“Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”
― Anthony Bourdain.
I really loved Bourdain’s shows. The places he went, the people he mixed with. He tried and respected everything, and he never went back to a studio to re-interpret a dish: that was how it was cooked.
A simple vegetable curry with roti style bread, in Bangladesh. Food was generally reasonably good, but rice was often low grade.
Ingredients for some street food snacks, in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Really fresh honeycomb for sale, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Food stalls, like this puri stand, set up along the river in the evening, in Rajshahi in Bangladesh.
A railway station vendor's snacks, Dinajpur, Bangladesh.
Making samosas in Dinajpur, Bangladesh.
Mixing chai in upcountry Bangladesh, in a shop under the stairs.
ICE-CREAM!! Seems a shame to eat it......yeah, no it doesn't.
Fruit of the Gods, Thessaloniki, Greece.
Peppers stuffed with feta, Kalmbaka Greece, near the famous Meteora monastries.
Ethiopia's staple food, injera, is a sour, round flat bread. Food is served directly on it. Injera is made from a grain called tef, with superfood properties.
An Ethiopian vegetarian plate, called bayenetu, sometimes refered to as "fasting food" as the Orthodox refrain frm meat on certain days. Generally, this was the best food to be had, better than goat.
Strange, but good, Tajikistan's kurutob. Bread, yoghurt, tomato, herbs and spices. MMMmmm.
Afternoon tea presents a few challenges in Tajikistan.
Tajikistan. The origins of the apple have been traced to nearby Al Mata, Kazakhstan.
A Tajik family invited us to lunch with them in Haft Kul. Plov, salad and bread.
The smell of the silk road, grilling lamb kebabs, in the bazaar, Istaravshan, Tajikistan.
Bread is essential in Central Asian cuisine and culture, part food, part ritual. A family would visit a bakery like this one in Istaravshan, Tajikistan, daily.
Fermented mares milk, koumiss or kumis, served from a traditional vessel, a sheep's bladder. Osh, Kyrgyzstan.
In Pakse, Laos, a girl buys sweet, fried bread treats.
Grilled frog on a stick, in the market of Pakse, southern Laos. I didn't try them.
Grilled chicken and pork on the streets of Bangkok, Thailand. Quick, tasty, cheap and everwhere.
Indian food, Penang, Malaysia. Holidaying in Penang often turns into a food crawl, from market to street stall, to hawker centre to restaurant.
On the streets of Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysia, making roti.
Christmas lunch in my neighbourhood of Melbourne, at an institution, Tibas' Lebanese.
Mixed mezze breakfast at Al Alamy, a Lebanese bakery in Melbourne's Coburg.
Moving between national parks in western Thailand, I stopped to get some food. That's going to be a pretty hot dip or sauce.
The best chicken on Sydney Rd Coburg, and some pretty good bread too. from Afghan Charcoal Chicken.
In the bazaar area of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the central asian staple, the kebab or shish.
Central asia does great fresh honey, with small hives kept in many villages. A selection here in Chorsu Bazaar, Tashkent.
In the dry summers of central Asia, melons are your best friend. Served after meals, between meals, with tea, for breakfast.
Dried chilli for sale in the bustling Margilon Bazaar, in Uzbekistan's Fergan region.
Uzbekistan's Fergana valley produces a quality, quantity and variety of fruits which can only be experienced, not described.
Kurt are balls of curd, which are sold in most of central Asia. They keep forever and come in a variety of flavours, and have been the saddle-bag snack of merchants and warriors for a thousand years.
A pokey snack shop in the Rishton (Uzbekistan) Bazaar sells fried breads and samosas, as well as coffee and tea.
Also in the Rishton bazaar a Lada load of melons. That would have been full to the roof when it arrived.