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cooking workshops

The Future… and the Rice Porridge

I attended (virtually) the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery again this year, with much less time available to spend perusing the papers and attending the followup question and answer sessions, but it was delightful to spend some time with fellow food obsessives from around the world.

One of the keynote speakers this year was Rob Hoskins, founder of the Transition movement, speaking on “What is to What If”. I was much taken with his Rilke quote

The future must enter you long before it happens

which he used in the context of the power of imagination to make change in this world that so needs it. His talk coincided with the launch of the millionaire’s rocket and the inhumanity of that gesture in a time of such need.

“Capitalism sells us short term pleasure,” he remarked – together with all the social and personal perils that ensue when expectations don’t meet reality.

In a more grounded session, I got my hands dirty.. well, food-encrusted anyway, at a Kitchen Lab online workshop. Organized by Danish chef Birgitte Kampmann in Copenhagen and featuring a diplomatic chef in Ottawa, Cameron Stauch, we delved into several unusual ways with rice, inspired by Stauch’s cookbook, Vegetarian Viet Nam. Here’s my version of his delicious recipe for Mixed Mushroom Rice Porridge (Cháo Nấm) – well garnished with home made crispy shallots, toasted sesame seeds, cilantro and spring onions – which found its way that morning onto my brunch table… despite a momentary power outage in the midst of the session, which knocked out my modem long enough to miss a few crucial steps!

London Cooks

Recipease Building
Recipease, Notting Hill

More catch-up posting. London is receding into the recent past at alarming speed, as the present gallops along. Here are a few culinary memories of that still-recent visit. It was not as food -centred as some of my trips, as I was not there over long and more concerned with catching up than dining out, but there is much good food in London, and I had some very nice meals.

The Jamie Oliver cookery school/cafe in Notting Hill, Recipease, had lured us in for carrot pancakes, on Pancake Day – and then, near the end of my stay, to a cookery class. The school and cafe are perched a floor above the glass-walled Recipease kitchen and shop. Lessons are taught around an open square within which the instructors move from student station to student station, and diners can look on while they dine. We chose North Indian Thali, which turned out to entail a demonstration (dhal) and some hands-on (chickpea masala, crispy spiced okra, puri bread from scratch, and stir-fried vegetable salad) cooking. After which we ate our own cooking, accompanied by rice, dhal and a mango puree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’d also made the required pilgrimage to Ottolenghi‘s Islington shrine, where the meringues beckoned and the salads gleamed. Everything always so beautiful there.

 

 

 

 

And elsewhere: home cooking isn’t too shabby when it comes in the form of anchovy-draped tuna-stuffed peppers. Another day I had a nostalgically quirky dining experience at the Maja cafe, in the ground floor of the Polish Social & Cultural Centre, where the pierogies were ample and the golabki available in both meat and vegetarian forms; brought back memories of Edmonton’s Ukranian fare. On another day we went to the Black Dog in Vauxhall, accompanied – of course – by a black dog, who napped beneath the table while we tucked in – a perfectly beautiful beetroot salad (with three colours of beets!) for me. And (hear this, food inspectors everywhere!) even with a canine companion so close by, I can confidently state that nobody caught rabies, supped on dog hair or perished from being in the same room as an animal during that meal.