The Joy of Shopping...

No, I am not talking about spending a fortune on handbags (or even gladrags, whatever they may be).

I am talking about real shopping, brushing shoulders with people hunting for food…

I am as guilty as the next Phantom. Most of the time I wander into my (rather “superior”) supermarket and just buy what I have already decided on, rather than choose what looks good value or good quality.

Saturdays are my chance to do proper shopping…

Seven Sisters Road may have been swamped by seemingly cloned “Turkish” grocer’s shops, but there are still some food shops with soul. *(Forget the butchers. The only vaguely multi-ethnic one shut down just before Christmas “for renovations”. Watch out for a kebab restaurant any day now…)

One of my particular favourites is the West Indian Muslim-owned grocers just halfway between Hornsey Road and the Nag’s Head. Piles of polished aubergines shine in the front of the display to grab the attention of passers-by. Further in, Scotch Bonnet chillis loiter, waiting to catch someone who can be fooled by their seemingly sweet outsides. By the time you are halfway in the shop the masculine perfumes of saltfish, smoked mackerel and crayfish hook you with a deeply savoury, hunger-producing waft.

The importance of home-foods to people far from home can’t be underestimated. I saw a Jamaican “mum” shelling out £3.50 for half a breadfruit, about the size of half a coconut. A basic starch, she could have bought about nine pounds of potatoes for the same amount. But I guess she wanted something that tasted of home.

Further up the road, in Gibbers, a greengrocers, I had the fun of testing out my (very limited) Greek with a Yaya (Grandmother) who was buying sachets of colouring to dye Easter eggs with. Real Eggs, not chocolate. She told me that she would dye them, then give them to her grandchildren. They would race them along the garden, rolling them with their noses. The winner would get to crack them all, and add them to the Easter meal. (And they might get a bit of chocolate afterwards)

As a (technically) half-Irish Englishman who has lived in Islington his entire life, I feel sad that I don’t have any real sense of belonging to a food tradition. I have a bookcase full of cookbooks. I can negotiate my way round most menus, with the exception of sushi (if I want raw fish I will prepare it myself.)

But the price of being so metropolitan is that I have no soul food.

(well, maybe a really mature Farmhouse Cheddar!)