Supplemental #17

I’m not here. I’m away – it’s a bank holiday, innit. But you’re here. And you’re here for the usual round up of the weekend recipes. Which makes this is a little awkward.

Thing is, stats over the last four years of spamming the internet suggest that, actually, most other people probably aren’t here either. So I don’t feel too bad that there’s no digest of Nigel, Yotam, and whichever crappy “how to cook something average in 3 minutes without lifting a finger” extract is in the Saturday Times (in fact, I don’t feel bad at all).

I like to think that internet figures usually drop massively on bank holiday Mondays because people are out and about spending quality time with friends and loved ones, far away from the glare of a screen. But maybe it’s just that most of our internet procrastination time is usually done at the expense of our employers.

Anyway, point is, there’s no summary this week. In its place I wanted to raise a new source of ideas that I will include on occasion – recipes from newspapers around the globe.

I’ve started looking to see whether the broadsheets outside Britain are as weekend recipe focused as ours seem to be. To date, I’m not convinced this is going to be a smashing theme – the Chicago Tribune‘s food section appears dry and overly conservative; The Straits Times from Singapore has promise, though I have a feeling their recipe section doesn’t get updated very often (at least, not the bit available to non subscribers); and, sadly and quite shockingly, the Ulan Bator Post doesn’t seem to cater for food loving English speaking Mongolians at all.

The New York Times has possibly the largest and most regular selection of recipes I’ve seen beyond our papers. I’m yet to work out which (if any) of their writers are go to cooks in the vein of an Ottolenghi or Slater. But I did enjoy this recent recipe by David Tanis for five spice crispy squid. It’s a nice (and effective) idea to flavour a cornflour dusting with five spice and cayenne. I ended up just wok frying my squid rings. Deep frying as per the instructions would’ve got a crisper finish, but perhaps an even rounder belly.

If you have a go, bear in mind, of course, that following an American recipe requires a certain amount of conversion from cup sizes to grams, cilantro to coriander, and tomato to tomato.

Do you know of any great recipe sections in foreign newspapers? Please let me know if so.