Chinese New Year 2024 – Sambal Shiok Feast February 18th

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UPDATE: SOLD OUT…. If you have emailed me I will respond individually to you

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Come join me at Sambal Shiok for my regular Chinese New Year Feast. This year I am cooking mostly solo, my partner in crime Guan Chua is back in Malaysia so I get to bring you a menu of Cantonese inspired feasting dishes sprinkled with some Sambal Shiok favourites. Here’s the menu, some items may change due to availability but never to their detriment:

Spaces are limited as we are focusing on just one sitting at 1pm. The feast will be served in tables of four or six. Please email me lap@thefoodist.co.uk to book a table and for prepayment details. Couples are welcome of course but please be aware you will be sat convivially with other diners.

Sambal Shiok is a fully licensed restaurant. So no BYOB at this event.

Kitchen Gallery Cookalong 28th October

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Join me at Kitchen Gallery showroom in Stratford-upon-avon, 6:30pm October 28th

I’ll be demonstrating a few delicious Asian inspired dishes on the showroom kitchen. Cookalong or just watch along for an hour. Check on Kitchen Gallery’s Instagram and Facebook for the live link. See you there!

MENU

  • Grilled slow cooked steak, soy brown butter, charred shallot 
  • Miso glazed aubergine
  • Vegetable fried rice

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Lap Cheong 臘腸 Chinese Sausage

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You wait ages for one, then two Chinese recipes come along. It’s almost as if I’d forgotten how to blog. In a way this is true. I’m pretty disgusted with the state of the blagging scene in Birmingham at the moment and the thought of being associated with it has made me, well, get my head down and actually do more good things with food this year. So more teaching, more popups, more food development work, more styling and photography. Less of the constant churning of idiot prose for idiot posers.

But then I’ve neglected for those of you who care about cooking good food, in particular Chinese food. So this for you then; a recipe for Chinese sausage. Of all my sausage recipes I’m most proud of this one. It’s the one most tinkered with, the most obscure (my middle name) and the most evocative for me. Continue reading →

Tea Smoked Pigeon 茶香燻乳鴿

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Walking by the frozen meat at my local Wing Yip, the radar pinged as I scanned over the usual offerings of frozen duck and mystery meat. French squab pigeons were available for the first time. There wasn’t really any hesitation I knew exactly what I wanted to cook. Tea smoked pigeon is one of my favourite dishes, a must eat whenever I go back to Hong Kong. A dish I pine for whenever I think about the food of Asia, which is often, in fact most of my waking hours.
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Eating out in 2016

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I try not to be too obvious on this blog but what is the point of having a blog if you can’t make slightly hubristic end of year lists? Every food blogger does it, I like reading them so let’s not beat around the bush, read and marvel at what I’ve eaten this year. You might like the look of it, and decide that you’d like to eat there too (see it’s actually informative and not showy-off at all).

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Takeda AS Gyutou, 10 Year Review

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Pre thinning

Ever read a proper kitchen knife review? They’re usually found on specialist discussion forums, places that regular people with an interest in food rarely visit. Those forums are subsets of knife-as-weapon forums and crossover with gun forums. And in them lie a whole world of crazy. I’m not into all that, I’m only really interested in kitchen knives and have been for a long time. This Takeda knife was bought over 10 years ago. So it’s probably time to review it. I think this timescale is a reasonable user testing period. Continue reading →

The Other Side of Brum Chinatown

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Suckling piglet and rice £8.60

Chinese food, you’re probably getting bored of it by now. Takeaway sweet and sour pork comes way down the fast food list after curry, Nandos, KFC and new wave “streetfood”. Going out for a meal? Sesame prawn toast, chow mein, lemon chicken, shredded crispy duck and all the other Anglicised Chinese food is seen as the safe option for a crowd with fussy eaters. But it doesn’t have to be like this. The Chinese food that I know has never been like that anyway. With more and more mainland Chinese folk living in the city, the options are expanding beyond the watered down Cantonese fare we all grew up eating in the UK. Fiery mouth numbing dishes from Sichuan, mutton skewers from the North, hotpots and hand-pulled noodles. Never let them show you the English menu ever again. I’ve written guides about the great mainstream food you can get in Birmingham Chinatown but now here’s a guide to get really under the crispy crackling skin of Chinatown. Continue reading →