dry wonton mee

Fried mackerel with fries and salad

You can’t get much simpler than chucking a fish in a pan with a bit of olive oil, chopped garlic and black pepper. Yes it would be even healthier if it was broiled, but we didn’t have a broiler for three years. There’s no excuse for the fries though, or the full-fat tartar sauce (but the fries were cooked in canola oil and the sauce contained soya-bean oil I think, and I served it with wholemeal bread).

Healthometer: (entire meal)
7: fairly wholesome

Hash and rosti - Alexis BSC

Spot the difference
Corned-beef hash	Swiss rösti

Verdict:   They’re very similar dishes and both very tasty and enjoyable. Sadly both were also too oily, too salty and a little bit burnt. It’s nice for this sort of thing to be just a little scorched, but this was over the edge. We did love it though, and I’d imagine that chef had just been distracted and that the over-burn is not usual. I always need to have a bit of bread with this sort of thing, but the only option is to go with a full toast and preserves set. All in all - a posh but unhealthy treat with almost perfectly cooked eggs.

Healthometer: (hash and rösti)
2: dangerous

Roti tisu - Devi's Corner

Place: Devi’s Corner, Bangsar, KL, Malaysia.

Dish: Roti Tisu - RM 2.50 (GBP 0.39 / USD 0.79)

Consists: A thin flatbread cone made with flour, water and oil/ghee (possibly also egg and evaporated milk, but I think more probably only with the sweet version where sugar is also added). Served with dhal.

Verdict: This was Co-eater’s so I only had a taste. Quite pleasant as a snack, but a bit boring when there is so much else more interesting on offer. It seems there are savoury and sweet versions of this. Thanks to tempinis for clarifying in the comments that they use a lot of ghee when they cook this, so that pulls down the healthrating to just 5.

Healthometer:
5: grey area

Nizzarda salad at Cipolla

Healthometer: (salad) 8: good stuff	Healthometer: (bread/dip) 5: grey area	Healthometer: (wine) 7: fairly wholesome

Beef dripping on toast

After bathtime on Sundays, Mum would let us kids toast slices of white bread off the coal fire in the living-room. We’d spread the hot toast with beef-dripping, with a touch of the sharp congealed juices that collect beneath the white fat, and sprinkle it with salt. It would always be accompanied with a glass of milk, which is ideal for reasons that I can’t explain. Yes it’s incredibly unhealthy, and to some it is a repugnant idea, but it is very tasty and, for me, very comforting. I’ve tried and tried but it just doesn’t seem to work with wholemeal bread, so if you’re gonna treat yourself to this you may as well go the whole hog (cow?) and use a nice fresh crusty white bread. Unless you’ve put a spot of oil in the roasting pan before you cook the beef, the dripping will need to be taken out of the fridge some time before to soften up and become spreadable.

Healthometer:
0: instant death

Mackerel garbanzo in salsa

Serves: 2

Time: 30 mins

Ingredients:
2 large mackerel chops
1 US cup (approx.) fresh or frozen salsa
1 stick celery
1 cup cooked/tinned chick-peas
Third cup medium-dry white wine
1-2 cups diced potatoes

Method:
Make a salsa like pico de gallo (recipe here), or defrost it from a pre-made batch - nasty stuff from jars will NOT work. Dice the potato to a size where it will take the same time to cook as the fish (1-3cm). If your steamer set-up allows, you can cook the potatoes in the water (or lower level) above which the fish is steamed, or you can just boil them seperately. Rinse your mackerel chops/fillets and lay them on a shallow plate that fits in your steamer. Chop the celery into inch-long pieces, then split them lengthwise into 3 or four fat sticks and arrange them around the mackerel. Pour the wine over it. Get the water in the steamer to the boil, throw in your spuds, put your steaming shelf on top, carefully put in the plate of fish, cover and steam for 5 - 8 minutes or until the fish is cooked.

Take off the heat and carefully remove the plate of fish (I have to use two large serving spoons, but this is a Health and Safety nightmare - use towels if you can manage it). If the potato is done, drain it and cover to keep it warm. Take the fish out of the wine and celery and put it on a fresh plate, where you can use forks to debone it (local tenggiri chops have large central bone with just a few stray ones between the quarters and the top ridge - if you have a bonier kind of mackerel or other fish, you’ll have to let it cool enough to do it with your fingers, so you can feel all the bones. Rinse and drain the chickpeas and put them in a small pan with the salsa. Bring it gently to a simmer in a small pan and add the fish, celery and wine. Simmer it gently for about a couple of minutes - we’re trying to avoid ‘cooking’ the salsa, we’re just heating it all through. Arrange the potatoes on the serving plates and spoon the fish salsa over the top.

Healthometer:
9: very healthy

Butter-cream prawn rice and steak

Place:	Strawberry Fields Kafe, 14 Jln Tengah, PJ, Selangor, MY.
Dishes:	Butter-cream prawn rice – RM 8.58 (GBP 1.36 / USD 2.67)
	Tenderloin steak - RM 16.28 (GBP 2.59 / USD 5.06)
Consists:	Prawn thing – Prawns, butter and cream mild chilli sauce, onion, curry leaves, steamed rice.
	Steak – Beef-steak, gravy, fries, baked-beans, coleslaw.
Verdict:   I thought the idea of butter-cream prawn rice sounded disgusting, so Co-eater had that while I played it safe with a steak. As it happens, I tasted the prawns and they were quite pleasant – creamy, tasty and aromatic with a mild hint of chilli. Co-eater said he got fed up with it about half-way through because it was so rich. I was surprised that the steak was so tender and unobjectionable, and that there was so much of it. It wasn’t the best quality meat, but it was alright for the price. More importantly though, it is unspeakably bad form to serve baked beans with coleslaw. How can people imagine that these two things go together on a plate? Or even coleslaw and gravy? I don’t understand.

Healthometer: (prawns) 2: dangerous

Healthometer: (steak) 3: very naughty