We think of Italy as the land of pasta and tomato sauce. However pasta was a feast day dish, requiring time and many hands, until industrialised dried pasta was invented, which transformed it into an easy, readily available ingredient. Tomato sauce, likewise, is a recent habit- 19th century. Discovered in Central America, and exported to…
Food history
Wasabi farm, Winchester
Last winter, I met farmer David Turton of the Wasabi Company just outside of Winchester. This area has been famous for watercress – which has similar growing requirements to Japanese horseradish, known as wasabi, the small pea-green mound next to the salmon-pink pickled ginger when you order sushi. The Wasabi company has moved from watercress…
Caceres, Extremadura
The old quarter of Caceres is one of the settings for the Game of Thones TV series. A renaissance web of cobbled squares, narrow lanes, an ancient archway, the filmmakers would have had to change very little, perhaps cover a few modern street signs, to convey a fantasy medieval town. It is a pity that…
Ahoy there! Wine, women and war
Sweethearts and wives (may they never meet). Naval Toast for Saturday Patrick O’Brian is dead now. He wrote the book of the film ‘Master and Commander’ which was the first of a series of 20 volumes about Captain Jack Aubrey and his ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin. O’Brian spent the last 50 years of his life…