Posts Tagged ‘chinese food’

We’ve really enjoyed Ken Hom’s cookbook. We’ve been working our way through the 60-odd recipes we thought looked tasty over the past three or fours months and can now conclusively say that it is a winner.

All of the recipes have been easy to follow. A lot of them start the same way: by chopping up some meat and marinating it in a mixture of sesame oil, rice wine, soy sauce and corn flour. Then typically stir-fried with a variety of other ingredients.

If you’re looking for authentic Chinese food, this isn’t the book for you. The recipes are Westernised, which makes them both easy to cook and very tasty.

Sweet and sour pork.

Chicken and sweetcorn soup. It should have been chicken and spinach soup, but I cooked all of the spinach the day before and had to rely on stereotypes to fill in the blank.

Chicken with sesame seeds.

Braised fish.

I’m sad to report that the last remaining restaurant of Leeds’s Chinatown has closed down.

Not that it was ever that big: a total of three restaurants. Hometown, Tong Palace and Ho’s. Plus the international supermarket remains, and Crown Buffet and Oriental City are nearby (though Mulan has also closed).

Luckily, the area booms with great food. Thai A Roy Dee, Zaap Thai and Bar Soba all provide Asian cuisine. But given Hometown and Ho’s were such enjoyable restaurants to visit, it is a shame that the street is now bereft of Chinese restaurants.

Sadly, restaurants live or die for a variety of reasons that you may not expect. Which is why I wrote a book about it.

While dining at Home Town Chinese Restaurant, we were going to order two soups, but the waiter recommended one would be enough. No wonder – I don’t think I could have finished that as a main course!

The panorama function on my phone does not produce flattering results.

We headed out from Amsterdam and down the motorway as far as Belgium before taking off to smaller roads to drive through one of the national parks. There was of course a quick stop off to buy some Belgian chocolate too!

Heading through southern Beligum and into Luxembourg was a fantastic drive as we headed up into the hills and the rolling countryside opened up.

We eventually made it to Luxembourg city shortly before talk and checked into the Mecure hotel which was of excellent standard – once of the nicest we stayed in despite it only being £50 per night for a twin room! As far as we could tell everyone comes to Luxembourg in business during the week and the weekends are just dead.

We headed for a wander round to take some photos of scary trees once we checked in and eventually found ourselves eating at a rather upmarket Chinese restaurant which produced some reasonably nice food.

Breakfast at the hotel was very nice too – there is just something awesome about eating chicken for breakfast. And with hindsight the €5 we paid for a pint of beer the night before was actually pretty reasonable given what we would later pay.

I was rather suprised when I got an email on Monday from Gijsbert inviting me to his wedding – on Friday! Apparently he and his girlfriend Weili, who have been living together for a while now anyway had decided to marry and wanted to do it soon so decided to keep it fairly small.

The ceremony took place at the Town Hall which is quite a nice venue even if they do struggle to find an ambient temperature between rooms but all the staff were helpful and professional so it made for a nice ceremony.

Afterwards we headed back to Gijsbert’s appartment for a quick stop before heading out to dinner at Oriental City, an excellent though hidden away Chinese restaurant in town. I managed to eat my way through quite a large array of dishes, they just seemed to have a line of people bringing more food to the table, not that any of us were complaining, the duck and the still intact sea bass being particular highlights.