Making tofu is a rewarding project; it’s a fairly involved process and the clean-up is a pain, but it isn’t difficult, and the end result is well worth the effort. If you’re among the initiated few who love tofu – or, better yet, if you have always thought tofu was bland and pointless – give it a go. It’s lovely.

This recipe is for what’s called nadofu, an obscure type of tofu from rural Miyazaki prefecture that’s studded with vegetables. Just omit the veg if you want plain tofu.

You will need:

300g dried soy beans
3.5L plus 180mL water
90g fresh vegetables (I’ve used 60g purple sprouting broccoli and 30g carrots)
8g salt
18g Epsom salts

a blender
a big-ass pot – should be at least 6L if you have it, but 4L will do; if you haven’t got a pot that big, you may want to scale down the recipe
a big-ass container
a colander, perforated tray, or tofu press
a flat plate, lid, or board that fits into your colander or tray
a slotted spoon (or another, smaller colander)
a spatula
a sieve
muslin
something big and heavy, like a brick or a jar of pickles
a knife and cutting board and stuff

1. Soak your beans with about 3 times their volume of water. They need at least 8 hours. I soak ‘em overnight.

This is actually 1kg worth of soaked beans.

2. Puree the soaked beans with some of the water in your blender. You’ll have to do this in batches, and be mindful that the mixture will froth up. Get the mixture as smooth as possible – leave them blending for at least a minute. Add the puree along with any extra water to your pot. This is your soy milk. Theoretically you could skip this step entirely and just use store-bought stuff. Theoretically. I haven’t tried it. There tends to be loads of other ingredients in pre-packaged soy milk – sugars, salt, preservatives, cocaine, etc. – that may interfere with the coagulation and setting of your tofu. So I have no idea if it actually works.

Wet beans into smithereens.

3. Bring your soy milk to a very gentle simmer. You’ve heard the expression ‘a watched pot never boils,’ right? Well in this case, that’s a good thing. If your soy milk boils, it won’t affect the outcome of your tofu, but it almost definitely will boil over. If you’re a food science geek, you’ll already know that soy lecithin is an excellent foaming agent. So unless your pot is really, really big, don’t let the milk boil or you will have a lot of mopping up to do. Take it from me – I’ve made this mistake before.

Frothy.

4. Simmer your soy milk for about 20 minutes; this is to cook out the beans’ protein, and the aroma will go from a starchy, grassy, raw green bean-like smell to a delightful, sweet, cake-batter like smell.

5. While your milk is simmering, prepare your veg. The veg will cook in the soy milk all at the same time, so cut them into small pieces bearing in mind their respective cooking times – I do the carrots on a mandoline so they’re quite thin, and separate the broccoli florets from their stalks, which I then split down the middle and cut into small chunks. The veg should end up very tender but not soft.

Note the use of a color-coded board. Health and safety first, kids!

6. Line your colander with muslin and perch it over a big container. Ladle or pour the soy milk into it. When the dripping slows, work it with a spatula. eventually you’ll end up with a fibrous pulp. Keep pressing down on this pulp to extract the milk, or, if it’s not too hot, bundle the muslin around it and squeeze it out like a sponge. The resulting dry matter is called okara, and it’s actually quite useful and crazy healthy, with tons of fiber and protein. The Wikipedia page on okara has several ideas on what to do with it, and it freezes well if you haven’t got an immediate use for it.

It kinda looks like mashed potato. It don’t kinda taste like it.

7. Pour the strained soy milk back into your pot and add the veg and the salt. Bring it back to a simmer and cook until the vegetables are just tender (bear in mind they will carry on cooking in the hot tofu until it cools).

The carrots sunk. But they’re in there.

8. Stir the Epsom salts into the 180mL water until it dissolves completely. Then add this solution to the soy milk and stir, and then let it sit for a good 5 minutes to let the proteins coagulate. By the way, if you have nigari – Japanese salts specifically blended for tofu making – use that, it will give your tofu a less granular, creamier texture. But I’ve never seen it in the UK, so Epsom salts will have to do.

9. Prepare your press: you can use a colander or a perforated tray, or better yet, a tofu press. It’s a pretty arcane piece of kit, but if you love tofu and plan to make a lot of it, it’s invaluable. I got mine on ebay for like £20. ANYWAY. Line your press/colander/tray with muslin and perch it over another container to catch the whey as it drips out.

10. Scoop out the coagulated soy milk and veg with a slotted spoon or a small colander. Tilt and gently shake the spoon to drain off excess liquid, then place the curds into your press. Carry on doing this until you’ve separated all the curds. At some point you’ll want to switch to a sieve for this job, as the globules get smaller and smaller.

At this point, you could just gently drain the curds, dish them out, and enjoy them with a splash of soy sauce or tsuyu and some sesame seeds – this is one of my absolute favorite ways to have tofu. Still warm, loose, and creamy – it simply melts in your mouth. Like a delightfully delicate cheesy custard, but far lighter and cleaner. Yum!

Breakfast of champions.

But if you want firmer tofu, or you’re saving it for later…

11. Weigh down the curds with a plate or lid or board or whatever so that all the extra moisture is pressed out. Today I used a container of sauerkraut, which was in turn being weighed down by a bottle of water. It was a mighty tower of liquid extraction. In the past I have also used a bottle of premium domestic vodka (pictured). Average, imported vodka will NOT DO.

12. Wait for an hour or so. At this point, your tofu should be just firm enough to remove from the press and slice. If you want it even firmer, just leave it in the press for another hour.

Trick your kids into eating tofu by telling them it’s nougat.

And that’s it! The tofu will keep in the fridge for a few days, or you can pack it in brine and let it ferment, in which case it can last many months.

With the nadofu I serve a simple sumiso sauce: white miso, rice vinegar, a little sesame oil, and mirin, blended to taste. It should be a thick but pourable consistency. Chilled down this also makes an exquisite hiya-yakko, or you can fry it up for the classic agedashi tofu.

Hope to see you this weekend!

Save the date.

The next event will be a launch of our soft cream! Soft cream is what they call soft serve ice cream (Mr. Whippy) in Japan, and it’s found in countless wonderful flavors, often showcasing local specialities. We’re going to continue this custom at Nanban, featuring two rotating soft cream flavors at any given time.

You’ll be able to try our first batches at the Euston Cider Tap on March 9 and 10! But I want your input on what to serve – here are some of the ideas I’ve been considering. Choose any four that sound the best to you, and you may get to try them in a few weeks!

The second most common question I get asked on Twitter (after “When is Nanban opening?) is “I’m going to Japan; what/where should I eat?”

It’s a tricky one for me to answer. Giving specifics can be perilous; if I recommend a restaurant, there will be a chance that it’s closed down, it’s not good anymore, or that my fondness for it had more to do with specific contexts than the food itself. If I recommend a dish, there’s the chance that whoever’s asking might try a poor version of it, or that they simply won’t like it. Even among people who like Japanese food, I admit that my tastes can be a little strange.

So I think maybe the question is flawed. A better one might be: “How should I eat in Japan?” I can give specific recommendations, but that would impose unnecessary limitations on a country full of great food that’s best approached with an exploratory mindset. Instead, I think it’s better to give general guidelines for making the most of your trip. So here are a few general dos and don’ts to keep in mind.

Do research and plan ahead. The first question you should ask yourself (and answer) when you’re planning a holiday to Japan is: what do you want to get out of this trip? Do you want to indulge in Tokyo’s opulent Michelin-starred fine dining, or the refined kaiseki cuisine of Kyoto, or the street stalls of Fukuoka? A little of everything? Do you want to experience the “greatest hits” of Japan, or enjoy some of the country’s lesser known destinations and dishes? Do you want to cover a broad geographic spread, or are you happy to stay in one or two locations? Answer questions like these and then get to work.

Find out about local foods by trawling the internet or asking a travel agent. You can either plan your trip around them (like I do), or decide on an itinerary first, and then see what each of your destinations is known for. Either way you’ll have great food. In most towns you’ll be able to find the local specialties without much of an effort, but I’d recommend deciding on a specific restaurant or two and printing out maps of them, because Japanese addresses are useless nonsense if you’re not accustomed to them (and even then, they’re pretty screwy). And that goes for everything, not just restaurants. Mobile data is expensive in Japan, networks are patchy, and wifi is rare – you won’t be able to rely on Google Maps when you’re out and about.

Keep seasonal produce in mind, and try to eat a lot of it – like white peaches in summer, matsutake mushrooms in autumn, citrus fruits in winter, and fiddlehead ferns in spring. Memorize the names of foods and drinks you want to try. Remember what they look like so you can identify them on menus and signs. Print out train and bus routes and timetables if you’re dining out beyond city centres. Double-check restaurant opening hours – they often close on odd days of the week. It is totally possible to have a good time and eat good food if you just wing it, but it’s more likely if you make a plan. Save spontaneity for after dinner (and then go nuts).

Ask locals for help. English language ability is not great in Japan. It’s not like going to Paris or Amsterdam. That said, most people will still be more than willing to help best they can if you’ve got questions, using a combination of piecemeal English, gestures, and maps or pictures. Hotel concierges, station attendants, shop workers, and police officers have all helped me out with directions or with recommendations for good restaurants or bars when I didn’t know where to go. And on more than one occasion, I’ve been offered help without even asking when I looked obviously lost and confused. People are nice.

Be polite. It should go without saying that you should also be nice. But I’ve seen a lot of foreigners in Japan act like entitled, obnoxious assholes. Nobody will expect you to know all the rules of Japanese etiquette, but a little decorum will make things more pleasant for both you and your hosts. You’ll have a better time if you smile apologetically a lot and learn to say arigatō and sumimasen.

Carry cash. And lots of it. Eating out in Japan is not cheap in general, and it’s less common for restaurants to accept card payments than it is in Europe or America. Furthermore, almost all Japanese ATMs have set operating hours, and you won’t be able to get cash out after a certain time, depending on the day of the week. So be prepared. I forgot this rule one night during my most recent trip, and I had to run around for an hour (no exaggeration) looking for an open ATM so I could pay our bill. Not fun.

Stay in a ryokan at least once. Shacking up in the traditional inns of Japan, which are found all over the country in both cities and the countryside, is a great and easy way to try a wide variety of foods. Typically a ryokan stay is inclusive of dinner and breakfast, both of which are often impressive multi-course feasts of local foods prepared by traditional methods. Last time I was in Japan I had two such dinners; one of them included delicious mountain vegetables and sashimi of a certain fish I’d never had before and probably will never get to have again; the other included around 30 immaculately presented individual dishes, all delightful and unique. A feast like this, accompanied by sake and followed by a dip in a hot spring and then bed, is one of the most deliriously relaxing and satisfying experiences you can have not only in Japan, but in the whole world.

Slurp some noodles. Soba, udon, ramen, etc. – they’re all good, and pretty much everywhere in Japan has its own special variation on at least one of them, like miso ramen in Sapporo, Shinshū soba in Nagano, hōtō in Yamanashi, Sanuki udon in Shikoku, or tonkotsu ramen in Kyushu. And learn to slurp. The way to eat noodles – especially ramen – is by aggressively hoovering in mouthfuls of noodles, guided through your chopsticks. This helps you inhale a good amount of soup along with the noodles while simultaneously drawing in cool air to prevent scalding your mouth. Once you get the hang of it, it’s great fun.

Buy souvenirs. In most countries, souvenir stands are the last place you’d look for good food. Not so in Japan, where a culture of ritual gift giving has given rise to an amazing array of confections, snacks, and spirits available in train stations and hotel lobbies. The word for souvenir, omiyage, is written using kanji characters that literally mean “produce from the earth,” or in other words, “stuff from around here.” Instead of generic biscuits like you’d find at Luton or Edinburgh airports, you get treats made with celebrated local ingredients like sweetcorn and cheese in Hokkaido, sweet potatoes in Kagoshima, or eel in Hamamatsu. The majority of these are not available except in the place where they’re made, so not buying them when you have the chance is a missed opportunity, and they’re an easy way to get a quick taste of an area even if you’re just passing through.

Visit (super)markets. This is an obvious tip for finding good food just about anywhere, and of course it holds true in Japan as well. Tsukiji in Tokyo and Nishiki in Kyoto are two of the most frequented by tourists, but this doesn’t make them any less impressive. Even if you don’t plan to buy anything, they’re great for just taking in the sights and smells. And be sure to visit supermarkets and department stores’ subterranean food halls – the former are good for fruit, snacks, and ingredients to bring home, and the latter offer beautiful pastries, good booze, high-quality picnic fodder, and excellent, jaw-droppingly expensive fresh produce, including the legendary ¥10000 cantaloupes you may have read about.

Go to a festival. Summer is the season for festivals in Japan, but if you do a little planning you can usually work at least one into your itinerary regardless of the time of year. And sometimes you may just happen upon one unexpectedly. Festivals are great for cheap, often unhealthy food suitable to an atmosphere of beer-fuelled revelry: fried chicken, okonomiyaki-wrapped hot dogs, soft cream, buttered potatoes, and squid on a stick are some of my favorites.

Don’t avoid “convenience food.” Some of Japan’s tastiest treats come from fast food chains, train station kiosks, vending machines, and convenience stores. In particular, ekiben – station bento – should be at the top of your must-eat list. Often featuring miniaturized versions of local dishes, these lunchboxes are one of the most enjoyable things about domestic travel in Japan and it would be a shame to miss out on them. I fondly recall a bento from Kagoshima that contained small portions of ten different local specialities, which allowed me a little taste of the things I didn’t get to try during my stay, and a happy reprise of some of the things I’d already enjoyed.

Like train station fare, convenience store fare in Japan is entirely different from what you find in the UK and the USA, partly due to their unique distribution model that allows multiple deliveries of fresh food throughout the day. The sandwiches, onigiri, and salads very rarely sit on the shelf for more than 12 hours. They also boast more variety than you might expect, and are a good place to find cool KitKat bar flavors, like red wine or melon.

Don’t dine sober. Local drinks taste good; a little Dutch courage makes you more open-minded to try strange foods; and with a drop of booze in you, you’re more likely to ignore the language barrier and get to know some locals. A couple of pre-meal beers can often make the difference between a not-bad dining experience and one you’ll remember with great fondness. (Too much, of course, and you won’t remember much of anything. So be careful with the chu-hai!)

Don’t skip breakfast. It’s advice we should probably all heed even when we’re not on holiday, but it’s especially true when we are. Hotel breakfasts in Japan are usually surprisingly delicious and diverse, whether they’re Western-style buffets or Japanese-style set meals. Miso soup in the morning is as invigorating as any cup of coffee.

Don’t limit yourself. You don’t have to eat Japanese food exclusively to eat well in Japan. In fact, considering it’s a country where ethnic minorities make up less than 2% of the general population, the quality and diversity of non-Japanese food is often surprising. If an excess of rice or miso or soy sauce has you feeling fatigued, go get some pasta, French pastries, or Korean barbecue.

But of course, you should also always keep an open mind, even when it comes to things you’ve already had. When I first had mentaiko, the chilli-cured cod roe famous in Fukuoka, I thought it was really quite weird. But after a few tries I came to love it. I know several people who’ve said they never liked sushi until they went to Japan, because it’s just so much better there – if you cross sushi off your list because you think you don’t like it, you may obstruct yourself from a potential gastronomic revelation.

Don’t be afraid. On my very first trip to Japan, back when I was a goofy and awkward 17 year old, I spent an embarrassing amount of time in my hotel room watching anime because I was too overwhelmed by my surroundings. I still had a good time, and I more than made up for it on my research trip in 2005 and in the two years I lived there, but if you’re only in Japan for a couple weeks, make the most of it! A friend of mine once said that Japan is the easiest place in the world to have fun. I’d say that’s pretty true, but you have to let it happen. Go to arcades, go to strange bars, do karaoke, do purikura, bathe naked with strangers, and try as many foods as you can. You’ll have fun and eat well as long as you are open to all the amazing experiences Japan has to offer.

Resources:

Blogs are a good place to start. Kavey and MiMi have very helpful posts on Japan. And so do I. Most of them cover Kyushu – Fukuoka (beer and ramen), Nagasaki, Kumamoto (including Kurokawa and Aso), Kagoshima, and Miyazaki – but I’ve also written about Tokyo, Sapporo, and Osaka.

Tofugu has a wonderful list (broken up into northeast and southwest) of three notable foods from each prefecture in Japan – with pictures!

Hyperdia and Jorudan are where to go for train timetables. They give the same results, so choosing one is just a matter of which interface you prefer.

For more advice, get in touch with Inside Japan or the JNTO.

It all seems so arbitrary. But I’m not so much angry at the food trendsetters as I am at myself for paying attention to them. One of my favorite restaurants in London was a place called Muna’s, on Green Lanes. They served Sudanese and Eritrean food. Delicious, unique cooking. But when we left Turnpike Lane, we stopped going there. I could blame it on the distance, but we only moved two tube stops away. In truth I was too busy stuffing my face with burgers and hot dogs and fried chicken and whatever else everybody was talking about at the moment. I wanted to taste what all the fuss was about – and I’m glad I did. But now Muna’s is closed.

Could they have marketed themselves better? Maybe. But they were a modest business that relied on locals and regulars to make money; they didn’t have a PR team, they weren’t in a cool part of town, and they’d never been featured in a magazine or blog. I always wondered if they were struggling; apparently they were. I wish I had gone back, not just because I feel guilty for not supporting them, but because I really liked their food, and now I can’t have it anymore.

This is just a roundabout way of saying that while following or forecasting food trends can be fun and rewarding, doing so doesn’t make the most of a city that boasts an enormous wealth of culinary diversity. In 2013, forge your own path. Do your own thing. Find your own favorites. Enjoy exploring!

I’m having trouble getting into the Christmas spirit this year. I’m not sure why. I like Christmas, and I like Christmas food, and I especially like Christmas music, but yesterday at the supermarket the smell of ripening Stilton combined with the sound of Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews howling “Baby It’s Cold Outside” stirred in me a sensation I can only describe as homicidal queasiness.

Today we put up the Christmas tree and listened to Alvin and the Chipmunks and Vince Guaraldi, and that made me feel better. But then we switched on the TV. I was raised to be skeptical of advertising; I didn’t trust it as a kid, and as an adult I find most of it insulting and obnoxious. This time of year it’s even worse than usual: bizarre, faux-artistic and borderline-pornographic perfume ads interspersed between Iceland commercials hawking a “luxury” hog roast and Waitrose commercials claiming they’ve spared expenses in their advertising budget in order to give more money to charity – as explained by two of the country’s most highly paid celebrity chefs.

And yet, I’m not against the commercialization of Christmas. In fact, it feels weird to refer to it as such, because I’ve not known a time when Christmas wasn’t commercial. I went to Catholic church as a child, but the the “true meaning” of Christmas never moved me much, and I’ve always mainly thought of it as a time when people get together, eat, drink, be merry, and give each other gifts. And what’s not to like about that? It’s such an appealing notion that it transcends religious allegiances. Many of my friends back in high school who were brought up in Hindu homes exchanged presents at Christmas, and even the outspokenly anti-religion celebrity zoologist Richard Dawkins celebrates with his family and enjoys traditional carols. The social/familial aspect of Christmas is what has always appealed to me, and the commercial aspect is inextricably tied to that. Shared indulgence in food and drink and the giving of gifts are both acts of pure consumption – and they’re what I love most about Christmas.

On that note, I give you my holiday gift guide. While the TV ads do their damnedest to convince us that Christmas shopping is a mindless endeavor oriented towards impersonal items intended for interchangeable, imaginary recipients, I believe there is still a special joy in finding just the right gift for just the right person (especially if that person is you). Here’s hoping you find that gift.

AeroPress and Guji Coffee
Amazon, £24 and Has Bean, £7

It is not an overstatement to say that the AeroPress has changed my life. I no longer make coffee any other way; my moka pot is now strictly ornamental, and my dual-function filter/espresso machine sits, neglected and sad, in my attic. Both have been wholly replaced by the AeroPress, which works like a cafetière under pressure, and makes impeccably full-flavored and nuanced coffee in 30 seconds – faster than brewing a cup of tea. For full-on coffee enlightenment, I recommend trying it with Ethiopian Guji coffee, which has a remarkable, distinct aroma of blueberry muffins.

Slurp! A Social and Culinary History of Ramen
Amazon, £55

I met Barak Kushner, the author of the first comprehensive English-language history of ramen, earlier this year after being introduced via e-mail by Emma Reynolds of Tonkotsu fame. The guy’s amazing, and so is his book. Straddling the line between academic text and popular history, it delves deep (like 10,000 years deep) to tell a very comprehensive, rightfully complicated story of what is arguably contemporary Japan’s national dish.

My Neighbor Totoro and Totoro Plush
Amazon, £8 and Otaku, £23

Japanophilia starts at home, and at an early age. Ensure your youngster develops a fondness for the aesthetics and literary themes of modern Japanese culture with this pairing of Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece and a cuddly toy version of its titular character. Actually, who needs youngsters? Both gifts are awesome even for fully grown adults. (I bought these for my 2 year old nephew and I’m kinda jealous.)

Dashi and Umami
Eat Japan, £25

People often ask me to recommend a Japanese cookbook. It’s usually this one. It covers fundamentals and classic dishes as well as more creative, refined recipes from some of Japan’s top kaiseki chefs. Plus, it contains a lengthy appendix explaining key ingredients and the science of umami, and how it’s integrated into Japanese and other cuisines.

Macarons and More
Macarons & More, £3-17

The original Tim from MasterChef is Dr. Tim Kinnaird, who was a finalist in the series before mine. The good doctor has since quit his job as a pediatrician and now runs a pastry business in Norfolk. The first time I met him he got tipsy and repeatedly informed me that I’m “living the dream” – and so is he, by the looks of things. His macarons are the best I’ve had anywhere, with an immaculate texture and a range of delightful flavors. My current favorites are chocolate orange and rose (but he should really bring back matcha).

Mince Pies for Charity
The Mince Pie Project

Mince pies are awesome, and you have to eat as many as possible around Christmas because they’re inappropriate any other time of year. Like making jack-0-lanterns in March. Just weird. The best way to get your mince pie fix is by bidding on a batch contributed by any of the 100 awesome chefs in this year’s Mince Pie Project, which auctions them off in support of the charities Galvin’s Chance and Crisis. I’m making my pies under the Nanban banner, with a Kyushu theme: a crust made with green tea from Yame; Kagoshima sweet potato filling with shochu and umeshu; and a soft caramel topping spiked with Oita yuzu-kosho. The auction ends at noon on Friday, so hurry up and bid while you can!

Lucky Peach
McSweeney’s; single issues, £7; four-issue subscription, £17 (plus shipping)

Too much food writing these days plays it safe and dumbs it down. We should be exploring and celebrating the infinite complexity and diversity of food, but so many mainstream chefs and journalists are still bent on making food ever more simplistic and innocuous. Not so with the publishers of Lucky Peach, who cover a huge range of topics in a variety of intriguing formats. It is a delightful and stimulating cacophony of art, science, history, journalism, and recipes; issue 3 features an essay on contemporary foodways in Mali, a recipe for chicken and waffles, and an impassioned editorial arguing that “cooking is dying” all within the span of a few pages. One issue contains a Choose Your Own Adventure-style travelogue about tacos. Another has a recipe using monkfish stomach. Its list of contributors reads like a culinary Lollapalooza lineup: Anthony Bourdain, Fuchsia Dunlop, David Chang, Jonathan Gold, Ferran Adrià, Harold McGee, Mario Batali, etc. What do you get for the foodie who has everything? Probably this.

Japanese Kit Kat “Flavor Journey” Collection
Sushinoms, £60

Is it silly to spend £60 on thirty miniature Kit Kat bars? Of course it is. But what if said Kit Kat bars came in exotic Japanese flavors like red bean sandwich, wasabi, purple sweet potato, hōjicha tea, and ichimi chilli? If anything can justify spending £2 on 12.3 grams of industrially made chocolate, I reckon this is it. This rare and unusual box set, which includes 15 different flavors representing various regions and cities around the country, is a fascinating and delicious  artifact of Japanese souvenir culture and the country’s fetish for local foods.

And a few other ideas if you’re stuck for them: Kin Knives (from £25),  Thunder Toffee Vodka (£18), The Smoking Gun (£56), Ash Mair’s My Basque Cuisine (£13), and Mikkeller beers (from £3).

I am competing in this year’s Chilli Standoff, organized by Tweat Up. I love competitive cooking in general and I’m particularly thrilled to be up against a bunch of local heavyweights including Lucky Chip, Mark “The Rib Man” Gevaux, Will Yates, and Gizzi Erskine.

It will be interesting to see what the others come up with. The chefs involved are all very different in personality and style, so I’m anticipating nine very different chillies. For my part, I’ve devised one inspired by the Pacific Ring of Fire.

The Pacific Ring of Fire is a volcanically and seismically active zone located along the perimeter of the Pacific Ocean. Here’s a handy map from Wikipedia:

As you can see, it covers a lot of rich culinary territory. My idea is to utilize as many key foods as possible from the regions that constitute the Ring of Fire to maximize the following seven attributes:

• umami
• spice
• heat
• complexity
• richness
• exoticism
• texture

To these ends I’ve chosen to feature the following areas and ingredients:

• Japan: kombu, katsuobushi, shiitake, Hatchō miso
• The Philippines: pigs’ blood, bagoong
• Indonesia/Malaysia: shrimp sambal, kicap manis
• New Zealand: lamb, Syrah wine
• Peru/Chile: sweet potatoes, quinoa
• Mexico: black and pinto beans, various dried chillies, nixtamal
• California: pale ale, burger cheese
• British Columbia: elk

I am possibly most excited about those last two. I’ve made my own sour cream and onion flavored burger cheese that tastes like Pringles and melts like Velveeta; and I’ve sourced elk from a company called Exotic Meats which will take the form of little meatballs. The chilli will also be bulked out with beef cheek and pork cheek from Donald Russell!

So if you’re not doing anything this Saturday, the 17th of November, come to Hackney to gorge on chilli – and vote for me, of course! Tickets can be purchased here.

 

The latest bit of food and drink language-torture to get me all peevish is “natural wine”…. For a start there is the idea of “naturalness”. A quick bit of undergraduate philosophy: if the human race is a natural phenomenon, then anything we do is natural, just as it’s natural for ants to make ant hills and rabbits to dig holes. It doesn’t mean everything we do is fine. But it does mean that calling one thing we do natural and something else unnatural is to take the English language, jump all over it, drive a stake through its heart, cover it in butane, drop a match on it and laugh at the guttering flames.

But here’s what matters. Every natural wine I have ever tried has been horrible. It’s felt like punishment; a sweet promise broken. If that’s what additive-free wine is like – the whacking smell of a pigsty before it’s been cleaned down, an acrid, grim burst of acid that makes you want to cry – then bring on the chemicals. Hurrah for sulphur. Hurrah for humankind and its ability to use all the tools at its disposal to make nice things to drink.

To reiterate, there are three important points to be taken here:

1. The dichotomy between “natural” and “artificial” is false.
2. “Unnatural” does not equal “bad.”
3. Sometimes – maybe most times – preservatives are a good thing.

I am reminded of the viral video of a McDonald’s meal sitting around for weeks and not rotting. It has since been debunked and shown to be meaningless. But if a hamburger that was immune to rot actually existed, why wouldn’t we consider it an amazing achievement of human ingenuity,rather than a disgusting crime against nature?

Plus, the first banoffee pie was originally based on an American dessert – although it was a coffee cream pie, not a banana one, that was the source of its inspiration. Odd, since some form of banana cream pie appeared in American cookbooks as early as 1887. Coffee cream pies came much later.

So while the addition of condensed milk caramel is a relatively recent British innovation, it seems banana cream pie is just as American as that other pie. Maybe even more so. And yet, growing up, I didn’t eat much of it. I did have a fair amount of apple, pumpkin, pecan, lemon meringue, and key lime pie, in addition to lots and lots of cheesecake. But banana cream never found its way into my pie-intake rotation. I can’t say why – maybe it’s because I didn’t much like bananas as a young child, or maybe it just seemed hopelessly retro. It wasn’t until I was a college student that I discovered how exquisite banana cream pie can be.

That revelation came at The Apple Pan, which I previously mentioned in my post on beer and burgers in LA. The Apple Pan sits on the corner of Pico and Glendon across from the Westside Pavilion, one of those silly late-’80s shopping malls that probably seemed exciting and colorful when it was built, but now feels cheap, outdated, and claustrophobic. Apple Pan predates the Pavilion by 40 years and also feels like a living artifact of its era, but it has a timeless quality nonetheless – kind of like a Norman Rockwell painting. Even the employees, mostly men over 50, seem like they could have been working there since day one.

The burgers at Apple Pan are classical yet distinctive, featuring a unique smoky sauce that basically tastes like a 50-50 mixture of ketchup and barbecue sauce. The patties are small but flavorful, not to be overpowered by the massive puck of iceberg lettuce tucked inside each bun. They aren’t LA’s best burgers, but they are tasty as hell, and they’ve withstood the test of time.

And then there are the pies. Their apple and pecan pies are delicious, of course, but not even in the same league as their banana cream pie. I first tried it while crashing with a friend at his home in Bel Air, during a week I now wistfully, rose-tintedly recall as one of the most decadent and carefree times of my life. At the Lawrence residence, takeaway Apple Pan pies were an occasional treat. On my hosts’ recommendation, I tried the banana cream and immediately recognized that it was one of the best pies I’d ever had. But I lived in east LA; I wasn’t local enough to the Apple Pan to really become a regular and develop a deep nostalgia for it, so over time the memory faded.

I went back to Apple Pan in August with a friend. I was overcome with excitement when I saw they had banana cream pie, and I was soon enjoying that very special kind of delirious pleasure that comes at the moment that giddy anticipation is fulfilled, and high expectations are surpassed. The pie, which was easily four fingers thick, lit up my tastebuds like a pinball machine. The crust is firm and sturdy yet fall-apart flaky and tasting of almost pure butter. The bananas themselves are evenly sliced at a perfect ripeness with just a tiny al dente bite to them, and sweetened with a fine coating of sugar that dissolves to form a slick banana glaze. A just-right amount of cold, smooth vanilla custard tops the bananas, and an angelic cloud of whipped cream lightens and completes the whole construction. It is a masterpiece of pie art.

It’s easy to be dismissive of food that has gone out of fashion, whether it’s banana cream pie, banoffee pie, or steak and kidney pie. But these things become popular for a reason, and it’s nice to be reminded of why. I suppose we just have to remember to be open-minded not only when it comes to new things, but to old things as well.

Further reading: LA Weekly.