Eat My Globe Part 11

35.

Teranga In the local language of Senegal, Wolof teranga means 'welcoml and is not just a greeting but a state of mind, the expression of the hospitality of the nation towards visitors. It obviously doesn't apply to weary travellers on round-the-world trips, because the welcome I received on my arrival in Dakar was not one that the Senegalese tourist board would ever wish to put in a brochure.

My friend Isabelle Fuchs, in Munich, had previously married to a man from Senegal. When she heard about Eat. Globe, she promised me that the food in Senegal was good and that her ex-husband, Keba, and his family would look after : So, knowing better than to doubt a German, I added Dakar^ the itinerary.

It started well enough. The plane from Johannesburg wasi time, and immigration was a breeze: they even had swish landing forms emblazoned with that word 'TERANGA'. WitS only a handful of bags to come through, I collected Big Red in ten minutes. So far, so good. Then, to use the technical term, it all went pear-shaped.

As I stepped out of the grim arrivals hall, the people were meeting me were nowhere to be seen. I had a phoii number, which I punched into my mobile. After a few rings it:^ was answered in French. Had they wanted to know the way the Sacre Coeur from the Eiffel Tower or 'les choses necessaireSj pour preparer le pet.i.t dejeuner', I would very much have beenl their man. Unfortunately, my schoolboy French was little use ia Dakar airport at midnight looking for someone I didn't know.

If my expected hosts were not there to greet me, plenty of other people were, and suddenly, in a scene straight from a zombie movie, I was surrounded by about thirty heaving bodies, jll with arms outstretched. Touts I could deal with. I could 'Non, nierci' with the best of them to the would-be taxi drivers and the people selling phone cards and chewing gum, although I really Jid want to ask the man who proffered an edition of French Scrabble 'Cla.s.sique' to a weary pa.s.senger at midnight, what the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l he was thinking. But others had less professional matters in mind. One person grabbed my arm while another tried to prise my mobile phone from my hand. Another had already laid 'dibs' to Big Red, on which I was sitting, and was trying to push me off using a short run-up and a shoulder charge he must have learned from watching wrestling.

1 heard someone barking loudly, again in French, and looked up to see a man beaming at me through a ring of gold-capped teeth. This was obviously Keba, and all was saved. 'Hurrah' for him and 'yah boo sucks' to all my a.s.sailants, who were drifting back into the shadows from whence they had come. My saviour gave me another beaming smile and then said, in a tone I found slightly less friendly than one would hope for from a welcoming party, 'Give me $50 and 1 will make sure no one hurts you.'

Oh, just great. Now I was the b.i.t.c.h of the local mobster. He began to push my luggage trolley over to the side of the car park and turned, beckoning me to follow with a wicked grin before flicking open a mobile phone and hollering down the mouthpiece. A good-looking boy like me could fetch top dollar on today's market, and I fully expected to be packed off by noon to serve as a love slave to a blubbery woman in an Arab state with a name that sounds like phlegm.

Just as I had nearly given up all hope of ever seeing my beloved Big Red again, I felt another, altogether more gentle, hand on tny shoulder and turned to see the wide, engaging grin of a tall man in a black bomber jacket.

'You must be Simon', he said. 'I'm Bath. We've had a lot of trouble getting through security. I hope you haven't had an trouble.'

'Trouble?' I wanted to scream at him. 'Trouble? I've prac cally been gang-raped. That man over there, walking away wi( my bag, by the way, is on the phone right now trying to sell i into slavery, and to top it all off, someone tried to make me 1 the French edition of Scrabble.'

But before I could say a word, he had spoken quietly with i self-appointed bodyguard, who gave in without a fight, and lifting Big Red onto his shoulders gesturing for me to folic him to a waiting taxi.

The way I felt that night, I would have cut my stay in Sene down to as short a time as physically possible, a feeling ad to when Keba, standing nonchalantly by the taxi, told me tl I was not going to stay with him after all, as he was leaving 1 Germany the next day, and we needed to find a hotel. The : that it was well past midnight did not seem to faze him at all. ] instructed the taxi driver to take us to a procession of hotels diminishing quality until we found one that had s.p.a.ce and met the requirements of my meagre and hastily calculated budget. I finally got to crash in a hotel room that was as tired and wor out as I was by about 3.30 a.m.

It tells you all your need to know about Senegal that, the unpromising start, it turned out to be one of the most enjc able stops of the trip, thanks to my new friend. Sakhary Sy, Bath (p.r.o.nounced 'Batch') as he was known to everyone, spok perfect English littered with Americanisms picked up whi acting as a translator for the US military. It was not just English, however. It was his manner.

Tall and constantly smiling, Bath was one of the kindest, mc gentle people I have ever encountered. He was about my ov age and lived with his family, including a 97-year-old father, a town some twenty miles outside Dakar, and seemed to knov everyone in the city. He knew every beggar and pan-handler ir Dakar by name, and often gave them a few coins.

'Charity is one of the pillars of Islam', he explained.

He sent hawkers away not with a shout but with a smiling 'genenyon Inchallah' ('Next time, if G.o.d wills it') and used liis loose change to purchase small songbirds, kept in cramped wooden cages, so he could release them into the skies, saying, 'Perhaps as they fly away, they will pray for me'.

He loved his city and announced to me, slightly incongruously, that it was his 'hood'. I liked him immediately, and on our first morning, as he took me on a walking tour, I explained to Bath why I was there.

'Food?' he replied. 'Well, I love food and we have great things to eat here.'

With that, he turned and headed in the direction of Sadaga, the central market of the city. The market was interesting, but, the real reason we were there was to try mafe, one of the staples of West African cooking. Bath led me to Chez Khady. It bore a name that reflected the city's French colonial past, but the restaurant itself was pure Africa. Communal tables were already heaving as we arrived, pre-paid for our meal and carved out a place for ourselves amid the bustle of men in flowing robes and women in explosions of colourful material. When the food arrived, it was simple, delivered without airs and graces on a plate of rice served next to a bowl of mafe with a pleasing slick of oil on the top.

Beef or goat was slow-cooked with chilli, onions, tomatoes and local vegetables, including ca.s.sava, until it thickened to form a rich, satisfying stew with a real kick. Not enough of a kick for Bath, however, who showed me how to mash up the scotch bonnet pepper so it slowly released its powerful juices into the gravy as you ate. The end-result was a dish so deeply savoury I could taste it for hours afterwards.

Dakar turned out, against all expectations, to be a pleasingly laid-back city with one or two sights of interest. But I began to realize that it was only going to take a couple of days to see everything, and I would still be killing time that could be better spent elsewhere.

In between sight-seeing, however, Bath was determined ^ fdl my time with good food and wanted to introduce me another Senegalese staple, ya.s.sa, a dish of chicken marinated with chillies, oil, lime juice and garlic before being roasted and then served in a sauce soured with palm vinegar and olives. The restaurant he chose was packed with locals, and plump servers in flowing robes were shimmying between tables fussing over the customers. Our lunch was placed before us, and we tucked into the communal pot. It was another great taste, simply prepared and served but with layers of flavour, from the sourness of the vinegar to the heat of the chillies. The accompanying local Gazelle beer, which Bath insisted we drink, was a perfect match.

Senegalese food was a very pleasant surprise to me. As in many developing nations, where food is fuel before it is fun, it's simple stufl": expensive proteins in the shape of beef, chicken, fish or goat being padded out with filling carbohydrates of rice, millet or potatoes. But the Senegalese make sure it is never dull, both by the preparation, which involves fresh ingredients, slow cooking and challenging heat, and the way it is served, with added doses of hospitality and tables often sharing from one large communal plate.

Bath's dream was for every visitor to love Senegal as much as he did, and he suggested we travel to his home town of Rufisque, where I would see real life away from the capital. He suggested we go by local taxi - one of the private cars that congregate by Independence Square ready to be hired for the hour-long journey. I was slightly alarmed that our chosen carriage appeared to have no doors, but Bath was not fazed and, joined by three others, we squeezed into the car, which sank until it was jus clearing the ground. Two of the driver's friends appeared, carrying the missing doors, and began attaching them to the car with the aid of packing tape, going over and under the car until, satisfied, the driver set off" on the journey with us trapped inside a Christmas present on wheels.

An hour later we waited patiently for the driver to cut the package open, Bath took me to his home to introduce me to his family- His two sisters had been busy preparing lunch: one of them gutting and cleaning fish, the other pulverizing spices in a pestle to create 'soul', used to flavour perhaps the most famous dish of Senegalese cooking, thiebou djene. It means simply 'fish with rice', but that does not do justice to a fabulous dish in which sweet, bony fish are cooked with vegetables and served on spiced rice that has been allowed to cook until the bottom layer develops an addictive, crunchy crust.

When mealtime came around, Bath took me into his room, where we ate together from one large plate placed on a small table. The rest of his family sat outside in the courtyard enjoying their own communal meal. The pleasure he took in serving and then eating the meal was obvious.

'Have some sauce,' he said, ladling a spoonful over a portion of rice for me, 'the flavour is the best.'

'Mix some hot sauce with the fish. It brings the sweetness out.'

We cleaned the plate down to the last grain of rice, and he pushed back his chair with the same huge grin on his face that had been such a welcome sight at the airport.

'Man, my sisters can cook', he said with a satisfied sigh.

If Eat My Globe was about anything worthwhile, it was about moments like this. Here I was, in a house in Senegal with a man I had only met a day or so before, sharing a meal prepared by his family.

At the end of my stay he insisted on seeing me to the airport, even though I had to check in at 4 a.m. 'I don't want you to have the same experience leaving Senegal as you had arriving', he explained over my protests. As we said goodbye, I fumbled in my pocket and found a handful of loose change that 1 would not be able to use. I handed it to him, thinking he could at least use it to buy some of that Gazelle beer he liked so much.

'Thanks. I'll use it to buy some more birds to set free', he said with another broad smile. 'I'll ask them to pray for With that, he extended his hand to touch knuckles and headed off back towards the city. That was Senegal. That was my new friend Bath, and that, in the end, was the true meaning of teranga.

Off on the Road to Morocco Casablanca, Morocco's capital, gets a horrendous press. One guidebook described it as 'unloved and unlovely', and another one calls it 'actively rank'. I can see why. It is not a pretty city and has few of the attractions tourists look for in Morocco. There is an industrial port and a rather tatty-looking Medina, and that is about it. Except for, of course, the Ha.s.san II Mosque, which was completed recently and is second in size only to Mecca in the Islamic world. It's impressive, with a capacity of over 100,000, and the calls to prayer blasted out by its sizeable speakers can be heard all over the city.

I rather liked it. It had all the hallmarks of a city that really appeal to me - a city not based on visitors but full of normal working stiffs getting on with the task of earning their daily crust and then spending the rest of their time figuring out where to have that daily crust. Casablanca has its own bust'mg charm and enough food options for even someone with my j?ded palate to perk up and take notice and certainly enough to fill the two days I had to kill before catching the train to Marrakech.

Morocco, because of its mainly Muslim population, is a predominantly dry country. The few places that sell beer are as dark and unwelcoming as a Soho s.e.x shop. I decided that a few dry days would do me no harm at all and instead found my way to one of the many cafes that litter the streets and alleyways of Casablanca. Serving little else except strong coffee and thick, sweet mint tea, the coffee shop is at the centre of Moroccan culture. It is where men - always men - come to meet and argue over anything and everything. Chairs are always set so they; facing the street to allow people-watching, making for a perfec point to relax, jot down some notes and decide what to do with my limited time there.

Of course, this mainly revolved around eating. I caught a cab up to the Quartier Habous, the new city built by the French in the early twentieth century, and found my way to a strip of butchers specializing in camel meat. The heads of the meat's previous owners were swinging from hooks outside the shops, just in case you had any doubts, and at the end of the strip a man behind a large grill was charring large steaks and kebabs. I bought a kebab and doused it in chilli sauce. It was the toughest meat I had ever encountered, like old beef, and after chewing furiously on the same piece for over twenty minutes I discarded the rest and went to look for something a bit softer.

Benis, in the same district, is one of the most famous patisseries in Morocco. I bought a box full of sublime pastries - some light and crumbly, others filled with pistachios and cream and some drowned in honey, all incredibly addictive - and I polished off' a box of fifteen as I walked back towards my hotel. But the best treat was the most simple. On Mohammed V, one of the main roads through the city, was a small market selling fruits, vegetables, fresh fish and meat. In the surrounding streets were shop front cafes preparing food from the market. At one end men were running across the street with freshly killed chickens to thread on to rotisserie skewers, and at the other end there was the constant whirr of machinery as fresh juices were pumped into small gla.s.ses. I chose a shop at random and sat on a small bench. Using my schoolboy French, I was able to order half a roast chicken with bread. You would think such a simple meal hardly worth remarking on, but it is if it is a freshly killed chicken, grilled slowly on a spit until the flesh remains moist and falls from the bones while the skin is crispy and delicious. It is if it is served with a bowl of olives warmed through with juices from the chicken mixed with olive oil, lemon juice and lemon zest. And morocco: casablanca to marrakech it is if the whole lot, including a fresh pomegranate juice, costs under Honest food prepared by working people for working people with immense friendliness and hospitality.

As much as I liked Casablanca, I found it hard to warm to Marrakech. It's certainly beautiful. With the twisting alleys of the Medina, the explosions of colour in the labyrinthine souks and the well-preserved remnants of its royal past, it should be the perfect place to experience Morocco and Moroccan cuisine at its very best.

There are vast numbers of tourists, mainly French, but also Spanish, Germans, a smattering of Brits and huge numbers of fearful-looking Americans with their unerring ability to blend in seamlessly with the locals. I was adding to the tourist numbers by one, obviously, so I shouldn't complain, but I will anyway. Like all cities that predicate themselves on the arrival of visitors from many nations, everything in Marrakech seemed neutered and false.

The mayhem of the Jemma El Fna, the main square of the Medina, with its snake charmers, acrobats, dancers and fortune tellers, felt more like a ride in a theme park than a real expression of the character of the city. The bustling streets had all the edge of a well-polished pool ball. As with the city itself so with the food, much of which seemed aimed at extracting cash from the gullible rather than providing quality and a taste of genuine Moroccan hospitality.

Obviously it is possible to eat well. In my case it took the help of the owner of my charming and well-placed guesthouse, nestled away in the alleys of the Medina, to point me in the right direction, particularly in my search for some of the royal Moroccan food for which Marrakech is famous.

Riad Dar Mimoun came highly recommended and, like most riads, worked on the basis of a set menu, giving the opportunity to try a superb example of a pastilla. It's a cla.s.sic of Moroccan cuisine. The dense pastry fdled with an unusual combination of savoury meat from pigeons or duck with sweet fruits is not to everybody's taste, but I cleared my plate to the last crumb. I foi_f lowed it with a cla.s.sic tagine of lamb with prunes and almonds slow-cooked in a style developed to preserve water. The meat fell from the bones, from where I was able to suck the precious cargo of blubbery warm marrow before using bread to mop up the thin juices.

Despite this memorable meal, I was not sad when it time to leave Marrakech and take the train back to Casablar Moroccan trains are wonderfully efficient, and a first-cla.s.s tic confirmed a seat in an air-conditioned carriage. As I boarded,! I realized 1 would have travelling companions for the journe and, being one of the most hospitable peoples on earth, whe the Moroccans travel, they bring food and when the Moroccans bring food, they share it.

My carriage was full as we pulled out of the station, and withii half an hour everyone was chatting in a mixture of Arabic ai French. Soon the food began to appear. Lots of it: loaves of so bread, cheese, dried fruits, hunks of chicken someone had in cold bag, and flasks of coffee and sweet tea. My contribution half a pack of Pringles was shameful, but no one seemed to car and I was invited to join the party as we all happily stuffed oui! faces until the train pulled into Casablanca's Voyageur railway station.

I said my farewells, swapping hugs and business cards with m new friends, but I did not have time to linger. I needed to straight to the station. It was time for a reunion. Together agair with TGS, and where better to do that than Spain?

37.

A h.o.r.eseman Riding By Whenever I sent TGS an e-mail raving about whatever dish I happened to be enjoying in whatever country, the reply would come with the annoying but inevitable qualification 'Sounds good, but is it Spain?' He knew that, wherever I was and whatever I was eating, I would always be making comparisons with my favourite country of all, Spain. It's his favourite too, and we have both been obsessive about Spain since our parents bought a place on the Costa del Sol in the early 1980s.

They chose Fuengirola, a small fishing village turned Sodom and Gomorrah, where charter planes of people were disgorged every summer to spend all day getting as burned as possible on the beach and all night getting as drunk as possible in bars before ending their day's activities with a fight and a much-needed vomit. Despite this, we fell in love with the town, the country and the food.

To someone who has not visited Spain it is hard to explain why it captures the imagination so readily. For TGS and me the food, the wine and the people are a combination we have found hard to resist for nearly thirty years, and we make a point of going at least twice a year to Madrid, our favourite city, and other regions of this vast and remarkable country.

During my brief Christmas stopover I was invited to join the owner of a Spanish restaurant in London for supper. Next to me at the same event sat Andrew Sinclair, who worked for Gonzalez Bya.s.s and whose job it was to persuade the UK that sherry is not just a drink you give your granny or a wandering cleric if they happen upon your doorstep. Sherry has a real image problem]

Most people have never tried it and think it is something that

tastes like melted Christmas cake, which it can do, but that is like

saying that all opera involves big, fat women in armour shouting

at you in German. jHJ

He was preaching to the converted. Sherry has always been one of my favourite drinks. When I was a student, for reasons I can never quite fathom, I decided that I needed to study theology. Each evening I would sit in the darkened room of j my student accommodation, puffmg on a pipe (no sn.i.g.g.e.ring] at the back) having important discussions about G.o.d with my fellow students, all the while sipping on a small gla.s.s of Harvey'sl Bristol Cream. Obviously, I was totally insufferable as I sat there' pontificating - I still am when given half a chance - but at the : very least it was my first introduction to this most under-ratedj of drinks.

As the Majumdar children grew older, our Christmas morning traditions expanded to include the opening of a bottle of; crisp, cold fino sherry as we waited for a stupidly large turkey to brown in the oven. Even now, when I taste this delicate, slightly acidic wine, I half-expect to turn around and see my mother * wrapping sausages in bacon or happily rolling b.a.l.l.s of stuffing.

Over supper I told Andrew about Eat My Globe. 'You should 1 come down to the Feria de Caballos in Jerez next April', he said. 'It is a fair for the local hors.e.m.e.n, but really it's an excuse to drink vast amounts of sherry.'

The words 'with k.n.o.bs on' sprang rapidly into my head, par-l ticularly when he said I could invite TGS and that the company he worked for, Gonzalez Bya.s.s, one of the great sherry families, would be able to find some hotel s.p.a.ce for us. By the time the trip came around at the end of April 2008, I was exhausted but ] excited. I connected with TGS in Madrid, and by late afternoon we were in our hotel in Jerez de la Frontera, ready to indulge in sherry and sherry-related products.

Jerez, however, did not seem quite so ready. Not one bar SPAIN: JEREZ.

was open. This wasn't the Spain we knew and adored. As we walked, we began to get a little desperate: it was, after all, nearly six hours since we had had beer and Ibenco ham at Madrid's Atocha station, and TGS was beginning to go cold jamon on me. Then TGS spotted gaggles of well-dressed pensioners walking in the opposite direction. We followed them, realizing what was happening. When the feria comes to town, the town itself closes, and all the bars move to the fairground to ply their trade there.

As we approached, we could already see the sky lit.up by the lights from the fair, but nothing prepared us for the incredible sight as we walked through the main entrance. To call this simply a fair would not do it justice. It covered an enormous area, and was packed with casetas, lavish stands representing the bars, clubs and sherry bodegas ofjerez. Music mixed with happy chattering was deafening, as tens of thousands of people milled from stand to stand with gla.s.ses of sherry in their hand.

We were struck immediately by the good nature of it all and could not help but think that, if the same event was held in the UK, with all the booze consumed, the local police and casualty departments would be working overtime. Here the locals, young and old, were just determined to have a good time. If someone b.u.mped into you, they apologized; if you were queuing at the bar for a drink, they would make way for you. For two boys from South Yorkshire, where touching someone's pint leads to a friendly kicking, it was all a bit disconcerting. Not disconcerting enough for us to leave, however, and we stayed until way past midnight sampling as we walked before calling it quits and returning to the hotel for a reasonably early night.

Jerez, however, had no such intentions. As we left, people a good deal older than us were just arriving for their night's entertainment, and the young folk looked as though they wouldn't stop drinking and dancing until the small hours of the morning. Us folk in the middle, however, were keen to indulge in a comfortable hotel and wanted to be on top form for the next day, It when we had been promised a tour of the vineyards and bodegas of Gonzalez Bya.s.s.

Founded in 1885, Gonzalez Bya.s.s was a joint venture by thei wonderfully named Manuel Maria Gonzalez Angel and his.' English agent, Mr Bya.s.s. Nearly 130 years later it remains in family hands and is one of the most famous names in sherry,, particularly for its Tio Pepe brand, named after Manuel's unclej:^ who was the first to create the fortified wine we now know as j fino.

We had been promised a special treat by Andrew and met' up with him and others from the group mid-morning to head.iJ out to the vineyards. From the look on their faces it was pretty obvious that they had been at the fair for a few more days thanj we had. Dark gla.s.ses were in evidence, and there was the slight-1 est air of loin girdage about facing the final couple of days after what I gathered were one too many late nights and early morn- [ ings. TGS and I, however, were now in fine fettle, bouncing] around in excitement as we were chauffeured to the enormous j vineyards of Palomino and Pedro Ximenez grapes just outside the city. Well over 900 hectares, it is an impressive sight, but: pales in comparison with the Gonzalez Bya.s.s bodegas back inl Jerez itself Each beautiful bodega, or warehouse, has its own aroma,' taken from the type of sherry being produced inside. The lofty ; warehouses of fino barrels had that sharp, clean smell of fresh, ^ young sherry. Those housing the Pedro Ximenez are filled with ' a sweet, almost musty hue. It would be as easy to get as drunk on the aroma as it would be on the wine itself Martin Skelton, the M. D. gave us a short history lesson as we walked through, explaining that sherry really began with the transport of wine to Britain in the 1800s, when it was first fortified to keep it from spoiling on the long journey. Fino was created almost by accident as a failure to fortify the wine sufficiently allowed a must to develop on the surface of the wine, which stopped it colouring. Sherry is produced by the solera system which, sounds like a Mike Oldfield alb.u.m but in fact refers to the way that barrels are stored: the oldest barrel is partly emptied and then refilled by the next oldest and so on, so that the final result is a blend of many ages of sherry.

Obviously the proof is in the tasting, and after the tour Martin led us to a tasting room, where a complete range of sherry had been laid out for us. This is where I wish all those people who claim not to like sherry could have joined me as we tasted all the way from sharp, crisp fino, perfect with the local speciality of fried fish, through to the darker oloroso, finishing with a range of staggering thirty-year-old wines, which would make the perfect accompaniment to chocolate or figs. These are magical wines and deserve a wider audience.

Martin then suggested that we head back to the feria for lunch, served, of course, with Tio Pepe bottled freshly for the event only days before. Now, in the early afternoon, it was already in full swing again, and every caseta was buzzing with the sounds of sherry-fuelled chattering. The air was filled with the haunting sounds of sevillanas, the local offshoot of flamenco, which summarizes the courtship between a man and a woman in twelve prescribed steps that everyone from small children to grandparents seemed to know and everyone seemed to be taking every opportunity to dance.

No one in their right mind wanted to see me get down with my bad self, so I settled down at a table in the lavish Gonzalez Bya.s.s caseta for the more important matter at hand: lunch, consisting of huge plates of jamon, local Manchego cheese and mounds of freshly mzdtjritura of fish and seafood - all washed down, of course, with more bottles of the zesty fino than anyone cares to remember.

We were joined by one of the descendants of the original Senor Gonzalez. He wanted to share with us the fact that the previous day over 25,000 bottles of Tio Pepe had been sold at the fair. A record. As though in celebration, before he left the table, he waved at one of the servers and the table was suddenly covered again in platefuls of food and bottles of sherry. XC picked up a crisp, freshly fried anchovy, plopped it in his mou and swooshed it down to his gullet with a good slug of chillec^ fino. He turned to me and mumbled through a mouthful of foe and booze, 'Every now and then, just for a moment, life st kicking you in the a.s.s'.

We don't always see eye to eye, but in this case The Gr Salami was bang on the money.

Istanbul: Eating Eytan's Way The Angel Mangal Turkish restaurant sat at the less glamorous end of Upper Street in London's Islington and was a regular standby in the Majumdar brothers' dining calendar. The grilled meats were among the best in London, and we could regularly be seen chomping at our standard order of 'special mixed grill with quail and a side-order of sweetbreads' washed down with pungent Turkish wine, which worked perfectly in context but tasted like camel urine whenever we were silly enough to open a bottle at home.

These being meals with TGS, however, things were never quite that easy, and we would have to take turns calling out what piece of meat we were to select next so that there could be no possibility the other brother could steal more than his fair share.

'We just did chicken wings. How about a lamb rib?' 'Have you just had a sweetbread?' 'That's a big piece. It counts as two.'

It simply became habit and remains so in every meal we share. So much so that Jay Rayner, the restaurant critic of The Observer newspaper, wrote, 'The Majumdar brothers have so many rituals they could job-share as the Pope', adding that the reason for our 'your turn/my turn' approach to meals was that we came from a large Bengali family, and if such methods were not enforced, there was a strong Hkelihood that the runts of the litter might starve.

As you can imagine, the notion that there might ever be less than enough food on the table to feed her brood went down like a cup of cold vomit with Gwen Majumdar, and we both receiv phone calls of the T am more disappointed than angry' varie the moment the paper hit the stands. I can still hear her voic now as she announced with Welsh defiance 'Well, neither of yojj look like you ever went hungry'.

Our routine, however, did have some roots in our childhoc - more specifically, Sunday lunchtimes, when TGS was allowe into the kitchen as the roast joint was being divvied up. It wasj as is the case for so many in Britain, the only time we all to sit down together as a family, and Mum went to town witl whatever large chunk of dead protein she was preparing, supple menting it with large Yorkshire puddings and as many vegetable as would fit on the table without it collapsing.

While Auriel, Jeremy and I would stand watching, nosesj pressed to the gla.s.s panes of the kitchen door, Robin would pu all the choice bits off the roast chicken, fat off the beef or crack-J ling off the pork and eat them noisily in front of us and ofte giving us the finger, before finally allowing us to come to the table. He termed these his 'treats' and declared them his birth's right as the eldest son. This scarred me deeply, and we now have an unspoken understanding that no one of us gets more than the rest, and an accusation of such a crime is a very, very serious matter in the Majumdar household.

While there may have been an underpinning of fairness^ about our way of eating, there is another, marginally more sane, i reason we chose to eat our mixed grill this way, which was thati it allowed us to compare the tastes as we ate the same morsel at the same time. Was the plump chicken wing, piping hot off the charcoal grill, as good as before? Was the thin lamb cutlet with a ribbon of crispy fat properly seasoned? Were the nuggets of thymus gland cooked so they still retained a little bite? Such things were and are important to us, and a good hour or so after the meal would be taken up with an in-depth discussion of the performance of the grillmeister and his steady hand with the seasoning.