Endangered Species: Queen’s Market & Hackney Action This Weekend

Photo: Friends of Queen’s Market

A friend in Hackney alerted me to the oh-so-typical problems with dodgy property people. From personal experience, my band has lost 3 rehersal places one after another to ‘development of luxury flats’ (Hackney Wick, Limehouse and Greenwich) and lots of artist and musician friends have lost their homes and work spaces (mostly in Hackney, Greenwich & Deptford). They call it ‘Regeneration’, but so far all I can see are tacky clone buildings for yuppies to live and work in. It certainly can’t be cultural regeneration! What a disturbing visual onslaught – glass, chrome and fake leather for the on-coming Blade Runner age. Let’s hope it comes at least with flying cafs & Chinese canteens a la Fifth Element… :/

So there are two things in Hackney this weekend, where you can show your support (money and corruption tends to overrule the voices of people everywhere, but at least you can make an attempt at holding up a mirror!). For more information, please see the Hackney Solidarity Network webite.

THIS SATURDAY:
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FUNDRAISING

“Today Spirit lost his court case and will be evicted by a Bhamanian-based property speculator that Hackney Council sold the lease of his shop to for less than he was willing to pay for it himself.

After years of working like a dog to pay off the extortionate rent they have been demanding, Spirit is (as I write) emptying the shop of his produce, for the sake of £7,000 legal costs that the magistrate refused to let him repay in instalments.

Please come to Broadway Market Saturday, 11am onwards to show support, rattle a bucket, make a noise. This campaign is not going out with a whimper …

Subscribe to email list below:
http://spirit.hackneysolidarity.info/ “
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THIS SUNDAY:
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GENTRIFICATION TOUR OF HACKNEY

“Jules Pipe (Mayor of Hackney) said that if you opposed developments like
the Dalston Square then you were part of a ‘keep hackney crap
mentality’. But Hackney isn’t crap. Not even close. It doesn’t need
property speculators to ‘make it a nice place’. Don’t take our word for
it – come and see for yourself.

On Sunday 28 September we will host a walking tour of Gentrification in
Dalston and Hackney Central, culminating in a picnic in London Fields.

While Hackney Council celebrate the Olympics with the ‘Carnival for the
Cultural Olympiad’ we will have a look at the gentrification of Hackney
that the Olympics will cause. From Dalston Lane to Broadway market we
will take people on a guided tour of dispossession and hear from
shopkeepers, residents and the homeless who are fighting to keep their
area a place they can live and work in and struggling to survive in this
Olympic borough.

On Sunday the 28th of September meet at 1pm at the Dalston Peace Mural
on Dalston Lane, (just after corner with Kingsland rd, near Dalston
Kingsland Station)

We are looking for volunteers to help organize the event: both before
and during the 28th! We need people to suggest tour stops, write pieces
for the booklet that accompanies the tour, speak on the day about
campaigns, developments, injustices and change, put up posters, tell
your friends and help make refreshments!

If you would like to get involved, or know more please contact –
londoncoaltionagainstpoverty@gmail.com or call 07932 241737.”

Peanut, Ginger & (Sweet) Potato Curry

I used to go to Oriental City a lot just for the great Thai food there. One of my favourite meals was tofu with ginger sauce, vegeables and rice (accompanied of course with one of those fantastic fruit cocktails!). But I also like the creamier curries and the peanutty ones. So today, I ogled at my almost-empty jar of peanut butter and a lonely tin of cocount milk in the cupboard and decided to embark on a Thai cooking adventure. I usually get a 5 kg bag of Thai rice from the wholesale place down the road, so I always have ‘rice on tap’ – which worked out nicely for the current ‘project’. I also keep a jar of salted soya beans in the fridge (which are used in many Thai curries instead of salt) alongside one or two curry pastes from the same shop. So all I had to get was some veg!

I discovered that the ‘Ethnic Shop’ in Balham (yes, it is really called that! There used to be loads of African shops, but unfortunately, they are all gone apart from one!) sells some Thai veg, but some of them are a little too bitter for my taste. As I had once fabricated a decent potato-peanut curry from far inferior ingredients to the initial horror, but later delight of my co-chef at a previous workplace (because we had not much else there but rice, potatoes and peanut butter on the last day before the next delivery) , I bought a sweet potato, a potato and a bunch of spinach. Also, I found a sweet pepper in the reduced to clear pile and bagged a nice bit of ginger! In the end, the following recipe came together (not for the faint-hearted in terms of calories, though I heard the rumour that coconut milk speeds up your metabolism! anyway…):

Peanut, Ginger & (Sweet) Potato Curry

Thai fragrant rice (use dry boiling method, measure water according to desired stickiness!) – if possible, don’t use supermarket rice as it never seems to come close to the rice you get at Asian/Oriental/African grocers. And supermarket rice is more expensive, too! Buy where the restaurants buy

Roast the sweet potatoes and potatoes in the oven (separately) with lots of crushed & chopped garlice, salt, pepper and oil (add a dash of olive and sesame oil for extra tastiness if you happen to have it around) – and chilli powder or dried chilli flakes.

Gently fry fine strips of sweet pepper, add curry paste, peanut butter (smooth works best, but I tend to buy crunchy!), grated ginger, coconut milk, lemon or lime juice (and if you like, extra garlic). You can also add more thai spices! Heat the sauce, but don’t let it get too hot. If coconut milk boils, it can get ugly
Lastly, add spinach leaves to the sauce.

On a plate, arrange roast vegetables on the rice (you could even roast the sweet pepper if you wanted!) and pour the sauce with the spinach leaves (and the pepper strips if you’ve put them in there) over everything. Or you can shape the rice with a large round cup (careful with the sticky rice – it ain’t called sticky for no reason!) and have it as an igloo on your plate surrounded by potato goodness and sauce! Bon appetit!

Photo will follow!

If anyone happens to have a good recipe for a Thai ginger sauce, please put it in the comment box! x

New Tasty Improvised Salad

Today I realised again how much of a difference it makes taste-wise how thinly or coarsely you chop things. The realisation came during the making of a salad which I was very pleased, so I thought I’d put in on the blog! I had little money left, but a strong craving for salad. As I already had the pepper, lemons and the apple, I just got the two lettuces…

1 Romaine hearts lettuce
1 chicory
1 red pepper
1/2 apple

Chop all above ingredients (the apple quite finely) and pour a mixture of lemon juice, sugar and oil over it. Quite a Northern German recipe… If you have herbs in the garden such as lemon balm, dill, chives, tarragon etc, feel free to add some of those!

10th Anniversary Food

Today was my 10th anniversary of living in the UK, so I had a little party with friends & British foods! I sort of turned my place into a mini caf for 12 hours making trifle, chip butties, crumpets, scones, beans on toast (with pickled eggs!) etc. and later on, we even put the barbecue on. I made my favourite trifle, which contains the following:

Fairy cakes
Juice of tin fruit and a little bit of cocktail cherry juice
Bananas
Raspberries
Custard
Whipped Cream
Toasted Almonds
Chocolate Sprinkle
Cocktail Cherries (not glace cherries!) – the nice almond-y ones!

And I made a fruit punch for the first time with the following ingredients:

Tin fruit (marinated over night with vodka & cranberry)
Red Wine
Bucks Fizz
Orange Juice
Cranberry Juice
Lime Slices
Grenadine

It’s a pretty light punch with not that much vodka!

Yellow Raspberries

Last week, I came across yellow raspberries at my local market. As I’d never eaten them before, I got a little punnet for £1. Eating them makes you think about how you associate a taste with a certain colour… Ended up making a very yellow raspberry-orange yoghurt shake with them.

Baked Figs

Today, they had 4 figs for £1 on the market. They were very ripe, so they had to be eaten ASAP! I just did one of the simplest things you can do to figs if you don’t want to eat them raw, turn them into ice cream or drown them in alcohol: I baked them with a little honey! Two of the figs were badly squished from my other fruit & veg anyway, so in the evening, I just put them into an ovenproof dish, tore them open some more and put half a teaspoon of honey into each fig. I left them in the oven until they were just hot – what a perfect taste!

Hot figs are also good with vanilla or nut ice cream, chopped nuts, biscuits (I had some spelt ginger biscuits in the house that I had bought in a fit of ostentatiousness, and they went really well with it) and all sorts of other stuff. A lot of people seem to bake them with alcohol and then make vanilla mascarpone – what a killer! Am also tempted to try out the BBC’s numerous fig salad recipes and tarts – they sound terribly posh, but can be made with pretty cheap ingredients – and sometimes with a barbecue! (I know, I have a barbecue fixation…) – and are very filling. I also love the ‘warmth’ that figs seem to radiate and the fact that they are quite docile creatures to work with in the kitchen – it seems to be rather difficult to do something wrong with them. Another great thing about figs is that you can eat the whole thing without having to chuck anything away! So go and get some figs!

PS: Due to popular request, I have changed the original photo for a prettier one…

Flower Ice Cream

On my recent treks to visit friends and family I keep bumping into stalls of flower ice cream. In Ghent, I had a delicious lily ice cream (I couldn’t afford a meal in Belgium anyway, so I lived on falafels and smaller snacks) which they sold at a flower shop (!), and my friend had a lavender ice cream. In Stralsund, I had some elderflower ice cream (as well as some sea buckthorn ice cream – they make everything imaginable out of sea buckthorn in this area). When I get back, I will try to make some myself with flower waters or my housemates geraniums – mwhahahaha! Talking of travelling, there are some really interesting articles in the virtual world about flower ice cream – recipes, stories of family flower ice cream businesses and even news items (e.g. warnings about aphrodisiac Turkish salep (‘fox testicles’) ice cream (yum!) made with endangered orchids). Check it out!