Let’s be honest. You didn’t come here to hear me wax lyrical about my love of good food, great wine and how cooking for friends gives me a bigger buzz than a taser-wielding queen bee strapped to a Powerplate.
You’re here for the story.
Everyone has one. The ‘How Food and I Met’ story. And mine, like many others, starts with family.
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‘There are people who eat to live, and people who live to eat.’
This nugget of wisdom was imparted to me at a young age, with the implication that our family was unequivocally a member of the latter group.
Unfortunately, as much as I enjoyed eating, the whole cooking aspect of the process completely passed me – that is, until university life necessitated the acquisition of skills greater than boiling pasta and opening jars of sauce. Cue learning to debone the cheapest cuts of chicken, commandeering an old rice cooker and cooking Variations on a Theme of Stir-Fry Chicken for the next three years.
Back in London, I developed a serious obsession with sushi and all other food Japanese. I expanded my culinary repertoire to include steak, steamed fish and the odd risotto. But recipe books continued to intimidate me, and I couldn’t shake the suspicion that slavishly following Jamie Oliver’s mockney mandates and being able to cook were two very different kettles of Herb-Crusted Wild Seabass.
So when I woke up one morning and announced I’d be packing in the day job and enrolling on the full-time diploma at Leiths School of Food and Wine, it seemed a perfectly logical decision. To me, at least.
‘We didn’t know you were so, um, interested in cooking,’ some said, eyebrows raised. Subtext: Have you gone completely insane? In case you missed the memo, careers don’t just grow on trees, you know.
Others were gushingly supportive. ‘It’s so amazing to see someone following their dreams,’ they breathed. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that my dreams usually involve cats on pogo-sticks bouncing through Martian landscapes and suchlike. Culinary school, on the other hand, merely seemed like the right place to go at the right time.
So come September, I learnt to chop, fillet, joint, sauté, roast, bake, churn, pipe and – brows beware – flambé. I began to tolerate, appreciate, and then fall head over heels into obsession with wine. I gained (and lost) 10lbs. I infiltrated restaurant kitchens, caterers, chocolatiers, food magazines and the world of food PR. I shook Heston’s hand.
And somewhere along those nine long months, I finally learnt to cook.
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So enough with all the reminiscing. What’s Hungry Tiger Thirsty Dragon all about then?
Restaurants. Not just eating in them, but also: how they’re run; why we go there; how they make us feel. The millions of little (and large) decisions restaurateurs make every day, just to keep their doors open. Who’s choosing the wine list and what’s on it. And I doff my caps to the chefs; I don’t know how they do it – sweltering kitchens, back-to-back double shifts, endless attention to detail – but I’m very glad they do.
Food education and experiences. After a year of daily cookery classes and weekly wine tasting, I’m now an unrepentant food/wine class addict. There’s nothing more fun and inspiring than picking up new techniques, new flavours and new stories from someone who’s made it their life’s work to shout to the world about their passion – be it bread, bacon or Burgundy.
Food trends. OK, I’ll admit it. Just as some people follow every step on the catwalks, I secretly enjoy the wholly vacuous pursuit of keeping up with the latest fashions in food. If we are what we eat, what do cupcakes, supperclubs and allotments say about us then?
Intelligible wine talk. I currently stand near(ish) the start of the dangerous downhill slope between knowing absolutely nothing and knowing far too much about wine. I hereby swear to write intelligibly about wine and wine-and-food, until the point where I succumb and start using phrases like ‘refined graphite palate’ and ‘sprightly leather nose’. I apologise in advance.
