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My main one is vegan food. Before I had access to a kitchen to make my own food, it used to involve collecting, curating and creating recipes, but has since moved onto creating (and endlessly recreating, adapting and morphing) certain flavour and texture profiles.
The current big one I've been very obsessed with making and eating for the last few years, is variations on hoisin mock duck wraps.
The latest iteration is a salad wrap, with leaves of nappa cabbage as the wrap, a layer of vegan garlic mayo with chilli crisp, mock duck, green onion, cucumber, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, hoisin sauce, corriander leaves, and another cabbage leaf to cover/ close the wrap. This probably has the best textures so far and tastes really good!
Making/eating kimchi is a similarly intense interest/obsession. So is hotpot. I fucking love hotpot.
My secondary major interest fluctuates between several different things, but is currently perfume.
I'm very into creating (and endlessly recreating, adapting and morphing) certain scent profiles, and collecting perfumes.
I like to do this through layering different perfumes on my skin and clothes, so I can highlight certain notes/sensory aspects for myself (that may not be apparent on other people's skin chemistry, so this, like with my other interest, is a very subjective fascination!).
Over the span of three days (between showers) I like to start in one place with my layering combinations and go on scent journeys as the notes morph and fade, and I add to them with other complimentary scents and see how far I can go. Notes linger on clothing longer and differently to how they do on skin, so as I'm layering over several days it builds up in fascinating ways. It's very interesting to me too finding which layering combinations work one way but not the other.
Lately I've enjoyed starting with a base combo of Mauboussin Mauboussin (resinous yet juicy plums and lots of ylang ylang) and Musamam White Intense by Lattafa (juicy spiced oranges and too much ambroxan)- and then taking that in interesting directions as it fades over the day, like layering on more spices and wood notes, and then when that fades, onto various ouds and roses.
Or adding a Stronger With You flanker (sweet and aromatic with chestnuts + individual flanker variations), then when that starts to fade leading it with fragrances full of ginger, vanilla, lactonic nutty notes and patchouli.
Being enveloped in layers of beautiful fragrances is such big sensory good times for me and discovering new combinations is so pleasing.
Also before anyone comes at me for this, I live alone and don't wear any fragrance when I go outside, so I'm really not hurting anyone with this hobby!
Oh man I've recently started getting into fragrances... I'd never realized how complex (and expensive) they can be! I discovered Kayali's Yum Pistachio Gelato from a makeup youtuber I follow and it's all been downhill from there. Lately I've been layering Ellis Brooklyn's Super Amber with Phlur's Heavy Cream, and I keep sneaking little sniffs of myself throughout the day... and sniffing my bra when I take it off for the night... send help!
What are some of your favorite unexpected notes to combine?
Ugh, I know right?! All my spare coin is going towards perfumes!
Yum Pistachio is gorgeous! I love all the dupes of it too, all the Arabic houses are on top form lately.
Your combination of Super Amber and Heavy Cream sounds hella sexy!
Ok, so here's a REALLY strange but beautiful scent combination I've found, let me try and set the scene it makes for you first:
You're in an coastal pine forest during a lightening storm. It's night. You can smell the wet earth underfoot and the forest behind you. Just before the rain starts up again, you're looking out over the sea as it crashes against the cliffside, sea water mists the air and sheets of lightening illuminate the world.
This was from about 5 spritzes of Vanilla Vibes by JHAG (salty non-gourmand vanilla) with a modest spritz of Quorum by Antonio Puig (beast mode aromatic oakmoss) over it. Encre Noir by Lalique could probably be substituted for the Quorum for a similar affect, but you'll need to spray a lot more of it as Quorum is very, very strong.
The way the sea salty solar notes of Vanila Vibes play against the dank mossy woods and grapefruit of Quorum, it's so visual for me. And there's this ozoneic smell they form together that isn't constant but is electric and kinda how I imagine lightening smells.
Do you have any unexpectedly beautiful scent combinations? Please share if so!
Oh man, you hooked me from
and it just got better from there. I'll have to try this!
I'm still building up my collection, so so far the most interesting I've come up with is Super Amber / Heavy Cream. I've been ordering a bunch of sample vials of things that sound interesting, trying to pin down what notes I like best and which I don't. So hopefully soon I can come up with creative combos like yours!
Don't be afraid of just amassing a bunch of 'cheapies' to start with, there are so many fantastic fragrances made by renowned perfumers/houses, that you can buy for under £50 (€/$/etc) to train your nose on and figure out what you like.
That's actually how I have Vanilla Vibes and Quorum, I literally just blind bought a load of cheaper perfumes going by what looked interesting on Fragrantica or was recommended on youtube, and I would likely never have bought or learnt to pick out and enjoy their notes had I gotten tiny testers first.
Also many cheap Arabic perfumes (originals and dupes) are surprisingly good, don't be too afraid of exploring that side of this world either! Al Rehab is a great place to start if you're unsure/skint, Choco Musk is quite possibly the best milk chocolate perfume in the world and you can get a 50ml bottle for like £6. The rest of their scents are similarly priced and pretty damn good too from what I've tried do far.
Ha if I keep buying perfumes I really will be skint! I'll have to check out the Arabic fragrances, make my money stretch a bit further!
What do you use for the fake duck meat?
I’ve gotten pretty obsessed with making good seitan, but there’s just so many variables. I’m mostly a texture person, and I find that the place where lots of vegan recipes fail is in the texture department. So that’s where my passion for vegan cooking leads me.
The Linda McCartney Vegetarian Shredded Hoisin Duck have been my go to for a while as they're in most of the big supermarkets here and I can get them delivered to my house.
I like to defrost them and use them 'raw' (they're already fully cooked) because I find the texture gets weird when they're prepared according to the package instructions.
Any Asian superstore will likely have many varieties of better, and probably cheaper, mock duck though. If I lived near one I would be so fat!
I had a seitan phase a few years back, I got really into finding good spice mixes to include in the dough for maximum 'meatiness'.
I made and tried to like the 'lunch meat' style seitan a few times, but memories of being a kid having to eat actual lunch meat (and how slimy and sometimes gritty from gristle it was) really put me off it.
Texture wise with seitan, I liked gently beating the kneaded dough flat with the end of a rolling pin, and then tightly rolling and coiling it up, wrapping it tightly to steam, and then shredding it and adding bite sized bits to hotpot.
What's your current favourite seitan recipe? What texture do you like your seitan?