Korma chicken

A simple meal I made for dinner.
I just used a bottle of Patak brand korma paste, pour it over raw chicken thighs placed in an oven tray. Then I set the oven to 250 degrees celcius and put the tray of chicken inside. Cook chicken for 30 minutes.

While waiting for the chicken to cook, I boiled some rice in the microwave. In 7minutes, my rice was ready.

30 minutes later, dinner is ready.

I made a new tag for this: 30 minute meals

Afternoon tea @ Ocho on the canal, Glasgow

I went to Ocho on the Canal again today. This time instead of fish and chips, we had afternoon tea. The difference between afternoon tea and tea break is that afternoon tea means 12pm, the other is at 2.30pm. Basically, we had lunch at Ocho :)

Fish and Chips was fantastic the last time Ann and I tried it. This time round it was tea with five Thai girls and two Malaysians. Lovely time spent with new friends and one hour with a table of six ladies chatting is never enough.

The food served was ok. We had the voucher from Living Social so it was cheap. Otherwise, I would say its always not worth paying for tea as its just scones, cakes and sandwiches. Everything could be made at home. I'd recommend the scones at Ocho but the sandwiches were tooo tiny and the filling for each sandwich was pathetic.

Other than that, the company was great and the service was good as last time.

Elia Greek Restaurant, Glasgow

Elia is located at George Square. It is a Greek restaurant with pretty good reviews. The staff were so friendly! You know I have been getting some good service in the least expected places in UK.

I loved how attentive the staff were at Elia and the timing from getting us seated to the food till getting the bill was perfect.

For starters, we were served slices of bread with olives and oil. I have a Greek friend who told me that it is customary for Jews to have bread, olives with oil amd a cup of red wine as breakfast on Saturday mornings. At first, the thought of dipping bread with oil did not sound appealing to me. But then again, I do eat french toast and roti canai for breakfast which are definitely more oily than what the Jews had ;)

Besides bread, we also ordered Grilled halloumi cheese and Dolmathes.

Grilled halloumi cheese: I was introduced to this delightful appetiser by my cousin from Luxembourg. Halloumi cheese is a slightly springy white cheese traditionally made of sheep's milk. I first tasted it in Nando's Glasgow. I loved it so much that when I was in Nando's London and Nando's York, I just had to order it. Unfortunately, Nandos in Glasgow halloumi cheese tasted the best among the other places.
Then, at Elia, it was definitely my first pick from the menu as halloumi is Greek :) The halloumi cheese tasted freaking delicious in Elia that I want more. Furthermore, it came with three huge slices on top of tomatoes. It was good as meal too.

Dolmathes: Rice, herbs and minced beef wrapped in the leaves of grapevine.
I think dolmathes was an acquired taste. Eating grapevine leaves was.... like eating leaves lol. It was definitely filling as an appetiser due to the rice.

For the main course, I had the Lamb souvlaki while my friend had Kleftiko.

Lamb souvlaki: Grilled lamb pieces with rice and vegetable. After looking at Kleftiko, my dish looked too simple! Nope, I would recommend Kleftiko as its worth the same price.

Kleftiko: Slow cooked lamb on the bone with tomato sauce and served with oven potatoes or chips or rice and salad. Sounds awesome just reading the description. Tripadvisor also recommends this dish. The portion for this was so big that my friend could only finish half the lamb and he had to takeway the rest. But it was really good.

We could not stomach any dessert. But we were really happy and satisfied :)

I would go back to order the halloumi cheese and Kleftiko. I think that will be enough to share between two people.

Is spring ever going to come??

It has been snowing in Glasgow the past two days. It snowed more in March than in other months. Its also really cold this time even without the wind and rain.

A friend jokingly said spring will come one week before summer! He further elaborated that spring will come for a week and bang! Summer is here hahaha

Easter travels

From Glasgow to London to Glasgow to Edinburgh to Ireland to Glasgow

I have had an amazing adventure lately travelling to places with amazing people, food and environment. Each place had its own 'wow' factor.

I am in Dublin right now enjoying the St. Patrick's Day vibe. The historical buildings were litted up with green lights at night in conjunction with St. Patricks Day.

More to come...

Spring time!

Its still so cold! We had a day of 14 degrees celcius and after that the temperature plunged to 4 degrees. London is supposedly going to snow this weekend too.

Waiting for the day i can be jacketless n just slip on a dress without having to worry about the weather.
If you dont know, i love dresses :)

Tomatoes

When I was younger, I did not like tomatoes. I did not eat them. I do not like ketchup at all. I always preferred chilli.

Surprisingly, I have grown to love tomatoes. Currently, tomatoes in soups, pasta sauces and salads are a must. I just feel like like something is missing if I do not have tomatoes... My dad used to munch on cherry tomatoes a lot. His purpose of going to the supermarket would be to just buy cherry tomatoes. That could be just his dinner and he is satisfied.

Tomatoes are good for the heart too, so why not have some :)

I love that it brightens up my meal too :):)

Today I had fried rice with egg, smoked salmon, anchovies, dried prawns sambal and cherry tomatoes. My housemate and I agree that Smoked salmon makes plain rice tasty. If you appreciate the smoked flavour, it goes well with anything :) cherry tomatoes too!!!

Sambal dried prawns and dried chilli chicken

You know I have been craving for spicy food for such a long long time. This kind of spicy cravings cannot be satisfied woth just Maggi chilli sauce, it has to be the real thing with the kick :p

I craved for sambal!!!
I knew how to do it but due to test and deadlines, going to the kitchen to cook felt like a crime!

I finally did What I wanted to do and I feel so happppppyyy.

Butter chicken attempt

Since I always have cravings for butter prawns and butter squids, its high time I learn how to make it. Few years back I did try but it was unsuccessful.

Of course, when trying something, we should always try it on chicken first as chicken is cheaper than seafood. Also, we wont feel so sakit hati if we ruin the dish.
So i bought some chicken fillets, marinated it and began my experiment.

It turned out ok. Still have room for improvements but my housemate likes i, so thats fine. And it looked and tasted good!

Im ready to make butter crabs :):)

Smile

A picture of Ann and I with our tea and scones at Ocho. We had a pot of tea but could not stomach a second cup of it because we were stuffed.

Deadlines are inhibitors xD

The weather has been so nice last week and this week but I do not get a chance to go out at all due to deadlines... Aih.
As usual, once the deadlines are over, the weather will turn tragic once again :(
Oh well, I am glad to be in Glasgow this year because we had plenty of sunny weather even during winter!

When london and down south were having snow storms and flight cancellations, Glasgow was actually sunny and warm. Even now, it is chilly and cold and wet down south, but the weather is fabulous in Glasgow. An ideal place to stay if the weather is like this for the next decade :)

10/21 days! Fun times ahead

I am excited and only a few know why :)

Ocho's lunch meal made me skip dinner. So worth it!

Ocho on the canal, Glasgow

Ann and I went to Ocho for some fish and chips and scones. The customers at other tables were having two tier tea time goodies. Uhm I do not think I fancy spending time having English Tea cakes, scones and such. This is because everything will be sweet. Also, mixing and matching scones with sandwich and cakes is too much for lunch.

We had the fish and chips which was battered with bread crumbs. Pretty fresh fish and it came with fries, peas and salad. We were also given a choice of sauce- vinegar or tartar

Since it was a set meal, we were also served one scone each and a pot of tea to share. The scones were very good.

Too full now but I had a great time.
One thing about finishing the entire plate of fish and chips was that its just too oily for me. Felt a bit queasy after that. But food was good. Also, the service was impeccable.

Strawberry season 2013

Winter is coming to an end and I saw plenty of strawberries for sale. During winter, the strawberries were tiny. But now, it is double the size! Its cheap too, so I bought two boxes of strawberries and two packs of green apples. That will be enough to make my smoothies for a week :)

Snow in Glasgow

This year's snowfall in Glasgow was inpredictable. The forecast would show it would snow, but in then end it was only rain. Finally, when people stopped expecting snow anymore, we woke up to a blanket of white snow few days ago. That was the heaviest snow we saw in central glasgow for thos winter. It only lasted one day and it was all melted away by the rain.

Come to think of it, the weather all year round in Glasgow has been not normal. There were weeks when it was really sunny. Just like this week, after the snow, it will be sunny for the next few days. There were a fee windy days and plenty of rainy days. But, I think we had more sunny days than rainy days this year. This makes Glasgow the perfect place to stay, not too hot and not too cold.

My housemate and I built a few snowmen behind the halls. Good thing we were early risers. While everyone else were sleeping, we used up most of the snow to make the snowmen :)

Note that the huge snowman buttons and mouth were made of Burger King's ketcup :p One snowman's eyes were capsules.

Chocoholic mode

It is the time of the year for some stress relievers :) My companions this week is the Moser Roth's finest truffles and Ferrero Rocher.

I read an article about Ferrero Rocher not bothering to put its nutrition facts on its packages. This means they are hiding something. So, this might be my last box forever.

All that horse meat found in lasagne, spaghetti and burgers in UK supermarkets has made me more concious about the meat I buy. Tesco's spaghetti contains 100% horse meat! Although I have never ate it before, but thought of it makes me want to barf.

As for Moser Roth, it taste better than FR actually. Not too sweet too and they have the nutritional facts.

Last week

The days are passing by so fast. Someone told me our minutes are actually shorter now than last time due to the Earths something something which means we do not exactly have 24 hours in a day now. We have less! I'd like to believe that fact because it really feels like time passes by really quickly nowadays. Even the snow melts so fast in Glasgow.

Last week was great.

I organised a small birthday celebration for two of my friends. Coincidentally they were both January babies born two days apart. So, just maybe, friends I'd like to keep are Capricorns. I believe in horoscopes. Sometimes reading things about myself, a Virgo, makes me understand myself more. Anyway, I made egg tarts as a birthday cake. Thankfully I lived near supermarkets because I realized I was not in KL, meaning I didn't have a single candle or matchsticks here.

The egg tarts turned out alright I guess since my friends each ate two or three of it :D

Few days ago I attended Malaysian Night. It was great effort by everyone who organized it. Who knew trying to make teh tarik could have been so messy. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the games. The food prepared were pretty good. I contributed by cooking curry chicken. Making curry chicken using three whole chicken sounded like a pretty tough job but it was actually the fastest and easiest thing to make. Very minimal washing up too :) Other people were making ondeh-ondeh, curry puffs etc. The guy who was in charge of frying had to stand in front of the stove for 6 hours to cook all the curry puffs!! I salute him!

What else... it snowed yesterday. The longest one, but it rained after that so everything melted on the same day.

Deceiving winter

What snow? what blizzard?
Even the weather forecast for Glasgow could not predict the winter weather for this city. So many times it was forecast to snow, but it has not happened much.

Yesterday, The pathway outside my place was salted for the big freeze today. But at the end of today, the man who salted it was sweeping the salt away because the snow never came to Glasgow. LOL

The sky outside looked perfect for a walk outside. Sunshine with no rain. But once we stepped out, the cold made us shiver. The more we walk, the more the cold bites. Our cheeks felt sore, our fingers were numb, and it was too cold to talk. Not forgetting the occasional gust of wind that comes. Stay home :)

Back from Bournemouth

The trip back to Glasgow using Megabus was much better. The journey was longer as the bus made stops at Manchester, Preston and Leicester. That means instead of a 7hour journey, it took 9 hours to reach Glasgow.

The bus this time was pretty good. I am not sure if this was the bus they planned to use for the trip bacause our scheduled departure time was delayed. Somehow our bus could not make it to London and so, we had this replacement bus.

It was a double decker Megabus and it was clean, the seats were more sturdy and it was really comfortable.

So, because of that, the nine hour joueney back to glasgow was not a 'head shattering' as the first bus I took.

I wish they would throw that older bus away.

London bound

1pound Megabus ticket to London. Im in the bus now, waiting to depart from Glasgow. Unfortunately we are bein delayed by a guy who smells of marjuana insisting on getting on the bus. He was at another stance earlier disturbing others. Can't imagine the gruelling journey with someone like him in the bus!