I’m going bite-sized today. That’s bite-sized in terms of the blog post, not in terms of food. I rarely go bite-sized when it comes to dinner. Unless we’re talking elephant, or in this case very large bull, size bites.
When the nights close in we seem to become unaccountably busy, at both work and play. And sometimes, just sometimes, I may not have the time, or energy, to cook a proper dinner. Thank goodness for leftovers. Continue reading
It’s not often you find yourself walking along a dragon’s spine. Curled protectively around the village of Ping’an in south western China, this particular beast is formed by row after serried row of rice terraces carved into the hills. The summits forming a spine along the ridge high above. Mist drifts across the water-logged paddy fields and stone paths, the breath of a sleeping giant.
We were winding our way along the sinuous curves of Longsheng’s terraced hillsides. From one summit you can look across the Nine Dragons and Five Tigers, hills that have been terraced from base to summit. From the other you see Seven Stars and Moon, constellations of flooded rice paddies reflecting the sky. Continue reading
Isn’t it weird how comfort food is so rarely good looking? Often it’s some sort of stewy one-pot meal of indeterminate ingredients or maybe big piles of mash splodged onto a plate covered in a brown gravy. Never the less, they do have their own rare beauty.
The glistening fat on a slow cooked lump of lamb, oily worm-like noodles, pieces of aubergine that look unsettlingly like withered body parts. And swampy sludges of pureed roots and vegetables like this. Just looking at the thick greeny-yellow soup gently steaming away kindles a warm glow in my navel. Continue reading
Visiting family in the USA was always a bit disconcerting when it came to mealtimes. Biscuits and gravy? Biscuits? A disturbing image of chocolate Hobnobs and Bisto comes to mind. Still, I’ve always been game for something different.
I quickly came to realise that everything wasn’t quite as it seemed. Biscuits and gravy was actually savoury scones with a creamy sausage meat sauce. Now how good does that sound? It’s now one of my favourite breakfasts. Continue reading
Looking back at that sepia toned period, “when I was growing up”, I realise I had a pretty privileged time when it came to food. Every autumn we’d start eating game – usually pheasant – for dinner every week or two. It would invariably be casseroled in red wine, one of my step-dad’s staples when it was his turn to cook dinner.
Of course, being a typical kid, all I really wanted was egg and chips, maybe a mars bar for pudding. What was this game, this fresh fish and seafood? Give me deep fried fast food horror instead! Okay, so maybe I wasn’t that bad, but it was only when I grew up and out of home that I truly realised what a treat it was. Continue reading
At nine o’clock sharp a swoosh of sheets being pulled off tables sounded across the ancient wooden town. Then there was a communal rustling as bottoms settled into chairs. Finally a deafening click-clacking echoed through the stone streets. It was mahjong time in Shangli.
Dinner was finished and the entire town was at it. They would stay at it until the early hours. Every night. My nightmares echoed with the sound of mahjong tiles being rattled around by electric tables. Accompanied by a concentrated sucking on cigarettes, clinking of tea cups or whiskey glasses and much muttering. Continue reading
I didn’t encounter chorizo until I left home. And even then, for years it was just a slightly exotic scarlet salami you’d buy in Sainsburys. Never the less, I cooked with it, making red beans and rice or scissoring fleshy slivers into a tomato sauce.
And then, on my 23rd birthday I got taken to Moro, Sam and Sam Clarke’s Iberian-cum-Moorish restaurant in London’s Exmouth Market and had my first real chorizo. My first bite was smoky, spicy, piquant, eye-popping doesn’t even come close. I thought I knew what chorizo was. I was wrong. Continue reading
Fresh crab takes me right back to being a kid in Cornwall, sitting outside in the warm summer weekend mornings. My step-dad would come back from the fish shop clutching a whole paper-wrapped pink crab, like a chest of buried treasure. Together we would sit on the patio steps and break our way in, carefully picking out the succulent treasure inside.
The legs and claws would be cracked and piled carefully on a plate, a pile of briny building blocks. They’d be served with a simple green salad. The brown body meat whipped up with just the slightest squeeze of lemon and some Dijon mustard. A creamy piquant treat to dollop onto bread. Continue reading
I looked out over the vast expanse of rotting concrete appartment blocks and crumbling office buildings. They peered back from under the blanket of gritty polluted fog that lay over the city. Billious clouds floated low and heavy overhead. The immense hazy city sprawled right out to far horizon and beyond.
We were driving over a multi-laned highway from the airport, raised high above the spread out mass of Chengdu. It was vast, dirty and looked like it had sprung from the dystopian imagination of William Gibson. The food had better be as good as they say, I reflected as the road dipped, and we slipped into the city. Continue reading
Summer is hanging in there by its fingernails, clutching desperately at the fading light as nights start to close in. And you have to admire its gutsiness as temperatures remain stubbornly in the high teens.
This dish is an ideal way to pay some respect to the season, but also to bring some heat to your belly after dark. It’s bright, colourful and redolent of heady Latin nights. And, at the same time, manages to be warming and comforting. A dish for all seasons. Continue reading