food, reviews and of course coffee
When is a waffle not a waffle? When it’s a caramel waffle.
Most coffee places seems to sell these caramel wafers and now and again I have been known to order one alongside my coffee.
They are crunchy, chewy and rather sweet, however they complement the coffee quite nicely if you fancy something sweet.
However they are not in my opinion real waffles, they have a waffle texture to look at, but are more wafer than waffle.
You don’t really have starters at Wagamama there are side dishes that arrive when they are ready. Out with friends we ordered a few alongside our main noodle dishes.
These ribs in a spicy pan-asian barbeque sauce were on the specials menu.
They weren’t freshly cooked, they had been pre-cooked and then reheated to demand when ordered. I understand why restaurants do this, it saves time, but wonder if they realise the impact this has on the quality of the food. A similar technique is often used with chicken wings, there is a big difference between chicken wings which have just been cooked and those that are already cooked and are just reheated. I wonder if there are techniques out there that allow for cooking from fresh quickly so negating the reheating technique.
Or…. if it does take time to cook and prepare, is there a way of knowing that your order is going to take longer to get to the table and as a result you’ll wait. I know restaurants will want to get people in and out quickly, I personally wouldn’t have a problem sitting in the bar, ordering in the bar and thirty minutes later I get my table and my freshly cooked food. I suspect though I can do that already, but need to pay a lot more money for the food than you do at places like Wagamama.
Back to the ribs, as a result of the reheating the texture of the meat on the ribs was soft, but you wouldn’t call it tender though. The sauce was nice, not too sticky sweet and the spiced just how I like them.
Over the years I have tried to cook potato rösti and have generally failed miserably. Either the rösti was too soggy and grey, or was burnt on the outside and raw in the middle. Sometimes the whole thing just fell apart as I tried to turn them, or had stuck to the bottom of the pan. I had tried various preparation processes, cooking techniques with little success. In the end I use to buy prepared rösti from Waitrose, though very nice I took as a sign of failure.
However I think I have managed to get it right this time.
I took some Maris Piper potatoes and I think that this was key, getting the ingredients right. I have found Maris Piper a really good potato for roast potatoes and thought that as a result it might work well for rösti.
I peeled the potatoes and then grated the potato into a bowl. I gave the grated potato a squeeze to remove some of the moisture. I then added some grated cheddar cheese. Now according to Wikipedia, true rösti is just plain potatoe, however some regional recipes do use cheese so I wasn’t that concerned.
I then using a flat frying pan added some sunflower oil and placed a handful of the raw ingredients onto the pan. I then pushed and shaped the pile into a round shape not too thick. When I was sure the bottom was cooked and from the edges looked nice and brown, this was the moment of truth, would they stick or turn?
It was a huge sense of relief as I turned the rösti over, it remained in one piece. After finishing that one off, I cooked some more and then placed them in the oven to finish them off and keep them warm.
The next test, was the taste test. I was so pleased with myself, the taste was perfect, I think the cheese added flavour and a hint of saltiness, whilst the texture was just right.
The next big test will be, can I repeat the process to cook rösti to the same standard, that remains to be seen….
It’s not even Christmas, let alone Easter, and there are chocolate eggs already on sale in my local shops!
These are not Creme Eggs, they are Screme Eggs!!!
Obviously produced and on sale for Halloween I am not sure though what eggs have to do with Halloween. Chocolate pumpkins I could understand, but green eggs…
Trying to expand their market beyond Easter methinks… what next Christmas Eggs?
Ten Chocolate Mini Rolls cost £2.00, whilst six cost 97p. So if I buy two packs of six I get twelve for £1.94 which means for 6p less I get two more chocolate rolls.
Notice it is not a special offer, this is the “normal” price.
Another amazing bargain from the supermarkets, this time Tesco.
Recently in London I went out for a meal at Ciao Bella in Bloomsbury.
It was rather a crowded noisy typical Italian restaurant that you can find in London and in other cities across the UK. You are when choosing what to eat faced with a typically large varied menu covering a range of Italian cuisine including pizza and pasta.
From personal experience in northern Italy these kinds of restaurants don’t seem to actually exist in Italy. In Italy there are small family run places have smaller menus, fresh food, ever changing and delicious food.
I have been put off going to Italian restaurants in the UK in the main as I have had a couple of bad experiences. I was once at another Italian restaurant in London and I asked for Spaghetti alle Vongole, and what I got was a sauce that was from a jar!
So I glanced over the menu with a little trepidation, knowing that though it might sound nice on the menu, it may not actually be nice. In the end I went with one of my usual choices, the calamari fritti. Regular readers of the blog will know that I am a real fan of squid and it’s almost a benchmark for me on how good a restaurant is. Squid is a relatively simple dish to cook and if a place can’t cook squid properly than what hope is there for any other dish from the place.
It was a good sized portion and despite the dusting of paprika was very nice. It wasn’t rubbery and tasted good. It wasn’t perfect, but I have had a lot worse before.
Despite the fact that it shouldn’t be the case I am still surprised by how varied coffee can be from different branches of the same chain. In some ways that could be argued to be a good thing, as coffee is an art and maybe shouldn’t be the same everywhere. However though I do expect a level of difference between the coffees made by different baristas, the differences between the coffees should be marginal. However as I said often I find a flat white in one branch is totally different to one from another. Even the simple Americano can be made badly.
What I would say though is my experience of Caffé Nero has been unusually consistent across the different branches I have been to in various cities. It’s also great coffee as well as consistent.
You don’t really have starters at Wagamama there are side dishes that arrive when they are ready. Out with friends we ordered a few alongside our main dishes.
Though generally I enjoy most items I have eaten at Wagamama I was less impressed with the deep-fried duck dumplings served with a spicy cherry hoi sin sauce.
Not that they were bad, more for me the dumplings in themselves lacked flavour and the hoi sin sauce was very overpowering. The texture was good and they were crunchy.
Having to stay overnight in London for a meeting I needed somewhere to eat and as I had enjoyed my last meal at Wagamama decided to go to the branch in Covent Garden.
I did consider having a ramen, but thinking that I always go with ramen so time to go with something different I thought. I looked carefully over the menu and in the end I went with the Teriyaki Chicken Donburi.
Grilled juicy chicken glazed with orange teriyaki sauce, sticky white rice with thin sliced carrots, pea shoots, spring onions and sesame seeds and a side of spicy kimchee.
I really did enjoy the dish, the combination of chicken, sticky sauce and rice combined with the freshness of the carrot and pea shoots worked well. The sauce has sweetness and sourness and though I expected strong orange overtones, but there weren’t any.
In case you were wondering I decided to give the kimchee a miss…
