Christmas dinner is always a bit of a challenge in our house. In the period before we moved to Hong Kong I would always cook a whole salmon. The first year we lived in Hong Kong, I ventured to the wet market to purchase a fish. Salmon are not widely available in Hong Kong, certainly not in the markets, so I got some other fish. I’ve still no idea what it was, but I do know we all got really ill. For the next two years I ordered the whole meal from a restaurant in Sai Kung, which arrived hot and tasted lovely, but was mostly turkey imported from the US. This year I am cooking venison purchased locally. What strikes me about this tale of food feasts is what we understand about what comprises fresh food and how that is so linked up with cultural differences.
Category Archives: Food
Habit, morals, food and social media
Image
Every year, for the past several I’ve gone to Brussels to review grants for the European Commission. It is not a habitual exercise, however as I must be invited, and this is not a certainty. I love going and look forward nervously for the invitation every spring. I gain a huge amount of satisfaction and validation from the effort. For the past several times, when I’ve gone, I meet a group of friends at a Moroccan restaurant near the Bourse. On the recent visit, at this restaurant, I learned about what is known as the Paleo diet. Roughly, on this diet you avoid pulses, grains, dairy, and sugar. It is meant to help you feel better. It does, but you have to break a few habits first. Continue reading
Urban food: Lines of opportunity into patterns of possiblity
Image
At the moment the Sheffield Food Festival is happening. Over the course of the weekend, in the town centre, there are stalls of folk selling the foods they grow, make, deliver, and cook. Given the weather has been wonderful, it makes for a very nice day out. This being England, along with purchasing your food items to take home, you can also buy a nice bit of something to eat, a drink to get a bit happy with, and find out more about urban gardening (the last of which is what this post is really about). Continue reading
(Not) a middle class point of view: Bloke’s Pasta.
Tonight, for dinner, I made a family favorite: a modified version of “Proper blokes’ sausage fusilli”. My version is an adaptation of a recipe in Jamie Oliver’s “Cook with Jamie“, which he wrote to help people “learn to cook properly and enjoy it (back cover).” I originally purchased the book (cost $16.99–though I think I might have gotten it for less at Cosco) to give to my son so he could feel confident in a kitchen. This dish is the one thing he has ventured from the book, though I have made many other things from it with good results. The book was written about the time that Jamie Oliver was beginning to try to have a food revolution in the UK, certainly before he really started talking to people who might consider themselves “ordinary folk”. As a result, the food, despite the ordinary and everyday language of the book and the best intentions of the author, is really not sympathetic to the economic needs of those “ordinary folk”. Continue reading
You must be logged in to post a comment.