Gang Kiew Wan Gai (Thai Chicken Green Curry) this is my favourite version of Thai Green Curry & well worth a try if you love Thai food. I obtained this particular recipe from a free magazine at The Chaophraya restaurant in Manchester.

Ingredients

• 400g Chicken
• 3 tbsp Thai green curry paste (see below for paste instructions)
• 3 cups coconut milk
• 5 small thai eggplants, quartered
• 2-3 red spur chillies, sliced diagonally
• Sweet basil leaves and red chilli slices for garnish
• 2 kaffir lime leaves, torn
• 1/4 cup sweet basil leaf
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tsp palm sugar
• 1 tbsp cooking oil

Green Curry Paste

Using a pestle and mortar, crush and mix together all the ingredients until it forms a thick green paste. Alternatively to save on cost of buying fresh ingredients, opt for a good quality pre-made green curry paste.

• 20 green chillies
• 5 Red Onions
• 10 garlic cloves
• 5 green peppercorns
• 1 spoonful each of the following: galangal, lemongrass, coriander root, coriander seed, cumin, salt and shrimp paste.

Method

Slice the chicken into pieces, about 3cm thick. Sauté the curry paste in oil over medium heat until fragrant, reduce the heat, gradually add 1 cup of the coconut milk a little at a time, and stir until a film of green oil surfaces.

Add the chicken and kaffir lime leaves; continue cooking for 3 minutes until fragrant and the chicken is cooked through. Transfer to a pot, place over medium heat and cook until boiling.

Add the remaining coconut milk, season with sugar and fish sauce. When the mixture returns to the boil add the eggplants. Cook until the eggplants are done, sprinkle sweet basil leaves and red chillies over, and then turn off the heat. Arrange on a serving dish and garnish with sweet basil leaves and red chillies before serving.

Special Tip: Remove the seeds from the chilli if you don't want it too spicy!

Location: 113 Deansgate Manchester

Now then, when you go for a bit of scran at the infamous Katsouris you only ever expect good quality nosh. It was brought to my attention that they indeed offer the mighty Ham salad, pre-packed under the stealth title of Egg & Ham. A belly buster full Ciabatta though will smash the average butty budget wide open though at a colossal £3.90 (this is a Ham salad butty we are talking about here after all). However a satisfying half Ciabatta is offered up for your average punter at a very reasonable £2.30.

On first appearances this sarnie looks nothing more than your bog standard Ham salad wedged between a hunk of fat Ciabatta bread. Biting into this baby though releases the fine flavours of Béarnaise sauce complementing the ham & it’s a true delight. Lets get one thing straight here the Béarnaise is a master stroke; it spits in the eye of Mayonnaise & lands Stevie G style blows to Salad Cream, leaving it for dead in the gutter. The only thing that stops this sandwich from blowing competitors out of the water is the sulphur taste that hits you in the back of the throat as you take a bite from the ample amounts of egg. Katsouris bread also always seems to suffer from mountains of flour coating the outer layer leaving even the soggiest mouth gagging for fluids.

Overall though this Egg & Cress / Ham Salad combo fused together with the Béarnaise sauce is a benchmark for all to follow. With its moderate pricing, top ingredients, including more than a layer of ham & great combination of flavours its going to be hard to beat.

Bread: Ciabatta

Optional extras included: None, pre-packed sandwich

Notable Qualities: Béarnaise sauce, Cress

Cost: £2.30 (Half Ciabatta)

Pro's: Béarnaise sauce, Quality ingredients.

Con's: Slightly too much egg, Over floured bread, Full Ciabatta costs a packet.

Overall: 8.5/10

Location: 1 Little Quay St, Manchester

The only Italian offering I can lay my eye on from the Italian sounding La Piazza is the option to have your ham slapped into a Ciabatta. The old lady serving immediately asks if I'd like onions, butter, & mayonnaise, I opt for the latter two. After scurrying around behind the counter for a short while I also accept the option for salt & pepper, none of which I detect on eating.

Down to eating the sandwich & it looks an impressive sight; packed with lettuce, cucumber & tomato, held together with a liberal amount of mayo. As I munched through the first half I happily spied some grated carrot, although it appears this is a rogue addition as no more is found in the other half of the sandwich. The bread however is slightly dry, but this may have been down to my choice of bread, the only other thing I found letting down this big hitter was just 1 slice of ham, although at £2.55 standard price the quality was good.

Bread: Ciabatta

Optional extras included: Mayonnaise, Butter, Ciabatta, Salt & Pepper

Notable Qualities: None standard bread, Rogue grated carrot

Cost: £2.85 (30p Extra for Ciabatta)

Pro's: Cheap offering for Ciabatta sandwich, decent amount of optional extras

Con's: Slightly dry Ciabatta, only one slice of ham

Overall: 7.5/10

Location: 9 Cooper Street, Manchester

This humble side street sandwich shop looks like it could be a husband & wife set-up. The half empty food counters & crusty price board make it feel run down & likely on its last legs.

The Roast Ham salad sandwich itself was most enjoyable, there appeared to be 2 layers of wafer thin ham with an acceptable amount of Salad Cream. However, the 'soft brown roll' seemed slightly stale in one corner leading to the only negative point about this sandwich.

Bread: Soft Brown Roll

Optional extras included: Egg, Salad Cream, Soft Brown Roll

Notable Qualities: None

Cost: £2.40

Pro's: At least 2 slices of ham, not drenched in salad cream.

Con's: Section of the bread seemed slightly stale, the shop needs decorating.

Overall: 7/10

Ever wondered what all those little symbols mean on the labels in your clothes? Those strange circular and triangular hieroglyphics, well while researching how best to wash some of my things that I didn't fancy just bunging in the wash I found a hand little guide to tell you what ever symbol means.

Thankfully, I was going to take my jacket to the dry cleaners, however it states on the label that I shouldn't! So it saved me a trip into town with it.

My web space providers (I-Websolutions) finally bit the bullet mid-week, they'd been offering a pretty lame service level for a couple of months. I've now switched new to a new provider, EUKHosts.

Hopefully everything will start working as its meant as I finish uploading everything. I've also refreshed the design of the site a little to celebrate the new move!

I'm always a bit dubious about claims to altering your settings in applications will bring some magical extra performance, but this one really seems to work. Try it out for yourself and see if your Firefox flies too.

Feeling exhausted after a good 6 hour Halo 3 marathon session! I've not had a good blasting like that since the old days of Halo 2.

At the moment my laptop takes just over 2 minutes too boot up Ubuntu, I've been looking through the forums though and it appears that under a minute is a reasonable time. Apparently it could be my wireless card that is delaying the boot, this fix has been offered that I'll have to play around with tonight:

Edit /etc/network/interfaces and replace everything in the file with:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

Update: This worked really well, my laptop can now cold boot and be on the internet with Firefox & aMSN running also in around 1 minute 5 seconds, fast enough for me!

Well I'm about to take the plunge into installing Ubuntu (Linux) onto my laptop and get it to dual boot with Vista. Probably end up destroying the thing, but we'll see.

Anyway, this is the tutorial I'm following.

Update: I had problems with getting Ubuntu detecting the Vista partition on my Dell Inspiron 6400, it seems this problem occurs quite a bit. However I've now come across this post that will hopefully help.

Update 2: I went with the install and it worked beautifully! So I now have a dual booting Vista + Ubuntu setup. I quickly started to miss the MS fonts on the system though, but I soon found a quick fix for that too. Along with a list of free killer apps!

I logged into my Nike+ account the other day and it tells me now finally I can have a certificate for running my first 100 miles. Which I apparently clocked up back in November last year. Oh well, its nice to get some recognition finally. I'm only 25 miles away from hitting the 300 mile mark now.

By the way, has anyone seen the fun lately, if so tell him to get his ass back up in the sky. I'm sick of all this rain. Grrr.