I had visited Oriental City a few years ago and thought that a visit to this one-mammoth-stop shop was long overdue. Oriental City was an aircraft hangar sized shopping centre on the A5 near Colindale and had many East Asian shops selling a vast range of cooking ingredients, crockery, jewellery and a great food hall where you could pick up authentic Chinese, Malay, Thai meals for rock bottom prices and eat on communal tables with hoards of hungry diners. It felt authentic compared to China Town in Soho and was a great place to go to buy essential ingredients.

I’m using the past tense, because I only found out that this placed had closed down in the summer of 2008 (I should have found out before, I know) as I was checking the opening hours of the supermarket.  How sad! There was a long struggle by the traders to keep this place open but the site had been sold to make way for a DIY store.  Even though Oriental City looked like an industrial estate on the outside, inside it was like walking into a Far East bazaar but without the 11 hour flight, it is a terrible to lose such a valuable amenity.

All is not lost… some of the traders that used to operate in Oriental City have set up in Pacific Plaza in the retail park right next to Wembley Stadium. Pacific Plaza is a lot smaller than Oriental City and is based on two floors. The upper floor has a small food court with outlets serving freshly cooked authentic Malay, Chinese, Korean and Thai dishes.  We got to Pacific Plaza just in time for lunch and decided to try out the Malay outlet . I had crispy white-flour rotis (different from wholemeal Indian-style chappatis) with a sour lentil soup. The boyf went for a meat stir fry and a sweet, frothy, milky Malaysian-style tea. 

The lower floor has a small Japanese bakery but the prize, in my opinion, is the Japanese tableware shop which definitely made up for the hellish nature of the Wembley retail park.   The tableware shop used to be known as Utsuwa-No-Yakata in Oriental City but is now known as Doki Limited and it sells a huge range of affordable, beautiful Japanese ceramics. We stocked up on soup bowls, bowls to serve dipping sauce, rectangular plates in different glazes and other serving ware.  Japanese food, as well as tasting delicious, also looks beautiful because of the handicraft and the amazing tableware used to serve food and drinks.

We decided to end that day on a less practical note by watching Casablanca on the big screen. Another first for me, it was an amazing film and the one-liners had the audience laughing throughout the movie.

It’s a real shame that the original Oriental City has gone but at least the Japanese tableware shop survives, even if it is in a chaotic retail park.  The food shop which used to stock a huge range of East Asian essentials has moved to Bayswater…I will be paying a visit and reporting back soon.

The boyf is very busy at work, and has been working long hours to get his new business up and running. Occasionally he will have lunch with a client or a team but most days, I know he just has soup or a wrap at his desk.  Even though I am working on my own project, it doesn’t take much time to rustle up a great tasting warming dinner to share together while chatting over the events of the day.

One evening last week, I decided to make vegetarian spring rolls and a winter vegetable salad. The contrast of hot and cold, gentle spicy and fragrant was a pleasing combination.

My recipe for Spring Rolls is likely to be very different from the Far Eastern traditional recipes, but I think the concept is still the same… the pleasure in eating the gently spicy rolls dipped in a homemade sweet miso-garlic sauce definitely is.

Spring Rolls

Ingredients (to make 15 small rolls – 2 people can eat these easily)

15 Rice flour (preferable) or Samosa/wheat flour leaves

For the filling

Fine Julienne strips of a handful of mange tout, 3-4 shi-take or chestnut mushrooms, one medium-sized carrot, one large shalot.  These ingredients can be substituted with other vegetables, e.g. bean sprouts, finely shredded cabbage etc.

Large tbsp sesame oil

1tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

1tbsp ginger juice (grate ginger on the smaller grater setting and squeeze pulp to extract juice)

1 tbsp soy sauce

Method

Heat a wok or a large frying pan and add the sesame oil. When the oil is hot, toss the vegetables and add the soy sauce, ginger juice and lemon juice after a minute. Stir fry for 2-3 minutes so that vegetables are still crunchy and remove the wok from the heat.

Make a simple flour and water paste to seal the spring rolls.  Lay the rice/wheat leaf flat on the surface and moisten the far edge with the flour and water paste. Add a large tablespoon of the stir fried ingredients onto the leaf and roll the sheet ensuring that the far edge seals to the skin of the roll.  Line up on a lined baking tray.

When all the spring rolls are ready, place the tray in a cool-moderate preheated oven (100C to 150C) for 15 minutes or until the outer skin turns golden brown.

Remove and serve with a sweet miso dip with finely shredded garlic.

Winter Salad

Ingredients

One raw grated beetroot.

One raw grated carrot.

A few pea shoots.

A dash of olive oil.

A splash of balsamic vinegar.

Method

Combine the above ingredients in a large bowl and turn over gently so that the olive oil and balsamic vinegar coats the ingredients.  Serve with the spring rolls as a colourful accompaniment.

It had taken several phonecalls to get to the right department at the council to deal with my questions on building use and planning.  Having finally reached a helpful person, it wasn’t quite the news I wanted to hear which means that my dream of setting up my own business has to wait until I find the right place. Not as easy as it sounds!

On top of that, I have been lucky enough to escape colds and other seasonal afflictions so far but I think my luck may have ran out with the tell tale signs of itchy ears.

In spite of this, I was determined to not be defeated. There was only one thing for it … bake a cake.

The only problem was that I had to get to the gym for a class in an hour. Spinning is a great way to clear the mind. There was no time too waste, except that I dropped an egg on the floor in my haste and it took ages to clear up! I guess the moral here is to hold eggs properly.

It took approximately 40 minutes to make and bake which left me just enough time to pull on my trainers and run to the gym.  However, I would recommend an hour to make and bake to enjoy making this wonderful textured cake.

Ingredients
2 eggs
45ml vegetable oil (a light oil not a strongly flavoured oil like olive or sesame)
45g light muscovado sugar
3g baking powder
1g salt
40g ground rice flour
45g ground almonds
20g semolina

50g roughly chopped chestnuts (small chunks)
5 balls of stem ginger ( if bought in a syrupy solution try not to take out too much of the syrup), chopped up in small chunks.

Method

1. Whisk the eggs and oil until combined and frothy.
2. Fold the remaining ingredients into the egg and oil solution gently taking care not to energetically mix. The cake mixture should be relatively thick but still have a runny, gloopy consistency.
3. Pour cake mixture into a 9 inch diameter lined cake tin. Bake in an oven preheated to 170 celsius for approx 25 min. Test with a skewer to make sure the cake has cooked. Leave on a wire rack to cool.

The boyf and I have had a slice or two of this cake for breakfast this morning with a cup of early morning tea (I don’t normally have cake for breakfast but muesli just won’t do when you need a little TLC).  It is good, the ground rice and semolina gives the cake an interesting granular texture, the chestnuts a gentle sweet earthiness and the ginger provides some sweetness and heat.

Speaking to a paediatric dietician earlier today, childhood obesity has noticeably increased over the past 20 years. There has been a change in eating habits, physical activities that children participate in, and a perception of what is a healthy appearance for a child. 

Listening to contemporary views from people who work in schools, again I was alarmed to hear about children who attend school hungry because they haven’t had breakfast, children who grab an iced bun or sausage roll from a nearby bakery before school and end up being hyper which then has a knock on effect on learning, or children whose parents provide them with deep fried food at the school gates at lunch time. Combined with a reduction of physical activity, this is a health time-bomb waiting to go off, if it hasn’t already.

But there is hope.

I am amazed by the dedication of teaching staff, welfare officers, and other people who support schools in trying to find ways through restrictive budgets and other constraints to encourage better eating habits. Whilst schools can play their part in helping the young to develop good behaviours for the future, society at large has a key role to play in changing attitudes to food, activity, aspirations and education.

Good food and educational achievement are ideals very close to my heart, so I will be following these issues closely but only time will tell whether society has managed to prevent a further widening of the inequality gap.

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Link to recent Panorama documentary “What’s really in our kids food?”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qcl08

Having had a quick glance at the people’s encyclopedia, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickpea, it seems that this humble bean has been cultivated and enjoyed across Southern European, Central and Southern Asian for millennia. Chickpeas have a wonderful earthy taste and can be used in whole form or ground up as gram flour. It is also a good source of protein and minerals.

Gram flour is finely ground with a golden-yellow colour and has a slight nutty, savoury flavour. It can be readily found in any South Asian grocers, whole food shops and I have also seen it stocked in two large supermarkets close to where I live. Just adding a little water to some flour would create a simple batter, which if gently spiced could be used to coat thin strips of vegetables (typically thin circles of potato or onions) for a very quick deep-fry before being eaten hot and crunchy either by themselves or accompanied with a contrasting cool, yogurt based dip. This is the dish called “bhajia” from my childhood, similar to Japanese tempura, but it does not resemble the “bhajis” sold in supermarkets or served in many Indian restaurants. Gram flour can be used in a number of recipes ranging from Indian savoury snacks to cakes and bread.

I have just taken two gram and olive loaves from the oven to cool. One is a plaited oblong loaf which looks surprisingly good. The other is a spiral which proved with an unintentional lopsided angle, but it smells heavenly and has a lovely deep golden brown colour speckled with olives.

Given the fine, powdery quality of gram flour and the fact that I did not want to create dense, monotonous bread, the proportion of gram flour used within the total flour component is 60%.

The ingredients used were:

Stage 1

75g Gram Flour

75g Strong White Flour

5g Yeast

150 ml warm water

The process for making this bread is exactly the same as set out in the Semolina and Fennel bread note.

Stage 2

150g Gram Flour

30g Strong White Flour

45g Malted granary flour (the grain adds interest and texture to the loaf)

One tablespoon olive oil

150g of pitted black olives roughly chopped

110 ml of the salted brine water the olives were stored in – this should mean that no additional salt needs to be added as the brine and olives will already be salty.

Again the process for Stage 2 and the final stage for making this bread is exactly the same as the Semolina and Fennel loaf.

This bread was baked in a pre-heated oven at 200C for 20-25minutes. As my oven also moonshines as a heat power plant for Bermondsey, I placed the bread on the bottom shelf, the coolest part of the ovem.

Once the loaves have cooled, I am going to go all out for chickpeas today and enjoy a slice of this bread with some home-made hummus.

Every morning, I wake up to a steaming mug of a short-cut version of Indian tea. A teaspoon or two of loose leaf PG Tips mixed with a tiny amount of homemade chai masala is left to brew in hot water for a few minutes in one of our random collection of teapots. I like my tea to have a medium-dark golden brown colour, with gentle hints of tannin and a slight aroma of cardamom and cloves, but the boyf insists on his tea being made to be as strong as road-menders tea. A splash of semi-skimmed stirred in and I’m ready for the day.

Around mid morning I’m ready for another cup of tea but something floral. I’m not an expert on green tea or tea in general but I love trying out different variants of the camellia family and ‘fruit’ teas, like dried rose buds or fennel.

I am currently enjoying the gentle flavour of a green tea which has tiny strands of dried mandarin and lychee. Unlike, my early morning tea, green tea should not be left to stand too long otherwise it develops a strong astringent taste. This tea has the gentle aromas of a mild citrus fruit and a hint of sweetness from the lychee. These flavours are balanced by the green leaves which have been left to brew for 2-3 minutes.

I think this tea was bought a few years ago when we were last in Paris in a specialist Oriental tea shop, probably somewhere in or near the Marais. Central Paris is a great place to discover Oriental teas and tea based foods in one of the many antique style tea shops. A trip to Mariage Freres stands out in my mind because of the refreshing earl-grey infused sorbet I had there.

I also remember a Far Eastern tea cafe we had visited in St Germain (sorry, I can’t remember its name!!) , in particular the attention to detail given by the proprietors in making their beautifully aromatic teas, including boiling the water for the tea in a special metal tea pot on a stand-alone burner and letting the water cool to a certain temperature before the water was added to the leaves. Drinking their teas seemed to heal the pain I was in after having run the Paris Half Marathon that morning. I also remember the delicately steamed dim sum that I had, as it was the first time I had tried this dish and the gentle heat of the homemade Ginger cake combined with the scented tea we drank. Hmmm, think we may need to visit Paris soon to see if this gem of a shop is still there…

I have an amateur interest in earthquakes, volcanoes and many other natural subjects.  I am also very interested in cooking good food and enjoy experimenting in the kitchen both randomly and with a scientific approach, just to see what happens.

Over the past few months, I have learnt to make bread from scratch and what an amazing learning experience this has been.  Bread is one of the essential food products that we eat but this is a food product which has, sadly, been taken for granted since the industrialisation of bread.

Many people would agree that they enjoy eating bread made by, what is termed nowadays, Artisan Bakers, compared to mass produced bread found in any supermarket. Most people enjoy eating the variety of national/regional breads on offer when eating out or when travelling abroad. The different textures of bread, the chewiness of the crust, the shape, smell and flavour of freshly baked bread eaten with a hearty soup on a cold day or dipped in green olive oil can only be described as perfection.

I had always thought that making bread would be a laborious task with an uncertain end result, i.e. disaster! This is clearly not the case. Anyone can make good bread and the bread making process can fit around most busy schedules. The key ingredients are available in a well stocked supermarket or a specialist grocers and once you have got to grips with the basics of good bread making, then you will see how easy and truly pleasurable it is. [1]

Yesterday, I baked a semolina and fennel loaf that got the seal of approval from the boyf, who immediately wolfed down half the loaf with the buttery sauce from the scallops he had just made. The recipe to making this loaf with a gentle aniseed flavour is as follows:

First Stage (this stage should be done a day before you would bake the bread)

Estimate time: 20-25 minutes

Ingredients

75g Strong White Flour (not plain flour for making cakes)

75g Semolina Flour

5g dried yeast

150ml warm water (this should be blood temperature, not hot or this will kill the yeast and not cold as the yeast will take a long time to wake up and become active)

1. First wake up the yeast in a glass. Put the dried yeast in a clear glass with approx 2g of brown sugar or 2g flour and the 150ml of warm water.  Mix the solution gently so that the yeast and its food supply (the sugar or flour) dissolve. Leave the solution for approx 10 to 15 minutes and you should see a cm or two of froth forming on the top of the solution.  This is a positive sign that your yeast solution is active and ready to make bread.
2. In a mixing bowl, add the measured flour then add the yeast solution. Mix to a soft spongy paste, making sure that there are no pockets of unmixed dry flour. The paste is likely to be wet, which is good. Cover the solution with a bag or clingfilm and leave at room temperature to ferment gently for 16 to 24 hours.

Over this period, the gluten structure of the first stage dough will develop, you will see the dough rise and collapse and the yeast cells will have multiplied to help with the next stage of bread making.

Fermenting the first stage dough over a long period helps to create more flavour in the final dough. Bread can be proved over a shorter period, indeed many of the recipes on the side of the flour packets can be made within six hours or less, however proving bread over a longer period helps to create a flavoursome, breadier loaf.

Second Stage

Estimated time: 25 to 30 minutes

Ingredients

First stage dough

270g semolina flour

Pinch of sea salt

7g crushed fennel

3g crushed coriander seed

1 table spoon of honey ( I used a clover honey, which had a slight floral hint)

135g of warm water

You will need to get your hands dirty for this stage, so remove any jewellery and get ready to knead all the ingredients together.

3. Add all the ingredients together in the mixing bowl which contains the first stage dough and then start mixing by hand. All the ingredients should combine to a wet, sloppy dough and there should be no water left in the bowl. This may take some time as semolina takes a little longer than flour to absorb liquid. Keep kneading until the dough is stretchy. If the dough is a little wet, that’s fine. If the dough is dry, then add some water to soften the mixture. Cover the mixture and leave to rise in the bowl for 2 hours in a warm place.

Final stage

4. Prepare a 1lb non stick loaf tin by dusting with semolina flour

5. Scrape the risen second stage dough from the mixing bowl onto a dusted work surface and gently knead and mould the dough in a oblong/sausage shape to fill a third to half of the bread tin.  Any excess dough can be made into rolls and placed onto a dusted baking sheet.

6. Cover the bread tin and leave the dough to rise until it has doubled in size. This will take approx 1 to 2 hours in a warm place (at 30C) A word of warning, at this stage I would recommend using an inflated bag rather than cling film to cover the loaf tin, as any contact that the rising dough has with the cling film will have the effect of pulling and sinking the risen dough.

7. Check the progress of the dough. When it has nearly doubled in size, heat your oven to 190C and make sure that your oven has got to that temperature before you put the loaf in.

8. Depending on the ferocity of your oven, the loaf should be cooked within 20 to 25 minutes. If you are making rolls with any excess dough, these should be done within 12 to 15 minutes.

The loaf should have a lovely golden brown colour from baking (and from the caramelisation of sugar on the crust).

Turn over on a cooling rack and tap the bottom to see if the loaf has a hollow knock. Leave to cool on the rack for 30 minutes before tucking in.

Enjoy by itself, with olive oil or butter, with a hearty bowl of soup, sliced and served as part of a mixed salad or toasted for tomorrow’s breakfast, if there is any left.