Wilson's Pie Van, Leeds

There's been a worrying development at work. Every day as noon approaches, a jingle plays, the pie van is nigh. Liberally stocked with all manner of pastry-based treats and assorted condiments, it entices me down the stairs and out the door. As winter arrives it'll be hard to resist. Mmmmm pie. Lovely warm, comforting pie and peas? Oh go on then.

Fortunately for my waistline they also stock a range of salads and sandwiches, and I'm usually only in the office a couple of days a week. Panic over. Not that I've got round to trying the salads yet, but the sandwiches are great. Think large soft granary rolls, packed with good quality ham, sliced eggs and salad.

More photogenic meals are available, but none so green

Today I went for the classic, pie and peas. A generous slick of sloppy peas and a hot Wilson's pork pie for a perfectly reasonable £2.10. Nice, though I actually prefer pork pies cold or slightly warm rather than heated up.

I used to wish the pie van would visit my office, and now it does. Lucky me.

8/10 for the sandwiches
7/10 for the pie and peas

Wilson's Pie Van
Loitering outside your office and making you fat


http://www.wilsonspies.co.uk/WilsonsPiesVan/

The Famous Fish Pan, Scarborough

It can be a challenge finding good fish and chips at the seaside.

The smell emanating from chip shop number one was reassuring, a steamy fug of hot oil and vinegar. We walked towards the door, and then I spotted it. A half eaten fillet on someones tray, the skin clearly visible. What is this, London? I'll have my battered fish skinned please. We moved on.

Chip shop number two looked promising from the outside, at least if the various quotes adorning the walls (best this and finest that) were to be believed. Another steamy fug hit me as I opened the door, but this time I recoiled at the stench of stale fat. We moved on rapidly.

Chip shop number three looked fine, smelled fine and tasted fine. I broke with tradition and ordered curry sauce with my fish and chips rather than peas. The sauce suggested recourse to actual ingredients rather than a powder mix, and wasn't bad at all raisins notwithstanding. The chips were freshly fried, creamy/crispy and moreish, and only the fish let the side down, just. It would have been very good had it been cooked fresh. In practice it was a rather wizened specimen, the batter good and crunchy but the fish a little past its best.

I'm sure there are better chip shops in Scarborough, but this did the job on a Sunday afternoon. Prices were reasonable given the location, we paid £7.95 for fish, chips and curry sauce, chips and two drinks.


7/10

28 Foreshore Road

Scarborough
North Yorkshire
YO11 1PB


http://www.thefamousfishpan.co.uk/

Thai Aroy Dee, Leeds

I'm not sure yet, but I think I might have chanced upon the best Thai food in Leeds. Thai Aroy Dee is up the top end of Vicar Lane, in the midst of Leeds' closest thing to a Chinatown.

It was the large poster in the window that grabbed my attention as I walked past a week or so ago. Dense with Thai script and no sign of the Roman alphabet, it was clearly aimed solely at Thais. I didn't go in at the time, but filed it in the memory bank for a future visit.

I was in town doing some shopping yesterday afternoon so thought I'd go there for lunch. They do indeed have a separate Thai menu. This is an annoying but not unusual feature of Asian restaurants, I've seen it in Thai and Chinese places. Presumably the expectation is that British people can't handle the more challenging flavours of the native cuisine. The spice levels, the funky, fishy flavours, the unusual cuts of meat. Whatever the reasoning behind this menu segregation, we're often missing out.

My ability to read Thai script not really being up to scratch, I had to ask the waitress to explain things for me. She was lovely, but not the best English speaker so we got as far as noodle soup with beef and I settled for that.

First impressions were good. A huge steaming bowl, plenty of meat visible and a decent selection of condiments (chillies in vinegar, fish sauce, chilli powder, sugar).

Second impressions were equally favourable, the broth was deeply savoury and satisfying. Stock based, similar to a Vietnamese pho but with lemongrass and celery in place of star anise and cinnamon. The meat was fantastic, fat chunks of braised, tender, slightly gelatinous beef (brisket at a guess) and also chewy, salty beef balls. Both present in more than generous quantities. Spring onions and beansprouts added a bit of textural variety and the springy noodles (flat rice sticks) weren't overcooked.

Great food, very reasonable prices (£5.95 for the noodle dish) and lovely, smiley service. I'll be back.

The secret list of goodies

Thanks to Twitter and the kindness of random strangers I also now have a full translation of the Thai menu (e-mail me if you'd like a copy). I took a photo of it and speculatively tweeted it asking for translation help. By the magic of re-tweets or hashtags I somehow got a response from a blogger based in the San Francisco bay area suggesting another blogger in that vicinity who may be able to assist. She duly translated the lot for me. By way of thanks here are links to their blogs, both of which are well worth a read if you're interested in street food or Thai cookery.

http://geezericious.blogspot.com/
http://shesimmers.com/


8/10

Thai Aroy Dee
112 Vicar Lane
Leeds
LS2 7NL

http://www.thaiaroydeeleeds.com/

English Muffins

I don't bake very often because I can't usually be bothered following recipes, mistakenly thinking it's too much like hard work. I always forget that whilst a recipe may be involved it often needs only 3 or 4 ingredients and little effort. Cooking Staffordshire oatcakes the other week reminded me how simple and rewarding it can be to mix up a batch of dough or batter, and if everything goes to plan how delicious the results.

With these thoughts in mind, and a cupboard full of yeast and flour it was only a matter of time before I got the mixing bowl out again. It had to be muffins. I love English muffins, simply toasted with butter, or butter and cheese, or butter and jam, or in a home-made version of the McMuffin. The McMuffin is a great idea, just executed badly. Sausage meat of dubious quality and an egg cooked solid. No-one in their right mind chooses a solid yolked egg. I like to make my own version with proper sausages and a runny egg, and it always goes down a treat.

I used Delia's recipe for my muffins. I won't recreate it here because I only changed one thing from the original. I forgot that I didn't have any strong white bread flour, so I used strong wholemeal instead. It worked just fine although I think white is probably better for muffins.

The method couldn't be simpler. Mix your dough, knead it, then leave it prove. This is the dough, kneaded but unproven.

Here it is after proving. It's twice the size as in the last picture, honest.

Then you can roll it out and cut it into muffins, then leave it prove again.

After the second prove they are cooked on both sides in a greased pan. Greased with lard, says Delia.

Leave to cool, then split and toast whenever you want one.

I split one straight from the pan, toasted it and buttered it. Lovely. It's all about the texture with muffins, that crisp, slightly chewy crust on the outside and the soft, yeasty inside that's just airy enough to soak up the butter.

The pièce de résistance was the breakfast muffin. I've been craving black pudding for a while so used this in place of the sausage. A toasted, buttered muffin, Bury black pudding, a runny egg and a squirt of ketchup. I fried the egg in the cutter used for the muffins to get that neat and tidy 'McMuffin' effect. Imagine a world where McDonalds served runny eggs and black pudding!

Sichuan stir-fried green beans with minced pork

Stir-fried beans with minced pork is a classic Sichuan dish. I've seen it on the menu of every Sichuan restaurant I've ever been to and I love it (5 or 6 of them, enough to know it's a running theme). A cracking version at Red Chilli the other weekend reminded me that it was about time I tried to cook it again.

On the couple of occasions I've attempted the dish before the results have been reasonable but I've never quite hit the nail on the head. It's never quite scaled the heights of deliciousness found in a good restaurant version. This time was better, I think I've nearly cracked it so I thought I'd share the recipe.

I did three things differently this time. I used pork belly and minced it by hand, I added shaoxing rice wine and I added a sachet of preserved vegetables. The pork belly was all my idea, but I can't claim credit for the wine and veggies as I perused plenty of recipes online that suggest their inclusion. The resultant method and quantities however are all my own work.

Cutting the meat by hand from a piece really sorted the texture out. You want little tiny nuggets of meat rather than actual mince which will either disintegrate into mush or form longer strands rather than nuggets. I used belly but shoulder would also work as I still trimmed quite a lot of the excess fat from the belly.

The rice wine and preserved veggies provided the depth of flavour and umami succulence (MSG may have been present in the preserved veg) that was otherwise lacking.

In it's original incarnation I think this is supposed to be a vegetable dish with pork garnish, but I upped the meat quotient a bit for no reason other than that I wanted more pork. One strip of pork belly should be plenty but you may want to use less if you are having this as a side dish. At Red Chilli this was our vegetable dish alongside other mutton, chicken and pork dishes so extra pork in the veggies wouldn't really have been necessary. Obviously a little bit of pork in the veggies was necessary, but not a lot. One has to consider arterial health on occasion.

The resultant dish should have an intensely savoury flavour balanced by some sweetness. It should also pack a punch from the chillies and make your lips tingle from the Sichuan pepper. All this, coupled with the fact it will contain lots of pork fat should combine to make it very more-ish indeed.

The more unusual ingredients are readily available in Oriental supermarkets.

You will need

These quantities will serve 2 as a main meal with rice, more as a side dish.
100g piece of pork belly
200g green beans
half a tsp sichuan peppercorns
handful of dried chillis
3 tbsps shaoxing rice wine
5 cloves garlic
an inch of ginger
3 spring onions
2 tbsps soy sauce
white pepper
vegetable oil
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 sachet of Sichuan preserved vegetable (made with mustard greens I think)

What to do

1. The first step is to prepare the meat. Cut any large quantities of excess fat from your meat, but don't get carried away as you still want it quite fatty.

2. Chop the meat into very small, almost minced pieces. The easiest way to do this is to attack it with scissors for a good five minutes.

3. Put your finely chopped meat into a small mixing bowl and add a good pinch of white pepper, a tbsp of soy sauce and a tbsp of shaoxing rice wine. Give it a good stir and set aside.

4. Top and tail your green beans, then cut them into roughly equal sized pieces. Get a wok on a medium-hot heat with a generous glug of vegetable oil and a tbsp of sesame oil in it.

5. Add the green beans to the wok and fry them until the surfaces start to blister and the insides are cooked but retain a little bite. This should only take 3 or 4 minutes. When they are done remove from the wok with a slotted spoon and put them onto kitchen paper to soak up any excess oil.

6. Whilst the beans are frying finely chop, crush or grate the garlic and ginger (I grated it) and slice the spring onions. Crush the sichuan peppercorns lightly in a pestle and mortar (if you haven't got one just bash them up a bit with something heavy on your chopping board). Open the sachet of preserved vegetables and have the dried chillies, soy sauce and rice wine to hand. Make sure all of this is done before the next step, as the rest of the cooking process takes only 4-5 minutes so you need to have everything ready to throw in quickly.

7. After the beans have been removed keep the wok on the heat and add the pork. Stir-fry it for a minute or two, don't worry if it sticks or catches as the crusty bits are delicious.

8. Add the handful of dried chillies and stir-fry for another few seconds, then add the garlic, ginger and sichuan pepper, then stir-fry for another minute or so.

9. Add the sachet of preserved vegetables and the beans, then stir-fry for another minute or so.

10. Throw in a good glug of shaoxing rice wine (about 2tbsps) and a glug of soy sauce (about 1 tbsp) and fry for one more minute.

11. Garnish with the spring onions and serve immediately with steamed rice.

...and finally, apropos of nothing other than to cheer me up here are a couple of photos taken in the Dales on Sunday. Just a little reminder that we do have blue skies from time to time in dank, dark November.

The Greedy Pig, Leeds

On Saturday The Greedy Pig served me up a contender for fry-up of the year, so in the manner afforded transpennine rival The Koffee Pot, here's the lowdown:

1. Bacon
Thick cut, piggy, crisped fat. Highly unlikely to have exuded nasty white foam on the application of heat.

2. Sausage
Good quality. Well seasoned. No daft, inappropriate at breakfast time flavourings.

3. Black Pudding
Aaargh no black pudding. Strangely I've been craving black pudding for weeks. It doesn't come as standard on the Greedy Pig breakfast, but I think you can add it for an extra 40p. But I forgot. At the crucial moment the desire for blood-based goodness eluded me. Damn fool.

4. Egg
Fried accurately. No mistakes. No egg snot.

5. Beans
Certain purists will tell you that beans should not be included in a traditional full English breakfast. The proprietors of The Greedy Pig may even be among such people as their breakfast doesn't include beans as standard. Fortunately they can be added for thirty pence. No slip-ups a la black pudding here, beans duly added.

6. Hash Brown
As ever, welcome when fried properly, and this was.

7. Tomato
Prime tomato season has long gone, but they managed to serve a grilled tomato with some sort of taste, so full marks here.

8. Toast
Just the one slice. White sliced. Just the job.

9. Tea
Served in a mug, with the bag left in allowing the punter to choose the strength of their own brew. Good. And from Teapigs too! I've been to places that charge well over half the cost of this entire breakfast for a cup of Teapigs tea. Outstanding value.

10. Condiments
HP sauce readily available in industrial quantities. Speaking of HP sauce, what's all this fuss about them changing the recipe and making it horrid? I haven't noticed. Maybe I haven't had the new stuff yet, or maybe I just don't have the subtle and refined palate I've persuaded myself I'm in possession of.

11. A bonus category! There were mushrooms too. Grilled mushrooms that definitely tasted of mushroom. 

It's not the largest of breakfasts, but it costs just £3.50 including the tea. For such good quality ingredients, assembled with such obvious care and attention, that is an absolute bargain. If you're especially hungry extra meaty things are 40p each, extra veggie things 30p. Adding beans, black pudding, an extra rasher of bacon and an extra slice of toast would still bring this in under a fiver.

The people running the place are friendly, and the sandwiches looked good too. Highly recommended.

9/10

58 North Street
Leeds
LS2 7PN

http://www.the-greedy-pig.co.uk/

Sukhothai, Headingley, Leeds (takeaway review)

Another day another disappointing takeaway. Thai this time, from Sukothai in Headingley.

Things got off to a bright start with a salad and some Thai sausages. The salad (Som tum) was crisp, zingy and surprisingly chock full of pungent, slightly foetid tasting (in a good way) dried shrimps. A lot of places hold back on these, presumably thinking they're a bit much for the average English palate. They can be a bit of an acquired taste, I like them but preferably in the presence of shedloads of chilli to balance things out a bit. The chilli quotient needed upping by about a factor of five, otherwise it was pretty good.

The sausages (Sai oua) tasted a lot better than they look! Coarse cut, fatty pork cut through with lime leaves and lemongrass. Citrus flavours might sound unusual in a sausage, but it works very well.

Another starter of tiger prawns in crispy batter was ok too. In a 'massive scampi straight from the freezer into the fryer' sort of way, but still.  

My main course was a disaster. It was a noodle stir fry (Pad kee mao) with prawns, basil, bamboo shoots, mushrooms and chilli. The noodles had been horribly overcooked and had formed together in a single claggy, sticky mass, with all of the other bits and pieces scattered around the outside. There was very little chilli in there and if there was any Thai basil in it at all I couldn't detect it, perhaps they'd run out and bunged some coriander (which definitely was present) in instead. Given the lack of basil or chilli the predominant taste was sweet, as in a bit sugary and nothing else.

A red curry was better, in that it wasn't actively bad, just boring. Completely one-note flavour wise (sweet again) and with no particular redeeming features.

Two starters, a salad, a curry with rice and a stir-fry cost about £26. Not the cheapest takeaway but Thai does tend to cost a little more than Indian or Chinese. The sausages and salad did suggest this place might be worth another shot, but on the other hand if they're happy to serve noodles like that then maybe not.


5/10

St Annes Road
Headingley
Leeds
LS6 3NX


http://www.thaifood4u.co.uk/