I BOUGHT A WOK

I'M SO EXCITED

That is all. 

Pimp My Sandwich

I have the rather unfortunate luck of working in Park Royal. For the uninitiated this is actually the largest industrial park in Western Europe and a rather grotty place just next to Acton in NW London. I have been working here for just over two years, previous to that I was working on New Bond Street, two places which couldn't be more different if they tried. Lunch breaks are pretty non existent as there is not really anywhere to go, there isn't even a blade of grass in sight, let alone a park (Park Royal is a very misleading place. Similar to the first time you get taken to Piccadilly Circus and realise you are at a junction and not a circus at all. CRUSHING DISAPPOINTMENT).

Lunch options are predominately either the caff, the other caff or the Lebanese caff. Not actually sure how one spells café pronounced without the e but I'm going with caff. There is, however, one giant feature of Park Royal that you can't ignore which is the giant 24 hour Asda opposite Central Middlesex Hospital; do hope I'm doing all of this justice. Asda gets seriously dull after a while as there are no cooking facilities to speak of at work unless you fancy losing a few kilos through contracting a combination of Norovirus and Lymes disease from the mouse infested kitchen. This means options are limited and laziness usually leads to a bog standard pre packaged sandwich. I can't complain, these are really  cheap, but really not that nice, so yesterday I took the not particularly interesting or brave move to Pimp My Sandwich.

Construction Recipe:

1 Asda ham and mustard sandwich
A pot of Bromley's Pickle Company Tomato and Chilli Jam
1 packet of 'Real Ox' Crisps - (in light of recent discoveries they are probably on to a good marketing ploy putting 'real' in front of their animal ingredients....)
1 plastic knife (for fear of kitchen contamination one must only use ones personal plastic knife)



Combine.

NB: Please note that the knife is only for spreading and is not for eating.

Eat.

It doesn't actually taste that great but is a darn sight better than the un-pimped version.

No photo is necessary. Seriously.
 

Recipe Wishlist

I know I'm not alone in that I am a bit of a cookbook hoarder. Compared to most my collection is pretty small but I can see it eventually spiralling out of control.

This was the first ever cookbook I purchased when I was 13:



I wish, wish, wish I still had it!!!! You can buy it still though and I'm seriously tempted.....

I thought I might try and give myself a bit of structure for my blog based around my unfortunately rather unused pile of cookbooks by forming a list of recipes that I plan to cook in the upcoming couple of weeks.

-  Shakshuka from Jerusalem - Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. I picked this up in January in the sales and this was the first thing that jumped out at me. I don't think I'll be making my own harissa unfortunately... or labneh.... maybe at a later date!

- Roast Chicken
I can roast a chicken alright, but I want to be able to  roast a chicken really well. This is all starting from the beginning for me so roasting a chicken is a pretty good benchmark. The recipe I'm going to do is from Simon Hopkinson, Roast Chicken & Other Stories.


- Melanzane Ripiene
From  Elizabeth David's Italian Food which my Mum has always adored but to my knowledge has never actually cooked anything from.

A Pretty Dull Confession

My name is Katie and I'm addicted to reading other people's blogs. My Google Reader is jammed full of them. I can only read them when I'm feeling happy though. Was a bit sad over Christmas and couldn't look at any blogs. 70% of them are about food and I think strangely while a lot of people like to eat when they are down, I avoid food like the plague. Food is definitely something that means contention and when I'm cooking and eating, I feel fulfilled.



I also am apparently addicted to not writing on my own blog, even though I only have just started it! I think the cold weather has thrown me, plus I haven't had a laptop, work has blogged Blogger so I've been having to write on my phone. Using my phone for a length of time is no mean feat bearing in mind how plastic encrusted it is! Incidentally I have very weak wrists (no sniggers, please), and this phone is not helping matters.

I am typing this on a brand new laptop, testing out my new camera. It's average. though you can see a bit of my house! It also just took me about 20 minutes to upload  that, I'm having serious issues with Windows 8.

Apologies for the ramble.

My blog and I are ready to do this properly now


 

Bone Daddies

DISCLAIMER - I wrote this ages ago, work went mental and I forgot to post it....

I love going to restaurants, I always have. I was always very well behaved when taken out to eat as a child as the fear of being taken out if I misbehaved and therefore missing the food was a hellish concept. When I know I am going somewhere to eat I studiously pore over the menu for days if not weeks in advance working out precisely what I'm going to have and exactly what I'm going to make everyone else order as well. I sincerely hope I will write more on this blog about what I cook rather than where I eat, but I am far better at eating than cooking so I don't have high hopes.........


A couple of weekends ago my darling cousin Flo and I went out for a day round town (I live in SW London so it isn't exactly a million miles away). We went to the National Gallery, I took her on my now well established educational routine involving much shutting of eyes, staring at Byzantine faces and then running round to Renaissance to compare. We then wandered over to Soho to find Bone Daddies which I had been reading a lot about as one of the leading players in London's current ramen obsession (alongside Shoyru Ramen, Tonkotsu and the comparatively well established Koya).

We started off with the fried chicken, kara age for the highly fluent in Japanese, which were lovely nuggets of goodness served very simply with a lemon slice. I thought they were incredibly moreish but my cousin wasn't so bothered, not that I cared that much as it meant I had loads.

We both had the T22, I avoided tonkotsu as I had already had some at it's namesake a couple of weeks previously and was after something different rather than looking for a direct comparison.

I can't remember exactly what was with it (I don't think specific details are going to be too much of a feature of this blog) BUT there was a soft boiled egg (natch!), spring onions, cock scratchings (queue lots of lolz from me and my cousin, and the waiter looking slightly fed up of the joke having had to explain for the gazillionth time that it is crispy chicken skin and nothing to do with chicken genitalia), soy ramen and chicken. We didn't actually realise their was spring onion, which was very uneducated of us, so we ordered extra, but it was a great shout if I say so myself because I heart alliums. Woo I said alliums in a sentence. Twice.

I actually preferred the Bone Daddies offering to Tonkotsu. To me I found it all a bit more interesting. Not just the food, which I thought was great but as I say, I didn't actually have tonkotsu ramen and I'm not much of an expert on noodles so can't comment on variations, but the atmosphere. I found Tonkotsu a bit cramped and dark, whereas Bone Daddies was bright and airy though I am not a fan of high uncomfortable stools when there is no where to leave your plethora of shopping bags...