Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music... Ad Infinitum

This is not a normal column tonight. For the first time ever I have a guest on "Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music... Ad Infinitum". And what a guest she is! Photographer, travel writer and chronicler of her barrio. She has already been featured here as part of a photography exhibition on Cuba I reviewed last year. She also recently started her own blog, Eat Hackney (http://twitter.com/eathackney), and that was the main reason why I asked Helena Smith to be your hostess tonight. That invitation's given me another idea. How about opening the space up to you, readers and fellow bloggers so that we can share recipes and music? This would be only for the duration of the summer. Usually this is a time when blogs are barren lands but how about turning them into lush and fruitful forests of culinary knowledge? The format is simple. You can do as Helena did and write about your barrio, your little neck of the woods and what makes it so different from the rest of the world when it comes to food. Submit a recipe you really like. It can be one you cook yourself, or one that reminds you of someone. In Helena's case, it's her mum's roast chicken with almonds and herbed rice. And then, there's the music. What music do you think should go with that recipe? Or maybe melodies you're listening to as you're cooking it. Whatever you decide, there must be music. If unsure, just read the title of this section. Please, make sure that you send me links to proper clips (official videos or live performances) and that they are embeddable so that I can upload them. Deadline is Friday 15th July. In the meantime, I'll leave you with our host for tonight Helena Smith. ¡Gracias Helena!

I’ve been lucky to travel a lot as a guidebook writer and photographer, and I’m an enthusiastic eater wherever I go. But the place where I live, the London borough of Hackney, is such a diverse place that it occurred to me I could make a global food journey on the doorstep. You can eat every kind of cuisine here: Nigerian, Georgian, Caribbean, Italian, all varieties of Indian… the list is pretty much endless.

I love the way that food evokes home for different communities: it’s a way of sharing precious traditions and memories. I want to celebrate this with my new blog Eat Hackney, and in my own way counter David Cameron’s nonsense soundbite about multiculturalism not working in Britain. I just interviewed the French/Algerian owner of L’Epicerie in Clapton, and he said his deli works better here than it would in France, because we’re more open and curious about food. By extension, I think we’ve become more open to other cultures, and we’re a richer and more interesting country as a result.

The dish that conjures home for me is Robert Carrier’s Roast Chicken with Almonds and Herbed Rice. When my Mum asked me what I wanted for my birthday or other treat, it was always this dish, elided to chickenandalmondsandraisinsandrice. You can see how often my Mum cooked this from the photo of the little book, published in 1971. [picture below] It seems an old fashioned recipe now as the chicken is drowned in butter, but this is what makes it so delicious.

I grew up in a small village in central Scotland with big windows and mountain views, and the soundtrack to the Sunday roast was jazz, which my folks love. So my first cooking track is Fats Waller, who I adore for his joyous naughtiness and irresistible piano playing. As this is a feature about cooking I’ll choose You’re Not the Only Oyster in the Stew. I love the way he rhymes “Paree” with “only one for me”…



I always listen to loud music when I cook, and alternate cooking with dancing. I’m a big fan of Cuban music – of course! – so I’ve chosen Homenaje a Benny Moré by Gente de Zona which makes me chuck down the wooden spoon for a boogie. Ai Mama!



Another favourite dance track is Tonkara by Staff Benda Bilili from Kinshasa. Most of the band are severely disabled as a result of polio. I saw them at the Roundhouse recently and it was pure joy to see them dance, and to hear their super high-energy Afro funk, with those trickly guitar sounds and pretty melodies. I lived in Africa when I was a kid, and this reminds me of another landscape and another home, with a different mountain view.





Roast Chicken with Almonds and Herbed Rice

Large chicken
90g seedless raisins
100–140g butter
Salt and pepper
1 chicken liver
4–5 tbsp corn oil
1 large onion
340g long grain rice
1 1/2 chicken stock cubes
1 tsp dried thyme
90g flaked almonds

Soak raisins in warm water to plump them up.

Preheat oven to moderately hot (200ºC, 400ºF).

Season 2–3 tbs of the butter with salt and pepper, kneading it thoroughly with your fingertips. Divide seasoned butter in half, flatten out slightly and slip a piece right down between the skin and meat of each chicken breast, loosening the skin away from breast gently with your fingers.

Season the bird inside with salt and pepper; add chicken liver and 2 tbsp butter. Rub outside of chicken generously with salt and pepper and spread with remaining butter.

Roast chicken with for 1hr to 1hr 15min, or until tender and crisp, turning it occasionally. Halfway through cooking time, baste with 2–3 tbsp boiling water.

Meanwhile, prepare rice: heat oil in a large, heavy saucepan. Add finely chopped onion and sauté gently until soft and golden. Stir in rice and continue to sauté gently, stirring, until each grain is separate and golden.

Dissolve chicken stock cubes in 1 1/4 pints boiling water.

Remove rice from heat and stir in stock and cried thyme. Cover and simmer very gently for about 15 minutes, or until rice is tender and fluffy, but not overcooked, and all the liquid has been absorbed, Stir gently with a fork two or three times while rice is cooking. (If necessary, it can be kept in a buttered bowl covered with a folded cloth over a saucepan of hot water until chicken is ready).

Arrange rice on heated serving dish. Place well-drained, roasted chicken on top and keep hot while you finish sauce.

Transfer roasting tin with buttery chicken juices to top of stove. Add flaked almonds and sauté until a deep golden colour, stirring constantly. Remove almonds from tin with a slotted spoon and keep hot.

Drain raisins thoroughly and add them to the roasting tin with 2 to 3 tbsp boiling water. Simmer for about 2 minutes, scraping bottom and side of pan with a wooden spoon. Season to taste with more salt and pepper if necessary, and spoon buttery sauce over chicken and rice.

Sprinkle with sautéed almonds and serve immediately.

© 2011

Next Post: "Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music", to be published on Sunday 3rd July at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

On Mondays I'm Joe, the lorry driver, travelling from the UK to mainland Europe via Dover and writing a blog about my experiences on the road. On Tuesday I'm Robert, a bespectacled librarian who works at the British Library Museum and who loves misplacing books whilst checking people's reactions. I also have a cyber-space where I describe my activities. Then, on Wednesday I'm Leonard, a stroppy teenager who hates his name and calls himself Fido. Under this guise I like roaming the neighbourhood and scaring people with my zombie outfit. My online diary is full of funny entries, like the one about Mrs Waller and how she wet herself when I jumped on her from behind late one night when she was out walking her dog. The canine also made a little puddle itself. From Thursday to Saturday I'm Bruce Patel, the soft-hearted bouncer who works at an alternative Bollywood club. I even have a tilaka on my forehead. And, of course, I write a blog about what it's like to be a security guard at a nightclub. Burly, stocky and intimidating I may look, but, remember, I have a kind soul.

On Sundays I'm the Lesbian in Damascus.

Why should we be surprised that the Gay Girl who made the uprising in Syria feel much closer turned out to be an Edinburgh-based bloke originally from the States? After all we had already been warned, back in the early 90s that when it came to the world wide web "You can be anything you want to be/Just turn yourself into anything you think that you could ever be/Be free with your tempo be free, be free/Surrender your ego, be free, be free to yourself!" ("Innuendo" by Queen). Of course, the British band were not singing about the multiple personality disorder that the net encourages in some people, but you could say their words were prescient.

Oh, the internet, don't you just love it? Whilst hundreds, if not thousands of people were out on the streets in Damascus, risking their lives to change the system and gays, especially, feared for their well-being, not just for daring to protest against the status quo, but also for their sexual orientation, a man amused himself by...

Enough! No, really, it's beyond the pale. The irony of it (if I can still muster a smile) is that this news came out a few days after VS Naipul let it be known that he found no woman writer his literary match. Sorry, did I just make you choke on your muesli? I beg your pardon. Please, sit down, because Laurel and Hardy are back, and this time they have teamed up with the Keystone Cops and the Marx Brothers. Oh, my sides!

According to V (I hope he doesn't mind me calling him that), "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me." He went on to explain that this was because women, not being complete masters of a house, had a narrow view of the world. I think he might have got stuck in the 1860s, Victorian England. Time to drag him to my house where my wife would definitely give V a crash course on gender equality.

I admit that as a writer, I like Naipul. I read and intend to re-read In a Free State because of the sense of displacement it conveys and the loose narrative. Half a Life has a quasi-autobiographical feel to it. His novels don't follow a single structure; on the contrary, they're multilayered. In the same way that Alice Munro's writing is multilayered, or Zora Neale Hurston's. And they're female writers.

The problem with V is that he's chosen the wrong target. Writing has become so homogeneous that it's hard to tell male and female writers apart. The "lad culture" from the 90s gave way to the metrosexual movement from the early noughties. Same with women and the whole "ladette" malarkey. It was swiftly followed by the "Bridget Jones" brigade. Where and when the - literary - market calls the shots, writing is neither feminine nor masculine. As long as it sells a bloke in the Jeremy Clarkson mould could very well pen a novel that belongs in the chick-lit genre.

That's why I wasn't surprised to find out that the Gay Girl in Damascus blog was a hoax. A few times fellow cyber-diarists and readers have been surprised to learn that I'm actually a straight, black man from downtown Havana with an incurable reading habit (not that I'm looking to be "cured", either) and strong opinions. Blimey, I would have thought that my cynical and warped sense would have given the game away, exposing a blokeish streak. But no. Maybe it's to do with the way I write or the subjects I choose, but some of you have stencilled a skirt on me. So, VS Naipaul's theory doesn't apply. And why should it? Does the mention of midwives, children and marriage in books only apply to women? Hell, no. In Midnight's Children there's plenty of talk about marriage and children. Plus Rushdie really goes to town with emotions, one of the elements that is said to characterise women's writing.

What should have really happened is that someone should have given the Gay Girl in Damascus blog to V to read. And then sit on a corner quietly whilst the author of A House for Mr Biswas analysed and digested the information in front of him before pronouncing on the gender of the writer. How to interpret a passage like this one: "What a time to be in Syria! What a time to be an Arab! What a time to be alive! These are the thoughts flashing through my mind right now … I want to rush out in the street and celebrate (and will as soon as I finish writing this) …" For the life of me I cannot see evidence of vaginal or penile influence in the excerpt above. Can you, my dear peeps?

It's time to realise, and accept, too, that when it comes to writing online and adopting an identity to go with it, Margritte's famous caption "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" is given a modern makeover along the lines of "Ceci n'est pas un homme, mais n'est pas une femme nonplus". Enough to shock even Jean Baudrillard.

© 2011

Next Post: “Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music… Ad Infinitum”, to be published on Wednesday 29th June at 11:59pm (GMT)