Jaded

"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans" or more often than not, when you are on Facebook.  Incidentally, it has been just over four years since I returned to Edinburgh and began this blog, and over three years since I last wrote.  That is around 1093 meals consumed without comment.  (Let's face it I am too busy to eat more than one meal a day!)  Thankfully my situation, although altered since I last wrote, has not relegated me to the realms of beans on toast.  A fair percentage of those 1093 dinner times were spent in lovely restaurants; lets also through in a few liquid lunches and medicinal breakfasts consumed in cozy cafes.  The food I have had has been mainly of high quality, peppered with a few poor meals which have now become little more than anecdotes.  Life, however, has got in the way of my culinary chronicling!

Edinburgh simply stopped being new.  The Auld Reekie became a familiar smell, like a Grandmother, still with the occasional surprise but essentially comforting and homely.  I quickly found the places that I liked when I moved back and have frequented them ever since!  This is great as  I am rarely disappointed, however, it is not so interesting for blog topics and inspiration!  One must experience something out of the mundane to inspire the pen, simply: Edinburgh had made me jaded.

However, something has obviously piqued my interest to get my ink flowing again.  Last night I was very lucky to be invited out for dinner with a group of friends.  These guys are serious about their food: to be taken to a tried and tested Chinese restaurant therefore, was met with a degree of expectation.  (Wow, she has been on the down low for the last few years - she is blogging about sweet and sour chicken...)  This particular restaurant, Jade Garden, (Cannon Street) has the much fabled 'other' menu i.e. an actual Chinese menu, featuring Chinese food for Chinese people.  Ladies and Gentleman I ate pig trotters!  As per a prearrangement, they had bought in lobster for us, our numbers unfortunately diminutive, left us the arduous task of consuming three between four.  Never before have I felt like a Queen in what is essentially a greasy spoon setting!  The lobsters were prepared in a deliciously subtle ginger sauce.  I am not a fan of ginger, it is in fact one of the few things on my hate list; but I have to concede the heat of the ginger against the sweet and succulent lobster meat had me cursing the entire Chinese nation (yes, all 1,343,239,924 of them) and their culture for not having bread to mop up the juices.

I have to admit that I am a big bread and juices type of girl.  Frequently we get together and enjoy slow cooked meat, (rabbit, ribs - at one point there was a whole piglet...) simply roasted with garlic, chili and rosemary.  Once the boys have licked the bones clean, I get my dipping on and I am as happy as a pig in... well, a roasting tin!  However, this evening I got in with the bones.  While we were waiting for one of our party to arrive, we ordered some salt and chili ribs to nibble on.  They were flavorful nuggets of meat with an addictive crumb that was able to be tidied up with some prawn crackers.  In fact this dish was so good, we ordered more for 'dessert'!

We all work in the Italian food and drink milieu and are therefore, are accustomed to calamari.  The platter of squid that we were presented with, again with salt and chili, was cooked to perfection.  It was soft and succulent, fried to the exact second...  Talking of soft and succulent, the dish of lamb in cumin was also divine.  This struck me as an interesting combination as I more commonly associate cumin with Mexican and Indian cuisines.  If I see this on a Chinese menu in the future I will definitely order it again.  The pigs trotters on the other hand (or other foot i guess!)...  They have been scored off the food 'bucket' list (to avoid KFC connotations perhaps another word has to be found for foods to eat before one dies!) and the sauce they were served in provided a nice dressing for the ubiquitous rice.  I am going to assume that these were just not to our taste rather than being prepared badly, we found then too gelatinous and let's face it after feasting on lobster I doubt we were going to find much pleasure in chewing on a pigs foot!

Jade Garden will now become one of my staples - never to be written of again.  The food, wine and company all complimented each other to create a fantastic dining experience.  My appetite for food has changed; I have been reading more about food history and culture, so to have this adventure appealed to this new side of me.  I hope to write more about food in the future within this context and I am about to start a course relating to this at Edinburgh University.  Future blogs will be inspired by food experiences but not so heavily based on reviews - after all taste is so arbitrary and Trip Advisor can fill in the details!