Nibbles #8
Everything we ate in Vienna, flour soup, and a literary tour through a jar of marmalade.
Welcome to Nibbles where once a month I share everything brilliant I’ve been reading on the web as well as some general updates from my kitchen, my vegetable garden during the growing season, and other miscellaneous ‘you really need to know about’ updates.
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Sarah has some excellent thoughts on how we measure the passing of time:
Why foreign candy (or what we call chocolate or biscuits) will always beat out American candy (says the girl who currently has a kilo #costco of Red Vines on her desk. I know they don’t taste of anything, but I got addicted in the States. Everyone I’ve handed one too hates them, and I’ve taken to describing them as tasting ‘of America’..!)
Jolene takes us on a beautifully written and fascinating tour through marmalade in literature:
I’m very excited to try Trevor’s method for pan frying fish, which really does look foolproof:
I though the whole board thing was almost over… and then I saw this bao board.
Digby Warde-Aldam brilliantly captures the history and ubiquity of Pizza Express:
The Kitchn have put together helpful (well, perhaps they should have put both dried and straight to wok udon noodles on there) pictorial guides to the different types of Japanese and Chinese noodles.
Debora Robertson, on moving to France on a whim:
What I’ve been cooking: Not much new from me this month whilst I’ve been catching up on all the recipe development work I put off over Christmas and because I’ve been away, but on the blog I’ve got an excellent (if I may say so myself) recipe for Deconstructed California Rolls with Fresh Crab, and for my Macknade residency I’ve made some vibrant Blood Orange & Cashew Crunch Bowls with seasonal greens and sesame fried eggs.
What I’ve been eating: An awful lot of cake and other Austrian items in Vienna. I’ve got an essay planned about food on the trip coming soon here on Substack, but for now I’ve put together a roundup of all the best coffee houses, restaurants, wurstelstands and bars we visited on our trip on my blog, and a review of the stunning Hotel Motto that we both have put up there as one of the best hotels we’ve ever stayed in.
What I’ve been reading: For Christmas I received a copy of The Philosophy of Curry (Amazon affiliate link, but it is free if you have Kindle Unlimited) which honestly has been one of the best food non fiction books I’ve read in a while. Demolishing it in one sitting, it is a fascinating look not just at the history of curry and the questions surrounding the sometimes controversial decision to call something a ‘curry’ (is the word cultural appropriation or not?) but there is also a helpful list of the origins and common ingredients in lots of the curries I always see on British Indian takeaway menus and am unfamiliar with - I’m sure I’ll be pulling it down a shelf every time I want to change up my usual order but I’m not actually sure what the menu items are.
Ooo interesting! I went down the 🐇 🕳️ of Time recently and shared a Substack post about it on. If you’re curious to time-explore:
https://kenshostudio.substack.com/p/measuring-the-infinite
Great post, Rachel! And thank you for the shout-out! :)