This Must Be Just Like Living in Paradise...

I’m food shopping in a small place called Heckmondwike. No I’m not making this up, as I sometimes wish I was. I’m in a chain of supermarket (aren’t I always) buying some half-decent beef for the Sunday roast and the checkout guy starts talking to me.

‘Baking?’ he says, looking at the plain flour I’m buying.

‘Yorkshire puddings: Sunday Roast.’ I tell him.

‘Ah, but can you get them to rise?’ he asks with a smile.

‘Yes mate. And I’m not even from Yorkshire!’

‘Where are you from? Where were you born?’

‘London.’

‘Oh! Me too, which part?

‘Bromley.’

‘I was born in Brent. Quite near to you! We must have done something in our previous lives to upset the gods, to end up in a place like this!’

And that’s verbatim. You couldn't make shit like this up (well, I couldn't).

Hot and Sour Fish with Stir-Fried Veg Noodles

Hot and Sour Fish with Stir-Fried Veg Noodles

Here you go something to warm and tangy – a definite break from the norm. This takes 15 mins max to make and tastes fucking wicked. I had to go back for more (would you believe).

Hot and Sour Fish

2 large filets of white fish (Tilapia, River Cobbler are good and cheap)

Groundnut oil

2 teasp Chilli bean Sauce (or Nandos/hot sauce)

1 tbsp Tomato Puree

2 teasp Chinese Rice Vinegar (or normal stuff you put on your chips)

2 tbsp Sweet Sherry (or Chinese rice wine if you're posh)

4 tbsp Soy

Sesame Oil

300ml Chicken Stock

Salt & Pepper

Corn Flour

--

Sir fried Veg Noodles

Pack of Medium Noodles

Spring Onions (shredded)

Mushrooms (chopped)

Broccoli (chopped into small trees)

Garlic (chopped)

Sesame Oil

Sweet Sherry (or Chinese rice wine)

--

In a low wide pan, put: Chilli bean Sauce, Tomato Puree, Chinese Rice Vinegar, Sweet Sherry, Soy, Chicken Stock, Salt & Pepper and heat slowly.

-

Chop the fish filets in half and then coat with Corn flour + Salt & Pepper.

-

In a medium sized pan boil some water, then cook broccoli trees for 5 mins. Remove and then using the same water, cook the noodles for 4 mins. Remove noodles. Chuck water.

-

In a wok heat a decent amount of groundnut oil (150ml).

Fry the fish for 3mins each side. 

Then remove and place fish on kitchen roll to dry.

Empty wok of 99% of the oil. 

Add Sesame oil. Heat for a min.

Add Spring Onions, Garlic, Mushrooms, Broccoli, Noodles and stir fry for 4 mins.

Add splash more Sesame oil and Soy sauce and give it another min.

Place fish pieces in pan with sauce. Heat gently, covering the fish with sauce.

Dish up veg+noodles,  putting a couple of pieces of fish ontop and then some sauce… 

Done and dusted.

All amounts are for guide only and should be added according to taste. I used more chilli and sesame…

Ad Killaz R Loose

Started work on my 5th book - a complete guide to global creativity - and had to put together a PDF portfolio of all my advertising work as a creative/director. Why did I choose an image of the devil for the cover? I hear you ask, perhaps it's to do with having already sold my soul way back inna day when I was working in advertising 24/7. Or maybe I'm just taking the piss and saying that it is indeed a dark art. Whatever way I cut it, advertising - like film - is something that I can't seem to shake. Okay, so the money is often too good to ignore, and the work has taken me to some fucking wicked spots around the globe - Cape Town, Jozi, Mali, Rwanda, NY, SF, Seoul, TLV - but I often find myself justifying the fact that part of me is forever advertising. What the fuck? Why does this matter? Seeing that I sold out years ago, long before any of the books, the films, the TeeVee, it doesn't make any sense. Am I worried what anyone else thinks? I hope not, but deep down I guess it's just that I've been conditioned to think poor artist = good and advertising + cash = bad. But I say fuck all that. Creativity rules. End of Story, see you in the Groucho, motherfucker!

First copy of Street Knowledge drops through my door

After 25 years in the making, this finally arrived today. Still taking it all in but it does what is says on the cover and drops the knowledge for any fucker out there who's interested in street culture.

Peace+love to all those who got on board!

God of the Bends

This statue was on a bend in the road beneath a house I rented in Corfu last week. Lorry drivers would stop and give thanks for a safe ride up (and down) as the road was choc-full of hairpin bends and wasn't that wide.

Books books books

Books seem to be all about the fucking idiot box these days. I'm 65,000 words into a novel (the fourth I've written and the first to be published) and I'm hoping to bring reading back to the people who make it interesting - the young. I don't mean kids here but the 15-45 age bracket of people who like a good read about some counter-cultural shit. Not the nice educated middle-class women who have hi-jacked the literary festivals of the world.
I recently went to a party thrown by my publisher and was looking forward to meeting some legendary writers who I could talk to about writing. But it was full of people from the telly. All the 'famous' people there had TV shows which feature food, and they were all sticking together like icing to a cup-cake.

In the taxi outta there I realised that I had to take my shit back to where it belonged: underground. Not underground as in some kind of bullshit counter-culture sense, but underground as in I don’t give a flying fuck about projected sales; about the state of the industry or the current climate of the market (completely fucked); about promotional (boring) or legal shit (complicated); about anything other than writing a killer book that I absolutely love and other people may or may not like. It made me think that what I should be doing is writing something that I just have to get out there to keep my sanity from evaporating along with my meagre advance. A book that I have absolutely no choice in writing, not something that’s been focus grouped or tested for viability, but something real.

It is safe to say that in the last few years I had become caught up in the idea of some mainstream success from my work. This was down to the fact that I had a mortgage, a car loan, 2 teenage kids, blah blah blah, but mainly due to the fact that I was thoroughly bored of being skint. I wanted the finical stability that this kind of A-list success would bring and thanks to years of no drinking and drugs (the curse of the Banksy Generation), working my ass off 7 days a week, years relentless self-promotion and – most importantly – getting a powerful agent, I was in a position to become richer and just a little bit famous (comes with the money.) Or so I believed.

But then the writers party shook me out of my trance-like state and everything went and changed inside my head. All I ever wanted to be was a writer of books; books that talked about what it was like to be one of us (the Chemical Generation), books that dealt with coming out of suburbia in the 1980s and being so fucking bored with the surroundings that sometimes, you went and did crazy shit, in-between the usual middle-class suburban bullshit. I certainly didn’t want to be knee-deep in projects that were tailored to a certain market or engineered to be commercial successes.

What the fuck is going on? Really? Then this hit me: How do you have the strength to sit down and write a book knowing that no books really sell unless they accompany some lame-assed god-awful TV show presented by some half-witted inbred twat who’s just going through the motions, doing what they’re told just for the money, or a biography of a z-list sleb/slag/WAG with more tits than sense. What do I do to break out of my life even though I need some mainstream success just to live? There is no way I am going back to working a real job as I’m too far down the road and have burnt (blown up) all my bridges. I’m fucking unemployable. Add this to the fact that just about everything has been done before and nothing is original?

What happened was that there was a blip in the work load in between writing and designing my next non-fiction book Street Knowledge, and the promotional activities beginning, and so I got to work on the novel and I'm nearly there.

See you on the other side...

This is just a test...

There is an interview with me up at 405 magazine whatever thing (not sure what the fuck it's about). It's a nice piece and definitely the calm before the storm, as I've started having meetings with my publicist about Street Knowledge and y'all gonna be sick of the very mention of King Adz by the time Street Knowledge hits the shelves in a coupla months...

INTERVIEW HERE

Work in Progress

Been spending a bit of time recently (in between falling in love with sumac*) creating a series of 5 fly-posters for the launch of Street Knowledge.
Here's a preview of one of them, the colour will be done by hand once the posters (A1) are printed in black and white...
*Sumac recipes on the way...

Cold Killer Pasta

Hung out with my Roman Bella Granny this weekend, and as usual, she cooked a pasta dish. And I got the recipe and cooked it last night...

500g Italian Pasta (Bows, whatever)
1 large Mozzarella
1 pack quality small plumb tomatoes
1 pack Sunblush Sun-Dried Tomatoes (in oil from Deli)
Bunch of fresh basil
Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
Olives (stuffed with anchovies or garlic or nothing)

Cook pasta an allow to cool in big bowl.
Chop up Mozarella into 1cm chunks.
Chop both Tomatoes in half.
Chop basil.
Chop Olives in half

Bung tomatoes, mozz into pasta bowl, mix, then add Olive oil, S&P, Olives.
Mix well and then serve.

Bella!

BBBBBB BEASTIE BOYS REMIXED

 By Mos DUB: Wicked shit... love remix culture...

Beastie Boys - Doublecheck Your Head by Max Tannone

Weapon of Choice

Mine has to be Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. Anyway enough of the random shit, here's a preview of the back bookends of my new book, featuring my brother from another mother Pilpeled's wicked wicked artwork. Yes Baby!

Mali Video

Have a butchers a this...My Mali Diesel/Only The Brave Film...

Watch it here!

Old School Recipes up at NoNewEnemies

One of the creative crews I belong to is called NoNewEnemies, and they have a killer site filled with all things creative and art-related. They have recently been putting out some of my old recipes. Straight Outta Brussellllllssss....
Click here to make the jump

More Mali Photos up

Just uploaded some more Mali Photos on to my Flickrrrrrrr.
Check them here...

And now for something French!!!

I have a french mate who is a DJ and Food writer, which is a interesting combination. 

He's just put up hisfirst film about a visit to Paris by the DJ Hugo Mendez. It's a interesting combination...

Watch the film here

Segou City Scores!

Just back from Mali, where I took this shot in a town called Segou. The most friendly people and the most amazing shoot for Diesel. More pics here!

A.F.R.I.C.A.

I'm going back to my favorite continent next week. This time I'm off to Mali, where you can't get in unless you actually get the jabs, so I'm writing this with 2 aching arms. I usually just cross my fingers!
But now my paperwork is up to date and all is well. Proofing the new book before I fly and then getting it off to the printers (well, HarperCollins do that), so things are moving along. Books take fucking forever to get out there...(Photo is one of mine from Rwanda, but will keep you posted!)

Orders are to be obeyed at all times: Follow your Leader!

Okay, so as some of you may know I was born out of advertising (hence the name - doh!) and so I still keep my hand in from time to time with some ad work. It is a great time to be looking at the whole ad game as it has changed beyond belief since the interweb revolution, and it is mutating into something that is a cross between entertainment, aural pyramid-selling, soft-porn, and a video game.

As a 'Cultural Leader' I am involved in the UK launch of the Honda CR-Z (I'm holding out for my free car) which is all about Cultural Engineers - people who are being creative and yet at the same time are doing some good. I applaud this as usually it's just about fuckers lining their pockets and trying to get out of paying the creatives for their hard work. (You'll get paid on the next job...)

So put all your prejudices about selling out and advertising aside and follow me into a world of pain, sorry, I mean the dream factory. There are some decent peeps in there...

http://www.dreamfactoryuk.com/cultural-leaders/

And now for something completely fucking different!!!

Been working on a kinda graphic novel for over 10 years now. Here's a couple of pages to jump start your working week after too much 'chocolate'...

It's totally fucked-up and mental view of the world of advertising and creativity.

Fresh Direction for Food/Blogs/Art

These guys got in touch with me from Australia and I love what they're doing. They're called the 'Bookery Cook' and they are doing something very unique with their recipes, art, design, and whole approach to food. As you might have read (check it here) I'm not that fond of what is happening right now with food in the media. You have to check out their blog and join them on FuckBook. Lots of wicked recipes, has to become a great cookbook...