This place at borough market does the best pork belly and apple sauce sandwich, for £6 you get a massive baguette with crackling and everything. They do other roasts but the pork belly is too good not to eat. It’s in borough market which i’m sure you could write an entire blog on just one stall in there and keep it fresh and interesting for about ten years.
“avoid lunch hours coz the local knows how good the roast is, and very friendly service is always a plus — Yu’an”
I got a huge package of all sorts of things the first time Yu’an was home in Taiwan, Lychee jellies i survived off for about a month.
Make pancake batter: mix an egg with an equal amount of flour make up to a single cream consistencey with milk and water. Get pan hot and swill in butter, beat excess in to pancake mix. 1 ladel-full at a time make pancakes. Add pancake back to dry pan. break egg in the middle, arrange cooked beef around it and wait for it to set adding in the spinach and cheese with enough time for them to slightly melt. Have love
“Love field crepe, remember to spread egg white all over the crepe sheet or it won’t cook forever - Yu’an”
Shabushabu in my room!!! Ok so shabu shabu = hot pot = winter food = action food = social food.
I remember that day Jonjon was exhausted from something, probably worked on sunday for his shop window. I decide to have a treat because he liked the shabu2 place I took him last time and we have been talking about having one at home since. ended up we had mini house dinner party with 4 of us.
soup base for Japanese style: Kombu wash it and slow boil it for a while. Prepare more than a pot full of soup, you will need to top it up quite frequently once start cooking.
For taiwanese style: anything from milk to what ever in hot water(ie, kimchi, chillies, tomatos, miso… so on). the difference is taiwanese/chinese style we leave the ingredients in the soup japanese style you take the kombu out.
When the soup base is sorted you can just trough anything you like in the pot really. that’s the good thing about having it at home. My personal must have (that’s available is London) are: thingly sliced beef ( you can get fancy pricy fresh one at japan center or cheap value frozen ones at china town) Daikon, enokitake, sweet potatos, rice cake, clam, taro and see through dumplings (don’t know what it’s called in english)
oh and dippings! so important! My personal favorite very taiwanesey one is：Taiwanese satay sauce (very good for other taiwanese dishes) + sesame oil + sugar + peanuts powder + coriander/spring onion + egg york = PERFECT dipping!!! if you like spicy stuff just chunk some fresh chillies in)
second favorite is sesame dipping or kombu sauce. Ohohoh and another good one when i’m in the chilli mood 老乾媽 chilli crunch oil (again china town) and oyster sauce is so good. even my foreign food phobic flatmate like it.
Lastly, get your udon ready and egg ready at the almost end of the shabushabu section,boil the udon and crake and york and stir it while the udon hot (not into the soup). Here is my lovey shabushabu recipe.
Night-before pizza from Basillico with extra rocket added, Melon with Yu’an’s ‘Sprinkle Surprise’ and Cappucino with Yu’an’s ‘Sprinkle Surprise’, Orange Juice and not our Diet Coke. A perfectly colourful and resourceful breakfast
“The gold mug make everything come together nicely”— Yu’an
The world’s Largest Gummy bear.
Cod and Scallop with Tomato Curry,
First get some big tomatoes, halve them, scoop out the flesh and salt them. In a large frying pan toast cumin, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, add a little butter and fry the garlic, ginger and curry leaves for a couple of minutes. Place the tomatoes in to the pan skin side down and pour in the coconut milk being careful not to wobble the tomatoes over, cover and every 10/15 minutes check and scoop the juice that forms in the tomato halves in to the coconut base. Depending on how ripe the tomatoes it takes between 25 and 50 minutes to give the sauce a pale red colour. when you have 10 minutes remaining: salt and oil the skin of the cod and fry skin side down in a hot pan, with two minutes remaining fry the scallops, plate and have love.
