Journeys
Around the world, to eat
KANKANA BASU
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A palatable and well-informed romp through global cuisine.
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Majumdar erupts into ecstasy on arriving at the India chapters which he writes with a rare exuberance ...writer ...both part-insider and part-outsider.
Eat My Globe Simon Majumdar, John Murray, £12.99
That one man’s desperate search for good food could provide hours of pleasurable entertainment to other men is amply demonstrated in Simon Majumdar’s Eat My Globe: One Man’s Search for the Best Food in the World.
As Majumdar slurps, slobbers, salivates (and occasionally shudders) his way across the globe on a mega-mission involving the taste buds, the reader gets to savour some remarkable cuisine. The fleeting curiosity that the name evokes is dispelled at the very onset as one learns of the author’s half-Welsh half-Bengali origins and this also partly explains his genetic fetish for food.
Written with irrepressible wit and humour, the book traces a convoluted culinary path across Britain, Ireland, Australia (Sydney, Melbourne), Japan, Hong Kong, China, Mongolia, Russia, the United States (Chicago, Texas, New York, Mexico), India (Mumbai, Kolkata, Darjeeling), Morocco, Istanbul, Sicily and Rome with many a short stopover in obscure places to sample local fare. Sundry characters drift in and out of the text in the briefest of guest appearances and most of these are fellow foodies (like-minded friends made over emails and food websites) who are eager to help Majumdar on his global mission.
Presences
The author’s elder brother Robin, re-christened TGS (The Great Salami) in childhood by his siblings for obvious reasons, is an invisible but formidable presence throughout the book, though. Readers hoping to glean an exotic recipe or two are likely to be disappointed as the thrust of the narrative is one-track and simple: how to get to good food and EAT it.
Majumdar has no qualms about painting himself as a ludicrous glutton who thinks nothing of mopping up the last bit of grease or licking his platter clean of curry (when he thinks nobody is watching) and this goes a long way in endearing him to the reader. Not one for wasting words in describing geographical and aesthetic aspects of the places of visit, the author nevertheless displays a great feel for atmosphere while describing the bustle of a Mexican market place or a quiet morning stroll down the Great Wall of China (where he surreptitiously sheds a tear for his dead mother).
The information load that this book imparts to the reader is almost overwhelming in its magnitude and one thus learns about the thirty course meal of baby sausages, sweet and sour pork, crispy fish fritters etc. at the famous Manjushuri temple in China that is completely vegetarian, the sushi making craft of the great master Naomichi Yasuda and that ‘curry house’ food in the UK is as far removed from traditional Indian cuisine as ‘red sauce’ American is from authentic Italian.
Majumdar is predominantly carnivorous in his taste for good food, the vegetarian aspects of good eating sidelined merely to things like french fries, mashed potatoes and tomatoes that go into the making of sauces and this could be an issue with vegetarian readers. Some of the passages could be stomach churning as Majumdar writes with gusto about the delights of eating dehydrated cane rats, calf’s brains, seahorses, silkworms, slugs, lizards, stuffed hearts, tongue dumplings, roasted marrowbone, sea urchins and the unspeakable horrors of Chinese toilets.
Culture and customs
Region related customs and phrases pop up occasionally in the text and the strangeness of these are enchanting. The reader is thus enlightened to learn that while ordering a Philly (Philadelphia) steak, ‘whiz with’ implies a sandwich cheese whiz while ‘handicapped’ indicates a sandwich cut in half and that Mexicans have a unique take on death (both joyous and macabre) which involves decorating stalls with models of skulls and skeletons (known as Katrinas and Katrines) made of sugar besides miniature versions of headstones and coffins.
Majumdar erupts into ecstasy on arriving at the India chapters which he writes with a rare exuberance characteristic of a writer who is both part-insider and part-outsider.
The two coloured book cover with a sketch of a strange apparition-like creature (is it or isn’t it Popeye the sailor?) is a bit of a let down and considering that the delicacies featured make a wide sweep of the avian, fish, rodent, arthropod, crustacean, reptilian and mammalian worlds, a statutory warning for the vegetarian reader might well have been in good order.
All in all, a highly recommended read, both entertaining and informative.
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