Hardly any of my most memorable meals have been eaten in arestaurant, and definitely none in one of those fancy marble-floored, polished-silver establishments. Rather, they've been devoured on grubby pavements, in Asian hawker centres or in simple eateries where people come to get grub day in, day out.
Take, say, the kale salad I was handed from the Mei Mei Street Kitchen food truck in Boston earlier this year. Served with chunks of salty feta, garlic panko crumbs and an egg that had been poached and then fried, this was fast food with areal difference, and yet more proof that you don't need a fancy kitchen to produce fantastic food. First-class, often locally-sourced ingredients, imagination and authenticity combined to magical effect.
That salad was no one-off, either. In the past few years, there has been a quiet revolution in the way we eat, city dwellers especially. Whatever you call it – fancy fast food, posh junk food, dirty food, dude food –the people who make it take their food very seriously (and their tattoos almost equally so). Many have asemi-geeky, obsessive interest in the technical details of their product; it's the kind of attention to detail that was once the preserve only ofnutritionists and Michelin-starred chefs catering to an elite.
Many owners of today's food trucks, street food stalls and other similar small-scale establishments could easily give you an in-depth, well-reasoned lecture on the right pH level for the perfect cup of coffee, or on the number of times meat needs to be passed through amincer to make the best burger. They also tend to use ingredients that have gone out of favour – offal, cheap cuts, rare breeds and unusual beasts, as well as rare and heritage vegetables and legumes.
But this is not food for which you make a reservation; you have to turn up and join the queue, like everyone else, which in itself is a guarantee of freshness that you don't get in many restaurants. Crucially, you know you're in the hands of an expert when their menu is spartan. Specialisation, as in doing one or two things very, very well, is key, be that burgers and beer, scotch eggs and pork pies, or ramen soups. The less that's on offer, the better it will be.
Pulled pork sandwich with pomegranate salad
The eight-hour wait for this pork tobecome "pullable" is possibly themost worthwhile eight hours you'll ever spend. Serves six.
2.5kg pork shoulder, bone in
200ml cider vinegar
80g dark brown sugar
1 tbsp Szechuan pepper
5 cinnamon sticks
1 tbsp red chilli flakes
2¼ tsp soy sauce
2 tbsp pomegranate molasses
1 tbsp tomato paste
Salt
3 baguettes, halved lengthways
For the pomegranate salad
1 small red onion, peeled and sliced very thinly into pinwheels
100g pomegranate seeds (ie, the seeds of 1 medium pomegranate)
20g parsley, picked and roughlychopped
1 tbsp red-wine vinegar
1 tbsp pomegranate molasses
2 tbsp olive oil
90g rocket
Heat the oven to 150C/300F/gas mark 2. Put a ridged griddle pan on ahigh heat. When smoking hot, lay the pork on top and cook for about eight minutes, turning as you go. For the last two minutes' griddling, cover the pork in a large sheet of foil, so that the resulting smoke infuses the meat. Remove and set aside.
Place a large, heavy-based pot for which you have a lid on a medium heat; the pan has to be big enough tohold the pork snugly. Add the vinegar, sugar, Szechuan pepper, cinnamon, chilli, soy, molasses andtomato paste, plus one and aquarter teaspoons of salt, and heatgently, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves. Remove four tablespoons of the sauce to abowl or ramekin and set aside.
Add the pork to the pot and spoon the pan juices all over it. Cover, cook in the oven for an hour, turning the meat in the sauce from time to time. Turn down the temperature to 130C/260F/gas mark ½ and cook for two hours more, again turning the meat regularly in the sticky juices. Turn down the heat again, this time to 120C/250F/gas mark ¼, and cook for five to six hours more, turning the joint from time to time, until the meat can easily be pulled off the bone. Remove and set aside.
When cool enough to handle, pull off and discard the bones and fatty skin, then shred the meat into bite-size pieces back into the pot. Add the reserved sauce, stir and keep warm.
For the salad, put all the ingredients in a bowl, add a quarter-teaspoon of salt and toss. Stuff the pulled pork into the baguette halves; put the salad in the bread, too, or serve on the side.
Sumac- and mint-rubbed rabbit saddle with seared radicchio
The earthiness of the rabbit works really well with the bitter leaves, sweet garlic and warm pine nuts. Bone the rabbit yourself, or ask your butcher to do it for you. Serves four.
1 whole garlic bulb, cloves separated, skin left on
3½ tbsp olive oil
750g boned rabbit saddles (2-4saddles, depending on size)
1 radicchio rosso di Treviso, cut in half and then into eight wedges
90g pine nuts
1 tbsp lemon juice
1½ tsp sumac
30g chopped parsley
Maldon sea salt
For the rub
1½ tbsp sumac
1½ tbsp dried mint
1½ tbsp olive oil
Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Put the garlic cloves and ateaspoon of oil in a baking tray large enough to hold the rabbit. Stirand roast for seven minutes.
Put the rub ingredients in a small bowl, add a tablespoon of Maldon salt, mix and set aside.
Remove all the sinew from the rabbit saddles. Use your hands to spread the rub all over the saddles, then roll each one lengthways into along cigar. Tie in two or three places with kitchen string, and set aside.
Heat a teaspoon of olive in a sauté pan on a high heat. Sear the saddles for four to five minutes, turning so they colour all over. Transfer to the garlic tray and roast for eight to 12 minutes, until the rabbit is just cooked through and the garlic is soft. Set aside in a warm place to rest.
Pour two teaspoons of oil into the sauté pan, add the radicchio and aquarter teaspoon of salt, and sear for four minutes, turning so it cooks on all sides. Add to the rabbit tray.
Put the pine nuts, the rest of the oil and a third of a teaspoon of salt in the sauté pan, and fry on medium-low heat for three minutes, until golden brown. Add the lemon juice, sumac and parsley, stir and set aside.
Cut the saddles into 1.5cm-thick roundsand divide between four plates with the radicchio and garlic. Spoon on the pine nuts and serve atonce.
