Fiery and fresh: a relish from Yemen

Before you shrug and scroll on, this is not pesto. This is a potent, fiery, fresh hit of a relish, and it’s from Yemen. It’s zhoug… as tricky to spell as it is to pronounce. Yemenite food is entrenched in Israel. Or I should say Yemenite Jewish food, because there is a difference. What is great

Read more

Salvage and save

It’s with a heavy heart (read: heavy stomach) that I left Georgia this week. What an incredible, colourful country that one is. And I chose this pic because I think it epitomises the way Georgians cook and eat, reuse and repurpose so well. I took it in Tbilisi, the capital, where cooperative shops are a

Read more

Armenia, walnuts, tea

Check out these walnuts! These are whole unshelled walnuts, soaked and cooked until the hard shell becomes soft and edible. Bite into one and you can see how the shell encases the whole walnut inside. Who knew? In Armenia, popoki murabba appears on the table with breakfast or a pot of tea; whole glistening black

Read more

A very French preserve

My uncle Yves, or tonton Yves as we all call him, lives in the house my great grandparents once owned, and where my grandad was born. It’s a residential townhouse on a busy road in a smallish Northern French town. Nothing much to look at from the front, but walk through to the back and

Read more