neuuuughdles.

part of the motivation for writing this blog was to record my experiences of eating around the world. naturally enough, you'd think. but i've been putting the whole project off and off for so long that i've missed hundreds of amazing, odd, and disgusting meals. this is a shame, but i'm not one for regrets, and so... from here on i'm aiming to document the ones worth documenting.

in the meantime it'll be retrospectively half-arsed.

so, yes... here's a generic out-of-the-hotel-window shot of shibuya, tokyo.

obviously japan has some crazy food. "crazy" is putting it mildly. it's another world, etc etc. truly alien. a common platitude, but it's unavoidably true. everywhere you go you're confronted with weirdness, often on a fairly basic level: the plastic models of curries and soups sat outside every restaurant advertising the food within, for example--hilarious the first time, but somewhat off-putting every time after that; the bento boxes available here there and everywhere which consist of no single identifiable food stuff--holding a soggy grey cube between your fingers you wonder if it's animal, vegetable or mineral, or potentially none of the above; and the fact that even the western-style packaged sandwiches in convenience stores look like they've been cloned, delivered via caesarean, and then boil-washed.

here's some kind of gravy jelly, from 2008.

and here is a raw shellfish salad.


mmmmmm. notevenkidding.

for better or worse this world tends to incite anecdote-hunting. inspired by sake and a camp sort of macho bravado , i set about on our first tour attempting to one-up anyone who'd have me in the game of "eat the most disgusting that the kitchen can offload on us'" led by my famed (not really) dictum that i will "put anything in my mouth once", i ended up eating raw beef cartilage (which can only be likened to the imagined experience of eating a human ear), raw frozen horse meat (which tastes like... a horse lollipop), raw squid guts (which caused the midnight juggern tm to spontaneously vomit--i proudly held mine down), and a whole bunch of stuff that i've erased from my memory.

fortunately for me this kind of behaviour, as dubious as it is childish, quickly wore thin, and i haven't done it again. unfortunately for you i don't have any photos of any of this. i do, however, have a photo of some ramen noodle soup.

mmm. egg-in-soup. what's not to like? this is from a small cafe somewhere in shibuya which we've been taken to twice recently by our uncompromisingly charming japanese hosts the first time was on arrival into tokyo after a harrowing week-long australian tour of self-deprivation and general self-abuse. fried and frazzled, there was nothing that could have been more comforting than this steaming bowl of uncomplicated deliciousness. fatty strips of pork fall apart at the merest chop-poke of a chopstick, the egg oozes gunk from the get-go, and beneath it all lies a swamp of noodles so heavy and dense that a decent night's sleep is almost guaranteed.

i tried to jazz this photo up a bit because i look so haggard. apparently that's how i roll nowadays. and--look!--my ears are half as big as the rest of my head. but, delinquency and deformity aside, i'm delighted.

i'm reminded of a japanese film that i saw years ago on the secrets behind the stock that goes into these things. no, i don't remember anything else about--certainly not the title--but it did make clear the otherwise murky distinction between great noodle soups and shitty noodle soups: love, skill and witchcraft on the one hand, and an oxo cube on the other. you just can't do that shit at home.

here's walter struggling with a shitty noodle soup elsewhere in south-east asia (begins with sin and ends with pore).

neuuuughdles.

agape

i'm not sure when my mum bought her aga. i think it was when we moved into this house, so... sometime after 1990. i can't remember not having one. it's quite an odd appliance to grow up with, though naturally at the time it felt as much of our family of furniture as the various cats. i did realise at some point in my teens that it is something of a status symbol for the rural middle classes (along with range rovers, shotguns and golliwogs), which is odd given that i grew up on state benefits in an ex-dockyard town. but there's nothing wrong with being aspirational, right? right.

there are no buttons and there's only one dial (and i don't know what it does). it's just on, all of the time, and has indeed been on for all of that time. it heats the kitchen and a lot of the house--especially my old bedroom, which sits directly above. living in a draughty old victorian house with single-glazed windows obviously requires some kind of decent central heating--and what better method than installing a big lumpy hot thing to sit smack back in the middle of it.*

not exactly energy efficient, no, but i like to think we made up for that by never, ever flying. (which, yes, i have in turn also made up for. er.)

of course, i like to think a lot of things. usually, i don't think very much. and growing up with such a useful and yet remarkably useless appliance has certainly shaped my thought in unflattering ways. i don't, for example, think anything about gas marks. i barely know how to use a microwave, grill or sandwich maker. and there's the apocraphyl story of how, while staying at the band house in oxford, i cheerfully filled up an electric kettle with water, turned on the hob, and ... yeah, you know where this is going. it only took a minute or two for the kitchen to be filled with toxic black smoke, and we had pretty much had to evacuate the house immediately to avoid a round of tracheostomies. (i hesitated to point out the irony of heavy smokers worrying about inhalation of toxic fumes).

and what are agas bad for? sponges, souffles, omelettes--anything that requires a specific high or low temperature. and what are they good for? toast.

see: they're really, really good for toast.

reason being: you can slap the bread down on the hob, add whatever you want, put the lid down, and walk off, ideally walking back in time for everything to be at that perfect place between squishy and crispy. that's about it. no need to think, and no need to fuss. delicious cheese on toast, just like mum used to make (and, er, still does).

it's not quite breakfast, but then i did get out of bed four hours late.

agape**.

*don't answer that question.

**defined by paulo coehlo as "the love that consumes," i.e., the highest and purest form of love, one that surpasses all other types of affection.

bratworst

a long weekend in berlin was organised on a whim with the explicit aim of seeing very little sun and eating very little food, and... in this sense it was sort of successful. after around 28 hours of nonchalant starvation we found some tasty mexican somewhere on oranienstrasse to digest slowly and rhythmically in darkness, but...

there isn't really a but.

obviously no-one needs to be reminded that english food has a global reputation for being really, really a-bit poor. derided throughout europe, abandoned in its former colonies, and ignored everywhere else, it's starchy, bland, and profoundly unhealthy. but then this is what our malnutritioned forebearers wanted, apparently: suet pudding to keep them warm at night, huge boiled oysters to keep their weighed down on windy days, and... sausages. lots of sausages.

the germans also love sausages. the difference, however--and i'm going out on a limb here--is that they're a lot worse at them.

assured by some australian ex-pats that german food was nice "youjusthavetoknowheretolook" (there is probably a german compound word for precisely that concept), we went to a fine, traditonal establishment by the name of max und moritz in kreuzberg.

catering to tourists but also, presumably, to german wishfulthinkers, the menu celebrates meat in all its offal glory i.e. with cartoons and grammar holds fully unbarred. torn between the "real old german dish steeped in a 'long time' red wine", "cheesy cream noodle-dumpling omelette", and "salted and lightly pickled pork-foot", i went for the "special sausages from westphalia", on the fairly safe assumption that whatever was special about them would at least be worth ... well, writing about.

it looks nice, doesn't it. look at the greens! and, yes, there is almost as much mustard as gravy--and everyone knows mustard is a squeezy gift from the gods. this was sweet and mild mustard similar to what you'd find all over a hot dog, but a little bit less orange.

and it was nice. easily the nicest meal i've ever had in germany*.

in the event, of course, the sausages were a non-event. juicy in the manner of a saveloy, haggis or fermenting corpse, they were also dry. but they did at least taste of pork--which is more than can be said of the notably less-special german bratwurst, which tastes of oily, bloody bath water. from the kind of bath a pig might be given right before it's horrifically decapitated.

the potatoes were boiled. yep, boiled potatoes. the beans were also boiled. yep, boiled beans. sort of like school dinner. but the sauce! who'd have thought it was all about the sauce. you know the urban myth about how mcdonald's cheeseburgers are technically classified as a dessert because of the amount of sugar in the bun--well, yeah, it seems they muddled up the courses here too.

it took me about ten minutes to realise why i was eating it so quickly. if i'd been presented with a black forest gateau i would surely have eaten it at the same speed. i'd have eaten a cheeseburger a bit quicker, but only because i can fit it in my mouth in one go. everyone likes a pudding, especially when it has sausages in it. and i did like this. i just ... you know, couldn't possibly finish it. nor ever consider eating it again. nor, more importantly, ever eat out in germany with enthusiasm again.

and that's about it. i don't really have a point. for a change.

drat... worst? ah fuck.

*true story

roast of the town

nothing much to say here. here's a roast. one hell of a roast.

let's toast the roast which boasted the most. to the roast!

i'd say it was the best roast i've ever had. possibly.

not sure if i should ever really dare making that kind of statement. mm, well, i just did.

from here: http://www.thegrazinggoat.co.uk/home.html, in poncy marylebone.

home is where the heart is

homelessness breeds contempt for the finer things in life. i haven't cooked in years. my repertoire of boring pasta dishes and tuna sandwiches has contracted if anything, and i've become so complacently reliant on eating out and filling up on fast food that i've come close to entirely forgetting the deep spiritual satisfaction that comes from cooking for yourself.

perhaps i should write "oneself" as that would clarify how obnoxiously privileged i just sounded. truth be told i've been homeless partly to stay afloat and partly because i'm too much of a dick to cope with living with anyone other than my parents occasoinally, and anyone else who'll have me for thanklessly brief periods of time.

and if i sound like a spoilt shit, well… yeah. go figure.

also, "deep spiritual satisfaction"--am i kidding? well, it always takes me by surprise. even a crispy little piece of cheese on toast made well makes me glow from the inside out. this is a bit like the genteel middle classes rediscovering the joys of allotment farming, or owning a house-pig, and it definitely tends towards the behaviour of oafs like the prince of wales lecturing town planners on the demerits of cheap, affordable housing--ie, a deadly mix of privileged ignorance and high-minded arrogance.

but so fucking what. i think, on a more prosaic level, it just happens to be a treat for me. especially when i have someone to cook with.

this was breakfast, australian vegetarian style:

in case you weren't aware, australians make the best breakfasts. no competition. they also make the best lunch and possibly even the best dinner, but i wouldnt want to overstate the case, what with them generally being smug know-it-all bastards.

it's all about avocado, really, cheif amongst their bounty of delicious almost-local vegetables. avocado sliced over vegemite on toast is the tastiest simple breakfast i've ever had.

i fucked up the eggs a bit. can you see? school dinner style. ew.

and these are some trout, on offer at waitrose for around 50p each, cooked with butter and lemon:

cool. i'm boring myself.

scurrylous

home time. a time of reflection, privacy and nostalgia. and what could be more nostalgic than the same food that i spent most of my life eating, served up on the same plates and eaten with the same cutlery. no, i'm not being disrespectful.

my mother, like the best mothers, has spent much of her life balancing making ends meet wit the needs and demands of four disrespectful little shits. my older sister "went" vegetarian at an early age, i followed some time after, and my younger sister chose to eat, well, nothing, ever, mixed with salt. consequently there were dinners comprised of different dinners, served up at different times and with different levels of attention. my father eats anything, fortunately, besides seafood and blood pudding, so his would take the least attention, followed by my mother's own, if it even existed, and then ours, in their individual fussy glory.

i wouldn't do it. would you? i guess it has something to do with hormones. oh, and love.

the highlight of my childhood, i think, would have to be a communal breakfast, which we went through various phases of being forced to attend, at some time between 7am and 7.30am, with a rack of toast, some kind of jam and probably marmite, and of course a collection of mostly-empty boxes of cereal, served with one-sixth of a pint of milk. it was from boxed cereal that i learnt what disneyland paris was, how much i wanted to win a holiday to the seychelles, and how important 100% of your RDA of niacin was (though i never learnt what niacin actually was--and now i look at the word it does look suspiciously like a deadly poison).

anyway, the milk. these were the days of daily milk deliveries. i think these still take place, though i'm so removed from (a) real life and (b) mornings, specifically, that i haven't observed any in recent years. we would pour the daily pint into a measuring jug, and we know exactly how much we were allowed by the notation of the side of the jug. i'm guessing it was a bit less than 100mls each, what with there being six of us. nowadays i'd probably take twice that amount, probably as a result of general debauchery.

so what does this have to do with my life today? not much, besides the universally acknowledged facts that i am a social animal, i'm lithe, i have a wide appreciation of tasteless but nutricious grains, and i have a serious middle child complex. these things are all true, and related to my excellent upbringing.

and, as fate would have it, i'm at home with my parents, with the rest of the litter spread to the winds across the south and north of england. within half an hour of my arrival home this was on the table. i didn't even know it was coming! cauliflower curry, deliciously spiced, served with yoghurt and naan bread.

(hi-res--dig it.)

in essence, this post is dedicated to my mother. sorry for the bad language, and thank you for the food.

scurrylous.

qantarse

in the depravity, venality and senility of my old age, i hope, if nothing else, that i resist the urge to write letters of complaint. i'd smugly settle down in leisured tunbridge wells, nursing my great fortune, if only it wasn't notoriously associated with the bigoted whingers of english conservatism--and, frankly, there's nothing worse than a bigoted whinger, regardless of the colour of their nanny's skin.

the closest i've come to writing such a letter was after arriving into london paddington several hours late from oxford, having witnessed reading station's entire staff body descend into apathy as one train after another terminated its service on their platforms. apparently someone was about to jump off a bridge further down the line, so the service was shutting down, and taking hopes and dreams of thousands of late-night commuters with it.

an hour of aimless traipsing from concrete space to concrete space passed, broken up by the acquisition of one dark chocolate bounty from a nearby vending manchine. a train, mysteriously absent from the departure board, quietly arrived, did not empty, and looked ready to continue its journey. panicking , i asked the closest fat controller where it was going--he didn't know, despite closing its doors and blowing his whistle. so on i jumped, and off i went, remarkably, somehow to london. no-one else did, and as far as i'm aware they're still in reading, possibly settled down with families and ponies and various repressed desires.

my only complaint, as far as i can tell looking back at the day, was that the people running the station appeared to have no idea what was happening, and responded, as all good service sector staff do in similar situations, with abstract intractible hostility. london bus drivers are the same, as are air stewards.

so i went to the desk, and i said "i'd like to make a complaint". the guy (let's call him jeff) responded "okay, great, here's a form; fill it in and post it to this address." i, smiling gracefully, "great", walked off... and immediately realised i couldn't be bothered anymore.

the bastards had won before they'd even known that defeat was a possibility.

and of course it was always going to be that way. the system is rigged! gerrymandered. only the most fearless persist; only the most bigoted insist.

*alighting, as the automated voice says--is that word used in any other context?

//////

so anyway. plane food. ramsey made a plain pun of it at heathrow's terminal five, which is all very well if you can afford to share it. if not, you just eat on the plane, plainly.

everyone knows it's--how else can i put this?--shit-shape. indeed, its shitness is one of the few stable truisms of food, placed securely up there upon shelf of truisms alongside the shitness of service station pasties, the shitness of subway, and the shitness of all german food ever**. some people, including myself, not-so-quietly delight in just how shit it is, while others cheerlessly shovel it down their throats, happy enough that the food is essentially free.

the stale bread, soggy vegetables, vague meat, dinky plastic cutlery and piss-water coffee need no introduction.


it's a prison picnic, in the sky, and no-one's having a good time.

but here's the thing: check-in online before your flight and request the asian vegetarian option. not only will your meal be brought out before everyone else's, sometimes even before drinks are served, but it will be a curry. and what, children, is the single saintly quality of curry that makes this all worthwhile? that's right--it's the one type of food that actually benefits from being kept warm for long periods of time! in fact, it actually gets better with time. it just gets nicer and nicer.

on qantas, you even get a banana.

no... fucking... way.

of course, the curry isn't very interesting. in this instance it was mostly just chickpeas and random other vegetables they found lying around on the floor. hell, anything could have been thrown in. the important thing is that it's flavoured, the ingredients are mostly what they say they are, and the texture is mostly what you'd expect from edible organic matter.

so, sitting like a king--a hindu or buddhist king. presumably--you spoon the delicious mush slowly into your mouth as everyone else around you fiddles anxiously with their inflight entertainment. it's a great feeling.

and what could go wrong?

the answer, if you haven't already guessed, is that on a long-haul flight the curries just keep... on... coming. not exactly an expert in asian vegetarian cuisine, the resident chef (let's call him... jeff) decided to stick with the winning formula and churn out exactly the same curry four times.

this, you see, was the third meal of the trip:

contrast and compare to the first picture above. it's exactly the same, isn't it? yep***.

you'd think they could at least have picked up something different in singapore. say, some noodles, or even a wagamamas. i would have settled for a bowl of oven chips .

did i complain? well, i considered it.

qantarse.

//////

**more later

***that's actually because it is the same--i only took one photo, and i'm passing it off as two different meals. hey, this isn't journalism.