Fish Tacos at las iguanus in Glasgow

Well, this blog could have been about another afternoon tea deal but I am done with it now.  Those online afternoon tea vouchers .... either I have too much high expectation or you just get what you paid for ... 

So last Saturday, five of us went for the afternoon tea. Right after that, Maria and her boyfriend Dale went to see a movie and Emily went for shopping.  My husband and I were not hungry obviously because we had just been to afternoon tea. I thought going somewhere to sit and relax for the rest of the afternoon with a glass of vino would be nice, perhaps with some nibbles. So we went to newly opened las iguanas http://www.iguanas.co.uk ) on West Nile Street in Glasgow to try. 

I loved this place. They have Latin Tapas to share, 3 dishes for £14.40 or 5 dishes for £24.

They also have lunch menu and taco sharing tray.

We went for 3 tapas and chose Gambas (greedy whole prawns, split and cooked in a garlic, lemon and chilli sauce, served with ciabatta), Calamares (whole baby calamari, sliced and coated in crisp crumb cassava with creamy aioli) and Spectacular Fish Taco (crackly battered sustainable white fish caught in soft heat and corn tortillas, topped with a corn and sweet chilli salsa).  We really enjoyed them all and they were what they are described in the menu.

My favourite was the fish tacos. I had been looking for Mexican restaurants in Glasgow that serves fish tacos but I don't think I have ever found anywhere till we came here so I got to try theirs and I really enjoyed this. I could go for anther one right now!

They also have good cocktail menu (http://www.iguanas.co.uk/menus/las-iguanas-glasgow-drinks-menu.pdf).  There are some drinks I would like to try next time I come here. I also read in Tripadvisor that they do very good Churros for dessert so I need to try that too.

Yes, we went for afternoon tea earlier (to my defence, I only had 1/2 of sandwich, 1 scone and 1 mini muffin, I mean literally 'mini' and a cup of tea so it was not much...) but 3 tapas to share between us was just right.  (Maria and Dale had hot dogs at cinema, ha ha ha.)

The restaurant is nice and airy, brightly decorated with lots of tables. Oh, finding toilet was a bit like a maze. You follow the sign and just as you feel you get lost, you believe yourself and keep following till the end of the corridor and you then suddently see there is a stair going up to take you to the toilets.

Anyway, I would love to go back there and have another fish tacos, and some.

That's all forks.

Tamie's Bake-off - for novice cake makers

I have never baked a cake in my entire life until a few months ago ....

It all started when my older daughter Emily was doing a bake-off at her work earlier this year, which got me thinking ... could I try one too???  Then Emily and Maria did an afternoon tea for me and my mother-in-law Mary at our house for Mother's Day this March. I thought, why not try making something for that.

Since then, I have been baking almost every Sunday and my family and my mother-in-law Mary are my Guinea pigs.

The most successful cake I have baked, I think, was this Strawberry Sponge Cake with white chocolate cream.  Sponge was quite nice and moist, sandwiching fresh strawberries and white chocolate filling. At first I thought white chocolate was far too sweat for me however after a day it settled and turned out to be very nice.  I thought it looked cute too.

The very first cake I baked was this Lemon Drizzle Cake by Raymond Blanc recipe, which was for Mother's Day.  The taste was fine but it looked disaster.... it looked nothing like the one in his recipe on-line!  In fact it looked like a Thanksgiving Turkey without wings and legs!

To my defence, the taste was not bad. The problem with this funny shape was because of having used silicon cake mould that went floppy once the cake mixture was poured and put into the oven to bake.
The recipe used some dark rum. I think I sprinkled it rather liberally but this was actually alright.

Ok, sponge had air holes in them but for the first try, it was edible.


After this, I then invested on 2 cake tins and decided to try baking cakes.

2nd cake I baked was this strawberry short cake. I thought if the sponge did not turn out to be perfect, I could hide it with lots of strawberries and cream....and it kinda worked!

Maybe the oven was a bit too hot as sponges turned rather dark brown instead of light brown.... however the taste was lovely.  Fresh strawberries and cream never go wrong.  I think my husband had most of it so I did not have any slice to give it to Mary... sorry ...

3rd cake I tried to make was this Cappuccino cake with walnuts.  Finally I also managed to make the best use of blender that had been hiding in the corner of the kitchen, collecting dusts, in britzing walnuts into pieces. 

The cake looked disastrous indeed and sprinkling of cocoa power did not work, which made the presentation even worse while coffee cream was too soft. It looks like coffee 'lava' like cream was about to over flow from the volcano cake and spill over the plate. It is literally disastrous!

It tasted ok, yap, you can taste coffee alright. It went with a cup of coffee, obviously (ha ha ha!) 

My husband does not like coffee cake, Maria, Mary and I had a slice each and the rest went into a bin as this was just a boring cake.  

The 4th cake I made was this Boston Cream Pie cake.  The photo looks like a small donut. It is actually a proper cake of 20cm in diameter!  This actually turned out to be very good cake. Think of giant donut with custard cream except baked, not deep fried!

The sponge was very nice, soft and moist, sandwiching 'home-made' custard cream with melted chocolate on top!  I was quite surprised and chuffed myself to have made this this well.

This cake was everyone's favourite so far.

Having tasted the success of cake baking for the first time, I then decided to bake chocolate cake.

The 5th cake was this Chocolate Marble cake - made of two types of sponges, chocolate sponge and orange sponge, covered with chocolate icing.  

The taste was fine but the apprearance required a lot of improvement. It looked more like a children's mud-pie and I literally mean 'mud' pie!

I did not manage well in swirling chocolate and orange sponge mixture to mix to create 'marble' effect. When you cut a slice and see inside, you can see that swirling did not work well.

My husband does not like chocolate cakes in general so again Maria, Mary and I became guinea pig. After slice each, the rest went to the bin also the icing went harder after a day or so and it became less appetising although orange sponge tasted nicer. Oh, well, I just try baking something else....

Then came the 6th cake, Strawberry and white chocolate cake that I was talking about earlier.
I thought I did quite well with this!

Then next, the 7th cake was another type of Lemon Drizzle Cake. This one does not use dark rum.
To tell you the truth,  the sponge turned far too dark. I reckon the oven temperature was too hot. The taste was fine but I was not happy with the result so I baked this again the following Sunday.

This one is the 2nd attempt.  The sponge is still a bit dark but the taste was nice and sponge was quite nice and moist. I think this one might have been Maria's favourite as I think she kept going back to it, which meant that she had to put her SlimmingWorld on hold too, ha ha ha.

There are lots of lemon inside, outside and on top of it!  I call it Lemon Drizzle Dazzle Cake!
This went very well with a nice cup of tea.

And the 8th cake which I made last weekend was this, Almond with Cherry Cake.  I love this, especially toasted almonds are lovely.  This should have been 'Cherry and Almond' cake. I could not get dried cherries from M&S so I decided to use dried cranberries instead along with glace cherries. My husband said that cranberry does not work with almonds and went out his way to get me a packet of dried cherries from Sainsbury whilst I was measuring ingredients.  

After putting the cake mixture into the oven, I then realised that I forgot to put dried cherries completely, stupid me!!!   By then it was too late to add them into the mixture so I used them to decorate the cake with almond slices.  So it should have been Cherry and Almond cake but it turned out to be Almond with Cherry Cake. 

Next time, I will make sure to use both glace and dried cherries in the mix. Nevertheless the cake tastes lovely, maybe a slight dry because of almond powder but I love this cake.

You know, it says cakes are really fattening. It's really true if you realise the amount of sugar and butter going into them. However, at least with home made cakes you know what's inside. I enjoy the process of baking and how it turns out rather than eating it, so I don't feel bad about it. And I also enjoy thinking of what to bake next.  Not bad for a novice cake maker, I think.

That's all forks!

My Family's Favourite - Tuna Potato Cakes

This is a recipe of the savoury snack which my family loves.  Very easy to make, just a little bit cumbersome and you need to be patient but the effort is worthwhile.

Tamie's Tuna Potato Cakes

You need these and 1/2 bag of potatoes to start with.

Oh, you also need these ... including Japanese breadcrumbs, which you can buy most of supermarkets nowadays. If you can't find them, you can use normal breadcrumbs to make fish & chips or go to Chinese supermarket and head for Japanese food section. 

First,  you boil potatoes with some salt. Mash them and add chopped parsley, coriander, 1 - 2 chilli (deseeded) and spring onions.  I like a little bit of kick so I usually leave little bit of chill seeds.

Add a tin of tuna steak, not tuna chunks (they are awful...).

Squeeze lemon juice to the mixture. Mix again and taste. If you want you can add more salt.

Now, the next step - you need flour, egg and Japanese panko breadcrumbs for coating.

Take a small handful of tuna potato mixture to make into balls and coat them well with flour.

Next, dip these into egg.

Then dip them into Panko breadcrumbs.

1/2 kg of bags of potatoes make about 12 - 14 potato cakes.

Fry them in oil. I don't have deep fryer so I just shallow fry them. Deep flying them would probably result better.

Fry them until golden colour...

And that's it! Easy. Best eat right away whilst they are still hot. You can eat them with any sauce you like. We like to eat these with mixture of tomato ketchup and Japanese brown sauce or mayonnaise.

Try making these this holiday weekend!

That's all forks.

Hands and Arms with Champaign and chocs @ Jo Malone

It was my younger daughter Maria's birth day recently so I booked Emily, Maria and myself for a lovely (and complimentary) Birthday hands and arms massage for Maria at Jo Malone (http://www.jomalone.co.uk/index.tmpl) in Glasgow's  Princes Square.

I love this experience - we were surrounded by lovely smells of Jo Malone's fragrances, enjoying a glass of bubbly and chocolate whilst the staff worked on your hands and arms with their lovely products. This is just soooo relaxing.

Jo Malone has just launched a new limited edition fragrance, Silk Blossoms. It has, unlike usual Jo Malone's bottles, pink labels with pink-fringed pompoms, representing silk blossoms.
According Jo Malone's website, it describes the fragrances as apricot-fresh with a touch of spice, airy with clouds of power-soft heliotrope, nestling on a bed of moss; fruity and enticing.

http://www.jomalone.co.uk/images/content/mpp/limited-edition-silk-blossom.jpg

Yes, it is lovely fruity and enticing indeed. Maria got this fragrance with another fragrance to pair it for her birthday gifts from me and my husband whilst I have given myself a wee treat to the small bottle too....

I wish you could smell this - it's just divine. Feeling lovely with mix of bubbly and chocolate and silk blossoms in our hands, we left Jo Malone shop with high note.

May forks be with you .....



p.s.  My husband has just pointed out that yesterday (May the 4th) was Star Wars Day. It's geeks' thing apparently.... ha ha ha.

Keep Calm and Have Lychee @ Lychee Oriental in Glasgow

I had been very busy working away last week and when I came home from work, I could not be bothered cooking. I had to admit that last week was a very lazy week for me and my cooking department let my family down too. Despite 2014 started off with great intension (i.e. supporting Emily and Maria in them following SlimmingWorld diet by cooking oil free or syn free meals for the whole family, anticipating that I too would lose some weight!) as the time goes by, this notion has escaped me.

And then I remembered that I had on-line voucher for 2-course meals with Thai crackers with chilli dip, sides and a glass of prosecco each at Lychee Oriental (http://www.lycheeoriental.co.uk) at 59 Mitchell Street, Glasgow, G1 3LN.  This is actually Maria and her boyfriend's favourite restaurant.

So Thursday last week, we decided to try Lychee Oriental. Glasgow was quite busy with late night Thursday shoppers and people going home after work. We could not find on-street parking space so we decided to part NCP car park which was almost right next door to the restaurant, albeit being rather expensive.

When we arrived at the restaurant, we were seated at one of the corner booths which we found it very nice and relaxing with low light. Outside there was bustling and hassling of the city, cars and people, yet here inside of Lychee Oriental, we found calm and relaxing atmosphere.  I said to my husband, 'I think I have seen that staff who showed us to this table .... at Cotton House Chinese restaurant in Longcroft near Falkirk...'  While we were perusing the menu, the same staff brought us Spicy Thai Cracker with Sweet Chilli Dip to our table and asked us 'Do you go to Cotton House?'  Yes, I was right - we did see him before and he is now at Lychee Oriental. It was nice to see a friendly face.

Crackers were really lovely, I could not stop eating. He came back and asked if we wanted more but we resisted the temptation as we had whole 2 courses ahead of us.

When I go to Chinese/Thai restaurant, I like ordering sea bass so I ordered Steamed Sea Bass with Ginger and Mushrooms for main course with £3.00 extra supplement. This was very delicious. There were lots of oriental mushrooms and underneath were 3 slices of nicely steamed sea bass with lovely soy and mushroom flavoured sauce. I really liked this. Fried rice was sutley seasoned so it actually went very well with this sea bass as I could taste the fish and delicious oriental mushroom and soy sauce.  Some restaurant's sea bass could be really salty but not here. It was just right.

Steamed Sea Bass with Ginger and Mushrooms

Spicy Thai Crackers with Sweet Chilli Dip  - yummy

After demolished the crackers, for starters my husband had Stuffed Fresh Chillies with Prawns in Black Bean Sauce whilst I had Salt and Pepper Squid. I love squid!

Stuffed chillies with prawns - it was not too spicy -
this came with crunchy pickled carrots and cucumbers which were very lovely and refreshing

I like salt & pepper squid - this too came with crunchy vegetable pickels!

Whilst I had sea bass for main course, my husband had Fresh Scallops with Pepper and Black Bean Sauce sizzling on a pan.

By the time we finished eating all, we were quite full, yet I wanted to see dessert menu. I saw Mango sorbet with lychee fruits. I said to my husband, 'We were in Lychee Oriental, why not try lychee?' So he ordered one between us.

To be honest, I think this might have been my very first time to have tried lychee. The fruit has a delicate and sweet flavour however it never appealed to me .... it looks a bit like an eyeball (sorry for being gross!), not that I have ever eaten eyeballs. BUT, according to Wikipedia, the lychee contains on average a total 72mg of vitamin C per 100 grams of fruit and on average 9 lychee fruits would meet an adult's daily recommended vitamin C requirement,  also low in saturated fat and sodium, and is cholesterol free! Wow, sounds great! Maybe I should eat more. The same Wikipedia page also informs me that excessive consumption can, in certain extreme cases, lead to fainting spells or skin rashes.  Ok .... maybe not too much...or  I just stick to jasmine tea then .....

Overall, we really enjoyed our dinner. If you want to go there, you should ask for a booth as it is lovely and cosy. Oh, by the way, apprently there is a very nice toilet downstairs worthy of 'toilet check'; I did not realise this and used toilet I could find on the ground floor, which happens to be a disabled toilet.  Having checked their website, I also discovered now that if you want to part at NCP next door, you could park there for £5 if you phone the restaurant. We did not know that neither so I think we paid around £6.50 for a few hours parking. 

It was a lovely restaurant. Food was lovely and service was good. I may even try another Lychee fruit when we go back...

That's all forks!