If there is a food more maligned than the doner kebab then it remains unknown to my palate.
Long the butt of jokes and the final resort of a hungry lush as he or she stumbles back home from the pub via a neon takeaway, the poor kebab as we know it in England is far removed from its original form. Read More…
Professional chefs work differently to home cooks. This is a lesson you learn very early on in a restaurant kitchen.
Working a successful service relies on a number of key practices but chief amongst these is doing one’s meez before the first ticket comes in.
If there is a meal that sums up New York better than this, I didn’t find it.
While much of the food available in the city reflects the diverse nature of the population – noodle bars next to falafal huts and pizza parlours – this is the all-American meal.
While they may not be able to lay claim to creating the individual components – the burger from Germany and the fries from Belgium – here is where the two were thrust together in a happy and enduring marriage.
There are a number of elements necessary to create the perfect cheeseburger and each must be just right before you can consider the possibility of creating something significantly greater than the sum of its parts. All good burgers are greater than the sum of its parts.
The bun should be soft and yielding and of an absorbent nature to suck up those delicious rich and beefy juices from the patties. The cheese has to be sufficiently melted with a distinct but subtle flavour of its own that doesn’t overpower the taste of the beef. As a result, blue cheese is a no-no for me.
Thinly sliced tomatoes should cut through the whole thing with a sweet freshness and a slick of mayonnaise and a dribble of ketchup must complete the ensemble, ready to squirt out at any moment over a clean shirt. Lettuce is window-dressing.
Whilst a good cheeseburger, when presented, must tower in an intimidating fashion, the first bite should compress the whole thing together into a manageable thickness so that all the components can be taken with every mouthful.
The side order, whilst not as important as the burger itself, needs also to be frighteningly oversized but the individual fries should be no thicker than a plumber’s finger.
And they must not, under any circumstances, be stacked in the manner of a virginal game of Jenga, merely tossed happily into a warm bowl. Melted cheese is optional but highly recommeneded.
According to trusted reports, the ultimate burger experience is to be enjoyed at Shake Shack, a veritable institution at Madison Square Park, within spitting distance of the wonderful Flatiron Building.
It’s not unusual for the queue to snake through the park and out towards Broadway as hungry residents wait patiently for upwards of an hour for a little taste of the city.
We didn’t wait quite that long but the lack of breakfast made the fifteen minutes pass achingly slowly.
But, oh, was it worth it. A truly excellent burger recreated in all its magnificent glory below.
Cheeseburger & Fries
Inside sources have revealed that Shake Shack use a combination of beef cuts (with a ratio of 80:20 meat to fat) in order to create their tasty patties. Budget and practicalities prevented me from taking this Heston Blumenthalian approach to burger making but beef skirt is a great alternative. Tasty, juicy and cheap enough to not feel guilty about forcing it through a mincer.
To make two thick or four thin burgers:
300g beef skirt – Good beef, please (goes without saying, no?)
Salt and pepper.
That’s it. No, really. That’s it. Don’t mess around with egg or breadcrumbs or onions. Leave it pure and let it sing over your tastebuds.
Slice the meat into 2cm pieces and salt generously. Leave, covered, in the fridge for a couple of hours. Rinse the meat under cold water and mince finely. Season with salt and pepper and shape into burgers. Let them come up to room temperature before you fry them.
The buns were made with the exact same recipe as the hot dog buns, just shaped differently and brushed with a little beaten egg before baking. They freeze just fine.
Tip: I used a cutter when making these little fellas but they would have risen better if shaped by hand. As a result instead of slicing one bun in half, I just used two for each burger.
Other items:
Cheddar cheese
Thinly sliced tomato
Lettuce
Mayonnaise
Ketchup
A little butter
Get everything ready before you go, that way there is no waiting around and you can assemble and attack as soon as possible.
Get a frying pan nice and hot, dribble in a little cooking oil, season each side of the burgers and fry for about four minutes. Flip them over – the underside should be browned nicely – place a couple of slices of cheese on the cooked side and leave to cook for a further two minutes.
Remove the burgers from the pan and put them on a warm plate to rest. Add a small nugget of butter to the pan, return to the heat and fry the cut side of the buns so they mop up all that lovely beef juice.
Smother one half of the bun with ketchup, the other with mayo and layer up.
Serve with cheesy fries and a hearty appetite.
Confession time.
I’ve always said that my last supper would consist of hot dogs. As much as I’ve tried to develop the outward appearance of a sophisticated foodie, I can’t shift this love of cheap sausages simmered in cloudy water and slung into a fluffy white bun.
Until now, I wasn’t fussy. I wouldn’t have specified brand names or quantities. Simply ‘lots. With everything.’ That would be my last request.
I’ve changed my mind. My final meal on earth would be these hot dogs. Homemade buns. Homemade relish. Ketchup. Mustard. Fried onions. And beef sausages.
Throughout Europe hot dogs are almost invariably made of pork. But with a historically large Jewish, and increasingly Muslim, population in New York, sausages here tend to be all-beef. It’s hard to find a kosher or Halal pig.
Your nearest Middle Eastern supermarket will be the best place to pick up beef hot dogs.
NB Recipe inspired by and modified from one in Gourmet magazine.
To make 16-20 hot dogs (more, even, than I could manage), you will need:
16-20 beef hot dogs (no kidding, Alex, get on with it)
Relish:
A medium sized cucumber cut into little tiny pieces
A small onion, also cut into teeny tiny pieces
150ml white wine vinegar
50g caster sugar
Thickener (I used xantham gum, my new favourite multi-purpose ingredient but cornflour works fine)
Mix all these together. That’s it.
Buns (can also be used to make burger buns – more on that later)
350ml full fat or semi-skimmed milk
150ml double cream
200ml warm water
800g plain flour
7g packet dried yeast
75g sugar
two teaspoons of salt
To make the buns, bring the milk and cream to a gentle simmer and leave to cool. Add the yeast to the warm water and leave for five minutes until it starts to foam like a rabid dog.
Mix the sugar and salt into the flour, pour in the foaming yeast mixture and then the cooled milk and cream (if it’s too hot you will kill the yeast, in the manner of a cruel Eastern European dictator wiping out a persecuted ethnic minority).
If you have a mixer, use the paddle to mix the wet doughy mass for about six minutes. If the dough is too wet, incorporate more flour until the dough just comes together.
If, like me, your mixer has exploded in a cloud of acrid black smoke and you are too scared to turn it on, you will be doing this by hand. Once the dough has been stirred together, turn out onto a floured surface and knead vigorously for about ten minutes. Add more flour whenever necessary – this is a wet dough.
Once you have a ball of dough and not a seeping puddle, tip it into an oiled bowl. Bear in mind that it will at least double in size. Let it prove for a couple of hours, covered with a damp tea towel
Turn it back out onto a floured surface and knock it back down by kneading it for another couple of minutes. Divide the dough into 16-20 equal sized pieces, roll them into a vague sausage shape (about six inches) and then place them evenly spaced on a baking sheet.
Leave a couple of centimetres between each one and let them prove, again covered with a damp tea-towel. About 45 minutes should do it.
Once your buns are touching and have near doubled in size, bake them in a pre-heated oven (about 175 degrees C) for 15-20 minutes, moving them from the top of the oven to the bottom about half way through. This will brown the tops whilst making sure they are cooked all the way through.
Remove them from the oven and leave to cool for ten minutes before putting them on a cooling rack.
To complete
Slice the bun down the middle, fill with fried onions (you don’t need a recipe for those, do you?), pop in a sausage that has been simmering away in murky water for six hours (if you want the really authentic NYC experience) and top with relish, ketchup and mustard.
This is without a shadow of a doubt the best hot dog I’ve ever had. The buns are light, soft and delicious but don’t have that cloudy, fluffy texture of bought buns. The relish is sharp, cool and sweet, the perfect counterpoint to the rest of the flavours and textures.
And the sausage? It’s a hot dog. You know not to expect artisanal spiced cuts of premium Saddleback pork. But that doesn’t make it any less tasty. Here’s to the guiltiest and most pleasurable of guilty pleasures. Perfect for July 4th.
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Times Sq. New York, New York – May 27th 2009
This is the greatest smear of humanity I’ve ever seen.
All around me is a barrage of illumination. Colour. Smells. Flavours. Noises. So many noises. A bottomless orchestral attack.
Fading chalk drawings cover tyre treads. Light bulb fireworks explode from ground to sky. Wide-eyed photographers catch single moments. Smoke from streetcart barbecues drifts over the road. Leaflets passed from hand to hand find their way quickly to the floor. ‘Cheap tickets. Broadway tickets.’ ‘You like stand-up comedy? Wanna see a show?’ ‘Happy hour all day, all cocktails half price, all day today.’
I’m sat on a plastic chair, on Broadway, in the middle of Times Square. This section of the road has been closed to cars for 48 hours. Around me is the greatest multi-sensory onslaught I’ve ever experienced.
This rich palate of humanity shifting through a single space dedicated solely to consumption. In all its forms. I find it fitting that this was once the city’s red light district – a better metaphor than I could ever have come up with.
It’s my last few minutes trying to get an understanding of this place before we have to take the Subway in the vague direction of JFK airport. And I can’t. There is no unified whole. No single defining factor. No culture nor cuisine unique to here. Just here.
And I love it. Because that is how to define New York: by its impossibility. By its vast richness. By its indefinability.
Normally over five days you’re able to begin the process of unravelling a city. I’m delighted I haven’t been able to.
The delicious variety of New York stretches to the food too. It is elusive, obvious, effusive and subtle. Characterised by nothing more than its globally disparate origins. This is a true food-loving city in every sense where you can eat your way around the world around the clock.
So that’s what I did.
But rather than relay a tired list full of information yet devoid of flavour, I’m going to take a slightly different approach.
In an effort to pin down what really characterises the cuisine of the Big Apple, I’m going to try and recreate each glorious food moment in words and in the kitchen. Burgers, fries, pizzas, knish, pork buns and all.
And it would be an honour if you would join me on this little adventure through Central Park, Little Italy, The Village, SoHo, NoHo all the way down to the Lower East Side. Come on, it’ll be fun. We might even have time for a hot dog.
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I lay the blame squarely at the door of Anthony Bourdain. If it had not been for this man I could be a normal, fully functioning member of society by now, complete with a regular job and a steady income. Instead I am a food obsessed jobbing writer desperate to eat my way around the world, indulge in endless gastronomic experiences, try anything and everything and hunt for the perfect meal. And then write it all down, naturally.
On second thoughts, maybe blame is the wrong word. I think, perhaps, that what I mean is that I owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. If it had not been for this man I might have a regular job and a steady income. I could be a jobbing account manager by now (whatever that means). Instead I am a food-obsessed writer carefully eating my way around the world and cataloguing the growing collection of gastronomic experiences I am revelling in. My boundaries are limitless, my palate adventurous. I am happy to try anything and everything and am hunting for the perfect meal. And writing it all down, naturally.
When it comes to food I have an uninhibited sense of adventure. I’ve said before that what excites me most about travel isn’t the weather or the beaches or the galleries or museums or the views and vistas. It is the food. I don’t even have to leave the country to get excited. I am planning a trip to Colchester to feast on native oysters and a sojourn to Cromer to gorge on crab. Theses are no further than an hour from my house but the prospect excites me to the point when I can think about little else.
There is a culinary adventure wherever you look. A recent trip to Cardiff and Bath resulted in some superb lamb and (officially) the best sandwich in the country (more of those later).
Thailand was, of course, an almost non-stop gastro-quest. We had some incredible food and some amazing experiences – not all of which were food related, it may surprise you to discover. The heaving throng of Chinatown with its myriad smells and mind-blowing selection of streetfood. The iced coffee we supped surrounded by a thousand and one cars billowing out acrid fumes. The sweetly infamous durian fruit, munched clandestinely in the hotel room. The century eggs that ended up in a napkin. All were truly, truly incredible.
But, as is customary, I felt that I should save the best for last.
Feeling a little claustrophobic thanks to the slightly sanitised and staid feeling of the hotel I went searching for something a little more traditional. We had succumbed to room service once and also endured a deeply average meal in the hotel restaurant (hot tip – if something on the menu makes you utter the words ‘oo, that sounds interesting’ then avoid it at all costs. Or you may end up with deep fried duck with sweet espresso flavoured sauce) but once again I was hankering for something real, something with soul, something made on the side of the road.
After walking south along the beach for an hour I came across a lone taxi driver waiting for any passing trade. He asked me if I wanted a taxi. No, thank you, I replied but perhaps you could tell me where I could get some food?
‘Thai food?’ he said
‘Thai food.’
‘Local food?’
‘Local food.’
‘400 metres down the road is a motorbike and food stall,’ came the glorious reply ‘I give you lift.’
My spirits soared. I could not have crafted a better scenario. It transpired that there was a substantial amount of construction work taking place just along the coast and builders need feeding.
I told him that I would have to go and get my girlfriend but I promised to be back as soon as I could and set on my way, as fast as it is possible to go on banked sand whilst wearing flip flops that are two sizes too big. I hesitate to think what I looked like but lithe and athletic are two words that probably wouldn’t be used in this context.
By the time I got back to the hotel I had been gone almost two hours but I was too eager to take notice of the gentle reprimand I received from my girlfriend, no doubt slightly anxious that a fifteen minute stroll had taken a little longer than expected.
And then it began to rain. It rained harder than we had seen since we arrived. We really were in our own version of The Truman Show: ‘We have confirmed reports that two guests are attempting to escape the complex and eat elsewhere. Turn on the storm. Repeat, turn on the storm.’
Our hunger began to press and we toyed with the idea of postponing. But just as the pain in our bellies began to take over rational control of our heads the clouds parted, the rain ceased and we were able to start the pilgrimage.
The taxi driver was waiting and displayed delight on seeing our return. As promised, he drove us the short distance for nothing and as I saw the destination an uncontrollable smile spread across my face. Not one but two hastily cobbled together motorbikes with rudimentary stalls attached, each with a gas burner and an array of exciting foodstuffs available. I asked our driver to order for us. He declined my offer of a meal but duly rattled off an order to the waiting hawkers.
Within minutes we each had a cob of corn, a plastic tray heaped with freshly cooked fried rice, topped with tiny chillies and a plastic cup full of sweetened Thai iced tea. The driver offered to take us back to the beach so that we could eat within sight of the sea, a proposition we couldn’t resist.
We ate sat on a large piece of driftwood within metres of the rolling waves. Grey clouds loomed close to the horizon and a soft breeze rattled the palm trees. The food was the best I have ever tasted.
I was in a place I love, with someone I love doing what I love. This was perfection. Thanks, Tony.
After a week in the urban intensity of Bangkok, we were ready to move on to more sedate climes and swap crushingly busy markets for vast empty beaches and the heaving Chao Praya river for the rolling Andaman sea.
Phuket is a famous contradiction. With a large Islamic population (here mosques allegedly outnumber Buddhist temples) there is a conservative streak running through the culture. Phuket Town, the capital of the island, is a tightly knit, functioning city with little regard, or need for a tourist industry. The markets are resolutely local with few, if any, concessions to non-Thais. English is not widely spoken, for example, and subsequently much communication must be done with elaborate hand gestures. The buildings here are crumbling relics to colonialism, stunning facades with peeling paint and overgrown driveways – the settlers long gone. It is traditional in an endearing and sleepy way.
Just 20 kilometres west lies Patong, the very antithesis of Phuket Town. Patong suffers thanks to its reputation as the sex tourism capital of Thailand. Formerly home to a US airbase, the town grew up and flourished on vice – the black market, sex, drugs and drink seem to be the key aspects of the economy. If hedonism were a currency, Patong would be beating the global recession. Pirate DVDs are sold openly on the streets along with fakes of every label under the sun. By day the neon lights look sad and stark as sunlight cascades the bright glow of reality over them but by night they dominate and turn the narrow streets into a lurid, glowing homage to Sodom and Gomorrah.
But thanks to international investment and government intervention, Patong is gradually shedding its reputation, or at least trying to. It is still a hedonist’s paradise (Michael Houellebecq’s novel Platform is a staggeringly well-written account of the underbelly of Patong) but, by all accounts, far less seedy than it once was and during daylight hours could even be described as a family resort.
Having had enough of late nights and neon, we chose to stay on the north of the island, about 45 minutes from Patong, at one of an increasing number of resort hotels on the Mai Khao beach. These luxurious retreats offer unsurpassed luxury, endless activities (should you want to do more than lie in the sun), a staggering range of food in a number of restaurants and will even loan you a movie or two if you feel like staying in. There is even an on-site shop to provide you with all the necessities (at grossly inflated prices). In short, it is like the Truman Show.
And this is at the heart of the problem. If you want to lose yourself in a glorious fug of luxury then these Thai theme parks are ideal. If you want to experience Thailand but don’t want to get your hands dirty or be bothered with non-essential trapping like ‘culture’ then they are perfect. You can forget that there is a world out there, a world where taxis are cheap and food is a fraction of the price, and infinitely better, than in the hotel.
Don’t get me wrong, we had a great time softly floating on this cloud like, inland cruise ship but we soon got itchy feet. Having seen Bangkok and all the excitement and variety and intensity, shifting to this Truman-like existence was hard. And like Jim Carey’s character, our sense of adventure and intrigue got the better of us. And we were delighted that it did…
There is little danger of being unable to get your ‘five-a-day’ in Thailand. Indeed, the ubiquitous street vendors sell so many varieties of fruit it is hard to stop yourself from going beyond the magic number. Pineapples cut into intricate corkscrews, slithers of green mangoes, chilled wedges of watermelon, bags of sweet jackfruit, tangerines with an unfamiliar green skin, deep purple mangosteens, alien-like spiky lychees, freshly cut coconuts with luridly coloured straws peeping from the top and bunches of longan berries, which look disturbingly like potatoes, are all available in huge quantities for no more than a few baht.
Chief among these exotic fruits, though, is the infamous durian, one of South East Asia’s most well known delicacies and something any bold food adventurer simply has to try. Durian look like the pre-historic eggs of an animal dreamed up by HG Wells but it is the smell that makes this particular fruit so notorious.
Put in the simplest language possible, durian stinks. It stinks like nothing I have ever smelt before. It stinks enough to make you check your pants just to make sure that last fart you did was no more than mere gas. Whilst strolling the streets of Bangkok you may occasionally be overwhelmed by the stench from the city’s primitive sewage system. The only trouble is that the city’s sewage system is far from primitive and the smell is, in fact, coming from a near-by durian seller. It is illegal to take the fruit on public transport and you will struggle to find a hotel that permits it onto the premises. And everything you have heard about this spiky, deadly looking fruit is true.
Even wrapped tightly in impermeable plastic, the fetid stench is quite overwhelming. Imagine the smell of an open latrine after a starving army, plagued with dysentery, had been fed on onions, eggs, broccoli, cabbage and laxatives and you are in the right sort of Ball Park. It is a smell that gets into your nostrils and will not let go. It is quite, quite foul. But also bizarrely curious.
After we bought some I was drawn to the fruit, like a fly pulled towards the fatal beauty of a glowing blue light. We unwrapped the plastic and placed the strange pale yellow insides onto a plate. They looked like the kidneys from an alien species. Initially the smell was faint but as the fruit breathed it began to get stronger. Onion was the first discernable scent to emit from the custard yellow cheese-like orbs, closely followed by an increasingly fetid funk of rotting brassicas, like a neglected vegetable tray in the bottom of a fridge.
Before I passed out I felt it wise to pop some in my mouth just to see if the myths were true: namely that it may smell like a dead sloth stuffed with garlic but don’t let that put you off because the taste is quite heavenly.
Until you actually taste it, it is hard to believe that this is the case. Taste and smell are so closely related that we often get the two confused: eat a piece of apple whilst holding a pear under your nose and you taste pear rather than apple. Surely with the two senses so close, there can’t be that much discrepancy between the full on nasal assault and the flavour of durian?
But anyone who has tried it knows that this is the case. Durian is delicious in a way that renders you quite speechless. It causes your eyes to widen in utter surprise, it dances across the tastebuds and tickles parts of your mouth in a way I have never experienced before. It is soft and creamy, custardy and sweet. Sure, there is the faintest taste of onion but that is only a mere flutter in the background – as if the smell and taste are only the most distantly related cousins. There is a delicate cheesiness to both the flavour and texture, which in my book is no bad thing. And once you have tasted it, the smell really isn’t that bad. There is a scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where, on his final leg of the journey, the eponymous hero has to walk across a seemingly vast chasm. But it is just an optical illusion and there was a bridge there all along. Well, durian is like that. Once you’ve stepped into the abyss, you can’t help but wonder what all the fuss was about.
We tucked the plastic tray and wrapping into the bin, went to bed happy and slept well no doubt thanks to the bottle of Thai whiskey we had successfully polished off.
On waking up however, we were greeted with an eye-wateringly bad smell. For a bleary eyed hour we levelled comedy accusations at each other until the stench became so bad we had to ascertain from where it was emanating. A tiny sniff taken in the direction of the bin had me retching into the toilet unable to escape the raw fetidity of the stench that greeted me. The plastic tray had contaminated the bin and subsequently the entire room. It quickly went onto the balcony. Now I understand the ban. We checked out of the hotel the same day.
www.justcookit.co.uk
Despite the best efforts of Starbucks et al who seem to be invading Bangkok with a ruthless efficiency, the best coffee in Thailand, like pretty much everything else, comes from solo entrepreneurs with little more than a roadside cart and a gas burner. Those who wish to indulge their caffeine habit with a skinny-frappa-latte-mochaccino may still do so but they are missing out on one of the city’s real treats.
The Thais love to nap. Second only to eating, dozing seems to be a national past-time. If a tuk-tuk driver isn’t racing through traffic he is likely to be parked under the shade of a tree, head back and eyes shut – a look of serene calm on his face. I suppose this explains the 24-hour nature of life in this city: catch some Zs in the day, keep going all night. It also explains the popularity of stimulant-laced drinks such as M-150 and Red Bull, a drink we are also familiar with, albeit in a slightly diluted and carbonated form. These frighteningly sweet, almost medicinal tasting drinks, are great at providing an intense and short lived burst of alertness (they also mix really, really well with Sam Song, a dangerously cheap brandy – just don’t expect to be sleeping any time soon if you have a night on these).
But despite the practicalities of these little brown bottles, I prefer my wake up call to be a little less sweet and slightly gentler. I also quite like my heart beating at its regular, sedate pace rather than an audible buzz which seems to be the effect of these liquid hyper stimulants. So coffee it was.
A busy road junction close to Chinatown was the temporary home of a coffee and tea cart sending wafts of tantalising smells through the fumes. Dodging the traffic, we ordered a coffee each and watched as an old lady went to work with dizzying speed: mixing, pouring, stirring and brewing with amazing skill. A large shot of coffee was mixed with sugar syrup and poured over crushed ice, steam pluming in fast disappearing curls above the rim of the cup where the hot coffee met the cool ice. This was topped up with condensed milk, dozens of tins of which weighed down the small cart.
Normally I am a purist when it comes to matters coffee, especially first thing in the morning when only a double shot of thick, black espresso sweetened with a little Demerara sugar will do. The prospect of messing around with this base perfection irks me slightly. But my irk quickly evaporated, much like the steam from the gently boiling water on the cart, when I tasted this delightful drink. I am a convert, a genuine iced coffee convert. So much so that when we arrived home one of our first purchases was a tin of condensed milk so that we could recreate this moment of caffeine fuelled heaven.
And now, along with the sharp hissing of the espresso machine, the peace of the morning is regularly disturbed by the harsh grinding of the food processor as it works to crush cubes of ice. This is the best way to wake up when the sun is shining.
Thai style iced coffee
Fire up your coffee machine. Crush enough ice to fill a highball glass ¾ of the way to the top. Make a double shot of espresso and pour it into a mug. Mix in two teaspoons of brown sugar (white sugar is just too saccharine for this, it gives the coffee a nasty thin and synthetic taste). Add about 150ml of condensed milk. Stir it well and pour over the ice. A little sprinkle of cinnamon or nutmeg adds a nice warming note as well. NB – if you don’t have a coffee machine, a heaped teaspoon of instant coffee (gah, I hate it so much and it pains me to say this) mixed with a little boiling water should give a similar (although vastly inferior) result.
After spending a day lost amid the tumultuous frenzy of Chinatown, drinking in the vast array of sights, sounds and smells (not to mention some excellent food), we felt that a slightly more sedate approach might be appropriate for our second day. Yes, Bangkok is a manic city but it is possible, thanks to the influence of the predominant religion of Theravadin Buddhism, to escape the chaos and the noise in any one of a number of blissful oases. Temples, or Wat, rise up out of their surroundings and provide delightfully serene pockets where perfumed incense replaces the more familiar smells and a gentle calm pervades.
Buddhism is a visible and welcome influence in Thai life, one that segues its way, almost effortlessly, into virtually all other aspects of the culture. Where we may be used to taxi drivers hanging air fresheners and fluffy dice from rear view mirrors, here they prefer amulets in the hope that they will bring them safety on the chaotic roads (although I can’t help thinking that if a sizeable chunk of the windscreen wasn’t taken up by nine or ten swinging mascots, they would have less need for such trinkets). I am quite used to buses and trains having dedicated seats for the elderly or pregnant women but doubt whether transport for London would go so far as marking ‘space for monks’, as they do on the river buses. Nor do I envisage the buyers of Tesco deciding to stock monks’ robes or other such religious paraphernalia. And so, with Buddhism such an integral, unavoidable and interesting part of the culture, we felt it necessary to see some of the Wat.
We took an express boat up the Chao Praya (being careful to avoid the monk space), the central river that runs like an artery through Bangkok, and got off within walking distance of the Grand Palace, the former residence of the Thai royal family and now the city’s main tourist attraction. On our way we were accosted at least three times by helpful locals informing us that the temple was closed, despite the hoards of tourists flocking towards a very open looking entrance.
Here I shall digress momentarily to impart some advice to anyone who visits this great city. Unless you wish to spend a couple of hours being taken from gem shop to gem shop and tailor to tailor in a tuk tuk (imagine a golf buggy with three wheels, a frighteningly large engine and a death wish and you are somewhere close), ignore anyone who says that your destination of choice is closed, no matter how official they may look. This is a scam.
(Although I did admire the gall of one wizened looking gentleman who attempted to convince us that the temple was very much closed whilst stood squarely in front of a sign that said in at least four languages ‘The temple is open seven days a week. Ignore any person who tells you otherwise’ – or words to that effect. I toyed with the idea of suggesting he chose his pitch more carefully in the future but he had already moved onto another couple before I could say anything).
The palace itself is, quite simply, stunning. A seemingly disparate collection of buildings each gilded with thousands of tiles of gold or vivid primary colours. The walls are painted with detailed and gory frescos relaying some ancient Eastern legend. Between three of the buildings sits a scale miniature of the great Angkor Wat. Amidst the bright ostentation of the temples that surround it, it looks drab and helpless. I couldn’t help thinking that far from being a mark of respect or admiration, it is perhaps a sly and underhand dig at neighbouring Cambodia. Hopefully the photographs should do justice to this incredible place.
A short walk from the Grand Palace is Wat Pho, home to a 46 metre long reclining Buddha figure painted head to toe in gold leaf. I had read about this in the guidebook but had somehow mis-read 46 metres as 46 feet. As a result I was in something of a state of awe when I saw the sheer size of the construction.
For all the grandiose design and impressive architecture of the Grand Palace, if I had to choose between the two then Wat Pho would be my recommendation. Although still relatively popular and still quite sizeable, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha is more of a haven, a delightful pocket of tranquillity in possession of the largest, and most relaxed, looking Buddha I have ever seen.
Having spent the morning exploring Wats of one sort, we spent the afternoon delving into temples of another – Bangkok has a number of enormous shopping malls, each a stand-alone temple to consumerism, an air conditioned leviathan specifically designed to get you to part with your baht. A trio of these sit next to each other, each jostling for space around the perimeter of Siam Square.
Because of our increasingly empty bellies we chose MBK, a towering eight-floor mall, two of which are devoted entirely to food outlets. Here you can sample sushi, Indian food, Greek grilled meats, Middle Eastern kebabs and, of course, Thai cuisine. Of the two floors the lower one is a slightly more formal and expensive affair where food and drink is paid for on a swipe card and the balance settled on exit.
We picked two curries and watched them being made in the open kitchen, one of six each with a team of chefs sweating over woks, burners, ovens, rotisseries and pans. Our steaming food was presented to us and we were shown to a selection of condiments with which to flavour our lunch as we saw fit. Thai cuisine is about balancing acidity, saltiness, sweetness and heat and virtually everywhere you eat you see this philosophy borne out in the same way: four containers holding white vinegar (with chilli), fish sauce (with chilli) sugar (without chilli) and, yup, chilli.
I spooned some of each into a dedicated sauce tray and we took a seat close to the bar, for obvious reasons. Despite my affinity for street food and desire to embrace the culture of wherever I happen to be as wholeheartedly as possible, there was a real element of luxury in eating sat at a table in an air-conditioned shopping centre as opposed to huddled on a pavement with the heat and dirt from a thousand cars enveloping your being. And the food here was good. It was fresh, tasty, as spicy as you want it to be and wonderfully satisfying, especially when washed down with an icy cool Singha. Perfect fuel for exploring the shops, of which there were hundreds.
At the time I felt as if we had split the day firmly into two separate parts: culture and shopping, but hindsight would suggest otherwise. Seeing the malls of Siam Square was as much of a culturally relevant experience as seeing the gilded temples and jewelled Buddhas, perhaps even more so. There are purists who would suggest otherwise, that it is a shame Thailand has bowed so eagerly to consumerism and perhaps lost its core elements along the way but I disagree. It is just another wonderful manifestation of the multifaceted nature of this diverse country, two sides of the very same coin.
Food dominates life in Bangkok in a way I have not witnessed in any other city. The residents of this vast urban sprawl appear to be engaged in a near perpetual hunt for the next meal. A while back I was discussing the nature of being a ‘foodie’ with my girlfriend. The conclusion we reached was that a ‘foodie’ is one who is thinking about their next meal even before they have finished the one they are eating – and if this is the case, then Bangkok is a city of six million bona fide foodies.
Couple this desire for eating with an almost natural entrepreneurial bent and you have a city where it is possible to sample a new taste or textural sensation every five metres, or so, whatever the time of day.
Restaurants and cafés per se don’t really exist. This is a city that ebbs and flows like a vast ocean and the food carts and nomadic street vendors are the living embodiment of this philosophy. Even the markets, which appear stationary, evolve and shift, tide like. It is, in short, a paradise for any gastronome.
We headed straight for Chinatown. A heaving, sweaty, tightly packed part of the city next to the river. There is no centre, as such, to Bangkok and it is easy to get hopelessly and wonderfully lost in this alien world. So that is exactly what we did. The market here swallows you hungrily, quickly enveloping you in a seemingly endless collection of stalls. The streets are narrow and covered making it even more difficult to navigate your way through the labyrinthine warren.
Rain had leaked through the canopy during the night making the ground underfoot dirty and treacherously slippy, especially for any idiot wearing flip-flops with little grip. Unfortunately that idiot was me. Thankfully, the sheer busyness of the place made it impossible to fall over. I was also a good foot taller than the vast majority of people around me allowing me to be able to see when an impossibly laden cart was heading directly for us, seemingly bending the known laws of physics with its ability to slip lithely through the throng.
The market appeared to be loosely organised into sections although at each junction, and at many places throughout, the system deviated and a wandering hawker would be proffering some tasty treat or other: sliced fruit on ice pepped up with chilli and sugar, skewers of non-descript meats grilling over hot coals, chicken frying in vast woks of spitting oil, steaming bowls of noodles complete with various bits of duck or pig – the choice was so vast as to be almost paralysing, as long as one wasn’t too concerned about the apparent lack of health and safety and basic hygiene precautions.
I take a philosophical view when it comes to such matters. Here in the UK, as in much of the western world, we live in a disinfected cotton wool shroud that appears to be doing us more harm than good. The human body is much more resilient than we give it credit for and if being seared in boiling fat doesn’t kill whatever bugs might be residing in my plate of rice or noodles, then maybe it deserves to have its fun inside my gut.
Suffice to say I am not squeamish about street food. Far from it. I simply adore it and think it gives a better indication and insight into a nation’s culinary culture than any three star restaurant or sanitised hotel kitchen. The streets are where people eat. Together. There is something wonderfully democratic about individuals from all walks of life heading to the same cart to get their Khao Phad or noodles. Street food is the soul of a city and I have never, not once, fallen victim to any malevolent bug caught from a roadside eatery.
In Thailand, street food is an institution. It isn’t a whim dreamt up to please the hoards of tourists that descend upon the country, many of whom refuse to eat anywhere other than their hotels – it is a 500-year-old tradition that exists because the Thais love to eat and they love to share this base pleasure with as many people as possible, as often as possible. The notion of three square meals a day is as alien to the Thais as the idea of near constant grazing is to us. Well, most of us at least.
For our first taste of this gloriously simple food we went by smell alone. It was nearing lunchtime so the fried eggs that appear at carts all over the city first thing in the morning had made way for more savoury and filling wares. It was too early for Phad Thai – more of an evening dish cooked when the sun has set – and we didn’t quite feel confident enough to test the noodles yet. Amid the heaving market was a tiny woman knelt by a large flat pan in which she was frying cubes of what looked like green jelly. We had no idea what it was but the smell alone was enough to convince us to part with thirty baht and sample the strange foodstuff.
Ten of these cubes, each one a large mouthful, were piled into a small plastic tray and sprinkled liberally with dark soy sauce, flecked throughout with the deep red of dried chillies before a wooden skewer was thrust into the steaming pile and we were sent on our way.
I have no idea what we ate (the first of many times during our holiday) but it was delicious: a crispy outside and a savoury dark green jelly inside with an intense saltiness thanks to the soy sauce. But they were filling and we struggled to finish the tray. I closed the clear plastic bag around the remains and we carried on through the market, pondering what we just ate in a happy and content fashion.
That was until heavy traffic forced us to stop outside a stall. A young Thai man, presumably the proprietor of the shop, looked at the bag in my hand, pointed at it then glanced up at my face before breaking into uncontrollable laughter. Still, it tasted good.
I really don’t know where to start. My usual existence plays itself out in a satisfyingly sedate fashion: the occasional domestic duty punctuating an otherwise relaxed approach dominated by growing food, cooking food and writing about (mostly) food. There might be the odd day when I go for a run, wander into town and buy a new album or amble around the flat countryside that surrounds our house. But most of the time I am beavering away, attempting to eke out a living by doing the things I love most, the things listed above.
Suffice to say that the last fortnight has provided something of a departure from this genteel life. The sweaty streets of Bangkok, so alive in so many ways, the soft beaches of Phuket and the sinister underbelly of Patong are a world away from the small, sleepy Cambridgeshire village I call home. And what a wondrous, living, breathing, pulsating, vibrant world Thailand is.
A slow and relaxed karmic paradise that lives in a manic frenzy. The sweeping hills flecked green with lush trees overlook heaving polluted city streets where the concept of a carbon footprint is unheard-of. The peaceful tranquillity of the Buddhist tradition exists amidst a tumultuous ferocity of a sprawling metropolis. The gentle curves of traditional Thai architecture sit alongside the harsh angular regularity of a modern city block. The intricate delicacy of old artwork appears soft against the brutal realism favoured by the nation’s contemporary artists.
Thailand encompasses all these things and more with an indescribable grace: everything and nothing that you expect. During the two short weeks that we spent there we saw many sides to this disparate yet cohesive nation; a country developing both within and outside of itself, finding its place in the world; struggling with and embracing the many facets of its intricate existence.
I have no doubt that we barely scratched the surface – the north of the country remains a mystery, as do many of the outlying islands, not to mention the complex traditions and formalities that pervade Thai life – but I like to think that we managed to at least begin the process of unraveling this incredible, fascinating and wonderful nation.
And the food? I suppose you’ll just have to wait and see.
South of Gamla Stan, across one of the city’s many bridges, lies Stockholm’s vibrant beating heart. Södermalm is achingly, effortlessly and unselfconsciously cool in the way only certain places can be. This is the city’s Soho where artists, musicians and writers pack into small and over-priced flats to compose their masterpieces. The shops are independent and boutique. The restaurants are ethnic and exotic. Cafés line the streets and music pours from open doorways – deep bass lines melding together and converging into a heavy morass that soundtracks your journey.
There is no pretence. There is no agenda. ‘Live and let live’ appears to be the philosophy that exudes from every corner. Closed doors tantalise with their potential secrets – you get the impression that the best nights are to be had in basements that do not advertise their wares. This is the sort of place where you have to be resident to truly appreciate it and we were merely visitors. And hungry ones at that.
Our desire to be as ‘free-range’ as possible when we travel cuts down our need to rely on guidebooks but sometimes it is impossible to ignore the lure of the Lonely Planet and that is exactly how we found ourselves in a Thai restaurant in the middle of Sweden’s capital.
Kho Phangan manages to skirt so very close to the realm of kitsch that it is amazing it doesn’t fall into a vast chasm of tackiness. This heavily decorated restaurant comes complete with a bamboo bar, UV lighting and even a table in a tuk tuk and yet somehow manages to maintain its dignity. It could be that tongue remains firmly in cheek and there is a nod of self-awareness. It might be because it is one of a kind and not part of a highly stylised chain of similar outlets. Or perhaps it is because the food is very, very good.
A half hour wait passed quickly at the well stocked bar which, in addition to three or four Thai beers, served the famous buckets of Mekong whisky and Red Bull, although at over forty pounds each we made do with a lager. As the minutes passed it became increasingly easy to forget that we were still in Scandinavia and not in an Asian beach hut and the level of detail aided this thought – the lighting, the drinks and even the sounds were reminiscent of Thailand and by the time our table was ready we were certainly ready to sample the food.
A complimentary salad, with a zingy lime juice and chilli dressing, served as an excellent appetiser while we perused the menu. One doesn’t go to a Thai restaurant to be surprised and, as expected, all the usual suspects were present including green and red curry and Pad Thai. Feeling as if I had probably consumed enough meat for at least a week (in the form of yet more hot dogs, and a steak the previous night), I went for a vegetable stir-fry with chilli and basil while the birthday girl chose a chicken curry. Both were delicious – capturing classical Thai flavours like lemongrass and ginger and delivering a hefty spice kick, enough to bring a few beads of sweat to the forehead. The vegetables were fabulously fresh and had been cooked for only a short amount of time, retaining a satisfying crunch. Delicately steamed plain white rice accompanied both dishes.
Knowing that a decadently tempting ice cream parlour lay in wait for us on the way back, we declined dessert, paid the bill and blinked our way back into the bright reality of early summer Sweden – the combination of strong Oriental beer, spicy food and UV lighting ensuring a few moments of confusion before we could head on our merry way.
***
I, like many others, have formed an inextricable link between holidays and ice cream. It is a foodstuff that I adore but doesn’t often appear on my radar and consequently makes only rare appearances in the freezer. But holidays provoke some sort of Pavlovian reaction within me and I begin to salivate at the merest thought of the good stuff.
Since day one we had been intrigued by a technique we had seen whereby an entire ice cream, complete with the top half inch of the cone, was dipped into warm, molten chocolate. On contact with the cold ice cream, the chocolate quickly hardened creating a crisp choco layer around the soft vanilla ice cream underneath. If it tasted half as good as it looked, it was bound to be achingly delicious. Coupled with this, the shop we chose made the enormous waffle cones fresh each day: a Heath Robinson style contraption in the window dribbled the mixture onto a hot plate which was then closed shut to cook the waffle. When it was ready and cool enough to handle whilst still being pliable, it was curled into a cone shape ready to be filled with soft vanilla ice cream.
When faced with such delicacies, it would be rude to merely dabble. Rather, the only course of action is to dive in headfirst and think about it later. It was this philosophy that saw me ordering two of the largest ice creams I have ever seen. Each one could easily have satisfied two people. They were dipped into the chocolate which, as expected, formed a dark brown shell around the light, white ice cream within.
We sat outside the shop, perched on the windowsill in front of the waffle maker and tucked into the behemoth frozen treats in our childlike hands. They were as tasty as they looked; soft ice cream with the unmistakeable taste of manufactured vanilla, a crisp cone with a faintly sweet note and a gentle bitterness from the dark chocolate. It was one of the great ice creams, a truly legendary dessert.
My steadfast determination to finish it saw me through to the end leaving me reeling like a child at Easter who has eaten too much chocolate before breakfast. I licked the final smudges of chocolate from my lips, tossed my napkin into the bin and rested a hand on my sore belly while my girlfriend, clutching the final quarter of a cone still filled with ice cream, admitted defeat. Even after all that I considered whether it would be foolhardy to do the gentlemanly thing and finish it for her. An audible groan from my stomach gave me my answer. We binned the remains before I could change my mind and ambled into the quickly cooling evening happy and sated.
I have a theory. Like the best theories, it is simple and concise and able to spark much debate as to its veracity and plausibility. Perhaps it is little more than the ramblings of a self-confessed gastronome attempting to add a modicum of legitimacy to a burgeoning obsession but I shall, nevertheless, share it with you now as a stimulus to further discussion.
I am willing to hear counter arguments and even consider the possibility that it might be nothing more than utter bunkum, but I have a feeling that a great many of you will agree.
It runs thus: the very best way to begin the process of understanding a new country or culture is not through examining their social structure, rituals, rites of passage or sexual practices. It is by looking at the food that they eat.
I firmly believe that by consuming three meals you can gain a more immediate and precise understanding of wherever you are than by reading any number of guidebooks. Only by sampling the local foods and flavours can you start to scratch the cultural surface and begin to delve deeper into the social miasma that a mere few mouthfuls ago felt so alien.
As a result whenever I find myself somewhere new, it is not the art galleries, museums, guided tours or buildings I am interested in – it is the local food. In the spirit of adventure I try not to be constrained by pre-conceptions or my own short-sighted cultural relativity. Granted there are some things that I would only eat if faced with the possibility of a long, slow and painful death from starvation, but they are few and far between (and for an entirely different post altogether). Now is the time to discover the food of my ancestral land – and what better place to begin than at breakfast.
Breakfast is the cornerstone of cuisine. It sets the day in motion and creates a springboard for whatever follows (usually lunch). It is usually a hurried affair, a far cry from the glory days of breakfast when an aristocratic diner could idle over tea and toast and eggs and bacon all served by the staff from silver platters. A freshly ironed copy of The London Times provided an excuse to avoid conversation aside from a muted commentary on the affairs of the day.
Sadly, I don’t live in an episode of Jeeves and Wooster so have to make do with toast and a large espresso with a glass of juice as a concession to health. But on holiday it is possible to linger over the first meal of the day a little longer, as if you are living in a world of perpetual Sundays (how I wish that were the case).
For some reason that remains elusive to me at this moment, I’d become convinced that the Swedes enjoyed a breakfast consisting mainly of coffee and pastries and so on our first morning – which also happened to be my girlfriends birthday – I confidently marched into a café ready to show off my knowledge of Swedish breakfast practices.
My request for two coffees was met with an approving nod from the chap behind the counter. So far so Scandinavian. My supplementary request for three pastries of his choice was met with a look of mild confusion and a glance at his watch before he shrugged his shoulders and removed a selection of tasty but totally unbreakfast-like items from the huge display. We were presented with a slab of chocolate cake, a glazed raspberry tart and a warm cinnamon roll. The first two were unexpected and came with a frightening amount of whipped cream. The third was more what I had in mind but I was willing to be proved wrong and we merrily tucked into this selection of Swedish breakfast treats.
The cinnamon roll was perfect with strong black coffee (the Swedes are the second biggest coffee consumers in the world, only the Finns neck more of the stuff), warming and steadying . I thought it would be an ideal hangover breakfast, like an edible hug. The others, although tasty, were just wrong at half nine in the morning and left me feeling a little sluggish while my poor digestive system struggled to deal with the cream.
I analysed this breakfast in conjunction with my theory. What did this tell me about the country I was in? Swedes are greedy, have a sweet tooth, aren’t particularly health conscious and most probably skirting a fine line between obesity and morbid obesity. Something was clearly amiss because not one of these conclusions appeared to be true.
I relayed this story to my Swedish mother. ‘Why on earth did you have cake for breakfast?’ she said.
‘Because that’s what they do over there. Isn’t it?’ I replied meekly
‘No, what gave you that idea? If people have cake at all, they wait until about three o’clock. Maybe late morning on a Sunday. And even then it is usually retired women who only do it as an excuse to gossip. Breakfast is usually yoghurt with cereal and fruit.’
This explained a lot. My disappointment at being wrong was offset by my delight that my theory still held water. And that we’d got to eat cake for breakfast, something I recommend everyone try at least once.
There are no ugly people in Sweden. Nobody is overweight and no-one is badly dressed. Swedes seem to exude an understated grace and style with an effortless and genteel humility not present in cities that are equally modish. Rome immediately springs to mind, which somehow manages to offset its intrinsic panache with a self-congratulatory air. In the formal side of the city, the men all look as if they have been dressed by Ralph Lauren with narrow cut suits and perfectly folded pocket squares. Clean cuts and jutting jaw lines make way for quirky plastic sunglasses and leggings in Södermalm, the beating Boho heart of the city just south of the old town. I imagine it is what the inside of Agyness Deyn’s head looks like – it really is that cool.
In between, there is a beautiful clean city with an abnormally low crime rate, few homeless (official figures estimate that there are about two but I managed to count at least six) and a bracing freshness from the clean sea on which the Stockholm archipelago sits. To give you an idea of just how clean this water is, anyone can pitch up with their fishing rod – no licence required – and catch salmon and sea trout which they are free to take home and eat. There are areas of peaceful greenery (over 2/3 of the city is greenbelt and there are a massive 38 parks) where Stockholmites take a lunchtime respite from the buzz of the workplace, there are over 100 museums and art galleries and countless bars. Restaurants serve food from all the far flung corners of the world, hardly surprising considering that the Swedish culinary heritage is somewhat limited, delicious but limited, thanks to the harsh long winters and the inability of the frozen land to yield substantial crops for a vast proportion of the year. It is a liberal, easy-going city where recent immigrants seem to exist happily alongside the Nordic residents.
Can any city be so absolutely utopian? Of course not. All this glorious perfection comes at a price. A painfully, almost prohibitively expensive price. Everything is about 25 per cent more expensive than we would perhaps be used to. It’s like the entire country is a branch of Waitrose. Every time you are presented with a bill there is a frisson of surprise, a thought they may have got it wrong then a realisation of where you actually are resulting in a shrugging of the shoulders and peeling off another wodge of bank notes from a rapidly decreasing stack. But with such effortlessly beautiful people around you begin not to care and almost feel obliged to pay over the odds to compensate for your own inadequacy: ‘sorry for sullying your country, have some more krona.’ Don’t get me wrong, the Swedes are friendly and welcoming but being surrounded by so much blonde hair and well-fitting clothes is certain to bring on a slight self-consciousness in anyone. And I’m even half Swedish so I dread to think how the average Iowan or Japanese tourist must feel.
There will be more of the food later – I think it is important to contextualise and create a sense of mise-en-place before launching headfirst into herring and knäckerbröd, so this is little more than a gentle introduction and brief summary of our first meal in this Hythlodayian paradise. We had hot dogs. In fact we had four hot dogs. The first was good (a kokt korv – boiled sausage) but lasted approximately four seconds so we had another of those before moving on and venturing towards the old town where we passed another street vendor selling similar wares. For reasons of comparison we chose the grilled variety this time which proved to be far superior. Just to make sure, we had another to galvanize our opinion. I should also add that we had not eaten a thing since 6am that morning and as it was fast approaching 6pm we felt justified in indulging in some vaguely gluttonous behaviour. Somehow, I think the Swedes may not have approved.
I'm Alex Rushmer: writer, chef and Masterchef 2010 finalist. Welcome to my little corner of the Web. Why not get a cup of tea, snuggle down and make yourself at home?
