Ceci N'est Pas Un Gâteau

Caviar is Less Appealing in Romania

Every Dish Tells a Story

I read somewhere (possibly in an interview with Tom Kitchin) that the easiest way to put together an experimental dish that works for sure is to throw together ingredients that are found close to each other in the real world. Just think of the classic favourites like pea and mint soup or game pie* with juniper berry sauce (* I like the thought that all game goes together because all partridges and deer gaily play together in the forest, of course) or mushrooms with panchetta, which make you think of wild boar searching for truffles. These obscure and a far fetched thoughts were clearly far from the mind of the chef at a nice little gastropub where I had a prawn, rabbit and pea risotto. At seeing the words on the menu and then the dish in front of me made my head spin! I ended up thinking up half parable, half acid trip at the crux of which lay the story of the meeting of the prawn and the rabbit.

They met in the pea plants in the kitchen garden of a certain WI lady, where rabbit was nibbling the greenery and the prawn … Well, he didn’t quite know himself what he was doing there. They fell in love and rabbit dug a little hole for the prawn and filled it with water. The prawn ran a strong man show for the other garden dwellers – he was surprisingly strong for his size and drew large crowds. They lived happily together until one day the WI lady put both in a pot and served upto me.

Every dish tells a story, but some more than others.

Sunday Lunch

Sunday Lunch after Columbia Road Flower market. Have you ever seen a prawn this big!?