Thai Pink Eggs!
Well, I’ve always said I’ll try anything once and I do like a bit of cooking so how could I resist buying these Pink eggs when I saw them on sale in a supermarket in Thailand.
The pack simply says that they’re preserved eggs but gives no indication as to how. There’s also nothing mentioned about if any preparation is required so off to the Internet I went.
It turns out they’re a variation of Chinese Century Eggs and are prepared over a number of weeks by being sealed in a mix of clay, ash, salt and quicklime. The pics on that page also made me even more nervous about trying them…they may be Pink on the outside but they’re Black once opened!
It turns out my fears were groundless. The preservation process turns the white of the egg into a very dark brown or black and somewhat translucent set jelly that’s actually pretty flavourless. The yolk however is another matter. The colour is an opaque very dark green to black with a somewhat lighter colour on the edges and the texture appears to be that of oil paint.
The taste of the Yolk is slightly salty, rich, creamy and intensely eggy. Really very tasty indeed!
The one thing missing from the ones I had, and I can’t say I was disappointed by this omission, was the smell. Perhaps it’s the more modern preservation process or some variation in these Thai Pink versions of the Century Egg but the commonly described smell of sulphur/ammonia was absent.
All in all I think these will make a nice change for the office from bringing biscuits back 🙂
There’s no such things as a free lunch…
I’ve just got home from the new Cambridge Brew House after a free lunch I won this morning on Twitter…they aren’t actually open until Feb 6th but today they wanted a few people in to act as a pre opening dry run, just to check everything is going OK, and from what I saw the answer is an emphatic yes.
The building has gone through several refers over the past few years and this incarnation is a shabby chic distressed mix ‘n’ match Grandmas house style. Don’t let my poor description put you off though, I think it works really well together, from the old fashioned bone handled style knives to the 50s style lampshades to the desserts served in patterned saucers.
Of the 4 of use who went 3 were vegetarian (at least temporarily in one case). Two went for the Sunday Nut Roast and the third for the stuffed roast Butternut Squash and I had the Sea Bream (or was it sea bass, my memory isn’t what it was after a couple of pints). Everyone agreed the food was very nice indeed with the only complaint, if you can call it that, being that with the roast squash there was perhaps too much food!
The beer on tap was worth of some of the other Cambridge real ale pubs, and whilst its not ready yet they will be brewing some of their own beer on site, hopefully as soon as March. One of the beers was a bit cold and did have something of a haze to it and they admitted that they’re still getting this right cellar wise but from the talk we had with them after dinner I have no doubt this minor issue will be rectified quickly.
The English Tapas menu that I was somewhat derisive about earlier in the week on Twitter (Pork Scratchings & chips maybe) looks really rather nice, the highlight of which may turn out to be the braised pigs cheeks…I suspect we’ll find out next Sunday when its fully open to watch the England vs Ireland 6 Nations rugby.
This free lunch was most enjoyable and I look forward to going back for more, even if I have to pay for it next time 🙂
Me and Keith . . .
Food again . . . well, yes.
This morning on the train I read a tweet from someone saying that Patrick Swayse had died . . . very sad and all but my only connection to him is a couple of, let’s be honest, somewhat crappy movies that I like (Road House and Point Break). About 2 hours later, and via another tweet, I discovered that Keith Floyd had also passed away and that one hit me a bit harder.
After a little introspection I think the reason is that the way I cook and generally muck about with food was clearly influenced by him. After a quick shuffle over to his page on Wikipedia I discovered that his first TV show, Floyd on Fish, was broadcast in 1984 and on my birthday as well. That would have made me 11 and I vividly remember watching it.
Floyd cooking on TV seemed to be a world of chaos. From ordering a handheld camera wielded by a poor bloke who Keith always thought was pointing it in the wrong direction, “not at me, at the food!”, to occasional spills, the odd missing ingredient, the general feeling that not a whole lot of planning had gone into the actual making of the dish and, of course, a generous glug of wine.
Throughout all this I always got the impression that the man really knew what he was doing. Ingredients weren’t just being thrown in for the sake of it, he knew tastes, he knew his palette and he knew that right now what this dish needed was a little touch of this . . . what I got from his programs, apart from a few laughs (and if I remember rightly some damn fine scenery) was that you didn’t have to follow a recipe like a maths formula, just go with it, create and enjoy
For one or two other view on the late great Keith Floyd you should head over to The Grauniad and check out what a few professionals think.
Keith Floyd, RIP
KFC’ish . . .
Here’s how it starts.
theWife: What do you fancy for dinner?
me: (shrug) dunno, what do you fancy?
theWife: don’t know . . . something chickeny, with lots of vegetables!.
And with that my brain starts ticking, my taste-buds start tingling and I know we’re in trouble. Read more
Food, glorious food . . .
I would say it’s that time of the year again but it isn’t . . . the fact is I’m on a diet. again. This isn’t the first diet I’ve been on and it almost certainly won’t be the last but what makes this one different from the others is that this time i’m keeping it in my pocket, it’s online, readily available and there’s no getting away from it.
I should probably back up a bit at this point and enlighten you all with some background facts. I’m 35 years old. I weigh, or at least at the start of this weighed, 19st 1lb and I have arthritis. The reason I mention the arthritis isn’t some cheap attempt to garner sympathy be simply a way to explain why I can’t just go and run the weight off like a lot of other people might. Read more
Pick A Pomegranate
I’d never thought of how Pomegranate’s grow until I read this post … dunno why but it seems weird! Someone will be telling me that spaghetti grows on trees next!
Blair’s 2AM Reserve
Holy crap this stuff sounds nuts … “1tsp. of Blair’s 2AM reserve mixed with 1 gallon of sauce will produce extreme heat”, wow!
I’d be tempted to get some and chick some into a colleagues salad to see what happens but I’m afraid it might actually kill them!
Top 10 Incredible Food Facts
More interesting foody facts (actually the first lot from last year) mentioning amongst other things that “The FDA allows an average of 30 or more insect fragments and one or more rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter” … eewwwwwwwwww!
Another 10 Fascinating Food Facts
Another 10 Fascinating Food Facts:
Onions taste the same as Apples, Bananas have large hard seeds, Ketchup was originally a fish sauce and 7-up used to contain Lithium – the drug commonly prescribed now to sufferers of bi-polar disorder.
If you go to pub quiz’s this page could just win for you one of these weeks 🙂
mmmmmm, Thai Green Curry
Thai Green Curry, rice and Spicy Prawn Crackers
After a trip off to Al Amin for supplies, dinner tonight consisted of a rather warm Thai Green Curry, rice and freshly cooked Prawn Crackers.
I’ve cooked the curry many times before and they really are pretty easy to knock together, but I haven’t cooked prawn crackers for years. They’re good fun really. Just heat up a pan of oil, drop them in and fish them back out 10 seconds later. Chuck em into smoe sweet chilli dipping sauce and munch away all night 🙂
We actually cooked far far too many so we’ve stored them ready for munchies later . . . and later might just be tomorrow. While at the store I also picked up a Papaya so that we can chuck together a Papaya salad for lunch tomorrow . . . mmmmmmmm
