A Pike in the Basement
 Simon Loftus
 Tales of a Hungry Traveller

 Pages: 144
 Format: Hardback
 ISBN: 0 907871 24 0

 Area of interest: Around the world
 Genre:  Food, Travel

 Date of first publication: 1987
 Eland publication date: January 11, 2004
 Price: £12.99

     

You couldn’t travel in more delightful company. Simon Loftus is a man with a sense of adventure and a nose for the good things in life. In A Pike in the Basement he combines a love of food and travel with beguiling style and takes us on a voyage of discovery round some of the world’s lesser-known culinary delights.

In his hands, freshly baked unleavened bread in a Teheran bakery at midnight, slightly salty, becomes as mouth-watering as white truffles shaved thinly over pasta in Piedmont. The exertions of travel transform a simple omelette in France into a harvest feast, and give tea and fried eggs in Pakistan a hitherto unobserved exoticism. He understands the importance of the right food in the right place at the right time, and the evocative power of tastes and smells to the traveller. "A fresh peach brings back a walled garden in Brittany, the smell of saffron recalls paella in Andalusia, and the succulence of a watermelon evokes a dusty afternoon in Isfahan."

Each of these sixteen traveller’s tales ends with a recipe - fried eggs, bacon, boiled potatoes and salad, Devilled Spuds, Frozen Oranges and of course, Pike Quenelles - and wine suggestions to go with them.

Reading A Pike in the Basement may inspire you to go into the kitchen and create, but more likely it will simply throw you into the delightful remembrance of meals past.