I’m re-acquainting myself with British history via TV series such as The Last Kingdom and Vikings. Both series feature the ninth century King Alfred, whose capital was in Winchester, in the former county of ‘Wessex’. Winchester is dominated by an enormous bronze statue of Alfred the Great, so called because he was the first monarch…
Travel
British weekend trips: Durham and County Durham
Since the Brexit vote and the resulting downturn in the value of the pound, I’ve been spending more time in the UK. This year I took acid for the first time in Cornwall (oh yeah forgot to mention that in the post), drank whisky in Oban, floated about on the Norfolk Broads, ate vegan in Stockport, ate puddings in Aberdeenshire, and walked around Winchester…
An Indian supper club in Bombay
I started my underground restaurant almost ten years ago. I couldn’t afford to set up a restaurant of my own (average cost to set up a restaurant in London is around a million quid), so I decided to use my own home. Ruminating on the idea since visiting Cuba in 2000, things really took off…
Back to India
In my favourite book about travelling in India, William Sutcliffe’s ‘Are you experienced?’, the anti-hero Dave talks about how nobody visits the centre of India, described as “full of poor people growing food”. The state of Madhya Pradesh is bang in the centre of India, mostly unknown, and indeed virtually untrammelled by foreign tourists. My…
My visit to the spaghetti factory in Italy’s most famous pasta town, Gragnano
Gragnano, pasta town, Italy Have a good look at packs of pasta next time you go food shopping. You’ll see that many of the best brands are made in Gragnano, a hilltop town south of Naples. Last year I visited Gragnano, specifically the factory Pastificio Dei Campi, which, according to Italian food experts that I know, is…
Food in Madhya Pradesh
Here are a couple of recipes that I learnt while travelling in Madhya Pradesh plus some general thoughts on Indian food. Everything is Indian in India. That’s part of what is so great about travelling here. Unlike most of the world where high streets are identical, India is just so bloody Indian. Especially the food….
Aberdeen and the Shire
I’m falling in love with Scotland. Over the last year I’ve visited Glasgow, Oban, and the World Porridge Championships in the Highlands. This summer I discovered Aberdeen and the surrounding area. In the past this town has had a mixed reputation (the writer Paul Theroux described it as ‘a cold, stony-faced city, over-cautious, unwelcoming and smug’)….
British Army catering, visiting 167 Catering corps in Grantham
“An army marches on its stomach” Napoleon The military is responsible for many advances in food technology: it was Napoleon that put out the call to invent a method of canning. French chef Alexis Soyer created the Soyer oven for British troops during the Victorian era, which lasted from the Crimean war until the Falklands…
Sicilian wines en primeur
“Sicily isn’t just an island, it’s a continent.” Leoluca Orlando, mayor of Palermo Despite the fact that grapevines thrive best in poor soil, vineyards are situated in some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. In Sicily, I saw fields where windswept vines are shaped like bushes, (often held down by stones); I saw…
Festival food through the decades and the Latitude festival food roundup
I have a theory that hippies make the best cooks. Ecology, natural fibres, concern with pollution, recycling, growing your own, vegetarianism and veganism, the beans, the yoghurt, the wholemeal flour, the nuts and seeds, the vegetables, all those things that used to be laughable, well, hippies did them first. Pretty much everything we think and…