kulu kulu sushi

Had a day off work because I had to attend a national insurance number interview, but once I was finished I headed into central London for a bit of a mooch and of course, some lunch. I don’t usually like eating alone, and that was part of the reason why I chose to go to Kulu Kulu sushi – everyone is seated side-by-side, snaking around the room, so it doesn’t matter if you’re there with a party of three, or if you’re alone.

When I got there at quarter past one, it was packed! Kulu Kulu is a bit tucked away, just a bit off Neal Street in Covent Garden. It’s also quite small. Their prices are reasonable and the sushi good – not fussy, and with a good variety, though today I found the rice a bit too crumbly for my liking. The staff are great (and surprisingly, the sushi chefs are all Indian), and will happily fetch you your preferred choice of sushi if it hasn’t been coming around the conveyer belt for a while. Green tea is free to wash it all down, like it should be!

I didn’t have much, just four dishes – salmon nigiri, tuna nigiri, ikura gunkan maki, and tobikko gunkan maki. Would have liked to have had the soft-shell crab handroll (which I had the last time I visited), but was simply too stuffed. They also do great pan-fried gyoza, and there are always plentiful plates of edamame beans. I’d avoid their noodles though, as I noticed at the bottom of the menu they note that they use genetically modified soya for those.

Kulu Kulu Sushi (Covent Garden)
51-53 Shelton Street
London
WC2H 9HE
Tel: 020 7240 5687
Nearest tube: Covent Garden/Holborn
There are also branches in Soho and South Kensington:

Kulu Kulu Sushi (Soho)
76 Brewer Street
London
W1F 9TX
Tel: 020 7734 7315

Kulu Kulu Sushi (South Kensington)
39 Thurloe Place
London
SW7 2HP
Tel: 020 7589 2225

a week in food

Work has been keeping me occupied, rendering me pretty much comatose by the time I get home at night. While I still have the energy to cook up a proper dinner, by the time the food is gobbled up and the dishes done (or not), there isn’t any time left for posting! So here you go, a week in food- in bitesized chunks. You can click on the smaller image to go to the full-sized photo on my flickr page!

July 5th : Fusion spaghetti

A continuation of the tobikko themed dishes, I made the “fusion” spaghetti I was thinking of making. I had eaten this style of pasta in lots of Japanese-style cafes (like Pokka Cafe in Hong Kong, and the fantastic Wired Cafe in Shibuya, Tokyo) where there’s a clear Asian influence on the otherwise traditional Italian pasta. I made a cream sauce with milk, using butter and flour as a roux (I would have preferred to use single/double cream but didn’t think to buy any), along with garlic and onions (would have preferred shallots, but again…). Stirred in the cooked spaghetti, and then the tobikko. Topped with shredded nori. Delicious and simple!

July 7th : Coconut pudding

Yuki and I went to Happy Gathering, a Chinese restaurant in Cardiff that does dim sum as well. They also do one of my favourite desserts- coconut pudding! Little squares of joy. I love anything coconut-flavoured, and these puddings are smooth, creamy and just plain delicious. They’re relatively hard to find in restaurants these days in Hong Kong (apparently they are harder to make than it may seem), so it’s great that a restaurant all the way out in Wales would have it on their menu. I actually attempted to make coconut pudding myself the other day, using gelatine, coconut cream and egg whites like in this recipe, but I didn’t manage to get it to the same stodgy pudding consistency like the ones I’ve had in restaurants, and it was far too sweet. Will try again, substituting the gelatine with agar jelly (because I feel sick at the thought of using beef gelatine) and using less sugar.

July 7th : Lemon herb roast chicken and potato dauphinoise

That night I carved a whole raw chicken for the first time! So I roasted the legs and wings and had it for dinner with a side of potato dauphinoise, saved the rest, and used the carcass to make chicken stock for vietnamese chicken noodles the next day. It doesn’t look attractive but it was yummy. The potatoes could have done with a bit more seasoning though, and I actually forgot to add any herbs. Oh well!

July 10th : Tangy chicken and vegetable stir-fry

Stir-fries are so versatile, and is great for when I can’t decide on what to eat- just choose a little bit of everything and toss it all into the wok! This particular version had chicken, red chilli, onions & garlic, broccoli, cabbage, spinach and tomatoes. Seasoned with ground coriander seeds, cumin, lemon juice and soy sauce and served on basmati rice. The fresh vegetables lend a sweetness to the dish, the soy sauce gives it a deep salty flavour, the chilli gives it spice, and the lemon juice gives it that tang. So delicious. And provides me with at least two portions of my 5-a-day!

July 14th: Afternoon tea :)

Spent my Saturday cleaning the kitchen (not the most savoury of tasks), and by the end of it I was famished. So a little afternoon tea of toast two-ways was perfect. Ham and avocado, and one with condensed milk (a very HK style thing to do). Unfortunately I’ve succumbed to white bread lately instead of wholegrain… but all is not lost, for this is the so-called ‘Best of both worlds’ bread- white bread with goodness of brown! Why do I buy into these things, I’ll never know…

July 14th : Phở gà aka Vietnamese chicken noodles

Back in London I carved another chicken, and made a chicken stock with it. One half went to a fragrant Portugese curry I made (which I forgot to photograph), and the other half went in my phở gà.

Now, traditional phở gà is a lot more complicated, because the most important component is the broth. They are incredibly complex, involving a lot of different ingredients (like star anise, cinnamon stick, kaffir lime leaves, peppercorns, etc.) and of course, the resulting flavours are indescribably good. I didn’t have much in the way of spices and herbs, so I made a simplified version, which I think tastes pretty darn good anyway. I used the chicken stock I’d made from before (lovely, lovely chicken stock that had simmered for a very long time to draw out as much chicken flavour as possible), sliced onions, a pinch of ground cinnamon powder, red chilli, fish sauce and lime juice. I added a chicken leg to the stock when it was heating up, and I let it cook until the meat became tender and would fall away from the bone. To my noodles I just added bean sprouts and chopped spring onions, and to me, that was just perfect. Phở gà is such a hearty, warming dish that everyone should try making at home!

the enduring happiness of a packed lunch

I’d forgotten how much I love packed lunches. When I was a wee one, my dad would always pack me a homemade meal to bring with me to school. And as far as I remember, my dad’s lunches always got some comments of approval. Back in elementary school in Canada, my parents both worked full-time, meaning I couldn’t go home for lunch like so many other kids did (we lived in a small town and my school supposedly had a small acceptance radius) so our school arranged for something called ‘Lunch Programme’ where kids like me could occupy the gym during noon, eat our packed lunches under the stern eyes of the Lunch Ladies, and then play games like tiddlywinks and dominos afterwards if we so wished.

I think all of the 90’s kids probably had one of those plastic, clunky lunchboxes (emblazoned with cartoon hero of choice, I don’t remember what mine was, but it was definitely a magenta-pink- so probably Barbie). It’d be great to open the box and discover what kind of delicious food my dad had packed for the day. Usually it’d be sandwiches, nothing too fancy, but they were fluffy and yummy nonetheless.

In middle school, by then I’d moved to Hong Kong and those colourful plastic lunchboxes were nowhere to be seen, replaced by high-tech multi-layer thermos-slash-bento boxes. Mine was a dark blue Zojirushi number and lasted a good couple of years before I stopped using it, like the one pictured. There was a main compartment that my dad usually filled with rice, noodles or dumplings, and the upper compartment was reserved for toppings, ranging from BBQ pork, to soya sauce chicken wings and my personal favourite- steamed minced pork patties with muy choy, salty preserved cabbage (to date still one of my favourite dishes). My best friend and I would sometimes scuttle over to each others’ desks (we were supposed to stay in our seats all throughout lunchtime) and quickly swap lunches (her mom always packed her some form of pasta and sausages, as I remember, and it was delicious). Then we got clever and when our respective tables were permitted to go to the kitchen and collect our lunch boxes, we would get each others’ instead. It was a funny little ritual and it still makes me smile.

In high school, my dad would still continue to pack lunches for me on occasion, though I bought from the canteen pretty often (I still remember the lunch crew, Michael and Libby and co.; a great bunch that would put extra sauce on my rice or pasta) . Usually, it would be again rice or noodle based and accompanying it would be leftovers from the previous night’s dinner. I’ve always wondered why leftovers taste so good the day after. And so my friends and I would sit in our little ‘cosy corner’ in the 6th form common room, and I’d reheat my lunch in the microwave and sit down and enjoy my little reminder of home while we chatted away.

So, I’ve been in university for the past three years, far away from home and it has only just occurred to me how little I actually pack lunches for myself- it’s always been my dad, king of all that is delicious. And I suppose I never had the time or inclination, choosing instead to indulge on the overpriced sandwiches in the canteen, or the burgers and chips at the student union cafe. Occassionally I’d make myself a bagel or bring in some fruit, but that was the extent of my lunch packing.

Funnily, its taken this stint at the BBC (a reminder of the irony- I work within the online editorial food department) to force me to make my own packed lunches again. And I can’t say I’m disappointed! I’ve been spending far too much on buying lunch while the food in my fridge deteriorates before I can eat them. All I can say is, I’m thankful that I’ve taken after my parents once again and saved up all these random containers from various takeaways (thank you, Uncle Wrinkle, for using such handy, plastic rectangular containers!) and empty vessels (thus my strawberries going into a kimchi pot today). I woke up a bit earlier than usual, and after washing my face and brushing my teeth I zoomed into the kitchen to wash some rice and bung it in the rice cooker while I did my usual morning things. Anyways, the lunch I had today:

(By the way, I apologize that my photos seem to be composed poorly- it’s not that, just that the width of this box is just a bit smaller than my photos that are usually 500px wide, so they get cut :T)
(L) Japanese (Nishiki brand) rice, and sprinkled on top is some maguro (tuna) furikake and the tobikko I bought yesterday- I have to use it up quickly so its been in every meal I’ve had so far except breakfast. To be honest I’m not sure how good that is in terms of cholesterol! And sliced up pan-fried chicken thigh that was marinating for about three days in Lee Kum Kee chicken marinade. I didn’t add any acids to the marinade so the meat wouldn’t disintegrate after the long marinating process.

(R) The same Italian-style salad as last night, minus the prawns and ponzu vinaigrette- to save time I used a Kewpie brand vinaigrette (packed in a little Gu chocolate pudding shot glass…clever eh?).

So today, while all my colleagues went down and bought overpriced sandwiches and/or munched on overcooked fish and soggy vegetables, I was at my desk with my little reminders of home, feeling pretty smug about myself.

easy, breezy, japanesey

Because I pass by Marble Arch/Bond Street tube station on the way home from work every day, I decided to pay a visit to Oxford Street and maybe grab a few bargains from the sales. Eventually I found myself fluttering excitedly into Selfridges, and flitted between the perfumes, make-up counters and multiple displays of shoes and dresses. For about five minutes, that is, before I lost interest and headed to their food hall instead. Now, it’s worth noting that I have low double-digits in my bank account right now, so that trip was probably an ill decision to start with, but in the end I handed over £3.25 in coins and walked away with a rather precious little parcel…

Yay, flying fish roe (or ‘tobikko’, as it’s known in Japanese)! Incidentally, I have this super strange phobia of small, clustered dots or spots. I suspect it stems from a particularly unsavoury invasion of insect eggs in our house once (I shant get into it, for I’m sure it would ruin many an appetite and signal the early signing off of this post)… but anyway, you’d think the sight of tiny little fish eggs clumped together in a small area would have me shrieking and clutching at my eyeballs in fear, but strangely, it doesn’t. Maybe because it’s edible. It’s just so fun to feel and to almost hear the little roes exploding in your mouth, filling your palate with rich, salty flavour. Not to mention I had come across caviar (probably poor man’s caviar, but “caviar” nonetheless) at a young age and have developed a taste for the unborn children of many a sea creature since…

I like to enjoy tobikko in its simplest form, spilling off the top of a gunkan-maki, dipped in the tiniest amount of shoyu and wasabi so as to not overshadow its natural flavour. But since I didn’t have the time or inclination to go through the arduous process of cooking sushi rice and actually making sushi, I had to find some other way to savour these delicious little things.

My stomach dictated that it should be something that was fresh, quick, and easy. So then, what better than to sprinkle the little jewels over a peppery Italian salad, fresh Vittoria vine tomatoes (the best, so flavourful!), with some fresh citrus vinaigrette (made with ponzu, sesame oil and a dash of rice vinegar), toasted sesame seeds and some sauteed prawns thrown in for good measure?

While the tobikko weren’t the star of the show, it added that little something extra- the range of textures and flavours were amazing. The crispness of the salad leaves (Marks & Spencers, yet another indulgence I shouldn’t be succumbing to…), the juicy and sweet vine tomatoes, the meaty prawns, the tangy vinaigrette and underlying it all, the subtle little tobikko giving that little bit of salty surprise when they explode in your mouth. Truly delicious! The ponzu vinaigrette also gets a special mention, because it’s all I’ve been using in my salads lately. If you’re not familiar with ponzu, according to my Time Out Eating & Drinking glossary, it’s “usually short for ponzu juyu, [it is] a mixture of the juice of a Japanese citrus fruit (ponzu) and soy sauce…”

Ponzu vinaigrette
serves 1
1 1/2 tbsp sesame oil (or extra virgin olive oil, I used sesame for this ‘Asian’ inspired salad)
2 tbsp ponzu
1 tsp rice wine vinegar, or to taste (I find the citrus in the ponzu to be too light, so the rice wine vinegar adds a bit more tartness)

Mix it all up and drizzle over salad. Hurrah!

And the supporting cast of tonight’s star appetiser…

Cold udon with spring onions and shredded nori :) I also had a fantastic pan-fried piece of super tender chicken leg meat that had been marinating in soy for quite a while… In fact, I shall be cooking the other piece, that is still marinating, tomorrow morning and pack myself a lunch. Yes, perhaps another tobikko-fied salad is on the menu tomorrow, if the atrocious menu at the BBC is anything to go by.

Tobikko is also great in creamy pastas- the epitome of that kind of delicious Japanese-Italian fusion food they have in so many cafes over there. Am also thinking of trying out that squid ink risotto rice Yuki also brought back from Italy… methinks the tobikko would go quite nicely on the top!