Who ate all the pies?

Quite clearly... it's me that's eaten all the pies! Today my dinner consisted of a Pieminister Moo Pie that is basically a steak and ale pie. I first came across the Pieminister brand at a friend's house and at the time they were only available from Ocado. However, recently I've started to notice them showing up in my local Tesco and the Junk Food Connoisseur just couldn't resist.

The Pieminister range is certainly in the Premier League of pies where as Holland's I'm afraid to say would be lucky to get into the Championship. At £2.99 each they aren't exactly cheap and is certainly something you should only be treating yourself to occasionally (read on for more reasons).

The filling within the pie is very generous, the steak very tender and sauce was exceptionally tasty. I generally prefer my pies to be slightly moist but the filling is more than sufficient and additional gravy wasn't required. At 643 calories, the Moo pie is rather epic and with some additional trimmings it can easily top the 1000 calories mark for a single meal.

As mentioned above, the Pieminister range is available from Ocado/Waitrose and most recently Tesco. Their website states that the pies are also available in pubs and restaurants.  They have a large range of different fillings and also produce sausage rolls and sweet pies. I'm having a difficult time deciding which filling to try next, suggestions welcome!

Lady of Leisure

Today was day four of being a lady gentleman of leisure and I'm thoroughly enjoying the time off work. The day began with a brisk run to work up an appetite (as if I need to, who am I kidding?) before heading out for dim sum with my grandparents, uncle and aunt. Remember kids, I may ramble on about unhealthy food and snacks but I want to promote regular exercise in your life you couch potatoes.

My family are regulars at Tai Wu on a Wednesday so it was nice to finally be able to join them for their last visit there this year. Besides, it's been a while since I've been for dim sum and with the knowledge that this day was dawning the cravings had developed.

For those that don't know, dim sum is essentially like tapas where food is served in small plates with multiples of each item. The idea is to go in a party so that you can order numerous different dishes and sample many if not all of them as each item is generally bite-size.

I'd say that a majority of the dishes are steam-cooked or deep fried. The most common items are probably the steamed dumplings, steamed buns and steamed rice noodle rolls. The dishes popular with Chinese people are chicken feet and beef tripe. It is also quite common to order a main dish of rice or noodles to accompany the smaller dishes and again this shared between you and your party.

Unfortunately I have no photos to show you as I was far too hungry to remember to take them. Terrible aren't I? Looks like you'll just have to drag yourselves down to Chinatown one lunchtime and visit the various establishments that serve dim sum. The most popular places are Tai Wu, Tai Pan, Glamorous and Pacific with some of them providing a trolley service during certain days of the week so that you see before you pick. Happy feasting but remember to exercise regularly!

An unlikely candidate

It's not often that a new snack hits the market and makes such an impression on me. Especially when it's a snack produced by a company that's renown for making bread. It's my Uncle I have to thank for introducing me to Warburton's New Baked Pitta Chips. Some would say I'm a marketer's dream when it comes to food in particular snacks.

Warburton's claim that they contain a third less fat than regular chips which is a bonus for the waistline especially in the lead up to Christmas. However, fat content has never been a attribute to judge a snack on. As a side note, they are offering two bags for £2 at Ocado so grab them quick. Who says I don't offer money saving tips as well?

I've tried both the Sea Salt & Cracked Black Pepper and Sour Cream & Chive and must say the latter tastes far superior. The flavour is very intense and from that first bite you find yourself wanting more.

Having done some research, the baked pitta chips are available in the following flavours:

• Sea Salt & Malt Vinegar
• Sea Salt & Cracked Black Pepper
• Sour Cream & Chive
• Oriental BBQ

Overall verdict, tasty and very moreish. Don't say I didn't warn you but you'll find yourself fighting with your friends over the last chip!

Just another munching Monday

Today was the beginning of my last week in Singapore. I've thoroughly enjoyed my time here so far and the people in the office have been very accommodating.

For lunch today we visited a clay pot rice restaurant. It was a relief to find we were dining in a air conditioned establishment. I've never had to sweat so hard for my meals before.

I went for the chicken clay pot as did most of our group. It's not too dissimilar to a bibimbap except the contents is cooked as the pot is heated. As well as chicken (least that's what they told us it was) it contained Chinese sausage, salty fish, green veg and Chinese mushroom. It's a good mix and the sauce it's cooked in is very tasty. However, a bibimbap would still get the nod over it for me because of the hot sauce, tastier meat and the egg on top to garnish.




Accompanied with this was a plate of Thai style bean curd. Im not a big fan of bean curd unless it's cooked in a sauce so didn't particularly enjoy it. This was simply a plate of plain bean curd garnishes with some nuts, lettuce and sweet chilli sauce. A rather lame effort in my opinion.




After work we made the short stroll over to Chinatown. A few side dishes were ordered that are certainly worth a mention.

First up is carrot cake that doesn't contain carrot and is made from flour. Very tasty and quite "Cheung fun" like.




Secondly we have Rotak which is a local dish that basically contains a lot of random crap in a sauce topped with nuts. This includes cucumber, pineapple, water chestnuts and many others.




I wasn't so keen on this one as I'm not particularly convinced the mixture works very well. Am I being too harsh? After all it's not exactly an episode of MasterChef.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Outram Rd,,Singapore

International delights

It's now been 4 full days in Singapore and although I've not posted until now it doesn't mean I've not been out and about sampling the various delights.

Today's lunch was a bit of a surprise, I left it to the capable hands of one of my colleagues here. We ventured out to the nearby hawker market again where there are 80 different stalls. The sauna like conditions in this semi open food court aren't the best way to spend lunch but the value and choice available certainly makes this worthwhile. There are numerous oscillating fans located around the market but this simply isn't sufficient to prevent you from perspiring (nor any amount of Lynx deodorant).

I'd already been informed it would be Ayam Penyet (Indonesian smashed fried chicken) but had no idea what to expect.







As you can see above it's basically a piece of fried chicken leg accompanied with rice, slice of omelette, vegetables and extremely spicy chilli sauce. If you examine carefully, plastic cutlery (fork and spoon!) was provided. To my surprise I was able to gentally scrap off small pieces of chicken with a flimsy plastic fork. The chicken is well flavoured and coated in a thin but tasty batter. It was also seasoned with what appeared to be breadcrumbs but I'm still unable to determine exactly what this was. This is a very nice alternative to something like KFC and possibly healthier.

Having sweated from a combination of the hot surroundings and spicy sauce I felt the need to cool myself down before the short walk back to the office in the midday sun. What better way to do this than to opt for a dessert containing ice. I've had variations of the strawberry sago in other locations throughout Asia and unfortunately this didn't quite meet those standards. Still, it was refreshing and just what you need in the humidity.

Stay tuned for more regular updates. With less than a week left here I've still plenty on my list to sample.







- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Moh Guan Terrace,Singapore,Singapore

Mamma Mia

Pizza has become the nation's favourite party food with Domino's with consistently seeing increase in profits. It has to be agreed that it is the ideal food to share with friends or in my case to consume all by myself.

This week my colleague described this new frozen pizza he had tried as "fit" but then he does have a way with words. I've often found that we both have similar taste in food (and women). He was the one that introduced me to the Dr Oetker Ristorante thin based pizza range and when he informed me of a new range I just had to try it for myself. It'd be rude to not to when it's been described as "fit". Their website describes it as "The Ultimate Homemade Pizza Taste".

With the above in mind, I popped down to my supermarket and picked up two frozen Casi Di Mama Daviola pizzas as they were on offer. There's always the likelihood when purchasing two that I might not like it but then there isn't much to dislike with a pepperoni pizza. As with most pizzas it takes around 15 minutes in the oven but where it differs is there is a baking sheet attached to the base.

The crust had risen during the baking giving it quite a authentic fresh look to it. This certainly gave it a restaurant style feel to the crust and was considerably soft like fresh bread. There's a nice kick to the pizza thanks to a few chillies.

Overall I'd give this a 9/10, a stuffed crust would probably make it a mind blowing perfect ten. I'm in Singapore now for the next 10 days so hopefully there will be a few updates.

Variety is the spice of life!

We all love a bit of choice in our life and I'm no exception, especially when it comes to food. It's one of the reasons why I particularly enjoy buffets, tapas and dim sum so much. When Tesco had an offer on for Gu desserts last week I couldn't decide which cheesecake option to purchase. Eventually I purchased both Chocolate and Vanilla and the Lemon flavoured cheesecakes. To be fair, you wouldn't expect any less from me now would you?

The best way to compare the two flavours was to consume them side by side on the same evening. The 300+ calories in each (about 700 in both) didn't deter me one bit. If that wasn't bad enough I couldn't help but eat the remaining two on the following night. It's a good job I enjoy exercising almost as much as I enjoy my food.

If you've never had a Gu cheesecake before they are packaged in a glass jar that can give your dinner guests the impression that you made them yourself. They can also double as a sauce container or candle holder afterwards. I decided to begin with the chocolate & vanilla flavour and with the initial bite you immediately hit with the richness of the chocolate. It certainly overpowers any vanilla flavouring that exists. I quickly demolished this to move on to the lemon flavour with a hope that the taste wouldn't be so strong. It's certainly not as rich as the chocolate flavour and the lemon rind that it's topped with certainly helps balance out the sweetness.

Overall I'd have to say the lemon flavoured cheesecake gets my vote but unfortunately I refuse to purchase these until they are on offer again. I do like to get value for money and at the time of writing, approximately 700 calories for £1.64 (Tesco) is pretty good going!