More Food Porn at Pasha restaurant – Middle Eastern Food

The girls having yummy middle eastern food

28 July 2009

London, United Kingdom

Pasha Restaurant – South Kensington, Gloucester Road

It was M’s birthday and L living in London for more than a decade, suggested visiting this middle eastern restaurant, Pasha at South Kensington to celebrate.

The food was impressive and the deco was beautifully done, in between the meals, belly dancers appeared shaking to  music.

We were not meat eaters but this Moroccan Middle Eastern food had great vegetarian dishes I have come to love like Baba ghanoush, which is made from Aubergines, Tahini (roasted sesame paste), garlic. Normally I hate this vegetable dip because most restaurant and cafes do it horribly, but Pasha does it by smoking the Aubergines, lightly smoky and roasting the garlic so that you can taste the caramelised sweetness. The result, a velvety creamy dip that up to now, I am still craving for.

We had tons of food,  mostly the typica dishes likel Moussaka which is aubergines,tomato, chickpea, onions,  Tabbouleh,  Chicken Tagine and other dishes I had forgot to photograph because of my hungry eager to eat and enjoy instead of snapping. But did manage to remember taking a few quick snaps before the girls engulfed the dishes.

Creamy with smoky hints of Baba Ghanoush, Aubergine dip. Nicely done without the tasteless creamy  version that most other places serve.  This has made into one of my comfort food list!

Fattoush salad, Fresh bread platter and sumac spiced bread.

This is a miss, didn’t like it. Forgot what it was called.

Another miss, a middle eastern Samosa, Sambusak with feta cheese, the pastry wasn’t great with little bland fillings.

Grilled seafood with hint of spices, pretty well-done and tender, loved the prawns, sea bass and cod.

Stuffed almonds with juicy majdool dates and chocolate fondue. Am picky about middle eastern dates, and Majdool the king of dates simply pure creamy sugary goodness packed with tons of healthy minerals and vitamin B nutritional goodies. Ahhh..

Chocolate fondue that we all devoured quickly. Good food takes no prisoners!

M doing her belly dance, those belly dance courses did not go to waste.

Meeting Adrian and Carol in Weymouth, South England

August 2009 – Weymouth, Dorset, South England

If there is another reason to visit Weymouth, its for the photogenic South England beach and its pretty yachting marina and meeting Carol and Adrian at their historical Bed and Breakfast hotel, The George.

Wonderful couple who bought their great B&B and conserved it on their own. Together they felt like the typical british couple on television. Adrian, the quiet and forgetful (he pretends only) but proud and always at your service chap, and Carol the out going chatty lady, who is also quite the psychic. The house apparently is a huge energy entity that communicates with Carol in uncanny ways and a nice lady who haunts the first floor.  The house also has moods.

Carol the ever out-going and enthusiatic historic bluff was educating us about the history of Weymouth and their conservation building.

Carol was pretty chatty about its history and in a tongue and cheek way, quite proud to mentioned that Weymouth was ‘infamous’ for bringing the Black Death, or Bubonic Plague to England back in the 1300s.

Weymouth was also the first sea-side resort, the Mad King George III (in late 1700s) came repeatedly for his summer holidays, taking a dip at the chalky cold waters of Weymouth beach. Back then it was rather unfashionable to take a dip in the waters, well, they didn’t really take baths and showers back then anyways, so this was definately not popular.

It was because of the first royal visits that the mayor of Weymouth decided to clean up the dreadfully pollution beach and sea side front and started building the luxury apartments , hence transforming it into one of the first famous sea side beaches.

At the dining room with the original fireplace that they discovered

At the front porch before we said out good byes

The artifacts Carol showed us when they discovered in the attic and basement while conserving the building.
Carol said she wants to find more of these hidden in the building and wants more of the old coins to complete the collection.

Here’s a ‘traditional’ English Breakfast

What a new ‘modern’ version of a traditional English Breakfast look like these days.
Pretty stylish looking, and rather sparse. I was getting a few of them at the Bed and Breakfast pub places while touring around South of English

The British really love their pork products, bacon and sausages and blood pudding.

Don’t really fancy them, I am not a mammal eater, I don’t eat pork, beef, mutton or anything with four legs. I love my seafood, fish and poultry and tons of yummy vegetables, but don’t get me eating my favorite animals

But I didn’t miss out in snapping a few photos of it when I temporarily confiscated the dishes from my travel buddies.

My vegetarian version of the English Breakfast – vegetarian fried sausage, eggs, hash potato and my favorite baked beans.  Everything tasted great when soaked with baked beans.. except that horrid deep fried ‘Vegie’  sausage.

The semi traditional modern English Breakfast – blood pudding, bacon, eggs, sauteed mushroom but no baked beans! how shocking!

The full English Breakfast minus the baked beans! When did they stop putting the beans in the breakfast and turn it modern! Tsk! Its not a English Breakfast without the baked beans along with the runny sunny side eggs! Where are the Food Nazis to set them ‘modern’ English cooks right! Damn you!

Food Glorious Food in the United Kingdom

This is a country of indulgence, its summer time and everywhere you see, gorgeous fruits and fresh produce all dressed up in beautiful colorful shop fronts. Everything seems so easy here, provided you have tons of those expensive British pounds. Consumerism is pricey!

You can get anything here… well anything and anywhere.. but just not anytime… The shops close early here, by 6pm or 7pm, some supermarkets like Tescos and Sainburys in some places open 24hours, but the restaurants close open.

Food has been a huge highlight on this trip, smoked fishes, smoked duck, preserves and fresh organic vegetable and fruit produce. Yummy

Here’s a whole lot of food shots for your entertainment.

The Famous Harrods Supermarket, beautifully presented food, photogenic decore

My favorite vegetables, bell peppers, artichokes, mini aubergines all dressed up so pretty.

French Artichoke Florettes according to the label.

In London Chinatown, crispy duck, so airy and crispy without being oily, I had this twice, once on our first day in London and on our last night in London!

Everything here is so nicely presented, even the ‘regular’ japanese takeaway

I rekindled my deep love of the fresh salmon here and went all out eating as much raw and smoked salmon as I could.

My favorite lunch meal, often craved in India, just a simple vegetable soup, fresh salad with artichokes and beans sprinkled generously with Parmasan cheese.

My rather expensive lunch/dinner at Selfridges. Organically raised salmon, smoked in aromatic woods for the summer, with duck pate and organic red cabbage saukekraut, and what’s left of this rather delicious salt smoked swordfish in between the smoked salmon bits. The salmon had such well distributed fat content, the meat just simply melts in your mouth. Nearly forgot to take a shot of it.

Amazing array of salads at the supermarket. I wonder what happens to them when it gets unsold. So much food wastage here, its so sinful!

Smoked meats.. they sure love their beautifully aromatic wood smoked game meats here in Greenwich Market

London – Summer Berries Galore!

It was summer and berry season, I got a little wild and bought a few punnets of strawberries, blue berries and raspberries daily, munching an average of 4 punnets a day. We don’t get such fresh and cheap berries here in Asia!

Berries were everywhere and I got them from Marks & Spencers, Sainburys and my favorite organically inclined Watrose. I love these wonderful Supermarkets!

This was heaven!

London – A break from my India travels

August 2009

Visited London and South United Kingdom for around 3 weeks. Met up with my friends who were coming from Singapore. London has been a strange place after being in India for awhile. Quite shockingly rude and impatient Londoners although the British I met in the countryside , South UK  seem a lot nicer.

The food has been quite good, thoroughly enjoyed the summer berries from the supermarkets, Sainsburys, Waltrose, Tescos.  Spent most of my time going to the supermarkets and picking up my lunch and breakfast. The variety here is amazing, after travelling in developing countries where you don’t really get much variety, this is food junkie’s heaven. A whole heap of consumerism, rows and rows of fresh food and even more amazing rows of processed foods. All I can say is, UK should be priviledged of having such wide array in their rather large supermarkets that in Singapore or India we call these regular sized supermarkets, ‘Hypermarkets” instead of a regular supermarket.

Didn’t do much photography here, just mainly enjoyed being a typical tourist, eating and sightseeing and taking snapshots some touristy places, but I did go a little insane with all the food and took some photos of the dishes I had.

It was summer, with beautiful berry season under the way, I got a little wild and bought a few punnets of strawberries, blue berries and raspberries daily, munching an average of 4 punnets a day.  We don’t get such fresh and cheap berries here in Asia! This was heaven!

It was food glorious food!

Londoners are NOT Helpful at all!

Funny Londoners,

I asked an information booth guy,where is such&such,what time it starts, he replies “OK,you see that corner, turn right,head to that newstand,pick up a magazine call TIMEOUT, from there you will be able to find out the listings and the address” – In my mind, I wanted to shout at him,’SO WHY DO WE NEED YOU TO BE HERE AS THE TOURIST INFORMATION BOOTH HELP?’

He isn’t the only one,
I asked my Hotel reception what time does breakfast start, and what other facilites they have, do they have free Wi-Fi.
The Receptionist didn’t even bother to look at me while hooked onto his computer, he just said,
: “You can find out all the information on the Hotel’s website, the same website you did your booking with us.”

Another idiotic receptionist at the same hotel woke me up at 1.30am in the morning to tell me, I just check in today to pay for tonight’s room. That I should come down and pay for the room. (No, i didn’t, I check in 5 days ago)

“Hello madam, our system shows you just check in and we like you to pay for tonight’s room, you come down and pay now. ”

What is with the service people in LONDON!
SO BLOODY BRAINLESS AND BLOODY RUDE ASSHOLES

Here in London

In London for 3 days now. Sunday was a dud.
Monday was great, discovered Chinatown which was just behind Leceister Square. Had the most delicious crispy roast duck with pancake in a HongKong style restaurant. The dish is quite unique to London, not tasted it anywhere else, pretty similar to the Balinese version of the crispy duck. The duck is shredded, the skin is air dried then fried to achieve that not so oily crisp airy texture. The service staff was very efficient and quite friendly, found out most of them were from Ipoh Malaysia who came to London in search for good money. Pretty gruelling job working more than 12 hours non stop 6days a week.

Watched the musical Wicked. It was ok, paid 45 pounds for a middle stall ticket, the view was pretty good, at least I didn’t have to struggle to watch a tiny figure moving in the stage compare to the first time I visited a musical.

Might head to the British museum and then do some street photography on Oxford street, find where the books and antique shops are.

Londons are awfully rude!

Londoners are shockingly bloody rude! Wow! Parisans seem to be so polite and helpful compared to them. Its sunday and everything is closed, tube lines closed, shops close early, restaurants chase you out before you step in, some don’t even bother to tell you they are closing, just a rude waving flick towards your face.