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Do you remember the first time something you tasted made an impression on you? Food, by its nature, has its roots in culture, in the things our mothers, fathers, grandparents and friends cooked – and still cook. The experiences of our youth (good and bad) resonate in the eating of our adulthood. As we grow up, learn new things and travel, inspiration comes from other sources: from places we visit, trying dishes that assail, tease, please and sometimes challenge our taste buds.
Combine tantalising flavours with sunshine and a view over sea or snowcovered mountains, add laughter and good conversation around the table and the pleasure is heightened. But equally that happy memory can be a solitary one, sitting alone eating a bowl of the sweetest, plumpest mussels in a bustling café, or a flavour-bomb morsel grabbed hot from a street stall.
Such memories are filed away in a folder marked ‘good times’ (I like to call them ‘delicious. moments’) that we can pull out whenever we want to muse on times we want to return to – but there’s a poignant edge because the likelihood is we never will. The result is a sort of sensory DNA, defining who we are.
In this April issue of delicious. – ‘the inspiration issue’ – we’ve tried to capture as many experiences and memory-trigger moments as we can. There are Ravinder Bhogal’s caramel recipes, inspired by a film that has almost nothing to do with food but everything to do with solidarity and camaraderie; there are Nuno Mendes’ memories of his childhood in Lisbon; and there are my own recollections of days in my grandad’s bakery…