(Note: This article was originally written for a Chinese magazine, hence the slightly Lonely Planet-esque tone. Unfortunately the magazine was not to be, so I thought I'd best not waste my work, and am thus posting it here. Enjoy!)

The first British home of my mother's family was the East End of London. Fleeing violent persecution in Eastern Europe and Russia during the early twentieth century, they and millions of other Jews moved across land and ocean to North America, Australia, and England.

In London, Jews mainly settled in an area that stretched from Spitalfields in the West to Stepney in the East; from Hackney in the North to Whitechapel in the South. The centre of the Jewish East End was Brick Lane, a long, narrow road running for over half a mile between Whitechapel and Bethnal Green Roads. Now a popular weekend destination lined with cafes and vintage clothes shops, Brick Lane was then a little pocket of Eastern Europe in London, complete with pickled cucumber stalls and bagel shops (a couple of which survive to this day).

This was the world that my maternal grandparents grew-up in. Though it's now years since the family moved to the suburbs, my grandmother, Sylvia, still talks about the folklore of this area. Sylvia witnessed the Battle of Cable Street in 1936, when Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists were prevented from marching through the area; she remembers when the Jewish restaurant Bloom’s was at the southern end of Brick Lane; and she remembers eating cholent on the Sabbath.

Cholent, a long, slow-cooked dish of beef, potatoes, barley and beans, is the quintessential East-European Jewish food. Its origins, however, lie further west. In Medieval France, Jews in cities such as Toulouse, Nimes and Montpelier adapted the local speciality of cassoulet, and it is from the French that the dish gets its name - a combination of chauld (hot), and lent (slow), in reference to the cooking method. When the Jews were expelled from France in 1394, many went to Germany and further East, and they took their eating habits with them.

However, as the food writer Claudia Roden points out, 'the Jewish practice of cooking a meal in a pot overnight is of course much older than the fourteenth century’. Because lighting fires and cooking are both forbidden on the Sabbath (the Jewish holy day, from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday), Jews have long found ways of making sure they have at least one hot dish to eat during this time. In the shtetls (villages) of Central and Eastern Europe, on Friday evenings Jewish housewives would assemble their uncooked cholent at home, and seal the lid onto their copper pot with a mixture of flour and water. The name of the family was then marked on the pot in chalk, the pot taken to the local baker’s oven, cooked overnight, and finally fetched, often by children, on the way home from synagogue - a tradition that continued in London's East End.

Though patently a poor people’s food, cholent is nonetheless loved and held dear by many, and my own family has its own stories about the dish. My great-grandmother Annie apparently made an excellent cholent, for which her two adult sons, Harold and Morris, would come home every Saturday night. Annie also had her own secret ingredient - a sheet of parchment paper pitted with dozens of small holes made with the tip of a pencil, which she would place on top of the assembled cholent, and then pour over a layer of beef dripping, allowing the fat to ooze slowly onto the ingredients below - a pretty indulgent extra, since cholent is already so rich that it is said that ‘people have to go to synagogue on Sunday to pray for their stomach to recover’.

I bought the ingredients for my version of this dish at one of the last remaining open-air markets in East London: Ridley Road, in Dalston, Hackney. Now one of the most fashionable parts of the city, this area has, like the rest of the East End, had a chequered history. Settled by Jews in the early 20th century, it is now home to a sizable Turkish and Afro-Caribbean community, both of whom are increasingly being pushed out by the rising house prices. This is an area undergoing major changes - the Olympic Park is just down the road, making it the focus of many government-funded regeneration projects; this though is creating its own problems, as the riots in August 2011 showed. There is a certain tension in the air of Hackney, as the (usually) white yuppies rub shoulders with their poorer neighbours; while taking the photographs for this article, I was told that it 'wasn’t allowed'.

Nonetheless, I have a great fondness for this area. My best friend Francesca grew up just around the corner from here, and within my own family there are associations - my grandfather had a china and pottery shop on Mare Street, and Annie lived for a short time at the Pembury Estate (one of the flashpoints of the 2011 riots). Ridley Road market itself is a joy - ‘like taking a holiday every time you walk down it’, as I once heard someone say.

I’d never made cholent before, but the easiness and deliciousness of the finished product could easily convince me to do it again. This recipe comes from the wonderful Book of Jewish Food by the incomparable Claudia Roden, which is also where I gathered much of the information in this article.

Cholent, adapted from The Book of Jewish Food, by Claudia Roden

Serves 4

500g fatty beef, diced
3 tablespoons light vegetable oil
2 large onions, diced
3 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
3-5 potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-size chunks
200g dried butter beans, soaked for an hour
100g pearl barley (optional)
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400°F / 200°C, gas mark 6.

In a large heavy pot or casserole dish with a tightly fitting lid, heat half of the oil, and brown the meat. Remove to a bowl, add the rest of the oil, and then fry the onions until soft. Add the garlic and bay leaves and fry until the aroma rises. Return the meat to the pot, and now add the potatoes, beans and barley (if using), seasoning each layer liberally with salt and pepper.

Cover with boiling water, then put the lid on and place in the oven. Cook for 20 mins, and then turn the oven down to its lowest temperature. Cook overnight, or for at least 8 hours. Serve, and in the words of Claudia Roden, ‘remove the lid at the table, so that everyone can get the first whiff of the appetizing smell which emanates’.

For the month of September 2011, Ridley's pop-up restaurant served lunch and dinner from an empty corner on Ridley Road Market, Dalston, East London.

Instead of paying with money, diners 'bought' their meal with produce purchased from the market, which the Ridley's chefs would then use to cook the next day's meals.

This film follows two Ridley's diners, who had never been to the market before.

www.ridleys.org

Banana lady.

Passion fruits, I think.

Three varieties of limes.

Chilli powders.

Unknown green vegetable or fruit.

Mushrooms and garlic.

Red shallots.

Coconut lady.

All from a sunny morning in Hue, Vietnam, February 2010.

I've been holding off from writing this post for a while now, keeping my fingers crossed that I'll eat a breakfast that beats this incredible morning feast I ate in Hoi An last week. So far, though, it's not happened, and to be frank, it would take something pretty bloody spectacular to top this one. So, here it is: The Best Breakfast of my Life.

As with all good breakfasts in Vietnam, it started early. Up and out of bed and on the streets by 7, I was rushing to the market when I encountered this: soymilk, Vietnam-style.

For me, this epitomizes all the differences between China and Vietnam's drinking cultures. In the former, soymilk is drunk hot or warm; in the latter, it's given the same treatment as coffee and tea - iced to within an inch of its life, which in China would be seen as a serious threat to one's health. Me, I adore it, and so nicely refreshed and ready for more substantial fare, I headed to the riverfront market, where, right on the edge of the quay, I found this:

The vendor was serving my quang, one of central Vietnam's most famous noodle dishes: springy rice noodles, beansprouts, herbs, shrimp, quail's eggs, chopped peanuts and a dash of lime juice.

Totally delectable, and even better with the beautiful view.

Most people would probably be satisfied by these two offerings, but predictably, not me. Feeling the weight of all Hoi An market's delicious foods on my shoulders, I felt duty bound to keep eating, and so headed next to a stall whose wares I had sampled the day before.

This is banh khaoi, and the stall came with a recommendation that did not disappoint. In the batter of freshly made pancakes nestles a piece of pork and half a shrimp, upon which is piled beansprouts, fresh herbs and green banana slices; the whole lot is then wrapped up in a sheet of rice paper, and dipped in a sweet and tangy sauce.

Though by this point I was pretty full, I figured I had just enough space for one more drink from a sinh to stall I'd spied just a few doors down.

And oh boy, was a glad that I did, for look what I got.

This wasn't your standard, middle of the road type sinh to, but a luxurious sinh to fit for a queen. Not only was it a blend of a number of different fruits (instead of the normal one), it had a topping which took the drink to a whole different level: crunchy, roasted slivers of coconut, a whole dried Chinese date, and juicy, lychee-flavour jelly cubes. Many different textures going on there, and for some perhaps too many, but I couldn't get enough of it - although, as you might imagine, I drank this last part of The Best Breakfast of my Life very, very slowly.

This is the scene that greeted me from the window of my hotel room in Son La, northwest Vietnam.

Nice, right? But of course, being the incurable foodie that I am, I wasn't at all interested in the mountains - it was what was going on down below that got my attention.

The ladies who were trading at this little roadside market were very amused by my taking photographs of their produce, which included this bizarre looking thing.

What on earth is it?! I showed this photo to a Vietnamese women in a village about 4 hours from where this was taken, and she didn't have a clue. Can anyone help me out with identifying this mystery vegetable? Or, for that matter, this one?

Thanks in advance! But asides from all that was different, there were some familiar foodstuffs too - like the foundations of Southeast Asian cooking, ginger, lemongrass and shallots...

...and these luscious-looking mangos.

And in case you're wondering if being directly above such a busy road kept me awake all night, let me assure you that having lodged next to some super-horny teenagers the night before, I slept like a log.

Corner of To Hieu and the public square,
Son La.