The Food Pornographer

Billy Lee’s current favourite napping spot is on the window sill in between the bookshelf and the curtain in my study. She seems to like posing for the camera.

Pixel’s current favourite spot is on the pink cat mat that came free with their Eukanuba cat biccies, in the spa room, in her own little ray of sunshine (awwww!). She hates the camera and almost always looks away or shuts her eyes.

We went to the shops on Saturday morning so I could check my PO Box and withdraw money from an ATM. We decided to have a junky breakfast. Jac opted for a pie and chips from Jesters Pies. The hot chips at this particular Jesters are really good as they tend to cook them to order, so you get them really fresh, piping hot and crisp. They have three kinds of salt for you to choose from: plain salt, chicken salt and garlic salt. The chicken salt and garlic salt are hell saltifying (I made that word up – it means mega salty), but are sooooo good on hot chips. Jac chose to have garlic salt on her chips.

Jac chose the Footy Pie, which is filled with chunky steak and mushrooms, and topped with bacon and tasty cheese. I love Jesters Pies – I love that the pastry isn’t typical flaky puff pastry – it’s more chewy (I tend to go for the chewy version of things – I prefer chewy cookies to the crunchy or crumbly kind anyday, for example – are you into chewy or crunchy?). My favourite Jesters is the Pavarotti, which is filled with skin-free chicken with bacon and button mushrooms in a light cheese sauce.

See the gooey cheese on the right?

While Jac tucked into her pie, I went with good old McDonald’s and got myself a Sausage and Egg McMuffin.

The beef was very nice – Jac had rolled it in herbs and garlic, and I poured gravy all over it – but the roasted vegetables were the highlight for me. There was butternut pumpkin, sweet potatoes, really weeny sweet carrots, zucchini, whole onions, and really crispy roasted potatoes. There was also cabbage, peas and (at around the one o’clock position on the plate, really yummy Yorkshire pudding! Jac cooked it in a small round cake tin, making one big pudding (I did ask if she’d cook individual puddings in the muffin tray like Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay, but the single pudding she produced was so delicious it didn’t really matter – in fact, after I had my dinner I ate another piece of warm pudding with maple syrup for dessert).

As a couple of you really liked the quartet of images thang I did with last Friday’s dinner, let’s go around the plate again, and then look at it all from a slightly different angle… (Click on the individual pics if you want to see bigger versions)

We all went to our favourite asian food hall for dinner. Colin had vegetarian stir-fried noodles.

Jac tried the gado gado from the Indonesian stall for the first time. It looked like a complete mess but Jac assured me it was very tasty. The sauce was like a satay gravy which drowned the boiled eggs, bean sprouts, tofu, cabbage, green beans and some sort of crackers – they didn’t taste like prawn or fish crackers to me – mystery crackers.

I had char siu wantan mee, dry style. Actually, I waited so long I ended up politely asking them about my order and as it turns out they’d forgotten about it, which sucks as I was the hungriest out of us three.

While I was waiting for my food to arrive, I went to my favourite stall and ordered some stuff for takeaway – one glutinous chicken rice for my breakfast tomorrow, a serve of yong tow foo for my lunch and a serve of loh bak (five spice pork roll) requested by Jac. We ended up cracking open the container of loh bak and feasting on it as we ate our chosen dishes.

Look at that lovely chicken, all glistening and juicy.

Jac made herself a sandwich, with lettuce, cracked black pepper and a generous spreading of mayonaise. Whenever Jac has lettuce in a sandwich or burger, she has heavy lettuce. She looooooves lettuce.

I had a thigh (my favourite part of the chicken), drumstick and wing, and a piece of buttered white bread.