Jambalaya in November: un peu de soleil dans l'eau froide

aving lived 7 years with a Southerner, you would think I must have had jambalaya more than half a thousand times. Far from that, it is my first time ever I laid my spoon and fork on one.

America's answer to paella, jambalaya combines West African cooking methods with the ingredients of the New World. I am too lazy to post the recipe, you can find it in one of the following books.

Pejines salados: maternity ward's most wanted

n Russia, conventional wisdom has it that if you have a craving for salted fish, you must be preggers. I must be permanently knocked up then, because the craving never goes away. If allowed, I could eat a pack an evening. Luckily, it is not that widely available in London because African dried fish that they sell in Brixton needs to be cooked before consumption. Not your beer snack, in other words.

However, God is faithful, God provides. Just when I had run out of cured tyulka that Victoria brought me from Moscow, most serendipitously, I stumbled upon these beauties called pejines. It took a 4-hour flight from London and a trip to Tenerife's Auchan (called there Alcampo) to get hold of it, but serendipity tends to happen to those on the move.

Much saltier and somewhat leaner than Russian tyulka, pejines should be given out for free in pubs to make people drink inordinate amounts of beer.