp with mango-pineapple salsa starter

And an amazing steak with homemade cucumber relish,
roasted potatoes and a kind of Greek salad

Now! Time for dessert! Sarah and I have made this a few times, and people seem to love it.

Full disclosure, I did not make this recipe up, (here's the original) but I love it and I have made some tweaks over time. The only cha[lle]nge this time, was that I needed to make it celiac-friendly.

NOTE

To make the recipe gluten-free, I substituted corn flour for all-purpose flour. It turns out a bit stickier and a bit less crumbly, but people still loved it!

YIELD

1 9” pie (see below for adjustments for 6 ramekins)

INGREDIENTS

Pie crust

• 1 cup (125 g) all-purpose flour
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup (75 g) chilled butter
• 2 tablespoons (30 ml) cold water, or more as needed

Filling

• 1 1/4 cups (250 g) white sugar
• 1/3 cup (40 g) all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon (1 g) ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2 cups (245 g) rhubarb, sliced 1/2-inch thick
• 2 cups (330 g) sliced fresh strawberries
• recipe: 1/3 cup me: 2/3 cup (recipe: 35 g) (me: 70 g) chopped pecans

Crumble

• 1 cup (125 g) all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup (135 g) white sugar
• 1/3 cup (75 g) chilled butter

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. Whisk 1 cup of flour and salt in a bowl. Cut 1/3 cup of butter into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter or your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Moisten with water, 1 tablespoon at a time, just until the mixture holds together. Shape the dough into a ball, and roll out into a 12-inch circle on a floured work surface. Crust will be thin. Fold the dough gently into quarters, and lay into a 9-inch pie dish; unfold the dough and center the crust in the pie dish. Trim the crust to 1/2 inch of overhang, and crimp or flute the edge of the crust. Press pecan pieces into the bottom/sides of the crust. Refrigerate crust while making filling.
3. Mix 1 1/4 cups of sugar, 1/3 cup of flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a bowl until thoroughly combined. Mix in the rhubarb and strawberries, and pour into the crust-lined pie dish.
4. Mix 1 cup of flour with 2/3 cup of sugar in a bowl, and cut 1/3 cup of butter into the mixture with a pastry cutter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs; sprinkle the crumb topping evenly over the pie filling and sprinkle with pecans. Cover the edge of the pie with strips of aluminum foil.
5. Bake in the preheated oven until the crumb topping is golden brown and the filling bubbles around the edges, 50 to 60 minutes. Remove foil for the last 10 minutes of baking to brown the pie edge.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

YIELD

6 ramekins

INGREDIENTS

Pie crust

• 1 cup (125 g) all-purpose flour
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup (75 g) chilled butter
• 2 tablespoons (30 ml) cold water, or more as needed

Filling

• 3/4 cups (125 g) white sugar
• 1/6 cup (20 g) all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon (1/2 g) ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 cup (125 g) rhubarb, sliced 1/2-inch thick
• 1 cup (165 g) sliced fresh strawberries
• 1/3 cup (35 g) chopped pecans

Crumble

• 1/2 cup (62.5 g) all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup (67 g) white sugar
• 1/6 cup (37.5 g) chilled butter

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. Whisk 1 cup of flour and salt in a bowl. Cut 1/3 cup of butter into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter or your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Moisten with water, 1 tablespoon at a time, just until the mixture holds together. Shape the dough into a ball, and roll out into a 12-inch circle on a floured work surface. Crust will be thin. It is often difficult to cut a circle and put it into the ramekins without making holes in the crust, so I find it easier to just put some dough into the ramekins and mold it, filling in holes where they appear. Press pecan pieces into the bottom/sides of the crust. Refrigerate crust while making filling.

3. Mix 3/4 cups of sugar, 1/6 cup of flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a bowl until thoroughly combined. Mix in the rhubarb and strawberries. Pour fruit mixture into ramekins.

L: End of step 2; R: End of step 3

4. Mix 1/2 cup of flour with 1/3 cup of sugar in a bowl, and cut 1/6 cup of butter into the mixture with a pastry cutter or your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs; sprinkle the crumb topping evenly over the pie filling and garnish with a pecan. Cover the pies with aluminum foil and refrigerate if not baking right away. It's a good recipe to make the day before and just put into the oven the next day (without the foil).

5. Bake in the preheated oven until the crumb topping is golden brown and the filling bubbles around the edges, 50 to 60 minutes. I don't seem to have any pictures of the finished product that aren't half-eaten...it's too good!!! Best served with vanilla ice cream!

Sooooooooo delicious! sCRUMBtious, even! :D

Cream colored ponies and crisp...fish fry

I love Indian food. But I didn't really make the effort to learn to cook it until I was deprived for it for almost a year and a half. Because I never had to! I lived 3 hours from home and went back once a month. Mama made me all the Indian food I wanted!! Silver spoon in my mouth. With homemade mango pickle on it. Why would I make it myself when Mom's is delish!? Oh right, because I'm an adult and independent yadda yadda and oh yeah now I live a little under 5000 miles away, so once-a-month trips home aren't an option. THEN I took it upon myself to [email my mother and beg her for recipes so that I could] cook all that goodness myself.

I started with avial, a Kerala dish, that's kind of like a vegetable stew:

 

Before 

After

Back when I made the avial was also my first try at making pappadums...

I failed.

James the White did better than me :( :(
BUT YAY pappadums and also YAY I CAN
DEFLECT THIS RESPONSIBILITY

My mom recommended that I use this recipe for the avial...yes, that's a youtube link.

It was really good, but I haven't really made it since. Probably because it was a bit more work than I realized and there are other things I like better. Instead, the staples I now make pretty often and can't live without are:

Fish fry!!!!!! I usually use sea bass. 

Mango. Pickle.

Palakkura Pappu aka Spinach Dal

The only keema pic I could find!! Sometimes I like to
throw eggplant into the mix. And I usually use
ground turkey.

Again, not the best picture.
Technically, it's Mummy Dara's chicken curry, but
I like to add some of this and that
and make it Mummy Dara's Aloo Gobi Chicken curry.

A few recent trials/one-bite-stands har har har have been:

Kerala Meen Curry and beans thoran. I'll definitely do this again, now that Mummy sent me back with
the secret ingredient last time I went home. 

Morcurry on the left and egg curry on the right

For the egg curry, I used this recipe. It was a bit spicy for me, haven't decided if I'll do it again.

These are from the dosa trial day...

As you can see, it didn't go perfectly...

Will need to try again from scratch, used a box that time, shh. Also want to try appam. 

K that's all bye!

Lovechild of a Halloumi salad, a Shrimp Po'boy and a good ole Salami sandwich

I call this...a saloumi sandwich

The pic isn't the greatest, but it was so good, I promise. A simple baguette with French's mustard and salami...but with the halloumi part of this salad and the remoulade from this shrimp po' boy. D-licious! (Plus some salt and vinegar chips. Obv.)

I made the salad last night before our picnic in Potter's Field Park to enjoy the sun.

Leaves and floured, fried cheese. Healthy.

Feasting in the sun, in the [figurative] shade of Tower Bridge

It was good, I really liked the dressing (lemon juice, garlic, honey, some red pepper flakes, salt and oil), but I think I prefer salads with romaine lettuce or spinach bases. But the best part was definitely the halloumi. Since 8 slices was a bit too much for 2 people's dinner though, I made sandwiches for lunch with the rest, and added some of the leftover remoulade from when we made shrimp po'boys a week or two ago. Super yummy.

And those shrimp po'boys were really good too! We made them with this amazing eggplant the first time by accident (as in, I had some eggplant and wanted to make it before it went bad) and then decided to do it again, just because it's so good, and although you wouldn't think to put the two together, the flavors don't clash.

Step 1: Butter. Lots and lots of butter

Step...later: Shrimp with lots and lots of butter and cajun spices, etc

Vietnamese eggplant

The Remoulade, before being spread on the baguette

 

Ta da! Goes well with S&V chips. Has anyone guessed my favorite kind of chips yet?

The 199 course meal day

Course 1: Low and Slow Scrambled Eggs (recipe from a self-proclaimed "girl who loves bacon but can't get fat" aka supermodel Chrissy Teigen aka John Legend's fiancée!), bacon, a baguette and freshly squeezed orange juice!!!!! We finally got a juicer (this one) -- (ultimately provoked by my and Becca's stay in Barcelona, where our airbnb hostess had one and we just got some oranges from the local market and had the besssssstttttttt morning juice with our breakfasts.) I know this sounds super snotty but I can't help it, fresh OJ is so delicious!!!!! I don't want cartons again!

Soooooo yummy

Anyway. 8 oranges (one bag, at least in terms of from Waity here -- sometimes we do grocery delivery and it's the best. Don't judge. We don't have cars and we can pay to get other people to lug around our heavy grocery choices, likes 5kg of basmati rice or 6 giant water bottles or other heavy things. Waity has a great selection and gives you free delivery if you spend £50 or more, whereas Ocado (which also has a great selection) charges you for delivery, so that's kind of annoying. That was a long parenthetical. Are you ready to go back to the sentence? Reminder: 8 oranges...) yielded about 16 ounces of juice, which was good for 3-4 small glasses. Now that I think about it, 8 oz is a pretty normal sized glass, but still. Enough and delicious.

Great way to break the fast

After some major cleaning around the house including organizing, consolidating and trashing things from our insane wine&cooking vinegars/oils/sauces section (see bacon picture), bakery cabinet and refrigerator, we headed off to Saturday's Booth's produce market down the street down the street to get some ripe avocados to make successful guacamole, as well as a few other fresh fruits and veggies. 

By then, it had of course started raining, so we grabbed some hooded jackets and headed to Potter's Field Park, where Rioja Tapas Fantasticas was going on. I love our home. Such a great area!! If you haven't come to visit already, you should :) We had some Rioja to complement all our tapas, which were:
Course 2: Calamari from 
It definitely wasn't the greatest I've ever had, so I wasn't too excited about it.
Course 3: Gambas from Donostia Social Club.
Course 4: Scallops with tomatoes and black rice with squid.
Course 5: Chorizo sandwich
Course 6: Churros con chocolate from Churros Garcia. Delicious.

Course 3: Gambas

Courses 7-199: Okay. It's confession time. We didn't really eat 199 courses. But we participated in a Guinness Book World Record Attempt! Kinda. (Sidenote: did you realize that the Guinness Book of World Records is actually associated with Guinness the beer company??) Really, it was an attempt to have the longest tasting course menu -- 193 courses in 24 hours. You can check out pics and descriptions of some of the courses on this liveblog. 
Course 7: Rose cordial (Turkmenistan)
8: olives, hummus, other unearthed snacks

Course 8

Courses 9, 10, 11, 13, 14

9: Shrimp on the barbie (Australia)
10: Kansiye (Guinea) - a hearty beef stew with peanut butter -- this one was just okay.
11: Pad Thai (Thailand) - delish, as always, but not the best ever. (plus, felt kind of like a copout! also we were in the basement of a Thai restaurant soooo...)
12: Koshari (Egypt) - an eccentric dish of macaroni pasta served with an exotic sauce of rice and lentils. This was really good! I wasn't expecting it to be, but I did really like it. I think that was because of all the butter in it...
13: Chicken (Angola)
14: Vegetable stew (Djibouti)

15: Otai (Tongo) Watermelon, pineapple and coconut drink
16: Tama (Palau) - deep fried vanilla ball. Meh.
17: Durian (Malaysia) - frozen slice. Weird smell, banned on public transport, not my fave fruit.

For those of you who were wondering--we did ask about what the dish from the US was - it was pumpkin pie.















Bonus Jonas!
A custom-made pop-tart cake by Bittersweet Bakers :)

(A giant version of this:

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