Food For Foreigners new shop open!

[eezergood]

20 hours ago, pagallim said:

And for the poster asking about suet....

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thanks for that! 

[Psimbo]

16 hours ago, pagallim said:

Agreed, I found their bacon very good, and with a mix of smoked/non smoked.   Problem for me is that it's all in 1 kg packs, and I'm the only meat eater in the house, so I'd have to be on a bacon fest to defrost a kg of bacon.   However, I did see some smaller .25 kg packs of very lean back bacon which looked just the job, and only 69 baht a pack.   Will go down great on a ciabatta from Flints One bakery, and a large mug of my new supply of Tetley tea.

 

Easy solution is part thaw the package and split it into two slice portions, then repackage and store. I am in the same boat and never had a problem. It means you can buy in bulk as well, and keep the cost down.

 

Some people will say NEVER thaw and re-freeze products. I PERSONALLY (before I get thread-bombed) disagree if you do it quickly and hygienically.

 

I got a small chest freezer a while back and it's great- I can bulk buy (well a kg of something down at a time) things that I would struggle to purchase otherwise. You will, however, forget the two sausages that have slipped to the bottom!

[pagallim]

^

 

Always loathe to defrost, even partially, meats particularly then re-freeze.   I guess ironic as, in this environment, we don't really know how many times foods have been defrosted/re-frozen before we buy them.

[alphason]

Picked up a few items to try, nice shop reasonable prices will be going back.

 

So far just tried the Bowmans steak and kidney pie.

 

There were no re heat instructions on the pack, but the bowmans facebook page said for oven cooking defrost and heat at 180c for 15-20 minutes (you could also microwave). Defrosted for 24 hours then oven cooked, after 20 mins the pastry was cooked but the bottom of the filing was a little cold so a minute in the microwave with the pastry lid off fixed this. We use one of those glass bowl tabletop fan ovens and have had this problem with other brands sometimes also.

 

I like to eat pies with chips (French fries), it was well filled with meat, good pastry but there was no real gravy just a coating clinging around the meat so probably better suited to mash & gravy than chips. All the meat tasted the same and I tried to look at the texture of a few pieces and they all looked like steak not kidney, with quite a cinnamon like taste. 

 

Sometimes I buy the UK imported frozen Pukka pies around 130 baht but sometimes offered around 100 baht,  I do prefer them with chips as the sauce/gravy is better although meat content is probably less. A pukka pie is around 130B but can be around 100b when on offer (when I am most likely to buy), does make a Thai made pie seem a bit expensive at 105B.

 

I did like it and will try some other flavours, but for the price and my personal taste I would choose the Pukka if available and at good price.

[Valentine]

2 hours ago, pagallim said:

^

 

Always loathe to defrost, even partially, meats particularly then re-freeze.   I guess ironic as, in this environment, we don't really know how many times foods have been defrosted/re-frozen before we buy them.

It can be dodgy. Back in the 90s I was working on an offshore drilling rig which had just arrived off Vietnam from Korea. More than half those on board came down with serious food poisoning, violently ill. Transpired the freezer broke down & the galley boss made a decision to re freeze everything in there. I ate the same as everyone else but did not get sick. Maybe stomach hardened from years of eating street food in my early days in Patong.

[xylophone]

5 hours ago, Valentine said:

It can be dodgy. Back in the 90s I was working on an offshore drilling rig which had just arrived off Vietnam from Korea. More than half those on board came down with serious food poisoning, violently ill. Transpired the freezer broke down & the galley boss made a decision to re freeze everything in there. I ate the same as everyone else but did not get sick. Maybe stomach hardened from years of eating street food in my early days in Patong.

That brings back memories Valentine............ I was working on a rig offshore Nigeria just after the Biafran war in 1970/71 and we had run out of food, quite literally, because we were surviving on what we could fish from the sea and I got tired of eating barracuda, mainly because I don't like fish!

 

We were told that a boat was about to arrive at the rig with food on board, so we waited patiently and it did arrive, but the food had been frozen and then put on the deck and covered by a tarpaulin for a while (obviously) before it it set off from Port Harcourt, and by the time it reached us, there was one huge smell as the tarpaulin in was lifted, not to mention a plague of flies. Obviously the stuff had defrosted and the flies got at it and much of it was spoiled, mostly with maggots, and it was quite comical to see the Nigerian cooks wading in amongst this mess and one thing particularly sticks in my mind – – this particular cook was in amongst the sausages and he held one particularly large sausage up in his hand and it was moving!!

 

He snapped the top half of the sausage off, the bit with the maggots in it and threw the "good part" into a bucket, much the same as the other cooks were doing with whatever meat was not completely spoiled or infested.

 

This went upstairs into the kitchen and into the deep freeze and that was our food supply for the coming weeks. As far as I know no one was violently ill, mainly because once it was defrosted again it was cooked long and hard in lots of hot spices, so you couldn't really taste what it was, but it was better than barracuda!

[NamKangMan]

14 minutes ago, xylophone said:

That brings back memories Valentine............ I was working on a rig offshore Nigeria just after the Biafran war in 1970/71 and we had run out of food, quite literally, because we were surviving on what we could fish from the sea and I got tired of eating barracuda, mainly because I don't like fish!

 

We were told that a boat was about to arrive at the rig with food on board, so we waited patiently and it did arrive, but the food had been frozen and then put on the deck and covered by a tarpaulin for a while (obviously) before it it set off from Port Harcourt, and by the time it reached us, there was one huge smell as the tarpaulin in was lifted, not to mention a plague of flies. Obviously the stuff had defrosted and the flies got at it and much of it was spoiled, mostly with maggots, and it was quite comical to see the Nigerian cooks wading in amongst this mess and one thing particularly sticks in my mind – – this particular cook was in amongst the sausages and he held one particularly large sausage up in his hand and it was moving!!

 

He snapped the top half of the sausage off, the bit with the maggots in it and threw the "good part" into a bucket, much the same as the other cooks were doing with whatever meat was not completely spoiled or infested.

 

This went upstairs into the kitchen and into the deep freeze and that was our food supply for the coming weeks. As far as I know no one was violently ill, mainly because once it was defrosted again it was cooked long and hard in lots of hot spices, so you couldn't really taste what it was, but it was better than barracuda!

 

In desperate times, a good deep frying in boiling oil usually kills all microbes, as the temperature is so high.  

[Psimbo]

9 hours ago, pagallim said:

^

 

Always loathe to defrost, even partially, meats particularly then re-freeze.   I guess ironic as, in this environment, we don't really know how many times foods have been defrosted/re-frozen before we buy them.

Hasn't killed me (or given me bad guts) yet 

 

One could say the same about food anywhere in the world it is bought frozen.

 

As for the comments above about food poisoning I did point out in my original comment about how I do it in a safe manner. Comparing rigs off Vietnam and Nigeria (in the 70s!) to my kitchen is apples and oranges. Partial thaw and complete thaw are different but best we stop the thread drift (as entertaining as it would probably be).

[xylophone]

10 minutes ago, Psimbo said:

Hasn't killed me (or given me bad guts) yet 

 

One could say the same about food anywhere in the world it is bought frozen.

 

As for the comments above about food poisoning I did point out in my original comment about how I do it in a safe manner. Comparing rigs off Vietnam and Nigeria (in the 70s!) to my kitchen is apples and oranges. Partial thaw and complete thaw are different but best we stop the thread drift (as entertaining as it would probably be).

Agree Psimbo and I do what you have done and have had no problems.

[chercheur888]

12 hours ago, Psimbo said:

Easy solution is part thaw the package and split it into two slice portions, then repackage and store. I am in the same boat and never had a problem. It means you can buy in bulk as well, and keep the cost down.

 

Some people will say NEVER thaw and re-freeze products. I PERSONALLY (before I get thread-bombed) disagree if you do it quickly and hygienically.

 

I got a small chest freezer a while back and it's great- I can bulk buy (well a kg of something down at a time) things that I would struggle to purchase otherwise. You will, however, forget the two sausages that have slipped to the bottom!

I don't know if you prefer your Lean Short Back bacon frozen, but if you prefer it fresh check LB Butchery in Sai Yuan minimum purchase is 100 grams, but it is German and not English

[xylophone]

Bought some Shaws Mango Chutney on my visit there because have been finding it (MC) relatively hard to find.

 

Got the chance to try it last night..........very poor indeed and no match for Sharwoods or the Mothers brand from Makro!

 

Just my opinion.

[PhuketFarang]

Hope they carry pickled pigs feet soon.

 

[xylophone]

15 hours ago, PhuketFarang said:

Hope they carry pickled pigs feet soon.

 

Ah my dear departed mother's favourite treat.......and I would feel nauseated as she sat slurping over a bowl of boiled pigs feet. Awful stuff!

[alphason]

The Manston Royal Beefburgers 150g were tasty,  will buy those again.

 

Only bettered by the Tesco finest Angus beefburgers from probably over a year ago now but like a lot of the things in Tesco went back 2 weeks later and they had gone and have not had them back.

[xylophone]

6 minutes ago, alphason said:

The Manston Royal Beefburgers 150g were tasty,  will buy those again.

 

Only bettered by the Tesco finest Angus beefburgers from probably over a year ago now but like a lot of the things in Tesco went back 2 weeks later and they had gone and have not had them back.

Had the Bowmans Steak & Ale pie last night (with some fresh Brussels sprouts!)..........very tasty with good meat content and will buy again.

[alphason]

5 minutes ago, xylophone said:

Had the Bowmans Steak & Ale pie last night (with some fresh Brussels sprouts!)..........very tasty with good meat content and will buy again.

Will give that a try, wasn't impressed by the steak and kidney, very meaty but dry lacking gravy

[xylophone]

2 minutes ago, alphason said:

Will give that a try, wasn't impressed by the steak and kidney, very meaty but dry lacking gravy

So that you're not disappointed, this one didn't have much gravy either, but what was there was tasty! 

[Old Croc]

Still waiting for a clue that The Foreign Food shop is a misnomer for what appears to be a British Food shop.

[trd]

Still waiting for a clue that The Foreign Food shop is a misnomer for what appears to be a British Food shop.

It's owned by a Brit so there's your clue.

 

[LivinginKata]

3 hours ago, trd said:

It's owned by a Brit so there's your clue.

 

 

Yes a Durham  northern luvvy lad.

[pistachios]

A British food shop is like a German bakery... A very peculiar idea for any non-British or non-German.

  

But since Bacon is one of the few things British know how to do properly, how much is a kg of bacon over there? I currently buy it at Makro, and it could be better.

[eezergood]

30 minutes ago, pistachios said:

A British food shop is like a German bakery... A very peculiar idea for any non-British or non-German.

  

But since Bacon is one of the few things British know how to do properly, how much is a kg of bacon over there? I currently buy it at Makro, and it could be better.

and build Empires.........

[madmitch]

1 hour ago, pistachios said:

A British food shop is like a German bakery... A very peculiar idea for any non-British or non-German.

  

But since Bacon is one of the few things British know how to do properly, how much is a kg of bacon over there? I currently buy it at Makro, and it could be better.

Better than Makro bacon at 234 baht a kilo.

[Crossy]

1 hour ago, madmitch said:

Better than Makro bacon at 234 baht a kilo.

Actually not bad at 5.30 Squid a kilo, Tesco online (UK) has streaky at 4.51 a kilo.

[LivinginKata]

Sadly no pork pie in stock today. Oh well ...

[xylophone]

10 hours ago, LivinginKata said:

Sadly no pork pie in stock today. Oh well ...

Was in Tops and they have the small Yorkies pork pies in stock........now in the upright freezers (and too easy to get at!).

[sebastion]

Was in Tops and they have the small Yorkies pork pies in stock........now in the upright freezers (and too easy to get at!).

Take a couple of pies and hide them under something else in the freezer. Dig them out next you go.
Don't hide them all, just a few for yourself.


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[xylophone]

34 minutes ago, sebastion said:

Take a couple of pies and hide them under something else in the freezer. Dig them out next you go.
Don't hide them all, just a few for yourself.


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Cunning stunt Sebastion, but I was meaning that the pies were too easy for me to take out, and my waistline is expanding into the pom pui region!

[LivinginKata]

1 hour ago, sebastion said:

Take a couple of pies and hide them under something else in the freezer. Dig them out next you go.
Don't hide them all, just a few for yourself.


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I must admit I have done that in Villa over the years .... back in the days when they did have a decent range of frozen pies,

[Guest]

1 hour ago, sebastion said:

Take a couple of pies and hide them under something else in the freezer. Dig them out next you go.
Don't hide them all, just a few for yourself.

Why not just buy all one needs now and in the near future and put those in the home fridge?