Roast Cockerel Stuffed with Chinese Glutinous Rice

A worried text came through from my housemate. 'Your chicken's arrived, feet and all. I gave it a poke, and, er... I think there's something inside it.' I laughed knowingly; the giblets are all inside a bag inside the chicken, of course! I carried on drinking my drink and dancing my dance without a worry in my mind. 5 hours later I stumbled back to South East London, bleary-eyed and my stomach churning. I hauled the big bird out of the fridge and visibly withered away. My dear housemate wasn't lying. Not only did it have enormous, dinosaur-like claws, THE HEAD WAS STILL ATTACHED. Wrapped up in a plastic bag, like some sort of morbid veil. There was no visible hole, which meant... oh god. The insides were still in.

I flapped (sorry) around the kitchen screeching, giggling and hyperventilating simultaneously. It was as heavy as a 4 month-old baby. I thought of my task ahead and a little retch began to take hold at the base of my throat. I was panicking. I'm squeamish, alright?

At that moment, my other housemate strode through the door, tanned and Adonis-like, the vision of manliness, and he took charge. 'Find me a YouTube video and we'll sort this.' I hid behind a door.  


'Shit, I don't know if I can do this.' 

'HARGH! Huuurrrgghhh.' Squelch-squelch-hack-splinter-squelch.

'Oooh look it's working'.

And like that, my housemate has become my new hero. Even if I did jump and scream from his careful positioning of the claws.

It was all a misunderstanding really. The lovely people at The Ginger Pig asked me to come up with a recipe for the new chickens they'll be selling. Bred in Lincolnshire / Leicestershire and hand plucked, they are offering either pullets (hens) or larger cockerels. I'd been asked whether I wanted the feet on mine, and thinking they'd be small delicate ones - you know, like the kind you have at dim sum - I said yes. Never again.

I wanted something special for this cockerel. Something to be a centre piece, to have everyone ooh'ing and ahhing over it, and something different from your usual. I decided to stuff it. Glutinous rice studded with sweet, porky Chinese sausage would soak up the fat from the bird well. Flavoured with shiitake mushrooms, made plump by the cock's juices (stop it) and finished off with a little dried mandarin peel for a tart dimension, this is quite a traditional Chinese dish. The skin is marinated in aromatics and basted well and often for a deep chrome colour. A little rice, some chicken and greenery made a different kind of Sunday roast, but a gorgeous one nonetheless. This beast feeds 6; at £8.50 / kg you can buy them here. You don't have to get yours with guts and claws.

And how does a cockerel taste? They take a lot of cooking, especially when stuffed. This one was in the oven for 4 hours, but when it came out the meat was tender and gamey, a hint of farmyard about it. The skin was tougher than a chicken's but by no means too tough; the flavour of the meat stood up to that ballsy filling well. It's not a quick recipe, but with a bit of planning ahead it should be relatively straight-forward. Don't be afraid of the blackened, gunky bits - these are quite delicious or you can scrape it off a little to reveal the gorgeous mahogany colour beneath.   

Cockerel Stuffed with Glutinous Rice 

Feeds 6 as a cockerel, 4 if a chicken 

To do the night before:  

 350gr glutinous rice, washed well and soaked in water overnight 

Mix together:  

 4 tbsp oyster sauce 

2 tbsp dark soy 

4 tbsp light soy 

6 cloves of garlic, mushed in a pestle and mortar 

1 inch of ginger, minced  

2 tbsp dark brown sugar  

1 tsp level of five spice  

Mix this all together and cover your bird in it. Leave for a few hours, or preferably overnight. Don't throw leftover marinade away.  

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C.   

For the filling:  3 lap cheong, sliced thinly (Chinese sausage, you can buy it at the Chinese supermarket) 

6 shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated in hot water. Reserve the soaking juices.   

2 inches of ginger, minced  

4 cloves of garlic, minced  

1 dried mandarin peel (you can buy this in Asian supermarkets), soaked in hot water  

3 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine, or sherry  

1 tsp dark soy sauce  

3 tbsp light soy sauce  

6 stalks of spring onion, chopped roughly.   

1 tbsp cooking oil  

Fry the garlic and ginger gently with the lap cheong. Remove the stems from the mushrooms and cut into bite-sized pieces. Add to the pot. Add the mandarin peel, chopped roughly. Add the soy sauces, rice wine / sherry and the rice and toss to coat the rice. Take off the heat and add the spring onions.  Stuff the rice back into the cavity of the bird - do not overstuff as the rice expands.  

Roast - my 2.5kg cockerel took around 4 hours as I cooked in on a lower temperature. For the beginning, I added the mushroom juices into the pan and then covered with foil and cooked it for 2 hours, then removed the foil, basted with any remaining marinade and roasted it a little higher for the rest of the time, again basting every half hour or so. Leave to rest in a warm place (like the oven, switched off with the door ajar) for half an hour.  

Carve so that everyone gets some rice, and serve with some greens, like spinach stir-fried with garlic. 

Sausage & Egg Not-Mc-Muffin

I'll admit it, I'm a bit of a sucker for a Maccy D's breakfast. Pure filth, but when you're still a bit drunk from the night before and you need to get something hot, fatty and so salty your bum reaches down for a drink when you go to the loo, there's nothing like it. There is always an element of shame attached to them, so I usually eat them on the move, trying the hide the McMuffin within the folds of my napkin as I hungrily devour it. Accompanied by a hash brown (no finer than theirs, I'll wager) dipped in some ketchup, it is a make-or-break. And trust me, I have been on the break end of the scale and yet I still love them. 

The wilds of East Dulwich don't have such an establishment though (dahling), so I set to making one of my own. This was the posh muffin, no Mc in sight. Lincolnshire sausages from the local butcher were relieved of their skins and shaped into patties, their slight herbiness working well but not overwhelming for a breakfast. Duck eggs were fried in a chef's ring to get the perfect disc shape, the yolk still wobbly and bursting forth from the toasted muffin, rendering it a happily messy breakfast. I forgot the slappy cheese - how could I?! - so instead, some finely grated cheddar for a cheesy savoury hit. McDonald's, I need never visit you again (except for your delicious hash browns. Dammit.). 

Sausage & Egg Not-Mc-Muffin

Serves 4

4 English muffins
4 duck eggs (oh fine, normal will do I SUPPOSE) 
100gr cheddar, or 4 slices of slappy cheese
5 Lincolnshire sausages
Butter
A little cooking oil

Squeeze the sausage meat out of the skins. This bit is gross and sticky. Season with a few twists of black pepper - they don't need salt. Wet your hands and shape into patties slightly larger than the muffin (as they'll shrink a little when they're cooking). Fry in a non-stick dry frying pan gently for 15 minutes (or longer, depending on thickness). Meanwhile, grate your cheese finely. Toast your muffins and butter them, then add an even layer of cheese to the bottom of the muffin. 

Oil the chef's ring so that the egg doesn't stick to it and place it in the non stick pan with a drop of oil. Wait till the ring is hot, then crack an egg into it - I had to do this one at a time as I only had one ring, so watch out for that. Using a chopstick, run around the chef's ring so that the egg white doesn't stick to it. Fry until the white is set (I hate flobby whites) and the yolk is still soft. This is easier if you place a plate or something on top to keep the heat in. Place your sausage patty on top of the cheese, then top with the egg and the top of the muffin.

Serve with napkins. 

Uncle Lau's Teochew Recipes

When Epigram Books contacted me asking whether I wanted to review a copy of their Heritage cookbooks, I jumped at the chance; it's very rare to see a Teochew cookbook available here. I love Teochew food, but have a very limited knowledge of it, and there aren't many (if any?) restaurants in London serving this kind of food.

Teochew people are native to the Guangdong province of China, but as far as I know most Teochew people (at least, the cuisine) is mostly found in Singapore and Malaysia. Teochew cuisine, in my limited experience, involves a lot of braised dishes and judging by this cookbook, is heavy on seafood. I recognised a lot of dishes listed, such as preserved radish omelette, but there are also a lot of intriguing dishes that I can't wait to make, like fish bladder soup. Yup, I have the dried bladders, all ready for a day I'm feeling brave.

The book is very simply laid out. If you're someone who likes a lot of glossy, heavily styled pictures of dishes then it is not really for you, as it has none. Instead, all the recipes are simply laid out within a clean, simple border. The introduction is a sweet story about the author's father, a self-taught cook, who the recipes are from. A lot of the ingredients from the book aren't available in normal supermarkets, but have a wander around the Asian supermarkets or a browse online and you're likely to find what you want.

I wanted to try the most straightforward of the recipes, so I went for Braised Pork Spare Ribs - come on, of course it was going to be pork! - or, Ang Sio Bak Kut. I had to do a little butchery to get the ribs down to the size I needed them, but otherwise it was very easy indeed. The ribs, on the bone were flavoursome and tender. The star of the show might have been the mushrooms which soaked up all the porky, cinnamon star anise flavour to fill your mouth with deliciousness and my friends I had round raved about them.

Ang Sio Bak Kut

Serves 6 with other dishes

1.5 kg pork spare ribs, cut into 3 - 4cm pieces - I left these a little larger; use a cleaver or a brute force 1/2 tsp salt   1.5 tbsp dark soy 
75ml Shaoxing rice wine 
20gr ginger 
4 - 6 stalks of spring onion, cut into 6cm lengths 
10 - 12 dried shiitake mushrooms - soak in hot water to soften and remove the stems 
4 tbsp light soy sauce 
1 - 2 star anise 
3cm stick of cinnamon (I used cassia bark) 
1 dried mandarin peel 
1.5 tsp rock sugar 
1 sprig coriander to garnish (I went for spring onion)

Place the spare ribs in a bowl and rub with the salt and the dark soy sauce. Transfer to a heavy bottomed casserole and pour in 100ml water and the Shaoxing rice wine. Add the ginger and spring onoins. Bring to a boil and then reduce the hear, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Halfway through cooking, turn the ribs over.

Squeeze the excess water from the mushrooms and add to the pot with 1/2 cup of the mushroom water. Add the light soy sauce, the cinnamon, star anise, mandarin peel and rock sugar. You can use a muslin bag for this - instead I had my guests look out for it in case they munched on it. Simmer for another hour, uncovered; add more water if it's looking dry. The sauce should have a syrupy consistency when it is done. If the sauce is too thick, add water.

Taste, adjust seasoning and garnish.

I also made Stir-Fried Vegetarian Stew (Chap Chye) but I ballsed that up quite royally by misreading the recipe and then running out of time. Instead of a soupy dish made with glass noodles, I ended up with a stir-fried rice vermicelli. It was still good though, despite my misunderstanding.

If I have any gripes about the book, I found that the page numbers being in the top left hand corner of the page difficult to flick through and find what I wanted easily. There aren't any suggestions on how many each dish might serve, but from what I can gather it seems to be 6, with other dishes as is typical of Chinese meals. Otherwise, I loved the book.

I can't find it for sale anywhere online but you can contact Epigram Books (based in Singapore) here if you want a copy.

Clams in Black Bean Sauce

I love clams. My earliest memory of them was eating them drenched in black bean sauce on Lamma Island off Hong Kong; meaty ones, without a hint of grit. Huge platters were bought to the table for you to feast on, and I had eyes only for them. Well, them and the buckets of prawns fried with garlic. I would squirm on my sweaty plastic chair, the sea breeze cooling us, grabbing at more clam shells and greedily scooping out its contents. It wasn't a pretty sight.  

Unfortunately I don't often see clams on sale much, so when I did I took the opportunity to grab a bag of them. My eyes widened when I saw that they cost £20 (Waitrose for you), but as a treat I swallowed my gasp. You can use mussels for this though, if they're too difficult to get hold of, or too pricy. 

Black bean is a strong flavour, but one that still allows the sweetness of the clams to shine through nicely. Eaten on top of some steamed white rice to absorb the juices, this was one to tackle with your hands, clattering away at the table. I served this with some simply steamed greens; the clams were made short work of, and we had the bonus of some flavoursome rice afterwards.

Clams in Black Bean Sauce

Serves 4

2kg clams, alive - keep them in the fridge win a bowl draped in a wet cloth 
1 red pepper, sliced into thin strips 
4 cloves of garlic, minced 
3" piece of ginger, minced 
1 tbsp dark soy sauce 
1 tsp soy sauce 
1 tbsp Chinese black vinegar 
1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine - or sherry 
1 tsp sugar 3 tbsp fermented black beans, rinsed - you can buy this at a Chinese supermarket 
1 heaped tsp cornflour, slaked with 2 tbsp water 
2 spring onions, sliced on the slant 
350ml water

Steamed white rice to serve.

Rinse the clams under running water for a good 15 minutes. Leave to drain. Meanwhile, smash up the black beans in a pestle and mortar with the garlic and minced ginger. Heat up some oil in a wok, and then fry the ginger, garlic and black beans gently.

Add the red pepper, and fry gently until softened. Add the water, and bring to a simmer. Add the clams followed by the soy sauces, vinegar, rice wine and sugar. Put the lid on and steam for a couple of minutes (I used foil) and then add the cornflour and toss well. The clams should now be open and cooked, but if not just carry on tossing them around the pan until they do on a medium heat. The sauce should be glossy and should cling to the clams, if not you need a little more cornflour mixed with water, cooked into the sauce. Serve in a big bowl, garnished with the spring onion, with rice on the side.

The Draft House, East Dulwich

It has been 3 months since I moved to East Dulwich and I still don't particularly feel like I've settled in. Lordship Lane, its backbone, is lined with expensive furniture shops, wine bars and nice cafes, a far cry from the 24 hour Londis that I used to live opposite. Now I miss its impressive array of instant noodles and instead, I can grab myself a loaf of sourdough for Saturday brunch, previously unheard of. I don't know why I reject it so; I imagine it's because I feel more of an affinity to the skint art students of New Cross than I do with the moneyed young parents wheeling their prams along the Lane.

In any case, at least I have several nice pubs to pretend I'm still a skint student in. The most recently opened is The Draft House, fourth of its kind, which I was recently invited to for a burger and a beer.

Bedecked in its signature green furniture, I was amused to hear they'd used parcel paper for the wallpaper. 'Foot-long' pork scratchings are so before they're cooked; once puffed up and ready for munching, they're served poking out of a glass. Salty and with the right amount of squidge underneath the skin, these were a great little nibble.

The Draft House have their own take on the current on-trend soft-yolked scotch egg. Served with a curried mayonnaise, the meat around the egg is gently spiced with a little sweetness. A big beast, I managed 3/4 before I got scared I wouldn't be able to finish my burger. If I liked beer more - sorry, it's true - this would make a great Sunday afternoon snack with a pint. As it happens, it goes well with cider too.

The menu is split into 3 burgers, with a few other salad / pasta mains. I went for The Poke; a burger with chillis, cheese and battered onion rings within. Requested medium, the burger was a bit overdone but the chillis had a proper kick. I squished the thinly battered onions into the cheese and patty for easy eating, and the salad came on the side so that you could construct your own. Besides the over-cooking issues, it was a decent burger in a sweet, sesame bun. Chips were thin and crisp - my favourite - and skin-on.

With its wide selection of craft beers, The Draft House looks welcome to the scene; on a Wednesday night it was pleasantly busy, and not just with crusty-bearded beer nerds (I know, I know, beer is cool now). Now all I have to do is start loving beer and then The Draft House and I would be inseparable. 


The Draft House

21 Lordship Lane,
London SE22 8EW

Salted Caramel Cheesecake

Salty caramel cheesecake. Just those words strike fear in any dieters heart, but joy in mine. There's no greater contrast than the sticky sweetness of the caramel, with savoury undertones making it deeply addictive. Crushed amaretti biscuits form the base of the cheesecake, lending its almond flavour to the otherwise plain cheesecake filling. 

It's not the kind of cheesecake you can plough through in one sitting with a spoon. This stuff is rich. Decadence doesn't even come near it. Thin slices are the way forward, unless you want to lie beached on your couch like I currently am. 

I used a pie dish as I seem to have lost my cake tin, so if you have one I'd recommend using a springform cake tin to make it easier to remove. 


Salted Caramel Cheesecake


Serves 8? It's big.


1 x 200gr packet of Amaretti biscuits crushed with a rolling pin
60gr butter
1 tbsp sugar


Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Melt the butter and toss with the Amaretti biscuits and the sugar. Press into and up the sides of a greased pie dish / springform cake tin measuring 9" across the base. Bake for 15 minutes, until browned (I left mine in a little too long so keep an eye on it). Remove and leave to cool.


2 x 200gr cream cheese
100gr caster sugar
120ml double cream
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs


In a mixer, attach the paddle attachment and mix the cream cheese and the caster sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and beat well, then add each egg, beating well in between. Add the cream and mix well. 


Turn the oven down to 160 degrees C. Spoon into the cooled biscuit base and bake for 60 mins. By then it should have puffed up and have lost some of the wobble. Remove and leave to cool. Meanwhile, make the salted caramel sauce. 


150gr soft brown sugar
80gr butter
100ml double cream
A hefty pinch of sea salt flakes

In a large saucepan (don't be tempted to use a small one, you want some good whisking space) heat the sugar up until it has all melted, stirring occasionally so that it melts evenly. Add the butter in and whisk well until incorporated. It may look lumpy and a bit gross at this point. Whisk in the cream, poured in a steady stream. Cook gently while whisking until smooth and silky - this may take a few minutes. Add the salt and then taste - carefully, it'll be molten - and add more if you think it needs it. I like my caramel quite salty. Leave to cool.


Spoon the caramel onto the cooled cheesecake and put it in the fridge for at least an hour. When serving, sprinkle the top with sea salt flakes. 

Eating in Tulum, Mexico

After three days in Mexico City, it was time to head for the coast. Brilliant white beaches beckoned and we had a lot of sitting around to do. Tulum was our destination and after an exhausting plane ride - there is absolutely no need to cheer every time we hit turbulence, okay? - we were rewarded with just the sound of the waves crashing outside our beach hut. 

Eating well and cheaply in Tulum, particularly down the stretch of beach we were on, was tricky. Lined with eco beach huts and boutique hotels, they catered for the tourists for tourist prices and on our first night it was quite the shock to have spent £40 on dinner, compared to the usual £10. 

With one eye on the budget, we decided to get a couple of bikes and do some cycling. 7km away, the town of Tulum was small but down some deserted side streets we found what we were after. A taco stall. 

For £1, I got two panuchos, said to be a speciality of the Yucatan region. The tortillas are split and deep fried, then stuffed with refried beans and topped with chopped chicken, pink pickled onions and slices of avocado. Squirty bottles of salsa were already at the table, the green being incendiary and the red milder. 

Sat under the shade in the sweltering heat, it knocked the socks off the £15 pasta dish we'd eaten by the beach the night before at Posada Margherita. Another day, on the edge of town an unassuming red fronted cafe was dark and disorientating inside. Having sat down, we realised there was no menu and the lady beckoned us towards the kitchen so we could point at which dishes we wanted. I picked the most interesting-looking which turned out to be meatballs with potatoes in a smoky chipotle sauce.

The meatballs were light and fluffy, the smoky tomatoey sauce lingering at the back of the throat with a suggestion of heat. A huge bucket of tamarind drink, sweet and sour at the same time cooled me down.

Chicken braised in a green sauce was tangy with lime and tomatillo, served with rice and beans on the side. A closed steamer tray stacked full of soft floppy tortillas turned out to be the best of the trip; delicate yet pliable, they made an excellent scooper. We paid up our £3 each and cycled off slowly, our bellies full.

I had wondered where all the beach barbecues plentiful with fish were and we never found them so instead we asked our snorkelling guide where the best fish restaurant was, for locals. He pointed us to a hotel, affiliated to where he was working and once that was out of the way he also wrote us down 'El Camello', in Tulum town. It wasn't much to look at but when we were there, and we went twice, it was always busy. 

Whole fried fish was deep fried and served with black beans, rice and salad. While we were eating it, a couple of men sauntered in with a couple of fish straight off the back of their pick up truck.

I kept seeing 'coctels' available so this time we decided to try one, 'mixto'. Our server was skeptical as it contained raw oysters, but we urged him on. A huge cocktail glass emerged stuffed with octopus, huge prawns and raw oysters. It was doused in lime juice and salsa, and topped with avocado and a little onion with coriander. 

Served with Saltine crackers (as it was everywhere we went, and is apparently traditional elsewhere too), this was tangy and fishy. It was pretty overwhelming and after a couple of mouthfuls each, we were pretty done. We didn't want to prove the nice waiter wrong so we ate it all up.  The one we ordered was a small, and later on I saw three petite Mexican ladies share a huge boat of it. We were humbled.  

At another visit, we tried the small ceviche. The Mexicans have a strange idea of small, but we weren't complaining. We stuffed ourselves silly piling the onion, tomato and coriander mixed with prawns high on totopos with salsa.

I fished out tiny crabs and an incredible number of prawns from this seafood soup, and it was so addictive I carried on until well past my totally-stuffed limit. All I could do afterwards was sip a tequila and flop into a taxi. Each meal cost us about £12 for two with beers.

Other places we visited that were on the stretch of beaches were El Tabano, a lovely restaurant specialising in Mexican home cooking set on the jungle side. Hartwood, at about 7.5km was also beautiful, set under pretty trees, with delicious American-Mexican food cooked in a wood-fired over. Both were roughly £25 a head and on the 'splurge' end of our spectrum.

Hottest salsa of the trip was also the most unexpected. Hungry after a long and sweaty walk down the beach, we wandered into a boutique hotel and were the only diners for lunch. A dark red oily salsa was offered with caution and upon taste I knew I was in serious trouble. Stars littered my vision and I could only curl my toes in horror, rendered speechless. The fish tacos were amazing (though expensive) and I am only sad I didn't take a picture, or write the name of the place down. Sorry. That's terribly unhelpful.

Travel Tips:

- We flew with Volaris, then got the ADO bus - which is actually a very nice air conditioned coach - from Cancun airport to Playa del Carmen (about 1 hour). There you can get a colectivo to Tulum town (another hour). This is much cheaper than a taxi all the way - the ADO bus was around 200 pesos (£10) and the colectivo 40 pesos, £2 - whereas taxis can be about US $150. It's also more interesting watching these colectivos pick up seemingly random people on the side of roads.

- On the return though we discovered an ADO coach from Tulum town straight to the airport; the last one is at 11am every day.

- Opposite directly opposite the ADO bus station in Tulum over the roads of traffic was a great hole in the wall place that do tacos and tortas of only carnitas - they will wrap you up a torta for your journey.

- You can cycle up to the Mayan ruins, there were plenty of bikes to hire. Bring a sweat rag though as it is HOT.

- Taxis in Tulum are plentiful and cheap. They all knew where 'El Camello' was and most are friendly and will suggest you a nice place to go and eat.

- We didn't find anywhere to get drunk on the beach at night. I KNOW. Goddamn we tried too. Mezzanine Thai Bar was a nice cocktail place with a terrace though.

- We stayed at Posada Lamar, which was a lovely beach hut. The beach huts are simple and the toilet and shower open plan so, er, make what you will of that. They only serve breakfasts. Ahau Tulum looked lovely when we walked around it, so I would head for them if I were to return. Accomodation isn't cheap in Tulum.