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
There’s something about that first mouthful. Intensely meaty, enough oil to coat your tongue with a rich deep flavour. Very savoury, but with an underlying sweetness as well. There’s the slightest tang of decadence as the pleasure centres of your brain light up in oily delight.
If eating a slow cooked ragu sounds just a wee bit dirty, that’s because it is. There is nothing sophisticated or subtle about it. Slippery and sticky, strong and beefy, the moist saucy meat just slides across your tongue leaving wobbly-legged, dazed but wide awake taste buds in its wake. Pure gourmet porn, this is the sensuous libidinous mistress to haut cuisine’s sophisticated lady.
Sharp eyes look over at me from under an olive green helmet. I see fingers momentarily tighten around the but of a tear gas gun. Our guide had said “no photos of soldiers”. I hesitate then slide my camera back into the case. I was aiming at a shop across the street, but don’t want my camera confiscated at the very start of my trip.
Am I giving in to the oppresive nature of Chinese government in Tibet? Well, yes I am. But what would it do any good to snap away and get chucked out? This is a difficult post to write and it’s taken me some time to gather my thoughts. Is it wrong to visit somewhere with an oppressive government, somewhere the locals consider as occupied territory? Continue reading
You know what I like about this dish? It’s the contrasts, the surprises you get when you take a mouthful. Like the way the squash dissolves into a sweet caramel mush in your mouth, whereas the fig is slightly crunchy, almost vegetable like as it bursts between your teeth.
Throw in the salty cheese, a citrussy-sharp, sweet and slightly hot glaze and you have a melange of tastes and textures that really ought to collide messily. But they don’t. Sure, they clamour for attention, but all that taste and texture walks a finely balanced pathway, never straying. Continue reading