We have decided to leave Latitudinal dinners for the rest of the year.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback, suggestions and warm thoughts on where to journey next.

This week

Join us on in Shoreditch on Friday 2nd December to celebrate the birthdays of a cluster of Saggitarean Latitudinals – Alex, Sinead, Stefan and Emma.

The theme is Masked Beasts: think fur & feathers and fleshy protuberances; wings & tails & hooves & horns & grotesque creatures of the night – all masked, of course

There’ll be DJs (including the great Conrad Ollende and the brilliant Paula Coughlan) & dancing and monstrous debauchery.

No entry without a mask and a beastly body part (it’s easier than cooking;))

RSVPs essential for door entry guestlist: http://maskedbeasts.eventbrite.co.uk

Our Last Supper of 2011

Nothing.

We stayed at home, or in our hood, or to ourselves, or something like that; in other words, we had no Latitude  : (

Nadia had to cancel; no one RSVPed. This was not only weird but a huge shame- especially if you’re lucky enough to be familiar with Nadia’s cooking.

This week

We have left the coast of south American and head into our most challenging week – bang in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

But, ahoy! Land ahead! Come sail with us to the Portuguese Azores, the Repulic of Cape Verde – or Reykjavik in Iceland, the world’s northenmost capital.

The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about 1,500 km (930 mi) west from Lisbon. Traditional cuisine of these islands include Alcatra, beef marinated in red wine and garlic and then roasted, a tradition of Terceira Island in the archipelago. The islands also feature a type of cheese made with cow’s milk with a spicy taste (Queijo de São Jorge. Jewish influence may have been a determining factor in some other practices in food preparation and eating habits. Different kinds of unleavened bread and cakes, such as the arrufadas de Coimbra, are baked throughout Continental Portugal and the Azores. In the islands, meat is often repeatedly rinsed in water to clean it of any trace of blood.

The Cape Verde diet is mostly based on fish and staple foods like corn and rice. Fruits such as banana and papayas are available year-round, while others like mangos and avocados are seasonal. A popular dish served in Cape Verde is Cachupa, a slow cooked stew of corn (hominy), beans, and fish or meat.

And Reykjavik citizens are known for their love of the drink.

So come join us this Saturday and raise a glass to our Icelandic friends.

We pondered the presence of absence and the long-lost Lord Lucan. Alicia had raised the bar and asked guests to cook a meal of disappearance – and make vanishing edible, dishing the invisible. Tricky.

Stefan – like Lucan – stashed nannies in sacks – lovely filo parcels, lashed with lucanism and scattered with speech bubbles of each nanny’s protestation

and Alicia served a stealth borscht – beetroot indetectable – and the most glorious pork known to human, slathered in a thick sweet sauce made from Korean blue cheese – a kind of fermented tofu – all served with noodles stewed in invisible green onions.

Alex and Alicia’s pics are here.

This week

Amazonia, Bossa Nova, Carnivale, caipirinhas, capoeira, favelas, feijoada, Lula, nuts, Portuguese, rodizio, Ronaldo, Samba, shaving, soyfields -

what does the word and country bring to mind for you?

We merged our destination with our hostess – argentina with itaian – with a luscious mound of geo-fusion.

Piers, sartorially immmaculate, carved mouthwatering chunks of ribeye, scattered with parsely and sundrieds; Tina baked cannelloni – with crepes! – splashed with chimichurri.

Veggies baked on bed of polenta aside a salad peppered with spiced parsley-provoleta parcels, and the table abounded with fine gnocchi and pasta, and paradise.

We wrapped with panettone (chocolate!) and a mango and raspberry pudding as lilia served her magic coffee, sweetened with lovingly-stirred cremina.

Alex’s pics are here.

This week

We dressed for dinner in skull makeup and scary clothes; the table was dressed as an altar to the dead; we feasted on Uruguryan Torta Pascualina and Mexican bean tacos to start.

Alex and Anthony had a fish-off comparing their Brazilian Moqueca de Peixes. Alex went for salmon, Anthony a more longitudinal correct white fish. Both were fantastic. Plantians and Candy Pumpkin from Lucy and Baz finished us off.

Dessert was a weirdly spooky banana cake from Jen and Imogen’s grandmother’s ginger wine trifle, bang on the longitude line as we travelled through the British owned Falkland islands.

Alex’s pics are here.

This week

I decided to cook insects. Many in the world do, and Westerners have dabbled in entomophagy for ages. If we won’t be able to keep eating meat the way we do – ethically, environmentally, biologically – then insects might have to do; plus they provide three times the protein at a fraction of the cost.

Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason were happy to sell me a few tiny extortionate ants (Conran hadn’t started their ‘Mapame worm season’ yet), but I needed more. The insect chef I spoke to recommended some insect farms – but they only sold by the truckload. Finally I found some locusts, in a pet shop down the Cally Road – the same one that used to have a live-maggot vending machine outside for the fisherman on the canal.

The only problem was that they were still alive.

I had never killed my dinner before. They sat around on my desk all afternoon, thumping around in their little tubs. I decided to freeze them, slightly fearful they’d burst to life when i removed them. But they seemed dead. It was only when i tossed their beautiful luminous bodies into the sizzling pan that they began to jump about in a crazy panic, flitting and buzzing, fitfully awoken, desperately trying to jump out of the fire.

I was always a fussy eater, refusing all veg til way down the line. My sister was once OK eating ladybirds and insects but I can’t even take a runny boiled egg. So those locusts needed some masking. I tossed them in honey and orange juice and laid them to rest on a pepper and date mix that kept popping up, locust-like, on the web. & in all honesty, I think they were pretty good.

Bring on the Swarmgasbords.

There was a bounty of brilliance in the thought and craft at our “Future of Food” discussion dinner at The Hub Westminster. Home-grown food featured prominently, as (very unexpectedly) did chocolate – whether raw beans, 85% Fairtrade Kichwan Kallari, artisanal pasta or even cauliflower bake – its florets lightly dusted with it. Many thanks to our wonderful guests – and to the Hub, whose beautiful new space in New Zealand House – just opposite the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square – awaits you.

Pics here, vid of locust life here, locust death here.

This week

This Saturday, come join us in Shoreditch to celebrate Halloween and Dia De Los Muertos. Sinead and Alex are hosting a south American dinner for 12 at 8pm followed by a trip to London Fields to a Dia De Los Muertos party at The New Empowering Church from midnight.

For dinner we are slap bang in the middle of South American passing through the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires. Argentine cuisine is famous for its beef with grilled meat from the asado (BBQ) being popular and accompained by Chimichurri, a sauce of herbs, garlic and vinegar,  Empanadas — small pastries of meat, cheese, sweet corn and a hundred other varieties — are a common sight for parties. A sweet paste, dulce de leche is another national obsession, used to fill cakes and pancakes, spread over toasted bread for breakfast or as an ice cream flavour.

We also visit Brazil (where we will be for a few weeks) so if feijoada, a simmered bean-and-meat dish, moqueca capixaba, consisting of slow-cooked fish, tomato, onion and garlic topped with cilantro, or chouriço, a mildly spicy sausage, take your fancy then go Brazilian, Brazil is also known for cachaça, a popular native liquor used in the caipirinha cocktail.

We also pass through smaller places such as the ex-British colony of Barbados, and smaller Southern American countries such as Guyana, Paraguay, Uruguay and Suriname. We have a nod to European colonialism while passing through the British owned Falkland Islands and the French overseas territory of French Guiana.

Come join us on Saturday for dinner and death : )

This Thursday come join us as we partner with The Hub Westminster for a dinner and conversation on the Future of Food.

The Hub Westminster is a brand new 12,000 sqft of space to meet, collaborate, and invent located in the heart of London. Supporting changemakers seeking to take ideas from action to impact, The Hub is the perfect place to dine and debate one of the most pressing environmental and social issues of our generation.

With 9 billion people predicted to be on this planet mid-century, how can we feed everyone in a sustainable way? How can we address the growing inequities in the global food system, where a billion people at the top end are killing themselves eating overly rich diets while a billion poor people live desperate lives circumscribed by malnutrition?

Will the future see a major cultural shift in diets away from meat and dairy products, which are inefficient to produce, towards plant based diets or even from less-efficient beef to more-efficient chicken.

Do you envisage a world without fish? Currently, upwards of 80 percent of the world’s wild fisheries are either being fished at the maximum rate that could allow for replenishment, or they are already overexploited, depleted, or are recovering from depletion. Will intensively farmed Chinese Tilapia fish be as common on British plates as chicken?

Do you share the views of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation who are exploring the possibilities of insects providing a greater share of global food needs. Insects are already eaten in four-fifths of nations, from the grasshopper tacos popular in Mexico to China, where almost anything goes. Insects produce a fraction of the greenhouse gasses pumped out by cattle and are rich in minerals, vitamins and proteins. Can you visualise an insect pick n mix in your local Tescos?

Bring a dish to provoke, to inspire, to dream. Come debate the future of food with us …

Book your free place here: http://latitudinalcuisinefutureoffood.eventbrite.com/

We return east to the spiritual (or at least legal) home of Latitudinal Cuisine, for a dinner for 12 on Thursday evening at Alex and Sinead’s in Shoreditch.

We travel east to Walthamstow to Gary’s home on Saturday where we are back to the longitude line. Gary writes:

“Starting from North to South, we have Quebec, which traditionally has high fat content dishes to cope with the harsh winters, just right for weather, um, we are having at the moment.  Pizza-ghetti though sounds an example fun new Quebec combination dish.

Further south we have Pennsylvania, Virginia, North and South Carolina. Much of the cuisine in these southern United States is shared with a lot of different influences due to the varying immigrant groups, from Europe to Africa. Some dishes will be familiar to everyone, exported and mass produced as they are – Kentucky fried chicken being the most ubiquitous (and not a dish suggestion to bring!), but actually it is not uncommon for a traditional southern meal to consist of only vegetables.

Then we arrive in Cuba, a fusion of Spain, Caribbean and Africa. Meat is only available really through rations, but sandwiches are very popular in Cuba, often made with ham, cheese and pickles, with tomatoes and lettuce considered by traditionalists as an unacceptable Americanization – showing how politics can influence what you eat. Although the food of Cuba is generably considered to be not so great, their limited cuisine is offset by their incredible & very important urban-agriculture machine of home-growing - Organopónicos.

We next visit Panama – which unlike a lot of neighbouring countries, has mildly flavoured food. Coconut rice is often served, and many dishes sound exotic and delicious like Almojábanos - ”S” shaped corn fritters, may be served with fresh tree tomato juice. Ecuador cuisine includes guinea pig, an option if anyone keeps such a pet and has left it too late to go to the supermarket. Slightly less exotic cuisine includes llapingachos, a pan seared potato ball and chorizo, a picture of which had me salivating.

Finally, Peru, which has an extraordinary cuisine, with influences from Spain, China, Italy, West Africa, and Japan. Some indigenous cereals, once spurned as “peasant foods”  are now highly rated by nutritionists including quinoa, kiwicha and maca, and used by Nasa astronauts in space. Lima butter beans (pallares) have been part of the Peruvian cuisine for at least 6,000 years, but if you plan to bring, please buy some fresh ones : )

The feast in E17 happens to coincide with the breaking of the fast for Yom Kippur (Jewish day of Atonement), and I will hope to welcome about a dozen to help me break my fast since at least lunch time that day.”

Who’s for dinner on Saturday?