Land of plenty or Big it up USA style!

Well I returned a few weeks back from the capital of big food and now I cant seem to eat any of the usual things Ive been satisfied with. I will share with you some of the things we ate and things we made in our 14 days jaunt around the East coast of Florida. The main crazy unforeseen mania - and one I should really keep quieter for all my obsessions with healthier fair- was for Buffalo wings! My little cup cake even grew a great fancy for them, even at their spiciest!

The thing most notable is the portion sizes ; Id forgotten how big they were, & big = good in USA!! With one of the largest obesity problems in the world, (& interestingly the West coast faring better than the East), I'm glad there's some headway for a new culture driven towards more healthy eating & away from serving big, greasy and overloaded, bring on the raw is all I can say! Due to such an inbred relationship to fast food in American culture, its like steering a large ship on a new baring! In the end all we could order from menus was some starters to share with extra sides of vegetables and salads, as we just couldn't stomach seeing that much food in front of us. Granted as we were with the girls most of the time, we frequented the more touristy old USA type haunts, so we were bound to come upon the more traditional, old school food ways!

Take The Cheesecake Factory for example, walking through I noticed people tucking into creamy cheesy salads served in dishes that would feed at least 5-6 people, but the upside was that they had a section on the menu for weight management with calories listed, so that's alrighty then!

Now after all that can you believe, I for some reason was compelled to order one of their famous cheesecake slices (well I did have to, didn't I?) and oh my gawsh I had two mouthfuls and that was it, I was done in . I'm hoping they expect you to share something that's the size of an air brick or do some of you guys really eat the whole lot!?

I wouldn't say this was a trip planned around fine dining , well not with 2 mini me's in tow. I wasn't prepared to munch in lovely romantic candlelit surroundings with my 2, err not so quiet ones! We did however get one evening to ourselves and had a booking at China Grill in Miami. The meal started with such promise, with a beautiful and delicate sushi amous bouche type dish . The the portions , even though it was stated at the beginning would be smaller as it was the"tasting menu" , (not the eat everything menu!) , got bigger and bigger, more clunky and heavy, until quite frankly we just didn't really want to eat any more. By the 6th dish and accompaniments, we just felt bloated! Which was a shame as the flavours were good and the combinations really packed a punch in your mouth. We just felt some delicacy and pairing down would have gone a long way to increase enjoyment of the meal rather than the pile it high & sell it not so cheap!

Dim sum in a savoury sour quite moreish sauce

lobster pancakes -stir fried with wild mushrooms, red chili, scallions & coconut milk

Halfway through I needed to cleanse my palet , of course with a strawberry lychee daiquiri! It was at this point we got served a variation on a Cesar & oriental salads , atop a rectangular plate in 3 huge mounds!

Large shrimp with black ink pasta & smoky cream sauce.

Famous Teriyaki steak

From a distance this looked like a frozen box of some berry fruit - that would have been really wow- , but it was actually a large Brandy snap , full of chopped bananas & cream ! Nice as it was , I wouldn't say it really sold me on their patisserie abilities! Hehehe Im difficult to please with food aren't I!!

In Key Biscayne , we tried Peruvian El Gran Inka ,a wonderfully different flavour experience to the normal American menu. We started with a beautifully tasting (although not as nice on the eye), ceviche , but even then the corn was larged up here too (I believe its a speciality in Peru)!! The rest of our meal was a combo of spiced grilled fishes and sweet potato dishes. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to photograph the rest , but it was all very well put together.

On our way into Duck key , we stopped at the Hungry tarpon for a quick snack and tried the Key's famous Conch chowder,a spicy tomatoey thick gloop full of bits of , well conch! It was like stepping back into old time USA, a bit grungy, with staff a bit niceish/snarky and food a sorta sloppy Joe style. Quite tasty though it was!

Whilst in our Villa on Duck key we made some time to go to Publix & got ourselves some great ingredients. He the mans as you know is rather partial to a Rib eye , so we got a lovely nice juicy one, & yes BIG one , to share that is!

Back in Miami we did make a rather special purchase of Demi Glace beef from William Sonoma and used this, (along with Rose wine as this was all we had, for De glazing the cooking pan) , to make an unctuous brown jus to pour all over it! To serve with it, inspired by a similar salad eaten at Toms Harbour Hawks Cay , I dry roasted some chopped pecans in sugared Cinnamon to add a spicy crunchy to my watermelon side salad.

We still managed to sniff out some really good sushi & went to Kaiyo in Islomarada. The flavours although not traditional , were very much enjoyed . We had a feast of fruity spare ribs , sashimi platter, miso soup, crispy dim sum & a lovely simple citrus salad. I also had to have my favourite Ikura , I cant have my sushi without it!

In the hotel in Duck Key we also enjoyed a kind of Latin tapas at Alma of soup, plantain chips & fish cakes and somewhere on he the mans Blackberry are our photographs from that night. When I eventually get round to working out how to download them, I will show them on here & tell you more of what I thought of that meal.

Our last meal was a lovely end to our trip , shared with our girls, sat on a veranda at the Butterfly cafe at the Hotel Tranquility Bay . My gals and I had a lovely sweet and savoury Cuban Grilled Pork Chop, served with pineapple & plaintain crema.

I finished off with a chocolate fondant creation as a little indulgence for the last night. It was rich velvety and very sweet and like with all these desserts I order I can never finish them , most friends think that's strange, I call it sensible!

Overall we had a good experience , gained some new thoughts on food i.e that I don't need to eat that much to be satisfied and also got some new ideas on how to combine flavours & textures to create a more layered taste .

I don't think I noticed this as an issue with food as a child when I was lucky enough to see Florida back in the 80's or even as a teen , it was much more a novelty seeing food in such abundance compared to the UK, but now most of the modern world pretty much is the same , yet USA still is up there on food as fanfare and size being the main point.

Ive always been fascinated with American culture and being fanatical about food, it makes for a lot of good combined mulling over: Do you think there's less value in food if it isn't abundant on your plate? Is it always expected ?Would it not feel right if it wasn't served this way? Even many of the servers agreed with us on portions and advised us to not over order, so why the perpetuation of largess? Its a huge dichotomy in total loggerheads with the medical problems of over eating : On the one hand you go out , have served to you enormous plates of food, (its very tempting and very easy to do). You then go home and see umpteen diet adverts , work out systems, pills and equipment to buy , that removes it all!

I never knew I had these passionate feelings about it all , till this holiday and it just blew us away, so Ive gone on a bit of a soapbox here!

Anyone reading this Id love to know your thoughts?

Oh and don't get me wrong , I still had a lot of fun eating out ! Ive been to all sorts of places with my relationship to food and I'm sort of swinging just in the middle of the pendulum right now. Its just that sometimes, we got surprised and almost disappointed faces when half the plate went back! "Did you not enjoy it?"

Some Hamisha nosh

Image from Global rhythm , book ; New Wave Kosher: Jewish Food From Near And Far

There seemed to be a hamisha, (cozy & familiar in Yiddish) , theme to last week. On Friday I had a lovely afternoon with our group of little girls at a friends house as they were preparing an old Jewish dish from Tunisia called Pikayla for their Friday night meal . "Pikayla" being my only spelling of it so far, as no one will spell it out , I feel , for fear of finding out its many wonderful secrets! It combines burnt spinach , beans and lamb in one pot. I think they may have preferred me being blindfold and led to another room , and the lid of the pot being tightly secured but I just love finding out new and different ways to cook. It really makes food seem exciting and on a cold dark winter night , to eat something different , as its so easy just to buy the same and make the same week in and week out , makes life , well just a lot more varied!

It seems several families, (only 15 I was told), have this spinach dish but are loathe to share it with anyone!! I had it once at a friends house as part of a wonderful middle eastern kosher buffet and her sister in law gave me part of the recipe but not all of it- oh the secretiveness of it all- so to this day (until fri) , I didn't have a clue how to make it , or what it was called. For several years after this party I also had a scribbled and incomplete version of Tbit recipe, but could never find the real recipe as again no one would spell it for me. Ive had it written down as Tbeet, for some years and didn't get anywhere with it on google or anyone else! Ive also never attempted to make either of them , for fear of getting it horribly wrong , especially as they may have omitted some secret part!

Many of these one pot dishes whether created in Libya , Tunisia, Israel or Iraq were created in a similar vein to Choulent , as it could be left in a low oven all night from Thursday to serve Friday night as part of the sabbath meal.

Last week I went to Sami's in Brent street , (the review linked here being the very few I found), for a mums night out. I was hoping for a yummy comforting Kosher meal, and I don't like to be down on restaurants , but disappointingly not all of it worked. The small salad starters were quite good and served on lovely small square plates and the portions plenty. Their Tabouleh was quite savoury and moreish , but it seemed to be made with cous cous rather than the bulgarwheat its more familiar for. My friend and I shared a Tbit (and I finally learnt of the correct Iraqi spelling) and a Shwarma , but both were like eating flavoured cardboard and even then it wasn't the flavours associated with either!!! Red Chinese five spice just doesn't belong on a shwarma , NOT EVER!!!! I also miss the Tahini sauce and harissa that just makes shwarma pop when served with all the salad trimmings and the very best is Sollys for that! The Tbit I'm led to believe after partaking several years ago should be a slow cooked warming spicy dish of chicken mixed with rice , all moreish and moist and deeply flavoured. There was a distinct lack of that with this as it consisted of three tomatoey dry chicken legs served separately from the flavoured rice. The nicest warming and cosy dish was chosen by another of our group , that being Memouleh - basically meaning stuffed - and we all wanted to try it, poor women!!! It consisted of meat packed with rice , wrapped in 2 pillow shaped cabbage packages and served smothered with a tomato spice sauce, heaven for me!! It just looked like you could go to sleep on it! The combination of soft cabbage and savoury rice meat filling worked really well with its differing textures and is what a wet winter night is all about. The sauce had enough spice for flavour but wasn't overpowering. It was definitely for the books and I will go to great pains now to find a good recipe. Apart from that I think that may be it would have been safer to stick to lots of grilled meats , which is their speciality.

However on the plus side were the girls who served us , as they stayed as patient as they could be with nearly 30 loud Jewish mums!!!

On my travels around I'm finding some really great dishes , but many are kept under wraps or just passed down between the generations , never to be seen outside that particular family. Ive been told I'm not allowed to experiment with the Pikayla until my friends have made it for me , and I will hold them to that, but until then I cant help but do some research and find its history, in fact I'm itching to right now. I believe that wonderful recipes and foods need to be shared and enjoyed. There is nothing more enriching and restorative than these kinds of foods. They are deep in memories of family and togetherness, its more than food , its a whole heartfelt sensory experience. To me they embody the very meaning of Hamisha : even if you haven't tasted them before, they feel recognizable!

I read in the Jewish Chronicle last week that a women Carol Savage has started the very web site , My dish, that would be a good place to find some of these hidden gems. It provides a space to share and publish recipes online. Apart from that it might take some chutzpah to make several surreptitious calls to various restaurants around to garner these recipes. Or just find a way of making best friends with some of the waiters on the night!

Happy food hunting

Let me know if anyone finds some of the recipes above!

Hi, yes still eating, cooking and making a mess of the kitchen

It seems this blog has turned into a "oncermonther", around the 25-29th mark I come on here and suddenly realise 4-5 weeks have gone by and I haven't shown any food porn!

Well I just have to change that this week somehow, have a look at my camera and come back to this space.

In the meantime have a look at this for a little Italian feasty we did a few weeks back

The "burning" question !

I often look up the nutritional content of foods , mainly to see what the Vitamin levels are. Did you realise that Papaya has double the vitamin c content of an orange ? What I also found interesting in my searches was the nutritional information on a food types Inflammation rating (IF) documented by Monica Reinagel at Inflammation factor. It appears it is responsible for our many ills.

As if I don't worry enough about eating my raw fruits and veg, I now have this to get me oesophagus in a twist about as I may be eating the WRONG fruits and veg!! I realised I eat quite a lot of high sugar fruits ,grapes, strawberries, plums and more , but checking them on the chart , they have fairly medium IF ratings, phew , not so bad then , but not the best!

So what should I be eating more of then?

Well it seems from this list , as the IF rating is in the positives , I need to be eating more crucifers ,raw carrots , cantaloupe, errr jalapeno peppers (yer I was surprised about that one too and need to have another look into it!) and of course spinach, (which I LOVE in salads) oh and I can continue to eat me beloved strawberries too!

I will be looking at her book The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan for more ideas and how it will work in my lifestyle in the new year. Hehehe , he the mans will have a fit , as every year Im onto some other guru, (it was Gillian McKeith 2yrs back and the year before this Superfoods by Steven Pratt) or a food plan to try and kick boost me a way from noshing on crisps and ice cream!

Has anyone tried this diet plan, have they found it beneficial , or are you a newbie on the IF rating like me?

Nope dont dig the partridge!

The minute I cut into the skin and saw the teeny ball bearing which was the shot that deceased this mini bird , that was it , I had to stop eating. I really was not enjoying the nutmeg cabbage either. I did have a picture of the offending article, (he the mans I apologise for my criticising), but it just looked nasteeeee and it seems to have disapeared also , strange? Is he hiding evidence may be! Its so strange how a taste can conjure up a feeling of such dislike in the mouth and nasal passage! It had such promise in the packaging , this teeny interesting little thing, so full of tasty hope , but it was not meant to be! Anyone want the one I have left in the freezer?

I reckon he the mans is allowed a small percentage of experimental disasters, I certainly have in my time; watery cauliflower cheese , sunken cakes , over alcoholised stews, over cooked rock hard mini wall tiles biscuits and more!

My success in August , was a lovely breast of duck in sichuan spices. I was very reluctant to cook it as its not an easy dish to do , as you have to be patient and render the fat of really slowly by cooking on a low light skin side down and I was determined to make sure it was medium rare too , so quite a tall order I gave myself!!! He the mans was due home late and I just had to try. After a lot of shouting and panicking to no one in particular, it came together. You would think I was creating some intricate gourmet dish with the way I was flapping around! It was in fact very simple in the end! I wilted some pak choy and then after I then de glazed the frying pan with soy sauce , rice wine and a little sugar poured this over the dish.













Another dish Id forgotten about , but was very savoury and flavoursome , was a Bruschetta dish created by he the mans with fresh grilled sardines on toasted Bruschetta bread , served with a wonderful tomato compote made with a mixture of mini santini tomato's, capers , onions , balsamic vinegar , parsley , lemon, garlic & seasoning all shallow fried together with olive oil.













Tonight's meal is another experimentation, whilst it doesn't sound to good , it smells amazing. He the mans has coated lamb chops with ciabatta breadcrumbs , mixed herbs and garlic salt. There is also a whole butternut squash being roasted in Cinnamon, honey & olive oil and seasoning. It should in all intents and purposes be good to eat, who knows , Ill find out in 5 minutes and let you know!!!!!!