Former Foreword

Just came across this, the foreword to my dissertation, "Are We What We Cook?: Self-Identity and Judgement in Come Dine With Me*" (yes, you read that right... I wrote my dissertation on Come Dine With Me). Seems somewhat appropriate considering the recent turns of events in my life, so thought I'd give it a post... 

I don’t feel someone truly knows me until I've cooked for them.  Cooking has been a strong part of my life for as long as I can remember – sneaking down with my father early Saturday mornings to make pancakes; kneading and twisting challah with my mother on rainy winter days, the smell of yeast and honey hovering in the air; lining up at the age of eleven, the youngest in line by a good two decades, in anticipation to meet my favourite TV chef, Jacques Pépin.  

Cooking is much more than a necessity to me, and when I invite people over for a meal, I want to express that in my food. Just as artists express at least a small part of themselves within their work, the same can be said for my cooking. When I pass a plate of my food to you, I'm not just offering you something to eat; I'm giving you a little taste of my passion, my history, myself. And, just as an artist waits with anticipation and anxiety for reactions to their work, don't be surprised if you catch me watching your reactions from the corner of my eye… waiting to see if you understand who I am a bit better after the first bite.

*If for some crazy reason you are interested in reading my dissertation, do get in touch!

An Unfinished Tangent

Thanks to a random mixture of A.A Gill's recent profile of London, continuing my perusal of Daniel Miller's The Comfort of Things, the announcement of the last of the Billingsgate Fish Market Porters and lots of recent city wandering and bus riding, I've been inspired to scribble down some words that have little to do with food... 

I love how London never seems to forget. It's a city that acquires - architecture, history, people, industry, culture - taking it all in but never quite being able to relinquish its grasp of what it already has, no matter how much detritus piles up. It's a city of layers, applying coat after coat of new paint to an old shopfront, demolishing buildings but leaving façades, mixing people and shifting populations, increasing the melting pot of areas rather than replacing the old with the new. It's seen in the store whose shining new sign still reveals the worn hand painted typography of the butchers that once filled its space; its the strip club in an old pub, whose lattice work of dancer's poles mingle with weathered gilded crown moulding and a rich mahogany bar, juxtaposing worlds and history amidst gyrating hips and shady old men.

London hoards - it shoves new belongings on the nooks and crannies of things already in place, the ultimate urban Tetris game to make everything fit, never knowing when a past memory might be of use.

When something does disappear, it's not often by choice - The Great Fire, WWII bombings, even the rise of housing prices pressuring longtime locals from the neighbourhoods they helped form. When change is suggested, it comes with a level of melancholy and anger equivalent to the loss of a family member, only reluctantly accepting change when necessity dictates it as so. London tries its best to look forward, but it can't help but perpetually linger in the past, covered in a haze of nostalgia as thick as its infamous fog...


(This is as far as I got scribbling on the bus this afternoon... I'm not entirely sure where its going, but just a few words to end the weekend.)