| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | I
was nosing around in the little ethnic stores in Shepherd's Bush that look pretty
run down, but are full of treasures. In one of them I found some tiny dried berries,
quite sour, but full of fantastic flavour. |
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took some home and played around with a few tagine-style dishes; then I found
myself down at Borough Market, where I discovered the most fantastic dried fruit
stall, run by an Iranian guy called Reza Dollabi, though everyone calls him Farhad,
and he calls his stall Nutman (Cranberry Ltd). On Thursdays he is at the organic
market in Portobello Road, then on Fridays and Saturdays at Borough Market, and
at Spitalfields every Sunday - busy boy. | | | | | | | | What
first attracted me was the fact that not only does he have about a hundred different
varieties of dried fruit - and nuts, hence the name of the stall - but he has
a really freestyle approach to selling it, inviting everyone to dive in and try
things. So you see all these people gathering around, saying: "What's this, and
what's this", nibbling away at dried wild strawberries and unusual things in all
shapes and sizes. There is dried fruit and dried fruit - and this is premier league
stuff: big, moist fruit, nowhere near as cheap as the big bags you can buy in
the Shepherd's Bush shops, but what you are paying for is the care taken in drying
the fruit, so the natural sugars intensify the flavour. | | | | |
| | | The
fruits that are imported from the Middle East and Africa are dried in the sun
on big nets raised from the ground, so the air can circulate; while the ones from
America and Australia are usually air-dried. At any one time at Farhad's stall
there might be dried wild white mulberries, kiwi and sweet cherries. From Africa
there are mango and pineapple; from Iran tiny yellow figs (which the Japanese
apparently love), sharon fruits (he is the only supplier in the world of dried
ones) and barberries, which are a bit like cranberries, and used in rice dishes
in Iran. From America there are blueberries and raspcherries (no, I didn't misspell
it, they are cherries soaked in raspberry juice, and then dried, which taste amazing),
and bananas from Vietnam. He has every kind of nut, some coated in chocolate (he
is thinking about doing that with some of the fruit, too). The fruit is great
for munchies - better than any wine gum - and it's brilliant for pukkolla, my
muesli-ish fruity breakfast concoction, which I make with four parts porridge
oats to one part ground bran. | | | | | | | | | |
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