Food politics

Slow lunch, faster work

May 18, 2013
Slow food and lunch

I’ve got a busy job. It involves a lot of meetings, a lot of running around doing things, sorting things out, making – and sometimes stopping – things from happening. Lately, work has stretched at the seams, slowly drifting into cracks it never reached before … those hours early in the very early morning when [...]

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What makes Skrei cod different?

March 17, 2013
Norwegian skrei cod - a Scandinavian delicacy

Cod is very firmly on the endangered list, and we’ve come to accept that its consumption comes with a healthy dose of guilt. That’s no bad thing – trawling has decimated Atlantic cod stocks over the last few decades, with numbers plummeting. That’s true of Atlantic cod – our main source – but stocks in other [...]

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Horse meat, and where your food comes from

February 14, 2013
Where does your meat come from? Horse meat, food provenance, accountability and traceability

The scandal of horse meat being surreptitiously sneaked into a variety of products that should have contained beef continues to dominate the news, with daily revelations about fraud and generally shoddy practice in the food industry. Today, there have been arrests, and there will be more. This feels like the very tip of a Titanic-sinking iceberg. There’s [...]

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EL BULLI – Cooking in Progress

October 14, 2012
El Bulli: Cooking in Progress

The process of cooking fascinates me, the way in which things change and transform under the eye and hand of a cook, how they become something more than they started out as. I realise the gulf in technique and understanding between an enthusiastic amateur and the professionals … I cook a lot, but I merely [...]

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How to catch, clean and cook garden snails

July 14, 2012
How to cook garden snails

The first thing to say about my very small attempt to farm garden snails for culinary purposes is that its been controversial. “It’s worse than the live crabs in the sink incident“, Jenny said, “but not as bad as the pig’s head in the fridge.” Personally, I think it’s far worse than the pig head [...]

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On simplicity, or maple syrup & citrus marinated pork chops

April 15, 2012
Citrus marinated pork chops, from the Ginger Pig, or why cooking should be simple.

I’ve been on my own this week. When that happens, I don’t cook a great deal, mainly because the routine disappears. When the routine goes, so does my will to cook anything much at all. I get too easily distracted by Other Projects that eat up the evenings, other things that need doing. Time slips [...]

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Hey, that’s my picture! Copyright and the new Internet

March 15, 2012
Copyright and blogging

A while ago, I had a run-in with a particularly nasty woman on a forum over attitudes to copyright issues. If I remember correctly, and of course, I do, because her attitude PISSED ME OFF, she ran a food blog and fancied herself quite the photographer. It all blew out of nothing, as these things [...]

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Turn it up/off…does music make or break restaurants?

March 4, 2012
Bad music in restaurants, or how should a restaurant choose its background music.

We went out for dinner the other evening. The food was brilliant, all fusion noodles and tempura and big Thai curries.  Proper South East Asian food that could maybe have had a slightly bigger chilli kick, but I am a Bradfordian, after all. We like our chillis. The restaurant is in one of those converted warehouse-type [...]

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