The 50 Greatest Dishes of the World E-Book

James Steen

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Serie: The 50
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 269

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Having dined and worked with some of the most brilliant chefs around the world, top food writer James Steen presents the definitive 50 dishes to die for. Let your taste buds travel the world to discover the delights of Vietnam's meaty pho, Japan's aromatic ramen, and the rib-sticking, spicy gumbo of America's Deep South. Learn the truth and fascinating histories of our favourite foods – how Queen Victoria loved a tongue-tingling curry and precisely why Marmite is an essential part of Queen Elizabeth's fried breakfast. Help settle the rows over the origins of the juicy burger, the swirly-peaked pavlova and the cherry-topped ice cream sundae. Oh, and is beef Wellington – so very British – actually named after the streets of Chicago? Including intriguing facts and valuable cooking tips, The 50 Greatest Dishes of the World is the epicurean's indispensable epicurean's travel guide.

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GREATEST DISHES OF THE WORLD

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GREATEST DISHES OF THE WORLD

JAMES STEEN

Published in the UK in 2017 by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP email: [email protected]

Sold in the UK, Europe and Asia by Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DA or their agents

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ISBN: 978-178578-173-5

Text copyright © 2017 James Steen The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

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Typeset and designed by Simmons Pugh

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Steen is an award-winning journalist and author. A sought-after collaborator with some of the most renowned kitchen legends, he has co-authored the autobiographies of Marco Pierre White (The Devil in the Kitchen), Raymond Blanc (A Taste of My Life), Keith Floyd (Stirred But Not Shaken) and Ken Hom (My Stir-Fried Life). He is the author of The Kitchen Magpie, and teamed up with Blanc to write Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons: The Story of a Modern Classic and Kitchen Secrets, and with White to produce Marco Made Easy and White Heat 25. During his extensive career in Fleet Street he edited Punch magazine. Alongside writing books, he is a contributing editor of Waitrose Food magazine. From his home in Wandsworth, South-west London, Steen runs classes for locals in his Loxley Cookery School.

DEDICATION

This book is for Louise.

DISCLAIMER

The recipes and descriptions given are for general guidance only, and should not be used as a substitute for a proper recipe book. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any adverse effect allegedly arising from any information contained in this book.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE 50 GREATEST DISHES OF THE WORLD

For Starters

Ants

Smørrebrød

Pho

Caviar

Ramen

Sushi

Dim Sum

Chicken Soup

Fish and Shellfish

Fish and Chips

Paella

Hákarl

Bouillabaisse

Ceviche

Lobsters Thermidor and Newberg

Stargazy Pie

Ika-Sōmen

Pad Thai

Gumbo

Meat and Poultry

The Burger

Mahberawi

Shepherd’s Pie

Bak-Kut-The

The Fry-Up

Chairo

Spaghetti (or Spaghettoni) alla Carbonara

Tagine

Roast Beef, Yorkshire Pudding and Horseradish

Jerk Pork

Green Curry

Beef Wellington

Birds

Peking Duck

Chicken Kiev

Coq au Vin

Mole Poblano

Chicken Curry

Roasted Woodcock

Vegetarian

Gazpacho

Käsknöpfle

Asparagus, Poached Egg, Hollandaise Sauce

Pizza

For Afters

Ice Cream Sundae

Trifle

Black Forest Gâteau

Apple Pie

Dobos Torta

Crème Brûlée

Cheesecake

Baklava and Turkish Coffee

Pavlova

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION: BEFORE YOU BEGIN

On a gloriously warm day in autumn 2016, I found myself in Daunt Books, the magnificent, high-ceilinged shop in Marylebone High Street, West London. For once, I was there not to browse the tall shelves and take in the woody scent of new books, but to appear on a stage before an audience and chat with the celebrated chef, Ken Hom, as I had recently collaborated on his autobiography. During the question and answer session, a lady asked Ken: ‘What do you think of fusion?’

‘Fusion,’ he said, with the usual air of Zen about him, ‘is fine, as long as it doesn’t become confusion.’ That single moment remains a vivid memory because, by then, I was deeply immersed in the writing and compilation of the book that you are now holding. Through incessant reading and midnight-oil-burning research, I had become considerably aware – inadvertently – of the true significance of culinary fusion; of how one country’s cuisine meets that of another, and results in a new dish.

Fusion may be a comparatively modern term in gastronomy but, as you will see in the pages that follow, for thousands of years it has shaped the food we eat. When the people of one place embrace the people of another, there are marriages, unity and collaboration. Ideas are swapped. New dishes and tastes also come about.

The fusion theme runs through this book, although it was not intentional: I did not set out to write a book about fusion, even if the examples frequently crop up as you read.

Around the time of the chat at Daunt Books, the popular TV chef Jamie Oliver had been castigated by the Spanish because he dared to add chorizo to his paella. ‘That’s not authentic’, screamed his critics. Who was right? The Spanish, or Jamie? As you will see from my entry on paella, the dish may be Spanish, but it would not exist were it not for fusion, admittedly introduced by invaders.

Paella takes its name from the ancient Roman patella – think of a paella pan, and that is what the patella looked like. The rice was introduced to Spain by the Moors, as was saffron. And the Arabs cannot claim ownership of the rice because that came to them from China and India. Red (bell) peppers are common in paella, but not without the help of the tribes of Aztecs in Central and South America. The peoples of many nations have added a bit of this and a bit of that to paella. So if Jamie Oliver wants to put chorizo in his one, then it is probably allowable.

Paella is not alone; there are plenty more cases. Each and every country, it seems, has a national dish which is influenced by, or has its roots in, another nation.

The ramen of Japan owes so much to the creation of noodles in China, as do you should you be eating noodles this evening. The fish of fish and chips, that classic Great British dish, would not be around were it not for the Jewish immigrants who showed the British how to deep-fry fish in batter. Oh, and it was the Belgians who gave us chips (although the fish and chips were united and first served together in London). The apple pie and the hamburger are surely American-born celebrations, but the first is British and the second is made from beef, not ham, and derives from Hamburg. Would Vietnam have pho, its beefy soup, were it not for the French, lovers of pot-au-feu, who occupied their country? Doubtful.

In the course of writing this book, I have made fascinating discoveries. Like most people, I believed that pavlova, that more-ish cake of whipped cream and fruit in a large meringue nest, was invented as a celebratory dessert in New Zealand (or Australia) in the late 1920s when ballerina, Anna Pavlova, toured the Antipodes. This book tells a different story. From the evidence amassed, there is no doubt that a grander version of the cake was being eaten in the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the 1800s, and a pavlova replica was being served in Britain in the late 1800s, when Ms Pavlova was only just entering this world and the grand allegro was a distant leap away.

Beef Wellington has also proved to have had an interesting journey. It may well take its name from the Duke of Wellington but, I have discovered, it seems more likely to have been named by a French chef cooking for the elite of Chicago. He is the one, rather than a British cook, who provided the first recipe. And – improbable though it may sound – was the dish perhaps named Wellington after a Chicago street or avenue? Unfortunately the duke cannot, as has been suggested, have considered this to be his favourite dish, because it had yet to be eaten in Britain by the time he marched heavenwards.

Many of the dishes have been puzzles, but I have tried to establish where each piece fits, and when. Gazpacho, for instance, is a cold tomato soup from Spain … but it was being made before tomatoes reached Spain. Bouillabaisse is a soupy fish stew from Provence … but there are recipes which contain no fish. The origins of spaghetti alla carbonara remain a mystery, so who is to say what is and is not an authentic carbonara?

Sometimes the pieces of the puzzle have been lost over time, but I have done my utmost to dig tirelessly, delve deep and explore so that I could present an accurate portrait, a fair biography, of each dish. Food historians do not have all the answers. Where there are questions remaining, I have listed them so that you, too, can have fun and join in the guessing game.

This is not a cookery book, so please do not expect to unearth numerous recipes. Easy recipes, short on words, have been included, as well as historical gems from the dusty but constantly compelling cookery books of centuries past. If, like me, you thoroughly relish such books – partly because they give an entertaining glimpse into the kitchens of the past and what our ancestors ate – then I believe, and sincerely hope, that you will savour this one. And now it is time to put on the oven. Again.

THE 50 GREATEST DISHES OF THE WORLD

FOR STARTERS

ANTS

Dried first in an oven, the insects can be eaten as a popcorn-style snack, used in meat sauces, or propped up on fresh pineapple chunks to make an unusual dessert in Brazil.

An ant a day, or maybe a handful, is good for you. The ant has long been regarded as medicine, as well as a food. In China, the belief is that what you eat will enable you to inherit the characteristics of the food. If you eat a tiger’s penis, for instance, you will be virile. A deer’s penis will do, if a tiger is not available. The ant is strong, sexually vigorous and never seems to tire with age. Therefore, eating ants will instil these traits in the consumer.

The Compendium of Materia Medica (known to the Chinese as Ben Cao Gang Mu or Pen-ts’ao Kang-mu) is an impressive masterpiece of some 4,400 pages. It includes remedies and pharmaceutical studies, and was compiled by Li Shizen during the Ming Dynasty in the 16th century. He studied, for instance, the data of 1,094 herbs. You and I might not put ants in the same food genre as parsley, chervil, basil and dill, but Shizen believed they deserved to be regarded as a herb.

Black ants, wrote Shizen, improve our qi, or life energy. They make skin beautiful, postpone ageing and restore kidney energy. The millions of people who have followed the advice of the Compendium include Emperor Qianlong, who died in 1799 at the age of 87. He liked to eat black ants, particularly for their anti-ageing properties. With a handful of pine nuts, they were speedily stir-fried in the emperor’s wok. The silk-worm chrysalis was another favourite.

Ants were often ground to a paste and eaten with greens. They were eaten by the original natives of Australia, and they are a delicacy in Central and South America, where the earliest tribes harvested the insects for consumption.

Ants have a citrus taste, bitter and acidic; the ant produces an acid to stop predators eating it (the acid is not always successful) and so that is what our palates pick up on. However, ant connoisseurs will be quick to point out that ants are no different to other creatures, in that their taste is affected by the environment in which they have lived, and the diet on which they have survived.

Think of them as having their own terroir, similar to wine, tea, coffee and cocoa. Ants from China will taste differently to ants from Thailand, and not all ants in China will taste the same. Some ants are said to be fatty. Large ants are considered to be tastier than small ants, and so it follows that they are more expensive. Of course, you save money by harvesting ants at home, in an ant hill or farming them in a fish tank (minus the water). Once they are collected in a Tupperware box, the box can then be popped into the freezer, dispatching the insects to a chilly demise. Gather the ant bodies and then bake them in the oven on a low heat of about 100˚C.

*

Although ants have been eaten for centuries, this ingredient reached haute cuisine status in 2013, when Alex Atala put them on his menu at D.O.M. in São Paulo. The restaurant is frequently ranked in the top ten of the World’s Best Restaurants. As one of his desserts, Atala served a dried leaf-cutter ant. Not on its own, but perched on a single cube of fresh pineapple. Simple yet quite beautiful, with an intelligent harmony on the palate while still comprising the essential sweet-sour elements. The dish was witty and fun. The world (the culinary world, that is) took notice.

Atala was not submitting us to a PR stunt. He had discovered the edible joys of ants while travelling in the Amazon. An old lady had offered him a bowl; he tasted and was smitten. ‘I found the taste amazing’, he recalled. He identified flavours of cardamom, lemongrass and ginger. He was inspired by this new (to him) ingredient. Other ant dishes on his menu have included coconut meringue, topped with an Amazonian ant. São Paulo is the place to go for intriguing ant dishes. At Meats, a burger restaurant in the same city, they serve burgers with vinaigrette of ants.

In Colombia, ants are known affectionately as hormigas culonas – literally, big-bottomed ants. They are soaked in a brine before being fried and eaten, usually with a sprinkle of salt. A bit like a tub of popcorn or nuts. They are believed to be an aphrodisiac and are given as a gift at Colombian weddings. Meanwhile, in the mountains of the Santander province, where ants are abundant and cherished, the chefs in the kitchen of the Color de Hormiga (Colour of Ants) rustle up a hearty, protein-rich dish: fillet steak is seared on the grill, covered in ant sauce, and then garnished with dried – you guessed right – ants.

Ants are everywhere. In New York’s East Village, for instance, The Black Ant restaurant is a Mexican eatery which serves black ant guacamole, made with mango, avocado, pomegranate, coriander and chicatana salt (made from crushed ants). If you don’t fancy that, there are other insects on the menu: Croquetas de Chapulin are deep-fried parcels of grasshoppers, yucca and manchego, accompanied by grasshopper salsa. With a side order of cactus fries? Mexicans, incidentally, also relish their street food of fried agave grubs, with palm.

*

Turning now to the health benefits. The National Geographic states that a 100 gram serving of red ants provides about 14 grams of protein, which is one gram more than a boiled egg. The same serving of red ants contains 5.7 milligrams of iron, which is 71 per cent of the required daily amount for a man, and about one-third required by a woman. Ants are also a good source of calcium.

The ant is said to be an antiscorbutic: it can prevent scurvy, but only when eaten. The carpenter ant takes its name from the lumberjacks of New England who ate the insects to ward off the illness. Edwin Way Teale, in his Pulitzer Prize-winner Wandering Through Winter, mentions that in the early 1900s, Americans could still buy vials of ants as ‘a winter’s end tonic’.

None of this would have surprised a certain Dr Shreiber, who in Russia in the 1830s, was chief physician at the Brestlitoffski military hospital. What an intriguing character. Dr Shreiber’s hospital was surrounded by forest which was home to many ant hills and, The London Medical Gazette of June, 1840, reported, ‘the thought struck him of drawing some advantage from them for his patients’.

In time, the doctor came up with a treatment for paralysis, although it did not involve eating the insects:

The ants are to be taken directly from their hill and put in a bag; and this bag is to be tied over the limb in such a manner that the ants cannot escape (but obtain access to the skin). Sometime after their application to the limb, the patient begins to feel the running and biting of the ants, by which they gradually excite a kind of electrical twitches, and a feeling of warmth, which gradually extends over the whole body.

This treatment went on for two or three days. The doctor’s results were so successful – 46 patients cured over three years – ‘that he was encouraged to use the same remedy for rheumatism and gout’. He also used ants to cure a case of elephantiasis; severe swelling of a limb.

The same article in the Gazette reveals that in ‘Little Russia’, the Cossack state, ‘they employ a home-made spirit of ants called muroschkowka, to prepare a punch which is used in many varieties of colds, with very great advantage’.

*

If you do like to eat ants, you may want to try ant eggs, a topic I covered in an earlier book, The Kitchen Magpie. In Thailand, red ant eggs are a versatile and nutritious food whether eaten on their own or as an ingredient in recipes like Yam Kai Mot Daeng (a salad), Kaeng Kai Mot Daeng (a soup) or Kai Jiow Kai Mot (an omelette). Then there is Kai Mot Daeng Op, in which lightly salted ant eggs are wrapped in banana leaves before the bundle is roasted.

In Mexico you can sate your appetite with escamoles. These are the larvae of ants of the genus Liometopum, harvested from the roots of the country’s agave or maguey plants (from which tequila and mescal are made, respectively). In some forms of Mexican cuisine, escamoles are a delicacy, sometimes referred to as ‘insect caviar’. They have a cottage cheese-like consistency and taste buttery, yet slightly nutty (those last two terms can also be used to describe caviar). Sometimes ant eggs are thrown in to escamoles, just for that extra crunch.

SMØRREBRØD

A towering open sandwich with a multitude of toppings, many of them pickled or smoked; eaten in Denmark with a chilled shot (or three) of aquavit.

First, a few words about the sandwich in general; two pieces of bread, with a filling in between. The Oxford English Dictionary states that the bread should be buttered, although surely butter is an option and not always necessary. A spread such as mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup or HP sauce often eliminates the need for butter. A bacon sarnie does not require butter. Likewise, Larousse Gastronomique – the French chef’s bible – also ascribes to the buttered bread theory … but then goes on to list the ‘foie gras sandwich’, which does not have butter as an ingredient.

The sandwich takes its name from John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718–1792) and First Lord of the Admiralty. He was also a keen gambler and, so the story goes, during a 24-hour cards session he asked his valet to bring him some roast beef and bread. ‘Put the beef between two slices,’ he instructed. This, he reasoned, would enable him to eat and continue with the game but would also prevent the cards becoming greasy. (Note: no mention of butter.) His chums marvelled at this spectacularly useful creation. From that moment on, the cards room echoed with cries of: ‘I’ll have what Sandwich is having.’ Soon it entered the diet of the posh and wealthy, and became dainty finger food.

Of course, Sandwich did not really ‘invent’ the sandwich, as is commonly suggested. Think of the paysannes of France, setting off for a day in the fields. They took with them a bottle of wine, a hunk of crusty bread and a large slice of cheese. Inevitably, the cheese worked its way between the bread. Similarly, Britain’s shepherds are likely to have eaten cold meat wrapped in a couple of slices of bread, with an apple or pear for additional sustenance. The Encyclopaedia of Food and Culture says of Sandwich: ‘… During his excursions in the Eastern Mediterranean, he saw grilled pita breads and small canapés and sandwiches served by the Greeks and Turks during their mezes, and copied the concept for its obvious convenience’.

The first known mention of the sandwich comes courtesy of Edward Gibbon, the Member of Parliament, historian and author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In his journal, snuff-sniffing Gibbon gives the ‘sandwich’ its debut in print when he records events of 24 November 1762:

I dined at the Cocoa Tree … That respectable body, of which I have the honour of being a member, affords every evening a sight truly English. Twenty or thirty, perhaps, of the first men in the kingdom, in point of fortune and fashion, supping at tables, covered with a little napkin, in the middle of a coffee-room, upon a bit of cold meat, or a sandwich, and drinking a glass of punch.

The sandwich does not seem to feature in a cookery book until 1787, when Charlotte Mason gives it just a nod in The Lady’s Assistant for Regulating and Supplying the Table. ‘Put some very thin slices of beef between thin slices of bread and butter; cut the ends off neatly, lay them in a dish. Veal and ham cut thin may be served in the same manner.’

*

Digressing briefly, the preceding entries in Mason’s 18th century book are for ‘Welch’ rabbit, Scotch rabbit and English rabbit. Of Scotch rabbit, she instructs: ‘Toast a slice of bread of a fine white brown on both sides, butter it; toast a slice of cheese on both sides and put it on the bread.’ The ‘Welch’ rabbit is made in the same way and then ‘… with a hot salamander, brown it and rub some mustard over it’.

English rabbit, meanwhile, was a boozy affair:

Cut a slice of bread, toast it, and soak it in red wine, put it before the fire; cut some cheese in very thin slices and rub some butter over the bottom of a plate, lay some cheese upon it and pour in two or three spoonfuls of white wine, and a little mustard; cover it with another plate and set it on a chafing-dish of coals two or three minutes, then stir it until it is well mixed; when it is enough lay it upon the bread and brown it with a salamander.

Enjoy!

*

In order to confuse the compilers of the OED and Larousse, some sandwiches are still called sandwiches even though they require only one slice of bread, as opposed to two.

This type of sandwich is the ‘open sandwich’ or ‘open-faced sandwich’. The rabbit – be it English, Scottish or Welsh – is not thought of as an open sandwich for some reason. Smørrebrød, however, is. The word stems from smør og brød, meaning butter and bread; gastronomy’s great understatement of description. Yes, it has butter and bread – rye, pumpernickel, sourdough, white, you name it – as its ingredients, but they are merely the base of the fantastic feast that is piled upon them.

As with a sandwich filling, the smørrebrød can have numerous ingredients, from savoury to sweet. Often it will include smoked fish or meat, and pickled ingredients are frequently used. Cold roasted meats such as pork and beef are popular, as is beef tartare (raw beef, finely chopped).

Onto the buttered bread goes, for instance, smoked salmon, and then prawns, and then sliced hard-boiled egg, and then roe; perhaps a grating or two of horseradish, as well as a slice of lemon and a sprig of dill to garnish. Or maybe you would prefer succulent slices of rare roast beef with fried onions and pickled radishes and a handful of fresh cress. Or sliced potatoes with onion, sliced apple and a couple of sprigs of thyme. Or, for breakfast, a smørrebrød of bilberry jam with whipped cream.

Traditionally this open-sandwich is eaten with a knife and fork, and butter is not essential. But even if that is the case, the dish is still called smørrebrød and not brød. Butter can be replaced by any other fat, and meat dripping is usually the replacement.

The smørrebrød precedes the Earl of Sandwich’s sandwich by a few centuries and the bread was probably used as the plate – a pile of ingredients were placed on top, and their juices would be soaked up by the bread beneath. Then the bread, rich in the flavours it had absorbed, was eaten (or not, if you were affluent).

Just as the paysannes of France and the shepherds of Britain left home with their bread and cheese or cold meats, the farm labourers of 17th century Denmark took bread and ‘toppings’ into the fields so that they had a meal later in the day. This original, but unnamed smørrebrød, was most likely washed down then as it often is today, with Danish beer and a shot of aquavit. In fact, the smørrebrød was being eaten in Denmark before Denmark was even producing butter. The first-known mention appears in the 18th century works of Ludwig Holberg, Baron of Holberg, the Norwegian-born essayist and playwright who spent much of his life in Copenhagen. He does not describe the filling.

At the officers’ club in Copenhagen in the 1880s, head waiter Emil Bjorn came up with a list of smørrebrød dishes and handed this menu – or smørrebrødssedel – to the officers. They could order and then play cards while eating their open sandwiches. Doubtless, the cards became greasy in a way that would have bothered the Earl of Sandwich. But from this clever move by Bjorn, a new custom was born. These sorts of menus are now commonplace in Danish restaurants.

PHO

A fragrant soup which exemplifies purity of taste. Vietnamese with French influence, the original is made with a stock from beef bones and contains rice noodles.

‘Pho is so elemental to Vietnamese Chinese culture that people talk about it in terms of romantic relationships,’ writes Andrea Nguyen in The Pho Cookbook. ‘Rice is the dutiful wife you can rely on, we say. Pho is the flirty mistress you slip away to visit.’

It is pronounced fah – start to say ‘fun’, which is what the pho is, but stop short of the ‘n’ sound. Although it is certainly part of the country’s culture, it is a comparatively new dish, little more than a century old. It is said that its journey (pho is now popular all around the world) started out in Nam Định, not far from Hanoi, in the North of Vietnam. In the early 1900s, Hanoi was the stopping place for travellers and merchants, and was home to many French men and women. The French had occupied Vietnam since the 1880s (and would remain until 1954), bringing their food customs and cooking techniques. There were also plenty of visitors from the nearby provinces of China. Inevitably, this led to culinary influences, some from the Chinese; others from the French.

The Vietnamese people used cows for work but did not really eat the cattle until they had grown old and were useless. The French, on the other hand, were committed and renowned consumers of beef. Something had to give. So inevitably, the cows were slaughtered. The French took the best cuts, and the remaining bones were retained by the butchers who, in turn, sold them at a cheap rate to the locals. The Vietnamese knew how to make broth, and they applied their skills to the beef bones and carcasses.

They simmered the bones gently for hours and when they had finished they were left with the intensely flavoursome base for the soup that would be called pho. Star anise, chilli, ginger, shallots and coriander were also incorporated. Rice noodles were added, too. Often the dish would have, perhaps, a thin slice of beef, cooked rare in the hot soup. They needed a name for the dish. Pho is believed to be a corruption of feu, the French for fire. And while the French make their beloved pot-au-feu – beef with vegetables and stock – in one big pot, so the pho was made in a cauldron: a pot of pho, if you like. It is a one-pot meal.

The pho, cheap to make, became street food sold by vendors in Hanoi. Across his shoulders the pho vendor would carry a pole: at one end was the pot of pho; at the other end hung a box containing noodles and spices.

This pho of the North became known as pho bac, and is the first pho. In 1954, when Vietnam was divided, people fled the communist rule of the North and headed south. They took with them their pho recipes and cauldrons. Here in the South, the pho evolved to become pho nam – the pho of the South. Hoisin sauce and fish sauce were added. Beef became merely an option; for the pho nam, chicken could be used instead of cow.

In 1975, at the end of the Vietnam War, refugees fled the country, resettling elsewhere and spreading the word of pho. Once again, it developed: in restaurants around the world, pho is now a dish of extensive variety, and shellfish and pork have joined the long list of possible ingredients.

CAVIAR

The world’s most expensive delicacy, originating in the Caspian Sea. The salt-cured roe of the mighty sturgeon is best eaten on spoons made of mother of pearl, with a shot of vodka within easy reach.

This story begins in AD 1240 when Batu Khan (grandson of Ghengis) had finished his annihilation of Moscow, much of central Russia, and Kiev.

With his Mongol warrior’s hunger, and a sizeable thirst to quench, Batu went with his wife to Uglich, and to the Resurrection Monastery. There the monks prepared to feed their guests. A feast was brought from the kitchens, one dish after another. There was sturgeon, both roasted at the fire and in a piping-hot soup, and plenty of other dishes, with and without sturgeon as their main ingredient.

Then came the final dish. For this one, apples had been gathered from the trees of the monastery’s garden before being stewed. The compote was served with something unknown to the warrior: the salt-cured roe of sturgeon – caviar – was on top of the apple stew. His wife Yildiz did not enjoy the taste, but Batu was overwhelmed by the experience, his first mouthfuls of caviar.

This is the earliest reference to caviar being eaten in Russia, although where and when in the world it was first eaten does not appear in the chronicles of food history. The Greeks, Turkish, Romans and Chinese have all claimed to be the ones who were the first to realise that the eggs taste better than the fish.

The history books can be misleading. They do refer to ‘caviar’ but caviar back then was not as it is today. Instead, the product was treated as an ingredient, and in one recipe the eggs were used in the same way as the roe of mullet, for instance, to create bottarga (or poutargue), of which the Greeks were the pioneers. The roe was taken from the fish immediately after the catch, placed on granite rocks and covered with salt. The elements did the rest: the roe was left to dry in the sun and wind. The eggs were dried, pressed or cooked but never raw salted as they are today.

While the sturgeon was ‘royal food’, its roe was merely a by-product which was cooked, dried, fried, salted and pressed. It was more of a condiment; an addition to a meal rather than being its very own dish, as it is in the 21st century.

*

In the 1500s caviar had reached Western Europe. The French writer François Rabelais mentioned it in Pantagruel