Your most memorable meal(s)

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fabindia
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Your most memorable meal(s)

Post by fabindia »

This lockdown is getting to a lot of us who are missing the normal interactions with our families, often missing eating and drinking together.

So what are your most memorable meals? Maybe with a partner in some exotic place or something really romantic happened in your local chip shop or a picnic in a carpark!

For me there are several but I'll start with just one. When we first lived in India, the youngest two kids were 6 and 11 and my older two 19 and 20 (we had the first very close together and then took a break!) I took a few days off work one weekend and we went up to Shimla in the foothills of the Himalayas. One day at lunchtime the kids wanted pizza so we popped into a rather uninspiring looking restaurant, probably not the sort of place you would look at twice in UK. The staff were really nice and asked if we would like to sit in the back, so we wandered through to the back of the place and were knocked over by the view. We sat pizzas looking up at the majestic Himalayas that just rose on and on into the sky. Amazing.
Michael
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lancashire lass
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Re: Your most memorable meal(s)

Post by lancashire lass »

I don't have anything quite as spectacular as a view of the Himalayas but it reminded me of my holiday to Italy and Portugal (nearly 20 years apart ... I don't go on holidays abroad that often :oops: ) and growing up in South Africa.

My family had emigrated to South Africa in the mid-60s where I grew up. Of course these days a lot of the exotic fruits and flavours I remember are available in one form or other these days from most supermarkets in the UK. A barbecue (or braai as it is known over there - translated it means "grill") was almost a staple meal especially when it was too hot to cook in the kitchen. A get together with up to 3 or 4 families was on a whole different level - a metal drum sawed in half and holes punched through propped on bricks and a grate over the top (even chicken wire at a pinch) Bear in mind this was the 60s / 70s so it was the man's job to be in charge of the cooking (I guess it hasn't changed much but you have to remember that this was something that we would never have done in the UK) and all the men would be standing round the fire with their bottles of beer, most of it liberally sprinkled on to the meat as it cooked (more to do with dosing the flames as the fat ignited) Meanwhile the wives had already prepared salads and other food still in their Tupperware containers and enjoying a raucous sundowner or two while all the kids were running about in the dark garden. As with any bbq, there was mock scorn when the meat was burnt but all I remember is the laughter. Just about any meat was used (we'd never heard of beef burgers back then until a Wimpy bar was opened in the mid-1970s) so it could have been lamb chops, steak, chicken pieces but my favourite was a traditional sausage called a Boerewors

My family returned to England in 1979. I kept in contact by letter with my closest friends from school and college, one of whom came from Italy. It was not long after when her family also returned to their home country and I was invited over for a holiday. Her family lived in a small town called Fabriano in the beautiful Marche region - my friend & I made almost daily trips out via the train to nearby towns and sites (I so wanted to visit Assisi but saw much more including a day trip to Florence and climbed up the stairs of the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral where I hit my head on a low beam and all the other tourists were in stitches as it made a "boom" sound) and of course I had a convenient translator especially when it came down to handling money (before the Euro). The main meal of the day was of course lunch with the WHOLE family even if they didn't live in the same flat so it was not unusual to have as many as 6 or so people round the table, and my friend's mother was a chef at a local hotel where she worked in the evenings. The food she prepared was out of this world and all traditional (we had to go to the market and buy the food on the day so it was always fresh) Of course, the day came when a proper Spaghetti Bolognese was served .... to cut a long story short, I'd never had spaggi bol before (my mother was surprisingly fussy about trying "foreign food" so my palate was somewhat limited back then) I was embarrassed about how to eat it in front of the whole family and I can remember seeing the horror on everyone's faces when I started to chop the spaghetti up into small pieces. I was then given a lesson on how to eat spaghetti properly like an Italian - and never looked back since. That trip inspired me into Italian cooking.

Finally Portugal in the late 1990s - it was not long after my mother had passed away and a friend who had been ill for a few months also suffered a loss when her partner died unexpected. We decided to go on a self catering holiday to the Algarve for a fortnight so that meant we ended up eating out every night. That first night we set off to the town to dine out but got lost and we were hot, tired and hungry. We looked at the nearest empty restaurant as not a good sign - talk about being off the beaten (tourist) track and the decor was dire with just a candle on the Formica kitchen tables .... not at all inspiring but we couldn't go any further and decided anything was better than nothing. We sat down and started to enjoy a carafe of wine (each) while the waiter / chef (there didn't seem to be any other staff) brought the menu. We made our selection and when it arrived, it was surprisingly delicious and completely contrary to the image of the place. We eventually found our way into town and tried other restaurants but we always seem to end up going back to the first one. It never got busy and we'd often spend most of the evening there unlike some of the other places which were packed like sardines. So I suppose the saying "don't judge a book by its cover" is quite apt.
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