What’s the point of this blog? I suppose it’s to tell the story of my continuing journey through food. Food and drink is my primary hobby, pretty much my passion. I am not a recipe developer and tend to follow or adapt recipes from an ever increasing collection of cookery books. I read about food and drink , listen to podcasts, love shopping using our wonderful London traders, and enjoy eating out – or at least we did before March 2020. I have the good fortune to travel too – for work and personal reasons – and that has exposed me to many different food cultures.

My original idea was to use this blog to describe what I cook and some of the restaurants we eat in. However, that became a bit formulaic and really not very interesting. In 2020, I am therefore trying to start again by writing occasional posts on food-related themes. I will write when I think there is something to say, as long as it has a food or drink focus. At times, maybe that will be a window to the wider world: I don’t want to hide from a wider world that is by turns troubled and beautiful, funny and tragic. But food will be the hook.

In short, I hope this blog will be able to cover the full range of my encounters with the world of food and drink.

About Me

I am part of the generation in the UK that has experienced a food revolution. When I was a kid, food was simply a means to an end, and there was a pattern to the week: roast on a Sunday, leftover roast on a Monday, stew on a Thursday, fish and chips on a Saturday. My family was not especially interested in food, although my grandparents had run a greengrocery. Given how many jobs my mother was trying to juggle, she was understandably more interested in finding the most convenient ways to feed us, and so the new processed food of the 70s and 80s was a blessing. We very, very rarely ate out – that changed when I moved away to university and pub lunches were a must when my parents visited; I hadn’t even had a curry until I was at university.

What changed? Three things. First, some friends who cooked and could present really impressive dinners. Then an interest in real ale led to an enthusiasm for trying to understand wine, and with that came a wish to match wine to food. And third, my awareness from the early 90s of a developing food culture, with the TV chefs (Keith Floyd, the early Rick Stein and then Jamie Oliver) really having an impact. From then on, food and drink became my abiding interest.

I have also had the privilege of a professional life that has taken me all over the world and brought me close colleague and friends in many countries. Food and drink has often been a means to come together, a topic of conversation and at times a genuine shared interest. The result is that I have eaten in some truly special places – the sorts of restaurants that friends want to take you to. My wife, Tuula, is Finnish, which has also opened a window on a different part of the world.

I now work from home in London, working independently in areas linked to international education. It is this pattern of work that – when I am not travelling – enables me to cook so much. It wasn’t always this way, and when my professional life was considerably more pressurised and involved very long hours, cooking was a way of relaxing at weekends: as Matthew Fort once wrote in the Guardian, if you thought too much about work while chopping an onion, your fingers would be in danger! We know we have a privileged life, and at times I am sure I will feel uncomfortable that writings here will reflect that.

There is no doubt that living in London makes this all so much easier. We have access to wonderful meat, fish and fruit and veg from brilliant traders, and we can source just about any ingredient that might not otherwise be readily available. Shopping in the food markets of Bermondsey and Borough Market is as much a part of our food life as the cooking and the eating.

Wine also has an important role. If it was wine that brought me to food, now food and wine have a symbiotic relationship and (two or three dry nights a week aside) I certainly can’t think of good food without wines that are as good a match as we can manage given our budget, circumstances and what is ready for drinking.

So what about the future? Well let’s see how this blog goes. Maybe there will be different ways of enjoying, buying and eating food and drink in the future, or other ways of engaging with the food community in London and elsewhere. We’ll see…