Bread pudding is a hug

Photo credit: 
Rijksmuseum
Binge's picture
Binge
May 15, 2018
Like Nigel Slater, we identify food that feels like a hug and a kiss.

"I love bread and butter pudding. I love its layers of sweet, quivering custard, juicy raisins, and puffed, golden crust. I love the way it sings quietly in the oven; the way it wobbles on the spoon.

You can’t smell a hug. You can’t hear a cuddle. But if you could, I reckon it would smell and sound of warm bread-and-butter pudding." 

— Nigel Slater, Toast

Thick noodles hang from chopsticks like vines from a tree arching over an al fresco dinner setting. Biting into meaty kinoko (mushroom) is like 6.30pm — not quite work hour and not quite rest, but that feeling of plonking yourself on the sofa for the first time after a long day. Fragile enoki tears and swims in the broth as you try to grab it, still around even if not present in the bunch that makes up the bite. The hot udon bowl with mushroom and walnut miso at Koya Bar is a bear hug.

At Koya Bar, 50 Frith Street, Soho, London.

 

Teeth touch the dainty crust and it cracks like thin ice over a lake. The bite is chewy, giving way to the ganache slathered between two meringue discs. Flavour from the rose is delicate and shy. The meringue is soft, fragrant, and tastes like candied rose. It sits on your tongue and dissolves if you don't chew within seconds. Your lips are sticky and your tongue aches for more. The rose macaron at Ladurée is a kiss.

At Ladurée salons across the world