From Compote to Coulis

The Value of Cooking

Being able to cook, or at least understanding the processes of cooking, not only informs you about quality and taste, but it also helps you appreciate the kind of labour involved in bringing a dish to the table.

Sometimes, we allow convenience to trump the need to slave over a cooker or an oven, or, in these times, a crockpot or slow cooker, a steamer, and an air fryer. Well, a rice cooker has now joined the appliances in my cramped kitchen. Utility meets facility, and the rest is the memory of the palatable.

Convenience Versus Craft

Supermarkets tend to offer convenience at the expense of kitchen activity; the onions come ready-chopped in a pack when I could use a mandolin and store them in a Ziplock bag in the freezer. When I could not get Agege bread in Cape Town, I began to bake my own; now that it is sold here, I simply buy it in the shops.

One time, whilst mixing the dough, one of the mixing hooks broke. It should have been an easy replacement, but by then the novelty of baking had worn off.

I can make most of what I like; it is the lack of time, patience, or will that militates against the creative process, so you reach instead for the processed food shortcuts in supermarket packs or obtain takeaways from restaurants.

Experiments with Yoghurt

For a while, I stopped buying yoghurt with fruit servings. Instead, I would get Greek yoghurt and add it to a fruit salad drizzled with honey, but I wanted something different. I made a compote of blueberries and raspberries, cooking the fruits with a little water and lemon juice, though I did not have any vanilla essence.

I liked the first result with Greek yoghurt and honey, but I left the compote too long in the fridge and it was developing a culture, so I had to throw it away. I soon made another portion, which I never used. I warmed it up in the microwave and it bubbled out of the container, filling the microwave plate with red juice. That was annoying to clean up.

From Compote to Coulis

When I went out shopping yesterday, I bought a pack of wonky raspberries and one of blueberries. Something about the chunky feel of the compote did not appeal to me, so this time, after cooking the fruits and mashing them in the pot, I decided to try something else. What about blending the compote, I thought?

Well, that changes a compote into a coulis. I did not pass the blended compote through a sieve, but I think the NutriBullet blender did a good enough job, and this time I added some Madagascan vanilla essence. I might also add a splash of brandy to give it longevity, which is what you would expect in a compote rather than a coulis.

The knowledge of cookery does not just give you the ability to follow a recipe, even though much of one's expertise comes from learning, experience, practice, and memory. The recipe, like rules, can be broken to suit your own requirements and taste, and you would be neither persecuted nor prosecuted for it. That, my friends, is the joy of knowing how to cook.

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Essential Snobbery 101: Ritzy on Piccadilly

A London Weekend

A fascinating London weekend it was, in which most of what was intended was achieved, including the benefit that being over the age of sixty offers; a third off transport fares, if you remember to show up with the bona fides for your age.

On the Piccadilly line of the London Underground, the glimpse I caught of buttons on the back of a jacket suggested an untucked, ruffian look from the front; with a tie rather than a bow tie or cravat, it was a tailcoat of undecided pretensions to putting on the Ritz.

The Ritz and Recognition

Indeed, I did alight at Green Park and exited onto Piccadilly on the side of The Ritz London, one of the swankiest hotels in the city, opened by César Ritz in May 1906.

I could never walk down Piccadilly without being acknowledged, and I was quite dressed down, standing out simply because I wore a straw hat, carried a walking cane, and had a jacket finished with an elaborate pocket square collage.

The doormen at the Ritz doffed their top hats and even muttered a greeting, which I returned.

Heading to Fortnum's

I was on my way to Fortnum & Mason, a walk that takes you past The Wolseley Piccadilly, the Caviar House, Burlington Arcade across the street beside Burlington House, the home of the learned Royal Societies too.

Fortnum's is always busy, yet a very different busy from Harrods in Knightsbridge, which I only ever entered once at someone's behest; the less said of the garish, gaudy place, the better.

Inside Fortnum's

In existence since 1707, this shop is famous for its teas and other exquisite foods. It has been picketed many times for selling foie gras, the making of which does not greatly concern me, as the taste is as different from pâté as fish roe is from beluga caviar.

I have a predilection for Earl Grey tea, and they have many blends, of which Smoky Earl Grey wins every time. It is best to have the loose tea dispensed at a counter by weight rather than buying packaged tea bags or the ready tins, which can be more than 33% dearer.

Along with some Lapsang Souchong aromatic tea and Strawberry with Fortnum's Champagne Preserve, which takes the edge off the sweetness of the jam, that was my first visit in about seven years.

Leaving Piccadilly

As I left for the station, the doorman at the Wolseley offered a greeting; not the one who always took time to compliment my dressing, but they do see enough to know the difference between being dapper and just snooty.

He had a bowler hat on, and I had to ask where he got it, as mine, bought from a gentleman's outfitters in Ipswich some thirty years ago, was looking the worse for wear.

He recommended a milliner near Liverpool Street, but that might require another visit to London.

There is a quiet, unbothered sophistication about Piccadilly; the London tour buses gather at the entrance to Green Park just as a patron of The Wolseley urges his dog to take a pee. The carefree appearance demands a dress code enforced on the serving, whilst remaining non-existent for the served.

Putting on the Ritz

A short note on the places that punctuated this walk: The Ritz London, opened in 1906, was the realisation of César Ritz, the Swiss hotelier whose name became shorthand for refined luxury. Fortnum & Mason, founded in 1707 by William Fortnum, a footman in Queen Anne's household, and Hugh Mason, his landlord, has supplied the British establishment with provisions for over three centuries.

The Wolseley, by comparison, is a relative newcomer; a former car showroom turned grand European café, it opened in 2003 and has since become a Piccadilly fixture in its own right. Burlington Arcade, opened in 1819, remains the original covered shopping promenade, still patrolled by its top-hatted Beadles. The Royal Societies along Piccadilly include the Royal Academy of Arts at Burlington House, where the learned and the artistic have gathered since the eighteenth century.

It is no accident that the Ritz lent its name to a song. When Irving Berlin wrote Puttin' on the Ritz in 1929, he was reaching across the Atlantic for the very idea César Ritz had built into a brand. The original lyric pictured "Park Avenue", with its "high hats and Arrow collars, white spats and lots of dollars", as the place to dress to impress.

The 1946 revision moved the scene to "up on Lenox Avenue", but the spirit remained the same; to put on the Ritz was to wear your best and walk as though the pavement belonged to you. 

Piccadilly, in its quieter, more unbothered way, has always done the same. Park Avenue performs its wealth; Piccadilly assumes it. The doormen still doff their top hats, the bowler hats still need replacing, and the tailcoats of undecided pretensions still ride the Underground, hoping nobody notices the buttons on the back.

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Strange queues for stranger things

A Queue for Inquiry

Everywhere you go in Manchester, there are queues. I am often tempted to ask someone in one of them what they are waiting for.

When it is for entrance to clubs or entertainment venues, you do wonder what event has attracted such interest or who is playing at the venue, but my curiosity does not go as far as learning the truth.

However, the stranger queues are those for people wanting to access a restaurant, or for when a product is launched and people queue up overnight to be the first to get into the shop. One finds oneself sneering about the need for some people to have a bit more purpose, but then, maybe that constitutes purpose.

Food Queues Are Not It

One rather peculiar queue was for a doughnut shop in the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront mall in Cape Town, Krispy Kreme, I think it was called. We surmised, Brian and I, that there was something in the doughnuts that was attracting the patrons: an elixir, a drug, a potion that suggested virility, or something of the sort.

I have nothing but suspicion and paranoia about such arrangements. If food attracts people like flies to faeces, to the point that they need to join long queues instead of going elsewhere, can there really be so many people so led by their stomachs?

Having no answer to that question, and possibly no full insight into the motivations of such people, imagine my surprise when I stepped out of my apartment block and saw a queue across the road. It extended beyond the front of two apartment blocks, all for a Japanese fluffy pancake meal.

The restaurant in question has already gone through one name change, and its opening hours were changed the other day. How I notice these things, I cannot tell, but they are there to be observed. It is not that I have been tempted to venture in for anything; it exists literally beside another Japanese restaurant that I once visited over eight years ago, though they are divided by a street.

The Queue Is Inviolable

As an Englishman, I like the orderliness of queues and detest queue-jumpers to the point of withstanding them at the risk of harm to myself, as was once the case in a Dutch venue. The principle, however, cannot be violated: you take your turn on a first-come, first-served basis.

I will queue for the bus, to enter an entertainment venue, at the airport, or to pay at the till. For the other kinds of queues, however, I have neither the patience nor the time to waste being a poster boy for indolence. All right, let’s not castigate them. They have a purpose for being there; I just happen to have more purposeful things to do.

A fair friar

Hark the hack

It amused me when a notice went out with one of those words that confused homophones with synonyms, ending up in a malapropism. Workmen had sown material that a seamstress might have sewn into fabric, causing safety issues.

That such mistakes seem to jump out of the seam of the misuse of words is something I cannot help; I see words in patterns, and if something does not fit, it is at once obvious. The workmen were not farmers; I should not be looking for seeds, whether they would have heeded this issue clearly enough not to mistake their screwdrivers for needles, is another matter.

However, this thought was sown in mock criticism of my kitchen acumen, where traditional cooking methods honed through observation and application found the ridicule of trendy experiences.

Cooked in preserve

The stove, with its reliability, an old steamer abandoned after it stopped working, a whisking hook lost in the exhaustion of kneading dough, or slow cookers aplenty abroad, the expansion of one's culinary repertoire had barely suffered the onslaught of modernity, and the food was still good to taste after all the striving.

Having pooh-poohed the advent of the air fryer, the needling that followed, compounded over days, led to relent. There was no compliment on offer without having gained another to complement the electrical goods.

Chopped in searing

We trundled round the front of the building, maybe quite a stretch for peace to reign and a box too large to bear even evoked visions of Africa; women with babies on their backs and basins on their heads, bare feet making steps on concrete or macadamised pavements, we found a convenience that could be out of place in Manchester, if you cared that much.

The operator took the flesh and bone and placed them in the apparatus. A few touches on the top, chops, time, and start, were for 15 minutes what sent the trusty oven to Coventry. Though, for roughage, it was the steamer in full regalia, a role no other could play better, we were once damned with praise, an acquisition that might be exercised in culinary achievement yet unrealised.

The fair friar indeed had successfully proselytised and won a convert, that her sacrifice, which felt like a punishment, was soon redeemed in the serving of a meal.

Cape Town: Is it time to lean on the fat?

How addiction hobbles our chances

Walking through a cancer hospital to the department where you are receiving treatment reveals a world of great suffering, the unerring will of humanity to survive, the purveyance of hope for which the only currency of purchase is faith that could waver depending on prognosis, pain, confidence, or despair; it is a teaching and humbling moment.

How I have wanted to walk out of that hospital and snatch a cigarette from the lips of a young smoker totally oblivious of what cancer does to the body and how the odds one faces with cancer depends of what it is, where is has been found, if it has spread and if there is a body of knowledge and expertise available to give you a chance to survive.

Then, I do not have to walk far to realise how much of a hold tobacco and nicotine has over people. As at a designated area near the entrance of the same cancer hospital, you will find patients undergoing cancer treatment huddling in corners for another drag of the poison already killing them. They give themselves no chances at all, and if they come through, good for them.

This is obese in plain sight

In Cape Town, there was something we could not unsee, when we stay in Cape Town, we try as much as possible to walk everywhere and everything is within walking distance. Even on days I did not seem to have the strength or the capacity, I made my daily 10,000 steps.

Walking alongside us or coming into view from our vantage point of observation was someone carrying just that extra extra bit of weight on their hips, their bellies, and usually both, then arms and thighs; sights to make you catch your breath.

What you cannot deny is there is an obesity problem which should be registering somewhere in the South African healthcare system. There cannot be any aesthetic value to wanting to tip the scales until the springs broke.

How you address this obvious health crisis will no doubt require tact, wisdom, and some innovative policy initiatives, it should not be ignored. You could see people who could barely move, some were panting every few steps and I cannot put a statistical value on those who might have already acquired diseases of the heart, the kidneys, the pancreas, the liver, and other related serious health problems because of this excess weight.

The fast in fast-food is weight

One other observation we made when we were in Muizenberg, some 25 kilometres from Cape Town, with long stretches of beautiful beaches that more deserted than walked, was the number of delivery bikes that attended our estate at all hours, as if most did no home cooking, but relied on fast food. We do most of our cooking, from quick preparations like stir fries to slow cooking activities, it is about the willingness and timing.

In town, the fast-food outlets are full, taking orders for tables and takeaways for patrons and the ubiquitous delivery bikers, God forfend we dignify those places with the moniker of restaurant. They offer you something to masticate and swallow, but none of it is of value to your body and if you do not work it off, it sits somewhere in your body and accumulates in fatty tissue.

Maybe the new miracle weight-loss drugs might bring respite to the South Africans we saw and give them a fighting chance, but it also must include some desire and the will to do something about it.

While everyone is free to celebrate their bodies and love who they are, while not being shamed for what they have become, we need to square the circle between feeling good and being healthy. That will not come by lying to be nice.

Photons on the Prostate - I

Change and difference

I guess this does not really fit the Men’s things blogs so I have decided to write about my radiotherapy treatment as Photons on the Prostate, basically on how I feel and other experiences. The Image Guided Radiotherapy treatment I am having uses a photon beam rather than a proton beam. [City Of Hope: What’s the difference? Photon and proton radiation therapy]

We are advised not to change our eating habits, but there is no way to prevent changing something when met with the prospect of treating cancer. You adjust or the situation forces them on you.

The first thing I had to sort out to prevent bowel gas was in the drinks, and I miss the fizzy comfort of bubbles dissipating on my tongue as sparkling water creates a sating sensation even before you have swallowed. Still water is so bland and ordinary, it is how things are.

Dishwater tastes so good

Returning from the hospital yesterday, I stopped at my local supermarket to get decaffeinated tea and coffee, how this effluent of dishwater was ever palatable escapes me. The coffee having lost its potency with the absence of caffeine is perceptible to taste, at least to mine.

Two cups of coffee later, I can understand this is being done for a cause as there is no way I could have been persuaded of the benefit of it, I shall persevere. What I have not dared to try yet is the decaffeinated Earl Grey tea, I guess I’ll just pinch my nose when I drink it.

Getting tired of food

In terms of side effects, whilst it is early days, I do not seem to have much of an appetite for food, I have already been skipping meals long before I started treatment, an anticipatory response that I need to counter. Every desire to cook deserts me too.

There is some tiredness and early morning insomnia, whether related or unexplained, I cannot tell. A feeling of bowel discomfort with some urgency that is not presenting effect, I can only wonder what that is.

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - II

Blog - Men's things

Preso dall'angoscia del panino

Sunk into panini despair

I saw her again this afternoon and my heart sank, her colleague was preoccupied with her mobile phone, and she was left to take my order. How hard can it be to make a panini?

A simple toasted Italian sandwich with fillings inside and keeping that together enough to cut it in half and wrap it up. So, for the third time, I was placing a basic order.

Cajun chicken, chorizo, jalapenos, and cheese in a ciabatta, cut through, lengthwise. I had the lowest expectations considering this could have the professional quality in the preparation and presentation she had twice failed to achieve.

Her accent belied my reticence to comment on what she was doing, I just felt it would all be lost in translation, and I did not want to make her feel bad even if I half hated the almost rubbish of their stated menu I was presented with.

A dimmer on panini

Usually, the first part of putting in the fillings survives any apparent mishap, but by the time she gets it into the tray to put in the oven, a slow train crash happens before your eyes. The interregnum between placement in the oven and retrieval at the beeps is a time to draw a deep breath hoping that clumsy would not overcome practice.

Fat chance! At retrieval, this basic heated thing that should have been held together by melted cheese is already falling apart as she lifts it to place on wrapping paper, I am surprised she is not already picking some of the chicken and chorizo off the floor.

A second stage of reparative preparation begins and the whole wrapping ends up like the ciabatta was running away from its fillings but forced to coexist. Utterly unbelievable!

You better believe it when I get my order which is everything it says it is on the board but nothing it appears to be. I am totally exasperated but find a way to get the thing into my mouth without ending up with bits in my hair or on my back.

The trials of panini

That was my thinking at lunchtime, and clumsy did happen as she could not find the tongs to put the tray in the oven and never deigned to ask her colleague where they might be. A dishcloth stood in for the tongs for placement and for retrieval. I thought it was totally wrecked that seagulls would come from the coast just for the chicken in my panini going for free like Saint Francis of Assisi loved to feed the birds of the field.

I had no hopes for a reprieve, I was stuck with what I was given and a bag of crisps for comfort until I opened the wrapping and to my surprise, I had a panini all together like it should have been presented and made by any of her other colleagues. Whether that was a fluke, I cannot tell, but if the panini trials are over, the tribulation of clumsy looms for the next time I venture down there.

The title translates to ‘Caught up in the anguish of the sandwich’ and that’s just Italian for starters.

Foods and fruits to the belly

Eating too much

Get those spices and aromas wafting through the apartment block, the kind of entreaty you should expect from someone who enjoys your cooking when you do it right.

However, on the subject of food and eating, I was just braising some beef cuts and expressing the fear that once done, half of it would have been eaten before it landed in the next stage of cooking for a stew or something else.

Then, I remembered how on Twitter a friend talked of his wife getting a dozen succulent meat pies this morning and he has gone through 6 of them already, no one is any wiser of the fact until she returns and I can only wonder how the conversation would go.

Mangoes on the yellow

Brian had his aunt visiting with a big basket of fruits, his fear was wondering what would be the result of eating, sorry quaffing down 5 mangoes. I was waiting on this end to find out what lessons were learnt from this sudden penchant for gluttony. Unfortunately for me, he seems to think he should have more mangoes when in fact the colour of his effluent as he described it, might be from mangoes than vitamins.

Anyway, the beef is cooked, and I have had two or three bites, the battle of resistance begins if I must count myself more disciplined than the mango-eating meat pie-quaffing men. I know I can, I’m sure I would.

Food in choice from supply

A rueful and grateful contemplation

There is always someone else whose situation and circumstances are worse than ours and, in the same spirit, one should always be grateful for the goodness and blessing that surround us even if issues tend to cloud our minds as to the relativeness of where we might be.

It is important that in recognising how fortunate one is, we do not go seeking to plumb the depths of destitution and adversity to ascertain the extent to which one should be grateful for being better off. Every lack needs supply, whether great or small.

Exiting the place, we all seem not to go straight home but stand somewhere to contemplate what we have just been through, a new low in a longer story that for many would be impossible to relate. A sense of embarrassment overcome by the realisation of need, a sense of shame bludgeoned through with a daring for survival, a sense of failure reducing you to the generosity and mercy of others.

Yea, I can recount many such situations that have become the broader tapestry of the joy of living, for without life, how can anyone experience the highs, the lows, the changes and consequently the opportunity to speak or write of such in your own words?

Parsnips for yams

On arrival, there was a registration before a helper took a list off me to ascertain what I might or might not need, through stifled giggles, we navigated an alien world into which we for the circumstances need to attempt to fit in for the sake of sustenance and keeping some of that hope alive.

She immediately recognised my heritage and she volunteered that her husband is Nigerian who likes his food fresh before saying one of those many issues with Nigerian men. It got to a point where I simply asked her to filter her list through the palate needs of anyone from West Africa and she immediately said, none of what we were viewing would work. However, we adapt.

Only what you need

The things that could work for me, I chose and left out those that just had no bearing on anything I would consider even in extremis. A box of sandwiches seeking those who hunger, the choices from simple to untenable, like horseradish with beef, horseradish is more than an acquired taste, you need to have been introduced to it under extreme torture for a long period of time to find your Stockholm’s Syndrome comfort in tasting it at will.

We were there because there was not enough and there were people and organisations willing and generous to give to a community effort of helping those who have a season and hopefully a short one of famine in the land. My sister will say to me, food is one essential commodity that should never be lacking in the home. Alas! We have not fallen to the temptation of turning stones to bread.

The food bank is both a humbling and an appreciation of the humanity that still throws an arm of love, consideration, and generosity around others, regardless of who they are.

Home homing homely and homily

An offering to see

The home front presents a quiet but obvious din from the traffic on the street, a feeling of being present without any participation in the tumult that suggests living in a city centre. It is the quality of being a hermit that one enjoys as the world comes to visit on different screens, large and small.

First, my peace is interrupted by my intercom system, a postman, well, a lady at door seeking ingress to the apartment block to deliver letters and I receive an unexpected parcel, an incendiary device, I thought aloud; it was a peace gift with apologies that leaves me a bit flummoxed.

Meanwhile, almost six months after returning to my home which was hardly recognisable because of how it had been rearranged by my house-sitter, I soon find things that have been out of place; the top of a screwdriver set, the lost hand of a pair of winter gloves, and somehow, I am beginning to feel I am back in my own home, knowing where things I have looked for by turning the house upside-down now are.

Boris to feline skies

Back to my study programme of keeping up to date with technology, a long slug of concentration given breaks of expert-level Sudoku, re-certifications I have to consider by July, something of a reprieve but to put on the back burner for now. As other studies for certifications continues apace.

Then around 9 years every time I step out of the back door to go to the railway station for work, there was a stray black cat that peeked at me, but never came close even if I talked and cooed to it. The cat soon was named Boris and he became the neighbour’s pet. Always, reticent, shy, and swift, he would dart away through the door to avoid me. We had a distant acquaintance and there were times I would have had to feed him when my neighbours were away.

A knock on my door this afternoon brought some unexpected and sad news, Boris had to be put to sleep yesterday. When he was taken to the veterinarian, his vital signals were at a point where he was quite poorly and not much could be done for him. It is one of those moments when you wished your pet could have told you long before, that they were unwell. Boris has gone to feline heaven; he will be sorely missed. Alas! No homily for the puss.

Back to the thoughts that occupy the mind after a teriyaki beef stir fry and that peckish feeling for a bowl of cereal, a siesta, or an early nap. You give the day its due and I am thankful for how in my quietude there is event and eventuality.

Essential Snobbery 101: Sir Hans Sloane disturbed

What we truly endured

Bluebird took me down memory lane, for what I remember is it was the model of one of the official cars granted to my father in his accountancy prime of the 1980s in the Nissan range, though now, I realise it was a broader model dating from 1995, the one in our fleet of vehicles being the U11 series. This was the thought on my mind as we sought the entrance to the King’s Road restaurant in Chelsea for brunch.

The pictures of food we saw on Google Maps after we realised the Chelsea Farmer’s Market had been gentrified to the standard of unrecognisable and inaccessible, this became our fallback. The young lady, nails all done in a shade of pink that would appear as just pink to men, looked like she had taken on a part-time role as a waiter, untrained, nervous, and unsure, like she was just earning a crust she did not need to be able to go out to party with her girlfriends.

All the appearances of sophistication and shabby chic were soon dispelled, the service was unsupervised and unprofessional, the food pitiable in presentation, I had to scrape the dollops of hollandaise sauce off the eggs royale and still had enough to paint the walls, if I was so inclined. We sat through it with regret and left in haste, for one should resist posting a review on TripAdvisor, for a couple of stars would be overly generous to the lasting impression. Like a Jehovah’s Witness proselytiser, I did half shake the dust off my feet as I left.

Everything off in this place

Then, for the first time ever, I set foot in Harrods and nothing, absolutely nothing, endeared me to the place, and it is why I had never been there before when Fortnum & Mason had proved its standing.

Stopping over at a Harvey Nichols café for a cream tea, two ladies refused to be seated beside us. I won’t want them for company either, as they looked like Madeline Ashton and Helen Sharp, the two protagonists of Death Becomes Her, so artificially enhanced to occlude any semblance of natural beauty that once blessed their visages. Perchance there was a child in that restaurant, it would have squealed in terror at sighting them.

In a fashion for the history

Another patron was so grandly attired in exorbitant designer label apparel that altogether failed the basics of coordination, and it did nothing to enhance her; she was more a clothes ass than a clothes horse. All that money and no fashion sense. Yet, I am informed that having the same designer label in 3 textures and 4 layers of clothes is termed Ghetto Fabulous; what do I know about fashion?

This area of Chelsea and Knightsbridge with its pomposity of class, old and new money, and antiquated aristocracy long past aspiration or adulation, that radiates from Sloane Square was named for Sir Hans Sloane, an Irish physicist from the 18^th Century, who was buried at the Chelsea Old Church and out of whose bequest formed the foundations of the British Museum, the British Library, and the Natural History Museum in London. The unsavoury aspects of his provenance and activities are not accounted for in this piece.

Coronavirus streets to lively markets - XLVIII

Local markets alive

It is interesting to be distracted by observation to notice things that are quite serendipitous especially after review. My trip to London was mainly to see friends who reside in boroughs as far apart as you could imagine for someone from out of town, for I was in Richmond on Saturday and then Haringey on Sunday.

On my return from Twickenham, I met a lady with lots of leftover bread at the station who manned the Celtic Bakers store at the Twickenham Farmers' Market and then on Sunday, after being taken for a circulatory ride by a black cab, we were out to the City & Country Farmers’ Market at the Alexandra Palace Campsbourne School.

Just smile for a while

The wide array of foods and goods locally sourced and fresh without the dead hand of over-processing by the food industrial complex makes one think it might be prudent to seek out a farmers’ market in my locality.

The store holders had different temperaments, one could not be bothered to notice us, another was an effervescent conversationalist, please to see us, willing to oblige and present to advice and tips. You can imagine how much time we spent with him before having to visit another stall just because he had run out of something we wanted.

Noticed fame and noted infamy

There, just above the stall was a blue plaque honouring Emma Clarke, reputed to be the first black female footballer who played in the first public national match for women on Nightingale Lane in 1895. Then to think that for most of the first part of the 20^th Century the Football Association took a conservative stance against women’s football.

Blue plaque to Emma Clarke - pioneering black British female footballer.

Round to the other side of the market venue on the school premises, we stocked up on vegetables and me, a bottle of ginger and banana kombucha made by a man who seemed to have more than a passing interest in me, I guess we just notice each other by some invisible radar.

Not that Yoruba

Moving on, there was a stall with language books, I picked the one for Yoruba off the shelf which was interesting in that they there teaching Yoruba pronunciations by using English phonics which I thought strange because the sounds would at best be approximations and when spoken would sound quite foreign too.

However, one critical element was missing, the diacritical marks necessary to show that Yoruba is a tonal language such that words that look like homonyms without the diacritical marks are not homophones because of the intonations and are essentially heteronyms.

Oiled his wallet nicely

We withstood a whole exegesis on walnut and cobnut (hazelnut) cold-pressed oils, if we could remember anything of what we were supposed to learn, the pitch was persuasive enough and he made a really good sale. The walnut oil will suit my steam cooking as it best used on food that does not take direct heat.

I was last at this market probably 3 years ago, and it was a wonderfully pleasant sunny day for fourth week of October.

Let's treat the cancer and laugh

Notes to the times

I recall that when I was in the hospital, I was writing blogs about my situation, it gave the impression to some readers, especially my brother that I was not that so near death if I was lucid enough to be tapping away on a keyboard. He had no idea.

Even though I was in my sixth year of blogging, the records of those contemporaneous are the best journal of my life at that time and it becomes the kind of advice I would anyone who starts blogging. Always journal the before, the during, the after, the reflection, the analysis, the memories, the rehash, if you must and any other thing that celebrates your story.

Considering the pain, discomfort, and situation I was in, I find myself reading the blogs 12 years on and extracting some of the apparently humorous lines that made light of a grave situation. I say, no matter what you are going through, acquire a sense of humour if you do not have one and use it as much as you can, a little mirth can be extraordinarily good medicine, it saves your dignity and enhances your gracefulness too.

Excerpts to amuse

When I was in pain and it appeared, nothing was being done about it. “I was literally begging, give me morphine, I beg of you – I am in a hospital for crying out loud, I am not here to find out how much I can endure pain and seek my pain threshold as a thing of achievement – I am not that mad.” {In hospital to kill the pain]

Could there be a better way to talk of urination? “And so I have been manufacturing bottles of Premier Cru Urea 2009 by the gallon, the colour is golden, there doesn’t appear to be impurities, I would not hazard the ideas of bouquet, palate, odour and what not.” [Golden red and painless]

It was pain, pain and more pain. “No, I did not die and go to heaven; I lived through the pain to tell another story of an event in my hospital life.” [The looming abyss of a deep biopsy]

There can be no praise of hospital food, none at all. “Don't worry, I am sick-bag trained, no mess.” [Seeing hospital meals again]

If I had a book of Psalms to write, this might be one of them. “For weeks I had sacrificed my peace at the altar of pain, bringing offerings of agony and lamentations of the unbearable as I worshipped as a subject of things going wrong and circumstances becoming dire.” [Getting off the pain train]

When you move from manual to automatic, there probably is no instruction for that transition. “One observation, the hospital bed controls do not lend themselves to geriatric finesse, I have observed both fumble in frustration with the buttons, the more senior expelling expletives as if he was out at sea. Strewth!” [Crutches on the drip]

In utter exasperation, I wrote. “Can you believe it? I can hear him from here. Save our ears. Save our sanity or as restraint overcomes whoever decides the cat of throttling him – save that man from himself.” [A relocation from the cacophony]

Something called chemotherapy is neither a barber nor a dentist. “The chemotherapy is supposed to be very tolerable though, what I am told and what I read are in two different spheres. I am not to expect hair loss, as if I had much anyway and my nails will not be growing off my teeth.” [Scuttling cancer with chemo]

Content is everything, especially when vomiting, yet, sometimes, you just have to go through the motions. “So, four times overnight I regurgitated the exclusive hospital gourmet till my body was conditioned into realising you could only throw up content, the channelling remains in the body. It was horrible.” Then on the gentler matter of the thing that might have brought misery after much pleasure. “The pain that ran to my feet when I stepped off the bed for a shower was excruciating, I threw away all inhibitions and let the nurse bath me, she was gentle on my crown jewels.” [Nausea abates by suppository]

I probably lost some of my humour in the next few blogs, not that I had given up, I was in good spirits, the food and seeing it all again but not from the plate in which it was served was getting to me. One last stab at this cuisine. “I will NOT abide this food any longer, no not any longer.” [I'm alive after my autopsy]

One last act on the catwalk before I leave tomorrow. “I have also changed to using the designer hospital tunics which seem to have no front or back, I suppose you wear the buttons to the back for ladies and to the front for gentlemen.” [One more night]

RSS Mischief IV - Post the pots

Double or starve

One morning, the vice principal came into the dining hall during breakfast when we had a bread bun and fish stew served in an aluminium dish. He asked one of the boys if the food was enough and the boy replied, “No sir.” That interaction led to the doubling of our bread rations, from then on we had two bread buns rather than one.

Our dinner ladies or cooks were of a different animal species, almost too well fed that they could have been a crossbreed of homo sapiens and hippopotamuses for the way the folds of skin at the elbows looked like armour cladding that you could not once suggest they were fat even as they were built like stout brick houses, their legs might have suggested elephantiasis, though none looked ill, and we were scrawny and skinny like Jack Sprat.

Weevils and vitamins

When we had beans that nearly passed for diarrheal effluent fully augmented with weevils, that became more of the protein content than the beans, you closed your eyes as you spooned in the sustenance, maybe mixed in with garri grains. That we never fell violently ill at what we were served was probably testament to a constitution borne of being shipped off to hostelry by our loving parents to toughen us up.

The dinner ladies had a side hustle of snacks and sweets that they sold to us, an escape from the witch’s gruel and puddings of three-square meals that would have made Oliver Twist think he was at the Ritz.

Gremlins of the dark

One night after everything had quietened down at the dining hall and the kitchen, I was invited by a classmate, and we found ourselves in the confines of the kitchen pilfering goods we should never have had access to. The doors and windows were bolted shut and yet we got in with ease.

The pots were placed over holes, there were heated from recesses for firewood on the outside and so whilst the food was cooked, the smoke was always outside. At the end of the day, the firewood was removed, and the recesses cleaned of ashes and soot for the next day.

Post the pots

We, the gremlins of the night could go into the recesses and lift the lighter pots and that was how we entered the kitchen, through the fireplace. How so criminal and soon the novelty of that enterprise wore out, for the pang of conscience and probably the realisation that too many gremlins were scavenging around the kitchen. Yet, I doubt Miss Marple would have determined how things were lost.

The thrill and the adrenalin rush of this naughtiness would have faded at the stroke of the first landing of the birch on one’s backside, you never wanted to suffer the humiliation of a morning assembly punishment and thankfully where one came a cropper, one was spared the lasting indignity of such.

Blog - RSS Mischief I - Yikes! A snake

Blog - RSS Mischief II - The fundamentals of fluid mechanics

Blog - RSS Mischief III - Swimming like crabs

Coronavirus streets in London - XXXIX

Peckham of the ethnics

Out from my hotel in the afternoon to meet my best friend at Highbury and Islington Station having realised it is the best place to get a train to Peckham Rye opened a century before I was born, we were caught in the confusion of two similarly named stations the first Dalston Kingsland was well known but Dalston Junction, where we had to change trains, was less so but got our changeover right and were soon at our destination.

Peckham is unwieldly schizophrenic, with ungentrified parts still ethnic and unreconstructed, stuck in the past of dreary and need, sounds and sights as familiar as parts of Africa you might want to avoid, some things here have never changed, you wonder, if ever.

Not a banger of taste

The restaurant I was taken to had a good menu sleeve with a menu that could do be helped with a professional touch, on the many choices on offer, we settled for the Banga soup and pounded yam. As I had never tried Banga soup before, I was in for adventure. It arrived in a clay pot, bubbling hot and ready to scald my fingers then sear my oesophagus, if we got that far.

I cannot say Banga soup was as exciting as it was made out to be, with fish, cow foot, tripe, and beef, the pleasure was lost to temperature control, and it is unlikely another attempt would be made of the fare. I was not disappointed, just not persuaded.

I used to live here

When we were done, the changeable weather could have stopped us from walking, but we started on Peckham High Street and a course of memories 30 years old came into mind. The National Westminster Bank where I opened an account, and I can still remember the Sort Code and Account Number from when the account was closed on my emigration to the Netherlands 21 years ago.

The North Peckham Estate lost to the modern development of pastel brick buildings, the Sumner Road access to Peckham Road is now a park and pedestrianised, I lived an estate to the right, it is all consigned to the history of the long forgotten, then abuse I received in my stretch jeans, I was called a ‘Bloody African’ too many times to count.

Stones on the sides

It rained a bit and soon, we were at Camberwell, the busy junction with a lot of traffic, we crossed the road towards the Oval and passed by the St Mark’s Church, we had to go into the churchyard to read the plaques on the walls. A historic place that was once notorious for being public gallows, the Wesleys, John and Charles did preach their Methodism nearby and the church that stands today was built by subscription. The father of Field Marshall Montgomery of Alamein was a vicar at the church too. [Wikipedia: St Mark’s Church, Kennington]

Old gravestones of what would have been the church cemetery are lined up against the walls of the church courtyard, this was quite all too different except in the ghosts that might have lingered since their markers were moved.

Memories of decades ago

At Archbishop Tenison’s School, named for a one-time Archbishop of Canterbury was the opportunity for a photograph that I sent to an ex, he was a teacher there over two decades ago. The Oval the cricket ground and home of Surrey County Club once sponsored by Foster’s and now by Kia.

The Royal Vauxhall Tavern is a Grade II listed building protected from developers and the oldest gay entertainment venue in South London where on Sundays in the early 90s we came to see drag acts like Lily Savage before she had a television career and dropped that persona for being himself as Paul O’Grady. When the Sunday pub hours kicked in, we decamped to another bar that served Chilli Con Carne, on which site now stands the new American embassy.

Out to Vauxhall, we veered on to the river walk by the River Thames all the way past Lambeth Bridge and Westminster Bridge with The National COVID Memorial Wall on the wall of St Thomas’ Hospital to the London Eye before parting ways at Waterloo Station. Another discovery of London that can only be experienced by walking.

Identities in birth and travel

Testing the areas

Reflecting on times we were in Cape Town; we did not get around as much apart from spending just over a week of the last part of our stay at Mouille Point not too far from the Green Point Lighthouse after four weeks in the Oranjezicht area near the Parliament precinct and Company Gardens.

On the evening of our move, we found a restaurant where we settled into steaks rather than seafood along with my first helping of Malva pudding. Whilst I usually have my steak medium rare, mine was closer to rare than medium, the fat became a bit off-putting that it became a discarded script of Murder, She Wrote unworthy of any edition to be progressed for auditioning.

We returned to the restaurant on our last night together before my departure but could not sit outside as we did before because of the wet weather. Wary of sitting inside, we found a table at the highest of cascading levels to the very back of the restaurant, not that crowded, though with a couple at a table already tucking into their meal.

Stake upon steak

As we were putting in our order, we could not help but notice the frenetic activity at the other table, the man who we soon learnt was the husband was constantly genuflecting for the waiter modifying their order and trying to engage in conversation with the staff as a regular customer who might have been slighted for not being recognised. He ordered a second steak even though for his appetite he seemed to have found a means of not allowing it show on his physique, and that is commendable.

Soon, he engaged us in conversation telling us that the restaurant had the best steaks as it transpired that they were regular visitors to Cape Town and this restaurant did take their fancy any time they were in town. A flutter of introductions ensued, he was Indian born in Nigeria with no religious pretensions to vegetarianism, his family having lived there for at least two generations, he knew the Chellarams, his wife was Scottish born in Hong Kong, Brian is Zimbabwean with distant Scottish and English ancestry and I am English born of Nigerian parentage.

Partners in blush

It made for interesting conversation even as they were UK-based but had escaped the lockdown to Cape Town via Addis Ababa only to find it uninteresting because of the restrictions and the alcohol ban that they were going to jet off to Dubai and stay there until things eased off. I did not get his line of business, but he appeared to have made a fortune selling his company in the UK having learnt he was not suited for the cutthroat business environment in Nigeria that his father prospered in.

We were soon through our two courses and were ready to leave, his sometimes-inquisitive talkativeness had a Nigerian influence that at times made me uncomfortable as he insisted on knowing what kind of partners were. Whether he missed the passing comment that we were too like his, partners in bed, I could not tell. We parted friendly and jocularly enough and surprisingly loose-tongued without the aid of alcohol. Even with strangers, encounters can be not so strange at all.

Perfecting my lessons in kitchen banditry

Ila Alasepo

A mouthful of chicken

Imitation they say is the best form of flattering and there is one act I have learnt too well from my dad and uncle. When I was out at the ethnic shop last Tuesday, I bought a kilo of chicken gizzards and another kilo of chicken drumsticks, this apart from the whole leg of lamb that I asked to be cut with the meat chainsaw.

I cooked the chicken first and then grilled it in the hope that it would be used in a simple tomato stew. The gizzard was supposed to be destined for a mix of gizzard and diced plantains in a chilli sauce. The grilling had considerably dried the chicken that it could keep for a while before use.

As I took the chicken out of the oven to make way for the grilling of the cooked lamb pieces, I left the drumsticks and gizzards in a bowl by the stove taking a bite or two of the gizzards, then the drumsticks and watched the contents depleting at the inspiration of my dad and uncle who usually stole into the kitchen at home as if to offer some help and escape with a piece of meat as a basic snack.

Cravings for something spicy

Obviously, one should not be surprised that a few rodent visits to the kitchen can change the quantity of ingredients laid aside for another purpose. Then yesterday, I decided I wanted to make Ila Alasepo, a variation on stewed okra, but not as fancifully decadent as the recipes. I had bought the okra as frozen, cut rings of fresh okra, bagged and frozen, it was the first time I would use it. Then out of the freezer, I took out 4 distinct kinds of chilli to be defrosted along with spicily hot scotch bonnets, all of which I blended this morning.

I had a bag of dried catfish cuts that I steamed for an hour, then prepared the pepper stew separately from the okra, before pouring everything in one pot and simmering until ready. By the time I knew things were done, all the chicken drumsticks and gizzards had undergone no further transformation apart from the mastication of my mandibles.

Then I wondered how this could be, the only excuse I had was I learnt to do this from my mentoring dad and uncle. I guess next time, I will just buy 2 kilos each just to forestall a mishap like this again.

Ingredients

Frozen okra fingers as chopped rings

Palm oil

Green bell pepper

Scotch bonnet chillies (use according to preference)

Jalapeños

Long green chilli peppers

Diced onions

Salt to taste

Lamb stock from previously cooked lamb

Lamb pieces

Dried catfish cutlets steamed before use

Kaun – potash for the initial preparation of the okra

Seasoning with herbs, I don’t use seasoning cubes in my cooking.

You can follow the recipe with these limited ingredients or extend them as needed.

Ikoyi London - Bring a full wallet to an amazing experience

Decisions in flux

We had planned to meet on Monday evening without any clear plans as I decided to spend stay over in London. We have been friends on Twitter for years and she was coming to Europe for a number of necessary #MeToo events.

I was unsure of what we would do, but when she said we should meet to have more than a drink but to get to know each other, this, I thought, could only be done over a meal. As I do not live in London, I could not suggest a favourite place, but Pitanga was on my mind, however, they open at inconvenient hours closing at 5:00 PM every day except for Friday and Saturday when they are open until 11:00 PM. They are closed on Mondays.

I floated a few other alternatives whilst seeking ideas, Ikoyi London, by interest and by reputation came to the fore and we decided on that.

Impressing impressions

I was greeted at Ikoyi London by a waiter ready to take my coat and my hat, I was then given a check-in ticket, a card, the 8 of clubs. Any restaurant that without prompting defrocks you and knows what to do with your hat has had staff see the four walls of a finishing school.

Making my way to our table by the window where my friend was already seated, embraced with kisses on the cheeks before contemplating what was to come before us. Starting with drinks, we took the non-alcoholic cocktail of Ikoyi Chapman – a concoction of hibiscus, guava and sour passionfruit, it was a tasty shade of pink that lasted through the seating.

Ikoyi London only serves a fixed tasting menu of 7 courses for dinner, which made it difficult to decide on the wine, so, we took on the wine pairing that came in from the third course. Ikoyi London does not follow the good rule of the skirt that any seamstress has learnt from the very first day, that it should be long enough to cover the detail and short enough to keep the interest. The courses were small enough to keep the interest but hardly big enough to sate the hunger – that is for another conversation.

You don’t say

The first course arrived which in terms was a new look on plantain and stew, my two Nigerian grandmothers of blessed memory would have been spinning in their states of repose, but this is an exercise in open-mindedness, where familiarity is dispensed for the whimsical. Authenticity gives way to the uniquely original and surprise. It went down a treat.

[Plantain and a scotch bonnet dip]

Little did I know that I had entered a West African version of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, I was living the lines of Ikoyi London saying to me, “Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination.” The course had more plate like a tree trying to be a forest, a burnt pepper and a sprinkling of dust with something related to cassava in the narrative. This was a long way from Eba and stew, the ship of our common reality had sailed.

Within 4 visits from crockery to buccal cavity, we were done.

[Burnt pepper and cassava]

Exciting the taste buds

Mackerel is not necessarily fish you will find on the plate of the bourgeoisie, but we were told the next serving was caught today, strips of seemingly poached mackerel on a bed of banga fish paste with vegetables. It was savoury and comfortingly feeling like home cooking. The paired wine only seemed to assume any character in taste after we had tasted the dish. Though I would be honest, all the pairings were lifeless at first taste and not entirely exciting afterwards.

[Mackerel and a banga sauce]

By the fourth course, we had pumpkin and that was a revelation. I had to ask, could you really do this to pumpkin? By now, we were sold on this visit, it was one to write home about.

[Pumpkin]

Jollof the duck

The fifth course was, in fact, two courses, the duck arrived first and then a steaming bowl of smoked jollof rice, both of which were a titillation of a different kind, filling with excitement and a screaming desire for more. Oliver Twist would have died for the lust of the more that cried for.

[Duck and malt bread]

[Smoked Jollof Rice]

You can wish for death

By then, we have the table next to us occupied, in that group of four of probably Europeans or North Africans, the light or my eyes were dim was one Nigerian who was unaware he was being brought to Ikoyi London. The look of amazement, despair and incredulity at what was presented to him could easily have had someone of a different disposition toss the tables and walk out in disgust.

As soon as I ascertained he was Yoruba, I began in a language that would communicate the experience was to be cherished as the difference for which there would be stories to tell about a place called Ikoyi London. It was not about pretensions but innovation, the challenge to open one’s mind and consider that what we once knew does not have to be sacred and impervious to design, artistry and review. That is what Ikoyi London is about.

It’s a lot more wonderful

He asked if the restaurant was one to visit regularly, I could not say that would be wise, but for the whimsy and the occasion, a conversation and gastronomic banter, Ikoyi London would come ahead of many a restaurant. It is the deconstruction of the mundane and typical to create a new essence. This is bold and hardly experimental, it works.

The dessert was a rice ice cream with a biscuit I cannot remember the name of, paired with a cider. One sip had me reaching for my old cocktail. I do not have a palate for lager, beer, ale or cider. It was a miss for me.

[Rice Ice Cream]

It is easy to forget that dinner is a tasting menu and not a meal, which suggests the portions are for tasting as opposed to filling. We had a wonderful time before walking down Jermyn Street and taking a picture with the statue of Beau Brummell.

Ikoyi London is a variation, an exploration, an interpretation and an experience, you will lose more weight in your wallet than you’ll probably gain in ingested food, that is the nature of the location, the standard of service and daring proposition the proprietors have decided to unleash on its adventurous clientele.

There is a discretionary charge and I suppose we rarely exercise the discretion to refuse the charge. The service was top class, the waiters gorgeous and interesting. The restaurant was full by the time we left. Ikoyi London is what is possible if we decide that excellence matters above all else.