Culinary polygamy

My father is Anglo-Indian. My mother is Scottish and loves Scottish food, as well as Italian and Indian. Part of marrying my father was learning how to cook ‘proper’ Indian food, taught by her mother-in-law, my grandmother. Now that is love.

As a result, our family meals were a mix of the above cuisines and anything else my mother decided to throw together. There were also the compulsory Sunday roasts (which had me gagging and wailing for something a bit more interesting [natural born thespian me]), the very occasional treat dim sum meal at a small Cantonese restaurant nearby or fish and chips in Dorset where they have a dilapidated cottage.

Ma worked in TV so spent many years toing and froing from the editing studios scattered above and below street level in Soho. After the long sessions in the cutting room, a large and very comforting bowl of noodles or ramen with colleagues was the tonic prescribed most nights. Sushi was a lunch time affair, eaten whilst bustling backwards and forward from meetings and auditions.

When the time came, I was allowed to travel up to Soho with Ma, and we would have sushi or noodles together. The smells (soy, ginger, hot oil), the sounds (braying media types, the sizzle and crack of the pans) and the sights (people slurping and bending their heads down, doing everything that parents tell children not to do at a table) made a huge impression on the little me. I promptly fell head over heels in love with Japanese food, as Soho does it. (I am yet to be lucky enough to travel to Japan, but I can fully imagine that Soho Japanese food is not Japan Japanese food. I still have that to look forward to).

Fast-forward a few years to when you become old enough to eat in restaurants with your friends, perhaps around the age of 15. We hit the usual suspects, unchallenging environments that weren’t expensive: pizza chains, Wagamamas, the odd Mexican place where dinner became a more liquid-affair thanks to potent cocktails and unscrupulous waiters. 

Of all of them, Wagamamas was my favourite. Harking back to those years with Ma in Soho, it had my toes curling every time: slurpy, sucky noodles and lots of tea. In between then and now, there are many more Japanese restaurants to contend with Wagamamas, and I have eaten a whole heap more noodles and every other type of cuisine. In short, I hope I am more discerning…

The place in my culinary-social life that Japanese restaurants occupy has, however, started to lose its grip. I can’t deny that a plate of noodles is easier for me to demolish than a plate from a French ‘bistro’, but more often than not, I am left feeling slightly uninspired. And for me, comfort food can inspire. It inspires comfort, for one, as well as satisfaction and simple pleasure. Plates of noodles of late have left me with a faint feeling of satisfaction, and very little else. The over-riding tastes are soy and some more soy. Perhaps overly confident teriyaki (too sweet for my liking). I want to keep loving you noodles, but, if I am honest, I’ve changed. It’s not you, it’s me. I need something more exciting. I will always love you, but it’s time for me to find out who I really am.

And Korean food has that answer. Korean food and where I was brought up: New Malden. New where? I hear you ask. New Malden. Aka Little Korea. And that’s what the Koreans call it. I once heard that outside of Seoul, New Malden has the largest population of South Koreans in the world. It sounds impossible, but take a trip to New Malden and you may be persuaded. The South Korean ambassador lived in New Malden and perhaps was the draw for quite so many expats from the 70s onwards, but no one really knows for sure.

What I know is that I love Koreans and am deeply pleased that they did come. As I have said before, I am not mad about British people, so, a flood of Koreans into what was a very unremarkable south-west London borough has enlivened it beyond my wildest dreams.

And then there’s the food. If you’ve never eaten Korean food, expect something like Japanese in the sense that menus usually break down into noodle dishes, rice dishes, soups, meat, fish and vegetables, but different in that soy sauce isn’t in everything, they BBQ in the middle of your table, they eat out of scorching, over-sized mortars, and they love their chilli.

To pop one’s Korean cherry I would advise dolsot bibimbap. And behold. A dolsot bibimbap, after having been mixed by your waiter, with however much chilli sauce you specify.

Pre-mixing, it arrives as rice topped with shredded vegetables, raw beef mince/ strips, and an egg yolk. The bowl is literally scorching, so as the waiter mixes in the chill sauce, the beef and egg, it cooks everything, resulting in the most heavenly soft, velvety rice studded with the finest strips of beef and vegetable. They also serve this without the beef for vegetarians, and in some restaurants you can find seafood versions, but, after many a taste-test, the beef wins out every time.



Namul on the left; beansprouts, pickled red beans and zucchini in the middle; kimchi on the right

Also worth a try is namul – a small side dish of, usually, three shredded vegetables, served at room temperature: white radish, beansprouts and something like spinach or chard. And then, the iconic kimchi. Essentially Chinese cabbage/ lettuce, ‘pickled’ (not in a malt vinegar sense) and mixed with chilli sauce. Both are delicious when eaten alongside the rice or noodle dishes, or on their own at the start of the meal.

Recently The Boy tried a ‘casserole’, another dish they are keen on. Behold the casserole.

He went for slow-cooked beef, mushrooms, chestnuts and dates. It was in fact a Korean tagine with huge chunks of beef, still on the bone but at the same time falling off, marrow melted and enriching the broth. (Don’t you love that? When you eat a dish that is one cuisine and realise that it is in fact that country’s counterpart to another dish you know…pizza-pide. Pasty-calzone. Spaghetti-noodles. Polpette-kofte. Tagine-casserole. Paella-special fried rice. Pho-ramen. Sorry. I’ll stop now.)

Koreans, like the Spanish with tapas, believe in ordering many dishes for the table and sharing them. Dishes arrive whenever they like, and can be eaten in any order. At the end of every meal, a slice of orange or melon is brought to each diner to cleanse the palette. I can’t think of many Korean menus I have seen that have desserts.

Perhaps it is because, compared to the number of years I have been eating Japanese food, Korean food is relatively ‘new’ for me…perhaps it is because Korean food is more ‘interesting’ or inspiring than the majority of Japanese food served nowadays in London, having gotten slightly lazy in its popularity with London mouths…perhaps it is a bit of both.

Whatever the reason, Korean and me are going steady. We’re still getting to know each other, but what we know we like. Japanese and me are still friends. Sushi and me are friends sometimes, and more than just friends other times, times when I find good sushi (Atari-ya). Ramen and me are more than just friends thanks to the handful of ‘authentic’ (?) ramen restaurants in London now. Culinary monogamy makes no sense in my head.

I find it very difficult, nigh-on impossible, to wipe a culinary bond (thus why I still get excited about the prospect of eating Kellog’s cornflakes with ice-cold milk, or eating butterscotch Angel Delight). Japanese will always be a pleasant meal to eat. But, when it comes to something exciting and inspiring, Korean’s got my heart.

Who knows what it will be next, and when…Spanish and me never really bonded. Too many potatoes (bleh), deep-fried or cooked cheese (I follow a raw-cheese diet. No cooked cheese. Bleh again.), and nowhere near enough vegetables. But maybe I need to go to Spain to address that…French – um. No. Butter and cream. Enough said. Scandinavian food interests me, but I’ve yet to find somewhere more authentic to sample their wares than the Ikea restaurant…

For the time being, I’m happy with Korean, Italian, Vietnamese, Indian, Turkish, Moroccan/ North-African, Scottish and Japanese, with the occasional dabble into British, Chinese (only from Silk Road, Camberwell) and Mexican, and not forgetting those all-important nondescript dishes that get thrown together with whatever the cook deems appropriate. Mark Twain once said “there is no sincerer love than the love of food”. Either he always ate spectacular food or he had no one to love. I can’t decide…

A mantra for the mouth

I feel I need a disclaimer for this blog. A way to set expectations. Something along the lines of:

The images used on this site are taken with an unexceptional camera, in unremarkable settings, by an undistinguished hand.

I am not one of those beautiful blogs. The ones with mid-recipe snaps or artfully shot plates of food embellished with a dried rose or linen place mat and vintage silver cutlery. They’re marvellous but they’re just not me. A bit like how I look at some women, with coiffured hair and manicured nails, in elegant dresses and delicate shoes. I admire them for their feminine aplomb, and for a fleeting moment wonder why I don’t do the same…and then I remember. Because I’m Me. And Me has never really worn make up. A 6ft Me doesn’t need heels (nor can Me find them – UK size nine. You try). Me does wear dresses, but Me is “big-boned” (or however else you can say wide-shouldered and long), so never quite cuts as elegant a figure…

In much the same way, this blog is not a refined, artful blog. It wouldn’t say no, but, in reality it isn’t. For the refined and artful bloggers out there who stumble across this page, don’t laugh too loud at what you are about to see.

Ok, so it doesn’t look appetising, but I can say, hand on my heart, it tasted amazing. 3 guesses at what you can see.

No?

Ok, it’s black pudding with roasted celeriac and butternut squash, with a miso, basil and spring onion dressing. Cumin and fennel seeds were what adorned the roasted vegetables. The fudgy squash and woody celeriac, combined with the dark, charcoal pudding and salty malted dressing worked a treat. A dollop of Greek yogurt on top provided the slightly sharp, cold contrast for those earth-like colours and flavours.

Y to the U to the M.

Black pudding is one of my most beloved foods. It upsets me greatly what facial contortions it provokes from the uninitiated, as do the little rounds of grizzly fatty nonsense served up in endless cafés around the country masquerading as black pudding. Just plain wrong. Black pudding should be rich, dark, subtly spiced and paté-like on the tongue.

As with anything related to food, there are umpteen different styles. There is the texture. Irish black pudding is very heavy on the barley or grain element which renders the final product like a coarse sausage, and, as I am not overly keen on sausages, the Irish one I do not go for.

Stornoway black pudding is, for want of better words, a gobful. It is almost impenetrably dark and dense, the crispy outer yielding way to a voluptuously soft centre. The spices fill your nose as it sizzles tenaciously in the pan, and in the mouth enliven the dense, Cimmerian-like taste.

Anything soft works a treat with this sooty wonder: poached or soft-boiled eggs, scallops, prawns, monkfish, purées or mashes (try apple or pear as well as vegetables), peas or beans, fresh or roasted figs, yogurt or curds and yielding roasted root vegetables all work marvellously.

At the same time, however, its robustness in texture and flavour mean that it can hold its own on the plate amongst other bold flavours: ginger, miso, whisky or port, mustard, wasabi, and horseradish to name but a few. Instead of fighting each other, in the right quantities, the pudding combined with another strong bedfellow result in an oratorio of taste.

It’s like haggis (another foodstuff lodged firmly in my heart). Somehow black pudding (and haggis) manages to scare people off before they’ve tasted it. My mother brought my brother and me up doggedly sticking to the mantra “try it before you say you don’t like it”, which, over the years, has meant I have experienced countless new foodstuffs, some good and some bad. The Eyebrow nearly shoots of the top of my head when I meet an ‘adult’ who looks at something and refuses to eat it not having tried it because somehow, perhaps by osmosis, they have divined that it won’t be to their liking. It is symbolic of an unquestioning character, intimidated or threatened by the act of experiencing. And what is life if not one over-sized and (potentially) technicolour experience..?

(It should be noted at this point that my mother’s mantra on the surface sounds fair, but even when we tried and disliked, she still refuted our pleas and wails. We were young and didn’t know any better, according to her. Then, in later life when we weren’t young and hopefully knew a bit better, we still didn’t know what we were talking about because…because she’s our mother and mothers know.)

For the record, my mantra is “try it before you say you don’t like it, and if you don’t like it remember that you might not have eaten the best example”.

Obviously there are times when you try something and you know it’s not for you. Tripe. Tripe and I will never be friends. Now liver, including paté, makes me liverish, but, when at the River Cottage for a dinner last winter, they served strips of liver, cooked rare, seasoned with sumac, and, it was almost delicious (in my opinion. The Boy inhaled them as liver is his thing).

But, there are other times when perhaps you may benefit from giving something a second chance if in an area or environment which knows how to handle said ‘thing’. I never went mad for meat until I moved to Umbria where a vegetable soup with pancetta is considered vegetarian. So I gaily went ahead with meat-eating and now am a bona fide carnivore. Lasagne too – I dislike béchamel as much as the Kardashians dislike being ignored. However, in Italy I discovered that lasagne wasn’t a bath of béchamel and melted cheese, and that the correct usage of béchamel is simply to moisten the pasta layers. Highly inoffensive I must say.

In short, if the idea of black pudding makes your shoulders shiver in dismay, and you haven’t tried it, please do. One mouthful won’t hurt. If you can get Stornoway black pudding, you’re on to the winner. Alternatively The Bury Black Pudding Company do a good 4-slice pack, and are in most major supermarkets. Slap it in a frying pan with a small dash of oil, let it sizzle away on both sides gently, and serve it with something you do like.

If you’ve tried black pudding and don’t like it, please, for me, try it again. Look out for the two names mentioned above in delicatessens, supermarkets or on menus, and give it one more go. And if you still don’t like it, perhaps I shall just have to demand you come to mine to try it because clearly you don’t know any better.

Like mother like daughter.

Oh god.

This strange eventful history

As much as I read, think, talk, exist and think some more, there is a part of my brain that I clearly can’t quite reach. Like the jar of nutella in the larder, surrounded by its bouncers of more rudimentary jams, marmalades and marmite, yet still visible to the little eye of the little person desperately stretching and straining to get their little hand around it before a growed up walks in bamboozles their sugar-heavy plan. So too is there a corner of my mind that, despite my efforts to stimulate and engage it in all manner of creative and intellectual activity, lies untouched and indifferent to my efforts. Until I see a play that is.

I cannot explain or rationalise how a play can so deeply stimulate me, yet nigh-on every film leaves me gasping for fresh air and mental stimulus like a fish rudely dragged out of its watery environs. I cannot explain or rationalise how a play can so deeply move me, yet even the most powerful and don’t-you-dare-put-me-down books (Kiterunner. Gulp) don’t quite have the same effect on me. Exhibitions, documentaries, talks, CDs, concerts – anything to stimulate the intellect. They all do, but just not this one part, right at the back, reserved for plays only.

On Saturday I saw Untold Stories – a double bill of Alan Bennett plays: Cocktail Sticks and Hymns. Alex Jennings played Bennett, and was every inch the retiring, pensive, considered Yorkshire man who penned the plays. The Boy had never seen a Bennett play before, yet, like many other people my age, knows his voice well, namely from an audio book of The Wind in The Willows. His cries of “POOP POOP! POOP POOOOOOOOP!” as Toady screams like a maniac through the country lanes in his new amore, his motor car, is as familiar to me as my parents’ voices calling after me as I darted off into the nearest largest crowd possible as a 5 year old.

(For the record, they didn’t call me “poop”, and nor was our relationship one that made me want to flee their grasps. I was simply a rather impressionable child who thought running headlong into big crowds without parental guidance was the surest way to end myself up in Narnia or the Goblin Kingdom or some other bewitching adventure.)

Anyway, back to Bennett. Two plays, forty five minutes or so each. But with a force that left me feeling as though I’d sat through Hamlet. What I love about Bennett, and what makes is autobiography so gratifying, is that his subject matter is simply him, but not in an inflated sense. In fact it is the opposite. It is his years spent in Yorkshire in a determinedly normal family, living a unquestionably average lifestyle, with no traumas, alarms or excursions. He takes a subject matter that is wholly uninteresting, but recounts it in a manner that is affectionate without being sentimental, and moving without being depressing. He centres on the bromidic nature of his upbringing, but nonetheless manages to see the wry humour in it: as a forty year old man he questions his mother as to where his childhood went, or if he even had one, a childhood full of issues and troubles that would, in later life, bestow him with reams of sterling writing material. In one measured swoop he taps into the belief that ‘good’ playwriting relies on a personal experience of pain, suffering and unhappiness, but at the same time rips the rug from its feet proving that not everyone needs to write about pain, suffering and unhappiness. Normality can be every bit as compelling and moving for the viewer as cliff-hangers and high-drama.

Whilst the plays certainly left me with a soft yet sincere smile, and in a state of intellectual satiation, a seed had been sowed by Cocktail Sticks. Bennett recounts the deaths of both of his parents, amongst other memories, and their presence on stage is either in a flashback or talking from the dead. That the play is about such pedestrian matters now serves to make it almost impossible to shy away from the realisation that what happens to them will happen to us. Will happen to me.

Next to me were my parents. And next to them The Boy.

The mind started to whirr, the eyebrow twitched anxiously. “I know ‘death is the only certain thing in life’, but it doesn’t mean I have to be okay with it. People gadding around claiming that dying doesn’t bother them because they’re enjoying life too much – surely that’s not possible? It’s a completely human reaction, it’s instinctive to be upset if something you love dearly, or are enjoying greatly is taken away from you. So, if life is so raucously fun and pleasing to you, death, which ends it all, will be a huge dampener on the party…

“Perhaps this is when people turn to religion. They somehow muster a blind faith in a religion that puts a stop to the endless questioning or looming fear of it all finishing. With religions come an explanation, answer, and hope for whatever comes next…but what religion doesn’t stand up well to is questioning or challenging. It relies on its followers accepting as answer to their queries ‘because God wills it so’, or ‘because He is love’, regardless of whether that is a relevant or poignant answer to their particular query.” Following a religion is an immensely personal matter, and one that I respect in others, but my head just does not stop whirring with answers like that.

It was like I had been hit, for the first time, with the realisation that death ends it all. As we walked back to the station, I wondered how long the people we passed on the street would live for…and then how long I would live for…and whether or not I would develop any health problems along the way and if they would impact my life dramatically…

By the time we got home I was well and truly wound up, but still it was a mix. There was the fatigued intellectual satisfaction, akin to pounding out a personal best, along with this rising and falling waves of panic about how simple and finite it all is – Life. Death.

And it is precisely this that I love about plays. They can move you in a manner that is so real and tangible, that you transplant ideas you’ve seen on stage into your own mind. I suddenly found myself thinking in the same bleak and mildly depressed terms as Bennett about life and death and what it might mean, and whether or not my life would be spectacular or the stuff of plays.

Films could never do that because you’re watching it on a screen. You know it’s been filmed, dubbed and edited. Ditto for TV. For books, if you begin to read something that cuts too close to a raw nerve, the mind may, subconsciously, put up a barrier to absorbing the information. Self-preservation in action.

But with theatres and plays, especially in the smaller venues, you find yourself exposed, prone and at the will on the players. Of course you can chose to switch off, or only engage at a surface level, but if you let yourself go, and if you are sucked in, there is an immense power in watching fellow-humans enact something right in front of you. There are no popcorn crunchers or lip-smackers to distract you. Like Alice, there’s a rabbit hole to fall into if you want to.

How long is a piece of string...how tall is a cup of coffee?

I think we have a complex, as British people, an inferiority complex. One that seems to pervade every café and bar and restaurant. A complex that says we are worse than our European counterparts, therefore we must do more on the plate and in the glass or cup.

Instead of patting us on the back, and lovingly stroking the national ego, I am going to agree. We are worse than our European neighbours at nearly everything to do with eating and drinking, but then, as ever in life, you may be below one person, but there is always someone below you. And that nation I shall leave unnamed, but it is there in all its super-sized glory.

And before you close this window in irritation or disgust at what I’m saying, I know I am talking in generalities. I can’t know every restaurant or food-orientated entity in any country, but you get an impression. And the British impression is less impressive than the European countries’ impression. Well, that’s the impression it’s left on me anyway.

Back to inferiority complexes.

Below is an Italian cappuccino. As in one bought in Italy. Not one bought in a non-descript café proudly proclaiming yet weakly demonstrating that they serve freshly ground Italian coffee. This is a real cappuccino in real life Italy. Lecce to be exact, in Puglia. And next to it is my finger. My finger, from the tip to the middle of my knuckle measures 10.5cm. Were I a man, and were that saying true, I would be very happy indeed.

This cup is 6cm tall, and 7cm wide. And a whole mouthful or two of god-give-me-another-one-and-make-mine-a-double. They are small but perfectly formed, and cost between 1-2 euros.

Below is an English coffee chain’s cup of dear-god-what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this-someone-take-it-away-from-me.

It is 12.5cm high, and 10cm wide. Essentially at least double the size of the Italian example. Double the volume and half the quality (and that’s if I’m being generous). Milky wappety nonsense of a coffee. They do not cost the equivalent of 1-2 euros.

But every coffee shop, café and restaurant in this country seems to serve their regular coffee in roughly this sized vessel. Is there a government directive ordaining the use of these sized vessels when serving pallid hot beverages? In comparison to Italian and French coffee cups, why do we have such large cups everywhere? And, why do we even choose what size our drink should be? Why can’t it just be one size fits all and leaves you wanting more, as opposed to the smallest sizes leaves you looking for a bin to throw it in.

In Italy you order the type of drink and that’s it. If you’re in a decidedly hippy area or bar, you may happen upon soya milk, but by and large what milk isn’t an option. No syrups either. Just coffee, decaf (which still provokes looks of miscomprehension akin to having ordered in Swahili), and ‘corrected’ coffee (caffè corretto). Coffee with a nice slug of grappa in. Traditionally taken between the hours of 10am and midday. No wonder Italians get so agitated. They’re running on a cocktail of hard spirits and caffeine.

And before you say “what about the flat white? That’s smaller…”, just stop. A flat white is a small latte at a higher price. Well done all marketing dons. I have tasted one and it is no different to a latte. And if, in your opinion, that is because I haven’t had a good one yet, I will politely nod, take you point, and…flatly refuse to waste my money any further. The coffee ‘scene’ was needing a bit of stimulus and innovation, and along came the flat white and all its connotations of antipodean sunniness, relaxation and chatting endlessly with friends on the weekend about the night before in the local independent coffee house. (Notice they are no longer shops, they are houses).

And then, there is the national confusion between what is a latte and what is a cappuccino. For some ‘baristas’, it seems, the difference lies simply in whether or not there is chocolate on top. For others, I think the difference is simply whichever name the customer decides they like more, because, at the end of it all, I get lattes when I have asked for cappuccinos. Only if I ask for a dry cappuccino (i.e. more foam) do I have some hope of getting something on the way to a wet cappuccino (i.e. less foam) by Italian standards.

Now, thinking caps on, let’s take a short lesson in the Art of Making The Correct Drink:

Latte: 1 part espresso, 2 parts milk, 1 part foam.

Cappuccino: 1 part espresso, 1 part milk, 2 parts foam.

Americano:  2 parts espresso, 2 parts water.

NB – An americano is not the same as filter coffee.

Apparently not as simples as I feel it to be.

It seems completely absurd, paradoxical and infuriating that we live amongst endless options and flourishes and adjustments and modifications, yet after all that, we are still left with tosh. And, that’s because the base items to which these adjustments and requests are applied are tosh themselves. So, we’re adding monstrosity on top of monstrosity.

This may seem slightly out of proportion given that it revolves around coffee cup sizes, but, for me it is true for many other areas in modern life: we are romanced my embellishments and the option to modify it to best suit our needs, and with these seductive choices and promises, we are cleverly distracted from the fact that the base product itself is bunkum. Restaurant hype, décor, food trends, diet fads, customise or build-your-own options, new openings, long waiting lists, high prices, tasting menus – all of them abound to take our mind off whether or not what we are experiencing is ‘worth’ it.

I, for one, long for the day that I can walk into any café I dam well like, order a cappuccino for roughly £1, stand at the bar whilst resolutely gawping back at those gawping at me, sip my coffee, consider ordering another one there and then, acknowledge that the gawpers would have a field day if I do, down the thimble of water left beside my cup, and leave, thanking the proprietors as I go, turning round at the last minute just to get the last gawp.

Pandora's (packed lunch) Box

When I think of what is good about being a person in Britain, I always end up with culture (not much else springs to mind. Culture and Scotland). I think Britain does culture brilliantly. Theatre, music, art, film, food, literature, and academia – I think of Britain as a petri-dish at the optimum temperature and humidity level to promote this ‘cultural’ bacteria to bloom and grow.

BBC Radio 4, for me, encapsulates that bacterial growth (not a particularly pleasant image...perhaps I’ll leave this petri-dish analogy for the time being). The day is book-ended with news programmes, programmes which have become so much a part of my daily routine that, if I have to miss them for some reason, I feel as though I’ve got my tights on my head and my underwear around my ankles. From top to toe, just plain preternatural.

Alongside the news programmes, there are financial, scientific, literary, philosophic, agricultural, cultural and world or current affair-based programmes, all there for your psychological pleasure. If you fancy something ‘easier’, there are highly silly panel programmes, plays and that iconic ‘soap’, The Archers, whose theme tune is a rival to the national anthem.

Whatever I listen to, it has the same effect on me – keep calm and carry on. Radio 4 is with you.

And I was doing precisely that one morning on my way to work, happily listening to the Today programme, when an article came up about how we eat lunch nowadays. More specifically how people in offices eat lunch. Packed lunch.

My ears pricked up, wondering if maybe I’d hear a heartening statistic that people are voting against the packaged dross that supermarkets and cafés sell, and have gone back to making food at home…or perhaps some interesting ideas for adult lunch box designs, or menu ideas.

What it was actually about was the anti-social aspect of eating a packed lunch whilst at your desk.

Blink. Eyebrow twitch.

A clearly strabismic woman was extolling the virtues of respecting your colleagues enough to take your smelly or noisy lunch outside, so as to avoid disturbing their work.

Um. WHAT?

1)      If you are distracted by the sound of someone chewing something at a desk in your area, you either have superhuman hearing or you are not busy enough. If the former, keep your powers secret – people will only ask you to abuse your skill. If the latter, get a life, get a new job, and leave me to eat my lunch in peace.

2)      If you are dismayed, offended or upset by the smell of someone else’s lunch, you either have a superhuman olfactory system, or you are eyebrow-raisingly precious. If the former, get your hearing checked out – you may be a super-superhuman. If the latter, get a life, get a new job, and, yes, you guessed it, leave me to eat my lunch in peace.

The last time I checked, life is a big maelstrom of sounds, sights, smells, tastes, and touches, all of which make up experiences. We don’t really get to choose which of those elements is thrust upon us and when. If it’s something horrific, like tasting fizzy hummus (oh my how I know that taste), or smelling rancid potato juice, then I admit, I would move away, or remove the offensive item.

But, as far as smell is concerned, a packed lunch will never smell that bad as someone is going to eat it, so it’ll hardly be toxic. And, with regards to the sound of eating it. I actually have no words. That the sounds of someone masticating could be so voracious and disturbing as to distract you for great swathes of time from your work is laughable. Eyebrow firmly raised.

For me the anti-social aspect of this conversation was the person condemning people eating their packed lunches at their desk. It is a typically British approach to eating – not in any way a communal or social activity. Something to be apologised for, to be hidden away for fear of bothering or offending people.

In the first few months of living in Italy, I nearly grew a complex about my eating habits. I couldn’t understand why every time I met up with people, after saying hello nigh on the first thing they would ask is what I ate for lunch. I started to frantically brush my teeth before going out thinking perhaps they were politely trying to indicate to me that when I opened my mouth, a dead dog fell out…and then I wondered if they were trying to subtly imply that I might want to cut back on what I eat for lunch…

Until finally, I confronted it head on, and asked why they asked me that every day. Blink. They didn’t know what I was talking about. So I explained again. They blinked again. Just because. Well, why not? What’s the problem? It’s just what we like to know.

And that’s how Italians are – what I had for lunch was as much a conversation starter as “how’s your day been?” or “what did you do on the weekend?”. From it could spring all manner of conversations – where to buy the best tomatoes; who sold the best wine; what really was the perfect raguὺ; and, always a favourite, what would we eat that night…

I think The Boy thought he’d landed himself a nutnut when we first started being us, as, over my time in Umbria, I unconsciously grew that bug – everyday, either in person or via a dedicated email, I’d ask what he’d had. A bit like the comfort blanket that is Eddie Mair’s voice or Mark Lawson’s dulcet tones, so too is hearing what was had for lunch.

For me, the equation of food = life is true on a spiritual and sensory basis, but for everyone it holds true on a physiological basis. Without food we can’t live. Everybody eats, but, just like every body being different and that being the beauty of it, so too is everyone’s food different. If you smell a smell whilst at work, instead of rejecting it angrily, why not investigate it. Working with one French woman, one Chinese woman and one Japanese woman, I’ve learned all manner of things about their respective cuisines. I’ve just been given a sachet of black fungus actually. Delicious fried up with pork mince. And even my fellow Brits, what they eat is different to what I eat, but in no way wrong.

Oh for the day that Britishness embraces food and recognises its importance…opening your eyes and opening your mouths let the world rush in.