Born two years after Martha Stewart in 1943, this Martha is not known for home keeping and entertaining. is a conceptual artist whose works spans across different mediums like photography, performance art, video and, installation. She often uses her art to comment on everyday life, class, consumerism and the role of women in society.

Her most famous work, Semiotics of The Kitchen is an uncomfortable watch. What initially looks like a cook show quickly descends into an alphabetical breakdown of the utensils that are demonstrated as tools to subvert women.

The year before Semiotics of The Kitchen, Rosler showcased an installation and performance called A Gourmet Experience. Engraved invitations were sent out for a “dinner party”. The dinner party was an installation featuring a table dressed with flowers, candles and beautiful cutlery. Projections of different cuisines were accompanied by readings of recipes from cookbooks from around the world. This was peppered with videos of labourers and manufacturers toiling away often in jarring contrast to the fancy setting highlighting the class difference between the producer and the consumer.

A Budding Gourmet was created as a companion piece to The Gourmet Experience, a novel written as a series of postcards. These postcards were sent to her friends every five to seven days, and then turned into a 15-minute video. The story of a housewife convinced that mastering French cooking will elevate her family’s social status. Both these artworks allude to the fact that food is used by many as cultural capital to assert their place in society.

In her 1977 video, The East is Red, the West is Bending, she reads aloud from an instruction booklet for a red electric wok manufactured by West Bend. As interest in global cooking grew, Rosler observed an explosion of corporations capitalising on the desire to become connoisseurs of “exotic” cuisines. The race to launch unnecessary appliances that appeared to be charged-up versions (non-stick! electric!) of traditional equipments like the wok, making them appealing to the American consumer eager to explore these cuisines.

This idea continued to stew and in 1985, Rosler exhibits Global Taste: A Meal in Three Courses. Where East is Red, The West is Bending looked at how domestic cooking trends in America were being manipulated by corporations whilst reducing the “exotic” food to novelty cooking gadgets, Global Taste: A Meal in Three Courses shows how the marketing of American goods globally and English as the language of power was influencing global tastes.

Rosler’s roster of work does not always involve food but it is a recurring theme. Her ongoing project Air Fare is a series of photographs of the food she is served on planes that she has been documenting whilst travelling across the world for exhibitions. An installation of her personal books displayed as a browsable library featuring more than 7000 books offers visitors an insight on her interests. Within this extensive collection of books are an impressive number of cookbooks.

As in her much larger installation Martha Rosler Library, 2005–2008, consisting of more than seven thousand volumes from her personal collection, visitors are invited to handle the books, which includeThe Settlement Cookbook (1901), Larousse Gastronomique (1938), a twenty-seven-volume set published by Time Life Books called Foods of the World (1968–71), paperbacks by Anthony Bourdain and Michael Pollan, and anthologies such as Edible Ideologies (2008), and Food and Philosophy (2009). Looking through them, I overheard museumgoers reminisce about the cookbooks they had grown up with and even watched them flip to their favorite dishes. These “decoys,” as Rosler calls them, are devices meant to trigger the memory, providing an affective shortcut for engagement. But the volumes function as more than a lure; they also offer a glimpse of the artist’s idiosyncrasies that pierce the seeming invulnerability of her political critiques.

Rachel Churner

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Over the years, Rosler’s works become bigger and go beyond the solo performances and she starts collaborating with others. Similarly, her art stretches beyond the kitchen and the medium of food is used to comment on globalisation and aimed at institutional powers. In Romances of the Meal three women in evening dresses read from a script that traces the myths and histories of coffee, chocolate, and Coca-Cola.

Tips on how to brew the perfect cup of coffee and recipes such as dioxin-contaminated chicken in Coca-Cola sauce for four hundred are shared. When one of the women instructs the audience on how to throw a pie in the face of an official, it is accompanied by a footage of Bill Gates being pied in Brussels in 1989 and followed by Rosler herself throwing a pie in the face of the curator!

Rosler’s own tastes in food are largely unknown. The artist is very private but there are signs to show that Rosler must have a genuine interest in cooking. Her library suggests so, although it could be argued that these books were collected as references for her work.

Between 1973 - 1975, Rosler wrote an imaginary dialogue between Julia Child and Craig Claiborne with text directly lifted from cookbooks. The Art of Cooking was later published in 2017 by the University of Minnesota and an excerpt of the absurd dialogue it can be found here.

We get a glimpse into Rosler’s life and kitchen when she shared a recipe for Mediteranean Spinach and an account of life during lockdown.

I try to maintain a fairly healthy diet, mindful of the fact that I am getting far less exercise. I also want to support one or two of my local restaurants, so I occasionally get take-out. I found that at the supermarket, I wasn’t a disciplined shopper, but I did try to get salad fixings and nuts as well as some other staples and treats. Pasta was, luckily, the last thing on my mind, because as everyone now knows, there wasn’t any to be had. I do have a stock of Chinese noodles in my pantry.

I have no desire to be particularly adventurous in cooking during this crisis, as I still have to get work done without the help of in-studio assistants. I’m not sure cooking for myself alone would be worth the effort of scaring up the ingredients. My own recipe, below, requires some common elements but not everyone might have them on hand.

Here’s something simple and good-tasting that I’ve been making for years. Its origin is lost in time, but I have it copied out on a piece of paper. The smell alone makes it worth cooking.

Martha Rosler

Food is more than a sprinkling of seasoning in Rosler’s art and activism. The recipe she shares, her kitchen, and the cookbooks within her library hint at an artist fluent in global cuisines. It doesn’t matter if she’s a gourmand. Rosler understands that food is the perfect ingredient, a lingua franca for political commentary.

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Sight

London is a very green city. It is in fact one of the greenest cities in the world. Did you know that 47% of Greater London is classified as either a green or blue (water) area? That’s nearly half the city!

I’ve been trying to get in the habit of taking a walk post-lunch and often wander aimlessly. On one of these walks, after meandering along the Thames, I went through Inner Temple to get back to the Strand and found myself in this oasis. I had to stop to look. I had to stop because it took my breath away.

I learned that Inner Temple Garden was once the site of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Spring Flower Show from 1888 until 1911, when it moved to Chelsea.

I am so happy to have discovered this gem and love the escapism it provides me from work. The garden is also right by Fountain Court, where I found two beautiful mulberry trees with plenty of fruit waiting to be picked.

Sound

We had family visit recently and had extended time with our nephews, aged six and 22 months. Lucas and Otis are full of personality and need very little to break into fits of giggles and laughter. HusbandMan and his brother are very funny men, so I am unsurprised that my little nephews have the best sense of humour.

Hearing them laugh is one of the best sounds in the world. It’s also impossible to feel any stress hearing them get hysterical which is a nice reminder that laughter truly is the best medicine.

Smell

Twice a week I walk to my gym, passing an old school launderette in Stroud Green. The route I take takes me past their back door which has been open all summer, most likely due to the heat. The humid scent of heated water vapour and fabrics is somewhat comforting. That promise of cleanliness filling the air is a nice thing to smell right before you get into a sweat sesh.

I recently visited two galleries where scent was either inspired by the works of the artist (as in the case of the Hulda Guzmán at Turner Contemporary) or a visceral experience (as in the works of Anish Kapoor at the Hayward Gallery). When I walked into the room where Ha Makom was, I was hit not just by the deep crimson of the sculpture but by a smell— it was a bit spicy. I was told it was turmeric but a bit of internet sleuthing tells me it was most likely the smell of fresh paint, raw pigment, resin and fibreglass.

Taste

Two different ice cream flavours tickled my taste buds this month. One was butter popcorn, which was available in three different ice cream shops on the Kent coast. The winner was Bears Ice Cream Imaginarium’s in Whitstable and the next best was from Angela’s Ices in Margate. Angela’s Ices is the ice cream shop opened by Angela’s, one of my favourite restaurants there. It’s right next door to the restaurant so my tip for you is to have a meal at Angela’s, skip dessert but go next door and get yourself a very good scoop of ice cream.

Butter popcorn ice cream tastes exactly like it sounds. It is buttery with a bit of smokiness from the flavour of popcorn. As the UK summer is no longer just for two weeks, I’ve no choice but to indulge in ice cream whenever I can.

Another stand out flavour was a shiso leaf ice cream that was on the menu in Sète. There is no world where I would have passed on this flavour and I’m glad I ordered it despite having had an ice cream earlier in the day. It was unusual but in a good way. It was earthy but cool and absolutely delicious—perfect after a scorching day by the seaside.

Touch

I have a weakness for textures. And I love part of my outfit to be a conversation piece. I pined after A.W.A.K.E MODE’s Dora embellished shoes and saw this dupe from Stine Goya in the wrong size on Vinted. I hunted them down and finally found and bought them on eBay. These shoes with their studs are not quite as wild as the A.W.A.K.E MODE ones, but they’re fun enough for me and much friendlier to my wallet.

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The first competition I ever took part in was an ice cream competition. A supermarket had just opened in our neighbourhood. It stood out from the row of grocery shops with their sacks of dried goods and their small selection of fresh vegetables.

The new supermarket was air-conditioned. It was brightly lit with strips of fluorescent lights and its aisles were filled with colourful goods in shiny packaging.

The competition was based on speed, rewarding the quickest eater amongst us. I stood in a line of five or six other children, holding the ice cream cone in my hands. The thing is, I wasn’t there to win. I was there for a free Cornetto which I’d planned on savouring in my own sweet time.

A Cornetto was always a treat. Although, if I were completely honest with myself, it never really lived up to its promise. The cone was always soggy—a texture I detest and yet, it always felt like a luxury to have one.

Compared to the push-up pops that were more common, a Cornetto seemed more sophisticated. These long plastic tubes were filled with either juice, rose syrup, Milo (a chocolate malt drink) and assam (tamarind), then knotted and frozen without labels.

Another everyday option was ais potong. These ice lollies were usually made with coconut milk and flavoured with pandan, adzuki beans, corn and taro, then frozen and cut into cuboids. I was unaware of how close ais potong was to the water ices popular in Georgian, Regency and Victorian England.

Icy Cream

Ice cream making in the beginning was an act of alchemy. It had just been discovered that salt lowered the freezing point of water through a process called freezing point depression. A lot of ice cream making in the early days were experiments to find the perfect ratio of ice, salt and sugar.

Mary Eales is often credited as the first person to share a recipe for ice cream. But before that, Lady Anne Fanshawe had handwritten a recipe in her book1. The recipe called for three pints of the best cream as a base, sugar, chopped ice and a blade of mace, orange flower water or ambergris (a substance used in perfume but is produced in the digestive tract of sperm whales and is widely known as whale vomit!) for flavouring. The recipe was unfortunately flawed because it was missing the magic ingredient that is salt; so no icy cream was formed.

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The 18^th Century is known as the golden age of ice cream. By 1768, the first book entirely devoted to ice cream was published by a Monsieur Emy. This was a time of flavour experiments and Emy is reportedly the first to make rye bread ice cream. He also made truffle ice cream, advising that it was best to cook the truffle in water and salt first before grounding it and mixing it with cream2.

What is especially striking about so many books and accounts of ice cream making at the time is the startling range of flavours that were accommodated. It is not just the vast range of fruits that draw the eye, but flavours like tea, coffee, chocolate, ginger, champagne, rum, brown bread, not to mention all kinds of nuts. Brown bread ice, according to The Pytchley Book of Refined Cookery, consisted of half a pound of stale brown bread crumbs mixed with a pint of whipped cream, six ounces of sugar and flavoured with vanilla essence.

Michael Freeman, Ice Blocks from Norway: The Importation of Natural Ice to Britain, Circa 1870 - 1925

It was not unusual for something like lavender ice cream to be served in the shape of a skull. Ice cream was always moulded into different shapes, creating a trompe l’oeil effect and then ceremoniously brought to the table during banquets. They were showstoppers and always the highlight of the meal.

The production of the dessert went hand in hand with the import of sugar throughout the 18th century. Ice cream had become available to more echelons of society partially due to the decrease in the price of sugar, which was a direct result of the transatlantic slave trade. This disturbing episode of history saw enslaved people treated as objects, and commodities treated as kings. Primarily sugar, but also tobacco, coffee, cotton and rum. This undercurrent of ice cream history is something that is uncomfortable to incorporate into the narrative, but for every grand banquet full of sculptural ices and for each ice cream shop offering icy treats, there was a very different diorama happening in the bows of ships and the cane fields of the Caribbean.

Tasha Marks3

The popularity of ice cream trickled down the social classes and by the late 1800s, it was not unusual for middle class homes to serve flavoured ice creams, water ices and sorbets for dessert.

The earliest reference of a cone was mentioned in entrepreneur and innovator, Agnes Marshall’s Book of Cookery. The “cornet” which was made with ground almonds was filled with ice cream but still eaten with a fork and knife. Agnes did more than invent the cone. She invented and patented Marshall’s Patent Freezer which was able to freeze a pint of ice cream in less than five minutes. She also invented an ice-breaking machine and an ice cave (an insulated box for storing ice cream). She wrote and self-published The Book of Ices, a recipe book containing 177 ice cream and dessert recipes!

So Vanilla

Ice cream evolved from the experimental spectacles of the Victorian times into a treat enjoyed by many. The convergence of the commercial ice cream production and the mass production of synthetic vanillin made this cold treat available to everyone.

In 1922, the company T. Wall & Sons (now known as Wall’s) pivoted from making sausages to producing ice cream during the hot summer months. They sold it using ten company tricycles plastered with the slogan “Stop me and buy one”. By 1939, T. Wall & Sons had 8,500 tricycles on the road.

If the 18^th Century was the golden age of ice cream, are we now living through its Renaissance?

Artisanal, small-batch brands experimenting with what appears to be “new” flavours like olive oil, hot honey, shiso leaf and parmesan have been snowballing since the pandemic. Historically, ice cream was for the extremely wealthy and served during elaborate banquets; today it is a sweet that can be accessible by almost everyone.

As global temperatures continue to rise, so have ice cream sales. During the recent heatwave, sales have nearly doubled compared to last year, making it the perfect moment for to publish its Ice Cream Guide 2026 by Tandoh.

Geopolitical conflicts and persistent inflation have formed new consumer habits. Ice cream is now considered a “micro luxury” and experiencing the lipstick effect.

This reflects a fragmented consumer divide where customers with more disposable income are buying premium ice cream and the lower-to-middle income families experience food insecurity. A distinct K-shaped economy is observed within the ice cream industry where mass market brands are trapped in the precarious middle ground and in danger of melting into oblivion.

Haute and Cold

Luxury brands have been quick to spot this and see ice cream as an experiential and social-media friendly opportunity. Bottega Veneta and Loewe have pop-up ice cream bars in London to launch their new fragrance and candle. Meanwhile, in NYC, Acne handed out free ice cream and perfume samples at their Prince Street to celebrate the launch of Acne par Frédéric Malle’s body wash and body milk.

The intersection between food and fashion continues to churn. Ice cream is an easy win for brand marketing: everyone loves it and it photographs beautifully. Ice cream easily transforms traditional retail into a multi-sensory experience. It is playful and nostalgic, evoking the feeling of a holiday and happy memories.

Anya Hindmarch was a scoop ahead when she launched The Ice Cream Project in 2022 turning ordinary supermarket brands to unique flavours. This year she launched flavours like OXO stock cube, Paxo stuffing to more palatable offerings like Lurpak butter, Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers and Mcvitties Ginger Nuts.

If ice cream is the new lipstick should it be considered an investment? If lipstick lasts only a moment on your lips, the effects of ice cream are surely more permanent—staying right on the hips! Nevertheless, nothing’s going to stop me from indulging in more frozen treats this summer.

Sight

I had an hour to spare and walked out to the dunes in Gran Canaria. I didn’t have enough time to see all of it but it didn’t take very long to be reminded of the force of nature. I was definitely humbled by the sheer size and beauty of it. There is a meditative quality in being immersed in a landscape like this.

Sound

I’ve always loved live music. Seeing Dev Hynes Ensemble as part of Harry Styles’ Meltdown Festival in Southbank Centre was an electric experience. I felt the synapses spark in my brain as I listened to these talented musicians play, moved to tears by the sheer joy of beautiful music.

I’ve since enjoyed discovering the musicians Dev performed with: Tariq Al-Sabir a composer and music director; Adam Tendler a pianist and Cæcilie Trier, the cellist. Most of all I loved seeing them move between instruments.

The four musicians became a single entity each time—with four very coordinated limbs moving together. Astounding.

Smell

There is nothing like being by the sea. It has been the longest I’ve not been to the beach so it was very special to receive an invitation to Gran Canaria Swim Week. I was there for a hot minute but it was enough to remind myself how rejuvenating it is to see a horizon of aquamarine water blending in with the blue sky. I especially love the smell of the sea. That salty, almost pungent scent—a mixture of seaweed and sea life, it’s slightly briny and wonderful!

Taste

Rarely does a hyped restaurant live up to its reputation. We went to Impala without expectations. I thought I’d probably like it based on the menu and the considered sourcing of their produce. What I didn’t expect was a restaurant that was pretty perfect in every aspect and truly deserving of its popularity. The service! The food! The perfect pairing of different ingredients across cuisines! The kibbeh of crab and sun dried wheat wrapped in shiso leaf! And the bird’s tongue pasta, slowly braised with spiced oxtail and cooked in ghee. It was so delicious that silence fell upon us. This is the kind of cooking that deserves reverence. Savouring every bite is what it commanded.

Touch

A cold shower at the end of a sweaty day is the best feeling. It immediately makes me feel less feral and more human. After a full day of being out I am desperate to wash away the city grime. There’s nothing like getting into bed feeling clean.

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The accessory of the season was the fan. They were in everyone’s hands: folding, USB mini ones and neck fans. Everybody had at least one type of fan. And we were all still very sweaty.

Cold Food, Hot Restaurant

I was sent a google map of a list of restaurants with air-conditioning which I promptly saved but didn’t use once. Instead, I had one of my best meals in the hottest corner of a Japanese bistro in the Marais.

Sōma is probably one of the first places in Paris to serve izakaya-style Japanese food. It opened in 2014 and has been on my list for many years. It serves the type of food I’d happily eat any time of the year, but is particularly appealing during a heatwave.

I loved almost everything we ordered but it was the sea bream carpaccio with daikon that stole my heart. The thin slivers of sea bream were covered by a veil of daikon, cut into whispers. Delicate and subtle, I didn’t want to share this at all.

SŌMA Saintonge, Rue de Saintonge, 75003 Paris

You’ll get FOMO over FUMO

It was by chance that we ended up going to FUMO for dessert. We’d just eaten at SŌMA but had to vacate the hot restaurant. It came up on a google map search for ice cream and as it was just around the corner, we went to check it out.

There were only five flavours on their menu:

• SOFT (fig leaf ice cream, served with olive oil, nigella seeds and wasabi roasted sesame seeds)

• SMOKE (olive oil ice cream served with smoked salt and Malabar black pepper)

• SPICE (cardamom ice cream served with olive oil, espelette pepper and cracked black pepper)

• EDGE (pickle sorbet served with olive oil, crushed wasabi peas and sumac)

• ROAST (burnt rice ice cream, served with olive oil, salt and miso roasted sesame seeds).

The flavours were created by Tessa Ponzo, the pastry chef at Irwin. I had the burnt rice ice cream. It was sweet and salty and smoky. And I’ve not stopped thinking about it. I think this might be one of the best ice cream I’ve ever had.

So, go. Go now!

FUMO, 59 Rue Charlot 75003 Paris (Pop-Up until 20 September, 2026)

Reigning Rainier

I’ve been on cherry-watch here in the UK, stalking the markets to see if they were for sale yet. So I was surprised to see that cherry season was in full swing in France. I am not ashamed to say that my love can be bought with cherries.

I walked to one of the greengrocers on Rue de Bretagne and bought a selection of cherries (Rainier and Bigarreau). The Rainier cherries were a lovely symphony of flavours, much like the yellow, orange red of its skin. Sweet and sour with a firm texture.

I washed them and filled a small ice bucket with the cherries and shared them with the team. It went down a treat.

Turns out the affection of others can also be bought with cherries.

Any épicerie or market, usually arranged by variety and sweetness.

It’s A Wrap!

I often crave for spice when the temperature rises. Luckily Paris is like London and you can find practically any type of food. I am a big fan of bokit- a Guadaloupean sandwich. Made from wheat flour and deep fried, it’s usually served with a filling of choice, salad and a hot sauce. In London, I get my fix from Bokit’la and apart from a mediocre one I had on Rue de Lappe years ago from a place called L’îlle du Bokits (now permanently closed), I’ve not come close to seeing it anywhere else. The one in Corossol is a hefty sandwich and slightly greasier than its London version. The filling was topped with carotte râpée. I ate this at the counter and watched, transfixed by the image of the beach with its white sands on the television in the corner. Combined with the heat, it definitely brought that holiday feeling.

Corossol, 33 bis, Rue Charlot, 75003 Paris

Another day, and another wrap sandwich from another hot country. I spotted Onda last season when I was looking for lunch options. This Brazilian street food spot serves beiju, a crepe made from tapioca flour. I had one stuffed with shredded chicken, cheese, pickles, corn and a tomato and red pepper sauce. It was delicious but very filling. So good, I ate it all.

Onda, 20, Rue des Écouffes, 75004 Paris

To complete my hat trick of wrap sandwiches from hot countries, I got one to go from Le Petit Dakar. I’ve walked past this place countless times on my way to the showroom and have always been intrigued by it. I had the fish ball pitta and it was my favourite out of the three that I tried. The restaurant itself is also very charming. I loved the small selection of produce for sale and the bottle cap garlands hanging by the window. I’m already planning to be back for dinner next Fashion Week.

Le Petit Dakar, 6 Rue Elzevir, 75003 Paris

The Last Supper

Nothing beats a plate of cold prawns. Meat that is firm and sweet. I love sucking on their heads and tasting the sea, shelling the lemony prawns, then dipping them in some mayo.

Terminus Nord would typically fall into my “tourist trap” category of restaurants but because I have been once many years ago, I knew that the food there is actually decent and is in fact the perfect place for your last meal especially if you like fruits de mer.

We didn’t have time for a full platter but we ordered a glass of wine each and shared this plate of prawns. It felt decadent and much nicer than grabbing a Five Guys before jumping on the train home.

Terminus Nord, 23 Rue de Dunkerque, 75010 Paris

Naturally my mind turns to food. Rather unnaturally it is not ice cream that I desire today. I am thinking of ice-cold cendol.

A mountain of finely shaved ice, soft like snow, it is piled precariously high in melamine bowls. On its own, it looks like Mount Fuji. Ladles of sticky, gula melaka syrup is spooned over the ice—soaking it and turning the white mounds to the colour of burnt toffee. The deep flavour of the palm sugar syrup tastes like smoky caramel. The syrup is like tar and it infuses the ice.

Next, coconut milk or santan is spooned generously over the ice. It changes the colour of the ice. It becomes lighter like the colour of buttercream. And the sweetness of the gula melaka syrup is also lifted, now balanced by the salty, creamy, nuttiness of the santan.

“Cendol” refers to the noodles made from mung bean starch or rice flour and shaped like green worms. Their colour comes from pandan, a screwpine leaf, commonly used in Southeast Asian cooking and desserts. The aroma of pandan imparts a subtle touch of grassiness to the noodles.

Combined, the coconut, gula melaka and pandan make up the holy trinity of Malaysian and Singaporean flavours.

I like my cendol just like that, but some have it with adzuki beans and sweet corn too.

Cendol is cold. It is sweet, and it is creamy. When you’ve been sat under the whirring fans and the sweat licks your skin, having this icy dessert brings sweet relief to the oppressing heat.

Gingerly break the snowy dome, taking care not to drop any of the noodles on the table and mix it all up.

You will most likely have to race to finish it. Spoon it quickly before the ice melts. But let me warn you, it will be futile: the heat always wins. The mixture will pool at the bottom of the bowl, so raise the bowl to your mouth and drink it all up.

It is heavenly.

So, Where Are You From?

The first mention of a sweet drink that is similar to cendol is found in Kakawin Kresnayana, an old Javanese poem by royal scribe, Mpu Triguna in the 12th century. The drink, dawet was made with coconut milk, palm sugar and green droplets made of rice flour.

Another version was printed in the colonial culinary literature Oost-Indisch Kookboek in 1866 as a dish called Tjendol of Dawet. The Javanese and Sundanese word, jendol meaning “bump”, “bulge” or “swollen” describes the appearance of the worm-like green strands after they are pressed through a perforated sieve. The recipe in the Oost-Indisch Kookboek was made with arrowroot.

Massive blocks of commercial ice was imported to the ports of Penang, Malacca, Singapore and Jakarta in the 1850s. By the 1890s, ice was considered a necessity. As ice became more readily available, cendol became closer to the version that is eaten today.

But Where Are You Really From?

There are many theories suggesting that cendol is derivative of an ancient Persian dessert called faloodeh brought to the Malay Archipelago by Middle East traders. At its simplest form, it is vermicelli served with rose water, sugar syrup and ice.

A subterranean chamber insulated by massive mud-brick walls up to six feet thick were built to store the ice that was brought down from mountains during winter. These ice storage houses known as yakhchal allowed ice to be kept all year round in the desert.

The common denominator between chendol and faloodeh is that they both contain jelly-like noodles that are made by pressing a hot starch batter through a sieve into ice water. The noodles in chendol have a more teardrop-like appearance while those in faloodeh, being pressed through a finer meshed sieve, resemble vermicelli.

on Chendol.

The theory is plausible. Trade expanded and when the Mughal Empire established itself in India, faloodeh became falooda. The Indian adaptation used milk, sweet basil seeds and noodles made from corn starch. As more Arab and Indian Muslim traders journeyed the maritime Silk Road to Southeast Asia, many ended up settling in the archipelago and adapted falooda using local ingredients.

If there is a strand of truth here, then cendol can trace its culinary lineage to faloodeh.

We All Eat The Same

Variations of cendol exists across Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, it is known as Chè Bánh Lọt and is served layered as a drink with lots of textures. The Thai name, Lot Chong translates to “gone through a hole”, describing the process of making the starch worms/noodles. The Burmese version is called Mont Let Saung or Shwe Yin Aye and is usually served with sticky rice and sago. Sometimes it is even served with bread! In Malaysia and Singapore, red beans or adzuki beans are typically added, the influence of the Chinese communities in these countries.

It’s a testament that this is a stellar combination that is much loved across the region. When something tastes as good as cendol, it’s no surprise that each country makes its own version.

The current heatwave has me craving this. If I were in Kuala Lumpur right now, I would head over to Sistars Kitchen in Happy Mansion where the best cendol can be found. And trust me, I’ve tried plenty. In fact, a few years ago I tasked myself with the job of hunting down the best cendol, making tasting notes as I went along. I was hoping to write the Cendol Chronicles as I coined it. So here I am, in the middle of this heatwave missing home and craving for a cendol: the only thing that’ll get me through this heat.

Friends often ask about how I’m coping but when you’re keeping your head above water, you don’t think about it. You just do. I’ve taken little steps towards some routine and finally feel like I am getting back some control in my life.

I’ve kicked my sugar habit and I’ve gone back to being more active and I feel stronger for it. Being outdoors during this time of the year is undoubtedly easier. The trees around us are full and on some of the narrower streets they canopy the roads and when the sunlight dapples through the leaves, it’s a sight that’s definitely worth getting out of bed for.

Sight

I have a fondness for a particular type of British telly: panel shows. I love Would I Lie To You, Never Mind The Buzzcocks and Have I Got News For You. In a world that takes itself too superficially and/or seriously, it is reassuring to know that there is space for the kind of entertainment where being quick-witted and silly is celebrated. We were watching an episode on HIGNY when on a whim, I applied to be in the audience.

So that is how we ended up sitting in a studio in Hammersmith on a Thursday evening watching the filming of the season finale. We couldn’t believe our luck when we learned that David Tennant was presenting that evening (especially because we’ve been watching Rivals). It made our Thursday evening extraordinary and it was totally free too!

Sound

I had a deadline and needed some music to help focus. I decided to put on the soundtrack to Minari and was instantly reminded of how much I love Emile Mosseri’s score.

Curious, I looked to see if I could find the sheet music and found A24’s Minari Song Reader—a box set with 16 sewn booklets of sheet music with beautiful illustrations by Ping Zhu accompanying each piece. It also includes a statement from Mosseri:

I was deeply moved by Isaac’s story and wrote a bunch of melodies in the spirit of his childhood. The thing that stuck out to me the most was this idea of childhood memory, and the challenge of trying to musically capture that spirit with these pieces. It’s so subjective, what does a childhood memory sound like? What does it feel like? I think I gravitated towards dreamier, more impressionistic melodies because we all look at our childhood through a romantic lens, and naturally fill in the gaps in our memories with dream-like emotionally-biased stories, so I wanted the music to reflect that. I wanted the music to let the audience feel that this was an emotional recollection of Isaac’s childhood (through David’s character) from his perspective.

I’ve loved playing these pieces on the piano. It pleases me to know that these beautiful pieces have a home in a stunning box set.

Smell

Elderflower grows widely (and wildly) here in Britain. The delicate and pretty white flowers signal the start of summer. My Substack feed reveals its popularity and there have been many a recipe and tips on how to cook with it.

Elderflower has an intoxicating aroma. It is sweet and floral. At a sauerkraut workshop run by my friend and master of ferments, , in partnership with Growing Communities (find tips on how I make use of my bag here) we were served some canapés to showcase how delicious fermented and pickled food is.

I loved the carrots that were part of her pickle platter. They had a sweet and floral smell and such a unique taste, having been fermented in a brine with elderflowers, then pickled in an elderflower vinegar. The scent and flavour of the elderflower lent a sweetness to the pickles. It was divine and I loved them!

On another nose note, the sauerkraut I made from the workshop is finally ready. I had a big old sniff of the jar today and it smelled funky and tasted perfectly sour and crunchy. I can’t wait to have it with my meals.

Taste

I want Filipino Thai Friendship to feed me forever. It is the culinary coupling combining the talents of and Dow. I went once during the earlier days of this residency with a friend and came away reminded of the early days of Singburi. Since then, I’ve wanted to go back to try the rest of the menu. When I saw that had an event there, I joined them to feast on the entire menu.

Each dish worked well as part of a bigger family style meal and was well-considered. My favourite dishes were the naem in caul fat (grilled fermented pork served with basil leaves), smoked aubergine salad, prawn ball piyalam and the coconut sorbet which was served with a fish sauce caramel, peanuts and crispy mung beans. The flavours in their cooking is always lively with a play on textures, making this one of my favourite meals of the year.

Touch

I am often reminded of how lucky I am to have the experiences I’ve had, and to have met the people I’ve met.

Not too long ago, I had an appointment in the enigmatic Susie Cave’s new boutique: Weddings & Funerals. She was showing a preview of the collection and telling me about the fabrications and techniques used in the collection when our conversation drifted to jewellery (she liked my earrings) and on to Nick Cave. I confessed to her that I was a fan and that Into My Arms is one of my all time favourite tracks. Nick appeared, as if conjured by our conversation and Susie took me over for an introduction. Of course I had nothing intelligent to say to him and was gawping the entire time but I managed to touch shake his hand like an Asian businessman.

I went away feeling giddy thinking about how my younger self living in Kuala Lumpur would never have imagined this moment. That I would meet some of my heroes in such intimate settings—oh, what a privilege!

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For ten years, I’ve given myself to seasonal harvests, eating the vegetables packed for me by the people at Growing Communities.

Deafened by the monotonous offering in supermarkets. Defeated by the limited choices, I’m now liberated from the arduous job that is shopping.

All I do is collect the bag once a week. It is filled with a colourful range of vegetables—varieties that I’ve not heard of and almost always covered in dirt. A reminder that they have just been freshly dug up or picked.

Recently, I’ve taken another step towards living better. I’ve borrowed from the Koreans and started filling my fridge with (a sort of) banchan. It is a quick fix for introducing diversity in your diet. The promise of a vegetable-forward meal is also always within reach. I call this Veg on Tap and it’s a lifesaver for days when you’ve been in meetings all day and come home drained, and without inspiration.

Eating this way is very close to the architecture of the meals I had when I was growing up. With a base of rice, our dinners were composed of various side dishes (meat, seafood or tofu and vegetables) that were shared family-style.

I can’t imagine making dinner the way my mum did—cooking at least two, usually three different dishes for us to have with rice. The modular meal I am suggesting here is the closest approximation to the meals I grew up with. It recalls bento boxes, bibimbap or japchae.

I read Tamar Adlar’s An Everlasting Meal a month ago and she too evangelises a similar approach. She prepares everything as soon as it is brought home from the Farmer’s Market. I am time-poor so I do this in several goes. Some days I can only manage one vegetable at a time. But quickly my fridge will begin to fill with all kinds of vegetables, cooked in different styles.

Doing this is an easy way of bringing variety and texture to your meals. It is also the building blocks to other dishes. For example, you can make a curry, stew or soup. Or for something simpler, assemble it into a salad.

This week, I steamed all the spinach that came with the bag and made a namul—tossing it in sesame oil, minced garlic, salt and some gochugaru.

We had some sweet potato which I roasted with harissa.

I swapped our celery for a celeriac which I cut into matchsticks, tossed in garlic powder and paprika and airfried, making chips with it.

There were beautiful radishes which I washed and kept in a bag for snacking.

When we get carrots, and we often do, I like to grate them—using it in salads. With this job done, you can easily make carrot fritters. The stubs left from grating go in a bag ready to be snacked on. Over time, I end up with a crudité of odds and ends of different vegetables. Eat this on its own or with some good quality EVOO, seasoned with salt and pepper and you’ll have your own private pinzimonio.

Once you have different vegetables prepped, building a meal isn’t too daunting. If I cook grains, I make extra to last a few meals. If I boil eggs, I’ll add a few more in the pot and store them. I usually have some tempeh in the fridge and airfry all in one go, adding them to my meals.

The one above is a meal I built using some roasted squash and grated carrots. I wanted some greens so I added some frozen vegetables (I like this broad bean, edamame and pea mix from M&S).

Complete this “fast food” with a fried egg, chilli oil and some coriander. It is quick and healthy. It is also delicious.

Freed of the burden of figuring out what to eat, you can have your meal while the evening is still young and spend the rest of the night doing something meaty like reading a book, listening to music or watching a film.

Sight

The best thing about living in London is that there’s always something new (or old in this case) to discover. I have wanted to visit Sir John Soane’s Museum for a long time but have always been deterred by the prospect of queuing. But standing in a queue is the perfect place to catch up with your best friend, especially if you’ve not seen each other for a long time. The reward is you do not feel time passing and suddenly you’re at the front of the queue, entering the house of a neo-classical architect whose collection contains thousands of objects from antiquities to sculptures to models of buildings and curios. It is a place with plenty to discover—you just need to keep your eyes peeled and take notice. If you’ve not been, I highly recommend this. If you have, I’m sure you’ll want to visit again.

Sound

Music is full of sway on our emotions. See You Again by Tyler, The Creator featuring Kali Uchis is a track that HusbandMan loves. I have had mixed feelings about it because it’s a song that was bringing out the more morose side of his personality. Recently, we’ve had news that have allowed us some latitude. Now music and songs like these can be enjoyed as it is. It’s catchy and one that you’ll want to sing along to. And I’ve been listening to it on repeat.

The other thing I have been listening to is an audiobook. I’ve listened to no more than two or three audiobooks in my lifetime as deep down, I am a traditionalist and prefer to hold a book in my hands. The exception is a memoir when it is read by the author. It’s been difficult restraining myself from fully binging on ’s Famesick.

Lena Dunham’s voice is not exactly soothing. It is at times even a bit grating. It is however never the case with her reading Famesick. She is brutally honest and the stories are at times horrifying and funny. You forget how young she was when she was thrusted into the limelight with the success of Girls. It’s making me want to rewatch the cult series.

Smell - or lack of!

This month’s entry is a floribunda named Resilience developed to have very little scent to raise awareness on Parkinson’s Disease, a debilitating disease that my mum suffered from. One of the earliest symptoms of PD is the loss of smell. This rose was recently launched by Harkness Roses in partnership with Parkinson’s UK. I know that my mum would have loved these beautiful blooms for their pretty shades of pink, carmine, and red.

Taste

Nothing tastes quite as good as kindness. One of my oldest and dearest friend, San now lives in London. We have been friends since we were 13 but we’ve not lived in the same country for decades until two years ago when she moved from Sydney to London. She now lives on the other side of London to us. Despite this, she trekked an hour across London to see me when HusbandMan was in hospital. This kind-hearted friend of mine came with a big bag bursting with delicious food—chicken curry, egg sambal, aubergine and rice. It fed us for well for weeks and I am eternally grateful to this friend of mine who is small in size but big in her heart.

Touch

I’ve learnt a new exercise and I love it! It helps with posture and shoulder strength and is particularly good for all of us desk bound workers. Doing wall angels in a wall sit looks simple but it isn’t. It’s no easy feat to keep contact with the wall but it’s one of those exercises that immediately feels right and good for you. Who knew feeling the support of the wall can feel so good?

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I am amongst the many women of my generation who are unable to have a crème brûlée without thinking of Amélie Poulain.

The film is celebrating its 25th anniversary and is back on the big screen. When it was first released, it stood out for its unique storytelling and point of view—a style that has inspired TV shows, films and even adverts. On a rewatch, I was worried it had become a pastiche of itself but was relieved to find it to be just as charming.

It was April, 2001 when Amélie first came to the screen. First opening in France, followed by a global release later in that year in November. The film owed part of its success to bringing joy to a bleak, post 9/11 world. It also made Montmartre a tourist destination, making it one of the first places that people set-jetted to.

The reds and yellows of the film were inspired by the paintings of a Brazilian artist, Juarez Machado known for his expressive figures, rich colour palettes and comic-like narrative. Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a huge fan of cartoons and graphic novels: this can be seen by the storyboarding of the film and the casting of a wide-eyed Audrey Tautou.

Compared to Delicatessen, a dystopian dark comedy about cannibalism, Amélie is a film about letting go, finding connections and risking heartbreak. It was fun spotting the reference to his darker film in the scene below:

Despite its whimsical nature, Jeunet actually based the vignettes in Amélie on true stories. He confessed1 that he collected a list of things that made him very happy, from private observations to personal memories. Many of these little things, all of them positive and magical, have turned up in some form in Amélie.

In recent years, people have speculated about whether Amélie is a neurodivergent-coded film. Whether this is true, the showrunners on Love On The Spectrum paid homage to Amélie by introducing cast members through their likes and dislikes.

The characters of Amélie and Nino (played by Matthew Kassovitz, the director of the fantastic La Haine) are presented as people who view the world differently. They notice the little and sometimes mundane things—these being the source of their pleasure.

It’s All In The Hands

We are shown the delight a young Amélie experiences from eating raspberries from her fingertips to her anticipation and joy in cracking the caramelised sugar crust of a crème brûlée with a teaspoon.

The tactile nature of food is further explored in the roast chicken in Dominique Bretodeau’s storyline.

Dominique Bretodeau buys a chicken to roast every week. A close up shot of him carving the chicken shows him starting with the legs and wings. We are told that he loves picking the steaming, hot carcass with his fingers. This is mirrored later in the film when he is reconciled with his grandson. In what I consider one of the greatest gesture of love, he feeds the child his favourite bit of chicken instead of eating it himself.

When Eating Together Isn’t Enough

It is common knowledge that eating together creates a sense of belonging and is linked to stronger family ties. The word companion is derived from its Latin roots of com (with) and panis (bread), literally meaning “someone with whom you break bread”. Despite this, eating together is sometimes not enough.

As a child, Amélie yearns to be close to her father, an ex-army doctor. Such is her excitement at his touch that it results in him misdiagnosing her with a heart problem. After the tragic death of her mother, he slumps into depression. Unable to cope, she moves out as soon as she becomes an adult.

They eat together when she visits. The spread they share is simple—there is soup, tomatoes and radishes but their conversation is anything but easy. They often sit in awkward silence, having stilted conversation. Her father is distant, a remote figure sitting across her at the table.

Similarly in Eat Drink Man Woman by Ang Lee a(nother) widower cooks elaborate meals banquets for his three daughters. It is his way of expressing love. The Sunday ritual that the family observes looks good on paper but does nothing to nourish these relationships.

Frustrated, the father, a retired chef muses:

I don’t understand any of them, and I don’t want to know. Let them grow up and leave. It’s like cooking. Your appetite’s gone when the dish is done.

But Eating Alone, Won’t Do Either

What starts as a regular domestic scene, where Amélie prepares a meal, reveals a moment of self-realisation. While what she makes is a simple (and comforting) pasta of butter, and cheese, Amélie suddenly realises that if she doesn't let go and start living, she will drift into a life of self-isolation like her neighbour, Mr. Dufayel, the Glass Man.

In a poignant scene later in the film, the two form an unlikely friendship and get to share some speculoos biscuits dipped in vin chaud. The warming spices match the warmth Mr. Dufayel and Amélie feel for each other, recognising their roles in each other’s lives.

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Bake Yourself Happy

In the final act of the film, Amélie turns to baking as a way to console herself. She starts to make her famous plum cake, only to discover she doesn’t have enough yeast. She imagines an alternate reality where she is with Nino and he steps out to Colignon’s store to buy the missing ingredient.

Something about this scene reminded me of Waitress. Jenna escapes her misery by baking the best imaginary pies in her head:

While Amélie imagines a life with Nino, Jenna dreams up these recipes to process her anger and frustrations.

I often turn to cooking or baking when feeling down. ’s book, Midnight Chicken: And Other Recipes Worth Living For is more than a collection of recipes; it tells the story of how she learned to love life again. Similarly, in Baking and The Meaning of Life, Helen Goh, explores how baking creates moments of connection. She highlights specific qualities that researchers have identified as the foundation of a meaningful life.

Making food asserts one’s presence in the world. In baking, the prepping of the ingredients to the rhythmic nature of sieving, whisking and mixing demands focus and encourages a state of mindfulness.

I wonder how a first-time viewer in 2026 will experience these screenings. Will they end up being fans? Or will it feel like a parody of itself?

With so much doomscrolling and second-screening, can Amélie conjure some magic for these first-time viewers? Or will we have to resort to baking to cheer ourselves up?

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Sight

The opening look at Kent&Curwen’s 100th Anniversary show is the one I covet (apart from the shoes). The location—Westminster School within Westminster Abbey was perfect for this heritage British brand. After all, they made a name for themselves supplying ties to Oxford University and Cambridge University. With Daniel Kearns as their Creative Director, the collections are wearable—preppy but not dated at all. His experience in tailoring makes the outerwear downright delicious. It was novel to see a show outside of fashion month and to take in each look without being distracted by other work demands (one eye on the catwalk, another on your phone). I thought the styling by Pau Avia was exceptional.

Sound

Piper Durabo’s aka Maraschino has a monthly show on NTS called Kiss Cafe that I love listening to. I’ve had her March show on when I’ve worked from home. The slow dancefloor jams is catered for her “candy perfume gurlz”. On a day when the skies are blue, the balearic house and synth pop is the right kind of hyperdelic for me. I listen with the windows wide open, and the volume up. There is something about the heat that makes me want to fill the air with music and because it is rare that it is this warm, I do it.

Smell

The scent of citrus flowers is comparable to the smell of jasmine flowers. I learned this when I walked into The Conservatory at the Oxford Botanic Garden & Arboretum. The air was so heavily perfumed with that familiar floral scent that I looked around for the jasmine.

Instead, I followed my nose to some potted bitter orange trees that had flowered—Citrus x aurantium. The smell: sweet and floral, and a little musky reminded me of melur (or jasmine) a flower that grows prolifically in Malaysia.

Citrus plants have been grown in the Botanic Garden since the 1600s. The heady smell of these flowers have been filling The Conservatory every spring since. How lucky am I to have visited it when the flowers were in bloom perfuming the air.

Some of you will know that I am a big fan of this funny species of fruits. Read more about it here to learn more:

Taste

I have a sweet tooth but not when it comes to drinks. I prefer to have my liquids plain, unsweetened and sometimes slightly bitter. This can of pine forest soda was part of the complimentary refreshments in our room. I was intrigued, of course—a drink infused with Douglas fir and Scots pine suggesting a green taste. I love the smell of pine and although sweetened, this carbonated soda has only a whisper of sweetness. Using sustainably foraged fir and pine, I hope that discovering this does not become my gateway drug to soft drinks​.

Touch

As I write this, it is 24 degrees and it feels like 24 degrees! The clear blue skies and sunny days that followed after the Easter bank holiday were a balm to the soul. When the sun hits the skin and warms it, literally nothing matters anymore. On days like these, we like to sit and read in Stationers’ Park—our closest park which is thankfully a Green Flag park. In the heat, the sounds of the birds chirping, and the children calling out to each other is amplified. Somehow it doesn’t bother us. Is everything simply more tolerable because I can feel the sun radiating on my skin? I take my socks and shoes off and feel the heat on more of my body. My feet freed, I continue reading aware of how heavy-lidded I am becoming. But I don’t mind as I’m sure an ice-cream will perk me up.

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A Hidden Corner

Luckily for me, the French team working in our showroom is young, hip and love to eat. We met through fashion but it is food that we bond over. And they are armed full of tips on where to eat and not.

I went to Recoin, a place that had been recommended to us. It was our last night in Paris. What had seem like a disaster (I booked it for the next evening) ended up being my favourite meal (they managed to seat us outside) with a meal of small plates that was faultless. Every one of the dishes we ordered executed perfectly and the flavours popping. This was on a night when the restaurant was down on staff in the kitchen and on the floor!

There is a charm about Recoin. It’s on a side street parallel to Boulevard Beaumarchais hidden behind the 19th-century Haussmannian buildings that line it. It’s a small restaurant without any pretensions. Yes, they serve a sharing menu, but places like this remind you why small plates became popular in the first place.

We had Bloody Mary oysters, a sea bass tartare with blood orange and samphire and a delicious blini topped with an egg salad which was exceptional. Dessert was some cheese (the Brillat-Savarin!) and a chocolate mousse.

It is open on Sundays and Mondays, which makes me love Recoin even more. I’m making it a tradition to come here for my last meal every season.

Recoin, 60 rue St Sabin, 75011 Paris

The OG

Berthillon is an institution in Paris. This family run ice cream parlour in Île Saint-Louis was founded in 1954. Berthillon also supplies many restaurants so you do not have to go to Île Saint-Louis for their ice cream. But it’s definitely worth a visit if you have the time.

The first time I tried salted caramel or caramel au beurre salé ice cream was in a brasserie serving Berthillon ice cream in August 2009. The rest of the trip became a Berthillon hunt, getting an ice cream every time we spotted the sign or saw it on menus. The French love their caramel au beurre salé. A specialty from Brittany, the first known recipe for salted caramel appeared in a cookbook, “La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange” in 1902. Salted caramel peaked in 2017 with a 78% increase1 in new global product launches that led to salted caramel fatigue—at least that was the case for me.

The Berthillon salted caramel is like no other. It is not a sickly sweet affair. The flavour profile is more complex. It is an intense taste, caramelised and dark and almost bitter like coffee with a salty finish.

We were having dîner en terrasse in Camille on the first warm evening of the year. Next to us, a very cool French woman who could have passed off as Fran Lebowitz. She ate the most French meal with garlicky escargot to start; a steak for mains, followed by a creme brûlée to end. All of this was of course accompanied by wine.

My dining companions were inspired by her jewellery and her creme brûlée and while I appreciated the rings on her fingers, I’d spotted the Berthillon logo on the menu and ordered a little coupe of caramel au beurre salé for myself. It had been years since I had it and it was better than I remembered.

Berthillon, 29 - 31 rue Saint-Louis en I’Ïle, 75004 Paris

Camille, 24 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, 75003 Paris.

An Unusual Flavour

The sun had been shining in Paris and yes, although I was mainly indoors there were moments when it was possible to step out into the sun for a little walk around the corner. On one such walk, I headed to this ice cream place that had been on my list.

The flavour that jumped out at me was the buckwheat and green apple one. I ordered this in haste without thinking it through. It was a sorbet—an unusual choice for a girl who prefers fat to sugar.

This one wasn’t too sweet and I liked its unusual taste: a nuttiness that accompanied the (real) green apple flavour.

Une Glace à Paris, 15 rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie 75004 Paris

Black Sesame & Chocolate

My colleagues always stop in the boulangerie before starting the day but I prefer skipping breakfast to save my per diem for a nice dinner. However, without fail I start fretting at the end of every trip—worried that I’d leave Paris without having a single pastry.

For my première pastry this trip, I went to Petite Île Bouglangerie. I didn’t expect that I would love the black sesame pain au chocolat so much that I would have it again the next day.

The landscape in Paris is changing and new artisanal boulangeries like this are popping up with menus informed by the heritages of the bakers. Petite Île Boulangerie is a French-Taiwanese bakery, bringing new flavour pairings like black sesame (a classic East Asian flavour) to pain au chocolat and I’m here for it.

Petite Île Boulangerie, 8 rue de Filles du Calvaire, 75003 Paris

An Extraordinaire Dessert

I walked past Bistrot Ordinaire in January and clocked that it looked interesting and looked it up on Google Maps immediately, noting the reviews and saving it to the list. Newly opened, it is another restaurant blending Asian flavours with European cooking techniques. We had some sea urchin, tofu with crab and beef tongue which were all pretty good but it was dessert that truly stood out.

This crème caramel au vin jaune was exceptional. Slightly boozy, umami and just bloody delicious.

Bistrot Ordinaire, 19 rue Keller, 750011 Paris

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Sight

I feel very privileged to have been able to get up close to Matiéres Fécales’ AW26 collection at Dover Street Market’s showroom this season. The construction of the jackets and coats and the other worldly nature of the shocking pink dresses; the texture on the steel feather dress and the super shiny silver paillette dress—this is a collection that celebrates tailoring and textures and volume. Each piece is a fantasy waiting to be lived out and it reminds me why I love fashion.

Sound

Nothing beats the sound of good news. My friends will be aware that HusbandMan is still getting treatment after an emergency surgery that led to further complications and a 6-week stay in hospital last year. Although he’s still some way to go, we had some positive news recently and can visualise the path to a full recovery. We play back the consultation over and over again (the consultant said, “It’s all positive”). A mantra I said to myself, now slowly unfolding into a reality.

Smell

I posted about Petite Ile Boulangerie and got a tip about Moon Croissant. It was an easy one to try next as the bakery was right in between my walk from the hotel to the showroom. Paris in early March had the promise of spring but the chill of winter was lingering. Entering this sunlit bakery and being greeted by the rich smell of butter, knowing a tasty breakfast awaits you is quite the treat.

Taste

I had my first Vietnamese coffee with salted cream in Hanoi last year and it has since been my favourite variation of Vietnamese coffee. I tried coconut (a close contender), and I tried egg (delicious in small doses but it’s very rich) but it’s the version with salted cream that I just could not get enough of. Little Bánh Bánh is right by work and I was very happy to spot this on their menu. Imagine the bitterness of coffee, softened by the richness of cream with enhanced flavour. For someone who usually drinks black coffee, this is dessert through a straw.

Touch

I am beyond honoured to have my writing featured in the first ESEA anthology amongst writers like and . This 236-page tome is a collection of essays, stories, interview and more examining the history and future of the community and celebrating the talent and depth of our voices. The first run has already sold out but you can buy the second print here.

I wrote about the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and how wartime scarcity permanently changed the way we eat through the creativity and resilience of the home cooks. It has been eighty years since the invasion and many are unaware of this time in history. I wanted this to be a reminder that these recipes are a product of quiet protest, a determination not only to beat hunger but to continue eating well through a time of rationing.

Anyone who cooks is never alone. Our kitchens are filled with generations of cooks before us and the recipes we cook from have made their routes to us. The recipes below have kept our people fed. These recipes are rooted in versatility, creativity and resilience that is a characteristic of our people.

It has been awhile since I last held a piece of publication that was mine and it felt good to see my writing in print, accompanied by the charming illustrations of Lisa Ha.

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Kazna Asker

It is not unusual for Kazna Asker, a British designer of Yemeni heritage to bring together a community. Her presentations are unique, in that she’s always planned them with her community in mind.

As this LFW coincided with Ramadan, Kazna worked with us to request a time that would give her the chance to weave the ritual of breaking fast into her presentation. Titled “The Hour of Sunset”, the show was paused to observe Iftar. Kazna, her team, models and guests broke fast with some Palestinian dates from Zaytoun. This was followed by flatbreads, lentil soup, and biryani prepared by Juma Café.

The set was inspired by her grandmother’s living room (a running theme from previous presentations) and attendees sat in togetherness and in solidarity on floor cushions creating a familiar, domestic scene. It was a moment to highlight the importance of this type of gathering and that breaking (flat)bread together strengthen these ties.

Chet Lo

The atmosphere was busy, and buzzy. It was also instantly familiar. I never would have imagined I’d find the chaos of the night markets in Malaysia at part of the set design of a catwalk show at the Mandarin Oriental ballroom (!). Although Chet Lo’s inspiration came from taking his partner to Hong Kong recently and seeing it through a new lens, this set could have easily been lifted straight from Petaling Street in Kuala Lumpur!

Tagged on to the traditional catwalk show was literally a night market curated by Chet himself. He’d invited 10 London-based creatives of ESEA heritage and gave them the opportunity to showcase to an entirely new audience. Profits generated were donated to the Asian People’s Disability Alliance, a charity that offers care support and services to disabled, elderly, and other isolated Asian people where Chet volunteers.

The bad ass attitude of the models that were sent down the runway disguised the thought and intention that went behind this show. Some of the guests at the show were there through Making Fashion Accessible. These visually impaired guests were given headsets and fabric swatches, allowing them to experience the catwalk. At a time when inclusivity and representation is in decline, it was so meaningful to see this reflected in the visually impaired guests and on the all-ESEA models on his catwalk.

I swear I smelled dim sum being steamed and discussed this with some other guests after the show as we made our way to another show, tummies rumbling. I thought it was part of the clever set design, but someone said it was actually dim sum. I need to ask Chet. I especially loved the way the credits for the show were presented as a laminated menu, and pictures of the fabrics used were presented as dishes—a souvenir for guests to take home.

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Sandiwara Screening

I decided, very last minutely to attend the screening of Sandiwara, a short film directed by Sean Baker, starring Michelle Yeoh, produced as part of self-portrait’s Residency Programme and am so glad I did.

The film is a love letter to Penang, where the designer and founder, Han Chong is from. What I loved most is the completeness of the project—explore the website and you’ll find writing by , and more; recipes by Helen Goh, Xiengni Zhou and Ramael Scully, a travel guide and a playlist.

The screening was held in the Malaysian-owned Leong’s Legends where dim sum and sweets like kuih bingka and cendol (by Abby Lee of Mambow) was served with a lot of champagne.

I feel optimistic seeing these designers go beyond drawing inspiration from their own cultures and backgrounds to create these moments that serve their (mostly marginalised) communities. Fashion has a bigger role to play and this gives me hope at a time when the world is on fire and the headlines are full of dismal news.

Meera Sodha shared a version in The Guardian recently which irked me and many of my friends from the community. I understand that Meera was “inspired” by the dish but it felt lazy not to have provided any context to this symbolic-laden dish. And it was evident that no research was done to explain why the tossing of the salad is part of the ritual. It was a huge misstep on The Guardian’s part not to have commissioned this recipe from any of the talented chefs that come from the diaspora like of Mambow especially at a time when everyone seems to be “Chinamaxxing”.

It is called a Prosperity Salad because the Chinese word for fish sounds like abundance. I’m sure Meera’s beancurd stick noodle salad is delicious but I’m afraid no amount of tossing that dish will bring you any luck.

Yee Sang most likely evolved from a sashimi-like raw fish dish that was eaten in China to become what it is today—a salad, not unlike a slaw full of ingredients that are filled with meaning and symbolism.

In response to The Guardian, I am sharing a recipe for real yee sang. I wanted to publish this today on rénrì (人日), the 7th day of Chinese New Year aka Humanity Day which is when it is traditionally eaten. Although it’s so delicious, most people are happy to eat all the time.

Pomegranates are not traditional but mum always added them and it makes it ever more festive. Our family also prefers using apricot jam for the dressing instead of plum sauce which is the more common choice.

Note that it is impossible to keep the table free of food from all the tossing. It is also impossible not to laugh when tossing the salad as high as possible. It brings out the inner child in us to be given a free pass for making a bit of a mess at the dinner table.

Growing up in Malaysia, I was spared the fatigue of winter that is usually felt around this time of the year. For me, February is a month of celebrations. My dad’s birthday was a week after mine and Lunar New Year (more often than not) falls in February.

Interestingly, Lunar New Year is also known as Spring Festival for the Chinese. This is because the lunisolar calendar recognises this as the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox—the moment when the northern hemisphere begins to warm up.

Sight

The riot of sunshine that is mimosa brightening up grey days is a sure sign of spring. I love it when they bloom. They are first to flower—at a time when the rest of the trees are bare bones and skeletal. They explode with these pompom shaped flowers. Even if the sun isn’t shining, find a mimosa tree, stand under it and you can almost feel its rays. My favourite mimosa tree is a short walk away and now that it’s in bloom, you’ll find me rerouting for a flash of joy.

Hearing

I once met Duval Timothy at an intimate event. I was already a fan of his music, having heard him play live on Charlie Bones’s show when he was still at NTS. I made a beeline for him and told him how much I love his music and…he took down my email and shared some of his new work! It’s always worth telling artists and writers how much you like them (this is how Rea met and became friends with Hilton Als).

His new release is a collaboration with C.J.Mirra on the score for Akinola Davies Jr’s feature My Father’s Shadow (a visceral film I highly recommend). The music is typical of Duval’s compositions which are mainly minimal, intimate soundscapes. Have a listen, you’ll soon be a fan of his too.

Smell

It’s Birthday Month so I’m all for treating myself and having others treat me! Our showroom in Paris is on rue Vieille du Temple and set amongst some lovely boutiques. Right across us is Perfumer H, a British perfumer. I saw that they’d collaborated with Studio Nicholson, a brand that I am fond of (and whose sample sales I’ve happily queued in) on a scent called Soap.

The top notes are quite floral with orange flower and cyclamen but settles to a base of white musk and tonka. Thanks to BREXIT, I got this duty free and cheaper in France than it is back home. So now I smell clean and expensive without the price tag.

Taste

Lobster noodles would feature in my death row meal. The dish is straightforward and as with any simple dishes, quality ingredients make a huge difference. Handmade noodles are cooked in a spring onion and ginger sauce. Corn flour is used to lock in moisture in the lobsters and make a velveteen sauce that clings to the noodles and the meat. The pleasure of getting every little morsel of meat is deeply satisfying. It is definitely one of the foods that are NSFD and a conversation killer. Go with someone who loves you as they’ll forgive you for the lack of conversation. I only go to Mandarin Kitchen .

Touch

I made pandan chiffon cake! Chiffon cake has a reputation for being difficult to bake. The cake should be light, like its name. Egg whites are beaten to stiff peaks and folded into the egg yolks.

Perfumed with the fragrant, grassy flavour of pandan this is one of my favourite cakes. I can’t believe I managed to nail the texture (thank you Helen Goh for the perfect recipe)—pillowy, fluffy and light. I fear I may have peaked.

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It is not uncommon to realise that you’ve been in Paris for a week and barely eaten any vegetables. This season, I found a way to remedy this. I bought this delicious jar of sauerkraut from Bien and had it as a snack. I have never felt so smug in my life.

Theatre To Go

Au Petit Fer à Cheval is a beautiful bistrot on the same road as our showroom in the Marais. The name comes from its horseshoe-shaped bar in Belle Époque style. A brass chandelier with multiple candle arms hang above it. I did not go in to eat as it was lunchtime and there’s never enough time to take a proper break. I did go in on a punt to buy a baguette to takeaway.

When I ordered my Pata Negra and Comté baguette, I wasn’t expecting the theatrics that came with it. The brusque waiter returned to the bar after taking my order holding a couple of small, white rectangular plates. On one platter is the ham, maroon and white, marbled fat in all its glory. The other held the cheese, sliced into thick slabs.

Planting himself at one end of the horseshoe bar, he sliced the baguette and opened it like a book. A generous amount of butter—enough to elicit a smile on my face—was spread onto the bread. He pushed the slabs of Comté inside, then stuffed it with ham, pressing the meat to the spine of the baguette. Ceremoniously, he took a tub from the fridge and pulled out a few cornichons to complete my sandwich and handed it to me, his act finished.

Nothing beats the irony of this (utterly delicious) €12 simple baguette made with such spectacle.

Au Petit Fer à Cheval, 30 rue Vieille du Temple, 75004 Paris

A Cut Above

I love raw food. Oysters! Ceviche! And beef tartare too!

I booked a meal at Mokoloco, the sister restaurant to Mokonuts (which I’ve still not been to). The guest chef on this visit was Minsoo Kim with a menu of small plates that are Korean with a French twist.

Fusion food has a bad name but growing up in multicultural Malaysia, it makes sense to me as our food is by nature the product of the intermingling of cultures and ingredients. French x Japanese food for example is often beautifully executed in Paris and make up many of my favourite meals there. We tried nearly everything on the menu but the stand out dish was the tartare with a nori mousse. Even a salad of beets, an ingredient I loathe because it tastes of soil was served—pretty in pink with grapefruit and radicchio and sang with wonderful flavours.

Mokoloco, 74 rue de Charonne, 75011 Paris

Shell Yes!

When I worked at Tomorrow, our showroom was on the seedy stretch of rue de Lappe. The consolation was that rue de Charonne is around the corner and it is on rue de Charonne where Clamato lies.

I had dinner there with a friend of mine who loves seafood as much as me. We ordered oysters, of course (two of each), but it was the scallops that we’ve still been texting each other about. They were DIVINE.

Each scallop sat in a small puddle of brown sauce, topped with a single Jerusalem artichoke crisp. The sauce, rich and buttery is made using the scallop foot to give it the salty umami taste of the sea, nuts and more Jerusalem artichokes.

I haven’t eaten in Clamato in years and was glad that it was still good. It is walk-ins only. But if it is busy, head across to Septime, the cave owned by the same group and enjoy their wonderful selection of wine until your table is ready.

Clamato, 80 rue de Charonne, 75011 Paris

Mysterious and Delicious

The best dessert I had on this trip was at Elmer. This shrouded piece of deliciousness is pear poached in a spicy syrup. At its base is shortbread biscuit. Timur pepper cream provides a kick and confit Buddha’s Hand and pear sorbet soften the edges.

I spotted Buddha’s Hand on a few menus in Paris which made me suspect that it was either in season (and it is) or trending (is it? Someone please tell me).

This was my first time trying Buddha’s Hand, making Paris my hat trick for discovering new citrus varieties (I’d previously tasted yuzu and lime caviar here). If you read my last post on citrus you will know that I am obsessed with this family of fruits.

Elmer, 30 rue Notre Dame de Nazareth, 75003 Paris

Lunar New Year is fast approaching but I will not be celebrating this year. It will be nearly a year since my mum passed away so we are still in mourning.

My family although not traditional observe some customs: we leave the lights turned on the night before; and we never clean on the first day of the New Year. Our reunion dinner always features prawns and fish with plenty for leftovers. But Lunar New Year is incomplete without kuih kapit, kuih bangkit, and mandarin oranges.

The Cantonese word for mandarin orange— kam 柑, a homophone for gold 金.

From December, the shops in Malaysia are filled with mandarins. The fruits, imported from China and Taiwan are sold in 10kg carton boxes. Some become part of the Lunar New Year decorations—mounds of them displayed around the house next to the pussy willow arrangements. The rest are kept in fridges to prevent the fruit from growing mouldy in the heat and humidity. Fridge crispers become treasure chests filled with these golden globes— a symbol of wealth, prosperity and good fortune. They are gifted, always in multiples of two; and they are eaten usually three or four a day.

We cling to the strings that tie us to our homes. This is a custom I continue, marking the festivities by buying mandarins and kumquats. In the UK they are not sold in cartons so I buy multiple bags—enough to fill our home every year.

Tasting The Transcendental

Oranges have never excited me. They are readily available, lacking the seasonality (and exclusivity) that come with my favourite fruits: mangosteens and rambutans. Here in the UK, I get giddy with excitement at the arrival of cherries. I visit the farmer’s market weekly knowing that the window is short, making sure I get my fill. When cherry season ends, I look forward to berries and when that season is over, I seek out stone fruit, enjoying the bounty that summer brings.

But oranges? Despite their bright hues, they pale in comparison.

Oranges with their sometimes dimpled skin resembling cellulite, are not sexy. The exception is blood oranges, which are alluring.

It was while reading Pith and Skin by Diane Henry in her collection of essays, Around The Table that I was reminded that I too love citrus.

I recalled the first time I tasted yuzu, many years ago. It was a transcendental experience, a true awakening of the senses. It made me evangelical: fragrant and floral, with sweet-sour notes unlike anything I’d tasted before.

I thought of finger lime or caviar lime. I tried it in Paris and until today remember how the little spheres burst into flavour—an explosion in my mouth.

Most citrus fruits can trace their lineage to five ancestral fruits (citron, pomelo, mandarin, papeda and kumquat), but the finger lime is native to Australia and is considered an ancient citrus relative thought to have evolved separately.

Did You Know?

If reading Diane Henry made me realise how much I love citrus, then reading John McPhee’s Oranges filled me with awe for these fruits. Under their peel lies many interesting facts. Do not let the prevalence of oranges, lemons and limes trick you into thinking that these are ordinary fruits.

For example, the orange is the only fruit to have lent its name to a colour. And yet the fruit can only turn this colour when the temperature is right.

Cold—coolness, rather is what makes an orange orange. In some part of the world, the weather never gets cold enough to change the colour; in Thailand for example, an orange is a green fruit, and travelling Thais often blink with wonder at the sight of oranges the colour of flame. Some oranges that become orange while they are still unripe may turn green again as they ripen.

John McPhee, Oranges

Let me tell you more. Did you know that if you planted an orange seed, a grapefruit can appear? And if you planted the seed of a grapefruit, you might end up with bitter lemon. The lemon is a hybrid of the bitter orange (which in itself is a mix of pomelo and mandarin) and citron. My favourite lime, the calamansi is the product of kumquat and mandarin. Most of the citrus varieties we know can be traced back to these five ancestral fruits.

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There is a drink like no other, the one I most look forward to whenever I’m back home in Malaysia. A peculiar concoction of calamansi lime juice (processed whole, peel and pith) and preserved salted plum, sweetened with syrup—the ultimate thirst-quencher. It’s a drink when made with enough calamansi limes is altogether tart and sweet and salty with a hint of bitterness, a reminder that the drink includes the peel of the fruit. The colour is a Pantone lime green, achieved naturally from the dark green of the skin and the deep orange of its pulp.

The Traveling Citrus

Citrus was born in the Orient, migrated westward with civilisation and traversed North Africa with the rise of Islam. Those oranges on the table in various Last Suppers were oranges of Renaissance Italy. Columbus himself brought the first citrus to the New World.

The first known reference to oranges occurs in the second book of the Five Classics, which appeared in China around 500BC. The main course of the migration of the fruit—from its origins near the South China Sea, down into the Malay Archipelago, then on four thousand miles of ocean current to the east coast of Africa , across the desert by caravan and into the Mediterranean basin, then over the Atlantic to the American continents—closely and sometimes exactly kept pace with the major journeys of civilisations. There were no oranges in the Western Hemisphere before Columbus himself introduced them.

John McPhee, Oranges

Evidence of this is overwhelming as there are more citrus varieties and citrus parasites found in China than anywhere else.

I find this fascinating. In school, we learned about the importance of Malacca as a trading port, but I never expected to feel a surge of pride on hearing how citrus seeds and trees journeyed from the Strait of Malacca to India and Africa, and onward to the West.

And so it is that, in Seville, these beautiful trees—heavy with fruit—now line the streets.

One of the fruits that is native to Southeast Asia is makrut lime or limau purut. We use their aromatic leaves, cooked in curries or sliced very thinly and garnished on rendang and tossed in yee sang. It was a job my mum always gave me, cutting the leaves into slivers so thin they were no thicker than a strand of hair. Its fragrance— a heady reward for the meticulous labour involved.

Sunshine on our Palates

Winter brings clementines, tangerines, kumquats and blood oranges—flashes of sunshine, brightening our palates and adding colour to otherwise grey days.

I guess oranges have remained like that for most of us in the north, fruits whose tropical colour and promiscuous juiciness don’t quite fit in our environments, and always carry the idea of feasts and holidays, respites from the ordinary.

Richard Mabey, in his forward in Oranges by John McPhee

I love the zing that lemon and lime juice brings to a dish. Mee goreng and laksa are always served with calamansi or limau kasturi as it is known. It’s a trick I employ when cooking. If I find a dish lacking in flavour, I squeeze some lemon juice to enhance its taste.

Like salt, the acidity in lemon or lime juice makes your mouth water, teasing your taste buds making your food taste better. It cuts through grease.

Always squeeze lemon juice right before you finish cooking. Adding it too early can make it bitter and dull the colour of vegetables. Adding it at the end brightens colour and makes your dishes sing.

I am not alone in my love for these fruits. M.F.K. Fisher’s account of the pleasure of eating something in secret (tangerines) inspired and introduced to a new way of enjoying food.

My pleasure in them is subtle and voluptuous and quite inexplicable. I can only write how they are prepared.

In the morning, in the soft sultry chamber, sit in the window peeling tangerines, three or four. Peel them gently, do not bruise them, as you watch soldiers pour past and past the corner and over the canal towards the watched Rhine. Separate each plump little pregnant crescent.

She continued:

You know those white pulpy strings that hold tangerines into their skins? Tear them off. Be careful. Take yesterday’s paper and spread it on top of the radiator. The maid has gone, of course—it might be hard to ignore her belligerent Alsatian glare of astonishment.

After you have put the pieces of tangerine on the paper on the hot radiator, it is best to forget about them.

On the radiator the sections of tangerines have grown even plumper, hot and full. You carry them to the window, pull it open and leave them for a few minutes on the packed snow of the sill. They are ready.

The sections of tangerine are gone, and I cannot tell you why they are so magical. Perhaps it is that little shell, thin as one layer of enamel on a Chinese bowl, that crackles so tinily, so ultimately under your teeth. Or the rush of cold pulp just after it. Or the perfume. I cannot tell.

Serve It Forth, M.F.K. Fischer

When Life Gives You Lemons

I drink lemon juice most mornings and have done so for the last decade. I started with the juice of half a lemon and some warm water. Soon I started adding apple cider vinegar to the juice. Today the tonic is topped with a dusting of cinnamon, turmeric and black pepper.

If I’m feeling under the weather I add ginger juice to the drink.

I collect the used lemon halves and chuck them inside my kettle twice a week. If you boil your kettle with lemons you can get rid of limescale naturally and it’s far more pleasant than rinsing the smell of vinegar from your kettle.

With the kettle nice and shiny again, make a cup of Earl Grey tea, a blend made with bergamot (a hybrid of lemon and bitter orange) oil and enjoy the fragrant tea, and relax knowing that the water used is free of scale and fresh with the scent of lemons.

In one of the stories, The Wind Howls Too. he captured my sentiment about this particular time in winter:

And from that day onwards we knew that, however distant it still was, the spring was approaching. The mornings would get lighter. Not regularly, but when there were no clouds in the sky.

It is all about hope, which is enough for me to see through January.

Sight

It rains a lot in Cheshire where we spent Christmas. When it doesn’t, we try to go for walks. There are many countryside routes around where my mother-in-law live but one of our favourite walks is a short drive away in Alderley Edge. The 200 acres of ancient woodland has a magical feel to it and unsurprisingly it is home to the Wizard of The Edge. Much has been said about the healing qualities of being in nature and I have never once been for a walk in the woods and not feel soothed by it.

Hearing

I love the sound of silence which comes with the cold and snowfall. It is the opposite to spring, when nature bursts with activity or in summer, when the air is filled with sounds of people gathering. The sound of silence encourages reflection and meditation. And that’s not a bad thing.

Smell

I was given Helen Goh’s Baking & the Meaning of Life for Christmas. I had not been feeling inspired to cook or bake until I flicked through the book. This hojicha shortbread recipe caught my eye. Hojicha is toasted green tea that has the fragrance of tea and a nutty flavour that comes with the smokiness.

When I spooned the powdered tea with vanilla extract and mixed it with the creamed butter and sugar, the kitchen was filled with a malty scent and hints of caramel. I know that I’ll be making more hojicha flavoured dishes. I’m fixated with the idea of making hojicha pannacotta as I’m sure it’ll be delicious. I will be referring to ’s Flavour Matrix for this when I make it.

Taste

I finally tried M&S’s The Big Daddy— launched as part of their Father’s Day campaign in 2024. I love Snickers and this is very simply, an elevated version. The addition of a layer of dark chocolate is genius as it makes something that is possibly sickly sweet, just perfect.

Touch

I am lucky that I am sometimes gifted items from the designers that I work with. The team at TOGA sent me a pair of the coolest, comfiest slippers recently— part of their collaboration with SUBU. Intended to be a slip-on that can be used outdoors, I’m wearing them indoors only. I love the knitted intarsia upper with TOGA’s signature metal coin detail. The best thing about them is how well-cushioned the soles (4 layers of insoles!) are and nothing beats slipping them on knowing that my slipper game is uncontested.

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I will never forget the Picasso that laid amongst the splashback tiles above the Aga in Farleys House. The Picasso had faded—for many meals were cooked on that stove. This was a detail that stayed with me, a bit of trivia that I like offering when the subject of Lee Miller comes up.

Back when I visited Farleys, I was merely aware of Lee Miller as Man Ray’s muse and (often forgotten) collaborator. It was years before I saw the indelible images she captured from the front line during WWII. And it would be another few more years before I discovered Lee Miller, the self-confessed compulsive cook.

Lee Miller was a multi-hyphenate, before the phrase had been coined. She started as a model, scouted by Condé Nast himself—he’d pulled her back from an oncoming car and she ended up on the cover of Vogue in March 1927. She had been a muse, photographer, Cordon Bleu-graduate and very nearly, a cookbook writer—she died before the manuscript for her cookbook was delivered. What was recovered is published in Lee Miller: A Life with Food, Friends & Recipes featuring more than 100 recipes.

Food had always been important to Lee from a young age. But it was in Paris that she became a gourmand. Man Ray opened her eyes (and taste) to a world of long lunches in exquisite restaurants with interesting people who knew all about food and wine. Its role beyond nutrition was clear to her.

Lee was influenced by the Surrealists she was hanging out with. She started experimenting with the notion of food as a form of protest and expression. Once, after photographing a radical mastectomy for a surgeon in Paris, she asked to keep the breast. Carrying it back to the French Vogue studio, she laid a napkin on the table and placed the breast on a plate.

Cooking Therapy

Lee Miller moved to London in 1939 to be with Roland Penrose, a painter and founder of the Institute of Contemporary Art. They bought Farleys Farm and its house in 1949. The house in East Sussex became their countryside getaway where they spent most of their weekends.

She would spend most of the week in London planning menus for their infamous Sunday lunches with friends. As soon as they arrived back in Farleys, the kitchen would become Lee’s domain. Cooking was a way for Lee to feel close to her friends.

French and Belgium cooking reminded me of my friends. I started reproducing, as best I could, the food I had eaten with them in the restaurants of Paris.

Lee spent a lot of time trying to replicate different taste memories. One such dish is mahlebieh, a rice pudding she had while living in Cairo. She made up little pots and carried around with her in London, consulting friends and even some Persian and Lebanese restaurants—tweaking the recipe until it tasted right.

Lee’s curiosity and interest in different cultures is illustrated in her recipes. She was inspired by her travels and friends; keen to learn the national dishes of her visitors and anyone she came across (including Stan, the Polish plumber who was installing central heating in Farleys and ended up a friend).

I love bringing food ideas home from my trips abroad. They aren’t always adaptable because of the difference in ingredients and climate at home but are good for inspiration.

Lee grappled with depression and PTSD after the war. She started to self-medicate with alcohol, hoping to dampen the horrors she witnessed as an accredited photographer during WWII, the sexual abuse she suffered as a child and possibly a bout of post-natal depression. She stopped using her camera as much.

Cooking replaced photography as an outlet for her creativity. Lee once said that cooking was therapy. She became a compulsive cook, being as prolific as she had been as a photographer. She entered (and won) contests to develop recipes. Many of her winning recipes revealed a streak of her Surrealist nature like Tomato Soup Cake and Cauliflower Breasts.

Her interest in cooking continued and deepened. She amassed more than 2000 cookbooks, which had to be housed in a separate room that Roland built her. Cooking was important to her and she wanted to share her resources with another generation of cooks. When she died, she bequeathed the books to Westminster Kingsway College, known for its Professional Chef Diploma.

Cookbooks are my favourite bedtime reading, sometimes I consult as many as fifty books for one recipe before I throw them aside and go off on my own.

With guests, they’d play Kitchen Roulette where you grabbed some cookbooks and made the first dish for which you have all the ingredients to hand.

For Lee, the kitchen was the centre of the house and never empty. Guests (including Picasso, James Beard, Dorothea Tanning, Joan Miró, etc) were welcome to linger, to help and try their hand at their own speciality which were worked into a menu.

The Entertaining Freezer

Her menus were inspired by the seasons, her kitchen and herb garden, the freezer, larder and market. When it came to desserts, she was a fan of one-implement desserts, simple things that would keep the conversation going.

The freezer was becoming a much more important piece of kitchen equipment, especially for working women with families. In her cookbook, she gives advice on things that are good to have on hand. The menus were designed to impress without having to toil in the kitchen all day.

The Entertaining Freezer is intended to be a gourmet cookbook, combining the theory of gourmet cooking and the theory of food freezing. It will include step-by-step recipes for 36 menus to entertain dinner parties of eight people. It does not deal with short-cuts, gimmicks or inexpensive dishes, nor is it meant to replace anyone’s everyday cookbook. Rather, it is a dinner party cookbook of menus and recipes, the bulk of which can be prepared more than a month in advance- properly and knowledgeably stored and beautifully served with only a few hours’ notice.

Lee and Roland moved to Farley Farm in a time when food was still rationed. Preserving food was the main type of cooking she first embraced with the harvest from her vegetable garden and orchard. Writing a cookbook that utilises the freezer, an equipment used for food preservation made sense.

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Christmas, A Magical Ceremony

I have had some pretty odd festive fare in my time, ranging from a shared box of K-rations in Alsace to a young camel with pistachio nuts after a day of hawking in the Sinai desert, but for a home Christmas dinner I wouldn’t dream of changing the traditional routine —turkey, goose, ham whatever, with all the classical trimmings and the finale of flaming pudding. It must stay a magical ceremony; a colossal cliche built of all our ancestor’s, our friends’ and our own customs. My preferences are to have everything flaming that will flame, except the Christmas tree; to ignore sage stuffing because I’m convinced it’s the sage, not the goose, port or wines which cause indigestion; and I refuse to eat cold turkey — Christmas night, Boxing Day or any other time whatever, or offer it to anyone. As a matter fact it’s less trouble to prepare leftover turkey ready for a chaffing-dish meal than it is to organise its carving and accessories for a second appearance.

Christmas at Farleys was a mix of tradition and some personal touches like a green pesto based stuffing for her turkey and Brandy Butters that were coloured blue (because she felt there was too much red and green involved in Christmas).

Lee was a meticulous planner. Her Christmas menus were planned as far in advance as spring as it involved planning the vegetable crop. Some of the foods she served during the festive period were:

Popocatapetl - a recipe for leftover turkey described as “Hot sauce for reheating turkey”. The ingredients include red chillies, warming spices like cloves and nutmeg, cooking chocolate, almonds and Tabasco.

Bigos - a Polish stew where different meats are cooked with sauerkraut, cabbage and mushrooms.

Green Rice and Pesto Stuffing For Your Turkey - fresh pesto was mixed with rice and celery to make stuffing.

Scottish Bonnet - a fiery sauce for soups, fish or egg dishes, made with dry chillies steeped in dry sherry.

Nesselrode - this 19th century frozen dessert was named after a Russian diplomat, Count Karl Nesselrode. She made Nesselrode-ish things as a way to use up the boxes of candied fruit.

Ahead of the guests arriving, Lee prepped what she could. A huge jar of prepared flour Master Mix could be turned into scones, pie-topping, waffles, dumplings, savoury or sweet. Crepes Suzettes were made in advance, ready for their flaming, croquettes chilled or frozen.

There is the traditional nonsense of hats, streamers, crackers and confusion, and then back to the old kitchen. With mugs of cider, or hot buttered rum, the party goes on till dawn in the old kitchen, swapping songs and round singing with interludes from the bells.

It meant a lot that her guests had a good time and that they went away inspired by the meal and with good stories. Christmas was celebrated with enthusiasm. She’d perfected the festive celebrations at the house to an art form, creating magic for all those who were lucky enough to be invited.

My love for Lee Miller has spanned more than a decade. Thanks to the work of her family in raising her profile, Lee’s contribution to art and reportage is getting more recognition. If you are interested in learning more:

Tate Britain is having a retrospective of her photographs and it is running until 15 February. I’ve not visited it yet but I will do before it ends.

Kate Winslet recently starred in the biopic, Lee which can be streamed. The film is based on Lee’s son’s biography, The Lives of Lee Miller.