Amusing anecdotes & random ramblings
Posts tagged food
My Chinese Christmas dinner
Dec 24th
While you all prepare to tuck into your cliched turkey & cranberry Christmas dinner and bemoan that it’s the same meal every year, bear in mind that I wish, that just for one tiny year, that I could have a turkey & cranberry dinner with all the trimmings. Especially roast potatoes!
Not because it’s particularly tasty – any meat that dry should belong in the Sahara, surely? – but because when my parents do Christmas dinner, it’s … rather different. Fantastically tasty, and as with all home-cooked food it’s heartwarming and fantastic, but for once, I’d like to try a turkey’n'cranberry dinner that wasn’t mass-cooked in a canteen or microwaved in a local pub.
They’ll probably cook the same sort of thing this year, but I really must ask how they produce all that food…
"Care to taste the wine, sir?"
Aug 3rd
A Planeta/Carluccio's wine tasting
Hell, there was one night back in my single Cardiff days, when I invited some young filly back to my flat after a drunken night out, and she asked if I had any wine in the house. I only had a bottle of white wine which had been opened a while ago, which I poured into a glass. She drank the glass, made a face, and left shortly afterwards. When I tasted the wine (waste not, want not), I was a little perturbed to find that it tasted more of vinegar than wine. Even I know that’s not the effect you want – and I hate the smell of vinegar anyway.
Plus I still have about six bottles of wine which have followed me from Cardiff to Llandudno to Manchester and London. Woe betide the next six people who invite me to a house party and tell me to “bring a bottle”. Because that’s what they’ll probably get…
So when an invite from Qype emerged for a wine tasting from the wide range of Sicillian wines by Planeta I thought I’d give it a go, and take the taste buds out for a spin. See if they could actually TASTE anything.
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Quality vs quantity
May 10th
I ended up popping down to Borough Food Market (with ex-flatmate @ifenn), which has got to be a top spot for any foodie-loving people in Londoners. It was packed full of stalls selling top quality food at relatively high prices. There were stalls of seafood, eggs, coffee, muffins, granola – and there was even one stall dedicated to seasalt.
Yet, as I sniffed and tasted some of the various little delicacies that came out (for some bizarre reason, I didn’t have much of an appetite after eating a fishfinger buttie and chips – rookie mistake), I kept wondering whether the food was actually worth the price they were asking.
Sure, it tastes nice – but then so does the 2-for-1 Brie I just bought from Tesco’s. Sure, it’s better for the environment, but economically speaking, is a venison burger worth the extra £2 they’re asking?
And really, is there any difference? I’ve been suspicious for a while that my taste buds are slowly dying off, and I’m reasonably sure if anyone subjected me to a blind taste test between, say, Tesco’s Value Burger and a £10 Gourmet Burger Kitchen burger cooked the same way, I’m not 100% sure I could tell the difference.
Is there any way of improving or testing your taste buds?
Brewing London beer…
Mar 16th
A while ago, thanks to a sudden Twitter from Annie Mole, I found myself invited to a Qype event of a brewery tour and ale tasting, washed down with some oysters.
The directions from Clapham Junction took me to an anonymous industrial estate – aside from the sign at the front proclaiming Sambrook’s Brewery, there was nothing to indicate that there was a brewery inside. No pipes, no steel tubing, no huge plume of smoke, nothing.
Inside, aside from a presentation and tasting room, the entire space was dedicated to the arcane art of brewing, although it seemed more like a scientific slaughterhouse than a brewery farm – hosing everywhere, a grey concrete floor, and huge steel tankers. Fortunately, the master brewery took us through the process of turning hops (which tasted nice), malt (which tasted terrible), yeast, and London water into a freshly-brewed beer. Of course, it also takes a few other ingredients – including sturgeon swimbladders to make the whole thing clear – but otherwise, they use all-fresh natural ingredients for a natural brew. Which you could tell in the final test product.
After that, as if drinking one fresh beer wasn’t enough, we made the long trek to the warm and welcoming Westbridge, where the landlord Charlie took us knowledgably through a variety of beers and ales, all washed down with some lovely oysters. With the interesting titbit that you should only eat oysters when there’s an ‘R’ in the month, so I’ve only got a month left to find more oysters in London…
Unfortunately, I’m not someone who can describe what they like, I just know when it hits my taste buds whether I like it or not. And I didn’t taste a single terrible thing all night. If I happened to live or work within striking distance of Battersea, the Westbridge would definitely be a high contender for my favourite local.
During all this, I was surrounded by the glittering taste buds of London’s blogerati, which seemed to include beer genius James Cridland, anniemole, londonelicious.com and hollow legs, who is painstakingly trying to recreate Chinese recipes from her childhood. I really must develop my tastebuds sometime.