Sod Borough Market.

I went to Southall in Middlesex for a meeting this week and had to wait an hour for someone to turn up, during which time I had a bit of a wander round.
Oh my god, it is an amazing place. I felt like I was in Mumbai on holiday. I think I was the only white face I saw all afternoon and the entire town is like a little bit of India, next Summer I am going to pack my sandals and spend two weeks in Southall soaking up the culture. It is great.

If you ever need some serious food porn, that's where you need to go. The markets are dangerously tempting.

I must have walked down four aisles in quality food where I couldn't identify a single item.

OK, well I know what Dosai are.... but Dhokla, Basundi and Dalvada? Am I really that ignorant?

It was all I could do not to buy lorry loads of new stuff to try.

And this aisle was specially for Chris. Just a snapshot of the different varieties of Bombay Mix on offer.

So we bought a sackful of that (even though I got the wrong one without green lentils) and a sackful of "cornflakes chevda". (No idea, but it does have cornflakes in it!)

I was tempted by the twelvety million different types of rice but managed to hold off and go to this little shop instead.

All your blue deity essentials covered there.

And it was cheap too. How much hairgel do you need for 50p? they obviously have some serious coiffures round here.

Oh, and for future culinary reference, of course you can get jaggery. Getting it to stand still long enough for a proper photo though- that's a bit more difficult.

Things like this make me love my job. And only last week I was having a very different "cultural learning for make benefit glorious nation of Herne Hill".

I had to go to New Malden which is the biggest Korea Town in Europe. Who knew!