a recipe and a typ­i­cal Lon­don story

I know I have just blogged a marathon entry, but I want­ed to tell youabout a recipe of extreme sim­plic­i­ty (I have been work­ing so hard all­week on my cook­book, by the way!) that shrimp lovers will rel­ish. Youbuy a half pound or so per per­son of large raw shrimps with the shellsstill on (or frozen raw is fine, in fact most raw shrimp you see instores has been pre­vi­ous­ly frozen and that’s fine as well), and with a lit­tle scis­sors cut the shell down the back, but leave it on (adds tremen­dous fla­vor). Chop a lot of gar­lic and gin­ger and sprin­kle it on the shrimp, which you’ve laid in a sin­gle lay­er on a plate. Sprin­kle on some sea salt and leave to mar­i­nate at least a half hour before you cook. Mean­while mix about a half cup of soy sauce with two good table­spoons of each of these: sesame oil, chili paste and rice wine vine­gar. Add one tea­spoon sug­ar and mix. Slice a bunch of green onions and add to sauce. Now heat peanut oil in a wok and saute the shrimp until they JUST turn pink. Don’t over­do. Take off heat and
put a cov­er on the wok and leave them to release their juices for five min­utes. Mean­while, put a cup of bas­mati rice and a cup and a half of
water in a saucepan and cov­er. Turn on a medi­um heat and watch it care­ful­ly for spit­ting; it will take about 20 min­utes to cook.

When it’s done, take it off the heat and leave cov­ered. Pour your­self a nice icy vod­ka and add a slice of lemon. Squeeze the rest of the
lemon juice onto the shrimps, and then take them out of the wok. Put them in the bowl you plan to serve them in and set aside. Now heat
the wok again and pour in the sauce. Stir for about four min­utes until the onions start to wilt, then add shrimp. Turn up super high
to heat through, and you’re done! Serve on the rice with TONS of nap­kins, and a body plate for the shells. So you pick up each shrimp
and peel it, and eat it very mess­i­ly, scoop­ing up some rice for each bite. Heavenly!

And so fun­ny: Eng­lish celebri­ties are con­stant­ly com­plain­ing about paparazzi har­rass­ment and I always thought they were being very whiny
about it. And prob­a­bly exag­ger­at­ing huge­ly. How­ev­er. As I walked down super-chic Sloane Street yes­ter­day, I came upon a huge crowd of
pho­tog­ra­phers with their zoom lens­es pressed against a shop win­dow, Rober­to Cav­al­li, Vic­to­ria Beck­ham’s new design obses­sion. Wondering
who was war­rant­i­ng all the fever­ish excite­ment, I wan­dered over and asked a guy, “Who’s in there?” He turned sort of lugubri­ous eyes on
me and said, “Some ran­dom foot­baller’s girl­friend. Not even a wife.

I don’t know what we’re doing here.”

!!!