Category: Foooddd

Parsley

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There are many people whinging and protesting about various things globally right now, whether it be freedom, speeding fines or most importantly the end of Ubertwitter (for now). These are all serious matters but what about parsley? It infests dishes globally and tastes foul but yet no one has taken a stand against parsley since Carrie did in an episdoe of sex and the city (i cant find the episode on youtube.com – bloody useless site).

Anyway there are loads of varities of the wretched thing but I have been forced to endure it mainly in England and the UAE.

In England, its used as a garnish and looks like this. The English type is usually a big twig of crap on the side or top of your dish. It looks fine, but the smell from it is gross and it never seems to go with the dish its garnishing. If it has been on some piece of your food, that piece of food will have a bit of the parsley smell and taste. It’s  bitter and horrible.

English_parsley

Then you have the middle east varitiey. This flat leaf parsley is used in dishes. Like loads of dishes such as tabbouleh. It’s bitter, it’s yuck and I don’t see why taste buds must be tortured. After five years in this region I’m clued up enough to know what Arabic dishes contain the wretched stuff so I can stay far away from it.

 

Flat_leaf_parlsey

If you google receipes with parsley there are thousands out there. There is even a video that shows you how to chop parsley for some chicken dish. Chopped parsley is worse than the bunches of it. You can’t remove chopped parsley when its all over your food and you sound like a bitch if you tell them to take it back and remove the parsley. All they do is scrap the stuff off. That doesn’t help, you still can taste the parsley.

Supposedly parsley is good for getting rid of bad breath and aids digestion. If a man has bad breath and wants to snog me, dont bring that parsley filled mouth near me. Parsley tasting mouth is more disgusting than pork tasting mouth. And if you got digestion problems eat less crap.

I did research on this parsley hate thing and read an article that stated that if you dislike parsley it’s due to an incorrect enzyme in my body. Will I correct this enzyme issue. Nope. I’ll just stick to not eating the wretched stuff.

21 Feb 2011 – went out to Aroos Damasacus for @daddybird’s birthday dinner. Someone thought it would be funny to put a plate of tabboleouh in front of me. I was not amused :S

 

Cooking – the East African way

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A big part of my life is being East African. Actually if I want to be correct i’m actually English-East African-Indian. I’m as English as they come from being born and raised here (if I swear like an English person, speak like one and went to school here I’m bloody English ok). The East African is due to my dad being born and brought up in Kenya and my mum was raised in Uganda from a young age.  The Indian comes from my grandparents and beyond who were pure Indian. The grandparents decided to move to East Africa when they were young to start a new life and to make the most of the opportunities that were available there (kind of like me living in Dubai).

It seems to be a huge problem for many people I have met over the years (yes I’m talking about you horrible German girl) to accept that I say I’m English-East African-Indian. I think it’s perfectly plausible and there are a hell of a lot of us out there thanks to that dickwad Idi Amin.

Indians think we are either backwards or terrible as they think we deny we are Indian. We don’t really deny our heritage; it’s just that most of us don’t have a true connection to India. If you ask most people who are from East Africa, our childhood wasn’t spent going to India it was spent going to Kenya to visit our family. We are only now deciding to go to India to finally see where we came from, but as tourists.

I had the great joy (I’m being sarcastic) of living in Kenya for one year when I was 16 as my dad decided that it would be a good idea to be back with his family. The fact that we stayed there for one year only speaks volumes of what a massive mistake that was. It wasn’t really due to the country (although it seems to be more and more of a disaster zone than what I remember when I was young) but mainly due to certain members of my family. But let’s not go down that path of bitterness.

Anyway a big part of our East African lives, which I love, is our food. It’s a mixture of India, East African and dollops of coconut. There is spiciness without burning your stomach. It’s not easy to describe but I love our food. The big problem is that we don’t have many recipe books out there for us. The Ismaili Muslims who have a big congregation in East Africa have published a few books which we have got copies of (thanks to half our family and having various friends who are Ismaili). However these books don’t always have all the recipes I love cooking and eating.

Saviour has come in the form of a blog from a lady called Chachi who has a wide and extensive collection of recipes from the East African Indian community. With additions from other readers it’s become a new reading staple for my parents (who discovered the site) and I.  If you are interested her site is

 

 

http://chachiskitchen.blogspot.com/

 

Once I get back to Dubai and have some time to myself I will be cooking some of the dishes for friends to show some true East African love.

14 August 2011 – discovered another blog which has some more East African receipes – Sabihas Kitchen

 

– http://www.sabihaskitchen.com/recipes.asp