Length: 2 mins Food and place. Food. And. Place. What was the most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten? What made it memorable? Ingredients? Cooking chops? Stunning visuals, smells? In my case it is far less the actual food and much, much, much more,… Read More »Potatoes, onions & Mum’s pies
Length: < 1 min So, it seems they’re built almost specifically for me? The word means a “snack” but more often in the sense of a snack-bar. Street food. Little or no table space, just a van or a window. As a native Berliner… Read More »Do not miss the imbiss, Chris.
Length: 3 mins Not all of ’em did of course; although a rough rule of thumb was “the posher, the lesser”. But as a perpetually hungry person, these mothers who did choose to feed me were on the side of the angels (at… Read More »That friend’s Mum; the one who always made you food
Length: 2 mins From the 1950’s on, here in England (and elsewhere in Europe and the US), we moved away from multiple breeds, bred on traditional, small farms and small-holdings, offering insurance against common diseases — and interest to our diet — towards… Read More »China; making the same mistakes as the West?
Length: < 1 min I should probably put this quote as the disclaimer for pretty much all my posts as well… “This is a memoir. It’s how I remember and believe things happened. Sometimes, I changed names and descriptions. Other times, I reordered or… Read More »Memory and memories
Length: 3 mins This was apparently how one of the publishers described this book. Picking up on the Ipcress File buzz of course. I have copies of two of Len Deighton’s cookbooks: a US, 1977 edition of “Ou Est Le Garlic” and the… Read More »The secret weapon in the kitchen?
Length: 2 mins The first, a restaurant in Soho… …and a Marx film (the brothers, not the German philosopher) …whilst — continuing the vaguely political theme — we have here, a döner shop called The Communist, run by Turkish man Yasar Armagan Ipek,… Read More »DuckSoup? Goat’s Head soup?
Length: 6 mins An excerpt from “Xi’an Famous Foods: The Cuisine of Western China, from New York’s Favorite Noodle Shop” by Jason Wang reminds me of Angela Hui in “Takeaway”. They grew up more than 3,000 miles apart. The latter from Beddau (which… Read More »What’s the takeaway from this one?
Length: 4 mins Maybe a slight hint of that one in there, you think? The actual translation on this one. is “when the dining hall is well-run, the production spirit will increase~”… I’m working on a long “piece” not sure of the format… Read More »On canteens. Or “the beatings will continue until morale improves” 食堂办得好生产劲头高
Length: < 1 min This one comes via Marina O’Loughlin — according to the ‘photo name — although I can’t recall exactly where I plucked it from (probably Twitter though), sorry. And despite what she says, surely someone in the UK is making these… Read More »Cucciddatu, is it true?
Length: 6 mins Apropos of nothing here (although I did recently do a piece or two about congee here and here), I see that Lisa Lim of the South China Morning Post writes that the Western name, “congee,” is actually borrowed from “Tamil kanji (also the… Read More »Pig skin and Century eggs
Length: < 1 min It is my belief that prices on the menu should include everything associated with both making and serving someone’s food. Anything else is externalised wage-theft. Get rid of tipping. Pay the person a living wage. Remember kids:
Length: < 1 min What a great idea; saves most of the hassles involved in digging out (& the cleaning afterwards)
Length: < 1 min Here’s some of the Spotify tracks I’ve put together as a (very, very long) play-list as part of the Victoria Line ‘mission’. Will give me 678 hours of travel time, give or take…
Length: < 1 min I feel excited to eat cull-yaw. And I know I keep talking about it; and it’s not 100% perfect, nothing is, but it grabs me in that deep place, the part of me where I still really, really love food,… Read More »Why does this make me happy?
Length: 2 mins Not THE measure but certainly a measure of how a cuisine is seen. To be honest, I was amazed when I saw that Germany ranked 4th in the world. Especially after reading BFS had bemoaned both the lack of good German… Read More »Starring, in Germany
Length: < 1 min Inside every old UK sheep there is still — potentially — a world class bit of meat. This one has retained the genes that make pigments go yellow when fed grass. Dark, dark red meat. Fat like butter. Aged to… Read More »Love lamb, happy with hogget, must be mutton…
Length: < 1 min Some may argue against this claim but so what? Anyway, here’s BAO London for April.
Length: 4 mins This post marries up two things that I love: pork and ferments, so you’ll excuse me if it’s a little prolix? I read a long-form article on the technique of fermenting food items; one in particular practiced in Thailand, called… Read More »Ferment me some pork, she said…
Length: < 1 min Water has no taste; leaving aside the whole set of questions raised by the existence of those water ‘sommeliers’ out there, I’m pretty sure that once it’s been boiling for a few minutes, any trace elements that may have started… Read More »豬潤公仔麵 poached pork liver with instant noodle
