Ilva interviews me.

Ilva at Lucullian Delights is actually pretty cool. Not only does she share her surname with a gun, she lives in Tuscany and I know from this post of mine that she at least once visited  Vivienne Westwood’s punk boutique SEX on the Kings Road. Oh, and she’s Swedish.

Right now though she’s running this fruity meme, where she was interviewed by another blogger and I volunteered to be interviewed. Here are the five questions Ilva sent me.
1. Are you happy to live where you do or would you like to live somewhere else?

In July we will have lived in the same house for seven years so I must be quite happy. We are lucky to live in a small friendly street in the Melbourne beach-side suburb of St Kilda, just around the corner from the famous Dogs Bar. Unusually for these times, we know most of our neighbours. I get to walk my dogs on the beach during low tide and a have vegetable plot at the local community gardens. I enjoy the inner city although sometimes I miss London and Europe for the cultural intensity, especially on the arts side. If I were to move again I’d like to try San Francisco or Barcelona – or I wouldn’t mind taking a six month sabatical writing some great opus in Hanoi. In reality, my only dissatisfaction is not having somewhere in the country to disappear to at weekends, chop logs and set up a proper cabinet-making workshop.

2. Australia is a gastronomical melting pot so I wonder which type of food is your favourite one? (or two or three…)

Many foods that are available elsewhere in the world that you can’t get here simply because of our strict customs controls. There is far more diversity of ingredients available in London but here the food is cheaper and more accessible to the people. This is especially the case in Melbourne where in the inner city we have three huge open markets and several more in the suburbs (not to mention farmers’ markets) What I’ve enjoyed discovering in Australia is Asian food. When I lived in Sydney I discovered rip-snorting, tear-jerking Thai curries – green, yellow, jungle. Thai food isn’t quite as good in Melbourne but with the access we have to superb quality fresh fish I’m really enjoying Japanese inspired foods – sashimi and sushi.

3. I know that you are a journalist, has your blog helped you in your professional life (has it helped you at all in your life?) and what do you think about ‘professional’ versus ‘amateur’ food blogs.

Funnily enough a reader recently asked how I, a business journalist, started writing about food. The truth is that I still am mainly a business journalist but blogging has allowed me to do some food writing as well. One of the things I’ve been doing on the blog is reviewing new restaurants before the critics got in. One of the local critics read one of my reviews and thought it hit the mark and invited me to review for the Good Food Guide. Partly because of my first night reviews, as well as being in the right place at the right time, I was offered a weekly column in one of the local daily papers, the Herald Sun (the columns aren’t yet available online but they are in my portfolio).
I would probably separate blogs between amateur, professional and journalists. I think journalists, myself included, sometimes treat blogs a bit like columns rather than personal diaries. And a lot of them, especially on newspapers, don’t really get involved in the community aspect and link sharing and aren’t really embracing the concept of social media which is what it is really all about. I treat my blog a bit like a personal notebook where I can post ideas and snippets without the polish required for a newspaper or magazine. Sometimes some of these ideas make it into print. What I have found difficult is that I want to post first on the blog but often feel I have to wait until the newspaper is published. Also because I’ve been out reviewing for guides I haven’t had the time to post on the blog. I guess I need to organise myself. I think the point of blogs is that there are no rules and whatever the level of quality of writing, photography or food we graduate to what we feel most comfortable with and stimulated by. I really don’t have time for various broadcasters and writers who say they don’t have time to trawl through all the blogs, good and bad, to find stuff. If they took the time to understand things such as RSS feeds they would be astonished at how effortlessly information comes to you.
4. Your favourite author (if it’s an obscure one please give us some details) and your favourite book, not necessarily by that author obviously?

I’ve been reading Ian McEwan since I was introduced to one of his books – First Love, last rights – by a girlfriend at university. I’ve almost always got a book on the go and read most good modern authors. Top of mind: Martin Amis, Jake Arnott, Nick Hornby, Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis… Classics such as Waugh. You’ll also find me reading good political diaries – Woodrow Wyatt, Alan Clarke. On food obviously I’m a big Anthony Bourdain fan. The best food related book I ever read wa Bill Burford’s Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. I’m currently reading (from the library) the disgustingly funny The bedroom secrets of the Masterchefs by Irvine Welsh. Also I have a strange affection for Nikos Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek.
5. Did you have a dish/treat/food that you could die for when you were a child?
I was very fussy about food and spoiled by the fact that my mother was a very good cook and that my maternal grandfather imported fruit & veg from Spain, Portugal and the Canary Islands (where my mother was born). I particularly remember eating smoked salmon from large waxed boxes, white peaches and cantaloup melons. He was known as grampy scampi because he ate so much scampi and obviously I ate a lot too. Then there were the exotic sweetmeats from Spain many of which I don’t remember the names of. I also have this memory for some reason of this one creamy curry containing fruit and topped with almonds that my mother made. I think she only ever made it once but for some reason it sticks in my mind. What leaves a nasty taste is appalling school food. The mash potato was lumpy, not fully cooked and had the eyes left in it. The mince not only tasted revolting but had little white pellets of gristle and bone in it. I couldn’t physically eat the food if I wanted to as it made me gag. Yet each day the teachers tried to force me, keeping me at the lunch table all through break.

Now it’s the turn of me Ed Charles to interview you my blogger friend.
DIRECTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW MEME
1. Leave a comment saying, “Interview me.” Cut me some slack — it may take awhile.
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. Please ensure I have your email address.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.