Contributors including Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver share the best thing they ate this year, from shiso-leaf noodles to live langoustine
Banana peel ice-cream
Massimo Bottura
Chef patron, Osteria Francescana, Modena, Italy
The other day I saw one of our chefs, Davide di Fabio, coming back from the market with a box of black bananas. “They were free,” he said, “just sitting next to the trash.” Two days later he called me over to his quiet corner of the kitchen. “Does this remind you of anything?” I glanced at the black banana peel on the white plate and then I touched it. It wasn’t peel but ice-cream moulded into that shape. “Does this remind you of anything?” he asked me again. It took me a minute and then I shouted, “Warhol!” I’d found the original mono version of the Velvet Underground’s first album with Warhol’s name and banana peel on the cover in a used record store in New York. I’d brought it into the kitchen a week ago to show the team. I drew my finger across the plate severing the banana peel diagonally. I closed my eyes. Grilled, blackened banana-peel ice-cream with an intense smoky aftertaste and a creamy texture. I swiped my finger across it again. There was something else in there, too, something chewy and salty. I looked closely at the plate and there it was – seaweed. I couldn’t help but smile. I wasn’t eating discarded banana peels but trash ice-cream. And it was divine.”
Shiso-leaf noodles
Nigella Lawson
Writer, broadcaster, cook
I have to be upfront: I eat so much, choosing one thing is what footballer commentators call a Big Ask. But the most exquisite thing I’ve eaten is shiso- leaf noodles at my favourite restaurant the Shiori in London (it’s a kaiseki restaurant: you don’t order; beautiful morsel after beautiful morsel is brought to you). I now ache to go to Japan.
