It's A Small World

It's a small world - and getting smaller by the day. But despite cheap air fares and the relative ease of crossing national borders, I still haven't managed to visit very many of the world's countries. Just 19 at the last count, or 10% of the world's 192 UN Member States.

But what can't be achieved in the real world can be done in the wonderful virtual world of the web. Although I can't talk directly to most of the planet's diverse peoples, I can extend an arm of friendship through the medium of the internet. So far this month my blog has received visitors from 116 different UN Member States. To all of them, and to readers from an additional 31 UN Member States who visited me earlier in 2009 - thank you for stopping by here and do come back again soon.



To everyone in Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa, Cuba, Djibouti, East Timor, Equatoral Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Malawi, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Nauru, Niger, North Korea, Palau, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Suriname, Togo, Tome & Principe, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu and Vanuatu - I know that poverty, lack of infrastructure and, in some instances, political interference can make internet access difficult if not impossible, but do visit me if you can. You'll be very welcome.

Maps courtesy of World66.

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Feasting On The Silk Road

When the first weblogs appeared just over a decade ago, they were exactly that - logs or diaries on the web. Food blogs soon emerged in which the authors, keen to share their daily experiences with a global audience, described their home cooking activities and favourite recipes. Some still do that with a consummate professionalism that utterly belies their amateur or semi-professional status - Kalyn Denny's Kalyn's Kitchen and Elise Bauer's Simply Recipes are just two of many shining examples.

After a while, new types of food blog began to emerge. These were the products of writers with a different mission - to educate, inform and entertain in areas of specialist knowledge and expertise. Regular readers of this blog will know that, with no disrespect to the former group, it is this latter group of food bloggers that most turns me on. Especially those who attempt something radically new - those who tread where none have stepped before.

Laura Kelley is such a radical author and I fell in love with her blog the moment I first came across it. So I was delighted to discover that Volume One of Laura's cookbook trilogy, The Silk Road Gourmet, is about to be published by iUniverse and thrilled to be invited to review it. Laura describes herself as a renaissance woman - and as someone who can lay claim to being a writer, public health analyst, anthropologist, photographer, musician, wife, mother and much traveled gourmet, that seems like a well-deserved title. I've been unfair in calling her work a cookbook because it's far more than just a collection of recipes. The Silk Road Gourmet is a voyage of discovery in cultural anthropology that, like the blog that spawned it, examines the cuisines of those societies that flourish along those ancient trading routes between Asia and The Mediterranean that we've come to know collectively by the epithet The Silk Road.

Over some 3,000 years of history, those routes formed a conduit through which thousands of merchants traded silks, satins, perfumes, medicines, jewelry, glassware and human slaves from China in the east to Rome in the west. And they introduced items of food produce and spices - fresh, dried, ripe, in seed form, ground and as oils - to societies which had never encountered them before and which readily incorporated them into their national cuisines. Laura explains: "I began to notice distinct patterns in the use of ingredients by Asian peoples sometimes separated by thousands of miles. For example, pomegranates — the use of which began in Iran in antiquity — are now common ingredients from Georgia... to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.... Successive Persian Empires ruled all of these areas at one time or another... Another example can be found in the distinctly Southeast Asian elements present in Sri Lankan cooking. In this case, lemongrass and roasted rice reveal strong connections between the island nation and countries of that region. Consulting the histories of trade and diplomacy... we find out that there was a vibrant maritime trade... that Sri Lanka had with Burma, Thailand, and Malaysia." Most of us have some degree of familiarity with the food of the Indian sub-continent, Malaysia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam and some of the many distinct cuisines of China. But if you want to discover something of the amazing culinary world of such countries as Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kirghizstan, Nepal, Tibet, Burma, Bhutan, Indonesia, Mongolia, Korea, Laos, Cambodia, The Philippines and Taiwan and how these cuisines have come to be inter-related through the influence of the passage of trade along The Silk Road, then these books are for you. Of course, you don't have to share Laura's anthropological interest in order to enjoy these works. Full of recipes that can be prepared in as little as 15-30 minutes, you can just open a volume, turn on the cooker and settle down for a delicious feast. I'll be doing exactly that! Volume One - Western and Southern Asia - will be available from the end of June 2009 through Amazon online and from Barnes & Noble. Volume Two - The Fusion Cusines of Central Asia, the Himalayas and the Pacific and Volume Three - Eastern Asia and the Pacific - publication dates will be announced later. For more information, see Silk Road Gourmet books section.

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The End Of The Line

"Imagine an ocean without fish. Imagine your meals without seafood. Imagine the global consequences. This is the future if we do not stop, think and act." This is the stark message brought to us all by Charles Clover, former Environment Editor of The Daily Telegraph and author of The End Of The Line, made into a documentary film by Director Rupert Murray and released in British cinemas this week. Unsustainable use of marine resources is a subject that's very important to me - I'm proud to have carried the logo of The Marine Stewardship Council in my sidebar for a long time now.

Murray's film should do for our oceans what An Inconvenient Truth did for climate change - bring the issue of unsustainable fishing into the public consciousness and shame governments around the world into action. Over-fishing means entire species of fish are under threat and the most important stocks will be in a state of collapse by 2050. The film points the finger at those most to blame - including celebrity chefs - and shows what we can do about it. This is not just a film - it's a campaign for sustainable consumption of fish, for marine protected areas to allow the sea to recover and for a new ethic of responsible fishing.

The End Of The Line campaign is supported by conservation organisations and individuals world-wide.

Organisations include Bite-Back, The Blue Ocean Institute, COAST, The Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, The Marine Conservation Society, The Marine Foundation, The Marine Stewardship Council, Monterey Bay Aquarium, The Natural Resources Defense Council, Oceana, The Pew Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, The Project AWARE Foundation, Save The Whales Please, The Sea Turtle Restoration Project, The Shark Trust, The Waterloo Foundation, The Wildlife Trusts and WWF and individuals include HRH The Prince of Wales, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Ted Danson, Greta Scacchi, Emilia Fox, Terry Gilliam, Sienna Miller, Jemima Khan, Laura Bailey, Alicia Silverstone, Charlize Theron, Zac Goldsmith, Sting, Trudie Styler, Geri Halliwell, Stephen Fry, Richard E. Grant, Elle Macpherson and Lenny Henry.

We can all do our little bit in different ways. Scacchi, Fox and Gilliam posed naked in a stunt aimed at drawing media attention to the campaign to save the bluefin tuna. I'll pass on that one - but as a chef, I pledge to campaign for fellow chefs to remove endangered species from menus and as a future restaurateur only to serve fish ethically sourced from sustainable stocks. The film has already prompted retailers such as Marks & Spencer and Pret à Manger to announce new policies on sustainable fishing, the removal of endangered tuna species and the switch to pole and line methods of catching in which Sainsbury's and Waitrose had already taken a lead. Some celebrity restaurateurs such as Aldo Zilli have already stepped forward to make the most important first step - removal of the bluefin tuna and other critically endangered species from their menus, along with the restaurant chains of Soseki, Moshi Moshi, Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Itsu and others. The devil of the piece, widely reported in the media including one of my favourite news sources The Kitchen Rat, is Nobu. The global chain of Japanese restaurants favoured by the rich and famous continues to serve bluefin tuna, despite the global campaign. Nobu Berkeley Street has added a note to the menu pointing out the threat to the bluefin and inviting diners to ask for an alternative. It's hard to find words to describe such an attitude.

I can't get to see the film myself as I'm working long hours including evening shifts here in Spain. But I can urge you to seek out a UK screening or a US screening if you are in those countries and to hunt out details if you are elsewhere. Meanwhile, here's an early version of the promotional clip for the movie:

If, even after that, you're still addicted to those tuna sandwiches and don't know what to do for a replacement, Matthew Fort in The Guardian has some useful suggestions. If you are still unable to break the habit, Sophie at Mostly Eating can offer you tips on ethical buying of tuna.

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Strawberry And Coriander

Pork and apple, tomato and basil, and duck and orange are just a few examples of classical food pairings that are recognised and reproduced across the world's cuisines. Then there are less well-known flavour combinations such as avocado and lobster, spinach and nutmeg and chocolate and salt. These emerged through centuries of experimental home cooking and became an integral part of regional cuisines. But there are other pairings that emerged only with the benefit of modern science. Molecular gastronomy, through identification of common volatile compounds, brought us cocoa and garlic, mango and pine, trout and peppermint, liver and jasmine, carrot and violet and banana and parsley.

Strawberry & coriander is a combination that first came to my attention a couple of years ago. Hosted by Evelyn Grauen of Bounteous Bites as a challenge to cooks and a part of the Molecular Gastronomy series They Go Really Well Together from Martin Lersch's blog.khymos.org, this pairing competition received a great response across the food blogs. I assumed at the time that it was a novel idea, but it soon became clear that the pairing had some history. There were suggestions at the time that it might have originated with Ferran Adrià, but I've seen no evidence of that. Nicola & Bill Donnelly from Melbourne, on the other hand, photographed this hearty Aussie Breakfast of Champions in January 2001.

Along with foamy strawberries with coriander from Martin of blog.khymos.org, responses to TGRWT3 included berry guacamole from Johanna at Green Gourmet Giraffe, strawberry and cilantro terrine from Helene of Neues aus der Kueche, strawberry salsa from Amrite at Le Petite Boulangette, strawberries with campari and coriander filling from Robert of lamiacucina, roasted coriander ice parfait with marinated strawberries and green tea sauce from Klaus of der Kompottsurfer, coriander custard with fresh strawberries from Alexis at See Us Eat, strawberry shortcakes with a coriander buttermilk biscuit and balsamic cream from Mari Gordon of Mevrouw Cupcake, avocados with strawberry salsa on crispy tortillas from Jen at Milk and Cookies, strawberry and coriander smoothie and strawberry and coriander dessert from Dennis of Kookjegek and strawberry-coriander cake with coconut glaze from my good friend Sarina Nicole at TriniGourmet. Thanks to Martin for letting me use these thumbnail photos.

There have been several other dishes created since - a scan through Flickr or a search through the food blogs reveals several inventive combinations. But the reason I'm writing this post is because of one particular dish that nearly didn't come to fruition... but eventually did. One night early last summer while I was working in the kitchens at Comerç 24, I observed Head Chef Arnau Muñío experimenting with some new creations. He was trying various combinations with strawberries, but with no apparent success. "Why not try coriander?" I ventured, "...poaching the strawberries in a sugar syrup infused with coriander stalks and garnishing with a fresh coriander leaf". My initiative was not met with an enthusiastic response. I got the distinct impression that chef would never pair strawberries with coriander if he lived to be as old as Methuselah. A few weeks ago, before leaving Barcelona, I spent a great celebratory couple of hours out on the town with Arnau and members of his kitchen team. Inbetween mojitos, Arnau leant across the table and clasped me firmly by the shoulder. "Let me tell you about this new dish I'm putting on the menu", he confided. "It's a great flavour combination and quite unique." You can guess what came next. There's still a very deep smile of contentment on my face now as I think about it. Postscript: Martin Lersch has kindly invited me to host a round of TGRWT this summer, which I'll announce here later. Meanwhile, perhaps you'd like to suggest the topic for my round via a comment on this post. Here are the food pairings explored thus far and here is a list of possible combinations.

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