Greenwich: A Shopping Guide

Greenwich, much like many other places in London, is a town of contradictions. High rise sink estates are nestled between leafy gardens and double-fronted houses. Tracksuited teenagers sit next to well-heeled professionals on the buses and trains. What makes it different from any other area of urban development in the city, is its historical importance.

Its astrological, royal and maritime legacy is enough to make it eligible for the starry accolade of an official venue of the 2012 Olympics, but the steep hierarchies of personal income are all too visible to anyone who strays from the town's neatly gentrified marketplace. The niche boutique shops and provisions for yummy mummies hide the surly underbelly of the town, where graffiti is spattered over derelict houses and status dogs are paraded down littered streets.

It's all too easy to suggest that the influx of affluent residents in search of an easy commute to the greedy metropolis of Canary Wharf would improve the quality of life for all Greenwich residents. But the clear divide between rich and poor serves to magnify the poverty seen in the east end of the high street. Convoys of yummy mummies in 4X4s and smarmy bankers flashing cash in microbreweries don't make the abandoned office buildings any more pleasing on the eye. The cost of housing makes even less sense when one passes the site of Greenwich Hospital. The concrete building, once a vital service to thousands of people, was demolished in 2006. The enormous site has remained boarded up and empty.

But, away from the hordes of day-tripping tourists and school groups idling around the Observatory, yet not so far from the inexcusable urban decay, there is hope. Trafalgar Road is rumoured to be the most polluted road in London, but beyond the toxic fumes of the trundling engines is a strip of shops to put any generic high street to shame. Polish and Italian delicatessens stand next to Afro-Caribbean hair salons, authentic meze kitchens, independent motorcycle shops and old-school launderettes.

Thanks to nationwide homogenisation, a list of the commercial outlets in a town wouldn't usually be cause for much interest. It could even be tasteless to suggest that the average high street represents or adequately provides for its actual surrounding community. However, east Greenwich's shopping parade is an emblem of capitalism at its most mutually beneficial. It's also the signifier of realistic diversity we rarely see in London.

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This piece was originally written as part of a job application.

Your Local Chinese Supermarket Needs YOU

Ok, it probably doesn't need you. It'll do fine without you. Rick Stein is always banging on about how you can find tamarind at 'your local Chinese supermarket'. I always think 'what a dick'. Yeah, because he lives in Padstow and I suspect, from my experience of eating Chinese food twice in Exeter and once in Warminster, that wherever the Chinese population is low, that's where there are no Chinese supermarkets. It's pretty mean of Rick to advise people from counties as white as his to guzzle loads of gas getting to a Chinese supermarket 40 miles away. Especially when Chinese food is referred to under the umbrella term of 'ethnic foodstuffs'. Mr. and Mrs. Whitebread will get all the way to Swindon and then discover they're in a Japanese shop. I'm not even talking about Chinese food. I'm talking about Cantonese food, but I'm not about to split hairs when every Bamboo Garden and Golden China I've encountered outside the M25 has had deep-fried saveloy on the menu.

My local Chinese supermarket is a cash and carry, and it's actually closer than my local Sainsbury's. I haven't been in it for years, but I went back two days ago and it's better than I remembered. It's as disorienting and as smelly as just the department store in Singapore's Chinatown, which is, I'm ashamed to say, the closest I've got to China. AND they were playing Lionel Richie's 'Dancing on the Ceiling' as I was there. And outside, there were little speakers playing...Lionel Richie's 'Dancing on the Ceiling'. How brilliant is that? Especially when you consider how Sainsbury's and Tesco don't play any music, and Co-Op radio is pretty much Radio 1.

It's remarkable to see how cheaply speciality food can be imported for these days. Of course, all restaurant fare is more expensive than home-made grub, but speciality food takes it to ridiculous levels. For the same price I'd buy two gyoza in Gerrard Street, or five gyoza in any Wagamama, I bought FIFTY at See Woo. I also bought some Nasi Goreng paste and some chili oil. I've eaten pretty much nothing else since.

1. Dumplings with soup noodles (keeping it casual, this was minimum effort, bit of chili, garlic paste, ginger and lemongrass in with packet noodles, dumplings on top)

2. Nasi Goreng (egg on top, fried shallots - Rick Stein's recipe, except I didn't use spring onions/shallots in the rice and I used this hectic MSG-laden curry paste and substituted sugar and soy for kecap manis)

3. Dumplings on Nasi Goreng (the 'Best of Both Worlds' - check the sp00n)

Taking Stock

So with my partridge stock (two partridge carcasses, the thyme and lemon that had lived in their empty shell of a body and a stick of celery), I made a risotto. I fried off a clove of garlic with an onion in some olive oil and the herby garlic butter that I also made last night. Then I added in some bacon. Then the rice, then ladled in bits of stock every now and then. Soon I added mushrooms and frozen peas, some crumbled parmesan and lemon juice. And LOADS of garden herbs - rosemary, thyme and sage. Then I copied Nigel Slater and fried little circles of grated parmesan and let them bubble and cool. Once this happened, they were nice and crisp and a perfect adornment for the risotto.

Game On

I just roasted a partridge and put it with sauté potatoes cooked in a fresh herb and garlic butter. The partridge was great, and it came with bacon. Yes please.

adaptations - dubstep and burritos

Adaptations come in many shapes and sizes. Today I've chucked my massive Sennheiser headphones on and resultantly looked like a dick for most of the day. I feel I can justify this faux pas by sharing that I have been listening to this on repeat:



The Police's Message in a Bottle is great, but the verses are great because they are all minor and dark. The chorus kind of ruins the song. So it's nice to hear that, in this remix, the whole song is seedy and gross.

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I also had a dream that I made Cannelloni with Jamie Oliver last night. So today, when buying all of the ingredients, I decided I'd make chili burritos. It's not that exciting, but cooking anything in the oven has previously been disastrous for me:

They were real tasty, quite light, yet hearty AND had ALL of the textures you could ever dream of in a meal: crispy, meaty and carroty. I just used Jamie's recipe for chili con carne. Except, instead of leaving the chili for a WHOLE HOUR, about half an hour in, I put the chili into flour tortillas in a dish then sprinkled loads of grated cheese on top. I chucked it in the over at 160degrees centigrade for about 15 minutes, then grilled it at 190degrees centigrade for about 10 minutes. I served it with salad and squeezed lime on top. Lime and cheese works. It's a powerful dish. After eating I don't feel bogged down, I feel like I can conquer the world.

Qype

I've just realised that I'm going to write restaurant reviews. And I'm going to write them somewhere where I am real easily published. Which is here. 

Spicy Baked Beans

Real healthy, quick, easy, cheap etc. etc. etc.

Sorbet Grapes

My friend Dolly introduced me to sorbet grapes. She likes to snack on frozen grapes as inside the skin, they have a wonderful texture. If you suck them for a while, they become softer at the edges, but crunchy, hard and icy in the middle. Today I tried to incorporate them into a dessert and a drink. In the case of sorbet grapes, reds are preferable to greens, not just due to taste, but the way the cold shows opaquely on their skins is refreshing in itself. The two 'recipes' I concocted today are so simple but ridiculously tasty.

Sorbet grapes with ice-cream

Get two scoops of icecream, cover with a couple of tablespoons of dessicated coconut and a couple of teaspoons of muscovado sugar. Dot a few frozen grapes around. Eat.

Sorbet grapes with elderflower juice

Pour some elderflower cordial into a glass. Add a slice of roughly-cut lime. Pour in water. Use frozen grapes as icecubes. Drink.

The cure for swine flu

It's pretty simple. I'm not entirely sure if it works yet but anything that sets your sweat glands going and your nose streaming at such a high rate is bound to clear a cold.

I don't really know what I'll call it, except 'an alternative to packet Jewish chicken noodle soup', as it's what I had instead of packet Jewish chicken noodle soup.



1x small clove of garlic
1/2 red chili
a thumb-sized piece of ginger
1 small spring onion
600ml boiling water
1/2 cube chicken stock or packet noodle soup powder.
1 1/2 tablespoons of sesame oil
1 nest of rice noodles
5 kaffir lime leaves
a handful of dried seaweed
3 tablespoons of fish sauce
a handful of frozen peas
a small handful of peanuts
a tablespoon of dried chili flakes
1 medium egg
some soy sauce

In retrospect, the seaweed was fucking weird. And the whole thing needed some lime. So don't put seaweed in, put lime in instead. Egg should be optional really.

A fairly simple recipe: Finely chop the ginger, garlic, chili and spring onion. Heat a tablespoon of sesame oil. Chuck in the ginger and garlic. Fry it off for a bit, then chuck in the spring onion. Pour in the boiling water. If you want to use seaweed, put it in here. Wait for it to absorb some water and soften before putting in the noodles peas, lime leaves and some fish sauce. After a minute and a half, pour it into a bowl. Put some more fish sauce in the bowl.

Slightly unnessecary behaviour: Pour some sesame oil and chili flakes into the pan, fry them off for half a minute then add in some boiling water. Pour this over the noodles in the bowl.

Unnessecary behaviour: Then toast some crushed peanuts and chuck them on the noodles.

Indecent ruining of a nice meal: Fry an egg, chuck that on top of all the noodles and use the fresh chili, fish sauce and lime to garnish.

All of this was inspired by Rick Stein's 'Far Eastern Odyssey' which is perfect viewing when you feel ill. All the garlic, ginger and chili made me not know if my nose was running or my philtrum sweating. Sweating helps to rid your body of unhealthy viruses as it encourages your cells to work in overdrive. Apparently. Chili gets the metabolism going, too, so all the vegging out and eating biscuits whilst ill won't catch up on you if you get this soup in your face hole.

And if all this fails to cure you, the egg, which will inevitably be undercooked in a mad effort to not make the noodles too soggy, will send you straight to the hospital, where you'll be safe.

Jamie Oliver's sweet and sour pork

Yes he's a patronising goodie-goodie, and his tongue is offputting, but I like Jamie Oliver's cookbook. Today I made sweet and sour pork:

It was really tasty and simple and even my sister liked it. It's not the same as normal sweet and sour pork, as the pork bits aren't deep fried. Which is a bit of a shame, really, as I was eating something bastardised, but it was a good bastardised so I couldn't quite disagree with it. The most obscure ingredient was balsamic vinegar. **** (out of how many I just do not know!?)

Curry

Turning up to someone else's house by surprise and cooking them a curry is such a bloody good idea. Especially when there's a bunch of you and you're all single and it's Valentine's Day. Curries are actually remarkably simple to make, but the important part is to use a ready made sauce (Bhuna, Jalfrezi, Saag) and add crushed cashew nuts to the sauce so as to thicken it and simultaneously hide the oiliness of the sauce. Lime pickle, it almost goes without saying, is a must.