1Dish4TheRoad
"1 Dish 4 The Road".. Fusing food writing with whatever else I find on the road – fiction, history, poetry, humour, diversity, family stories & London.

A Warm Embrace at HALWA POORI HOUSE

Halwa poori plate of three dishes: halwa, poori, and aloo ki tarakari

I peer up at the news. I don’t understand what’s being said, but I find myself transfixed anyway.

Urdu flows along the bottom of the screen, the white script drifting over a ribbon of azure, like passing clouds on a sunny day. I wish I could read it, then I’d know what the item is about.

At the centre of the screen, a man talks intently to the camera; he looks very serious. For some reason, they have projected his image onto each corner of the picture: a multi-headed hydra in beard, suit and glasses. My eyes struggle to settle, flitting incessantly from head to head.

A waiter beside me is also gazing up at the five-headed man. He occasionally nods, sometimes strokes his chin, and every so often frowns. Either way he is resting on every word.

My curiosity eventually gets the better of me. I reach for my phone, and search up Pakistani ARY News. A series of English headlines flash over my screen:

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Butter Chicken at DASTAAN is the Best in the World (..and so much better than my Dad’s!)

Butter chicken masala curry at Dastaan restaurant Surrey, garnished with cream and coriander

Monday

So Dad decided to make a curry tonight. He called it “leftover curry” because he made it out of vegetables left over in the veg box that he didn’t know what to do with. Like swede. He reckoned if he put it in a curry, perhaps we wouldn’t notice. But when it’s big and orange and tastes disgusting, there’s no way we wouldn’t find out.

You see, me and my big brother are always one step ahead. Nothing gets past us. And if Dad thinks he can sneak onions into a curry, then he’s got another thing coming!

 

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Makhan Malai at INDIAN ACCENT; a Matter of Time

Indian Accent serves up this magical dish of makhan malhai, a golden dome of cream bedecked in all manner of opulent finery.

Tick tock. Tick tock.

Time. Goodness me, how on earth do I go about talking about Time? On a food blog!

A science blog perhaps – yes, that’d be more fitting. Perhaps a post written by that amiable if ubiquitous Brian Cox chap who pops up on the radio now and again, and who looks way too young be a professor. And a physics professor at that.

(And am I really now at that age when everyone starts to “look too young to be.. a doctor? A teacher? A leader of a nation state?” But I guess that’s time for you – as Einstein said, it’s all relative.)

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Winter has come; Where there’s light there’s HOPPERS

Hoppers London - where bone marrow varuval has me howling to the moon

 

“The White Witch? Who is she?”
“Why.. it’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter, and never Christmas..”

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. C.S. Lewis, 1950.

 

“At this moment you should be with us,
Feeling like we do.. like you love to
But never will again.
I miss you my dear, Xiola.
I prepared the room tonight with christmas lights,
A city of candles…”

Three Days, Jane’s Addiction, 1990

 

My childhood winters were cold Northern affairs. Stretching across the horizon, the distant Pennines lay dark and brooding, looming over Bury like a dormant dragon, its arched back frosted with fairy-dust snow. There, we’d take our sledges and run them down those Lancashire slopes, fast and true: the icy air stinging our watery eyes, the sledge barely skimming the snowy ground below. We were Peter Pan, we were Tinkerbell.

Of all the seasons, Winter kindled the imagination the most: a twilight zone where reality and fairytale would come together before waltzing off into a blur. Each evening, with the garden shrouded in dusk and the air stifled by unearthly silence, we’d joyously roll about in the crunching snow, crafting igloos out of ice-bricks, crawling into these dens safe and snug from the creatures lurking just beyond..

..Then comes a mother’s call. A warm embrace. The sound of water splashing in a distant room. Steam slipping underneath a bathroom door. I’d leap into the bath, my goose-bumped skin ablaze with the sudden heat.

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It’s Not Just KRICKET, It’s Thoran Around India

Kricket, where the diverse ingredients in this thoran has me reflecting on diversity more generally.

Religion. Do I go there? What is to gain? What could I lose? And yet here I am. And here beside me is the territory of ritual, history and God. And here’s me stepping into it..

I think most of us have our stories of religion. Whether we grew up with it or not. Whether it was found or it was lost. Mine begins in a Jewish family, quite Orthodox in fact, until I discovered I was possibly atheist, but let’s call it agnostic, but always felt connected to Jewish culture if not belief, now living in and raising a mixed-faith family, rewarded by the richness and challenges that brings, living in a city that’s probably the most diverse on earth. I love that my neighbours are also mixed-faith; in fact between our two houses there are four religions, a fifth if you include our other neighbours. In our local neighborhood, there’s a friendly Sikh gurdwara, a serene Buddhist temple, a vibrant synagogue, the oldest mosque in London, churches from myriad denominations, and probably lots more besides.

I’m constantly intrigued by religion. I revel in its rituals, its festivals, its music, its community, and of course the centrality of food. It can transcend the individual, traversing time and space, helping people in their search for meaning. But as for dogma, division, rigidity and intolerance – well, who needs those unfortunate bedfellows… View Post