Slow Food London set a challenge: could regular Londoners go slow for an entire year? Would it be easy? Would it be hard? Would there be times when it would (slowly) start to go wrong?
Here, Susan Paul talks us through her sixteenth week:
A busy start to the week so I was glad to have some of the carrot soup made a couple of weeks ago, in the freezer. I added a spoonful of yoghurt and some chopped mint as we still have lots in the garden.
I made an omelette for supper and added our British cheese for this week, which is the delicious Appleby’s Cheshire.
We have spent 4 days in Istanbul so I have tried to adapt the Slow Food Challenge to that city instead of London.
We ate out for our entire stay and the food we chose was really very good. It was clear to me that the abundant supplies of local fruit and vegetables were put to good use in the restaurants: pomegranate and parsley salad; red onions with tomatoes and roasted walnuts; baby cucumbers with mint and olive oil; aubergines with tomatoes and garlic; red peppers with marinated anchovies; fat leaves of peppery rocket; and the “street food” of grilled corn on the cob and roast chestnuts amongst many other freshly made things.
The meat we ate was mostly lamb: shish kebab; chops grilled with lemon, garlic and mint; and in a casserole with cinnamon. We also had a soup of red lentils with mint and yoghurt; Lamacun, a kind of Turkish pizza with a topping of minced beef and red onion and of course lots of hummus with Anatolian bread.
The Turkish wines were very good and reasonably priced.
You see food everywhere in this city! There are shops and stalls with huge displays of all kinds and colours of exotic spices, teas, nuts, and dried fruits including slices of bright green kiwi fruits. And rows of jars! Jars of pickled vegetables, jars of preserved fruits and jars with nuts arranged in layers of different types. Oh and Turkish Delight in so many different flavours even chocolate!
Back in London, although there are still strawberries and raspberries around, we have switched to apples and pears for our breakfast fruit, as they are so good. We have also enjoyed more watercress with some beef braised very slowly with caramelised onions; and a lovely supper at our neighbours house where we had some delicious fish and vegetables baked in paper and some blackberry crumble ice cream. I am finishing off the week with a simple Sunday evening supper of a boiled egg with toasted sourdough bread and good butter and more lovely watercress.
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