Cam’s friend Mike is in town at the moment, and comes bearing mouth-watering tales from his current home New York. In addition to veg boxes, the Park Slope Food Coop, and Mexican food, he also showed us this photo of a recent dumpster diving haul. Apparently they got about three times as much as what’s shown in this picture.

When I was a student I also used to dumpster dive with my housemates, and it was amazing some of the goodies you could get – I remember we once got several huge fruit pies (which would probably sell for at least 10 pounds a piece) from a Kosher bakery in North London. Here in China too, where just a few decades ago people were starving, I am often amazed at how much food is wasted. With this recent report revealing the disgusting quantities of food wasted in the UK, and the grim outlook for our planet generally, it makes me mad that so-called 'developed' countries like America and Britain are setting such a bad example to poorer countries like China. I guess I just have to keep my fingers crossed for a more environmentally-aware attitude to food in the future.

I couldn’t agree more. The above quotation is from ‘A Room of One’s Own’, Virginia Woolf’s famous treatise on women and fiction, which I’m currently re-reading. I first read this book some four or five years ago while at university, but having not fully given in to my foodie impulses then, failed to take much notice of this lovely passage:

'Lunch on this occasion began with soles, sunk in a deep dish, over which the collage cook had spread a counterpane of the whitest cream, save that it was branded here and there with brown spot like the spots on the flanks of a doe.

After that came the partridges, but if this suggests a couple of bald, brown birds on a plate you are mistaken. The partridges, many and various, came with all their retinue of sauces and salads, the sharp and the sweet, each in its order; their potatoes, thin as coins but not so hard; their sprouts, foliated as rosebuds but more succulent.

And no sooner had the roast and its retinue been done with that the serving-man…set before us, wreathed in napkins, a confection which rose all sugar from the waves. To call it pudding and so relate it to rice and tapioca would be an insult.’

Surely one of the most vivid descriptions of food you’re likely to find in literature. This lunch, at one of the male colleges, provides a stark contrast to Woolf’s dinner later the same day, at Girton, then Cambridge’s only college for women. This second meal is an altogether sparser affair, consisting only of ‘plain gravy soup’, beef, potatoes and greens, prunes and custard, and finally, cheese and biscuits served with water. Girton’s difficulty in obtaining funds, because it is an all-female establishment, mean that ‘the amenities' (ie. good food) 'have to wait.’

All this got me thinking about the food provisions at Sussex University, where I studied, and which were, to put it bluntly, pretty crap. There wasn’t even a canteen. At times, there was nothing to be found except tired, pre-packaged sandwiches. Anybody who cared about what they ate invariably brought their own food. It was, as I said, dire.

But miraculously, magically, once or twice a week we were saved by Gordon and Elena. This middle-aged couple from nearby Lewes, sometimes helped out by their children or friends, would arrive on campus with two enormous paella pans, portable gas burners, spices, and dozens of boxes of chopped-up vegetables. In the hour or so before the lunch break, they would fry up the vegetables in one pan, and an accompanying bean and tomato sauce in the other. ‘Poor Man’s Potatoes’ was what they dubbed their cheap but delicious concoction, which was served in aluminum take-away boxes, heaped with fresh coriander and spicy pickles. I and my friends adored this food, and would always arrive early to ensure we got some before it all sold out (and it usually did).

In the end though, Poor Man’s Potatoes’ popularity proved to be its undoing. The university catering services realized that they were losing business to this outsider, and Gordon and Elena’s license to serve on campus was revoked. There was a brief campaign to bring them back, but in the end, faced with the brick wall of university bureaucracy, Gordon and Elena gave up and found other places to serve their food.

My friends and I have reminisced many a time about Poor Man’s Potatoes, which was fuel for much of our thinking, loving and sleeping while we were at university. Virginia Woolf would, I think, have approved greatly of Gordon and Elena, and so, in grateful thanks to them, here is my own interpretation of their legendary dish.

Poor Man’s Potatoes

For the potatoes:
Potatoes, cooked
Cabbage
Onions
Any other vegetable you happen to have lying around
Garlic
Coriander seeds
Cumin seeds
Fennel seeds
Turmeric
Any other spice you fancy
Cooking oil

For the bean and tomato sauce:
Any bean (kidney, butter, chickpea are all good), cooked
Tomatoes or tomato puree
Onions
Garlic
Paprika

To serve:
Fresh coriander leaves
Spicy pickles

1. Chop all the vegetables into bite-sized chunks.
2. In a pan, fry the onions and garlic. Once slightly brown, add the garlic and paprika, and then add the tomatoes and beans. Turn the heat down low, cover and leave to simmer.
3. In a large frying-pan or wok, fry the onions and garlic. Add the potatoes and all other vegetables, mix well and stir-fry until cooked.
4. Add the spices to the vegetables, mix well and cook for a couple more minutes.
5. Serve the potatoes with a generous topping of the sauce, fresh coriander, and spicy pickles on the side.

Yesterday’s Observer Food Magazine contained a lovely article about foodie men and their mothers, and got me thinking about my own early cooking experiences.

Like Hugh Fernley Whittingstall, the first food I made totally by myself were peppermint creams. I was about 8 years old when my after-school childminder, Joy, gave me my first taste of these simple but moreish treats. I liked them so much that I immediately got her to tell me how to make them, and did so, by myself, the very next day.

And of course, like Hugh, Gordon Ramsey and the rest, my mother was a huge influence. Long before she taught me how to make such basics as a roux sauce, spaghetti bolognese and from-scratch salad dressing, I sat and chatted with her while she cooked our evening meals, and must, just by watching, have absorbed a great deal without even realising it.

By about 10, I could make a decent sponge cake single-handed, and it was around this time that I was given my first cookbook, Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes. This magical book, illustrated by long-time Dahl collaborator Quentin Blake, includes such gems as Stink Bugs’ Eggs (from this blog’s namesake, James and the Giant Peach)…

…Butterscotch, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory…

…and, of course, Bruce Bogtrotter’s Cake, from perhaps my favourite Roald Dahl book, Matilda.

The funny thing is, I don’t think I ever cooked anything from this book as a child. Funnier still, I nonetheless absolutely loved it. Though the recipes were just a tad too hard for me at that time, that didn’t stop me from poring over the wonderful photos and illustrations, and I remember very clearly how I would often take it down from the cookbook shelf in the kitchen to read while I ate breakfast

While I was home at my mum’s this summer, I realised that this book is perhaps the biggest reason why I now love cookbooks as much as I do. I still enjoy flicking through a cookbook while I eat, and though I may not actually have made many recipes from some of my favourites, they are nonetheless, as the Amateur Gourmet says, among the first things I would grab if my house were on fire.

So, in memory of childhood cooking, cookbooks and Roald Dahl, I present to you the recipe for Bruce Bogtrotter’s Cake. I may not be able to cook it right now (good dairy products and chocolate being rather hard to find in China), but at least I can drool.

Bruce Bogtrotter’s Cake
Serves 1 to 8
From Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes

Cake:
8 oz (225g) good quality plain chocolate
6 oz (175g) unsalted butter
6 oz (175g) self raising flour
4 oz (125g) caster sugar
6 eggs, separated, yolks lightly beaten

Icing:
8 oz (225g) good–quality plain chocolate
8 oz (225g) double cream

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F, 180°c or gas mark 4.
2. Line a cake pan with baking paper and butter the bottom and sides of the paper.
3. Melt the chocolate in a Pyrex bowl set in a saucepan of simmering water or in a microwave on low heat. Mix in the butter and stir until melted.
4. Transfer to a large bowl and add the sugar, flour, and lightly beaten egg yolks.
5. Whisk the egg whites until stiff. Gently fold half of the whites into the chocolate mixture, blending thoroughly, then fold in the remaining whites.
6. Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake for about 35 minutes. There will be a thin crust on top of the cake, and if tested with a toothpick the inside will appear undercooked (don't worry, the cake will get firmer as it cools). Remove from the oven, and let cool in the pan on a wire rack.
7. While the cake is cooling, make the icing. Melt the chocolate with the cream in a heavy–bottomed saucepan over lowest heat, stirring occasionally until the chocolate is fully melted and blended with the cream. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
8. When the cake is cool enough to handle, remove it from the pan and discard the wax paper. The cake is prone to sinking slightly in the middle, so flip it upside down before icing by placing a plate on top and carefully turning over the cake pan and plate together.
9. Carefully spread the chocolate icing all over the cake with a spatula. Allow the icing to cool and set slightly before serving.

Brighton, South Coast, England.

Ok, so maybe that's going a little far, but still, the two recent Sichuan cuisine feasts I cooked while in the UK certainly made up for in quantity what they lacked in flashy ingredients.

The first was during the　time I spent in my hometown, Hebden Bridge, when I cooked for 17 of my mum's friends. The menu for that evening was:

Cold Dishes
Steamed aubergines in a chilli-oil and black bean sauce
Belly pork slices in a garlic paste sauce
Cucumbers with garlic and vinegar

Hot Dishes
Mapo tofu
Dry-fried green beans
Courgette and egg stir-fry
Beef in a sweet-wheat sauce
Potato and green pepper slivers
Stir-fried spinach

Above is the table before everyone pounced. Because we were so many I decided to serve the food buffet-style; very un-Chinese it's true, but the assortment of dishes did look rather nice all on a plate together.

Clockwise from 9 o'clock are the potato slivers; green beans; tofu; rice; spinach; aubergines; pork; cucumber; courgette and egg; and the beef is in the middle.

To save myself the hassle of cooking 15 plus different dishes I just made double portions of everything; nonetheless, it did still take me almost 4 hours to cook it all, and that was with some help too! It was all totally delicious in the end though, if I do say so myself, and to my relief everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Thankfully the second Sichuan meal I cooked, about 2 weeks later in London, was far less high pressure, being only for 7 people. Same menu, more or less, lazy I know, but very nice it was anyway.

Mmmm...maybe if all else fails I can start up a Sichuan cuisine supper club when I move back to Britain...