TALKING ABOUT FOOD

I'm currently back home in Sarawak, Malaysia. The day in punctuated by food, your metronome is meal times. Breakfast is eaten out, at a coffee shop, the hunt for the best laksa, kolo mee et al, is always on. We talk about where is good, where has had a dip in quality. It is serious talk that we start the day with. Dad comes back from work for lunch and we all sit down together. If you're not home for lunch - you call. As with dinner. There is always rice, there is always conversation. Lunch and dinner are home cooked meals. All meals are relaxed, quick, un-ceremonial. They are points of contact, checking in, keeping pace. Each with a slightly different rhythm and topic of conversation. Dinner is reflective of the times, the last week of July 2016 is a precipice. The East looks to the West and waits to see what it will do - fall or fly, there doesn't seem to be any other options. Dinner follows a pattern, it doesn't change, except who asks the questions. W...

I am half Iban, the Iban are a tribe in Borneo, predominantly in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. Gawai is our harvest festival, so each year I try to celebrate it, which is around the beginning of June. This year I had a garden party. It was wonderful! I cooked for 22 people. Everyone brought bubbles of some kind to start the day off, and I served riesling with food - kung fu girl (from Washington State) and Farmingham (from New Zealand). This day is what London is to me - family, friends and sharing good food and wine.  I cooked beef rending from a recipe from my mum, obvs (recipe at the bottom). I also marinated chicken - can't remember what, something chilli, garlic, ginger no doubt, classic stuff. I made sweetcorn ice cream, which is hugely reminscent of my childhood in Malaysia. I used Dan Doherty's peanut butter ice cream recipe, and used three tablespoons of sweetcorn. The key with ice cream is about the sugar, and I figured peanut butter and sweetcorn had s...