Sound of Silence

Sorry for the absent words, been busy finish off the new book.Can't say or show anything at the moment and so I will just have to post this photo I shot in Venice Beach. Fuck-know why but this should slate your thirst...
Some nice food coming your way this week, promise...

1percent

Okay, alright...It's been 14 years since the beginning of '1percent'. Now on line for the first time in ages, you can have a butchers at what it was like in the old days, before...
DOWNLOAD HERE

Chicken & Egg Pilau

Sorry for the distinct lack of action on this here blog but it's been a busy week and lots has been going on (nothing I can talk about, yet). In between the madness I cooked a Pilau for my mates Walks+Kirsten who have no kitchen (it's being fitted as we speak) and a 6-week old baby daughter. So the best thing was to cook a rice dish, keep the lid on the pan and make a Rasam that could be nuked in a microwave. Cooked the pilau (chicken) and shot round there. All good, rice was still hot and banged some rasam on the top. Sat around nashing, cooing over the baby and laughing at the crap telly.

PRO BONO STREET FOOD RECIPES #3

C’mon! Double Bubble – 2 recipes today!!!

Rice & Peas



I used to live in Balham, South London, and my flatmate’s mum would send round rice and peas and hot pepper gravy on a Sunday (a Jamaican Sunday lunch). This was the best thing we’d eat all week. 

Feeds 4-6  

300g/10 1/2oz/1 3/4 cups long-grain rice 
1 bunch spring onions (or just a regular onion), chopped 
1 tin kidney beans 
4 teaspoons allspice 
4 tablespoons soy sauce 
4 cloves garlic, chopped (or 4 teaspoons garlic paste from a jar) 
1 chicken stock cube 
1 x 200g block creamed coconut 

Wash the rice and cover with water to about 3cm above the top of the rice. Mix the onion into the rice and water. Open the tin of kidney beans and pour into the rice, brine and all. Add the allspice, soy sauce, garlic and stock cube. Chop the coconut block into pieces and add to the mixture. 
Mix thoroughly and then cover the pan and bring to the boil. Cook for 20 minutes on a very low heat without taking off the lid. 

Turn off the heat and allow to the pan stand for 10 minutes before serving with jerk chicken and hot pepper gravy (see the following recipe). 




Jerk chicken with hot pepper gravy 



This is a recipe from Ladbroke Grove, West London. A guy I knew back inna day had a shop there selling hip-hop clothes and trainers that he and his partner imported from New York by the bag load (as many as they could get on the plane). This was in 1989 and good gear was hard to get. I used to hang with him sometimes and we’d eat jerk chicken for lunch. Those were the dayz. 

Feeds 4 

8 chicken portions (thighs and drumsticks) 
jerk seasoning (Encona or similar) 
1 large pot yoghurt 
juice of 1 lime 

Hot pepper gravy  
2 teaspoons ground allspice 
1 teaspoon jerk seasoning 
1 chicken stock cube dissolved in 450ml/16fl oz/2 cups water 
1 tablespoon soy sauce 
2 teaspoons chopped garlic  
1 teaspoon chopped fresh root ginger 

Wash the chicken pieces and score each piece deeply with a sharp knife three or four times. 

In a large bowl mix 1–4 teaspoons  jerk seasoning (depending on how hot you want it!) with the yoghurt and lime juice, and then add all the chicken pieces, one by one, coating each piece with the mixture. Marinate for as long as possible (overnight is best). 
Bake in the oven at 200°C/400ºF/Gas 6 for 60 minutes, or cook on a BBQ for 30 minutes. 
Meanwhile, make the hot pepper gravy. Mix all the ingredients in a pan and bring to the boil.  
Simmer for 10 minutes. 

Serve the jerk chicken with rice and peas and hot pepper gravy.

Window Shopping

Food Porn

(The above picture is my favourite shot I've taken so far of one of my recipes. This apparently is food porn, but we'll get to that in a moment...)

Does anyone really want to see people actually cooking on TV? Is it that important to see how it's done? I mean most of the great recipes are not that difficult and the only reason to see someone actually doing it is to get it right. Good food is all about simplicity and not some major fucking campaign to construct a piece of art. This is where food porn comes into it. Apparently people only cook the recipes from books that have colour photos of the finished dish, and most people only cook one or two recipes from each book. Does this mean that the cult of food porn is all about the voyeurism and not the participating in the actual cooking?
If it is then I call bullshit on this. For me food is all about actually doing something that creates something, unlike sitting on a computer all day surfing, watching, reading, which is what a lot of us fuckers do in our down time (as well as at work). I love cooking because it is the antidote to the virtual world of instantly available nothingness. You really produce something that is of use. I mean, once a you've given up the 24-hour drinking, the drugs, the orgies, what is left? Food... that's what!

Going Back to Cali

Picture this: Summer has kicked-off with a bang, you are a rich white suburban teen and the year could be 1978 or 1988, it doesn’t matter. You and your friends all have convertibles with high-grade stereos in them and an endless supply of weed, and all you have to do is hang out and keep cool: In every sense of the word.
You spend you days sleeping till noon and then after a quick dip in the large blue pool behind the house you jump (literally) in your Firebird or Freebird or Thunderbird and cruise through the valley to pick up your best friend, Kenny. The two of you then go to a sweet leafy spot high up in the hills to kick back and smoke some weed, over looking the city suburbs, until you are really stoned and then cruise about the streets listening to KROC or a mixtape that one of you have made. The tunes are all blissed-out west coast shit, and the tunes play loudly as your skin blisters and burns in the sun, from white to red to brown. You and Kenny begin to look alike and a couple of times you get so wasted that you forget your name, you forget who what when where why, until you spot Kenny sat in a corner sat by the pool sat in the passenger seat and it all comes rushing back to you. It could be said that Kenny keeps you grounded, that he keeps you from floating off and never returning. But this would never happen, as that would be just too deep for you to imagine: beyond comprehension.
After a few hours of cruising you float down from the hills into the valley and hook up with your close circle of friends every night in a car park behind the 7-11, which by 9-o clock looks like a convertible car show complete with beautiful girls lolling about stoned on the hoods and seats of the cars. By midnight the party has moved on to wherever is available; whoever’s parents are out of town, you move from one to another in heavy rotation. You drift through a steady supply of girls, nothing heavy and nobody gets hurt when you trade in one girl for another. This is all part of it. The girls are into the brief, intense, relationships and after a couple of hazy days of love they want something new, something fresh. This is all you do all summer. This is all you want to do all summer. This is summer. You have absolutely noting to worry about…