A new cooking adventure

And a reading recommendation.

Hello, hello.

I’m back home in Melbourne and struggling with the worst! jet lag! I’ve! ever! had! So we will keep things short this week, and come back with a bang next fortnight. There’s lots I want to write about, but I’ll be better able to do it once my brain is no longer jelly.

As the title may suggest, I do want to share a new project, a reading recommendation and talk about a particularly sweet afternoon spent at a London hotel.

What’s cooking around the world

I’m actually looking quite forward to getting back into the kitchen after many meals out. My bank account too dictates that this is the way forward (although, rising food prices… hmph).

So. What I’m gonna do is help us all escape the rest of this cold winter weather, by taking a culinary journey around the world.

The plan is to make a meal from five different countries. So, a different country each newsletter.

We’re gonna start with England. Please don’t let that put you off; there is fun to be had with English food, I swear!

What will it be? Toad in a hole? Bangers and mash? Spotted dick? Honestly, who came up with these names.

Tune in next fortnight to find out….

The best thing I read this fortnight

Books are one of my favourite souvenirs to collect while travelling, and as far as weight restrictions are concerned, the least practical. Oh well.

As such, I returned from my recent holiday abroad with, ahem, four books. One however is TINY and another I carried onto the plane. So that was only two books taking up space in my luggage, which seems acceptable. Right?

The book that I found myself devouring on the flight home is Yellowface, by Rebecca F. Kuang. I first spied it in a bookstore in Glasgow; it has an admittedly eye-catching cover.

Over the next four weeks, before I snagged a copy in London on the tail end of my trip, I saw it just about everywhere; in airport bookstores, across Instagram – and it’s the pick of my book club next month.

So, I bought it as a treat, to dull the pain of the 23 hour plane trip back to Oz and… back to reality.

Yellowface is told from the perspective of Juniper Song, or June Hayward as she’s otherwise known. June’s in the orbit of literary darling and bestselling author Athena Liu, who she quietly resents for her success.

A freak accident gives June the chance to steal Athena’s unpublished manuscript and publish it under her own (pen)name. I mean, June deserves success, right? Does it matter that she’s not exactly playing in her ballpark, as a white woman publishing an epic concerning Chinese laborers during World War I? Does it matter that she can’t seem to step out from under Athena’s shadow… and that Athena seems to be haunting her from beyond the grave?

This isn’t the first book I’ve read where a writer steals someone else’s story, only to have it (somewhat rightfully) blow up in their face. Equally riveting in a similar sense is The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz, whose protagonist steals a sensational story from a deceased student, with devastating consequences.

Both books raise interesting questions about ethics, literally asking which stories writers have a right to tell. And this one is great. Read it!

The best thing I ate this fortnight

Whenever I’m in London (which is not nearly as often as that sentence makes it out to be), I meet a dear friend who lives for an Afternoon Tea.

Although I’m not the biggest fan of sweet treats and often feel half hungover from the sugar hit this particular type of dining experience brings on, I enjoy the pageantry of the event.

Especially in London, where they usually take place at some gorgeous hotel, in a lovely setting, and you can usually get some sort of alcoholic beverage involved, to seal the deal.

This time, we met at the Ampersand Hotel in South Kensington, for a Jurassic Park themed afternoon tea.

Look, I’ve a lot of afternoon/high teas under my belt and in my belly. So I have standards that need to be met, if a tea is gonna make the cut. Especially when you consider the cost of an arvo tea these days.

Luckily, the Ampersand delivered on just about every point:

• They served real tea, with TEA LEAVES, rather than tea bags. I am a passionate consumer of tea (I am here for the tea!) and these sort of details are VERY IMPORTANT

• The service is impeccable and the delivery of the savoury and sweet treats was an EVENT in itself

• The food is delicious and they used REAL clotted cream.

• You could add on cocktails for an addition £15. I misread this and thought that a single cocktail addition was £15 and was very pleased to find out that no, this meant you’d receive ALL THREE COCKTAILS listed on the menu. This would completely obliterate any remaining room in both your stomach or bladder, but who cares? Totally worth it.

That’s it for this fortnight. I’ll be back with the first installment of our ‘What’s Cooking Around the World’ series, kicking off in dear old Blighty.

Can I ask a favour? If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, could you perhaps hit the ‘like’ button (the heart on the left hand side) for me? Think of it as giving this content a vote of confidence, a green light to the algorithms that most unfortunately now control the Internet.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

-Celine