Of Book Launches & Supper Clubs - Chinatown Kitchen

This is a somewhat late post, given my book, Chinatown Kitchen, was published on 2nd April. I've been coming down from an adrenaline high ever since.

To launch my book, I held a party at the fantastic Drapers Arms. Truly, Nick Gibson is the master of being a total ledge - here I was, swanning in with my booze sponsor, Tsing Tao, and making a right ruddy mess of their prep kitchens in making canapés for 80.

Some party rules I learnt: DON'T to be in a situation where you're jointing 20 kilos of chicken wings on the morning of your own party. Those Coca Cola chicken wings did go down well, though. 

DO: Recruit your friends to pass round platters of things to eat. Like these smacked cucumbers. 

DON'T: Over-estimate. Canapés are canapés, not a full dinner. You probably don't need as many as 35 cucumbers. (Thanks Wholegood!) Still, the resident chefs were pretty chuffed with leftovers to pickle. 

DO: Ask your friends to help you out. I thought "naaah, I've got this all sorted" but actually it's nice to have someone around to go "AHHHH! People are arriving in THREE HOURS!" with. And to chop your cucumbers up. Thanks, Sheba! 

DON'T: forget to jot down some semblance of a speech. I am not good at free-styling. Instead, I just blathered on, thanking some people feebly. Oops. 

DO: Bring a Sharpie, to sign books with. 

Photo Courtesy of @LJHale

DON'T: Get drunk and draw willies in peoples' books. Unless they ask for it. 

There were also supper clubs, two nights held at the School of Wok. The School was pretty much the perfect place for me to host a dinner; they had all the right equipment and ingredients. There were made soft-shell crab sliders, udon carbonara, and I even made people eat century eggs, in a scotch egg form. 

Pic courtesy of @chefjeremypang 

Surprisingly, the century eggs were almost 50 / 50 split on favourite dish with the sliders, something that was completely unprecedented; I'd almost put them on the menu as a bit of a challenge! That showed me. 

I've had a lot of fun. Long may it continue. 

To buy the book, you can click here. (Woop! Currently 50% off!)

For more pictures of other peoples' efforts in cooking dishes from Chinatown Kitchen, click on the below.
https://instagram.com/explore/tags/chinatownkitchen/ 

Have you bought the book? Have you cooked anything from it? I'd love to hear from you if so!

A Malaysian Street Food Brunch

When it comes to food, Malaysians know their stuff. Most of their best food is sold on the streets at hawker centres and during my two weeks in Malaysia last year I slurped my way through bowls of noodles while sat on plastic stools, cooling cendol standing on street corners and sticks of satay, barbecue smoke stinging my eyes. We just don't have that kind of culture here, although things are improving with collectives like Eat St., and markets like Berwick Street allowing traders to peddle their wares. But still no Malaysian street food. So, I jumped at the news of Wild Serai's supperclub hosting an Easter Monday street food brunch.

Located in New Malden aka. Korea Town, I battled through driving rain and wind to sit at the lunch table. Two tables were decorated brightly, huge prawn crackers (krupuk) waiting for us to snap our way through them.

Chicken and beef satay was served with a spicy, chunky peanut sauce. The meat was smoky and benefitted from the charcoal it had been grilled on outside. The peanut sauce was so addictive I turned to just slathering it on the red onion and cucumber it was served with.

Mee Goreng was a big towering pile of fried noodles for us to all dig in to. Huge prawns were nestled within and tiny dried anchovies (ikan bilis) topped the dish. The noodles were well balanced, all sweet, savoury and tart and unlike other variations of the dish I've tried even in Malaysia, these were grease-free. I loved their colourful melamine plates.

Rojak is the Malay term for 'mixture', and a rojak salad consists of fruits and vegetables in a fruity, salty sauce. This was a strange one; sweet chunks of pineapple mingled with sour green mango, cucumber and tofu puffs. There was the unmistakable funk of fermented prawn about it. After my initial misgivings, as I speared more and more chunks onto the skewers we were given to eat it from, it became more and more palatable.

We were handed banana leaves to place on our plates for the next course, nasi lemak. At the core of the dish is a spicy sambal sauce, with fragrant coconut rice to eat it with. The rice wafted its perfume towards me as I waited for the rest of the accompaniments. I caved in, the sambal breaking my will. Sweet, spicy and with a hint of lime leaves, the sambal was gorgeous. More of those anchovies created a deep savoury base. My neighbour, Goz explained to me that sambals are all made differently according to taste; some people make theirs spicier, some sweeter. A piece of fried chicken, a couple of boiled quails eggs and some cucumber completed the plate.

I was pretty stuffed by now and grateful for the break that came in between courses. Roti jala, a type of pancake made by creating a lattice from the batter was to come. It was less crisp than I imagined, but it went well with the rich, coconutty curry sauce.

I love Asian desserts; tapioca pearls, jellies, beans and shaved ice feature a lot in hawker centre desserts. Cendol is probably the most famous, with those little green worms. We had ice kakang and beneath the shaved ice drizzled with coloured palm sugar syrup, sweetcorn mingled with red beans, sea coconut and fruit jellies. The most prominent was the honeydew melon jelly. This revived me.

To finish, cups of teh tarik - a type of black tea sweetened with condensed milk, and then poured at a high height to create a foam - reminded me of my childhood. A four hour brunch was perfect for a rainy day, and at £25 per head I felt like I was ripping them off since so much work goes into supper clubs (where do they keep all that crockery?!). It was as good as any street food I had in Penang.

Their next event is a seafood feast and you can book tickets here.