Europe Meets Asia: Food

Cheer your last days of winter with a glass of Mulled Wine

When it comes to the last days of February, probably you are also feeling tired of waking up each and every morning with a cold and dark weather outside, not to mention the seemingly never ending snowfalls and early dusk.

While longing for the early signs of spring and sunshine, I suggest to make your late winter days cozier with a cup of mulled wine.

Mulled wine is quite similar to the hot toddy and it is a traditional holiday treat in many European countries. During the preparation we add spices and sweets to the wine and we slightly heat it up, thus it warms and spices up our mood as well for the cold days.

It is very easy to prepare it by yourself, you only need a bottle of wine, and some common spices that are easily accessible in supermarkets. During a gathering of friends or a party it can easily cheer up the atmosphere, and carry along with it delicious and sweet fragrances.

Here is my favourite receipt for Mulled Wine from Jamie Oliver:

Ingredients:

2 clementines
1 lemon
1 lime
200 g caster sugar
6 whole cloves
1 stick cinnamon
3 fresh bay leaves
1 whole nutmeg, for grating
1 vanilla pod, halved lengthways
2 star anise
2 bottles Chianti or orther Italian red wine

Peel large sections of peel from your clementines, lemon and lime using a speed peeler. Put the sugar in a large saucepan over a medium heat, add the pieces of peel and squeeze in the clementine juice. Add the cloves, cinnamon stick, bay leaves and about 10 to 12 gratings of nutmeg. Throw in your halved vanilla pod and stir in just enough red wine to cover the sugar.

Let this simmer until the sugar has completely dissolved into the red wine and then bring to the boil. Keep on a rolling boil for about 4 to 5 minutes, or until you've got a beautiful thick syrup. The reason I'm doing this first is to create a wonderful flavour base by really getting the sugar and spices to infuse and blend well with the wine. It's important to do make a syrup base first because it needs to be quite hot, and if you do this with both bottles of wine in there you'll burn off the alcohol.

When your syrup is ready, turn the heat down to low and add your star anise and the rest of the wine. Gently heat the wine and after around 5 minutes, when it's warm and delicious, ladle it into glasses and serve.

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/uncategorised-recipes/jamie-s-mulled-wine

Enjoy!!!

The Famous Hungarian lángos

Some weeks ago I was wandering the streets of Budapest, and I bumped into this small hut, where they were busy with making some world famous Hungarian old fashioned bread lángos.

Bread lángos is basically a fried flat bread made of dough with flour, yeast and salt.

According to some sources it originates from the 16-17th century, when the Turkish troops invaded the country, and occupied almost half of it for over a century. Some food historians say that it has close links with the Turkish pita bread.

Traditionally - when people still used brick ovens for baking - on the day when the new bread was made, there always remained some pieces which were baked close to the flames, or on the stone, and they were served for breakfast with onion, sour cream or marmalade. That was lángos for the old times.

In modern times, we no longer bake them in ovens, instead it is cooked in deep fried oil and later it is served with different toppings.

The most popular type of it is with sour cream, cheese and some garlic, called the Sajtos-tejfölös lángos. It is very popular at times of summer festivals, or on the beach next to lake Balaton for lunchtime. Other types of lángos can be served with mushroom, meat, quark cheese, cabbage, bacon or even with sausage.

It's a must at times of festivals in Hungary.

Try & Enjoy!

Dorina Gyurkócza

A Modern Filipino Food

ROMULO'S
Cuisine: Filipino
Price range: 160-700PHP

Living in China as an expat, I do miss Filipino food sometimes. Cooking a genuine Filipino food requires of course Filipino ingredients which apparently can only be found in Philippines and sadly I forgot to pack. And due to some visa issues, I was lucky to be in Manila for a week after my holiday in Hongkong. I guess it was somewhat a meant of fate. And this time, I made sure I packed everything.

Being in Manila for a week was enough to get my Filipino buds back to shape. From our famous Adobo to Halo-halo dessert, yes I certainly didn’t skip any of them despite my self-proclaimed healthy gym freak. Anyway, it is just a week of Filipino heaven delights.
Usually whenever I meet new friends in Shanghai, they would ask me to explain what Filipino food is like. And most of the time, I find it hard to explain. For me, it is a bit more about experiencing it than just talking about it. But in any case, it actually gave me an idea on writing an overview about Filipino food since many people were asking about it. And who else would be better to write an article about it but a person who comes from the country with 7,107 magnificent islands.

As I was in Manila, I decided to meet my best friends in a Filipino restaurant called Romulo’s. Despite my friends having Filipino food almost every day, they were very excited about the idea of a get-together and my article about Filipino food.

Romulo’s was taken from the name of the former eighth president of the Philippines, Carlos P. Romulo. The owner of the restaurant Sandie Squillantini is the granddaughter of the late president and was inspired to put up a restaurant focusing on Filipino comfort food.

The place was an old house renovated into a restaurant. The exterior looks quite simple with lightings as their major accent. The interior is very modern with black and white wall ensembles and furniture giving it a sleek and sophisticated style. This modern type of restaurant seemed to be the“in” thing in Manila right now. Menus are in Tagalog with an English description and their servers can speak in both languages (quite normal in Philippines) fluently.

The food was impressively good. Despite the fact that every house in the city can have the same dishes, they made it quite special that people keep coming back. A distinguished taste can be well identified on each dish making you appreciate the food more. My personal favorite is the Lola Virginia’s Chicken Relleno. I am in love with it, it is definitely a must-try! Their servings are good for 3-4 people. Though the desserts are not so good, better go to a dessert bar somewhere close.

Here are some of the foods we ordered.

Lola Virginia’s Chicken Relleno (1/2 Chicken)
Description: Roasted Chicken stuffed with ground pork, raisins, chorizo and peas
Price: 250PHP

Bangus Belly in Banana Leaves
Description: Milkfish belly served in banana leaves with special sauce
Price: 295PHP

Ginataang Sigarillas with Tinapa
Description: Vegetable with coconut milk and slices of dried fish
Price: 180PHP

Strawberry Cheesecake
Price: 180PHP

Chocolate Cake
Price: 160PHP

Sansrival

Price: 180PHP

The Verdict
Food: 4/5
Service: 2/5
Ambience: 3/5
Overall experience: 3/5

Contact details
Address: 32 Scout Tuason corner Dr. Lazcano Tomas Morato, Quezon City

Contact number: +632332-7275

Website: http://romulocafe.com

Opening Hours:

Monday - Sunday

Lunch - 11:00 am to 3:00 pm

Dinner - 6:00 pm to 11:00 pm

Catherine Valencia

Hongkong's Floating Restaurant

JUMBO KINGDOM
Cuisine: Cantonese and Seafood
Price range: 130-500HKD

Traveling to a foreign country for the first time, we are all expected to be googling the top restaurants and bars existing in the country or probably had asked a friend or two on whereabouts to eat based on their own travel experience. Better yet if you are lucky enough, a friend living in town for years would even be a better source. But most of the time we find ourselves in the same restaurants as other tourists are, which ends up with long queues during holidays. But anyway, it would be quite an interesting story for the next dinner with your friends. And you know that yeah-I’ve-been-there-It’s-cool when you talk to the first timers? Yeah..makes you feel like a pro.

Jumbo Kingdom is no different; it has been in Hongkong for 36 years. But with regards to restaurants, you know it’s good when it stayed in the mainstream for years. It is a fine-dining Cantonese and Seafood restaurant that took four years and millions of dollars to be designed and built. The style is of a gorgeous, exquisite ancient Chinese imperial palace you would think you are entering a Chinese palace and even inside, it really does look like one.
Mainly, our dining table was set with a heavy black stone carved with ancient Chinese writing as a placemat with a nicely folded embroidered cloth as our table napkin. There was a mini statue of Buddha as a centerpiece, which they put away when the dishes are to be served.

The food was impeccably Chinese but Cantonese, which is totally different from many other Chinese food I should say.

But it was quite an experience. I found myself having a Cantonese dinner with 7 Kazakhs in Hongkong. Talking about global fusion in this blog is certainly well applied in my personal life as well.

Here are a few of what we have tried. My personal favorite was the Peking Duck.