Chiang Mai – & The Cool Curve of Coffee Bars

The Gulf Islands seem to represent Thailand’s mainstream/gap yah partyville and short holiday culture and Bangkok the loud smelly, vivid sensory big city experience. Meanwhile, Chiang Mai carries the alternative or younger cultural scene. I’m not pretending it isn’t geared for tourism; there are tourist markets and innumerable travel agents make sport out of selling a ‘same same’ set of excursions (I’m a particular fan of the ‘non touristy’ bullshit in the picture below) typically including trekking, cooking, zip lining, ATV and mountain biking. But Chiang Mai also seems to have this underlying young alternative personality.

From the (admittedly very limited) two weeks I’ve hung around here, it seems down to the lesser presence of a music scene and cafe culture. There are fewer late tourist-only bars with drunk people falling out and not so many international retail/food chains. There are lots of great coffee bars and cafes and you aren’t hassled past the point of “no thanks” by tuk tuk drivers. Unlike in Bangkok, where they’ll chase you down the street and take umbrage if you ignore or dismiss them.

There’s, some good live music in many of the bars. People seem happier, younger and there is a strong university presence. Again, it’s subjective and partly based on my having landed in a great chilled out hostel with a great cafe next door. Now here’s a cafe with personality that I’d love to have near where I live. It’s called Birds Nest and is charmingly decked out.

It’s themed like a bird cage (bear with me), with a hand-painted tree on the wall, painted and model birds and associated paraphernalia (like the eggcup) around. It plays varied background jazz music, as the owner also owns a local jazz club and it’s got nicely miss-matching wooden furniture. There’s an impressive array of modern classic and reference books (from Bryson to Bennett, Tolstoy and travel guides). There are also board games like chess, go, draughts, scrabble and brain teasers like rubix cubes.

And I’m not only bigging it up because it did one of my favourite things which was to serve me perfect soft boiled eggs. The majority of its food is freshly cooked and cheep (like the budgie). For example, you get a great breakfast of fresh fruit, yoghurt and muesli (which would tend to see me through to dinner); green, red, massuman and Penang curries; hot sandwiches with fresh bread and even homemade pita bread and hummus.

Its the kind of place you meet very interesting people. For instance, I met a local guy named Pisit, known as Peter, who was jamming on the guitar and killing time before a job interview. We had a chat about music and we talked about out favourite current bands (he also works as a DJ) and he is launching an online music radio station. It’s launches today, so have a look: http://www.marchroom.com/.

Back home, I think too many cool places like this fall foul of the a dangerous curve. People seek reliability, so the economics of what I call ‘the cool curve’ destroy fun of places like this. A place becomes well known and usually prices rise, the brand is used to open a chain or group and standardisation takes over. The more people go there, the less cool it gets and the more standardisation happens. The less cool and charming it is. The chain then trades off a standard quality or reliability brand and the magic is gone. The cycle is to an extent, inevitable, but some cities manage to cultivate a culture where more of these great little boutique places pop up.

That’s the kind of city I’d like to live in.

Fantastic Morrocan lamb wrap recipe

I recently visited Exmouth market at lunchtime with my colleague James and we both enjoyed a great Morrocan lamb wrap. The well-known restaurant Moro has a food stand there, as do many other local restaurants and other sellers not based in the area. Collectively, they selling all kinds of interesting foods and it’s a real delight visiting the market there – I suggest you try it if you can get there on a lunchtime on a nice day. There’s also a cakes stand which has some very nice looking cakes, including some great cheesecakes.

The lamb wrap from Moro was really tasty. It was slow-cooked lamb, spiced with great Moroccan flavours and served with a crunchy salad, fresh red chilli and yoghurt. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to try and replicate it. I’m sure my lamb won’t be quite as nice as that from the restaurant by all-in-all, it came out well. Here’s what I did.

I roasted a shoulder of lamb in the same way I did for a Jamie Oliver recipe called mad Moroccan lamb. It’s essentially a shoulder of lamb, crisscrossed deeply with a knife and rubbed with a mixture of ground cumin, corriander, black pepper etc. You give it a good three hours, so it’s very brown and the fat can render off.

Then, you leave it to cool and then take the meat off the bone. Try to get rid of any really fatty bits, but do try to keep in as much of the crunchy outside as possible. Then mix and mash it all together in a bowl. You can keep this for some time. I kept it in the fridge for a week, but it’s probably best to freeze some of it in smaller portions, so you can come back to it.

This just went into a wrap (I used a multi-seed one) with a tablespoon or two of natural yoghurt. For the salad, I chopped up cucumber, radish, celery and de-seeded tomatos and a reasonable portion of red chilli all pretty small (the red chilli as small as I could) and mixed it all together before adding to the wrap. I had some parsley at the time as well, which was a good addition too. That was pretty much it – but very, very tasty. I’d thoroughly suggest trying it.

Even better – cook the lamb for a Sunday roast and they just plan this as how to use the leftovers. Very economical and extremely tasty.

Ingredient sales up, prepackaged dinners down…

Another story that caught my eye this week was one from the Observer, in which Rebecca Seal reported on figures that suggest a significant move away from prepackaged food. Some very interesting stats include:

• The sale of convenience food rose by 300% in the past decade… Asda says sales of economy white potatoes have risen by an astonishing 3,017% in a year
• At Morrisons, sales of the ingredients for Sunday roasts are up 44% on the year
• At Asda, beef kidney sales are up 74% and pork shoulder 58%
• When Sainsbury’s featured basic beef chunks on an in-store recipe card, purchases rose by 2,000%.

Seal attributes this to the efforts of celebrity chefs creating more interest in cooking; this may well be the case. However at this stage the trend could go two ways. Either cost pressures will dissuade many consumers from experimenting with new foods and cooking as a result of job pressure or being unemployed, or people will seek budget relief by attempting to cook more. The issue lies in whether people percieve cooking as cheaper than prepared meals and how far health affects the purchasing decision.

There will also no doubt be a strong reaction from the packaged food industry which will target marketing efforts at this very trend towards healthier food, particularly in the credit crunch. FMCG companies frequently up their marketing at times of slowdown in an attempt to drive market share, so this could well affect the balance of power.

I for one, will keep trying to find cheap ways of preparing my own food.

M&S to Change its Sourcing Strategy

The FT reports today that M&S is to continue and expand its use of non M&S branded products. It’s food business seems to have been a large part of its sucess in recent years, almost imposing itself on the rest of the business and expanding into clothing real estate. The store in Ealing for one has adapted and been totally remodelled to cater for the bulging food section.

I hadn’t realised they’d started selling products like Tetley tea and Hellman’s mayo (probably because it was a limited trial), but this is going to increasingly be part of their offering. This will bring them more into direct competition with Waitrose, which is the only supermarket in the same part of the market as M&S, price/quality wise.

You have to wonder what this’ll do to M&S’ existing suppliers and how their mix of imports vs. local suppliers will change. I have to say I do like Waitrose’s approach in trying to convince people that as many of it’s products as possible, are local. And I hope M&S go down the same road and not just in terms of how they position it.

However, I still prefer to beat the drum about using local shops though – I barely seem to use supermarkets at the moment and I’ve gone so far as to scope out the local shops in locations I’m planning to move to. If only there were more local shops to chose from.

Lancashire Hotpot Recipe & What Meat To Use?

I cooked a Lancashire hotpot over the weekend – recipe courtesy of Delia – using the recommended best end and middle neck of lamb; I thoroughly recommend it, the meat comes up beautifully sweet and tender.

It made me think when I saw Jay Rayner from The Observer‘s comments today about supermarkets not stocking more traditional cuts of meat that are largely forgotten today. It’s funny to think that a high-end supermarket like Waitrose expects to see demand for offal and cheaper cuts of meat, which were once more the cuts of the lower/working classes.

The best end and middle neck of lamb is another cut of meat that is infrequently stocked in supermarkets (used in traditional lancashire hotpot). I picked one up from S C Crosby in Smithfield (near work) for just £6.80 and it was plenty for feeding four people. I hadn’t tried using such a cut before, but the meat was absolutely delicious. In the butchers, it was hanging next to various cuts like shoulder (c£12) and leg (c£18), which were far more expensive. It made me think about how inflated some of the prices are.

It’s all down to demand. Just look at how oysters are seen as today’s delicacy, where they used to be a filler for beef pies! Maybe the trend will go away quickly and Waitrose will drop the cheeks and trotters, but who knows, maybe we’ll all be dashing out to get hold of some exclusive ‘not-just-offal, but M&S luxury-hand-selected-from-the-finest-offcuts offal’. Maybe it’ll drive down the cost of traditional cuts? Chance would be a fine thing.

Source it… In Pitshanger Lane, Ealing

I’ve increasingly been finding that I can get almost everything I want locally, without having to go to a supermarket. Now that a I see a new butcher is opening up in Pitshanger Lane, which is where I do my ‘ping, I’ll be able to get almost everything locally.  Below I’ve mapped out the main independent food shops in Pitshanger, all of which I regularly use. For heavy items and general stocking up on detergent etc I do a quarterly-ish Tesco delivery.

These include:

• T H Carr - Fishmonger (which I’ve mentioned a few … times)
• Rays Fruit Bowl - Grocer
• The Village Pantry - Delicatessen
• Pitshanger Village Bakery
• McCreadies – Butcher

Best of all, they’re all very close together, as you can see on this map!

Do you use local shops as much as possible? If not, have you got a reason; really, I’d be interested to know if they are poor quality, or inconvenient etc.

Where to get Japanese produce in London

An esteemed commenter today suggested that my first mistake in looking for a good place to eat Japanese, was looking on the fringe of Chinatown. To be fair, the only two poor meals I’ve had in Chinatown have been at Japanese places, namely Kintaro Sushi, and some time ago, the Tokyo Diner (which to be fair, may be better now). Otherwise I’ve had some great meals chinese meals in the area.

Yesterday I made the mistake of thinking I could get good Japanese for bargain prices, but sadly at Kintaro Sushi, I was bitterly dissapointed with the food. Having just the day before enjoyed a great spot of lunch at Sushi World in Ealing, at Kintaro Sushi I was greeted with weird noodles that were translucent and acted like rubber; dodgy fishcake reconstituted from mush; dry shredded luttice and rice that was dry like it had been sittting out for hours. Lesson learned, next time I want cheap noodles, I’ll stick to Wagamama or Hare and Tortoise.

But where can you get good Japanese produce or food in London? Fortunately I found a good place on the same day, which partly made up for it.

On the way home we walked past the Japanese Centre on Picadilly [see map] which has a great variety of Japanese food supplies, crockery, cookery books and fresh produce too. I picked up some rice, a few dipping dishes, some udon noodles and some sushi nori. Having previously paid over-the-odds for sushi-making ingredients etc in organic shops and higher-end supermarkets it was great to find a place where you can bulk buy good ingredients at reasonable prices. I’m also planning to explore some more of the Japanese and Chinese shops around Gerrard St.

No doubt there are many other great places to buy Japanese food supplies; I’m also keen to find some more great Japanese restaurants that tempt me to move away from eating sushi each time I go for Japanese!

Please let me know if you know of anywhere good