Food

Bad Korma*…

There’s plenty of scaremongering about immigration these days but, even allowing for a proper degree of skepticism, this constitutes a clear and present danger to our way of life: The curry industry will die if action is not taken to address tough new immigration laws, restaurant bosses have warned the Scottish Parliament. They claim food quality will deteriorate and up to half of the Indian restaurants currently in business could shut. The comments came as 100 restaurateurs staged a protest at Holyrood over the changes to immigration rules. They claim a shortage of kitchen staff has been created as a result. Restaurant owners said legislation which came in at the

Email of the Day

In a whimsical Facebook moment I suggested that life would be more bearable if everything were as fine and reliable as a good pork pie. Too true, you may feel like saying and I wouldn’t blame you. Need it really be said that the ready availability of quality pork pies is one of the great benefits of returning to the United Kingdom? A friend emails: “Your status update puts it beautifully. There is something about pork and pastry alright. I’m a sausage roll man myself, but there are so many poor versions out there it’s always a gamble. The upside of pork pies is that anyone who bothers to make

A Cook’s Bookshelf

Megan offers her annual Christmas cooking recommendations. Kit here; manuals here. As usual, there’s lots of good stuff. But permit me to offer some supplementary ideas on the matter of cookbooks. If, as Megan suggests you should, you own several of Julia Child’s books you may not think you need another set of classic volumes on French, Italian and Mediterranean food. You’d be wrong. No serious Anglophone cook should be without at least two (if not all three) of Elizabeth David’s masterpieces: Mediterranean Food, Italian Food and French Provincial Cooking. These three books alone provide enough inspiration to last a lifetime. More than just recipe books, however, these old friends

Pizza Wars Continued…

Yeah, so Megan can’t find New York style pizza in Washington. Well, I can’t find Scottish pizza here either. I forgot to ask earlier if any readers know of anywhere on the eastern seaboard that does a good, proper deep-fried pizza*? *Photos from a fine chippie I used to frequent regularly: Piccante on Broughton Street in Edinburgh.  We were spoilt for choice, in fact, since we also had the Rapido 100 yards down the road. Their traditional – that is, only cooked once – pizzas were better but Piccante took the palm for deep-frying. It’s also one of the few places I know where, honoring the spirit of Scottish invention,

In Search of the Perfect Pie

As any newcomer to DC must, Megan McArdle bemoans the relative lack of decent pizza in Washington: To a lifelong New Yorker, there is no other sort of pizza than the large, thin, New York slice. We may disagree amongst ourselves about the theological details–crispy or floppy, thick border or thin, sweet sauce or spicy, and how much grease is too much? But basically, we’re all in the same church, and it’s a highly localized one. Chicago pizza may be a fine foodstuff, as long as one consumes it without trying to imagine that it is actual pizza. But it is no substitute for the One True Faith. Well, sure,