Learning that self-care isn’t selfish

This week, I have mostly eaten beige food. It started well at the weekend, with a blowout BBQ, and homemade German potato salad (the secret is boiled eggs and gerkins). A real highlight was midweek, when I ate saveloy and chips – it was delicious. I very generously shared about 5 chips with my 5 year old. Thank god the 2 year old was asleep already, as I’m not sure I would have been prepared to share any further. I was already sharing a box of spicy deep fried chicken wings with my husband, and negotiated for the last one (arguing that my saveloy and chips was smaller than his kebab – never mind that he’s a foot taller than me).

BBQ sausages, sweetcorn, German potato salad, roast butternut squash salad with baby kale and pomegranate

Yesterday, when I reached for an M&S ham and mushroom tagliatelle (a staple ready meal from my lazy pie eating university days), I realised that I hadn’t eaten a home cooked meal in about 5 days. Opps.

Since last July, I’ve lost a dress size, mainly thanks to a militant focus on my diet, being good every 4 out of 7 days, and cauliflower. But it’s so easy to fall off the wagon. Whenever I’m feeling knackered or stressed, my autopilot kicks in, and I crave comfort food (aka carbs) and sugar. This week, I’ve washed down all that beige food with full fat Fanta! Whilst my cravings were momentarily satisfied, my gut has not been happy, and my skin and mood are paying the price!

After months training myself to eat well i.e. upping my vegetable intake, reducing my carb intake and avoiding processed food, I fell off the bandwagon big time. And I feel worse for it.

I must learn that if I’m reaching for the frankfurters and Fanta, I need to press pause. I’m the kind of person who likes to get things done. I’m a ‘starter finisher’, hold myself to a ridiculously high standard, and am impatient. The other day I congratulated myself for speed walking to the shops to buy various ready meals for the next 2 days and selecting backpacks for my kids (I sped through John Lewis, H&M and Paperchase looking for backpacks, before finally settling on Smiggle), and then raced home to join a conference call. I did all of that in 30 minutes (including spending 5 minutes silently fuming for joining the slow queue at the supermarket instead of using the self-checkout).

Now that I’ve had a day to decompress from trying to be superhuman (partly forced because I’m so knackered), I am reminded that self care isn’t selfish. In my rush to be a perfect employee and a perfect mum, I’ve forgotten to prioritise my own needs. I have this inbuilt feeling that self-care is selfish, and actually it’s both vital for my wellbeing, and that of my family. If mum ain’t happy, nobody is!

So, in my effort to look after my needs, I didn’t take my kids to ballet or Rainbows (aka Brownies), and today, I mostly vegetated on the sofa with my 2 year old climbing all over me.  I also ate a very comforting stir fry of chicken mince (good stuff from the butcher’s, not the grey stuff from the supermarket), green beans, roast cherry tomatoes and mushrooms. I then made a comforting Chinese bone broth in the pressure cooker. I’m starting to feel a bit more human now, and am really looking forward to date night at Roux at the Landau tomorrow, followed by a massage and facial on Sunday!

Note to self: teach the kids the importance of regular facials both for vanity and wellbeing purposes!

Sosharu

I was pretty excited about going to Sosharu for a posh family lunch. Giles Coren had it spot on: ‘Fantastic food and the best bogs. Damn, the Japanese know a thing or two about khazis’.

Tucked away in Farringdon, London, the restaurant serves refined small plates of Japanese cuisine in intimate, wooden surroundings with high ceilings. Alex Craciun is the Executive Head Chef and Jason and Irha Atherton are Directors. It’s hard to go wrong if Jason Atherton is in charge!

We had the Taste of Sosharu menu and ordered Tonkotsu noodle soup for the kids. Who would have thought that a bowl of noodles could be sooo pretty! We were all pretty enamoured and enjoyed the authentic touch of the Tonkotsu menu where you could select every element of the dish, from the richness of the soup base to the garnishes. I was also pretty chuffed that the timber screens between tables (made to feel like a Japanese home) made us feel like we were in a semi-private room. I was comfortable with my 2.5 and 5 year olds playing with puzzles and Lego at the table and didn’t feel like they were disturbing anyone despite it being a posh joint. There were even a few babies in prams at other tables.

Every course is beautifully presented and made with care and love. The lime and orange cured salmon with tosazu jelly tastes amazing. The menu description doesn’t quite do the food justice. You get exquisite taste and texture with every mouthful. The chicken kaarage is Japanese fried chicken, aka the most delicious posh KFC you’ll ever have, with miniature bottles of sauce to accompany the dish.

My brother was pretty excited by the Tonkatsu crumbed pork, which he’d queued two hours to eat in Japan!

The Kyoto style chirashi, tuna, salmon, eggs threads and sushi rice was the most delicate, sweet tasting chirashi I’ve ever eaten.

Dessert was coconut rice with mango served in half a coconut shell. I wouldn’t ordinarily have ordered it but pretty glad to have eaten it. It was satisfyingly homely yet refined. My kids were given complimentary chocolate ice-cream with a chocolate bear served on a glass block fashioned to look like an ice cube.

I’ve since spotted Matcha mille crepe with Matcha sorbet on the menu and am pretty excited about my next visit to Sosharu to try it. I last ate Mille crepe in Singapore, i.e. a ‘thousand’ pancakes layered on top of one another, each filled with cream.

And of course the bogs! No visit to Sosharu is complete without a visit to the first class loos! Who doesn’t want seats that open automatically and warmed toilet seats!

The Taste of Sosharu menu costs £29.50 per person or £33.50 with a glass of wine or sake (for 2 to share), plus service and VAT.

http://sosharulondon.com

Roast cauliflower: How it transformed my relationship with carbs

Roast cauliflower has helped to transform my relationship with carbs. In fact, it’s helped me lose a dress size, and shed the extra weight I’ve been carrying in recent years.

Being British Born Chinese, I grew up eating Jasmine rice for dinner, every single evening. At primary school, when my friends talked about the variety of things they ate for dinner (fish and chips being pretty exotic for me!), I was slightly embarrassed to admit I ate rice with every evening meal. And then at university, I discovered that the canteen served pies twice a day…. I carried on eating pies in my 20’s, when I was travelling across the UK for work, and spent a lot of down time at train stations!

My eating habits caught up with me when I was pregnant with my second daughter. Midway through my pregnancy, wondering why I was looking a lot more pregnant than I actually was, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I was pretty devastated. It turned out that the extreme tiredness I felt, wasn’t just down to being a working mum. I was now permanently at risk of diabetes in the long term.

Determined to manage my diabetes purely through diet, I began a militant assessment of my diet. It turns out that huge bowls of rice, rice noodles, or delicious fresh bread, is generally bad for you! I had no concept of portion size, and half my plate would often be filled with carbs, especially of the high Glycemic Index variety. I began to obsessively Google ‘high/low GI index foods’ to understand every source of sugar in my diet. I wasn’t tucking into daily bars of chocolate or eating mountains of cake. My downfall was massive bowls of white rice, with a bit of veg and meat on the side! After a carb-fest, I’d collapse in a heap of exhaustion, because my body simply couldn’t process all the sugar. Curbing carbs was hell. Unlearning all my eating habits actually took a lot of time.

About one hour after giving birth, I was tucking into my homemade chicken and rice, followed by fresh chocolate eclairs from Paul’s and le Pain Quotidien, plus jaffa cakes on the side. I came to the hospital well stocked up and had a patisserie shopping list for my husband to deliver! Although I’d reduced my carb intake in recent months out of necessity, I never really felt satisfied or full unless I had some refined carbs in me, and frankly, qunioa ain’t gonna cut it. It wasn’t until 2 years later, when someone at work cheekily pulled me aside after a meeting and asked if I was expecting number 3, that I got the kick up the backside that I needed.

Six months on, I’ve lost 6kg, which is a lot for me. I went down from a size 12 which I was personally unhappy with, back down to a healthy size 10. I recently fit into a dress that hasn’t really fit me for about 10 years. And it’s partly thanks to a near elimination of carbs in my evening meals (as well as counting calories for about 3 weeks to understand what I was tucking into when I wasn’t thinking!).

The discovery of the sweet, nutty deliciousness of roast cauliflower has been amazeballs! I’d always associated cauliflower with the stinky boiled variety, and the simple act of roasting large chunks of cauliflower drizzled with a bit of rapeseed oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, eliminates my need for carbs. 45min later (at 180 degrees in a fan assisted oven), and you’ll have slightly caramelised cauliflower which goes with pretty much everything. If I’m really craving something more filling, I’ll eat roast sweet potato.

So, forget about any childhood memories of stinky boiled cauliflower, add a cauliflower in your weekly shop, and let me know if it makes a difference to your life.

Roast cauliflower, carrots, sweet potato and red onion

April 2017

Celeriac – how do you like yours?

There’s something special about celeriac. It’s my veg of the month for March. I’ve been featuring a different vegetable every month in a effort to diversify and increase my veg intake.

It has a sweet, nutty, celery-like flavour, that’s akin to a Jerusalem artichoke (and a bit less poncy).

Celeriac is a variety of celery cultivated for its edible roots, and apparently it’s also know as knob celery (brilliant)!

I love it in soup, mash and stews. It’s also good finely chopped, raw in salads. But my recent discovery is roast celeriac, which I enjoyed at The Pig restaurant in the New Forest.

Celeriac requires a bit of effort to prepare but it’s worth it. You need a very sharp knife or peeler to remove the skin and knobbly bits. I usually slice off the top and bottom, and peel the rest.

To roast, slice it into chunks, season with salt and pepper and add a glug of oil (I like rapeseed). It discolours quickly, so immerse in cold water with a squeeze of lemon juice or cook straight away. Roast it for 45min until golden and slightly caramelised.

Cây Tre

The chefs at Cây Tre in Soho know their flavours. It’s as good or perhaps even better than the many Vietnamese restaurants and cafes on Kingsland Road, Shoreditch, aka Pho Mile, and at all at a special bargain set lunch menu price of £11 for a main course and side. (Cây Tre’s sister restaurant Viet Grill is on Kingsland Road, and the restaurant group has a couple of restaurants in London.)

The green papaya and dried beef salad is stunning, both zingy and subtle at the same time. Something about the perfect combo of fresh lime juice, nuts, chilli, fish sauce, sugar and coriander, makes it pretty special. It makes the super spicy green papaya salad I had at Champor-Champor the other night look like it’s rustic cousin.

We also shared prawn summer rolls, which are salad and prawns wrapped in rice paper and dipped in sweet Hoisin sauce.

My friend’s 8 month old baby enjoyed sampling the tasty broth. She clearly appreciated the 24h bone marrow stock! The classic beef pho here is made from the most silky handmade pho noodles flown in twice a week from Saigon, with thinly sliced beef brisket.

The waitress seated us in a corner booth with plenty of room for the baby to play in the corner and lie down. Unfortunately they don’t have highchairs, but clip on highchairs work well here for very little ones and there’s room for buggies. I love that the restaurant feels spacious. They haven’t tried to cram a million tables in and don’t rush you, even on a Saturday lunchtime.

I think I’ve found a favourite noodle place, and I love my noodles! Can’t wait to check out more of the menu next time.

http://www.thevietnamesekitchen.co.uk

The Pig

For the ultimate, relaxed luxury experience in the New Forest, a visit to The Pig is a must. It’s a 2 hour drive from London.

Everything is stunning. It is cosy and beautiful in equal measure.

I was pretty excited that my 5 year old and 2 & a quarter year old are just about mature enough for us for us to come to fancy places like this (provided I’m armed with some activities and cuddles). We spotted some babies in prams too.

We enjoyed pre-lunch drinks in the stunning, cosy bar. The window filled with coloured glasses is beautiful, as is the array of flavoured vodkas with charming handwritten tags. Bacon vodka anyone? We enjoyed a decent whiskey sour and homemade lemonade whilst the kids downed tasty apple juice and busied themselves with some fairy sticker books (themed to link with the lovely visit to Furzey Gardens to search for fairy doors hidden off the beaten track).

Lunch was in the most wonderful conservatory bathed in natural light, with amazing mismatched and multicoloured tiles and garden herbs a plenty. The ’25 mile’ British menu is what they call ‘true to the micro seasons’, dependent on the forager and the kitchen garden. We started off with some very satisfying and crunchy strips of pork crackling with apple sauce. It seemed remiss not to continue with the pork theme and my husband had ‘bath chaps’ which turned out to be pig cheeks complete with crackling skin, ear and some teeth! It’s not for the faint hearted. The cheek itself was amazingly succulent and tender. I had the pork shoulder, pickled cabbage and dumpling bits which wasn’t as exciting or juicy, but the flavours were good. The side dish of roast celeriac was so flavoursome, I’ve added to my must try at home list! (It will make a change from my usual celeriac soup.)

The kids had yummy sausage and chips and the most tender chicken breast and chips.

We all had rhubarb for dessert. The delicately flavoured rhubarb jelly was a bit too sophisticated for my kids. My 5 year old said it didn’t taste like school jelly! But they did gobble up the ice-cream. I had a lovely meringue and my husband’s rhubarb fool was a winner. The picture speaks for itself!

Lunch for 2 adults (3 courses) and 2 children (2 courses) with drinks cost about £160.

https://www.thepighotel.com

The Huntsman of Brockenhurst

The New Forest is great for scenic walks,wild horse spotting and good, wholesome food.

The Huntsman of Brockenhurst in the New Forest serves delicious, hearty meals. The booths are super family friendly and the service comes with a smile. My 2 year old enjoyed a game of peek-a-boo with the Italian waiter she was charmed by. I mainly chose the place based on its cool decor and the fact that I could book a table for 4.30pm. There’s a handy car park too.

The kids gobbled up pasta and fish fingers, followed by some really tasty ice cream. The Huntsman has an impressive range of charcoal grilled steaks and we sampled the American rib eye and Welsh cote du boeuf. Both cuts were tender and worth recommending (even by our gourmet standards), especially accompanied by the tripled cooked chips and a pint of creamy Ship Yard pale ale. The sticky toffee pudding and coconut parfait went down a treat too. The table behind us ordered chocolate brownie and the smell of the hot chocolate sauce smelt like heaven! I’m definitely coming back!

http://thehuntsmanofbrockenhurst.com

 

 

Water spinach

Last month I set a challenge to add a new vegetable to your life every month. I was going to wax lyrical about how roasted cauliflower has transformed my perception of cauliflower, but there’s a bit of a cauliflower drought at the moment, so I’m continuing the Chinese vegetable theme for now! This month I’m featuring tung choi, or water spinach, as it’s also known. The literal translation from Chinese is hollow vegetable, and part of the appeal is that the stem is completely hollow. I love stir fried tung choi with a healthy smattering of crushed and finely chopped garlic. It only takes a few minutes to stir fry. Just wash, chop and fry in some oil, adding a splash of water so it gently steams at the same time.

The result is lots of crunchy texture, with softened spinach like leaves. Because the stems are slightly fibrous, and therefore needs a fair bit of chewing, tung choi is not suitable for toddlers unless you only give them some well cooked and finely chopped leaves.

I really recommend heading down to your local Chinese supermarket and trying out the exotic array of vegetables they have. You may have heard of pak choy (or bok choy) as it’s often found in western supermarkets these days. Baby pak choy has white stems and dark green leaves and has a wonderful sweetness.

What veg would you recommend everybody adds to their life?

Slow roast garlicy tomato sauce

Slow roast garlicy tomato sauce is heavenly. My cousin gave me this recipe when I was weaning my firstborn. It is so simple and so flavoursome. Slow roasting intensifies the taste of the tomatoes and garlic.

Ingredients
1kg ripe tomatoes
2-3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees. Line a baking tray with baking paper, don’t use foil as the acidity of the tomatoes reacts with the metal. Half the tomatoes, chuck in a couple of crushed garlic cloves after you’ve peeled and crushed them with flattened side of a large knife (to release the flavour and goodness), season with salt and pepper and then drizzle with olive oil. Give it all a shake and then put it in the oven for 1 hour.

Transfer to a large bowl and blend until smooth.

It’s a great sauce to freeze in batches and use as a delicious base. I’m making homemade pizza with mine.