High Tea at Cornwall Park

I have known Debbie for years and years. I first met her through her husband whom I knew through work. And although I am no longer in that line of work any more, we remain very, very good friends (she is also one of those in my not-so-secret serviette lover society:)

I treated Debbie high tea at Cornwall Park for her Birthday the other day. It was the first day this week that was nice and sunny but it was still pretty cold (we have snow in Auckland for the first time in 70+ years as a result of the Polar Blast).

The three-tier cake stand was quite dainty and the contents were yummy. We both had breakfast tea to go with these. All these little morsels were for two people and as much as we loved to devour them all we had to concede defeat not even half way through the top tier (we started from the bottom tier upward).

The weather was nice and crisp at 10 degrees C. It was not too bad cold and sunny – much, much better than cold and wet that we have endured quite a lot this winter.

This Thai Bang Kaew Dog

My brother who lives in Bangkok also owns a dog called “Sheene”. She is a Thai Bang Kaew dog. Read more about this breed here.

Puppy-cutie phase

Pesky-cunning phase

Sheene has turned 2 this week and her birthday cake was shared by her human parents. My brother normally tries to eat healthily but Sheene’s BD is an excuse for him to enjoy this creamy treat.

Spicy Szechuan Chilli Chicken

Bob likes Szechuan food (as long as it is not absurdly hot). In Summer we will go to a small Szechuan eating joint in town called Granny’s Garden (now changed to Happy Time) in Dominion Road. Our favourites include Spicy Chicken and Fried Green Beans.

However, in Winter when the weather is wet and cold (like it is now) we’d rather stay at home and eat in. Bob had been hassling me to try cooking our own for a while. I had googled and searched for the recipes. A lot of recipes are for stir fry with sauce which is not what we are after. We like ours dry and crispy. Eventually, I have found this recipe from My Kitchen Snippets and voi la! This recipe is quite close to what we have had at Happy Time’s but I have tweaked it a bit to replicate theirs.

My Spicy Szechuan Style Chilli Chicken (adapted from My Food Snippets’ Recipe)

Ingredients

2 chicken breast fillets or 3-4 boneless thighs, skin removed & diced

1 Tbs Dry Sherry

Soy sauce, salt & pepper to taste (I also use Chicken Stock Powder)

1 egg white

2 Tbs Corn Flour

10 -15 small dried chillies, cut in halves, seeds removed (for the brave ones you can leave 1 or 2 intact )

½ Red or Yellow capsicum, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

Ginger root about small thumb size, peeled and minced

1-2 spring onion, sliced

Chopped Coriander leaves for garnish (you can leave 2-3 leaves intact for decoration)

2 Tbs Szechuan pepper (you can find it in Asian Groceries –it is often labelled as fragrant pepper), toasted and crushed

Canola Oil for deep frying

Method

Marinate the chicken in dry sherry, soy sauce, salt and pepper and rest in the fridge, about an hour will do.

Heat the oil in the wok (I use my Scanpan Wok – it is such a dream. I will talk about it later) on medium high heat. Add egg white and then corn flour to the chicken and stir well. Deep fry the chicken pieces until golden and crisp in two batches. You might have to separate them a bit in the wok while frying. Drain and put them on the paper towel lined plate.

Discard the oil but two table spoons in the wok, add minced garlic, ginger and dry chillies and fry until fragrant then add capsicum. Stir fry for a bit further – do not let the dry chillies burn. Adjust the heat if you need to as garlic and dry chillies can brown quite quickly. Add the chicken to the wok and season, you only need a little bit more salt or soy sauce at this stage as the chicken has been marinated. Add Szechuan pepper and spring onion, stir well and remove from heat. Put the chicken on the plate and garnish with coriander leaves. Serve with jasmine rice.

Black & White

Barb, my friend and neighbour must be telepathic. As if she knew that I had been talking about serviettes when she came over to have our coffee ritual on Friday afternoon, she gave me this packet of serviettes. It looks awesome in black & white with cat.

This one is a cheapo from $2 shop.

Basket Case

Bonnie loves her job supervising me in my office. Her place is in the basket in the corner. Sometime supervising is so tiring and she cannot help but go to sleep.

At 6 months old.

Growing in to her post at 2 years old.

Pretty Serviettes

I like pattern serviettes – the pretty ones. I have friends who also like them and whenever they give me gift for Birthday or Christmas, they often include a packet of serviettes as an extra. And likewise, if I come across beautiful patterns, I will stock them up to give to my friends.

Paper serviettes come in different sizes and thickness from a small cocktail (25 cm x 25 cm) to proper dinner size (39 cm x 39 cm). The popular everyday size is luncheon or picnic (33 cm x 33 cm) with 1 ply thickness to 3 ply.

These are some of what I have. They are all 2 ply. My favourite make is the Swedish one “Duni” – they have fantastic website that gives me ideas for table setting.

This one is very pretty - unusual size (32 cm x 42 cm) but good for casual dinner.

Young Bailey

When we had not yet got Bonnie, I used to mind Bailey for our neighbour. He was about 4 months old then, so cute, so innocent.

I could not imagine that he would become this naughty...

And this vicious!