Red Spinach Pancakes

I'm home alone for a little while as my husband has left on his summer holiday. He is going to the UK for a wedding and to see his friends and family. I, meanwhile, am here in Hong Kong, working again. The beginning of the school year is busy, and I am spending late nights at work. I don't have much time for making meals. And now that Anthony is gone I don't feel as much motivation, either! Producing a big meal seems a waste. Instead I'm eating simple things such as these vegetable pancakes.

With the hubby away, I also like to try out new vegetables. Check out this vibrant red spinach.

whole grain onion flatbread

Possibly the easiest flatbread ever, and also 100% whole grain. Just whisk together, let it rest while the oven warms up, then pop it in. Simple.

Now, equally easy: describing something as 100% whole grain when it is, in fact, all whole grain. Or saying that a colleague gave 100% effort when they did actually do so. Why do some people say that they gave 110% effort?

summer squash and carrot pancakes

I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating by Barbara Kingsolver for the Kitchen Reader book club later this month. I won't spoil the whole book, but, in one sentence, the book is about a family that decided to eat only locally grown and produced food for a year. It's fascinating, and at the end of the month you can expect a full review.

Locally grown food is a difficult idea for me at the moment since Hong Kong is a city that doesn't produce (much?) of its own food. Everything is from elsewhere. My milk frustration is one example of trying to find a local solution that works for me. (*Milk update below.) With vegetables I have been turning the local challenge into more of a fun game. There are plenty of local vegetables, though they are not all vegetables with which I am familiar. When I shop at the "wet market" that is a short bus ride away, there are rows of stall holders all selling mounds of green things, not all of which I recognise. I have taken to buying several veggies I recognise and then picking a few I don't. This has been a very successful strategy; with the help of The Visual Food Lover's Guide and The Vegetable Bible I usually manage to identify them in English.

Food Matters by Mark Bittman & Sweet Potato Spread

This month the Kitchen Reader book club has been reading Mark Bittman's treatise on "sane eating". I have used Bittman's recipes and ideas in the past because I love his simple style. In recent years he has become more interested in health and the environment and it has really impacted what and how he cooks. I've been inspired, so I was thrilled to read his book, Food Matters. Thanks to Elizabeth of Spike Bakes for choosing it.

He writes compellingly about the kinds of food that we can enjoy that also minimise environmental damage, expense to our health, and reduce costs for us. The first half of the book contains the evidence he provides for each of these three areas; it's hard hitting.

roast duck dinner

Sonya, you will be proud! I roasted my first duck. Sonya has been telling me for years that it is easy to roast a whole bird, and over the last few months I have done quite a few chickens. And my first duck was a success. I used some advice from How to Cook Everything and pricked the skin all over before I put it in and every 15 minutes thereafter. I made some roast potatoes and broccoli on the side--Ant was a very happy man. Meat, potatoes, veg, and lots of gravy is his idea of heaven.


After the roasting, I poured off the duck fat. I am told (by Jamie Oliver, and my friend Geary!) that duck fat makes the best roast potatoes. So I have this little jar to use for our next roast dinner. Bittman said that I needed to pour off the fat but not the juices--I have no idea if I did this correctly! I just poured in everything in the pan. I suppose that later the fat and juices will separate more convincingly and I'll know if I managed it.

fresh pineapple

My fruit and veg box brings me seven wonderful veggies and three fruits each week. They are all organic and most are also local to the Riverford farm that supplies the boxes. Occasionally there are items from further afield (but they are never air freighted, which I really appreciate). This lovely pineapple arrived recently.

Cutting a pineapple is not something I have done before; have you? But it was not hard to do (and I did see a tutorial in How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman while I was thinking about what to do with my pineapple). First cut off the top.


Then cut into quarters and for each one, slice the rough skin away. Also remove the woody inner core.



In the end I discovered that the best thing to do with a fresh pineapple is to eat it as is! The sweet, yellow flesh is only ripe for a short time. I cut up an organic apple and threw in a handful of blackberries. A fantastic afternoon snack!

pancake day

Ant and I had a little pancake picnic after dinner today. I used a recipe I have been saving for several weeks from the NY Times blog, Bitten, by Mark Bittman. They were the tastiest pancakes I have ever eaten. A bit fussy, though, with egg whites to be beaten separately and three dirty bowls in the end. But they were so yummy!

We ate them with fresh lemon juice, whipped cream, and maple syrup. So decadent. I told Ant this was my one big treat this week!

courgette muffins

Since we both stayed home from work today, we kept ourselves busy with the internet, books, a movie (Michael Clayton), a bit of TV, some organising, and cooking. I made these zucchini/courgette muffins to eat with tea as we curled up under the duvet on the couch. They were a bit dry and I ate mine with Greek yoghurt.

For supper we had some slow-cooked beef and a coleslaw (recipe from Sarah's gift of How to Cook Everything).

soup for the week ahead

Tonight I did something I have never done before in preparation for the week of work. Perhaps it is the healthy living magazine (Zest) I have been reading. Or perhaps that my mother told me she is totally eating low GI now (what an inspiration!). I prepared a soup tonight to eat over the week and I made the first two days of salad to go with it.

I made Caribbean Sweet Potato Coconut Soup from my new Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special cookbook (page 29 for the one reader who may be interested!). Here I am defrosting 2 cups of stock that I had frozen in cup measures, then popped out into a freezer bag. (Hey--I forgot to tell you that I roasted my first chicken two Saturdays ago and then I made my first stock the next day with the bones. All with the help of Mr Bittman.)


And the soup is made with lots of lovely sweet vegetables and coconut milk and orange juice. I had a small bowl tonight and I have a flask I will use to take it to school this week.

food for my British party

I had such a great time last night celebrating my citizenship with some friends who came over. It was really nice to have my friends mix as well--not something that happens very much. I had some colleagues, some church friends, some new friends, and some of Ant's friends there. I wish I had taken more pictures! I guess I was too busy pulling things out of the oven and topping up (or was it emptying?) the Pimm's pitcher.

Dave was pressed into service when he arrived and he constructed this amazing cheese and pineapple hedgehog. Ant told me that this was a food he always ate in Liverpool when he was young, and my British guests confirmed that they remembered it from their childhoods.


Ant made the cucumber sandwiches and they were snapped up. I managed to get a photo just before they were all devoured. Very British with the crusts removed.


I ordered most of the other food from Sainsbury's: toad-in-the-hole, steak and kidney pies, cocktail sausages, onion bhajis, vegetable spring rolls and samosas, quiches. I did make the puddings, though, chocolate trifle and cream scones. I am so pleased with the scones (from my new Bittman cookbook), which we ate with clotted cream and Grammie's strawberry and raspberry jams. Yummm--it was delicious.

four great places to get food inspiration

There are lots of places on the web from which to get cooking ideas. Here are four of my favourites.

1. The Kitchn
This a big cooking blog with writers in the US, Canada, and (at least one!) in Europe. What I like about The Kitchn is that the posts are very accessible and friendly, with a community discussion feel. They always have nice ideas to share, but also talk about their cooking failures. I have enjoyed reading, for example, about what they tried when too many cucumbers built up in the fridge.

2. Cookthink
This is a searchable recipe database that lets you type in keywords such as ingredients, meal type, cuisine type, or even your mood. The recipes that come up are invariably very good. At the moment, it's still a small-ish database, but all of the handful of recipes I have tried so far have been excellent. Last night i made Seared Cumin Lemon Lamb Chops, which was easy and delicious. There are always suggestions of what recipes would go with the one you are viewing, and also an informative weekly email newsletter that spotlights an interesting ingredient and how to use it.

3. Bitten
I am new to Mark Bittman and his writings in the New York Times Dining and Wine section, but I loved his post about how to make mix-and-match rice salads.

4. Other Bloggers
I read the blogs of other food-lovers, like Clotilde at Chocolate and Zucchini and David on Book the Cook. My friends blog about food on their personal sites, too, like Sonya (her's is a gated blog, so email her [or me] to get added to her readership). I also see some interesting food-related stuff on Facebook, like Carolyn's homemade wholewheat pasta.

Foodies, tell me, are there any great cooking sites online that you like to look to for inspiration?

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