Fuddland

Entries concerning the world of food and drink.

One consequence of leaving behind the comforts of home to live an entirely different lifestyle elsewhere is, it forces one to confront those fears or performs those tasks that one has been surreptitiously avoiding for many years. Hence, I have found, not even a month into my new life in here, that I have had to develop a skill that I have been able to work around not having for nearly thirty years…

Read the rest of “Tangerine Dreams”…

The food here is, on the whole, delicious: sticky sweet and sour pork; spicy chicken with peanuts; pickled cabbage and pork; sweet and sour aubergine with sesame seeds and green chillis; dumplings galore — I could go on. The only trouble is, almost every dish that isn’t dumpling- or soup-based has the prefix “deep fried”, and it gets a little much for the system to process. I’m doing my best to eat plenty of fresh fruit whilst I’m at home to flush my system, but I have yet to cook a meal in my flat simply because it’s so cheap to eat out [and our cooking facilities consist of two gas hobs, a microwave and a rice cooker/steamer — no one has an oven, even the fresh cookies at the market are fried].

There is one particular local restaurant where a few foreigners regularly dine, and I have already been adopted into the extended “foreign family” by the owners, whom we all call Māma and Bàba, being allowed to sit at Bàba’s table and join him for a tea/beer/horrible spirit — whatever he’s drinking — whilst he tries to pronounce “David” without the v sounding like a w. But last night I cracked and decided that, after only ten days here, I needed some Western-style food for a change, so a fellow British teacher and I sought out the local fast-food restaurant and ordered a large pizza.

It was the greasiest pizza I’ve ever had, and to be honest the idea of eating it was much better than the actual consumption, so I don’t think I’ll be going back there in a hurry. Instead, tomorrow I’m determined to buy some fresh vegetables from the market and cook myself a meal of steamed vegetables and plain rice — no sauce, and definitely no grease. I can’t wait.

Aside from the five spent out in the Yungas, my days [or rather, our days, as I was travelling with my friend Jo] were largely broken up into two main parts: during the daylight hours, we would go on a hike somewhere just out of town, or wander around the plaza checking out the cathedral and various monuments to people we’d never heard of, or something equally touristy; but come eight o’clock or so, we’d either find a decent restaurant and order two enormous steaks and a bottle of red wine, or we’d buy some ingredients [usually two enormous steaks and a bottle of red wine] and cook back at the hostel.

With apologies to all vegetarians reading — skip to the next paragraph if you like, there’s talk of booze to be found — the steaks in northern Argentina are, hands down, the best I’ve ever had. Thick, thick rump steak [called bife de chorizo, but nothing to with the spicy sausage], but oh so tender. I usually prefer my steak cooked medium-to-well done, but seemingly no matter what you ask for, they generally deliver it at least a little bit bloody, and I found that didn’t mind this one bit, the meal was so delicious. And when it costs somewhere between two and three pounds for an inch-thick steak that would cover my face were I to lie on my back and place its centre on my nose [after waiting for it to cool down of course], it was all I could do to not ask the waiter if they had some kind of beef surplus and were desperately trying to rid themselves of a meat mountain. The downside to all of this is the inevitability of my gradually ceasing to be invited out to dinner by my friends, as they grow tired of me commenting incredulously on the inferior quality and exorbitant prices of the food in this, my home country.

And what better to wash down these amazing steaks [oops, sorry veggies, I forgot I’m not supposed to mention those delicious slices of beef that I sampled almost daily last month], than a good bottle of red wine? I’m not going to pretend I know my Shiraz from my Syrah, but I know the difference between a wine that’s just drinkable and a wine that’s a pleasure to drink, and in my extensive experience all but the very cheapest bottles [and we’re talking seventy UK pennies from the supermarket] in Argentina lie in the regions some way above just drinkable. Pay a quid and a half or more and you’re pretty much guaranteed a nice accompaniment to your steak. [Sorry! To your nut-roast.]

I spent one particularly enjoyable evening with two ladies I’d met at the hostel [an Australian and an American] whilst Jo decided to have a quiet night, sampling a couple of bottles at a deserted little bar with hand-made wooden tables and a very friendly [but not over-friendly] owner on the outskirts of a town called Cafayate. I liked the quiet, relaxed environment so much that I recommended to Jo that we go there on our last night, when of course the rest of the town decided to do the same thing, meaning the owner was fairly rushed off his feet and we had to sit on plastic patio furniture rather than at sturdy wooden tables. But the wine was still good so I didn’t care one jot.

Now, does anyone know how to get rid of a month’s worth of red-wine-tongue? I bet chewing down a good steak would work.

1. Order your groceries from tesco.com [making sure you tell Opera to pretend it’s IE or Mozilla first, as their rubbish browser-sniffing thinks you’re using a handheld device].

2. Include a box of eggs in your order.

3. Receive the delivery and wait until the van has left the area.

4. Ring up the helpline and tell them that the eggs were broken when you unpacked your shopping — they’ll apologise and refund the price of the eggs.

Wonder how many times I can get away with this [and what other readily-breakable items I can order]…

I believe I had my first modern smoothie on Nantucket Island back in the summer of 1998; my cousin was working at The Juice Guys café and I went there fairly often to see how she was doing. They offered a bewildering choice of fruit smoothies and I usually just let my cousin choose one for me, otherwise I’d have been there all day — especially with all the “boosters” like ginseng and honeycomb to pick on top of the fruit itself.

Lately I’ve been thinking that it might be a tad healthier if I replaced the large percentage of my intake that consists of Twixae with a bit more fruit, and so — to save me all the trouble of actually chewing — I’ve invested in a rather snazzy smoothie maker.

I still need to build up a repository of standard ingredients — mostly a stash of a variety of frozen berries to add to whatever fresh fruit I use — but I managed to improvise a fairly nice first attempt this evening: two semi-frozen bananas, three kiwi fruit, some pineapple juice, plain yoghurt, and a few ice cubes. The machine is lovely and simple to use: throw all the ingredients into the jug, turn it on for thirty seconds [it’s loud! No early morning smoothies for me, my housemate will kill me], then pour the smoothie into a glass using the handy tap. I can feel the nutrition coursing through me as I type.

Hmm, I wonder what a Twix smoothie would be like?

Read the rest of “Smoothie operator”…

As seen in a recent episode of E.R., but I honestly thought the writers made it up for a laugh, feel your heart balk and watch your digestive juices head for the hills as you read about how to prepare a turducken: a turkey stuffed with a duckling stuffed with a chicken stuffed with sausage meat.

Any food that requires a stitching together with a large needle and dotton thread, or has phrases like “with another person’s help” in the recipe, is just wrong.