Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

Suf and turf with an extra large king prawn.

This is more a record for myself than anyone else. But it does come with pictures. Start with a dorade stuffed with butter and lemon, you know, for dressing.

Get some giant king prawns.

Compare them to the size of your head.

Fill a pan with water, then add an arbitrary amount of salt to it and bring it to boil. Throw your giant king prawns in and bring it back to boil, then turn it down and let it simmer for around eight minutes.

Once cooked, run them under cold water to stop the cooking process.

Serve.

In honour of Yorkshire Day, I made some puddings. It was the first time I’ve tried it, but obviously being from Yorkshire, I’m born with a genetically inherited ability to make them.

In honour of having eaten this turbot, I’m add a new “food” category to my blog.

Last weekend, I had the parents over for dinner, which seemed a good excuse to do something other than meat and wedges, thrown in the oven for 20 minutes and then consumed. So we headed down to the market to pick up some fresh fish.

Langoustines, which are used in scampi, were dead easy to prepare. All I did was drop them in a pan of boiling water and leave them for four or five minutes until the flesh turned from a translucent colour to an opaque white.

We got a whole red snapper, that we had cleaned when we bought it (which means removing all the guts) and then rinsed it when we got home. I then stuffed it full of ginger cut up into small cubes, several slices of lime, dill and a block of butter.

We also got a whole trevally jack, which was probably the nicest one of the two, again had it cleaned, and then stuff it with lemon slices, parsley and another slab of butter. I then cut a few slits in the sides, rubbed a little salt in the wounds and wrapped them both in tin foil and stuck them in the oven for about thirty minutes. Seemed to work quite well.

It’s not often that I get kicked out of a restaurant.

But when you’re taking advantage of the early bird special and you then proceed to sit there for several hours, eventually they start moaning about having other bookings. You could blame me for turning up 7 minutes late, but I could tell from the waiter’s eyes that they were really saying “your mother is getting a little too lairy after that half a bottle of wine, sir.”

We were out celebrating my dad’s birthday and enjoyed a night of great conversation about how you won’t be around forever, so it’s important to spend your life’s savings before you die, while having picked the restaurant specifically because it represented a good compromise between great food and not having to pay Blackhouse prices.

I was very interested to try the pigeon available on the starters menu, but was somewhat worried I wouldn’t like it. Therefore, I did the only sensible thing to do – I made Elina get the pigeon and tried some of hers. Turns out, a pigeon is pretty delicious.

Of course, normally in these situations you would offer to pay, but having recently left my job, and having had our conversation earlier about making the most of your savings before your time is up, I thought it only fair to let me dad pick up the bill.

You can tell Sous le Nez is an authenticate French restaurant because they say everything in perfect English, but then add the word “monsieur” onto the end. So it’s a great to enjoy French food, particularly as if you actually go to France, you just get Greek food.

Last weekend, I joined my parents for dinner at Escobar, which bills itself as “Mexian restaurant and live music venue at the heart of Leeds.”

Despite only three or four of their twenty tables being occupied when I turned up, they seemed somewhat startled that I had turned up, but a quick double check against my booking seemed to pacify the situation. “We’re short staffed tonight” the waiter explained.

The menu was reasonable, it offered a good selection of fajita and fajita style products, though not much else. I decided to go for a burrito, which was enjoyable and more than I could eat (you should now have playing in your head the phrase “wow, this burrito is delicious, but it is filling.” 😉 ).

Not a bad place to eat, but I’m not in any hurry to go back.

With everything that you need to cook still packed away in boxes, myself and Elina headed up to AM Kitchen & Bar to grab some dinner. It’s one of the few restaurants in Leeds I hadn’t eaten at yet, so I was looking forward to trying it.

It’s tastefully decorated with what I presume is Indian style furniture (I haven’t been to India, so I can only guess), though the window displays were all of various different vodkas. Perhaps there is something I’m missing, but I’m not quite sure what the connection was there.

The food itself was great, probably slightly more authentic than Cafe Guru and equally as good. I really enjoyed my chicken dopiaza, though I was a little disappointed with Elina’s lamb pasanda. They also had excellent chocolate mints, so I might just order a bowl of those next time.

Last weekend I headed over to Thai Edge for lunch with Si and Sarann. On Sundays they do a buffet, so you’re forced to have that – but being a buffet they have everything, so it’s not particularly restrictive.

It was good food and a nice selection. Though I think having spent so many years going to Spice Quarter and Red Hot World Buffet, I think my view of what the average buffet has to offer is in all other circumstances going to leave me disappointed.

They did have a chocolate foundation though there seemed to be an emphasis on taking fruit and dipping it in the chocolate – I just put my bowl under the foundation as that seemed like the only effective way to get a sufficient quantity to feed my habit. It was a bit disappointing though, as the chocolate itself tasted of the cooking variety.

All in all, it was OK, but I think I would prefer to go when they are serving their regular menu.

Recently, I headed over to the West Yorkshire Playhouse, where my sister currently works, to have dinner with my parents and one of my grandmothers.

They have a restaurant in there, though they don’t offer table service, it’s more of a cafe slash restaurant, and to be fair to them, that is what they sell it as. The food was, however, rather disappointing. It was well cooked but it wasn’t very warm, probably a result of the excessively long wait in line to be served.

I could have understood this slightly more if they were busy, but with accelerated dining experience being my area it was obvious what they were doing wrong and how with a few simple changes they could quickly clear such problems up.