Alcohol review: Kwai Feh Lychee Liqueur

Since moving into my flat in September last year, I’ve been really enjoying hosting friends, and part of my hosting duties include mixing fun cocktails for my guests. I was kindly sent a bottle of the Kwai Feh lychee liqueur to review, and had lots of fun using it to jazz up some well-known drinks recipes. 

I love lychees as a fruit, and this liqueur both had a strong lychee taste and smell. This lychee essence goes with a lot of alcoholic spirits, making it a very versatile ingredient for drinks. In the photo below, I made lychee mojitos:

The ingredients for this drink were: a handful of mint (I have a mint plant which I use for this, very helpful!), 25ml of Kwai Feh, 25ml of rum, 25ml of freshly squeezed lime juice, 15ml of sugar syrup, topped up with lychee juice.

Whilst I enjoy rum cocktails, I don’t actually love the flavour of rum on its own, so it was pleasing to my taste buds that the lychee liqueur overpowered the rum in this drink! The lychee mojito was very fruity and fresh, with the mint leaves and lime really bringing out the tastiness of the lychee in the drink.

The next drink I made was the pink señorita cocktail, partially inspired by the pink aesthetic of the Barbie film!

The ingredients here were: 25ml Kwai Feh, 25ml tequila, 25ml Cointreau, 10ml lemon juice, topped up with pink lemonade.

Lockdown activities: making a pizza from scratch

I decided to make the most of being stuck inside during the lockdown to try my hand at some cookery experimentation. This was what the result was:

It was delicious! A good thing about making a pizza from scratch is that you can pile on all the things you like, and none of the stuff you don't! 

Restaurant review: LAHORE KARAHI (Tooting)

A friend recommended Lahore Karahi to me as a tasty, cheap curryhouse, and being an ardent fan of both Pakistani food and bargains, I ventured to South-West London to investigate. I have now been to Lahore Karahi twice, and here are my impressions of the dishes there!

Cooking: salmon and pomegranate salad

I made a salmon and pomegranate salad today. It was easy to cook and tasted so delicious, so I shall share my recipe!

Step 1: Buy a few fillets of salmon from your local high street. Before putting them in the oven for the time allocated, chop a few fine chillis (as shown in the first photo) and evenly distribute these on the salmon:

Step 2: While the salmon is cooking in the oven, cut open a pomegranate. Break all the individual pieces into a salad bowl and throw in a healthy quantity of greens. Use a spoon to spread the two fruit/veg out, before drizzling delicious balsamic vinegar over the combination.

Once the salmon is ready, boom! There's your dinner! Including preparation time, this took less than 20 minutes to make, and the end result is delicious and nutritious. Am definitely going to follow this recipe again (I may make amendments) - watch this space!

Restaurant review: MASALA DABBAS (Orpington)

Having just opened earlier this month, Masala Dabbas aims to bring authentic Indian dining to Orpington, on a High Street that is filled to the brim with 'Indian' dishes that have actually been liberally doctored to appease western palates.

Cooking: a meatier adaptation of the full English breakfast.

The last time I reported on my attempts to make a full English were over three years ago! This time round, I decided to cut out the stuff I wasn't too keen on (for example, the mushrooms), and feast on the stuff I love (hash browns, potatoes). Furthermore, because I was cooking, rather than ordering at a cafe, where the bacon is cooked to a certain level, I like my bacon a lot crispier than average, and so cooked it thus.

Ta da! It was absolutely delicious, even if I do say so myself. The crispy bacon, cooked in a reservoir of oil, probably single-handedly doubled my cholesterol levels, but was heaven to taste.

Next time, however, I would recommend adding eggs. Runny egg adds a certain something to the English breakfast, that I thought this was missing.

Cooking a Japanese Curry with Yutaka products.

Following a few unimaginative forays into the world of cookery, I thought I'd venture out of my comfort zone and try to make a Japanese curry, with the help of some fabulous Yutaka ingredients, and their helpful website, which features several recipes.

I pretty much followed the recipe linked above, although as usual when I cook, I do like to put my own little spin on things, so this is how I did things: 

The chicken

Get yourself some chicken breast. The one I had was nicely packaged in this handy silver tray, and slightly breaded, although I wanted my chicken to be completely covered in breadcrumbs, which was where the Panko came in!

Nomnomnom!

Then I put it in the oven for half an hour at 200C, and left it there for half an hour. Note: the instructions that come with your chicken might tell you to heat it at something like 170C, but this isn't factoring the many layers of breadcrumbs you've marinated it in. In order to properly cook the centre of the chicken, you have to give it an extra boost!

The rice

I used about 100g of the sushi rice pictured at the top and about 133ml (roughly) of water. After washing the rice, I put it and the water in a saucepan, bringing the water to boil, then letting it simmer.

The sauce

My favourite part! I cut a large onion (a vital component of all my meals), and fried it with oil (and a cheeky bit of balsamic vinegar) until it was almost completely cooked. Then, I added water and Katsu curry stock:

Due to the fact that I did all this rather quickly and haphazardly (I was hungry at the end of a long day and eager to fill my stomach with this awesome curry!), the final product was, true to my cooking-level:

But taste-wise, it was everything. I'd had a biryani at Dishoom the previous week, and whilst it was very nice, I'd felt it was a tad overpriced for what it was. This was very cheap indeed (the Yutaka items are competitive high street prices), and, being the one who made it, I was able to customise my meal to my own preferences, which of course, I know better than any chef. 

The Katsu sauce was lovely and a great alternative from the usual flavour of curry I have, and the Originario rice incredibly filling. The mixture of the textures, in terms of the hardness of the breadcrumbs, the softness of the chicken, the sticky rice, all synthesised with the delicious curry sauce, made for one delectable meal.

I'm definitely going to be cooking more Japanese flavours in the future! If you're that way inclined, I'd definitely recommend the Yutaka website, which has plenty of recipes if you need inspiration 👏👌

Cooking Stuff that Looks Bad But Tastes Delicious #2: The Veggie Supreme.

Since this dish doesn't feature any meat or fish, I will call it 'The Veggie Supreme'.

As pictured, the ingredients were:
- cheddar cheese
- chips
- red onions
- peppers
- oil (drizzled a little too liberally over the chips and peppers)

I cut pieces of cheddar cheese and onions and bunged them into the yellow peppers, then topped it up with oil. I probably put too much oil in, because as you can see on the oven dish, there's a fair bit of spillage. I also poured salt in the peppers pre-putting it in the oven, but that's up to you.

And, as with The Nemo, I had tomato ketchup to enjoy the chips with! Nomnomnom.

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Here's a photo of my dad's incredible authentic Chinese cooking!

Cooking Stuff that Looks Bad But Tastes Delicious #1: The Nemo.

I've been making the most of my mum being in China and having the kitchen to myself recently (I don't like cooking when surrounded by people, haha). 

My concoctions don't look too appetising, but as I bung in ingredients I like and ingredients I like only, I'm usually very pleased with the end product!

So in this haphazard invention, which I will call 'The Nemo' (because there's fish fingers in it), I put:
- 4 baby potatoes
- one red onion
- one tomato
- cheddar cheese
- oil
- 4 fish fingers

And after it was all cooked, I dipped the fish fingers in tomato ketchup.

Next time I cook it, I would increase the number of baby potatoes to about 6 or 7, as they reduce in size when fried due to it being on the pan for the longest period of time. But apart from that, I really liked The Nemo!

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In other, completely unrelated-to-cooking news, I saw that Damien Chazelle's upcoming La La Land, hotly tipped to rack up multiple Oscar nominations, got a PG in Ireland despite getting a 12A over here.

I find this very interesting because I think it illustrates the Irish are a bit more flexible about single uses of the f-word depending on context, whereas for the BBFC (and the MPAA), it leads to an automatic 12A/PG-13.

A subtle point, but illustrates the nuances in different countries' attitudes towards swearing!

I wonder who hollers the solitary f-bomb in the movie, Emma or Ryan? (Or maybe, given his character's colourful language in Whiplash, J.K. Simmons gets that honour...)

Two Omelettes I Cooked This Week.

When I was on holiday in Amsterdam in June, I had the sickest omelette. It tasted great, but I took slight umbrage at having to shell out an extra Euro for every extra ingredient. I knew it would be much more financially viable to cook my own omelette; the only problem is that I don't usually have time and I'm not the most culinarily gifted. 

Well, circumstance would have it that this week, I made time. On Thursday, I visited my friend Rebecca's new flat for the first time, and we cooked together, and on Sunday, I made Tom a meal by way of reciprocation for all the times he's cooked me a delicious hangover cure. In producing two omelettes in such short succession, it allowed me to hone my skills at making them whilst the production process was still fresh in my mind.

Omelette 1 (Thursday omelette)

Step 1: Cut potatoes and fry them with oil

Step 2: Cut onions and fry them with oil too (I used three onions)

Step 3: when the onions and the potatoes are about equal time from being cooked, put the onions in the same frying pan as the potatoes

Step 4: whisk eggs in a cup. Pour the eggs (6 were used here) into the frying pan and distribute evenly around the pan to bind the ingredients together

End product, viola!

Omelette 2 (Sunday omelette)

The main difference between this one and the first one was the inclusion of cheese, which worked with the eggs to bind the onions and the potatoes together. I also included parsley (which Rebecca told me added to the flavour of omelettes), and, because I am absolutely obsessed with onions, I use red onions as well as white ones.

Step 1: Cut potatoes and fry them with oil. I cut these pieces much smaller than Thursday's, so that they'd cook faster

Step 2: cut red and white onions into small pieces

Step 3: (slightly different because I could only find one frying pan, ha). I had fried the onions for about 15 minutes in this frying pan before I put the onions in with them to cook. Parsley was also added (and a cheeky bit of salt)

Step 4: whisk eggs and pour them into the frying pan to bind all the ingredients together. Add cheese to omelette after eggs have begun to set. We used more ingredients this time, so used 9 eggs for the omelette.

I didn't take a final photo because it wasn't very aesthetically pleasing, haha. But me and Tom polished off everything that was in the photo above in one sitting, so who cares how it looked? XD

Overall, had a really fun time making these two omelettes. When Tom comes back from Uni in a few weeks, I reckon I'll chop a few pieces of salami and embed them into the omelette. Maybe add tomato too. I could go on and on and on. Who knew, cooking can be enjoyable?!

A pretty sick pizza.

The staple of this was just a margarita pizza, with greens and sweet-and-sour chicken bought separately and applied on. Tasted a dream, especially dipped in salsa sauce!

Christmas Dinner.

This year, me and the brother were put on Christmas roast-cooking duty. These were the fruits of our labour:

We sprinkled a bit of cheese on our veg, just 4dabanta.



We marinated the turkey in lots of peri peri sauce.



Delicious food, all ready to be eaten!~~~

Burnt nachos making.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emsy tries her hand at cooking a full English breakfast.

I had some help from Theo (read: he cooked pretty much everything other than the hash browns, tomatos, sausages and baked beans, which I was in charge of. And I ruined the sausages).

The cooking process:

 

 

The sausages were a rather embarrassing phail. Basically, I put them in the grill thinking they were cooking as the grill was warm, but that was just heat from the oven cooking the hash browns. So by the time I worked it out, the sausages were late, and looking distinctly unappetising. Anyway, here they are:

 

 

And the finished product:

Contents: 3 slices of bacon, garlicy mushrooms, fried egg, three fried tomatos, baked beans, three hash browns.

 

And it was absolutely delicious! We'll see what mistakes I make in the kitchen next weekend...

 

 

 

Carnitas pork burritos.

The veggies:

The pork (slow cooked in the oven for about 4 hours):

The other ingredients:

The finished product: