Vegetarian Night

After the last successful ‘Nancy Boy’ dinner on my birthday, me and Emma decided to make another one, but with total vegetarian food, and yes, we do like challenge sometimes.

Shamefully, I actually don’t have much experience on veggie cooking. My culinary skill on this particular category is limited to veggie stir-fry and using meat substitute to make most of meat dishes into vegetarian. It has been some difficulties for two devoted carnivores to set up a quality vegetarian menu, but we got our starter and desserts sorted quite easily. I guess most of starter and desserts are vegetarian, it was not too hard to pick a good one. The hard bit was the main course, it has to be something more substantial, more powerful on visual impact and it should fill you up, so you feel satisfied. However, for an exquisite dinner, veggie lasagne, veggie cannelloni, veggie chill con carne, curry or stir-fry is not going to be good enough. Finally, we decided to make a pudding like steak and kidney pudding, but instead of those ‘bloody’ fillings, heart warming Portobello mushroom and chestnut are the ones to give you a winter hug.

So, what exactly is the menu? Brace yourselves, here we come.

Cold Starter
Heart of Romaine with apple, walnut and celery with camembert dressing

Warm Starter
Broccoli Cheese Souffle

Sorbet
Pear Sorbet

Main
Chestnut and mushroom pudding with seasonal vegetable and red wine gravy

Desserts
Passion fruit tart with cardamom white chocolate mascarpone ice-cream

Some of the recipe will be posted on here soon. Keep checking!!

Starter : Beetroot Cured Salmon with Horseradish Sour Cream

Hi everyone, Christmas is getting close, where are you going to have your favourite Chirstmas Dinner? Posh Restaurant? Friend's House Party? for me, a wholesome home-made Chirstmas Dinner is unbeatable. The following dish that I have served on my birthday dinner as a starter also fit well in Christmas. The dark red beetroot taints the edge of salmon slice in red and leaves the middle orange pink. Horseradish gives it an extra dimension on the fish, you definietly can 'Taste the Difference'. With horseradish cream and Irish soda bread, this dish is the perfect starter for a lot more to come.

For the Salmon:

2 skin-on salmon fillets (about 1.3kg/3lb in total)

200g caster sugar

140g sea salt flakes

85g grated horseradish from a jar

3 medium raw beetroot (about 250g/9oz), coarsely grated (no need to peel)

1 bunch dill , chopped

For the Sour Cream:

200ml tub sour cream

juice 1 lemon

2 tbsp grated horseradish from the jar

handful dill fronds, roughly chopped

Soda Bread (I chose Paul Rankin’s) for serving

1. Lay the salmon fillets, skin side down, on a board and brush your hand along it. If you feel any little pin bones pinch them out with your fingers or tweezers. In a bowl, mix all of the other ingredients for the salmon together to make the cure.

2. Stretch two large sheets of cling film over a work surface and spoon over some of the cure. Lay one of the fillets, skin side down, on the cure, then pack over most of the cure, and sandwich with the remaining fillet, skin side up. Top with the last of the cure and wrap both fillets together tightly with lots of cling film. Place in a container with sides, like a large roasting tray, put a smaller tray on top and weigh it down with a couple of tins. Leave in the fridge for at least three days or up to a week. Don't be alarmed by the amount of liquid that leaks out, this is normal. Once a day, pour away the liquid, turn the salmon and re-apply the weights.

3. To serve, unwrap the salmon from the cling film and brush off the marinade. Slice the salmon into thin slivers. Make the dressing by mixing all the ingredients together with some salt and pepper, and pour them into small ramekins, one for each guest. Serve each guest with a few slices of salmon, few slices of soda bread and the dressing at the side. Once made the salmon will sit happily in the fridge for up to a week and can be used just like smoked salmon.

Family Do: Lunch at Mr. Thomas's

English Chop House, the first thing came into my head was Aberdeen Angus Steak House which is Scottish in fact. I apologise for my lack of chop house experience. In my mind, I couldn’t get around the idea of steak pie and grilled steak, such simple, no gimmick, somehow uninteresting dishes, could be famous nationally and internationally, and plus, I don’t need to travel tens or hundreds of miles into those remote villages and their local gastro pubs, a gastro pub in town, can’t be that authentic. Fortunately for me, I proved myself wrong on the day.

The day wasn’t as good as we wanted it to be, so my Adventure in Clitheroe has to postpone. I was so looking forward to the outing with my surrogate family. My interests never get far away from food and drink, going to Clitheroe is not only for landscape, castle, or herons. I expected visiting local restaurants and bars, having some traditional pub food would be my high-light of the day. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t on our side, we have to think of something else for this family do

After some serious discussion, Mr Thomas’s Chop House is the place, Za decided, I have no idea what is this restaurant like. I only have this mental image of a posh Wetherspoons, scally free, playing cosy music in the background, not long before I had this Victorian building in front of me. Entering it I found myself in a smallish English pub as I went blind at the same time because of condensation. It was peak lunch hour on Saturday, the queue was surprisingly not bad. We have waited for 10 minutes to get a table which I considered lucky. At the point stepping in the restaurant part, the mystery of famous English Chop house finally unfolded. My inner tourist-self came out with my brick-like camera, started observing for potential snap materials. Floral lights hanging down from the ceiling, the incandescent lighting on beige tiles tainted the whole room into a canteen like dinning hall, without the shouting from the dinner lady and the chance of beaten up by a bully over a pudding. The tiling of the restaurant, from floor to ceiling are original, you can feel the bareness but also layers of characteristics. Most of diners were family and couples, they all seemed having a great time.

I was amused by the choice in the menu, traditional fish and chips, steak and kidney pudding to hash and flame grilled steak. I stuck with my favourite, steak and kidney pudding, even the smell of hash that the lady sat next to us was enjoying, made me have a second thought. The pudding came with peas, chips and gravy. I wouldn’t expect less on the chips from a famous chop house, and they didn’t disappoint me. The gravy was a real meaty one instead of those brown glue with bits of disintegrated onion. They were very good but not enough to blow me away though. The peas were something I want to know more. Crunchy, and somehow have this meaty and smoky flavour. I guess it would be fresh peas roasted with bacon or lardoons, it was divine. Last but not least, is the huge pudding, perfectly cooked. Breaking into the just dried outside, steamy, fluffy, doughy goodness were flowing out, not only the juice, but chucks and chunks of steak and lamb kidney. The pudding soaked up all the juice, leaves enough for lingering between the meats, not too much to transform itself into a doughy mess. While I was having my orgasm with my gastroporn, Em wasn’t impressed by her fish and chips. She insisted me to give a second opinion, and it wasn’t bad. However, for 13 quid, I do expect more than it was. The fish wasn’t seasoned well, batter was ok, but on the thick side and then it dripped out oil in my mouth. It might be because of Em sent the first one back to kitchen, because the fish was overcooked, they rushed out a new one without enough time to drain the grease. Other than that, everyone was happy about their main course.

With all the girls around me, pudding was a compulsory. Banoffee Sundae did catch my eyes, but Za and Bec had put their mark on it, as I kindly chose lemon posset instead. Em ordered a sticky toffee pudding, so we can share a bit of everything. I rest my case for lemon posset, it was something to die for. The texture and flavour just perfect, it melted at the second you put it in your mouth and burst out citrus tang, gorgeous! Sticky toffee pudding was great too, very spongy, strong treacle flavour with a runny buttery toffee sauce, it was just the thing for a cold rainy day. I was glad I haven’t ordered the Banoffee Sundae, dry stale toffee sponge cubes at the bottom, seemed like trimming from the toffee pudding but dried. Chucks of banana, with condensed milk like fresh out from the tin without caramelised, just enough to coat them, leave the sponge cubes dry and crumbly. Strongly not recommended.

Price: Lunch £30 per head (including main course and desserts, 3 bottle of house wine shared between 5 people and 10% service charge)

Mr. Thomas’s Chop House
Victorian Bar, Restaurant and Coffee Shop
52 Cross Street
Tel: 0161 832 2245
http://www.tomschophouse.com/

My Baby Evan

It was great to see my son again, this weekend. I have not seen him for a good few months. I know I am not a perfect dad material, actually I am, but I cannot afford him at the moment. He has two sweet mums to look after him, I have nothing to worried about.

Some of you might ask, what is this all about? A puff, has a son? No, Evan was not a mistake, he was planned, and we all love him very much. Well, I start to be a sperm donor about 2 years ago. I always want a child when I am not too old. It might be easy for you, but not for me. I knew Z was on this website that is called http://www.free-sperm-donations.com/ , he told me I can set up a profile and there will be couples to contact me, straight or gay, so I did. About a month after, T and L contacted me. They are Chinese (L) and German (T) lesbian couple, T was the one who want to carry the baby, so they will have a Chinese and German half cast baby and look-a-like them.

Anyway, I went to Belfast to see them all with Z. We arrived at early evening on Saturday. T picked us up at the airport. The day was very nice and dry, bright warm sunshine, you wouldn’t think that was the end of summer. Evan was in the car looking at me suspiciously. Last time he met me was half a year ago, he was only 2 months old. He probably didn’t remember me at all. Instead of greeting me, the second I got in the car and said hi to Evan, he started crying, no matter what I did, he just kept crying. It was very embarrassing to be honest, people around might think it was child abuse.

Finally we arrived at T & L’s place. Once Evan back to his throne, had his food, he was full of beans again. For a 7-month old baby, he can walk with help from us. In no time, he will walk around the place and wreck it.

We stayed in and caught up on things. I had 2 and a half bottle of wine, very insensible. The next morning I woke up with hanging headache, anything I drank from then I threw up straight away. It was the worst hang over ever. After an hour struggling in bed, Zoran gave me some painkillers and then emotional blackmail me that they were going to this food festival in the park. I have to say the blackmail worked beautifully. I suddenly had this momentum to get myself out the bed, went to the shower and got out the house.

It was a beautiful day, even tho I was still half pissed, I managed to have some food and had a good time with Evan and all. I was very nice to have an outing with the girls, my son and Zoran and we get on very well. I m sure Little Evan had a good time too, he giggle all the time when we were in the park. I can see he really wants to walk on his own, he never stop turning here and there when I was holding him.

After that, it was about time to go to the airport. I would love to stay a bit longer. Before we went, I gave T & L my calligraphy of Evan’s name in Chinese. They were delighted. I also leave a life casting kit at them, so next time, we can cast Evan’s baby foot and hand, that will be good fun.