Malay Menu Words translated

 

Malay restaurant near Paddington Station London. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Malay words - English

air (proounced ay-er) - water

ais - ice

barli - barley

gula - sugar

laici - lychee

sagu - sago

sirap - syrup

sirap rose - rose syrup (note that the adjective comes after the noun in Malay)

teh - tea

English - Malay

barley - barli

ice - ais

lychee - laici

sago -sagu

sugar - gula

syrup - syrap

tea - teh

water - air (pronounced ayer)

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Teta's Lebanese Restaurant In Belsize Park - Highlights and Low toilet

Teta's restaurant in Belsize Village, Belsize Park, London, UK. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Teta's restaurant is in a quiet location, an easy, uphill walk away from the bustle and traffic around Finchley Road station. We had booked a table for ten, a family reunion, on the recommendation of a relative who is a regular diner there. 

The owner or manager immediately met us, quick to pull out the tables to give us access to the banquette at the back. We had a selection of dishes all tasty, with lots of vegetables, which is important to us as we are health conscious.

Our starters included hummus. I wanted to try the potato starter and the moussaka. But our food was chosen for the whole table by one of the group.

The toilet is down a steep flight of stairs. There is only one toilet. On the plus side, the soap dispenser and moisturiser were a good brand. You won't run out of toilet paper because they have spare rolls on the shelves.

We had kebabs of lamb and chicken. The pieces of meat were large. I am glad I ordered the chicken because the lamb was tough, so tough that I did not eat it.

Drinks

I was pleased to have Prosecco. The lemonade in a bottle, ordered for children aged 7 and 9, did not impress me. I would have liked to try the Turkish coffee.

Best of all? The desserts we bought to take home. We took two of each of the three types. I was not so fond of the little dome shaped pastry, rather hard, with a nutty centre. The moist syrupy cube was my favourite.

Leftovers

We had enough leftovers for two meals. They gave us takeaway boxes, and, when I asked, a paper carrier bag.

Useful Websites

https://tetaslebanese.co.uk/

tel: 0203 903 7010

Sunday to Saturday 12 noon to 10 pm.

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English gooseberry, Chinese Gooseberry and Indian Gooseberry from Singapore's Little India

We bought what looked like giant gooseberries in Little India in Singapore, expecting to get the flavoursome gooseberries we were used to in England.

English Gooseberries
The English or bought in London gooseberries can have a slightly sour taste but when cooked up in a sugar syrup are delicious and highly flavoured, nice by themselves. You can add them to crumbles or fruit salad but they are a delicate distinctive flavour.

Chinese Gooseberries
We thought at first that what we had bought might be Chinese gooseberries. No. When I checked on line I realised that Chinese Gooseberry is another name for kiwi fruit, a totally different fruit, very popular in London sliced into fruit salads or as a decoration.

Indian Gooseberries
The fruit we bought in Little India in Singapore, it now became apparent, were Indian gooseberries. At first bite it was obvious they were not the same as English gooseberries. We found them quite horrid. No soft centre and seeds. Solid and tough to bite, liken an uncooked potato. Tasteless but slightly sour.

We tried cooking them up with a sugar syrup. (That sounds like a tautology. What other kind of syrup could you have if not sugar? You could have sugar from a fruit such as fructose, or from milk, called lactose.)

We tried to hide the result in a fruit salad for breakfast. Nobody was fooled. Nasty solid, hard to bite, nothing you could chew or suck. Am I being poisoned? I removed the solid, tasteless bits.

Indian Lady's Recipe Blog
I then tried searching the internet for enlightenment. I found it immediately. A lovely Indian lady recalls her childhood picking these fruits and eating them fresh. She claims they were juicy. She says the secret is to eat them with salt. Then sip water which by contrast tastes sweet.

The fruit we bought were not juicy. I hacked at them with a knife on a chopping board and had trouble cutting them. I thought that like everything else we had bought they would be ready to eat. Was I supposed to keep them ripening?

The fruit she says, is an acquired taste. I have acquired a taste for yogurt which I did not like the first time I tried it. I have acquired a taste for durian ice cream or durian cream or durian cake which I love, like a mixture of chestnut and banana, although I don't like fresh durians with their sulphurous bad egg flavour.

My Verdict
However, I have had two goes at fresh and cooked Indian gooseberry. Since we have a few left, we will try one last time with salt or pickling, or candying, the way we dealt with rock hard figs in London, which made delicious candied figs. After that, if you don't ever hear from me again on this subject, my verdict is, stick to fresh gooseberries from England or America.

On the other hand, if what we bought was not an Indian gooseberry - what was it? It is green, rock hard, with six segment divisions visible on the outer skin.

http://www.lovefoodeat.com/how-to-eat-indian-gooseberriesamlanellikai/

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.