ARE YOU HUNGRY?
10 June, 2007
This is the first question Burmese people will ask you. A new friend, chance encounter, date, business meeting all require this polite
enquiry. It tells a great deal about this extraordinary country and its gentle people.
And the food is delicous. Balanced flavours and textures always accompanied by a kind of marrow soup and roasted salt chillies
on the side. Fish, light curries of meat and vegetables dipped in shrimp paste, accompanied by plain or coconut rice. Familiar ingredients
often appear in unusual friendships. Fried fish with onions and radish, jellied seaweed. All rounded off with any number of exotic fresh
fruits.
For Burma was the garden of Asia. More fruits and vegetables grow there than anywhere else in that vast continent. Rich in minerals too,
by all standards this should be a rich country, very rich.
But of course these people have tried desperately to find their prosperity otherwise. Their inner calm, generosity and care for each other
as delivered through the teachings of the monks has sustained and some would argue held back this suffering people. Starved by their rulers
for decades, now the unholy alliance of freak weather and political sadism is driving them to their deaths in thousands. Since the
September uprising, the filthy hands of the generals have been tainted by disgraceful rises in the cost of rice. A simple way to keep the
people down. Make their children suffer.
And now it seems nature has done the same. One in three of those who have died and will do so in the wake of the cyclone are children.
Life in the Irawaddy Delta has changed beyond recognition. I have seen photographs taken in Rangoon, showing destruction almost reaching to
the central townships of the city. And we are about to witness a devastating rise in water borne disease, raising the final death toll to
unimaginable levels.
Meanwhile we enjoy our food, as we should. But as we eat we should remember the lives that are being carelessly thrown aside by those
who fatten on a land they have stolen from their own people.
TENDER WORDS
Tender (2009) tells the story of Nigel Slater's love affair with his garden in
Islington and the many seedlings he has raised in his box-hedged vegetable patches. It’s a magnificent volume, like a medieval knightly
treatise with pictures of his Eden, its produce and many of the recipes he has created from them.
23 May, 2010
FOOD FROM THE HEART
Cooking is a basic human instinct. We’ve been eating, chopping, shaping, flavouring, enticing ingredients into something delicious
since time began. But as the way many of us live has changed, the basic skills we require to cook, are no longer valued and it’s often easier to
let others take control of what we eat.
21 April, 2010
IN A RIGHT FISH STEW
This week we had sustainable fish stew. It’s a quick and easy way to feed a gang of hungries on a Friday night and
doesn’t need much else but some good bread and wine. Like all stews, you need balance, rich liquid and a range of potent flavours steaming
from your pot.
15 March, 2010