WordPress give you writing prompts each day, most of the time they don’t float my boat, but today however, today, I felt the need to get involved.

I could wax lyrical for hours here. Food, the growing of it, the cooking of it, the eating of it, the sharing of it. Oh how I love you food!

It was not always so however. I am from a family where holidays abroad were just not a thing. I considered myself very lucky (still do), to have a static caravan on the East coast of the UK, Bridlington to be exact. 5 minutes walk from the sea, but not, (in the 80’s anyway), known for it’s gastronomy. Which is probably just as well.

My Dad had an aversion to eating out, just wasn’t a fan, I think I can remember perhaps twice eating in a cafe or restaurant with Dad, pretty sure it was fish and chips both times. He was very particular about what he ate, which coming from a man that had 3 sugars in every cup of tea, and every workplace lunch was cheese sandwiches on buttered white bread dunked into said cup of tea (yup, you heard me), to the point that the tea would develop an oily sheen similar to the Exxon Valdez disaster. He loved a Sunday roast, but hated gravy, so alongside roasties and chicken, and well, whatever, would be a side of baked beans. Every Saturday was a fry up for lunch, without fail. I have fond memories of peeling the skin from huge portobello mushrooms while watching World of Sport with my Dad. I also remember my Dad (one of the things I inherited from him was his hair trigger gag reflex), fully retching because a guest house in Eastbourne once had the audacity to give him spaghetti hoops instead of beans on his full English breakfast…..

Mum was more adventurous back then, we would have a curry on occasion, of the sort where chopped apple and raisins were added. There’s a time and a place for such things, and I always enjoyed my Mum’s curry, still do, but authentic Indian it was not. But again, it was the 80s, pretty sure none of us had ever encountered lemongrass or kafir lime leaves back then. Except probably Deliah, but then, I remember her introducing us all to cous-cous, and calling it cooos-cooooos, the entire time. My Dad had no time for any of this, pizza, nope, anything with rice, nope. Just a very traditional eater, and nothing wrong with that.

I was 19 when I first went abroad. 2 weeks in Zakinthos, where I ate nothing but Tuna Mayo sandwiches and Lasagne (yep, traditional Greek fare), washed down with many a Mythos. I didn’t know where to start, was on a budget, and didn’t want to risk ordering something that I wouldn’t like. Oddly, I would now say Middle Eastern food is my favourite, but Greek is a very close second. Will dance for mezze.

Then it happened. My foodie awakening.

I was lucky enough to travel a bit with my job in my early 20s, and I got to spend a considerable amount of time in Israel. My boss at the time, Peter, was constantly saying things like, have you tried hummus, sushi, foie gras, and of course I had not. Our hosts were super hospitable and Tel-Aviv, even 20 years ago was a wonderful vibrant global city. Wide paved promenades with people rollerskating or doing Tai Chi, overlooking the ocean. The seafront lined with what I guess we’d call global fusion restaurants these days. I stayed in the best hotel I’ve possibly ever stayed in to this day, with a sea-view balcony larger than my first home. I decided there and then, to take peoples recommendations, try as many new things as possible, and I’m not ashamed to say, it changed my life. Well certainly, my approach to food.

I vividly remember the first time I had hummus, with fresh Israeli bread, eaten at a small cafe in the ancient port of Jaffa. Yes where the oranges come from. It blew my mind. You appreciate your food more when you’re being circled by an Israeli military helicopter, with machine gun wielding soldiers hanging out of the door.

In Jerusalem we ate chargrilled kebabs, with whole onions, barbecued skin on until they looked like cannonballs, and you just peeled back the layers to the sweet soft onion underneath. I did opt for chicken rather than “the tit of the cow” as my kebab of choice. Baby steps….

I think that whole meal for 3 of us came to less than £5.

I did try foie gras, even though you couldn’t pay me to eat it now – it was sadly delicious.

I had sushi and sashimi in a very swanky Japanese restaurant, and was an immediate convert, despite never trying it before, because I could hear both my parents exclaiming “raw fish!!”, like something from a Peter Kaye routine.

It just made me think, what have I been missing all this time.

My only negative experience was “St Peter’s fish”. A famous restaurant right next to the Red Sea where the whole loaves and fishes situation was supposed to have happened. (Audibly rolls eyes). I fell foul of Israeli “mud’ coffee, by trying to drink it right to the bottom, rather than leaving the last inch, which is both gritty and chewy…. But the hell on earth was the whole St Peters Fish experience. I couldn’t understand why you got a spare plate with your order. Turns out that’s for all the shit you can’t eat. You’re presented with a whole deep fried fish, head, tail, the lot. Filled with a gazillion needle sharp bones that you get to pick at and gag your way through. It was grim. If I get a piece of eggshell or a fish bone it’s game over for me. Not wanting to offend our hosts who had insisted we come here, I persevered and managed to deconstruct and deftly reconstruct a pile of bones on the other plate, making it look like I’d eaten most of it, when I’d just popped it in little piles hidden by skin and bone. Bleugh! I’m sure this is just a trick they play on tourists.

It’s a shame that I have no photographs of this, we were in Nokia 3110 territory back then. But after racking my brains for the best thing I had ever eaten, I decided to trust the first thing that came to mind, and that is the truffle beef wellington I had in Brantome in the Dordogne last year. A piece of beef fillet, mashed potato surrounding it, studded with black truffle, and wrapped in crisp buttery pastry. Eaten on a terrace overlooking the river, washed down with a glass of armagnac. It was perfect, but I did need to climb 100 very steep steps at a chateau the next day and it was hardcore I can tell you.

You can listen to me wheeze my way up some chateau steps here. https://youtu.be/LOlc8vmBIo0

And if you’d like to see more of the gorgeous town of Brantome, where you can find this creation, you can also do so here. https://youtu.be/eJBlCC2rnX8

TTFN xx