Tero Pikala

Oh well. I’m not really a fan of prepared food but then again I just don’t have time to make proper food every day just for myself.

Patak’s has reasonably ok Indian meal Chicken Madras. First time I tried it I didn’t believe instructions that say I can heat it in it’s own container (in oven):

And guess what: After I had warmed it up in a oven still getting warm for less than 10 minutes packaging looks like this:

I will try to find their email address and send some complaints. If I would have just left it into oven for 40 minutes it could have been pretty dangerous in my opinion.

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Banana Store restaurant close to Borough Market has quite interesting idea:

Buy whatever food you want from Borough Market, take it to them and they will cook it for you. It costs 10 pounds per person making it quite reasonable considering that proper meal is easily 30-40 pounds here.

I scanned their leaflet for more information (and some neck bending… )

I haven’t tried this, it’s only commencing tomorrow, but definitely will soon. I just hope their chefs are good, it takes some courage to promise to make food of anything exotic that you can find at the market!

Tags: Food, London by tero
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Some background: I had some excellent mussels couple of years ago in Notting Hill bar. Not your typical white wine ones - they were cooked in coconut curry. Because I thought it would be typical Thai cousine I tried to order same thing in Thailand couple of times - and always I was presented with red curry with typical chicken/pork/potatoes replaced with mussel meat. It was always good but not what I was looking for. I’ve even asked kitchen pros how to make that stuff.
Today I picked some food from my favourite Borough Market and decided to have some mussels as well. First attempt at Google gave reasonable recipe and I adjusted that to what I had available:

End results looked like this - I can imagine you getting hungry right now

First taste was definitely “wow”. If possible it was even better than what I recalled from my earlier experience. I think it was due high quality of mussels mostly (just couple of broken shells, not a single dead ones!) - they were just real soft and delicious, nothing like those frozen one’s I’ve cooked before.

If you wish to give it a try here’s what I did:

1 table spoon of butter

1 lemon crass, smashed and in 1 inch pieces

2 inch piece of ginger; chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped

2 tomatoes, chopped

1 table spoon of thai curry paste

1 can of coconut milk

splash of fish sauce / nam pla

mussels (I don’t know how much, look at the picture..)
0. Check mussels, discard those that don’t close when knocked or are cracked. Remove any seaweed if you like.
1. Heat butter
2. Cook spices
3. Add tomatoes, cook while
4. Add curry paste, cook while
5. Add coconut milk.
6. Let it simmer until you are ready to server, hopefully not more than 10 mins.
7. Add mussels, cook about 3-5 minutes
8. Don’t eat those that are not open.

If you don’t have some of the ingredients just skip them or use something else. My chili was pretty hot and it would be better to keep it reasonable, point is to taste mussels, not chili! Coriander wouldn’t hurt if you like it, I forgot to throw some in as I typically do.
This is really easy and mussels are quite cheap so why not to give it a try!

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Yes, I did know that they sell Spam here but I was still smiling when I found 3 different kind of Spam tins in supermarket.

Atleast I know what I’ll get for Christmas to my geek friends

    Google

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In my never-ending quest to find differences in food between Finland and UK latest experience was yesterday at my favourite coffee shop in Borough Market.

I was having coffee with my Italian colleague and managed to make him try filtered coffee - for first time in his life! I think that in Finland 95% of the coffee consumed is filtered and for example my parents probably haven’t had other kind of coffee more than couple of times in their life. On the side note, Finns drink most coffee in the world per person, at least according to this study.
I’m mostly into latte but when I realized how excellent their filtered coffee is I don’t order anything else at that place.  Beans are grinded and coffee is individually filtered after you have placed your order - it doesn’t get much better than that!

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In my guest to find differences in food between Finland and U.K. I have noticed one rather significant difference: In Finland sausages are almost always pre-cooked and could be eaten as is and in U.K. it’s almost the opposite.

Both countries have small sausages (’nakit’ in Finnish) which are cooked in both countries but they are so bad that I don’t have any reason to buy them expect when making hot dogs (and that’s maybe 2 times a year)
I think getting sausages fresh is really great and recently bough for example ones made from wild boar from Borough Market.

Tags: Food, London by tero
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We had company Christmas party last week and dessert was local speciality, Christmas Pudding.

I usually try almost anything (spiders and cocroaches will be skipped, though) and did also try this one. Even though I was pretty drunk at that point there was no way I could have eaten that cake.

That said, I really think it’s something my father would love and I’ll bring some to home when I’ll get there for Christmas.

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