What The Fork?
March 21, 2018
Welcome to ‘What The Fork?’, the (hopefully at
least semi-regular) series where I track my surprise, delight, and occasional
dismay with the weird and wonderful culinary delights that the UK has to offer.
For this, our first instalment, the feeling is
definitely surprise. It may not come as a surprise to you, and if that is the
case, please let me know! Have I been living under a rock? Am I the only person
who didn’t know about this?
‘This’, in this particular case being,
‘boil-in-the-bag rice’.
Yes, that’s right. You heard me (read me…).
Boil. In. The. Bag. Rice.
I can’t be the only one who has never heard of
this before?
The story is thus; I was invited over for
dinner by a lovely new friend that I have made here in London. When I finally
arrived at her apartment (flat, must remember to say flat!) after trying to
figure out how to get into a closed Oxfam store thanks to a hopelessly lost
Google maps, she was in the process of making dinner. Which consisted of a yum
not-curry curry.
And Mesh, if you read this at any point, take
it as my witness statement that Benni can cook. So there.
But she also had what looked like two white
balls on the go in a rapidly boiling saucepan. I didn’t really know how to ask
what they were. When she said the not-curry curry was a chicken not-curry curry, I had a moment of fear that in the saucepan were the
unfortunate birds themselves.
That would not have had me feeling like
Chicken Tonight.
(just a
little millennial Australian humour, there, for anyone too foreign and/or young
to pick it up!)
When she told me what it was (they were?), I didn’t really
believe her for a moment. Well, I believed her, but I couldn’t wrap my head
around it.
Which she found hilarious.
‘Don’t you have boil-in-a-bag rice in
Australian?’
‘No?’
‘How do you make rice, then?’
‘…in a rice cooker?’
‘What?! Who has a rice cooker?’
‘…everyone? My last housemate and I had two,
and there were only two of us in the apartment!’
Flat. Must remember to say flat.
Anyway, I didn’t take a photo, because a) I
feel that would’ve been rude, and b) I forgot. So I have stolen one from an
unnamed website over here. No points for guessing which one!
No, seriously, don’t mention their name. I’ve
just had to pay all my professional registrations and the last thing I can afford
right now is to be sued for photo theft or whatever it is they’d try to get me
for.
Stay tuned for more food adventures in
arguably one of the blandest culinary environments in the world!
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