Turkey Haiku

Turkey on the plate.
It used to be my best mate.
That’s until I ate.

Pak Choi or plain old Cabbage?

Pak Choi, otherwise known as Chinese Cabbage. A recent inclusion in British cuisine, and something that is considered a bit above the normal veggie. It is not exactly exotic (as it is fairly easy to cook), but there is definitely an impressive quality about the vegetable whenever it is eaten by someone who is not of Chinese descent. It is a little bit like someone eating Mackerel for the first time. It impresses anyone who does not realise that us Seychellois use it as dog food.

Now, I felt really guilty about buying the Pak Choi. After all, with all the furore about greenhouse gases, I should have bought something that was grown a little closer to home. What I needed was a little less ‘authenticity’ in my noodles and a little more consideration for the amount of miles my food has had to travel. The vegetable would have been grown somewhere in Asia, chucked onto a tractor towards the warehouse, put on a (refrigerated) lorry, taken to an airport, put in (another refrigerated) warehouse, dumped on a plane, flown thousands of miles, ended up at Schiphol, put on another plane, ended up at Heathrow, trucked to a distribution centre off the M25, then trucked to a warehouse for the supermarket before finally being delivered to the supermarket where I purchased it and drove back home in my own car.

Damn, all that to obtain a texture to my vegetable not normally found in cabbage. I should have just bought the cabbage…

Considering that you can get a whole cabbage for a third of that price, something tells me that I have been swindled by the supermarket. Damn, if I am paying that much, I expect my vegetable to have been flown in on a business class seat!

Well, to look on the bright side, at least the UK is self sufficient in Pak Choi. Hey, it may even be the start of a whole new export industry! I see taxes for this new thriving enterprise…

Bread

Not the stuff in our wallets but the grain based substance that is available in virtually every society on Earth. Whether made from maize, rice, teff or rye, it is a common element of humanity to eat bread.

In the UK, most of our bread is made from wheat. We can get it in the supermarket or down the corner shop in polythene packets or we can head to the high street chain baker where they stock their baked goods fresh from the industrial estate. Occasionally however, there are still some bakeries that actually bake their own bread, within their premises. Early morning, as I am (often) coming home, these bakeries are open. The friend of all night shift workers, they are open at hours to suit us and so we can always pop in for a cup of tea and a bun and on the way home, get some bread.

Of course, by the time I actually have some of this bread for ‘my’ breakfast, you would have already finished your lunch…

India 2 – Eating Well

Oh, that is one thing I did in India. The cuisine of a vast country with its cultural whims and ways, means that the food on offer is spectacular and tasty. And trust me, the cultural influence of India is evident in the eclectic nature of the cuisine. Dumplings in India? Whether it is an influence from Nepal or Tibet it is now a Bengali speciality. Being India it is a country that grows all its food, so eating is fresh and cheap! Also, I am a bit of a hungry fella, and for me, nibbling my way around a country is as important as breathtaking sights and meeting the locals. The experience of my stomach is as important as any other experience.

And remember where to get the best food. It is at India’s street stalls. No matter where you go in the country, there is always someone with a little kerosene/gas stove and a handful of ingredients cooking up a delight that will fill up the casual traveller such as myself. Cheap, cheerful and fresh, I never once got sick in my travels through this country and I ate at every imaginable street stall around. And it was not just a diet that did not just kept me in survival but gave me the strength to meet the Khasis, hop on the train, cross a tree root (rubber not bamboo) bridge and watch great movies. I also did a lot more during my second trip to this wonderful land, thanks to the great food on offer. Stay tuned fr more travel tales from wonderful India!

A cup of chai

One of the infinite pleasures of travelling through India is the tea. I love tea, fact. None of this cappuccino crap or bucket sized cups of expresso that seem to swill down the throats of westerners, but a lovely cup of tea will refresh me anytime of the day. I’ll drink it anyhow or anyway, but if I have a preference, it is for my tea to be unsweetened, and if it is a black tea, then for it to have just a dash of milk, although I will also happily drink black tea without the moo juice.

However, in India, tea is very much of the spiced, sweetened and milky variety. And you know what, I love it! Wherever I go for Rs2 or Rs3 a Chai Wallah will serve up his own special brew. I do not need to be scared of dirty water or milk as everything is boiled to achieve the perfect brew. In the morning, it kick starts my day, in the heat of the sun, it cools and refreshes me, and if I need a quick pick-me-up before I head on board a long bus journey, it is a cup of tea that will refresh beyond belief. Thank goodness for this little miracle on India’s roads. And when it is served in a clay cup, you can have the extra satisfaction of throwing your finished cup to the ground – the ultimate in biodegradability! Masters of Chai, long may you continue to refresh the nation!

Egg Rice

I like my rice. Really, I think it is a marvelous grain. Filled with the delights of the paddy field, this labour intensive food is something that I cannot live without. For me, it is the ultimate source of all pleasure that is to be found on a plate. Pasta is bland, potatoes too bulky, bread too boring. Yes, I can deal with teff, but I am not Ethiopian enough to eat it on a daily basis. Corn is fine, so is barley and oats, but let us be honest, there is none of the fluffiness of rice involved with any of those grains. Rice is simply a delightful food, no matter what type of rice is on offer.

And rice can go with absolutely anything. It is such a versatile food. It can be eaten at any time of the day, especially for breakfast! I can’t live without it. Just like tea, it is an import into the UK which if halted would simply ruin my day.

Unlike tea, I am pretty good at cooking rice. But I cheat, I use a rice cooker in order to make sure that nothing of mine gets burned. In fact, I probably use the rice cooker second to the kettle in the order of kitchen implements.

But one thing I am poor at is Egg rice. The best egg fried rice I ever had was in Zhengzhou city. It was 2002, and I came off a twenty four hour journey from Hong Kong. Absolutely shattered, I showed, changed and headed to the nearest restaurant to the hotel. I asked for some tofu and egg fried rice, something I could easily order in Mandarin. Since that day I have tried to find an egg rice that was equal in taste to that plateful. I can remember everything, the smell in the air, the people serving that rice, the absolute deliciousness of that particular meal – singular. I have tried to emulate it and failed. But do not worry, I am still hunting for a bowl of egg fried rice that equals that in delight! The hunt is still young…

The perfect cup of tea

For some reason my tea making skills are pants. Don’t ask me why, but I can never make the perfect cup of tea. And I drink gallons of the stuff. In the morning, I am nothing without a sip of that Asian nectar. Whether green, oolong, red, yellow, black, white or just a simple assortment of twigs and leaves, I will drink tea of any kind, with or without caffeine (although the Chinese and black varieties are infinitely better tasting due to the stimulus).

However, my tea making skills are crap. Surprising, as my coffee tastes really good (although I am no big fan of coffee). The patience needed to brew tea, the ceremony of the pot and the kettle, it is beyond my comprehension. Still, I have an affinity for tea loving countries, hence my passion for travel in Asia. For me, tea is the height of civilisation. It is something that cannot be underestimated in terms of its use as a social lubricant as well as a simple phycological tool.

I need to take more trime for my tea. The fruit of the Himalaya, now grown throughout the world, I very much doubt that this will be the last blog post on this subject. Now I think I am about to make a nice cup of tea…

Genie in a Bottle…

Anytime you take public transport, you will always see some miracle potion being advertised. Take this to make your blood funky, take that to make your bones strong. Pop this if you do sports, have a bit of this to perk you up in the day. And I wonder how many people actually take ‘this’ and ‘that’ to actually get through a day/life.

Anyhow, do we really need all these magic potions? The human body is remarkably resilient, and more importantly, we have access to a really good diet. Many of these advertised tablets are no better than supplements, which are in themselves next to useless in human terms. The body cannot absorb infinite amount of vitamins and minerals. Even water we expel after a while. The only thing the body is really good at absorbing is carbs/fat, which is why we put on weight so easily, it is humanity’s in-built defence against famine. For example, two oranges contains more Vitamin C than the body can absorb in 24 hours.

But there is also something of the ‘panic’ in these ads. An urgency. Well, you get that in all adverts, but for a society that has access to relatively cheap and plentiful food, and a relatively sedentary lifestyle that preserves rather than exhausts our bodies, you have to ask, do we need all those pills and remedies? I am lucky, I have pretty good health, especially for someone with a body clock as screwed up as mine (thank shift work for that). And yes, while swine flu is going to sweep this country this year, this is not 1918. We are a healthier bunch of people than we were 90 odd years ago.

More importantly, why spend money on a pill to enhance the iron in my blood, when I can have a good steak?

How I enjoyed the local food and did not get sick!

‘Fruit and berries on strange planets either make you live or make you die. Therefore the point at which to start toying with them is when you’re going to die if you don’t. That way you stay ahead. The secret to healthy hitchhiking is to eat junk food.’
–Ford Prefect, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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There is a lot of truth to that piece of comedy. If you do not want to vomit, spend eternal hours in the toilet and have your stomach in zombie mode, then the best thing is to stick to fast food. Junk that has no taste. Burgers that have been zapped to death, over-fried chicken and chips. Tasteless but perfectly safe. However, if you are anything like me, then the food makes up a pretty big experience of the holiday. I love cooking, I love food and while shopping for clothes (even my own) bores the hell out of me, I can quite easily spend many hours sourcing the best tasting food. I like eating out, not at the posh restaurants with the haughty service but the local places, where lots of families congregate – the best places for finding wholesome and healthy food. It is those same rules that I apply when I travel abroad.

I can proudly say that I did not get one bit of sickness while in India. Not once did my stomach growl, no diarrhoea, no vomiting, nothing. And I was eating at the kind of places the guidebooks would not even dare mention. So I thought I would share the secret of my success. Obviously, I do have a pretty good immune system, having so frequently travelled in the past. But I also take precautions when I travel abroad and so can enjoy exactly the same foods as all the local people do. And India is filled with great tasting food, so it would be crime to miss out on the delicacies on offer. The cuisine is so rich and due to the vast size of the country contains many local specialities. As is befitting of such a vast producer of food, what you eat is fresh and plentiful as well as being ludicrously cheap. And if all the locals are eating it, then why not the casual traveller? So here are my six simple steps to staying healthy abroad.

1 – Water:

This is so important. Do not touch the local water. Be bloody careful. Unfortunately, this is the one time that I have to endorse bottle water. But if you can, boil your water or filter it. Some of the countries that I have visited have perfectly safe drinking water (US, the EU, Seychelles, Singapore, Malaysia (most of it), Hong Kong) and some do not (Sri Lanka, India, dysentery infested Pakistan and China – but at least that country boils their water as a rule).

Ditto for milk, treat it with suspicion. Not all ice cream and yoghurts may be safe. Be careful. However, hot milk is perfectly fine (yes!), as well tea (oh baby!) and coffee (not bad). Soft sugary canned and bottled drinks (yuck) are great for your sugar rush, but terrible for your teeth.

The guidebooks and health professionals advise you to brush your teeth in bottled water. Mmm. I don’t, I normally use the local tap water. Now, I can only go on my own experiences, and the fact that my gut is not as sensitive as many others. While there is a lot of sense in avoiding the local water, it is a pain to do so when brushing your teeth. Also, my mentality is that I need to desensitise my body to the local bugs, so brushing your teeth, rinsing out your mouth and spitting out the water will mean that only a small amount of bugs gets into your body. It allows some tolerance to be built up, but if you want an official piece of advice, I would always say that you need to seek out a truly qualified health professional, not some funky blogger

2 – If you can’t cook it, boil it or peel it, then forget it.

The colonial masters may have been a bunch of tossers, but they did come up with a great slogan for those sensitive western bellies. If the food is cooked, it will kill all the bugs. Particularly when eating meat or fish. Fruit and vegetables that need to be peeled and/or cooked are also perfectly safe to eat. Mangoes, bananas, pomegranates, pineapples, papayas, mongosteens, durians, jack fruits, lychees, komquats, rambutans, oranges, lemons and limes arre amongst the many fruits that can be peeled and are easily available, cheap and highly nutritious. They will probably not give you any problems.

Melons can be dodgy as they absorb water through their skins, although I have never had a problem with them. Salads are usually washed (worrying) or soaked (yikes!) in the local water and so should be treated with suspicion. Veggies that are cooked are great to eat. Boiling refers to the water and any liquids. Watch out if going up in the mountains as liquids will boil at lower temperatures and so may not kill all the local bugs!

3 – Fire, Steam and Smoke

When deciding where to eat out, these are the three signs that I look for. If I see a hot stove with lots of fire, steam coming off a water or meat being smoked, then the food is being cooked on the spot, and so is going to have the least bugs in it. Also, it is fresh! No matter where you go, if you see the emitting of heat in some form, then it is likely to be fine food cooked to order and not waiting to be served.

Likewise, if the place you plan to eat has a good crowd, then there is a reason for it. Follow the locals, eat where they eat. They know what is good food, what is honest food and what is food that will not make them sick. Better than any guide book recommended eatery. Plus if the restaurant is busy, then the food will not be lying around.

4 – Eat at street stalls.

Now let me qualify this. Not every street stall is going to make you sick. Yes, there are dodgy stalls around and you should look out for them. But street stalls are usually the best places to get your hands on food that is being freshly cooked and that has a quick turnaround time. They are the most likely places to find fire, steam and smoke. Plus they are the most popular place in any town. I have rarely been sick from street stalls, and considering what I have eaten and where I have travelled, that is some achievement.

No street stall in North East India made me sick. And I broke the last three rules at least once while eating at those said stalls.

Much of Asia (in fact much of the world) has a fine tradition of hawker markets where (particularly at night) people get their carts onto the street and begin to cook up one or two dishes from their stalls. They are cheap, freshly cooked and popular. While most guidebooks will not recommend a street stall, I will. But be choosy. Make sure the food is fresh, make sure it is popular and make sure to sample everything available. Usually there is more than one stall in a road, so taste a little of everything. And enjoy the food served on the road, for this is one of the highlights of any journey!

5 – Go veggie!

In many countries (Pakistan) this may be impractical. And in many other parts of the world (Central Asia) this may be no fun! However, at least for the first three or four days, whenever I start travelling, I am usually a vegetarian. Thus gives your stomach a chance to get used to the local cuisine and your immunity a chance to respond. Vegetables, pulses and carbs harbour the least amount of bugs and so is a pretty good place to begin the exploration of the local diet. After a few days, your stomach has had a chance to get used to the environment and so you can start to eat meat, fish etc.

Out of all the meats be careful of pork, horse and dog. Chicken can be dodgy, depends how it is cooked. Beef, Goat, Mutton and Yak have always been good to me. Never tried insects. Offal can be awful but cheap. Snails never gave me a problem.

Fish is one of the wonders of travelling, but be careful of shellfish, they must be cooked properly. Sea fish is great, tasty and is clean – I love sea fish!. Freshwater fish must be thoroughly cooked. No matter what anyone says, eating cuttlefish or any other bottom feeder is asking for trouble, I don’t touch the stuff.

While in India, I was vegetarian for the first three days. Afterwards I was mostly veggie, but I was also eating plenty of the local fish. In the north east of India, the main diet is freshwater fish, rice, pulses and vegetables. Pretty similar to the diet I am used to (sea water fish, rice, pulses and vegetables) and so I was very happy eating the food. Meat was hard to come by, but pork and chicken seem to be fairly popular in the local area if you are hankering for a bit of flesh. To be honest, I just didn’t feel like meat given the intense heat.

In India, there really is no need to eat meat. Vegetarianism is ingrained in the society, and so you can pretty much get all your vitamins and minerals from the veggies and pulses on offer. Just make sure to eat leafy green vegetables to ensure your iron intake is kept up. And rotate your pulse/carbohydrate types to ensure your B Vitamins are up to scratch. If you decide to eat meat in India, then be careful – other than the water, this is probably the quickest way to get sick. Most people I have talked to have had a bad stomach after eating meat in India.

6 – Wash your hands!

The same advice your mother gave you, then follow it!

You have been travelling all day. Maybe on a bus, or hiking somewhere in the dirt. So wash them, especially if there are no pieces of cutlery with which to eat. The locals in India are immaculately dressed and prepared, never coming out of their houses without a sense of style and cleanliness. Travelers on the other hand are the filthiest people in India, mucky pups, half dressed in filthy clothes and smelling of sweat. Wash your hands before you eat. And get used to the left hand/right hand rule. Use your left hand for the ‘unclean business’ and the right hand for eating. It helps.

Food at Easter!

If I was not this sick, normally I would be delighting my taste buds in a fiesta of food, being Easter. However, I am weakly sipping tea and cut lime in an effort to hold down food. So without much ado, here are my taste bud tickles for the Easter period, what I like, what I am not to big a fan of, what is big fat con and what typically delights me:

1) Currant Buns, or more to the point, Hot Cross Buns. Back in the Day, these delightful treats were only available in the last couple of weeks of Lent leading up to Easter. Now available virtually all year round, they have lost some of their appeal in terms of seasonality. Still, when you compare them with those awful sugary muffins, they are far nicer to the palette. Unlike mince pies which can be quickly tiresome, Hot Cross Buns are delightful no matter when they are consumed! Also, their very nature means it is very hard to gorge on these buns and so, you do not feel bloated unlike some other seasonal treats…

2) Easter Eggs, or more to the point, the ‘Cream’ filled eggs. Yuck. Just simply disgusting. Factory by-grade chocolate, over sugary filling thatdrips everywhere. Plus the countless bunny shaped pieces of brown confectionary dripping everywhere. An excuse to get rid of last year’s cocoa harvest. Revolting!

3) Spring Lamb. I like lamb, mutton, goat, in fact anything that is cute, furry and has four legs. Spring Lamb is a bit of a misnomer as if it is sold at Easter, than the Lamb was probably born in winter…hmm…still, it is all good!

4) Fish! Good Friday is traditionally a fast day in the Christian calenders and what better way to celebrate than with fish. Usually in my household this means going crazy on some funky tasting fish, from some tropical backwater that many people beyond the temperate zones have never heard of. And it is all good!!! All of you guys must know how much I love fish and so in and around Easter is a perfect time to spoil myself!

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So there you have it. Tasty (and not so tasty) morsels from Easter. From a European point of view it is an optimistic time, but it really is also utilising the last of the winter stores. New produce do not kick in until June and so traditionally, May is a bit of a scarce month in terms of food as all the stores have vanished for the year. Just as well we are big importers of food in Britain, for now…