1Dish4TheRoad
"1 Dish 4 The Road".. Fusing food writing with whatever else I find on the road – fiction, history, poetry, humour, diversity, family stories & London.

‘Food Podcasts: A Tethering to Sound, Food and the World’ – A Guest Post by Adrienne Katz Kennedy

A montage of logos from different food podcasts

food podcasts

– Foreword –

I initially researched and wrote this piece two years ago, during a challenging period. Sadly, it never made it to publication, an inevitable reality of the freelance writing world that never really seems to get easier. Two years on, and suddenly Aaron offered this opportunity to guest post on his blogsite. To have it revived in this way (and by someone who takes such care with his words) seemed genuinely impossible: it felt like cheating, or playing with a hand of cards that weren’t mine. Besides, would it even be relevant now?

Yet, as we mark the third anniversary of the first Covid 19 pandemic lockdown in the UK, I find myself reflecting on the past. If I were to pick a soundtrack to accompany my life at that time, it would be the voices of those I’ve listed below. Voices and stories that carried me up and away, tethering me to other places as a reassurance that they still existed. The reliable, weekly or monthly appearance of a new podcast episode or comforting reassurance of older ones I had yet to hear helped to push me through the drudgery, even if only as a dangling carrot, coaxing me back out on a walk through the same streets with new sounds and stories and familiar voices as my reward.

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A Brief History of Food & Drink in Five Objects

Five ancient artefacts from The British Museum, London, related to food and drink.

The world’s greatest repository of antiquities? Or a vainglorious testament to the arrogance and narcissism of empire? Either way, the British Museum has long engendered discussion and debate.

But as a child, all this flew largely over my head. As far as I was concerned, the British Museum was always just a bit.. well, dull.

Egyptian mummy? So what! Roman statue? Meh! The sheer scale of time and place just washed over my youthful mind without tingling any neurones of appreciation.

And so years passed, and it was not until my 30’s that I ventured back. This time, I felt a palpable thrill as I gazed round the entrance hall – all the more gripping for its unexpectedness.

Stepping tentatively into the cavernous glass-domed Great Court was like venturing into an oversized snowglobe. But rather than chintzy little reindeers or rickety Brighton piers, there were actual sphinxes and sarcophagi – millennia-old relics staring back at me, like they were alive and breathing.

Over time, it struck me just how many objects related to food and drink: not only cutlery, crockery, and utensils, but also in the glorified representations of feasts or hunting.

I had such a sense that, regardless of time and place, food has always been a central pillar of civilisation. It is more than a sustainer of life: it’s a gatherer of people, a connector of communities, and a shaper of identity.

Over time, I’ve been steadily making note of display items that have piqued my gastronomic interest, and I’m picking out five of them here – each originating from a different era and region, each with a culinary theme and a story to tell about the society of the time.

One of these stories is about the museum itself, and how the shadow of colonialism has shaped its collection… but more on that later. For now it’s time to buckle up – you’re about to go 5000 years back into the past…

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London Bridge Is Staying Strong; a Tribute to BOROUGH MARKET

Borough Market, London Bridge - where I am reflecting on the defiant spirit of London and its communities.

“London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair Lady.

Build it up with wood and clay,
Wood and clay, wood and clay.
Build it up with wood and clay,
My fair Lady.”

 

As I tread these streets of London, rain streaming off rooftops, puddles lining the paving-stones like little pools of transient street-art, concentric circles appearing and disappearing within them, I think of this city. This great great city.

It’s two days now after another senseless assault; people were hurt and killed. And my heart cries for them, and for the people who hold them so dear. And as I walk, I look around me, at the city streets through the driving rain.

I wander past London’s squares and structures, buildings and bridges: they whisper words into my ear, reassuring me with their stories from days gone by. History hangs heavy in the air, like mist, swirling through the city’s alleys and gardens, wispy tendrils of history clinging onto cobblestones and brickwork.

Too much history for some. And not always good. But in amongst the narratives of this city – tangling and jostling as they do – lies the very oldest one. One that’s still the loudest and proudest of them all – the indefatigable spirit of Londoners in the face of adversity.

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DIP and FLIP, Donald Trump, and what’s left of the American Dream?

Trump should understand the significance of the burger - immigrants are the ones who built America!

As American as apple pie. So the saying goes. But really what’s more American than the hamburger?

In that meat patty lie redolent images of cattle herded over epic Mid-Western landscapes by sun-scarred cowboys. The cheese as flat and enduring as the emerald Wisconsin pastures it was milked from. And if you put the bun right up close, well you can almost hear the murmuring of wheat swaying in the Wyoming wind. In fact, why not just unscrew a Coke right now, put on some Springsteen, and let’s hit Route 66 in an ol’ open-top Chevy, for this post is pure 100% Americana.

Some folk say the burger’s a little like America itself: fast ‘n free-spirited, big ‘n brash, refreshingly unfussy, yet all a swaggerin’ like John Wayne in True Grit. It’s ubiquitous and it’s egalitarian: from the subways of New York to the shores of California, the burger is relished alike from Walmart stacker to Wall Street trader, from bag-lady to baseball hero.

If American culture’s conquering the globe, burgers are the culinary cavalry. Them ‘golden arches’ stretch far ‘n wide, but it ain’t just an American multi-national carrying the meme: burgers sizzle away atop many a London pop-up stove, small-hold indie pioneers tapping into the American dream. View Post

It’s Not Just KRICKET, It’s Thoran Around India

Kricket, where the diverse ingredients in this thoran has me reflecting on diversity more generally.

Religion. Do I go there? What is to gain? What could I lose? And yet here I am. And here beside me is the territory of ritual, history and God. And here’s me stepping into it..

I think most of us have our stories of religion. Whether we grew up with it or not. Whether it was found or it was lost. Mine begins in a Jewish family, quite Orthodox in fact, until I discovered I was possibly atheist, but let’s call it agnostic, but always felt connected to Jewish culture if not belief, now living in and raising a mixed-faith family, rewarded by the richness and challenges that brings, living in a city that’s probably the most diverse on earth. I love that my neighbours are also mixed-faith; in fact between our two houses there are four religions, a fifth if you include our other neighbours. In our local neighborhood, there’s a friendly Sikh gurdwara, a serene Buddhist temple, a vibrant synagogue, the oldest mosque in London, churches from myriad denominations, and probably lots more besides.

I’m constantly intrigued by religion. I revel in its rituals, its festivals, its music, its community, and of course the centrality of food. It can transcend the individual, traversing time and space, helping people in their search for meaning. But as for dogma, division, rigidity and intolerance – well, who needs those unfortunate bedfellows… View Post