The pear is a particularly humble fruit often forgotten in my house or outshone by the more appealing apple,the milkshake-worthy banana, the stunning golden kiwi or the refreshing watermelon. If it were a game of ball, the pear would be the last to be picked onto the team. It may be its delicate flavour, subtle sweetness and generally modest but spotty complexion that causes it to be overlooked, to fade into the background of other more colourful, juicy, sweet and tangy fruit. Nevertheless, I have a special fondness for this bottom-heavy fruit, especially the conference and packham variety; I love them on its own, in salads or poached and served with cream or custard. They’re quite the versatile fruit and cooking them releases its delicate honeyed flavour all the more.

The last upside-down cake I made (years ago, geez) was a recipe from Bill Granger and I remember using heckloads of maple syrup in it. I’d used bananas in the base and so the cake was pretty rich and intensely sweet. Mindblowingly so in fact. I believe the post-cake sugar high lasted for bout half an hour or so, which isn’t quite a good thing for sugar-maniacs like me. But this recipe – Bill Granger’s Banana Maple Upside Down Cake from Bill’s Open Kitchen – is still gorgeous if you aren’t too calorie or sugar-conscious. Instead of using this same Granger recipe, however, I wanted a recipe that wouldn’t have too many flavours working in the syrupy base so as not to overpower the pears. I found one from Ottolenghi and was really excited to give it a go since many have raved about Ottolenghi. Because I have yet to taste their gorgeous food for myself, I simply cannot wait to be in London next year to taste Ottolenghi amongst other equally, if not more, amazing restaurants like Maze, Nobu and dans le noir?. Reckon I should start organizing a list of restaurants to visit with my future flatmate (if she’s nice and amiable!). Someone pass me my diary please…Diva’s got an important restaurant visit-list to note down! Figures I’ll have to work doubly hard to earn a wage that’ll support my shopping, my desire for shoes and that insatiable hunger for yum yummy food.

I’m really pleased with this recipe. I admit it’s a lot of work since you’ve got to poach the pears, make the caramel topping from scratch and basically make sure nothing burns and that you don’t burn yourself, but the results were fantastic. The recipe uses cranberries which I thought would be quite a wonderful marriage with pears, giving it a sweetness boost and a light touch of tanginess. The cake batter incorporates lemon and orange zest amidst spices like ground star anise, cinnamon and nutmeg. The ground almonds also gave it a lovely fluffy texture. Any recipe that uses ground almonds I love. Something about ground almonds that gives all baked goods a special x-factor. So anyway, this is sort of an autumnal cake which I found delightful especially since September is finally here and we’ve gotta say goodbye to summer. I might add a little more cinnamon and nutmeg to the batter in the future as I quite like a bit more spice in cakes like these. The pears which were poached in lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar and spices tasted wonderful with the caramel topping and cranberries soaked in the pear poaching water. Together with the cake, served warm, it was lush! I loved the lemoniness and laces of orange together with the cinnamon-sweetness of the pears and cranberries. I’m not that great at describing how good food tastes to me but honestly, this was good. Moist, very tasty and not overly sweet such that you couldn’t even taste the pear.

Gorgeous.

One problem I had with the recipe, aside from all my kitchen accidents which I’ll get to in a bit, was the baking time. The recipe states that you bake it for 35 mins but I had to bake mine in the oven for nearly 50 mins. I’m not too sure why that was and I have a nagging suspicion that my oven wasn’t preheated long enough to get to the right temperature for baking the cake and thus, required a longer cooking time than advised in the recipe. Any ideas?

I chose not to glaze the cake with jam a little watered down in a saucepan as I felt the caramel topping was sufficient and the cake moist and pretty enough. Like I’d mentioned before, I wanted to keep the recipe simple so I’d stay true to the pears. Any other jam, apricot, strawberry or marmalade would just be unhelpful.  

Right, so some of you might be wondering about those kitchen accidents and if you’ve kept up with me on Twitter, you’d have some idea of the silly things I’d done to myself. I guess today’s just one of those days where hand-eye coordination totally fails you. On days like that, I usually ruin everything and by the end of the day, I feel exhausted and emotionally drained. Ie., I feel like a failure. The upside down cake gave me hope but the process of making it was utterly chaotic. Whilst preparing the lemon zest, I’d grated my thumb into the zest as well. Quite a mess I created with the blood streaked across the white sink. Yes. My kitchen’s got a white, dark brown and silver theme to it. All the table tops are marble white and mum loves to keep it absolutely spotless. She’s anal. And I’m OCD-ed. Great. Picture me freaking out and washing away all the blood, picking out the bad zest and all – don’t worry. It didn’t really get onto the lemon but totally irked me out. 

So what happened next? Yes, there’s more. The caramel was a successful event. As I stirred the butter into the melted sugar, the itchy-fingered bit of me suddenly stuck a finger into the beautifully browning (and still, bubbling) mixture. Yep. I burnt my finger through and through. It’s now red, sore and still throbbing. To top it off with the cherry on the icing, I’ve got a bulbous white blister on the tip of my finger that really gets in the way of typing, washing my hair, etc. 

Wally brain in the kitchen. Stay away.

I’d like to stop here and end your pain. I mean, seriously, you can hurl me some verbal abuse and I wouldn’t mind. Haha. Getting my cake out of the oven was interesting as well. As I’d placed my cake tin on a cookie tray to prevent any accidental spillage, I had to get the cake out of the oven with oven mitts by grabbing the cookie tray and pulling it out. I gather my brain had executed complete shutdown or just decided a simple act like this didn’t require complex thinking – I turned 90 degrees to my left without moving my right arm away from the oven and seared the flesh of my upper right arm with the cookie tray. WOW. The skin’s kinda like welded down where I’ve burned it. A burn line of about 1.5 inches. If anyone asks, I’ll just say I was in a fight or something. My life’s way cooler than ‘Whoops. I burned myself with a cookie tray.’ Oh no. I can already imagine the looks on their faces when they find out the truth. Scarred for life I am, pun not intended.

Right. But the cake was good so I’m a happy chappy. Off to go reap the rewards of my efforts today. If you’re looking for that recipe, check it out over at Ottolenghi’s website. They’ve got loads of other cool recipes as well.

On campus, we have a limited choice of greasy, boring places to eat. I’m not really complaining since there’s a place we usually stop by on Mondays after our lecture for yummy jackpots, aka jacket potatoes or pots. Whatever weird combo you fancy (eg. tuna and cheese, sweet thai chicken and beetroot, etc.) they are more than willing to cater to your odds and ends for a jackpot topping. In terms of healthy eating, we’ve even got a little healthy snack bar under the University Centre that offers gluten free soup, salads, a range of vegan and organic sandwiches, drinks, fresh fruit and a range of rice & corn crisps and snacks. Thing is, to get your money’s worth, you’d order a Salad & Protein which offers you 5 salad choices and 1 protein from £2.45. Your choice of protein can be anything from feta cheese & sundried tomatoes to a chicken breast to shrimp to marinated chicken breast to poached salmon. If you’re the type who can’t go without a salad dressing, the lady behind the salad counter is more than happy to squirt a ridiculous amount of mayo, vinaigrette, soy sauce and other weird sorts of liquids on your salad. Fresh salad, tasty, generous portions, affordable.

Sounds good so far, don’t you think? The downside of this is the long queues, the slow service, the lack-lustre expressions of the salad people. You’d think healthy eating could be made more ‘healthy’ with healthy, chirpy people offering the food. No. You’ve got druggee-types, grumpy types, dazed types, clueless types. Honestly! Also, if you happen to go into the snack bar with a 10 pound note, about 90% of the time you’ll have the salad lady fretting about chatting with her mate about not having enough change, etc. etc. It can get très annoying if you’re a pretty impatient-from-hunger type of person.

It’s cold. I’m hungry. Don’t piss me off. Now, give me my food dammit.

So anyhow, ranting done. I have realized that the saying ‘If you wanna get it right, do it yourself’ rings true. Salads are dead easy. Salads are quick to make. Prepare a massive bowl in the morning and you’ve got a satisfying lunch to bring with you to work, to a picnic – it’s great! You can throw anything in it so use up that almost-rotting vegetable at the back of the fridge quick! This said, why am I getting frustrated in a healthy snack bar when I can whip up something even better for less, minus the frustration and the queueing?

Diva has been silly. From now on, I’ll be taking a packed lunch with me to university. Probably will start getting up early and bento it up as well. Oh, I’m getting little eager shivers just thinking about how the others will watch and envy my adorable little lunch sets. Haha!

Clementine Salad Bowl with Wild Crayfish Tails, Fresh Basil, Raisins & Walnuts
Ingredients

1 serving your favourite mix of salad leaves
1/3 cup wild crayfish tails, ready to eat
5 large fresh basil leaves, roughly shredded and broken up
2 tbs raisins
2 tbs walnuts
drizzle on your favourite vinaigrette, or some lemon/orange juice

Salads are easy. Put it all in a large bowl. Mix together. Drizzle on your dressing. You don’t need much dressing for this as sweet clementines make up for all the flavour! Now toss wildly. Serve.

I’ve served mine in a lousy glass casserole dish out in the cold on ice or melting snow…Eccentric huh?

I’m a fruit junkie. The 5 a day deal doesn’t work for me because it’s more like 7-8 a day. Fruit is simply too amazing to have anything else. Now that the sun’s come out from it’s shitty home from behind a grey cloud more often than it used to (although it bloody seems like this month’s gonna be one grey month yet again, what’s new really) – I couldn’t let that seafood-lover island girl within me stay shut in anymore. So “to market, to market” it was.

The marketplace is always my favourite place to be in. It’s just awesome. All that hustle and bustle, busy wet exchange of produce and money. The shouting, the casual greeting of ‘alrite love’ and the occasional stern look from a geez!-he’s-well-huge and very hairy butcher. It’s a beehive of hungry foodies and devoted sellers. Wet, messy and smelly or not, I adore the handwritten, marker-pen scribbled price labels as well. Something about that personal attention and careful thought gets to me more than anything else. Not even my beloved Marks&Spenser could hold a finger up to the treasure trove I believe is the food market. Reminds me a lot of the tiny market that used to be (and probably still is) situated close to my old home. The butcher, grocer, fish monger, etc. – all of them were like my family and they too, in their own closeknit group were like family. I remember the fish being thrown about from person to person, seemed like so much fun but it was really tough work. Choosing the best fish available and satisfying the customers at the same time. The large (why are they always big burly men?) but jovial butcher sold some pretty amazing meats under that red glowing light of his. The days when I was sent off by mum to pick up some char siew pork from him were one of the best days of my childhood too! With each downward slice of his butcher knife, the pool of saliva in my mouth grew a little larger and more uncontrollable. The vegetable grocer next door wasn’t too friendly with me and her vegetables often looked a little sad and muddy. But her sister did make one of the best green tea mooncakes for 50 cents each so she scored a point in my good books I suppose, and that made me score a helluva lot of points with the classmates too – what with all my goodies and truly, just my pleasant being. Jokes.

Those were indeed some good times. And thinking on that, I couldn’t help but miss good fish and seafood. Got a little carried away with my shopping today. Tore my Bag for Life (forgot to take the M&S Organic Cotton bag I have with me, it’s adorable and lime green so that means LOOK AT ME! i’m cool) with all that shopping I had. However, couldn’t be any happier with all that glorious food and specifically – fresh squid, ‘lobster’ tails (these are tails using lobster meat and not fresh lobster – I had to go for the cheap option) and some really good Wild Alaskan salmon steaks. Although I couldn’t afford real lobster this time – I no longer have the backing of my parents who once shipped fresh lobster from Australia – this salad will be amazing with the real deal. Right now I can only work with what I have unless I sell my clothes and shoes!

Recipe was adapted from Rasa Malaysia‘s Tropical Fruit Salad with Baby Shrimps and Toasted Coconut which I would really want to do in the future when I can pull together all the ingredients because it sounds absolutely gorgeous. I couldn’t get any canned mandarins or mandarins for that matter so this is going back on my list of to-dos. Here’s my cheaptrick, haha, spin on this beautiful salad. It’s great for 2.

Lobster Fruit Salad
Ingredients

1 large orange, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup fresh mango, cubed
2 lobster tails, sliced
juice of 1 lime
1 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs honey
1/4 tsp grated garlic flakes
good handful of basil leaves, chopped
1/4 of a small red onion, chopped
1/4 cup sultanas

Put everything in a salad bowl. Drizzle the honey over, followed by the juices. Give everything a good, energetic toss. Cover with clingwrap and leave in the fridge to chill for at least an hour. Then when ready, serve and garnish with lime wedge and some basil leaves. Quick & easy.

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And guess what came through the post this morning? My love treats. Little apron gifts for the girls, personalized according to favourite drinks and courtesy of The Sugar Bar. Indeed, my skin is thick enough to do some blatant plugging but these were just the perfect things for our upcoming Summer BBQ House Party. Although these can never replace my Laura Ashley apron, a gift from the ever-lovely Kate, I can’t help but say their simplicity and ‘The Sugar Bar’ emblazoned across the chest sure make me almost teary to see my little blog come thus far.

vodka shot, gin&tonic, snakebite, tequila sunrise

Black aprons made with quality cotton. Durable and easy to wash. The words have been printed using a Flex Print technique in white and cream.

On this (foodblog) note, Kyoto Foodie is currently holding a little survey to make its blog better. The good bit? Win Japanese treats! If you don’t already know, Japanese sweet treats or labelled ‘junk food’ by Kyoto Foodie (I would never go as far as to call them junk food because they are too amazing ) are one of the cutest and most awesome things to have around. They’re tasty, fun, some of them totally out of this world. So head on over to the survey page to help Kyoto Foodie out (you’ve only got to answer 4 simple questions) and try your luck at winning some fantastic yummies. Talking about this actually makes me wish I had a box of GALBO with me now.

Well then, y’all, diva out.

I really liked these muffins. I’m a chocolate lover up to my toes so i really am not such a big fan of things with fruit in them, with the exception of cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries and all the other berries that i can find. But these muffins tasted very REAL to me. I guess it’s cause of the low amount of sugar used and the use of orange juice and milk to make up for that lack of sweetness. I also threw in some orange pulp and nibbling on them in the muffins was quite an experience. Honestly, I never did like fresh oranges. I didn’t like the acidity of oranges, or the fact that they tended to make your nails orange and the bitter aftertaste if i bit too far into the peel. Until last year when i decided it was more worthwhile and fun (with all that juice squirting into my eyes) to eat a fresh orange than vitamin C pills.

This recipe is a Nigella Bites one. Orange Breakfast Muffins. But i’d recommend you add in some dried cranberries cause they give it an added sweetness. Remember watching Nigella on TV and she saying something like how muffins to her are a type of bread. Just break it open whether warm or cool and eat it with cream cheese or jam and that’s how i ate mine. The muffins may seem to some to be a little bland (to a chocolate lover, definitely) but i guess you really have to get used to the fact that this recipe called for freshly squeezed juice so it tastes less sweet, but tangier and of course healthier. The smell of butter and milk is still wonderfully strong from these muffins and so, it’s really yummy to eat it with strawberry cream cheese, homemade marmalade or really just simple strawberry jam. Best thing was I had this for lunch while watching Jamie Oliver dearest on Discovery Travel&Living-perfect afternoon. Makes the dreaful heat livable.

Cranberry Orange Muffins

Ingredients

75g unsalted butter

1 2/3 cup flour, sifted

1/4 cup ground almonds

1/2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup sugar

zest of 1 orange, washed and dried

juice of one orange (abt 1/3 cup)

1/3 cup milk

1 egg

Preheat oven to 200dCelsius.

Melt butter and set aside to cool.

Combine flour,almonds,soda and baking pwder, sugar and zest in a bowl and give a little stir with a fork. Measure juice and milk into a jug and whisk in egg, followed by the cooled melted butter.

Make a well in the dried ingredients and neatly pour in the liquid ingredients into the well, mixing carefully but swiftly with a fork as you go until just incorporated and mixture starts to resemble yellow custard.

According to Nigella, if batter is too dry, add either a tbs of juice or milk. Bake for 20min and no longer. Once out of oven, transfer to wire rack to cool and while still slightly warm, crack open muffin and serve with jam! Voila!