Food Nut

12th August 2005

........................INSTANT KARMA EXOTIC FOODS


My assertion that the image of Helen Clark barreling down the highway won’t do her any harm has been reinforced several times this week in the media: Murray Deaker saying, basically “Good on her I didn’t think she had it in her” and “she needs a helicopter” before descending into a “political correctness has gone mad” (what again? It must be clinically insane by now) rant ..
While Russell Brown in Hard News imagines her cracking open a Lion Red in the back seat of her car.
Clark has a rather dour image as a workaholic, autocrat so maybe this may prove a devine Hugh Grant “foppish/staid image Begone!” moment.

A link from Hard News to the Noelle McCarthy interview with Winston Peters is worth checking out. She gives him a good seeing to, which is rare, because the press spend so much time getting pissed with him in the green room and at various haunts around Wellington they are unable to appraise him without being seduced by his apparent charm.
“Oh Winston..” they sigh.. Coyly..
as he spuriously assassinates the good character of whole swathes of our community.
The truth is he is a bully who picks on the weak and ignorant. I’m not talking here about the Asians but about the oldies who are his basic support group. Many of them, would never go near an immigrant or an Asian and if you asked them:
“Have you ever been to Yum Char?”
They would say..
“Where’s that love. The south island? No. I’ve never liked it there.. makes my lumbago flare up something awful..”
With dentures rattling and breath heavy with the stench of strong tea….

Yet, Peters convinces them we are in a New Zealand overrun by triads and Al Queda members.
Which is garbage and I would wager the Chinese community in particular, are one of the most law abiding in the country. Their main crimes are - being over achieving girly-swats who dominate the dux awards, rugby ineptitude and a parallel parking ability way, way below the national average - and that’s not going to hurt anyone.

“Never trust a double breasted, whisky soaked midget”

Radio B’s McCarthy is a potential star though and if I were a TV exec I would be signing her up now-ish.

A few weeks ago, after concerted prompting from from friends, I finally visited the Khyber Spice Traders shop in Sandringham. It’s a place filled with the sort of foreigners who would have Winston’s ignorant and elderly scurrying home, thinking of the blitz, to make a one egg chocolate sponge.
But for me it is a sort of weird food heaven. Wonderful Indian filled soft breads and the best Turkish delight in well… Sandringham, at least.
I would cite this shop alone as a reason we need more immigrants.

I have realized over the years that I not only love food, I love discovering food as well. I adore the exotic nature of foreign food. There is something simply delicious, even in the act of buying something from a weird stall on a fetid smelling side street in Asia.
Mind you, I wont eat everything, but almost.
I would never eat uncooked hector dolphin.
But… if it was seared and served on a bed of rocket and cherry tomatoes … well...

Bloody good eating

I’m joking of course. But what is true is that in my food tastes and appreciation I am the polar opposite of that great stereotype - The English Food Coward.
As anyone who as traveled through Europe will know many English seem to have a fear of food unless it falls into certain clearly defined food groups, basically: chips, eggs, steak and pies. Outside that exclusive club, food is dismissed as “foreign muck” and the whole vegetable sub-continent really doesn’t get a look in.
Curiously, history even confirms this pattern.
I once read a history text where the Romans talked of arriving in England in the middle Ages or the old ages (let’s just say it was a very long time ago) and they spoke of the English expression of distaste for food, even then.
“The locals are a squat in stature and instinctively distrust what we try to to feed them”
Presumably the Italians sat around, very well dressed, with Veal Parmigiana and Asparagus .. and the English sidled up, looked at the food with a high degree of reticence and then said
“nah …I don’t fancy that”
and scuttled off to the safety of a bowl of gruel.

In more recent times..I was once on holiday on the Greek island of Corfu, which is always bursting with the English. So much so that there are Union Jacks everywhere over food outlets so that the Englander can know that they serve the above allotted food.

My girlfriend and I went for dinner at a small Greek restaurant and to my delight a large Eastender family settled into the table next to us.

My “I cant wait till they order”
was given a quick “wanker”
from my then partner. Followed by ..
“you cant say what people will do. They might order moussaka”
“Moussaka my arse” (in my best Ricky Tomlinson)

Eventually the Dad in the group said (imagine the voice of Harold Steptoe talking to Pauline from Eastenders)..
“I don’t like none of this…”
Mum “No …it’s rubbish..”
Dad “ Swordfish Steaks.. bleedin’ ek”
Mum “hope they take the bloody swords aaart”
Dad “No. Bollocks. I’m gonna get steak, eggs and chips..”
Mum “yes.. dad. I’ll get that as well”
Eventually the ENTIRE table ordered the same thing so it was like ..
“12 steak, eggs and Chips, please Spiro’s”

Fantastic.. I could barely contain my glee..A living cliche. I really couldn’t have scripted it better.(What about having a couple of gay dutchmen walking in smoking a joint? -ed)
The satisfying caveat to that story (for you anyway) is that, with a sense of awful righteousness we ordered the swordfish steak, which were like two jandals soaked in sardine juice from the previously mentioned middle-ages. Bloody awful. I spent the entire dinner forlornly observing the pommies enjoying a bloody good feed of that old standard - Steak, Eggs and Chips.
In the words of that other Winston (No. not THAT one) –
John WinstonLennon – “Instant Karma’s gonna get you”.
If the food doesn’t get you first, I suppose.