Bristol Bites

I'm very proud to say that I will be writing a few pieces here and there for Bristol Bites. It's blogs like Emily's that inspired me to start writing again and so am seriously pleased to be able to contribute towards their output.

Am off to my first official outing for them on Thursday so watch this space (and theirs!).

Watersky - they have knives and forks, don't you know?

I think it is incredibly difficult to find a good Chinese restaurant. I’m not talking about a local takeaway that serves questionable meat in fluorescent sauces and food served with bucketfuls of bean sprouts to flesh out portions or indeed a restaurant that serves a set menu of crispy duck, sweet and sour something and beef in black bean sauce. 

I’m talking about an authentic Chinese restaurant that serves clay hotpot dishes, dim sum and platters of Chinese roasted meat. Roasted meat, namely char siu (bbq-ed pork), duck and crispy belly pork on rice is one of the dishes of my childhood and is still one of my favourite meals. 

There are a few Chinese restaurants in Bristol, namely Dynasty, Hong Kong Diner, Mayflower, Wongs and WaterSky. I’ve visited all but Wongs and some definitely rank better than others but I won’t review all of them here today. 

I’ve visited WaterSky a couple of times, recently. Once with friends for dim sum and once on a mad mission for some crispy belly pork. WaterSky is easily one of the biggest Chinese restaurants I’ve ever been to. It easily seats 300 and is plush and opulent. The ceiling houses several gigantic chandeliers and the gold and scarlet carpet is grand and thick underfoot. And don’t even get me started on the toilets (seriously, if you visit WaterSky ladies, take a trip to the conveniences). 

We’ve been here for dim sum on the weekend when it is absolutely packed and people are queuing to get in but I don’t get it. As a self-titled connoisseur of dim sum (seriously, I come from a family who will happily drive an hour and half each way to satisfy a craving), I found it to be one of the worst places to eat it. 

The cheung fun (think Chinese cannelloni – long flat sheets of rice noodles rolled up with various fillings) with char siu was thick and rubbery and the char siu was unappetisingly pale and fatty. The yam croquettes, instead of being light and fluffy were heavy and stodgy and very dry and the various  steamed dumplings seemed to be over-cooked and soggy. Our fried dishes such as won ton (minced pork and prawn wrapped in spring roll skin and deep fried) and lobster dumpling were very greasy – I guess typical of having been taken out of the fryer and not drained properly. But everything seemed to be tasteless.  It was almost as if the food had been bought from Wai Yee Hong, the supermarket downstairs, and reheated upstairs. There didn’t seem to be any love or care in the dishes.

 All in all, I was very disappointed and won’t be letting either of my parents near it for fear of the months of moaning that will follow - ‘Remember when you took us to that restaurant for dim sum and it was LOUSY?’ / ‘I can’t believe you took us there and we had to queue for such a LOUSY meal,’ etc. (They like the word ‘lousy’).

However, I was nearby the other day and in the mood for a dish of three roasties rice. I was seated in one corner of the vast restaurant away from a crowd of noisy, elderly Chinese folk who I was told were there on an annual ‘Chinese Elders Group’ lunch. Bless… there’s something for me to look forward to in my senior years. 

When my dish came, it looked utterly delicious. Most restaurants try and palm you off with a more generous helping of char siu but the duck and belly pork was in plentiful supply too. However, I was asked if I needed a knife and fork. Bemused, I told the waitress I was Chinese to which she told me that I didn’t look it and started to question me on my heritage. Ok, I know it happens a lot and I don’t look authentically Chinese but who’s to say that even if I wasn’t, I couldn’t eat with chopsticks? Thumbs down for customer service… 

But the char siu was sweet and tender, the belly pork salty and crunchy and the duck was soft and highly spiced with 5 spice powder with a lot of the fat rendered away so you weren’t getting mouthfuls of it under the crispy skin. Except for the service, it was the polar opposite to the food we were served for dim sum and I would certainly go there again for the more traditional menu based dishes. And next time, I’m going to tell them that I’m Swedish… 

At the moment...

I'm working in a lovely, LOVELY company called Humble Bee Films. I can't remember when I enjoyed working for a company more. I shan't wax lyrical about what makes it so good, just that they are all bloody nice people and I feel arse numbingly lucky to be here. (Especially as Auntie is just over the road and is, for me, the opposite end of the happy staff scale).

I'm currently on a documentary about parrots, and while it's far away from my last programme with my lady crush, Nigella, it is one of the sweetest things I've ever worked on.

Cue smug face and passing of the sick bucket...

Making time = Making sense

Last night I spoke to one of my best friends who I haven't spoken to since Christmas. Not because of a falling out or because one of us had been on exotic adventures round the world. Our very lame excuse was that we've both been 'too busy'. During the phone call she was telling me how if anyone threw anything at her at work she'd deal with it and make it a priority but when it came to personal matters, even medical ones, they'd be put on the back burner until she had the time to deal with them.

Admittedly, I do the same. I fill in forms every day at work, I tot up expenses, I dot the i's and cross the t's, I chastise cameramen for not giving me the right name for air tickets etc but when it comes to me, I haven't even changed my name on my driver's licence yet and I've been married for nearly a year. There are medical insurance forms sat on the coffee table, a doctor's appointment I need to make, my CV to update, not to mention my friends who I don't talk to as much as I would like to. And look at this blog that I was so enthusiastic about setting up... #blogspotfail

I have no-one to blame but me and some strange in-built thought process that I'm not important enough to take priority. I will definitely try to make room in my life for me, even if it's only 15 minutes a week. And I'll start with that driver's licence (and more blogging!).

Peas = Peace?

As mentioned in the previous entry, I'm a total foodie. I love cooking for friends and family but it's a relatively new hobby. I've 'cooked' since I was a student but have only started honing my skills in the last few years or so. Student food was relatively simple - toad in the hole, pasta bakes and the ingenious one tray roasts which, I'll be honest, could probably have scraped a C+ in home economics, but not much else. I didn't realise garlic, salt and pepper could change a chicken so much until Nigella draped herself across my television screen. Nowadays I'm pretty confident in the kitchen and can hold my own in a tarragon vs oregano conversation but I will happily profess that I've still got a long way to go before I can call myself a master-chef.

My love of food comes from my entire family. My dad has been known to hotfoot it down to Chinatown in the middle of the night in his younger days to slurp up a bowl of noodles and my mother looks like she's won the lottery several times over every time she cracks a new recipe. My brother just has fun eating the products of everyone's labour... However, the primary reason I love food (I think) is because I find food = peace. And here, dear ones, is why.

I have grown up in a noisy, emotionally charged family who all lack a sense of tact and see no reason to hold back criticism even though taking it themselves is impossible so you may be forgiven for thinking that I mean peace as silence. In some ways I do but silence is normally the added bonus. The peace I mean is a truce.

Throughout my youth I was involved in countless shouting matches with both my parents and even now, they pull the, 'I'm-not-having-a-go-at-you-because-I-enjoy-it' card, adding a pinch of, 'I-know-I-said-I-wouldn't-mention-it-again-but-I've-got-to-say-something...' along the way but everything always seemed to come together peacefully at the dinner table as if someone had stationed a white flag above the centrepiece of steaming dishes. Dad would spoon things on to my plate - normally things with a lot of sauce that I would otherwise decorate the table mats pebble-dash style with and Mum would push the near empty bowl of broth towards me at the end of the meal telling me to drink it. Ed would eye the last piece of meat sat in the centre of its serving dish and put on a show of humble gratefulness when we all said he could and should finish it. Criticism would be forgotten and instead reassurances that the toyu pork had enough chilli in or that the stuffed tofu was tasty would take precedance.

Even when my parents had one of their huge arguements resulting in radio silence on both sides of for weeks, if we kids were at home, dinner was always served around the table. A swift jerk of the head from Mum towards the lounge where Dad can normally be found, lost in a programme about extreme fishing or silently committing how to build a set of collapsible, rotating shelves out of old floorboards, cotton wool and belly button fluff to memory, is the signal for one of us to alert him to the fact that dinner was ready and he should come and play happy families. It wasn't the most natural of circumstances but everyone always seemed to be quiet, and more importantly, happier when we were all eating together.

I cook now for Si, but I cook to show him I love him and want to take care of him and eventually, our family. I often grumble because he doesn't eat fish and he tells me to cook it for myself and he'll have something else but it's not something I'm happy doing. I don't want to be one of those families with three different meals on the go because it's disjointed and doesn't signify togetherness. I hope that I can distance myself from my family's method of using food as some form of truce and place more emphasis on the connection to love and happiness. So I hope that with further blog entries that I will share particular recipes or meals that conjour fantastic memories of love and laughter not just for me, but for anyone who reads this.

And for one girl, peas definitely don't equal peace. I can't stand the bloody things.

Hello... I work in TV

It's 11.40pm and I'm currently sat in an apartment in Warrington, on my own. I've just spent the last few minutes flicking through TV channels, giving up hope of finding anything decent and settling on some awful looking Anthony Hopkins film that I've never heard of. (The fact that Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris and Gary Sinise co-star and I've STILL not heard of it must mean it's truly, truly terrible!)

I'm just thinking how weird it is that TV is the reason why I'm here. It's also the reason why I've had a steak sandwich made with ciabatta bread and drunk a glass of raspberry and orange juice (god love per diems) and why it is I've been bored out of my brain for the last quarter of an hour as there's nothing to watch.

But it also plays a massive part of who I am, what beliefs I hold and what I know. Rather scary how such an increasingly larger, flatter box in the corner of the room can influence your life so much. Of course, newspapers, novels, the internet and conversations play their parts but how much easier is it to flick to 601 on the Virgin box and have George Alagiah tell me all I need to know about bombers, shooters and natural disasters? At least I can cook at the same time and he does know how to sport a nifty tie...

I love my job, it definitely has its negative points but I believe the good far outweigh the bad. However, I do wish there better programmes out there for broadcasters to choose from. Not just because I want to work on them but in situations like tonight, I can practically feel my brain dribbling out of my ear.

Oh god, Anthony Hopkins is dancing with Gary Sinise. Cue wide shot, backlighting and the pronounciation of viagra as FY-HARG-RAHR.

In the beginning...

I don't know why it's taken me so long to start a blog.

As a person who has always considered myself a writer, I have to admit that I've been woefully slow off the mark as far as blogging is concerned. I've always written. As a child I wrote poetry and stories, proudly showing them to my parents and teachers, living in fear of criticism. Even now I can remember the first time I felt that devasting, crushing feeling as one of my poems was critiqued.

Like all other sulky teenagers, convinced that nobody on the planet could possibly understand what they were going through, I religiously kept a diary, scrawling pages and pages of angst and romantic notions and carefully hiding my notebooks in an old bag on a shelf in my cupboard stuffed behind a row of cuddly toys.

As I approached A-Levels and the frightening decision of a uni placement, I ploughed all my confidence into my writing ability and switched from my decade long ambition to follow in the footsteps of Scott Robinson from 'Neighbours' to become a journalist to the slightly shakier decision of taking up Scriptwriting for Film & Television instead (much to the horror of my parents).

One degree, a published short story and a frankly, awesome wrestling role-playing website later, my writing has lapsed even though I still have daily ideas swirling around in my head, itching to be put on paper. Or on screen. And so to it then... a blog. More so for me but for anyone else who wants to read it as well.

PS - I still get that devastating, crushing feeling whenever my work is criticised, so unless you're prepared to stump up for Prozac.... be nice!