Wild Cat Nero D Avola

My BYO offering at the puttanesca dinner party tonight is Sicilano Wild Cat Nero d'Abola 2008. It rounded off the pasta really nicely. So nice I forgot to bring my leftover half bottle home from Kilburn.


Waitrose review: "Generous black cherry and damson fruit, and an enjoyable textured finish. An organic Nero d’Avola, the signature red grape of the vineyards of Sicily, offering an authentic yet fruit-driven example of this remarkable variety. Try matching its intensity with hearty stews or a rich ratatouille."


The menu tonight:


Starter: Salad of Gorgonzola with Celeriac and Black Olives, seasoned with olive oil, lemon juice and lemon salt with parsley garnish. Served with fried mushrooms on bruschetta.


Main: Rigatoni with Puttanesca Sauce topped with a sprig of basil leave.


Dessert: Chocolate tarte with honeycomb bits on top served with cream.


The starter and dessert were amazing. I think my puttanesca was more authentic, this puttanesca wasn't sufficiently strong, tasted more like just plain tomato sauce.


I hit it off with the norwegian and german guests sitting at my table though. They were delightful to talk to. The Norwegian threesome was a family. They are here on holiday and was grateful to come to an interesting culinary experience that is London. Norwegian food is boring - or so they say. The Mom - named Unn, has a perpetual smile on her face and she makes everything she say seem so interesting and so true. The son is rather interesting having been part of the UN military police in Lebanon during the war, he makes very bad jokes though. Daughter-in-law is a keen cook. The Munich-based couple were so studious, they studied everything and seems like they make a point to read about every experience before they go off and do it. They read a whole book about oslo before even visiting. Mr Munich is deep into his Sherlock Holmes vintage books and memorabilia. Ms Munich has been studying Chinese for 2 years. Just your regular London dinner party crowd then.

Hand Made Food

Handmade food uses local ingredients, organic if possible, hand-made food always. It makes food for the soul. If I turn up at Handmade Food in pieces, this is the only food I know that will put me back together again. Bacon and Egg sandwiches served everyday (3 pound 25p or maybe 4 pound - can't remember). Full English breakfast every Sunday. A medley of other favourites include salad of spinach, pine nuts, raisins and pomegranetes, salmon fish cakes, frozen dinners - beef bourginon, coq qu vin, fish stew, ready-made to go!, grilled tuna steaks with basmatic rice with spices. Cheeses, olives stuffed with garlic, peppers. Olive oil, wine, fresh juice from local farms. Served up with a huge dollop of pride. I like the rustic decor too, love the way they used chalk boards as doors. The upstairs seating and outside seating areas are furnished with old salvaged furniture that still look salvaged. Above the junkyard styled dining room there is mirrored disco ball. Pull up a chair, help yourself to the water, sit next to the sink if you want - that could be the only seat available in this crowded house. Super rustic, super nonchalent, super chic.

Spring Sprung Down My Road

I live on Wisteria Lane......

:)

Blackheath

I can't get sick of taking pictures of where I live. Blackheath is beautiful. There is a rather interesting community living here, we are a laid back, grounded bunch who know we found a good place to land and prefer to keep it as secret and private as possible. No stilettos or high heels at the village pub, its sweats, sneakers, hiking boots as we've probably just been for an hour's walk around the park. The food in the village always good, nothing fancy, just really good food. Hand-made food does the most rustic simple salads, grilled meats and curries, not to mention the world's best egg and bacon sarnie on door-stop size slices of white bread. The village deli does the cutest, well presented english breakfasts. Chapters, Bella Vista and Buenos Aires are where my friends and I celebrated many an occasion. Not to mention the drinking holes - Railway, the Crown and Zerodegress. Also the local shops where people know me - the village thai -Laicram, Indian takeout - Khans', Shepherd's Foods and the little fresh veg shop and the butchers. Perhaps I should have a special piece on the blog about each. Shall try.

Food and Wine Matching

My favorite red grape is Pinot Noir - made famous by the movie 'Sideways' (starring Sandra Oh, from Grey's Anatomy!). We know from the movie that Pinot Noir is hard to grow since its skin makes it easily susceptible to rot. It is also super sensitive to light exposure, soil and fermentation techniques. It is just plain fussy. I like the wine for its lightly bodied, gamey nature. The wine when mature is at its best complex, sensual, intense, succulent all at the same time. Most of all it makes duck taste like absolute heaven. Duck and pinot noir, the best match ever. 


My food and wine match at dinner tonight was a disaster. I was indulging by making pasta puttanesca for dinner to cap off the week. The only wines I had were Jean Luc Colombo Les Gravieres Crozes Hermitage 2008 and Les Grands Cypres Vacqueyras 2007 - North and South Rhone - both bought from the wine section at Waitrose. The northern rhone wine was mostly characteristically Syrah. The Vacqueyras was really nice tasting of red fruit and quite a pronounced round taste of Grenache which I liked.




Lines from Sideways the Movie:

Maya: You know, can I ask you a personal question, Miles?

Miles Raymond: Sure.

Maya: Why are you so in to Pinot?

Miles Raymond: [laughs softly]

Maya: I mean, it's like a thing with you.

Miles Raymond: [continues laughing softly]

Miles Raymond: Uh, I don't know, I don't know. Um, it's a hard grape to grow, as you know. Right? It's uh, it's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's, you know, it's not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and uh, thrive even when it's neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention. You know? And in fact it can only grow in these really specific, little, tucked away corners of the world. And, and only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot's potential can then coax it into its fullest expression. Then, I mean, oh its flavors, they're just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and... ancient on the planet. 

Morning

It's 17 deg this morning and the sun is out. 2nd day of a perfectly sunny and fair weathered weekend. Eunice and I were toasting a bagel for breakfast when looking at the sunshine out in the garden, we decided to make it a bright and early breakfast picnic. We grabbed what we could find in the fridge and the store cupboard and went downstairs in quick time, even forgetting to change out of our pjs almost. Eunice suggested we take our easels and paintbrushes out. It was great fun having bagel, speck, tahini, yoghurt and strawberries for breakfast. We even brought a glass of carmanere which we were smart enough to leave alone. Sitting in gentle sunshine, remembering the Burning Man and Glastonbury and painting.

The results of our rumination....I love having a garden:

Love tells us who we are

As you read this, word is hopefully out that I will be returning Singapore to work and live for the foreseeable future. In a matter of weeks. I haven't kept a good record of my time (8 years) living in London for various reasons but now could be time to take stock. I decided to try to blog about my thoughts over the move for the record!


Over my time here, the word HOME evolved to take meaning. Singapore is in my blood. Family is Singapore, including the many sisters whom I have done life with - decades-long friends. I speak the language, blend in, claim my space there as one of a generation of future owners of that land. I am looking forward to taking that space again, taking in the warmth and the comfort as one would on a Sunday night, sitting on the couch, after dinner, with the gang gathered round and chilling out.


If Singapore is one red color that holds together and makes a living human shape, then Britain or even closer, London added the colors that made my life as a human shape, beautiful. London is my mental and spiritual home. It's celebrated and mourned in my most formative adult years. It tore down and remolded the way I see and understand the world. Its ancient trees in parks and centuries of solid brick buildings in the city were watching as it tested my character. As in a marriage, we've loved and argued, given and compromised, torn down and put us back together. Lucky for me that London is as open-minded, wise and worldly as it is. Lucky that London doesn't judge or try to tell me what to do. I understand London and it understands me. 


Singapore is mine and I am London's. Well, the city has my money at the very least, 8 years of 30% taxes and I won't even be living here during the Olympics!


I read something somewhere about 20 years ago that stuck with me. This songwriter whose parents were constant traveling missionaries wrote that since he moved countries often for most of his growing-up years, HOMESICK is a constant in his emotional state. I came to understand what this means really in the last 8 years. There will always be things that made me who I am that will not fit in that suitcase to the next place I go. Ironically, especially the small and mundane, like the three-part harmony of the birdsong I am hearing in my garden pre-dawn as I write this.


In return for the great blessing and privilege of being able to call 2 countries home, I have known and shall continue to know what it is to be homesick.

Love Tells Us Who

We Are.

When I asked the 

Answer "Who?"

No Love Answered

So I knew I 

Had to Wait

For Love

For

We are No one

Before Love

A missing clue looking

For a Person

A Star looking for 

A sky

An "I am" waiting for

An I

Music Tells Us

What We Feel

But Cannot Say

Love Reveals

What We Know

But cannot See

Before You I was Nothing But

When You Gave me Your Hand

I took My Hand

For Love Tells Us Who

We Are So

When I asked the

Answer "Who?"

Love Answered 

You

love tells us who we are - Donald T. Sanders (American, b.1944)