But there are ways to chase the February blues away. Jogging helps (when it’s not raining). So does beer. And of course there’s the Super Bowl, although I can understand it if not many of you are interested in staying up until 3 AM to watch a confusing sport often unfavorably compared to the far more popular rugby.

Call me a romantic, but my favorite way to break up the late winter doldrums is to celebrate Valentine’s Day. (Cue eye rolling.) I know, I know. It’s the sappiest of holidays, mostly advocated by greeting card companies and purveyors of cheap chocolates, and if you’re single it can make you want to commit suicide – or homicide. But hear me out.

Even for romantics, the rituals of Valentine’s Day can become a dreadful chore after so many years of chocolate, roses, and overpriced lobster dinners. It should be fun and exciting for couples, so why do we turn to the same old steakhouses and stuffy French restaurants year after year? Typical Valentine’s meals are heavy, overly formal, and criminally expensive – hardly moodmakers for an evening of love, if you get my meaning. A meal that’s truly romantic requires spice, color, a sense of excitement and a touch of the exotic – but by now, Indian and Thai have grown tiresome. It’s got to be Malaysian.

Anybody worth dating will find typical Malaysian aromas of kaffir lime leaf, lemongrass, chilli, and coconut irresistibly intoxicating, and these days, the UK boasts some truly atmospheric Malaysian restaurants. Up north, you can visit Norman Musa’s Ning in Manchester for a three-course Valentine’s feast of satay, curry puffs, whole fried sea bass, chicken curry, and light, tropical sorbets. In London, there’s Suka at the Sanderson Hotel, which boasts an authentic Malaysian menu served in one of the city’s most stylish venues.

Or better yet, you can impress your date by cooking a Malaysian feast yourself. Classic dishes are remarkably easy and very satisfying, and they fill your house with an incredible perfume. And remember not to skimp on the chilli – they’re an aphrodisiac. The pain signals your brain receives from chilli heat cause your body to release endorphins, resulting in a light, woozy buzz. My old college roommate and I used to challenge each other to do shots of Tabasco sauce for this very reason. Also, we were idiots.

If you’re single, I may have lost you already. But Valentine’s Day is a perfect opportunity to have some friends around, grab a few beers or a bottle of gin, avoid overbooked restaurants and nauseating cooing couples, and knock up some awesome rendang, laksa, or char kway teow. At the very least it will help provide an escape from the gloomy February climate. Which we all need, regardless of relationship status.

For recipes and restaurant info visit Malaysia Kitchen!

Note that these aren’t necessarily things that were opened/launched/published/forged from lava in 2011. Just things I experienced for the first time, or really came to appreciate last year.

Favorite beers!

Bristol Beer Factory Acer: There have been a lot of really delectable 4%-ish, hella hoppy golden ales released by British brewers in the past year, but this is my favorite, brewed with copious amounts of Sorachi Ace hops. Because of the weirdly complex nature of this Japanese varietal, and inevitable inconsistencies related to cask-conditioned beer, Acer is always a little bit different each time I have it – but it’s always bitingly bitter and thoroughly refreshing.

Mikkeller Nelson Sauvignon: I do hope we don’t see the last of this already rare brew, because it’s a jaw-dropper. Playing on the fruity aromatics of the Nelson Sauvin hop – so named because of its similarities to Sauvignon Blanc wines – Mikkeller has used champagne yeast and the wild fungus brettanomyces to produce even more vinous notes, then aged it in Austrian white wine barrels to drive the point home. The result is a real WTF of a beer that gleefully blurs the line between wine and beer. A few other beer geeks and I were left without words when we sampled it on a whim at BrewDog Camden.

BrewDog/Stone Bashah Highland Park and Black Raspberry Reserve: On paper, this collaboration between two of the most rambunctious breweries on the planet sounds like a train wreck, or at the very least, a “throw everything at the wall” type of ill-conceived experiment: a black IPA aged in whisky casks with copious amounts of berries. In actuality, it’s something far more than the sum of its parts, and unlike any other beer I’ve tasted, with fruity hops  and delicate tartness harmonizing beautifully with the richer, more mellow flavors of dark malts and whisky.

BrewDog Mr. Squirrel: I love this beer – and not just because I helped brew it. The game boys at BrewDog helped me put together this completely bonkers strong dark lager, made with 100% Sorachi Ace hops, four varieties of miso, and toasted walnuts. It turned out pretty much exactly how I’d hoped: lushly pork-friendly and multilayered with a full-on proteinaceous body, intense nuttiness, and a jab of salt and fragrant hops.

De Struise Pannepot: In November I went to Belgium, and it rekindled my love for Belgian beer. Pilgrimages to the Cantillon brewery and Delirium Cafe were almost too awesome for words, and completely by chance I found Westvleteren XII on the menu of a cafe. But none of the beer experiences I had were quite as marvelous as Pannepot, an offering as close to the Platonic ideal of a quadrupel as I think I’m ever going to find. It made Westvleteren taste like Leffe by comparison. This is one serious Belgian beer from a serious Belgian brewery.

Honorable mention goes to my collaborative smoked chilli weizenbock with Black Isle, Highland Smog; De Struise’s massively, dangerously complex imperial stout, Black Albert; Camden‘s Inner City Green and Summer Wine‘s Elbow, both hugely hoppy quaffers at under 4%; and just about anything from The Kernel and Marble.

Favorite restaurants!

The food at Racine never ceases to amaze me. I first visited three years ago, by chance – Laura and I wandered in because we were in the area and it has the same name as my hometown. But as soon as the first course arrived, I was enraptured by their deceptively complex French cooking – I say deceptively because dishes like their rabbit with mustard sauce, grouse with Armagnac, and chocolate terrine are presented in a straightforward, unassuming manner, but now that I know a bit more about classical French cookery, it’s obvious that these are really difficult, consummately skillful feats of cookery. I had the pleasure of meeting chef patron Henry Harris on my last visit there, and I couldn’t resist asking him how he makes one of his signature dishes: warm garlic and saffron mousse with mussels. I asked not only because that dish is one of the most magnificent things I’ve ever tasted (and easily one of my top five London dishes of all time), but because its intricacies seemed almost impossible to unravel. He answered with a justifiably annoyed shake of the head, followed by a coy smile and an explanation that was disconcertingly simple: the fundamentals of the dish aren’t hard to follow, but they are very hard to execute. And that’s what makes Racine special: every dish takes talent and practice, and it shows. And what’s more, they’ve got the service and the ambiance nailed, too – it’s one of the rare places you can go for both a romantic date or a pre-museum lunch with your hollering baby nephew and still have a lovely time.

More towards my end of the Piccadilly line, I’ve finally found a Korean restaurant that serves tteokbokki, pajeon, and bibimbap that taste just how I remember them from my trips to Seoul and Busan: Dotori. And it isn’t just the flavors that are authentic – it’s the prices, too. For some reason, Korean food in London has always struck me as unusually expensive; I don’t mind paying good money for good food, and I appreciate the economics of running an east Asian restaurant in London are a teensy bit different from running one in east Asia. But when it comes to to Korean, I just couldn’t shake memories of amazing meals eaten from anonymous street stalls for less than a fifth of what I typically have to pay here for a lower quality product. Dotori’s barbecue and banchan are excellent, and excellent value, and it’s nice knowing they’re only four tube stops away – actually, it’s nice knowing they exist at all.

In a similar vein, I’m a huge fan of Asakusa, which shines like a lighthouse in a sea of overly stylized, sexed-up, overblown and overpriced Japanese restaurants. Asakusa is an izakaya, and a proper one – the carpets are a weird red color, the walls plastered with handwritten menus and faded Japanese beer posters, and the food fantastic. Fancy it ain’t – you won’t find a foie gras roll here. But what you will find are Japanese pub classics cooked perfectly, things like karaage, soft shell crab tempura, dengaku nasu and grilled chicken skin. Healthy? Who cares? This is a place to relax and enjoy yourself with friends and family and a big bottle of Asahi.

If I love Racine, Dotori, and Asakusa for their straightforward authenticity, I love Spuntino because it’s the complete antithesis of it. Spuntino is neither here nor there; on the surface, it’s a meticulous pastiche of a Lower East Side cafe/diner, but the menu reads more like a mashup of arty American and northern Italian with flashes of modern British. Chilli popcorn and a remixed PBJ dessert bookend meals that may consist of chickpeas with squid and ink alongside sliders made with spiced mackerel or bone marrow-studded beef, all washed down with black filter coffee or classic cocktails – or are they classic? Maybe not, but they feel like it. It goes without saying that the food is delicious, but more importantly, it’s joyful and creative, made with an obvious love for its sources of inspiration, but also a willful irreverence that few restaurants have the confidence to pull off.

The Sweet Fanboy Vindication Award goes to The Fat Duck.

The Best Budget Cheeseburger in London Award goes to BrewDog Camden. (Burger Anarchy‘s words, not mine!)

The Style Over Substance (But the Substance is Pretty Damn Good) Award goes to Bob Bob Ricard.

The It’s Not Really a Restaurant, But It’s Still the Best Restaurant In Scotland Award goes to Yatai.

And the Better Than Tayyabs Award goes to Mirch Masala (try the fried fish – it’s the new lamb chop).

Favorite things to read!

I’ve written enough words now. Go read someone else’s!

Ideas in Food: Inspirational modernist cuisine from two of America’s most adventurous cooks.

The Fat Duck Cookbook: Dense, uncompromising, and endlessly useful.

Jonathan Gold: Still the best restaurant critic in the world. Don’t believe me? Just ask the Pulitzer Prize committee.

Cooking Issues: Advanced yet accessible experiments in food science.

Harold McGee on Food and Cooking: If you’ve ever asked yourself “why?” in the kitchen, this book probably has the answer.

For years, I feel like the London food scene has been dominated by this idea that all good food is fine dining, and if it’s not fine dining it isn’t good food (unless it’s home cooked, but that’s different). In 2011 we saw that notion completely inverted, as fine dining took to the streets and lowbrow food worked its way into highbrow contexts. Diners seem to be less uptight these days, and more casual, honest, and adventurous in what they spend their money on. Beer is cheaper, more food-friendly, and more diverse than wine; there’s more to China than dim sum and duck; fusion cooking works when it’s inspired by flavor, not forced by concept; burgers don’t have to be “gourmet” to be good; great barbecue requires as much thought, practice, and care as French haute cuisine. These are all important lessons we collectively learned last year, lessons that New Yorkers and Angelenos learned many years ago. I’m not trying to be snobby or patriotic; there are obviously great things about British food culture that Americans would be wise to take on board. But I do think that until quite recently, most major cities in the US have been more exciting and more diverse food destinations than those in the UK. And I think the UK has taken note of that.

Not convinced? I submit a few more thoughts for your consideration:

• In April, an American won the MasterChef title by serving burgers as a starter. (It was me.)
• There is now a restaurant in London called Burger and Lobster. Burger and Lobster! And that’s all they serve! That sounds like Maine, not Mayfair.
• My completely average corner shop here in Bounds Green sells Sam Adams, Morrisons stocks Sierra Nevada, and Tesco carries Goose Island.
• Ramen is finally coming to the capital.

This last point is important. Ramen’s obviously not American, it’s Japanese, but it isn’t entry-level Japanese. For many people in both the US and the UK, sushi is the first Japanese dish we try, and the first one we come to love. The whole sushi phenomenon is a little bit vexing to me because it’s based on a frustrating contradiction: it seems exotic and sophisticated on paper, but more often than not, it tastes completely inoffensive and bland. Let me just clarify that good sushi is one of the most beautiful dishes in the world; if made with fresh, seasonal seafood and expertly prepared rice, it can be absolutely exuberant with flavor and texture. But for every Yatai there are a hundred outlets of Yo! Sushi or supermarket shelves hawking insipid pre-fab maki that tastes like nothing but rice. And poorly cooked rice, at that.

Because sushi so frequently lacks any flavor at all, it lacks flavors that may be unappealing or challenging. But for that reason, and because it’s fun to eat (even crappy sushi looks pretty and colorful), it’s a good gateway to more interesting Japanese cuisine. We come for the sushi, but we stay for the tempura, the pickles, or the gyoza (and we may even discover good sushi). We graduate from sushi and branch out into other kinds of washoku like okonomiyaki and yakitori. And then there’s ramen. Glorious, wonderful ramen.

If sushi is too often style over substance, then ramen is the opposite. Ramen is unrefined and rough; it isn’t delicate, healthy, or even particularly exotic; but what it lacks in terms of image it more than compensates for with soul. Ramen is one of Japan’s most rich and flavorsome foods, and also one of its most individualistic; whereas soba and udon are considered more traditionally “Japanese” and therefore subject to more rigid strictures, ramen is open to variation because it’s often thought of as not quite 100% Japanese. (Its roots are Chinese, and it’s occasionally still called “Chinese soba.”) Different regions boast different types of ramen, and within those regions, different shops sell endless permutations of that type. The question of which region and which shop makes the best ramen is hotly debated, with loyalties typically divided along prefectural borders.

In New York and Los Angeles, ramen has come to attract the same kind of devotion as it does in its native Japan. It started as an unsung staple among Japanese Americans (and dedicated Japanophiles), but soon caught the attention of the local press, and then the foodie community at large. With outposts like Momofuku injecting a dosage of modern coolness into an otherwise humble food, ramen has gone bourgeois, and it’s now as ubiquitous and essential an American urban food item as the taco or the hot dog. Of course, London has never had a very large Japanese community, so Japanese food has been slower to take off here than, say, Chinese or Indian. But by now we’ve all crossed the sushi bridge, and we’ve arrived in noodle country.

It’s not that ramen didn’t exist in London until now – it’s just that nobody cared, not even the restaurants that sold it. There are a few dedicated ramen shops in Soho that churn out indifferent and totally mediocre soup, while the best ramen in the city has been shrouded behind a speakeasy-like veil of secrecy. Cocoro, Nagomi, and Roka all serve mighty fine ramen, but up until recently, none of them listed it on their menu. To be fair, Cocoro and Nagomi advertise in Japanese-language magazines and newspapers, which is how I found them. I think they just assumed non-Japanese folks weren’t interested, but I always figured that if a restaurant were to serve good ramen and put a little marketing behind it, the foodies would come flocking. And that’s exactly what’s happened with the ramen events held by Tsuru Sushi. So far they’ve generated quite a lot of buzz around their three previous ramen lunches, all of which sold out and received universally positive, sometimes gushing reviews from those in attendance.

When I first discovered Tsuru Ramen on Twitter, my eyes widened and I got goosebumps. It’s happening, I thought. I got a similar feeling when I first discovered Daikokuya in LA back in 2004, but this is exciting on two levels. I was happy that good ramen might become easier to find in London, but it also validated my hunch that there is a general ramen void that needs to be filled. I’ve been planning to open a ramen-centric izakaya since winning MasterChef, and the rousing success of the Tsuru Ramen events seems to be a good sign that the time is right for it. It is possible that ramen may be just a fad – but that’s what they said about sushi.

At any rate, the arrival of ramen, burgers, beer, and highbrow/lowbrow shuffling all makes me feel very at home; I guess it seems like Americanization because to me, it seems like America. London has always been a good place to eat out, but it’s just now becoming a fun place to eat out, and it’s going to be awesome to see what happens in 2012 – and to be a part of it myself.

It’s safe to say that last year was one of the strangest and most awesome I’ve yet to live through.

I started off managing the Euston Tap, yet another job I wasn’t really qualified for but somehow managed to get with relative ease. It started with 80-hour working weeks, scrambling to organize an operation with problems ranging from rude staff to raw sewage, but after a few months we got to a point where I could work only 50 hours a week and I was really starting to enjoy myself. It was never an easy job and it wasn’t one I would have stuck with for long, but I took pride in it, and in the end it was the only full-time job I’d ever really liked. That’s partly down to a very large supporting cast of hilarious and big-hearted characters, both behind the bar and in front of it, and to regular episodes of outlandish comedy and grim tragedy. (On two occasions I had to dig shit out of the toilets by hand, which at the time was decidedly the latter, but in hindsight seems more like the former.) I always felt that the Euston Tap would make an awesome setting for a ridiculous reality show. They could call it The Only Way Is Euston.

Of course, when the MasterChef final aired I was more than ready to move on. Ready, but not at all prepared. As far as career changes go, winning a game show and being thrust into the national spotlight, if only for a moment, is a hell of a way to do it. It was abrupt, immediate, and dramatic. Because of the conflict created by being known for my culinary skill despite having no real experience of professional cooking, there has been the odd rough spot: pop-ups with inconsistent food and service, or demos and classes that were too convoluted to follow. But I’ve learned from my mistakes, and as my kung fu instructor says, you can’t learn to cook rice by talking about it. You’ve just got to do it.

My life has been pretty exciting and chaotic ever since I left Wisconsin, but what followed MasterChef has probably been the most exciting and chaotic eight months of my life. When I heard that I would be going to work at the Fat Duck, I felt a sort of thrill I haven’t felt in years – it was a childlike giddiness, the way you feel on Christmas Eve when you think you might be getting Legos. The two weeks there were incredibly enlightening and educational, difficult but at the same time surprisingly fun. I was also invited to brew my own beer at the Black Isle Brewery and BrewDog; this would have been a dream come true at just about any brewery, but these guys gave me a huge amount of creative control and treated me like a real guest rather than a marketing tool (even if that’s what I was). We made some awesome beers that I’m very proud of, and I developed some lasting professional and personal relationships with them.

There have been big projects like campaigns for Malaysia Kitchen, KitchenAid, and Oral-B, and smaller gigs, like speaking at the Japanese Embassy and Unilever, cooking for Trevor Sorbie, and testing microwaves on the Gadget Show that have all kept me quite happily busy. There is always the fear that the offers may start to slow as my 15 minutes count down to zero. But even when they do, that will be a fine opportunity for me to focus on much bigger projects, like a book or a restaurant – which is already in the works.

Despite warnings from successful restaurateurs – who pretty much universally tell me not to open a restaurant – I still want to open a restaurant. That’s the dream, and I feel like now is the time to do it. Professionally, I’m still well unprepared and inexperienced. But I fear I may always feel like that, so I may as well just close my eyes and jump. Conan O’Brien said something in his interview on Marc Maron’s podcast that really spoke to me:

Get yourself into situations where you don’t have a choice. I really think that’s the definition of accomplishing a lot of things in this life. I have some part of me – because I’m not a brave person, I don’t think of myself as someone who has a lot of guts – but I will get myself into situations where the house is on fire and there’s only one way out, which is through the front door. And then people later on give you credit for going through the front door, and well, there was really no where else to go… the only way out is to survive it. If I had been taken off the air after six months, I would just become a Trivial Pursuit question.

I’m also not a brave person. I’m not very assertive or confident, but one thing I’ve learned about myself through MasterChef and everything that’s come after it – and this is probably true of most people – is that I can do things that I never thought I could do if I have no choice but to do them. I said before that it was awkward to be asked to run kitchens or cooking classes without any experience, and that I was unqualified for my job at the Euston Tap; I wasn’t just being self-deprecating. I really had no practical knowledge of how to run a pub except for a fairly good knowledge of craft beer. When I started, I had never changed a keg; I didn’t know how to condition ale; I had never cashed up, made rotas, or ordered supplies; and I faltered. I made mistakes and I struggled, but I had bosses, co-workers, and customers that were counting on me, and so I had no choice. I had to, as they say, shape up or ship out.

And that’s how I feel about opening a restaurant. It just has to be done. And I think it has to be done sooner rather than later because now is such an exciting time to eat out in London, and I think that my restaurant will fit in nicely with current food trends while also filling a long-standing void. I’ll speak more on that in my next post.

I love British food and the UK food scene in general, but I must say street food is something I’ve sorely missed since I moved here three years ago. Ever since my college days in Los Angeles, I’ve lived off street food. Back then it was tacos, burritos, and quesadillas sold out of trucks, on perfectly breezy nights both sober and less so. The issue of which taco truck was the best on the boulevard was debated with passion and jingoistic loyalty. We loved our trucks, so much so that we thought nothing of waiting nearly an hour to get our food and didn’t mind that snarky Beverly Hills types ignorantly referred to them as “roach coaches.”

When I moved to Japan, I lived in Fukuoka, which is on the island of Kyushu, Japan’s dirty south. Aside from murderous late summer humidity and the occasional typhoon, the weather on Kyushu is warmer and more conducive to outdoor eating than other parts of the country, and so I took many of my evening meals at yatai, the red-lanterned street stalls that lit up the backstreets and banksides of Fukuoka city. Hearty pork ramen and gyoza dumplings, or simply grilled meat on a stick were the perfect pick-me-ups before or after a big night out.

And of course, all my travels around east Asia were fuelled by street food. In South Korea, it was spicy rice cakes, blood sausage, and waffles; in Hong Kong, stinky tofu and tea-stained eggs; in Taiwan, beef noodles and dumplings; and in Burma, there was grilled squid, fried chicken, and samosas. If memory serves me correctly, on my first trip to Thailand I don’t think I had a single meal within four walls; everything I ate came from a stall, a cart, a truck, a bicycle, or just a basket balanced on someone’s head. And I ate well – very, very well. The only reason I deviated from the street food path on my second trip to Thailand was because I was a travel agent, and I was forced to evaluate hotel restaurants. Dreadfully boring, that.

In 6 years of travelling and eating, I’d developed a love and appreciation for the food of the street, so I was dismayed to discover that such a culture doesn’t really exist here in Britain. The basic units for casual, inexpensive eating in Britain are the pub, the cafe, and the home – all of which I love, but they don’t replace the experience of a hot meal enjoyed in the air of a cool night. But then that’s just the problem – British nights (and days) aren’t really cool, they’re downright cold, even in the summertime. Couple the weather issue with a beloved pub culture that dates back for centuries, and it’s not surprising that street food never really took off here.

That is, until now.

The recession, while in many ways tragic and dispiriting, has had in my opinion a positive impact on the way people dine out in the UK. Increasingly, people want value for money, so we’ve seen a thrilling boom of eateries that are unique and delicious, but still affordable, with the creativity and skill of fine dining applied to casual scenarios. In 2011 counter service trumped table service as the country devoured exciting and exotic food at prices that make eating out a day-to-day activity. And at the center of this activity was an exaltation of street food.

But what of the weather? The British have always been admirably defiant in the face of terrible weather, almost going so far as to celebrate it. And while a cold and damp climate may not seem suitable for dining out doors, there may be no better context for enjoying something hot, spicy, and aromatic. Malaysian food fits the bill perfectly – when we took to the streets with the Malaysia Kitchen Street Food Tour truck in late November, it was a joy to see how our nasi goreng, chicken satay, and char kway teow brought visible warmth to the cheeks of all who tried them.

London, Nottingham, and Manchester are a world away from Kuala Lumpur, Melaka, and Sandakan, but that may be precisely why our Malaysian street food went down such a treat. Who couldn’t use a little exotic escapism during these bitter winter months? With its lively aromats, sweet sauces, and fiery chillies, Malaysian cooking can transport you, if only for an instant, to a more equatorial state of mind. Yes, we had the occasional confused shopper trying to order burgers. But after one bite of our food, their faces lit up – the thought of burgers vanished, and all they wanted was more Malaysian food.

Luckily, you don’t have to wait for the Malaysia Kitchen truck to roll into your town to get your spicy street food fix, because these days there are more Malaysian restaurants in the UK than you may realize. To find the Malaysian restaurant nearest to you, visit the Restaurant Finder at MalaysiaKitchen.co.uk. And if there isn’t a restaurant nearby, don’t forget that Malaysian food is easy to cook at home, and the right ingredients are readily available on the internet!

What do you do on a Friday night? Maybe you relax at home with a takeaway (there’s no shame in that), watch a movie and generally zonk out. Or maybe you hit the pub, the one roughly halfway between your office and the train station, and stay there for a few hours until somebody suggests you all go to Pizza Express or something. Or maybe you go to the cinema, which can so often be a surprisingly stressful ordeal, what with all the monstrously overpriced snacks, 20 minutes of advertising, and the inevitable person who persists in talking throughout the film. (Or maybe you are that person, in which case: shame on you!)

We go out on Friday night to relax and have fun, and yet so regularly we end up doing things that are neither relaxing nor particularly fun. One of the best Friday nights I’ve had in recent memory was Malaysia Night, a massive takeover of Trafalgar Square in celebration of all things Malaysian. To my knowledge, there’s nothing quite like it in London, and it was amazing to walk around the square and experience the palpable happiness and pride exuded by the exhibitors, vendors, and visitors alike. Traditional dance, arts and crafts, and travel info were all on colorful, enthusiastic display, but of course, I came for the food.

And what food it was. More than 20 Malaysian restaurants had set up shop, which was great to see, because in honesty I didn’t even know there were that many Malaysian restaurants in London! It opened my eyes to a whole new food culture on my doorstep that I hardly knew existed. I am not ashamed to say I stuffed my face, which I have a tendency to do when surrounded by delicious food. First up was rendang with roti canai from Pelangi – incredibly tender beef, braised for hours in a sauce of coconut, lemongrass, and ginger, served with traditional flatbread. Succulent and aromatic, it’s no wonder this is considered one of Malaysia’s national dishes.

Next, I sampled some specialities of the Terengganu region, keropok, a delicious sort of fish sausage, and some fish crackers which were absolutely amazing. Imagine prawn crackers made with mackerel and less grease; they’re exceptionally moreish and make a great snack or accompaniment to a variety of other dishes. I then moved on to the Tukdin stall, where I devoured a few of their delectable curry puffs: flaky pastries concealing a lush, satisfying potato curry, like a sort of refined Malaysian pasty. The kind of food I could happily eat several times a week, simple yet undeniably tasty.

As my internal fuel gage approached full, I settled on a final dish, sambal sotong from Delima: tender chunks of cuttlefish smothered in a brick-red, fiery hot sauce. It was so good I greedily snarfed the entire plate, even though I was full to the point of discomfort.

Like I usually do at good food festivals, I was disappointed with myself for getting too full to carry on eating, because there was so much more I wanted to try. But I left with an understanding of the British Malaysian food scene that I didn’t have before; the sheer amount of restaurants there excited me, and the the food was revelatory. With so much good food available, there’s no need (and no excuse) to settle for bland, boring, and safe! I am determined to shake up my Friday night routine every now and then with a visit to my local Malaysian. Malaysia Night comes just once a year, but with so many great Malaysian restaurants around, there’s no reason every night can’t be Malaysia Night.

Fancy a Malaysia night in? Don’t forget that Malaysian food is cheap and easy to make at home! See my first Malaysia Kitchen blog for more info.

First and foremost: cooking. I will be working as a stagiaire in some of the country’s best restaurants, the names of which I cannot reveal, but rest assured they are led by some of my culinary idols. They are unpaid gigs, and I’m sure I will be on the very bottom rung of the kitchen ladder, but to have opportunities like these is a real dream come true and I am beside myself with excitement. I’m also scared out of my mind.

Additionally, I will be establishing myself as a caterer and consultant for private and corporate events. I’m doing a few parties and pop-ups in the near future, but the catering business won’t really get going until the end of the summer, when I’ve finished most of my stages and have more time to focus on setting it up properly. I intend for this to be my bread and butter for the next year, so I want to do it right.

Meanwhile, I am appearing in the MasterChef Experience at the Good Food Show in Birmingham, this June 15-19, along with my contemporaries Tom and Sara, as well as John, Gregg, Dhruv, Mat, and other MC alumni. Stop by to watch us cook and say hello!

At the end of June I’ll be heading up to Scotland to do something I’ve always wanted to do: brewing. And I’m going to go nuts with it. I’ll be spending three days with BrewDog producing one of the most insane lagers the world has ever seen, then cooking a beer dinner at their restaurant Musa in Aberdeen (details to follow). After that I’m trucking up to Black Isle Brewery to make another properly bonkers beer, and I have been discussing the possibility to brew with yet another respected Scottish brewery while I’m up there to make a neat little hat trick.

On top of all this, I plan to doing a bit of writing and recipe development for various companies, new digital media projects, a few appearances here and there, and I may also have a hand in curating an art exhibit and even making music. The people who I have met through my newfound notoriety have generally been lovely, and I’m thrilled about my upcoming collaborations.

Finally: the restaurant. There is a restaurant in the works, though it’s all quite nebulous right now. It would be disastrously foolish of me to think that I could immediately open up shop with virtually no experience, so while I am starting to meet with potential backers, I am going to take my time and build up my understanding of kitchen mechanics and restaurant management before I begin to solidify any plans. But the goal is to get the ball rolling early next year, for an opening late next year.

It’s all happening now. I am grateful for the continuing support I’ve had from my family, friends, and fans. It’s such a lovely feeling when people tell me they’d love to try my food, and I promise that soon enough, they can!

This self-congratulatory proclamation adorns countless food packages around the Anglosphere. We’ve all seen it, on bags of potato chips or Chinese takeout menus, on instant noodles or those “just add meat and sour cream” Mexican meal kits. Oh thank heavens, we think when we spot it. This food is safe. This food is natural. This food is good.

MSG must be one of the most maligned chemical compounds in existence. Imagine a frozen pizza label, with an image of gooey cheese and glistening red pepperoni, enthusiastically marked “Contains MSG!” In terms of point-of-purchase advertising, it may as well say “Contains POISON!” Nobody would buy it, and the company would be laughed out of business.

But why? Why does everybody always gotta hate on the glutamate? The dubious badge of MSG-free honor has become so common and platitudinous – much like “low fat” or “organic” – that nobody seems to question what exactly is so wrong with MSG in the first place. It’s as though people assume that because a food producer would make a point to declare their product void of MSG, then it must be bad for you. Clearly this is silly; if potato chip packets suddenly started announcing that they were “low in vitamin C!” we would be skeptical of the reasoning behind such a claim. But we are so accustomed to the idea that MSG is unhealthy that we accept it unthinkingly.

Perhaps it is time for us all to reconsider MSG. There is so much hearsay surrounding it that it may be best to start with some clear, simple, possibly mind-blowing facts:

1. MSG is a naturally occurring compound present in many traditional foods; it is not an artificial flavoring nor a modern invention.
2. MSG has never been conclusively demonstrated to cause health problems in clinical studies; reports on its potentially negative effects are largely conjectural or anecdotal.
3. MSG can be added indirectly to food via products containing free glutamic acid, frequently rendering the “no MSG” label inaccurate, misleading, and/or pointless.
4. MSG is a very pure form of umami, and it can help make food taste fantastic.

First, a bit of chemistry. MSG is the initialism for monosodium glutamate, a common salt of glutamic acid, which is one of twenty amino acids that combine to form proteins in living organisms (other well-known proteinogenic amino acids are tryptophan and lysine). Glutamic acid is a non-essential amino acid, meaning that the body synthesizes it naturally from other proteins and uses it for things like metabolism and neurotransmission. Salts of glutamic acid such as MSG or monopotassium glutamate are used (directly or indirectly, via other foods that are naturally high in these salts) to add umami, or savoriness, to foods. Umami is a Japanese word that literally means “delicious flavor,” and it is now commonly recognized as the fifth basic taste, following bitter, salty, sweet, and sour. Umami’s position as the “fifth element” of gastronomy reminds me of quintessence, especially because it is so fundamental and omnipresent in cooking.

Next, a bit of history. In 1908 the Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda set to work trying to figure out what it was exactly that made his wife’s dashi so damn tasty. He began experimenting on konbu, the dried kelp that is used as the base of all Japanese master stocks. He discovered two things: 1) umami is a separate and distinct basic taste that contributes a savory character to food, and 2) glutamic acid and its salts are responsible for the umami in konbu dashi. He went on to patent monosodium glutamate under the name Ajinomoto (“essence of flavor”), which to this day is a top-selling global brand of MSG. (Years later, two other umami-producing compounds would be discovered, inosinate from katsuobushi and guanylate from shiitake mushrooms.) I was about to write that MSG has been enjoyed in Japan for over 100 years, but I caught myself because in actuality it has been enjoyed there, and here, and everywhere, for much, much longer. For as long as we have made stocks, cheeses and pickles and eaten peas, pork, and tomatoes, we have been relishing glutamic acid in all its myriad manifestations. Common, traditional foods particularly high in glutamate include soy sauce, miso, aged cheese, wine, beer, kimchi, scallops, asparagus, and yeast extracts like Vegemite and Marmite.

I had planned on trawling the internet for an assortment of common claims about the negative health effects of MSG, but as it turns out, I didn’t have to – this guy has done it all for me. His name is Steve and he seems to be quite an interesting fellow. Likes include freshly brewed coffee, spreading Christianity around Africa, and demanding to see Barack Obama’s birth certificate (here you are, sir). Dislikes? Messing with Texas, the antichrist, and most of all, MSG. Steve’s list of grievances with MSG is long, and his tone histrionic. The many, many side effects he attributes to it range from the familiar (migraines, obesity, “Chinese restaurant syndrome”) to the extreme (Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, death) to the bizarre (drunkenness, autism, night terrors). He compares MSG to marijuana and crack, and claims that “Cantonese food would taste like dish water” without it. He is an active geyser of misinformation and hysteria.

Steve’s claim that he has solved his own personal health problems by eliminating glutamates from his diet may well be true. (His claim that a friend becomes “literally drunk” from MSG is probably not quite so true.) If his tachycardia went away by cutting out excess glutamic acid from his diet, good for him – I have no way of disproving that. But almost all his other claims are unfounded, and in fact many are called into question by sources that he himself cites. It would take me ages to wade through them all, so let’s just take a couple at random:

One article linked from the “Truth In Labeling” site that supplies Steve with most of his information cites a 2002 study meant to provide evidence of MSG-induced damage to the nervous system. The study involved feeding rats a diet of MSG for three months, finding that the rats had a buildup of glutamic acid in the vitreous humor and suffered from retinal damage. Scary. But the citation itself says that the rats were fed 10 grams of MSG a day. If that doesn’t sound like much, consider that lab rats weigh 500 grams on average. Even if we’re generous and suppose these particular rats weighed one full kilogram, then the math makes this study practically inapplicable to humans. I weigh 75,000 grams, probably about average for a human male. The rats were getting 1 gram of MSG per 100 grams body weight; this means that for me to eat an equivalent amount I would need to ingest 750 grams daily. This is an impossible amount – imagine three sirloin steaks and you’re in the ballpark. Hell, most of us wouldn’t even want to eat that much steak on a day to day basis.

Another article correlates a rise in MSG consumption with the rise in obesity in the United States. Could MSG cause obesity? Perhaps – it does so in rats, according to some studies. But let’s look at these studies more closely. Here again we see an unrealistically high daily dosage of MSG being administered to the rats, 2.5-5 grams, or on a human scale, about 200-400 grams; and yet they describe this as “concentrations that only slightly surpass those found in everyday human food.” They then conclude that MSG “exhibits significant potential for damaging the hypothalamic regulation of appetite, and thereby determines the propensity of world-wide obesity.” Does it? Let’s look at this handy pie chart: China, Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand are among the largest consumers of MSG in the world. And what do these countries have in common? If you answered “they’re in Asia,” you’re correct. But more to the point, they aren’t fat countries; in 2007 the WHO reported that in China only 28.9% of the population was obese, in Indonesia only 16.2%, in Japan 22.6%, and Thailand 31.6%. Out of 194 countries they rank 148th, 175th, 163rd, and 144th for fatness, respectively. None of these countries could be said to have a serious obesity problem, which isn’t definitive evidence that MSG doesn’t contribute to a higher BMI, but it certainly suggests that the contribution is trivial if it exists at all. “Truth In Labeling” ignores more important factors even as it lists them: “overeating, inadequate diet, junk food, lack of exercise, psychological problems, genetics, and bad parenting.”

What I glean from all this research is that MSG is probably slightly neurotoxic, but only in concentrations far beyond what a normal person would consume. I could be wrong, and if I saw conclusive evidence that MSG causes dementia or nightmares or blindness or whatever then I would admit it. But so far I have yet to see that evidence. To people like Steve who claim all manner of personal health problems brought on by MSG, I would simply shrug and say, “sucks to be you.” I think most of us would agree that there’s nothing inherently wrong with with peanuts or lactose, and yet some people have peanut allergies, and some are lactose intolerant. Sucks to be them. And if you think that MSG gives you headaches or diarrhea, then I’m afraid it sucks to be you, too.

Why does it suck to be you? Because MSG is a wonderful, wonderful thing to cook with. It has been pointed out that MSG is only necessary when the food it’s applied to is bland on its own. There is some truth to this; MSG can add a moreish quality to food that would otherwise be fairly flavorless, which is why it’s found in so many industrially manufactured food products. But then just imagine what it can do to food that’s already good. I am reminded of my days in Japan. At some point it dawned on me why the plain grilled pork belly at my usual yakitori bar tasted uncommonly delicious; why Japanese mayonnaise is far superior to the American version; and why Parmesan cheese tastes surprisingly good in ramen. It’s because the pork, the mayo, and the cheese all contain MSG, which makes them exceptionally mouthwatering, savory, and bold.

Just last night I made some BLTs, and after dinner I had some leftover tomatoes and avocados (they were actually BLATs). I decided to sprinkle on some MSG and gobble them up. Somehow it just made them taste more of themselves – fresher, sweeter, brighter. It’s similar to adding salt, but different – it adds a depth and a satisfying aftertaste that can only be described as a big boost of umami. Of course there are other ways to add umami to food: dashi, soy sauce, Parmesan, ketchup, etc. But MSG is the most pure. It allows the original ingredients to shine without any interference from superfluous flavors, and that’s what makes it so lovely.

You can try an experiment at home. Get yourself an ingredient – meat, fish, vegetables, it doesn’t matter. Divide it into four portions. Leave one unseasoned. Season one with salt. Season one with soy sauce. Season the last one with MSG. (You can get it at Asian grocery stores, or even at mainstream supermarkets if you look carefully.) Cook them all the same way, any way you like, then taste them, and you’ll get a good idea of what MSG does and why it can be so useful. (As a twist to the experiment, find a friend who claims to be MSG sensitive, blindfold them, give them the food and see how they react.)

As cooks and eaters we are denying ourselves a tremendously useful ingredient for no good reason. Of course there may be minor health risks from eating too much MSG, as there are from eating too much of just about anything. But in terms of flavor, it takes us where ordinary salt can only dream of going, into the deep, shadowy, sensuous world of umami. If MSG is risky, then it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

On their main page, the authors of “Truth In Labeling” proudly and prominently display a catchphrase that’s as pithy as it is desperately stupid:

If MSG isn’t harmful, why is it hidden?

I retort and close with a quotation that’s equally pithy (and a little glib) but much more incisive:

If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn’t everyone in Asia have a headache?

Further reading:

Dashi and Umami: The Heart of Japanese Cuisine by Yukiko Takahashi

“The Day I Ate as Many E Numbers as Possible” by Stefan Gates, BBC News

Amateur molecular gastronomists like me often seem to start their self-education with the same introductory lesson: spherification. The process was developed by Spanish culinary demigod Ferran Adrià, and his creations based on the technique have become international emblems of progressive cuisine; olive caviar, pasta-free ravioli, and eggs that look like eggs but taste like (wow!) truffle and asparagus are among the many marvels of spherification. The technique yields food that has a certain ooh-ahh visual impact, a lovely burst of pure flavor, and at its best, a “how did he do that?” sense of wonder to it. Spherification is actually pretty easy once you work out the dos and don’ts, and the ingredients you need – sodium alginate and calcium chloride – are available and affordable on the internet. It is probably the combination of accessibility and impact that make spherifcation a popular starting point for forays into culinary chemical arts.

Although it is well-known by the small (but growing) community of progressive chefs and gastro geeks, spherification isn’t really known or practiced much in common home cookery. Which is why I was surprised, and also delighted and slightly angered, to discover that the fish roe I used to garnish my Christmas canapés wasn’t actual roe at all but liquidized fish that had been spherified! Our suspicions arose when we noticed the flavor wasn’t quite right – not bad, just less salty and sweet and more smoky and meaty than roe usually is. And sure enough, the ingredients confirmed that we were actually eating a puree of smoked herring, dyed black and made into little balls with sodium alginate. And I got this at Sainsbury’s for four pounds – spherification for the masses! I was excited to find that this little nugget of avant garde cooking had found its way into the mainstream, but I also felt tricked. I thought I was buying roe! That’ll learn me to not read the label (I should have at least noticed the alarming description “reformed herring product).

But I actually liked the fake roe, and some of us actually preferred it to the real thing (typically I just get lumpfish roe, which isn’t great anyway). The smokiness in particular matched the smoked salmon nicely, and it seemed to give the dish a big boost of umami. There is something circuitous about using spherification to make fake roe (why not just use real roe?), but even so I think it was a clever application of the technique, and it made me wonder what else might work in a spherified form. Can you imagine pancetta caviar, maybe on a grilled oyster or scallop? Or melon caviar on Iberico ham? Soy sauce caviar on sushi? Yum yum.

Of course, there is a dangerous element to spherification, and that element is surprise. Half the fun of spherification in its basic form is expecting one thing and getting something else – but therein lies a potential risk as well. An exclamation such as “It’s not caviar after all, it’s licorice!” could be uttered with delight just as easily as it could be uttered with disgust. Heston Blumenthal writes in The Fat Duck Cookbook:

I was in Kyoto to make a presentation on umami at a food workshop. For breakfast one morning our hosts took us to a temple… waiters brought out bowls of rice that had been cooked in dashi until it had broken down. Resting on top of this was a small pool of dashi reduction that had been thickened with starch. It looked exactly like a bowl of porridge with a blob of honey or golden syrup in the middle. I’d had this before and knew what to expect… some of the others weren’t so lucky. They expected one thing and got another, and the barely concealed grimace on their faces suggested that only respect for our hosts was keeping them from spitting it out there and then.

I imagine the surprise of spherification, is pleasant only when the diner expects a surprise, but doesn’t know what that surprise will be. And that comes down to reputation, service, and atmosphere. Guests at The Fat Duck or El Bulli (or Noma or The French Laundry or Ryugin) must know that they’re in for some surprises, and that things may not be what they seem. It’s a risky game to play, but chefs that can make the element of surprise work in their favor introduce an extra layer of excitement and emotion to their cooking. And to me, it can turn a great meal into a thrilling event, and ultimately a treasured memory.

Tomorrow: our love is sphere to stay.

1. “vajazzling“
2. “vuvuzela“
3. “Eyjafjallajökull“
4. “squeakquel“
5. “Cleggeron“