Tag Archives: food

Learning the lingo: Italian

Posted on by
Reply

aerial photography of city

 

Until I was 16 years old, I accompanied my parents on annual holidays in Florence (Italy). We always stayed at the Pensione Burchianti, which was run by two ageing sisters. Almost every evening, we ate dinner in a nearby restaurant (the Buca Mario). This excerpt from my book CHARLIE CHAPLIN WAVED TO ME describes how I began to acquire some limited skill in speaking Italia. Here is the excerpt:

” … After dinner we would walk back to the Burchianti. It might have been during one of these evening strolls that my father came up with a new version of the saying ‘a penny for your thoughts’, namely: ‘a penne for your sauce’. The traffic in the streets would have quietened down by the time that we had eaten, and all of the traffic signals, or ‘robots’ as my South African parents called them, had flashing amber lights instead of the usual sequence of three coloured lamps. The pedestrian signals, which alternated between the red ‘Alt’ and the green ‘Avanti’ during the day, simply flashed both messages at the same time at night.

When we arrived back at the Burchianti, the residents, who had been eating supper, were usually still lingering at their tables. Many of them almost lived in the Burchianti. There was an elderly commendatore, who took all his meals there but slept elsewhere. There were also a number of business people who spent the week working in Florence, but resided some distance away in the weekend. They lived in the pensione during the week. One of these was a lady pharmacist from Parma who spoke Italian with a curious accent, rolling her ‘r’s in an exaggerated way.

On entering the dining room, we would be greeted like old friends, which I suppose we were. We would be invited to sit at the sisters’ table, and then I had to perform. One of the sisters would ask me in Italian what I had eaten for dinner, and I had to reply in Italian. Everyone listened to my reply which usually went something like this:
“Primo piatto o mangiato spaghetti con pomodoro. Dopo o mangiato bistecca con patate fritte. E dopo, profiterole.”

It was not difficult to relate what I had eaten because every dinner I ordered the same thing or substituted lombatina di vitello (veal chop) for the bistecca. This nightly recitation gave me the confidence to try to speak in Italian, even if badly. When I did not know a word, I tried using a Latin word but pronounced it in a way that I believed made it sound Italian. Often, this worked! ...”

 

If you want to know whether Charlie Chaplin really did wave to me, grab a copy of my book from:

https://www.bookdepository.com/Charlie-Chaplin-Waved-Me-Adam-YAMEY/9781291845051

OR

http://www.lulu.com/shop/adam-yamey/charlie-chaplin-waved-to-me/paperback/product-21611544.html

OR Amazon or Kindle store

 

Photo by Josh Hild on Pexels.com

Veggie burgers and other creatures

Posted on by
Reply

veggie

The popularity of vegetarianism and its relative veganism has greatly increased in the western world in recent years, and is still increasing. Popular reasons for abandoning the consumption of meat and/or products derived from animals (e.g. milk and eggs) include seemingly virtuous reasons such as love of animals and a desire to protect the world’s climate.

On the 23rd of July 1939, one world-famous vegetarian wrote a letter to another equally well-known vegetarian. Mahatma Gandhi wrote to Adolf Hitler. Here it is in a much abbreviated form (from: https://www.mkgandhi.org/letters/hitler_ltr1.htm):

“DEAR FRIEND,
That I address you as a friend is no formality. I own no foes.

… We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents. But your own writings and pronouncements and those of your friends and admirers leave no room for doubt that many of your acts are monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity, especially in the estimation of men like me who believe in universal friendliness

… I, therefore, appeal to you in the name of humanity to stop the war. You will lose nothing by referring all the matters of dispute between you and Great Britain to an international tribunal of your joint choice

…You know that not long ago I made an appeal to every Briton to accept my method of non-violent resistance.

… During this season when the hearts of the peoples of Europe yearn for peace, we have suspended even our own peaceful struggle. Is it too much to ask you to make an effort for peace during a time which may mean nothing to you personally but which must mean much to the millions of Europeans whose dumb cry for peace I hear, for my ears are attended to hearing the dumb millions? …

I am,
Your sincere friend,
M. K. GANDHI“
The letter never reached Hitler; it was intercepted by the British in India.

I have no idea what the monster Adolf Hitler had to say about vegetarianism, but the saintly and peace-loving Gandhi wrote much about his abstinence from meat. For example, in 1932 he wrote:

“I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to
kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants. The beautiful lines
of Goldsmith occurs to me as I tell you of my vegetarian fad:

‘No flocks that range the valley free
To slaughter I condemn;
Taught by the Power that pities me
I learn to pity them’ “

(see: https://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/moralbasis_vegetarianism.pdf)

And at another time:

““It is very significant that some of the most thoughtful and cultured men are partisans of a pure vegetable diet.”“.

Maybe, he was thinking of the man of culture, Bernard Shaw, rather than Adolf Hitler!

Returning to the present day and the increasing appetite for meatless and dairy-free food, let us consider the current desire for vegetarian products to resemble meat products. Supermarket shelves are filling up with veggie burgers, meatless steaks, meatless meat balls, meatless shawarma, and many other products made to resemble meat without containing it. Recently, I was in a Chinese restaurant, which offered diners vegetarian chicken and vegetarian duck dishes. This yearning for vegetarian products to be named like and to look like meat products is absurd,

There are plenty of delicious vegetarian dishes that are not made to resemble foods that usually contain meat. Middle-Eastern and Turkish cuisine, for example, offer vegetarian eaters delights such as: humous, fattoush, Imam Bayildi, Mutabbel (an aubergine dish), falaffel, stuffed peppers,etc. Even the French, who until recently have not been overly attracted to vegetarianism, have a traditional dish perfect for vegetarians: ratatouille. As for Indian cuisine, there is a plethora of dishes that are vegetarian and do not try to appear like meat. In India, the land where Gandhi was born, vegetarianism is a way of life, rather than a changed lifestyle, for hundreds of millions of people. This has been the case in India for many millennia.

To conclude, what I am trying to say is that if you wish to abandon eating meat for whatever reason, then you might as well abandon the desire to eat things that look like meat, but are not. If you are adopting vegetarianism, then enjoy meatless dishes for their own sake, not because they remind you of meat! Bon apetit!

Picture source: tesco.com

Shrinking cabbages

Posted on by
Reply

 

Golborne Road intersects London’s famous Portobello Road. I practised dentistry in a clinic on Golborne Road between 1995 and 2001. In those days, Golborne was far less chic than it is today. Every day I used to pass E Price and Sons, a vegetable shop on Golborne.

The shop had a disorderly display of vegetables outside it and was run by a very old couple. I never entered their shop because it seemed to be impenetrable.

On the rare occasions that I purchased anything there, either the old lady or the old man would hurl the produce onto the scales and hardly waited to see the true weight. Then, they would mention a price, always adding the word ‘alright’, pronouncing it as if they were asking the question “is that alright?” They said the word ‘alright’ in such a way that suggested that something was not alright.

My lasting memory of this vegetable shop is of watching either of the man or woman sitting outside the shop removing withered outer leaves from the cabbages. Every day, I noticed that the cabbages on display got smaller and smaller; they seemed to be shrinking.

The shop closed a few years ago, and was later reopened by younger members of the Price family. Sadly, their lovely shop went out of business and the premises are awaiting their new reincarnation.

Burgers

Posted on by
Reply

Everyone, who eats them, can reccommend a place that serves the very best beef burgers. Naturally, most people have their own favourites. So, it would seem that there are many places that serve the ‘very best burgers’.  I havetried a few of these highly reccommended places and have with one exception (Gourmet Burger Kitchen – a chain that originated in New Zealand) been disappointed. Most ‘very best burgers’ turn out to be ok (usually) but an anti-climax (mostly).

Now, I am going to seem very conceited. That is because I believe that I make the ‘very best burgers’ myself in our home, and so should you. My recipe is dead simple. I take minced beef with a lowish fat content (10% or less), add a pinch of salt and a small spoon of oil (sunflower or olive) and, after washing my hands, mush the three ingredients together before hand shaping patties of the  sizes preferred by those who will eat them. Then, I cook them on a griddle. That’s all. No egg or breadcrumbs are added.  Try this for yourself and you will no longer be wasting your money on overpriced, mediochre burgers.

 

ham burger with vegetables

 

A patty of minced beef 

Mould-ed by hand

Enjoy burger perfection

 

 

Photo by Valeria Boltneva on Pexels.com

A sandwich

Posted on by
1

lgbt

While looking for something to eat on the train between Cambridge and London, I spotted a sandwich in a colourful wrapping (illustrated above). It was a ‘LGBT’ sandwich containing Lettuce, Guacamole, Bacon, and Tomato. Well, the initials ‘LGBT’ usually refer to  ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender’. The colours of the sandwich’s  wrapping are those associated with the LGBT ‘community’. 

I wondered whether M&S, the suppliers of this colourfully wrapped sandwich were:

  1. trying to appeal to LGBT customers
  2. trying to be ‘politically correct’
  3. both of the above
  4. neither 1 nor 2
  5. having a laugh at the expense of the LGBT ‘community’
  6. or, all of the above  

Who knows? I did not buy this sandwich, but selected a similar one, the BLT, which lacks guacamole.

Pizza in Warsaw with a haiku on the side

Posted on by
Reply

Pizza Etna_500

 

Some years ago, we were visiting relatives in the city of Buffalo in New York State (USA). We had never met them before, which was a pity since they turned aout to be a quite delightful couple. Apart from that, they were very interesting and interested in everything. Unfortunately, one of them has passed away.

We were travelling around New York State in a rented car when we visited my relatives in Buffalo. One day, they suggested that we went for an outing. Being much younger than them, I decided that we should all travel in our rented car. They were very mysterious about our destination. They gave me directions and i followed them. About 50 miles east of Buffalo we arrived at a neatly laid out small ‘one horse town’ and parked next to a pizzeria. 

My relatives ordered one pizza. It was large enough for each of the five of us in our party to eat to our satisfaction. Of all the many pizzas I have eaten so far, this was one of the best that I can remember. I cannot rember the name of the pizzeria, but the town’s name is WARSAW.

A ring of dough

A colourful topping

It’s Italian, it’s pizza

 

PS after lunch at Warsaw, we continued to the nearby Letchworth State Park, which well deserves its nickname ‘The Grand Canyon of the East’