My Lovely Blogaki

I found these gorgeous red mullets in Birmingham market. I don't know where do they live, but the fishmonger said "English sea".

For £2.50 per kilo (in the photo above is one kilo of the fish), it think it was a bargain by any G7 country standard (another G is not real G). They could not clean them for you for this price, but it is not a big problem for someone like me who come from fish rich contry.


I clean them at home, and dusted with seasoned flour and pan fried. Red mullet is not one of my favourite fish, but I did enjoy as what they were.

I absolutely love Birmingham fish market, as there are so many discoveries.

From Monday to Friday I eat quite simple and quick food, as I work daytime and I don't enought time to shop and cook. So, Saturdays and Sundays are my eathing therapy days. Here are photos of what I ate...

At lunch time yesterday, I went out with 4 Japanese friends and 1 English husband (not mine) to eat dim sum.





These are shark fin and coriander dumplings. Shark fin is chinese delicacy and very expensive. Are these dumplings expensive? No. Not much more than other dumplings? So how they cope? Answer: not putting shark fin!

I don't know if there was not shark fin at all, but I did not see any. I was not that disappointed as it was rather foreseeable. Tasted good, though.


Steamed cattle fish balls. They were similar to Japanese food and made me feel nostalgic (well, not so much ).

The accompanying sauce, however, was very chilly. Not Japanese idea at all.






Porridge with pork and preserved egg.

This was really nice. Even the people who have not liked preserved egg liked this porridge. Plenty of pork and egg.







Saying good-buy to my friends, I headed for the Indoor Market.

When you go there, you'd better not to decide what to buy, but buy what looks good on the spot.

I saw this swordfish fillet and I decided dinner menu. It looked really fresh.






I grilled it and ate it with Japanese style vinegar rice. I had it in Japanese way with soy sauce and yuzu pepper, but Dim ate it with olive oil and lemon. Very good in both ways.

Really delicious.

These are the plaices I bought from the In-Door Market, Birmingham; I paied £5 for 3.



On the day first, I dusted them with seasoned flour and deep-fried. It was nice but there wasn't so much meat to eat and it was so flat






Day two. This is Japanese style. Cooked the fish wish small quantity of water, sake (Japanese rice wine), mirin (sweet liquid condiment made from rice), soy sauce and ginger. A bit gelatinous (plaice skin contains a lot of collagen), and nicely flavoured.

Next to it is "Oyako-don". Base is Japanese rice, and on top of it, chicken bits, spring onion, and eggs cooked in "Dashi" sauce. This is very easy to make and a kind of Japanese food even the foreigners find accessible and tasty.

A new Polish grocery opened near our home a couple of weeks ago, and we went there right after the opening.

Many of the stuff are dry food like biscuits, tinned or bottled foods, instant dried food (knorr style soup, stew mix etc.), but there is a small fridge in which hams, sausages, cheese and preserved fish are kept.

We decided to sample some.



This is a glass container of preserved herrings. Herrings seemed to be first treated with vinegar, then rolled with shredded onions and carrots, and soaked in oil. I had bought in the past two types of Polish preserved fish from another Polish grocery in Digbeth area of Birmingham, but this one tasted better than those.



This a kind of smoked ham. 470g for £2.74 is cheaper than average British hams, but this is waterier and a bit too salty than my liking.

Not bad, however.



I cut thick slices of it and made ham eggs, and ate with Polish bread. Thick ham slices give me an idea of luxury, as when I was young ham was very expensive in Japan.

Nice


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BBQ at friend's house, no. 2.

Another thing I pretty much looking forward to bbq was these.



RAZOR CLAMS!!!

I have seen these clams often at the Birmingham central market, but I never had courage to buy, as 1) they are sold only in 10s, 2) relatively expensive, maybe £8 (ca. US$16) for 10. But this time, we were in 8, so we could share the burden.

What part of this shell is razor escapes me.



BBQ in operation. As you see in the photo, the meat shrinks quite a lot and there is not much to eat.

The taste, however, was superb!!! Very dense and deep flavour of sea clams, so intense that we could get quite a big satisfaction with only 1 or 2 clams.

We baked also some oysters, but everyone there agreed that razor clams were much superior bbq shellfish.

According to a friend from Kyushu area of Japan, these clams can be found also in Ariake sea and she used to go and collect them. It is called マテ貝 in Japanese.

Afterwards we had lamb kebabs, pork and beef, until the early evening. We departed saying that we will bake something even more adventurous next time!