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.

There’s No Place Like CAMPANIA AND JONES; Reflections on Home and Homeship

Campania and Jones, where I am reflecting on the meaning of home and homeship.

Home. Mine was once a launderette, back in the ‘70s. I wasn’t living there then. I was hardly even born then. But there’s still evidence of it all over the place – from the peculiar frontage to the panoply of pipes protruding defiantly out of the flooring. But times have changed. At least for this building.

For me though, my home is more than a house – more than four walls, windows, roofs and doors. It’s more than the place where my family and I eat, sleep, or take refuge from the cold and rain. It’s the scene of our everyday victories – big and small – celebrating a good day at work or school, a festival or birthday, or just an elaborately-constructed sofa den. And of course, it’s sometimes where opinions are argued, tears are shed, and shoulders are hugged.

Our home isn’t just bricks and mortar. It’s the stage on which our lives unfurl. And I know how lucky that makes me, especially when so many people don’t even have basic shelter.

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PLOT KITCHEN, Flash Fiction, And The Future of Food

Plot Kitchen, where ingredients are sourced locally, and seasonality is of key importance.

Clone 4621bx powered through the door onto the roof, the lock snapping in two like a dry stick in a summer drought. Close behind, the menacing clatter of footsteps echoed up the stairwell. Immediately ahead was the night: dark, brooding and uncertain.

But for now, all being well, Captain Tansley would be there – better be there – waiting for her and her priceless cargo. She sped across the rooftop, the stolen case clutched tightly to her chest, her feet barely a pitter-patter across the flat concrete floor. She scanned the moonlit sky for signs of the hover-copter – hopeful, expectant – but all she saw was an indifferent dome of stars.

Urgently, she broadcast into her headset microphone. Agitation fizzed up inside her, tingling her skin like static. Where the hell is he?.. Suddenly, a cacophony of shouts, a melee of footsteps – her pursuers had now burst through the stairwell door.

“Over there!” one yelled, pointing right at her across the rooftop. She spun around, her body poised precariously by the edge, the vertiginous drop looming just beyond.

The security detail, about a dozen of them, were so massively armed that they looked more like a single tangled mass of industrial weaponry than a collection of individual breathing bodies. One sharply barked out orders, another panned a searchlight across the roof – Clone 4621bx winced and shielded her eyes.

Seedtek’s guards had her cornered.  View Post

London Bridge Is Staying Strong; a Tribute to BOROUGH MARKET

Borough Market, London Bridge - where I am reflecting on the defiant spirit of London and its communities.

“London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair Lady.

Build it up with wood and clay,
Wood and clay, wood and clay.
Build it up with wood and clay,
My fair Lady.”

 

As I tread these streets of London, rain streaming off rooftops, puddles lining the paving-stones like little pools of transient street-art, concentric circles appearing and disappearing within them, I think of this city. This great great city.

It’s two days now after another senseless assault; people were hurt and killed. And my heart cries for them, and for the people who hold them so dear. And as I walk, I look around me, at the city streets through the driving rain.

I wander past London’s squares and structures, buildings and bridges: they whisper words into my ear, reassuring me with their stories from days gone by. History hangs heavy in the air, like mist, swirling through the city’s alleys and gardens, wispy tendrils of history clinging onto cobblestones and brickwork.

Too much history for some. And not always good. But in amongst the narratives of this city – tangling and jostling as they do – lies the very oldest one. One that’s still the loudest and proudest of them all – the indefatigable spirit of Londoners in the face of adversity.

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Passover, food and memory; Chocolate babka at HONEY AND CO

Passover food as depicted on the Passover seder plate

Food memories. They’re possibly the most powerful memories we have. There’s some science behind it – our perception of food is primarily streamed through our nasal olfactory system, a region of the brain closely associated with long-term memory. But beyond the biology, food memories form such a large part of our own life story, they cannot help but evoke a potent sense of longing and reminiscence. The weekend roast. Our first sip of wine. School pudding. (I didn’t say all memories had to be good, mind you!)

When we recollect a food memory, we are remembering a time in our lives that food made meaningful. Alternatively, food memories may emerge because of their association with a particular person, place or time. However they became, whatever their provenance, they’re then woven into our tapestry of experience and assimilated into our own life story. And there they remain, little nuggets that we stumble upon again and again.

For me, my fondest and most indelible food memories relate to the week-long Jewish festival of Passover. There’s a myriad of reasons for me why Passover food elicits such an emotive reaction, all of which inter-connect like an intricate dance. View Post

Grandma Beryl’s Chicken Soup

Chicken Soup, reminding me of the ones the Grandma Beryl used to make. Hers was of course the best.

In so many ways, Grandma Beryl was the matriarch of our family and a wise dignified figurehead. She was almost always immaculately turned out, her hair a halo of wispy-white cotton-candy with not a strand out of place. Her elocution was invariably poised and precise, graced with a slight Mancunian lilt, and as mellifluous as any a Radio 4 presenter.

Through the best part of ninety years, us children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren would congregate at Grandma’s each week, her home bursting alive with the sighs and squeals of newborn babies, the pitter-patter of toddler feet, children trampolining on the sofa, kids taking penalty kicks in the lounge, and grown-ups sporadically crying out “Mind the ornaments!”, all accompanied by the constant clang and clatter of cutlery and plates as they materialised on and off the dining-room table.

Of course she loved all this, the hubbub of family coming together. And ultimately she yearned for nothing more than her family to be happy and well. To that end, she connected deeply with each and every one of us, like the gravitational pull of a warm radiating sun round which all our lives orbited.

And when it came to my Grandpa Reuben, well she was beyond devoted. He’d been her rock, and she his; a husband she’d lovingly served in an old-fashioned way, a couple and a home steeped in Jewish tradition. (“Call me old-fashioned” was in fact her favourite refrain.) But even after he died, the family would continue to come, week after week, and she remained the constant, the glue, the fabric, by which our family were reassuringly held.

On second thoughts, ‘matriarch’ isn’t quite right. The word conjures up images of haughtiness and detachment which couldn’t be further from the truth when it came to Grandma Beryl. She was a warm, loving, generous soul, totally unassuming, always smiling, gentle in her humility, yet strong in her own way.

A real ‘people person’, she loved snatching a conversation here and there, with everyone and anyone, from taxi-drivers to Big Issue sellers. And she was naturally gifted with a wonderful sense of humour, somehow both knowingly cheeky and yet brilliantly bone-dry, radiant even until her very last days.

For 10th October 2016 was her very last day, when her life was no more and she was finally at peace.  View Post