Street party...

A snapshot of dancers taking the streets in London recently. Update to come...

Cantonese roast duck @ Gold Mine

Succulent roast duck on wanton noodle

Bayswater is an area of west London in the City of Westminster. It is one of London's most cosmopolitan areas and well-known for its concentration of great restaurant serving Cantonese roast duck. Here, you will find rows of roast duck hanging on the window of Chinese restaurant wanting a share of your money in exchange for delicious roast duck.

Rather than throwing out all the names of restaurant of the entire Cantonese roast duck industry, I will just focus with Gold Mine in this entry.

Gold Mine

Address: 102 Queensway W2 3RR

Tel: 020 7792 8331

Opening Hours: Mon-Sun 12N-11pm

Average price per person: £7 to £15

As what I’ve heard from friends, the head barbecue chef at Four Seasons (one of the few best rated places for roast duck) left and formed Gold Mine in 2007 and brought many of his regular customers with him. It has regular customers of mostly Singaporean and Malaysians. Whilst I don’t think the flow of business is as good as Four Seasons, the food quality is up to the excellent standard.

The restaurant’s Cantonese roast duck is succulent and the skin is crispy. The meat has a layer of fat under a crisp envelope of shiny skin – which makes the roast duck so juicy. Among my friends view, Gold Mine is rated as one of the best place to get roast duck.

On a personal note, its roast pork is also excellent, though at times it could be a little too salty.

On top of that, Gold Mine has a relatively standard selection of Chinese dishes and has notably my personally favorite, kangkong belacan (as of the date of this entry, Gold Mine is one of the few restaurant in London that serves a decent kangkong belacan that suits Malaysian’s taste).

Service is good and friendly. But don’t expect to sit and chat for long at the restaurant because the turnover is fairly high, so you are expected to pay and leave the table the soonest you’ve finished your meal.

Crispy roast pork

The score: 9 out of 10

A very angry doggie...

I was out recently and ran into this tiny little dog glaring at me as if I owe the dog a million doggie biscuit. Couldn't help it but to snap a photo of the 'Very Angry Doggie' as it looked at me.

Fresh Prawns with Baked Tomato

Another Bob's Kitchen recipe for lazy people...

An appetizer for two to share.









Ingredients:
1) One large tomato - as big as a small Chinese bowl
2) few cloves of garlic (forget peeling the skin or cutting - we are lazy people)
3) 5 to 6 pieces of fresh prawn - quantity depends on the size of the prawn. The prawns got to fit into the tomato.
4) Olive oil
5) Salt

Time to prepare: 10 to 15 minutes

How do we do it?
1) Slice to top part of the tomato.
2) Dig out the content of the tomato leaving the skin which mirror a bowl - while digging the contents, careful not to destroy to outer part of the tomato. (Don't throw the content! - we need it later)
3) Pinch of salt on the heated frying pan.
4) Add olive oil to mix the salt.
5) Add a few clove of garlic and lower down the fire/ heat.
6) Put the tomato 'bowl' in the oven and baked it for 7 to 8 minutes (180 degrees Celsius).
7) Once the garlic turn golden brown add the contents of the tomato onto the frying pan.
8) Stir fry it for a while until it turned into puree like and then add the fresh prawn.
9) Once the prawn is cooked, place the tomato puree and the prawn (with the garlic) into the just baked tomato 'bowl'.
10) Serve it to hot. - DONE!