Sichuan soup and Didi

I'm trying a new approach to worcestershire sauce. If you use too much of it, it tastes British Pub. But in the background, it makes sweet stuff more adult. Add it to a kiwi/pineapple blend and oh my god how delicious!
Tofu on the other hand has joined chili on the central pedistal of my life. I've learned how to make an excellent soup centred on bamboo shoots and rice vinegar- add tofu, chili, sichuan pepper and bean paste to make it 'sichuan'. It's so easy to make, I expect it to become a regular (if not daily!) feature on the Dundee menu.

It is not all about food though. I'm currently working on setting up a fan-club for Didi: DidiForPresident.com. The charter of this club will be to change the EU laws in the following way:
- We want a permanent EU presidency with limitless powers over all countries in the union. We would prefer a dictatorship, but expect this may be difficult to get past some of the larger countries. Limitless power is a good compromise.
- We want the minimum age for candidates for this presidency to be reduced to 15. We don't expect to amass the required support for another 10 months or so, so we thing that will work well.
- We want citizens of Scotland, Sweden and Iceland to have FIVE votes each in all elections (including the vote for presidency), to recognize their cultural SU-PE-RI-O-RI-TY.

We're not yet open for new members, but do post your interest in the comment section.

ADDED 29 January:
Didi escaping my worcestershire centred cooking.

Update on worcestershire/banana combination

While interesting, definately not a combination to keep at the center of the experience. The lime and thyme turned out to be essential. However, I'm not too happy with the Britishness of the taste. I think my passionate relationship with Worcestershire sauce may be coming to an end. However, lime, thyme and banana is a combination worth exploring.

Bananas, Worcestershire Sauce and Singapore

Today I woke up fully recovered from Mount Kinabalu. Waking up alone in Dundee, I feel it is imperative to explore new flavour combinations. On the flight to Hong Kong, my neighbour recommended Worcestershire sauce as a must-use ingredient in any cooking. I used to put this sauce on toast when I was at uni but never figured any other use for it. It struck me as a very "British" flavour, and who want's to eat British?

Having now rediscovered this sauce, I am completely fascinated by it. It's really quite pungent, spicy and zangy. It even contains anchovies! So what to do with it? Mix it with banana of course! The sweetness makes the pungent flavour more inclusive. Right now I'm waiting for some beef that is marinating in a concoction based on this interesting combination.

I confess I went overboard, adding quite a lot of other gunk into the mix. This is the problem with northern European style cooking, where you have a very limited number of dishes. When you make only one dish, it's difficult to exclude flavours. I much prefer the Asian style that I've got used to in Hong Kong, where you order several dishes and share. Then, you can focus each dish on a limited number of flavours in each dish while still getting variety by eating several dishes.

While waiting for the beef, I'm dreaming about Singapore. What a neat place that was, even though I only spent one night there. I've always been good at 'gut-feeling' a city as soon as I arrive, and there was definately something about that place that made me feel good and at home. That's right, I'm planning another escape. Last time I planned for Australia and ended up in Borneo. Maybe if I target Singapore, this time I'll end up in Brazil???

Mala doufu and an obvious obsession with Mount Kinabalu

Mmmmmm, I dream of Mala. Tickly spicy. Sichuan peppercorns and chili. But however much I put into my cooking, it never seems to get quite as tickly as I remember from the restaurants in Hong Kong. Even tried roasting them like some websites suggest.

Tried to do Mala Doufu with pork. Tasted super nice, but way too much tomato puree. It also appears that taking photos of food is really tricky. I'm starting to understand why photographers use all that lighting equipment. The flash manages to get the worst out of everything. A bit of blur seems to help.

Speaking of photographers. When I climbed mount kinabalu, spending the afternoon on the veranda of the base camp was probably the most pleasant part of the whole experience. The final climb and actually reaching the top was the greatest adventure ever but I could not describe it as pleasant.

Among other great personalities, sitting on the veranda I got to know a professional photographer/masseur who also turned out to be a philosopher/traveller/writer- Mark. He was an excellent storyteller and one of those amiable people who collect wise words from the people he's met. He had a great, inspiring idea:
- Have a goal that you can communicate clearly.

It's not the "have a goal" bit which is so ingenious of course, but the bit about communication. Any self-development book will tell you to have a goal. No, the idea that you make it into a tag-line is the really cool bit. For instance, take Mark's goal. Compare:

• I want to travel the world
• I will cycle through 100 countries

The former suggests he's a back-packer with too many ideas and too much time on his hands. The latter suggests he's a man on a mission. It's specific, it's measurable- we will all know when he's achieved his goal.

A good way to end this post would be to declare my own tag-line goal. However, what Mark and every self development book out there misses is that you are really lucky if you know what your goal is... That's why we have religions, "family values" and nostalgia: to fill in that absence of real goals. So for now, I will remain goal-less. But not without a plan...