Oven... Baking days are here!

Inspired by all the baking in Rosie Hopkin's Sweet Shop of Dreams, I bought my first oven this weekend!

It's a mini oven for two but like they say, "rather have a mini oven for two than no oven at all!"

New Books, food books!

Every 1st of every month, I go and buy a book. Since I hadn't bought books for a few months now, I spent 2 hours in the bookstore and bought five books this weekend!

I suppose the books I bought are a fair indication of what's on my mind these days... cooking and digital media marketing!

Bought two books on food. One for the recipes and the other just because it had 'sweet shop' in the title and had pictures of all things food and, baking!

Jenny Colgan's Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams is about, a sweet shop! And has recipes to boot. Love at first sight!

Having never used recipe books before, I decided to buy a book with basic recipes. And what better cuisine to experiment with than Greek! Looking forward to whipping up a storm in the coming days - let's see how good I am at following instructions!

What's not to love about Greek food, sweet shops and recipes? Looking forward to my week day evenings of reading and weekend of cooking!

What are your favourite books on food? Do you like following recipes? Do let me know! Waiting to hear from you... :)

Recipe: Homemade Greek salad in 15 minutes!

Today is a holiday in HK and a long weekend warrants at least one big brunch!

The holiday brunch included baked beans with asparagus, french toast and my favourite, Greek salad.

Sometimes I wonder why I have Greek salad outside when it's so easy to make at home!

Here's the recipe for all you salad lovers and especially for my friend, Pragya Narang.

Ingredients -

• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• Reduced fat feta cheese
• 2 tablespoon lime juice
• Lettuce leaves
• 1 onion
• 1 cucumber
• 6 baby tomatoes or 1 whole tomato
• 1/2 bellpeppper; I used yellow bellpepper for the colour but you can use anything

How to make -

Dressing - Combine the olive oil, lime juice, crumbled feta cheese, salt and pepper and keep aside

Wash the lettuce leaves and make a bed of leaves in the salad bowl

Cube the onions and cucumbers. 

Cut the baby tomatoes into quarters. 

Finely chop the bellpeppers. 

Put everything together in a bowl.

Pour 1 tablespoon of the dressing on the vegetables and toss till everything's mixed together.

Now, transfer all the vegetables to the salad bowl. Pour the rest of the dressing on it and voila, your salad is ready!

I like my Greek salad cold so I tend to pop into the fridge and take it out just before eating. This ensures that the vegetables remain fresh and crunchy!

The thing I like most about the Greek salad? The lemon and olive oil juice right at the bottom. Scoop up the juice with the lettuce leaves and enjoy!

Can you see the juice?

Do let me know if you liked the recipe! What more can we add to make it even yummier? Would you like to share your favourite salad recipe? Let me know in the comments below!

Restaurant Review: Oolaa, SoHo

Somebody recommended that I try Oolaa brunches and boy was it a great recommendation!

The husband and I booked a table at Oolaa last Saturday (yes, reservations are a must here) and had the most perfect mid-day meal. The staff was friendly and the food was reasonably priced for the portion size. The place was absolutely buzzing and the service super-fast. 

The only down-side is that you can only sit-in and dine in the restaurant section for 90 minutes over the weekend. This is the kind of traffic they get. On weekdays though, one can linger and use the wifi for hours on end as long as you have some food on your table. 

Oolaa's Big Breakfast

The husband prefers to take the easy way out while ordering his breakfast and always goes for the Big Breakfast. At Oolaa, he got a huge breakfast - he literally gasped when he saw his plate! The restaurant owners seem to believe in 'big is beautiful' - Oolaa is huge by HK standards and so are the portion sizes. I don't hear anybody complaining!

Muesli

I thought I would take the healthier route and have a bowl of muesli followed by bruschetta. Boy, was I in for a surprise! As you can see, my small 'bowl' of muesli was a heaping plate full.

Breakfast bruschetta

...and have a look at the bruschetta! I had imagined the bruschetta to look like this, instead I got the above! It was great!

Asparagus

On top of the above, we had also ordered a side of asparagus. This again was absolutely flavourful and crunchy.

We went in famished and came out stuffed. All in all, a great weekend meal indeed!

With its large open spaces, comfortable vibe, Oolaa is a must visit for people who visit SoHo.

Oolaa

G/F, Bridges Street, Centrestage

SoHo, Mid-Levels, Hong Kong

Reservations: 2803 2083

Halloween's here!

Supermarkets in Hong Kong have a decidedly 'spooky' air around them this month. Pumpkins, and Halloween's here! 

I found the expressive pumpkins far more eerie than the purple spider! There's something about a pumpkin with whiskers or a simpering pumpkin that just put me off!

Pumpkins of all shapes, sizes and colours.

These small pumpkins lend themselves perfectly to roasting. Spicy roasted pumpkins and mushrooms with pasta... yum!!

Some pumpkin recipes coming up soon! Till then, enjoy the spooks my friends!