Another market

I didn’t associate street markets with Berlin before I arrived, but there’s one at least … the Haeckerstr market, which only operates Thursdays & Saturdays apparently. But I was in luck, and enjoyed it. Small but perfectly formed! There’s fresh produce, and food to eat, as well as craft-y stuff (as well as good shops nearby … a book store, Muji …). On the first visit just browsed, with an espresso from the Italian coffee stall in hand, and later, for lunch, a gozle (have I got that right?) from two Turkish women at another stall. It’s a flat bread, like a pita, with spinach & white cheese worked into the dough, and wrapped around salad. A little too much red onion in the salad for my taste, but apart from that tasty and fresh. That, anyway, was the Thursday. Returned on the Saturday … decided I was going to cook roast pumpkin & feta frittata for the friends I was staying with … so left the market with a small pumpkin & a lettuce for the accompanying salad. The flesh of the pumpkin, I have to say, was a lovely deep orange … very important for the dish, gives it a visual richness. And dinner was a success. Thank goodness for straightforward recipes! I posted it earlier.

Scottish Sunday

Sunday in Glasgow. A fine day, and out walking along a path beside a stream, bird-watching. When you stop and look, so many differents birds, quite surprisingly many. And looking at, looking for birds takes the eye away from the pollution, the plastic, the shoppng trollies, that befoul the stream. However, overall it was lovely, a very British thing to do. And our destination a pub. Only ten years old, D says, but it looks the real thing. So, maybe made of plaster board, but the beams are solid & genuine, and it has an open fire. None of those nasty gas imitations here. The pub’s full of families eating and drinking … it’s near a shopping centre so I don’t think these people have walked here, though some look as though they would benefit from a long walk, or three. But the atmosphere’s good, and if the food is average … but perhaps the Sunday roast was the ‘right’ choice … the beer is good. Just a half of some real ale. Not enough to make me sleepy … there’s the walk home after all … but enough to make it all a very British experience.

Harrod’s

Are the food halls of Harrod’s to foodies what the caverns of Moria are to dwarves? A wonderful place for wandering and ogling. Emerged with a selection of Leonidas chocolates, my favourites, and a smoked salmon roll. Wandered up past Buckingham Palace to St James’s Park, another favourite, to sit by the water and watch the birds … and be pestered by a squirrel, as bad as seagulls on the Picton foreshore! … where I ate my little lunch. Well, not the chocolates, they were for after dinner. Anyway, it was a lovely little interlude in a busy day, and the generous amount of smoked salmon in the roll made me think that the egg mayonnaise sandwich I grabbed from the ubiquitous Pret a Manger was about the same price and far less tasty. In other words, make Harrod’s your local!

London

London, I do love it and it’s many faces. Tatty & run-down … arrive at Heathrow Terminal 1 & see if that’s not your first impression. Splendid … the iconic skyline, the buildings. And reassuringly unchanging. That perhaps is the human face of the city. At the bottom of the road where I’m staying is a market, the North End Road market. It’s just great. Fruit stalls, vege stalls. Fish, cheese. And ’stuff’. It’s not big, but it’s busy, and cheerful (especially if you take being called ‘love’, and ‘darling’, as evidence of good cheer), and seems cheap. Of course, very little is locally grown, or even seasonal. The Peruvian asparagus we had my first night, for example. Is this a treat I wondered, feeling that as a good guest I should eat them, and try to keep them down … asparagus is FAR from my favourite vegetable. And trying not to wonder about the food miles.

Roast duck

There’s a bit of a reluctance, travelling alone, to go into restaurants full of groups having a good time. Better to seek out the cafes where local people eat, perhaps on their way home from work. May not be the haute-est of local cuisine, but good honest food. I was quite pleased yesterday to discover barbecued roast duck and rice from a sort of fast food outlet, Cafe de Coral, at one of the railway stations. Eating it standing up at a counter, beside a plate glass window, in full view of the passing foot traffic … would people stare? But no, not that I noticed, and chopsticks and duck don’t pose any sort of problem for me. So I wasn’t creating a spectacle. And I LOVE that roast duck, so my focus was on the food.

There was a bit more of a chopstick challenge at dinner though … deliciously fatty knuckles of pork, but so hard to manage. They’d provided a fork with the chopsticks, and I wasn’t too proud to use it to impale the meat with my left hand, while I prodded and poked with chopsticks in my right. Free entertainment for other diners? No, they were intent on their own eating.

And, as a postscript, some things in HK may be expensive, but eating like this sure ain’t.

A fine bakery

Back in Hong Kong, back at the same hotel I stayed at the start of last year. The great thing about returning, the immediate locale is a little familiar. A couple of road names known, a couple of small restaurants remembered. But best of all, just around the corner on Nathan Road, a great little bakery. Yamazaki Bakery. Excellent little croissants, and so inexpensive. Also, and this a real treat, delicious egg custard tarts. Those are something I somehow associate with Chinese cuisine … blame that on a taste sensation in Singapore once upon a time. But anyway, I can’t recommend this bakery enough … it’s always humming, mainly young women picking their selections with tongs onto trays … and then can be seen at the bus stop nearby nibbling away.

Anyway, so I’m skipping hotel breakfasts and eating in my room. Very contentedly!

Leaving, on a jet plane

Am at Auckland airport, once again, on my travels. Grazing on an apple & a glass of bubbles as I wait for my flight to be called. Half past ten at night, and the place is busy. Guess none of us will be looking so bright-eyed in twelve hours’ time. I know I won’t! Anyway, a chance to add a few random thoughts …

The garden, now planted up with vegetables for summer. Tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, peas, silver beet. The same as last year. The reassuring cycle of the seasons. I hope, when I return, to find it looking healthy, if not yet bountiful. And, fingers crossed, none of the blight that affected the tomatoes last year.

And last night, a great Kiwi feed, courtesy of our neighbours … West Coast whitebait. Perhaps the fritter recipe in the Edmonds’ Cookbook is not the most flattering way to treat that expensive delicacy, but that’s how we had them. And they were fine. But I do recall once, in a restaurant, having them tossed in a beaten egg and lightly dusted with flour. That was the best ever, but I didn’t feel confident to try it last night.

Lots more I’ve been meaning to say, but it’s not important, can wait. Except to add, we have eaten again at Caffe Italiano in Cuba St since my last post … disappointing this time. I start to wonder whether it’s a franchise, and about quality control. Think it may be time to find a new favourite cheap-ish eatery.

But for now, I’m looking forward to some eating treats in Hong Kong.

Why Sue Bradford is (probably) right

Working at home this morning, an in-depth interview between Kathryn Ryan and outgoing Green MP Sue Bradford distracted me. An impressive interview, and when Bradford’s given the space to talk, to expand on her ideas & experiences, you realize what an injustice her public persona as humorless, battling activist does to her. But it was her thoughts on the economy, and economics, that struck a particular chord. Now, this is supposed to be a foodie blog, so let’s take this back to a supermarket experience, a little epiphany in the aisles. I enjoy a tisane in the evenings and was reaching for my usual herbal tea bags when I saw the price. From the last time I bought them, less than a month ago, the price had jumped from under $3 to over $4. A whopping increase. Unannounced, unexplained, and – as far as I could see – utterly unjustifiable. After all, they’re not petroleum based, transport costs must be minimal per unit … And this got me thinking about the essential POWERLESSNESS of the consumer and the worker in our economy. Why is it all right for the retailer or the manufacturer to push up prices relentlessly, or the employer to push wages down effectively by not matching cost of living increases, but the worker can’t act in the same way, can’t walk into work and say, right, you’re paying me an extra 50 cents an hour from today? Of course I understand why that wouldn’t work, it’d be chaos and societal collapse, but at the same time this inequity illustrates why capitalism is a desperately flawed system if you believe in a fair and just society. And because my tea bags leapt in price like that, well, that’s why I think Sue Bradford is (probably) right about the changes we need in our society. And so … haere ra, Sue Bradford, wahine toa. Kia kaha.

Pot luck dinners

 Something I’m NOT a fan of … pot luck dinners. Sure, they serve a purpose but I just don’t enjoy them. Part of me wants to say, when you come to my house I’m happy to cook and clean up for you, I don’t want to do the same when I come to yours. And part of my dislike of these events – and they’ve been cropping up regularly of late – is never knowing what to make. So I normally don’t go (and NEVER feel I’m missing out!), but there is one exception … the monthly Volunteer Service Abroad branch meeting. A gathering of people who’ve been volunteers and supporters, good people who it’s great to keep in touch with. Usually, coming from work, I grab something suitable from the supermarket but this month was at home during the day & turned to St Annabel for inspiration. Her chicken & noodle with chilli peanut sauce worked a treat. Even if I did end up using egg spaghetti rather than noodles, so a rather unusual fusion going on there. But it made me think, maybe I could put a little tick beside this … just in case I overcome my aversion to pot lucks any time soon.

Date scones

 The long weekend provided a great excuse to get across to the Sounds again. Just the two of us, so a peaceful, relaxing time with only birds for company. Some gardening, some work around the property, but nothing too arduous. And a fair bit of eating. Decided one day that I’d make date scones. After all, how hard could it be? Pulled out the old Edmonds Cookbook and found the recipe. Make a soft dough, divide it in half. Roll out one half, stud with dates, then roll out the other half & place on top. Problem #1. What does a ‘soft dough’ look like? Mine was certainly soft, but would perhaps more accurately be described as soggy. The intelligent thing I suppose would have been to add more flour. But I didn’t, just persevered. The first half of the dough rolled out okay but, despite generous sprinklings of flour, seemed pretty glued to the board. So was the second half. Problem #2. How to get one glued-on rolled-out dough sheet on top of another date-studded ditto?? With a bit of scraping with a spatula and a helping hand, literally, it flopped on top, in a sad-looking mound. Teased it out to sort of cover the bottom layer, but then … Problem #3. It all had to transfer to a baking tray. Placed the baking tray on top, turned the board upside down … Oh dear, it didn’t look pretty, and no way could it be cut into scone sizes with a knife. Nothing for it but to bung it in the oven and hope. The miracle didn’t happen. Well, it did cook, and the end result was decently date-filled, but rather flat in appearance & rubbery in texture. Still, hot out of the oven & dripping with butter, they weren’t too bad. But why didn’t I just make a basic scone dough & mix in a generous quantity of chopped dates, I wonder? That’s what I’d expected to be doing. Shouldn’t have trusted the recipe! But at least I may be a little less critical, or a little more appreciative, of the date scones I encounter in cafés in the future. And will try again, doing things MY way next time.