COOKING FROM EXPERIENCE
Food and memories mingle in the hot-off-the-presses cookbook Home and Away
Randy Shore’s Proustian moment wasn’t via a madeleine. It happened with a bowl of Korean noodles, the name of which he never knew, and never will.
“I recall the moment my palate and my life changed forever,” he writes in his just-out cookbook, Home and Away: Simple, Delicious Recipes Inspired by The World’s Cafes, Bistros and Diners (Arsenal Pulp Press).
“I was standing shoulder to shoulder with the morning rush in a tiny noodle shop on a side street in Seoul, Korea. The temperature was well below freezing and condensation was running freely down the windows, fed continuously by huge steaming pots of broth.”
He pointed to a steaming bowl of noodles a man was slurping noisily and ordered the same. It came with a raw egg, but as it swirled into the hot broth, it cooked and created something memorable. “I knew at the moment that I was in a magical place, not so much geographically as emotionally,” he says.
Now I’m of the thought that any hungry young backpacker, travelling in below zero temperatures would be similarly moved by any number of hot, rustic Korean dishes, but those noodles seared into his limbic system while he and a friend were backpacking in Korea and India. And from then on, he has sought out humble hole in the walls whether he was in India, Europe, Morocco or Turkey.
Home and Away is a collaboration with his wife Darcy and a kind of tribute to many subsequent Proustian moments on their travels. The couple, who live in Gibsons, take inspiration from food they’ve eaten on their travels and replicate some of the dishes. There are 140 recipes, including dishes from East Asia, Australasia, Africa, India, Europe and the Americas.
He interviewed well-known food personalities in North America to share their own food experiences and influences. For Vikram Vij, it was the roadside stalls called dhabas in India that cook only one thing. For Meeru Dhalwala, she finds inspiration in many personal experiences, like visiting Thomas Jefferson’s historic home in Virginia, which inspired an eggplant curry when she learned Jefferson smuggled eggplant seeds to the U.S. Mario Batali is inspired by street foods. “That’s where the soul of the local people really lives,” he says.
Shore’s first cookbook was Grow What You Eat, Eat What You Grow. He covers sustainability for The Vancouver Sun and has previously cooked in restaurants.