Day in the Life of a Faux Gourmet

See how this Faux Gourmet keeps it real

Taste & See:  You know how some times your fridge is just kind of sad?  Not empty, per se, but the ingredients in it don't naturally lend themselves to concoting a meal?  Mine has things like: caramel sauce, fudge sauce, pickled radishes, chutney, soy milk, chicken broth, sourdough starter, corn tortillas, curry paste, and about 30 kinds of sauces in various jars and bottles. Yu-ummmmy. Um, OK.  

Never fear.  There's no need to skip breakfast, go out for lunch & order take-out for dinner (you know who you are...).  Not when you're a faux gourmet.  A Faux Gourmet, mon cherie, beholds an empty fridge and sees an opportunity.  I mean, how else do you think I came upon my classic, much beloved "Tortilla PBJ Crepes?" [On a similar note, see here:]  Yeah. That's what I thought.

Breakfast:  No photo, but it was a sight to behold.  First, the starting ingredients:  

• Old ketchup from Pomme de Terre that I kept after throwing away the leftover fries because it was Just That Good. 
• End of a loaf of bread from a party almost 2 weeks ago. Yeah. I kept it. I've been dutifully eating as much bread as I can to slog through my overactive bread supply but there you have it; I can only eat so much toast. 
• Beautiful Feather Ridge Farm eggs, purchased at Northern Spy Food Co. (the restaurant has a little market in back). 
• Leftover cheeses from said party. 
• Leftover guacamole, from a different party.  I host lots of gatherings, which leaves me with lots of random foods.   It's what I do.
  

Nothing to eat? No sir. In fact, this Faux Gourmet made a ... Mexican-American Eggs Benedict. Or something like that.  Start an egg a-poaching.  Toast slice of bread, spread ketchup & add cheese, toast some more.  Top with egg.  Top that with a dollop of guacamole. Voila!  It helps that the egg is a beautiful, beautiful egg.  The uber-yellow runny yolk over the guacamole is kind of heavenly, you heard it here first.

Lunch: 99 cent Paneer Makhani, procured from Jackson Heights grocery store.  I've had this box in my desk drawer at work for a while, waiting for "one of those days."  It's one of those days.  

I've had this box in my desk drawer at work for a while, waiting for "one of those days."  It's one of those days.  But want to know what 99 cents bought me?

"The simple splendor of Indian cottage cheese in a creamy tomato sauce romanced with a light bouquet herb, kasuri methi, works wonders.  Relish with Tandoori naan bread."

Romanced with??? How do they afford to sell for 99 cents when they pay writers like that? I present for your romancing pleasure, my 99 cent  Paneer Makhani.

Pretty good deal! Really tasty and flavorful, exactly as you'd expect with all that romancing going on.  Paneer texture a bit rubbery but it did come in a box.  Also not the most filling of lunches (there are about 5 paneer cubes & I didn't have the foresight to bring rice), but that's OK; I have leftover eggplant bruschetta from a recent picnic...

Dinner:  "Crashing" reception at a law school reunion reception.  Not really crashing, since I'm invited, but let's be honest:  I'm going for the free cheap wine & canapes before dashing off for more free wine at an art school show.  Here I'm actually going for the show; the free wine is just a side benefit.  Win-win!

Stop 3: Penang Part II

Oh, glory.

Taste & See: I found Little India to be the most charming part of Georgetown. As in Singapore, the vivacious neighborhood was overflowing with the bright colours of Bollywood posters and sari fabric stores, and bouncing to overlapping soundtrack hits. In Singapore, the city is generally modern and reserved; in Georgetown, a bit grungy. Either way, the extravagantly beautiful Little India stands in stark contrast.

And the food- oh, glory! Every corner had a cafeteria-style Indian restaurant with a half dozen regions' foods served up at different stations, the perfect antidote to my inexplicable cravings. Sometimes I yearn for the for mushy warmth of baby-foodesque Indian dishes like Butter Chicken and Palak Paneer, sometimes for the complexity and strangeness of something altogether new. Georgetown offered both lovely versions of the familiar and a few surprises I look forward to tracking down back home.

We spent a good deal of time meandering through town, ostensibly towards a tourist site but more often wandering from one food break to another. One day we had barely finished a bowl of Malaysian-style won ton noodles (Giow) when we passed a catch-all Indian place, brightly done up in greens and yellows.


Who could resist the red-rubbed Tandoori Chicken sticks roasting? Certainly not us.


Served with tamarind & cilantro sauces:


It is practically our tourism duty to consume as much Roti as possible during our stay (or so we told ourselves):



Our last night in Georgetown we traipsed through the rain in search of Sri Ananda Bawan, a hallowed Guide Book destination where we would at last find A's much-coveted banana-leaf meals.


We had been informed that upon sitting down, a slough of vegetarian Indian food would appear on banana leaves before us as if by magic. We made the mistake of doubting the oracle and proceeded to order a "few" dishes. In the mean time, the table began to fill with things we had not ordered . . .

First, the banana leaves topped with scoops of a trio of potato-based veg dishes reminiscent of church potluck fare-- though far more flavourful:


A trio of sauces (from top left, coconut chutney, red garlic sauce, and masala) splashed on in generous quantities:


A basket of crispy Papadums:


Topped off with a few bowls of Dahl:


The food is making A pretty happy at this point. Little do we realize this is merely the beginning of the onslaught.


Out came a Pakora:


The odd Black Pepper Chicken, lightly breaded chicken chunks in a sauce of curry-like consistency, with a flavor I'd expect from a Chinese restaurant:


Two more curries, with ladyfingers (okra) & mutton (here, goat rather than lamb):


One of my favorite dishes consisted of a something like a hamburger-patty made of beans and spices, chopped up into small pieces on a grill & served with a dipping sauce.



We made valiant efforts to consume this feast . . .


I, especially, deserve an honourable mention for foregoing silverware-- even with the soupiest dahl. Following A's lead, I made a little ball of rice and scooped it directly into my mouth with one hand, attempting to imitate A but with a far higher percentage of the food winding up decorating my face.


I was proud of my efforts, but rather delighted to finally have clean hands at the end:


Despite all the food wasted smeared on my face, we were ultimately no match for the banana-leaf feast.


In fact, we ended up with a guilt-inducing quantity of leftovers. All of that delicious food, never to be enjoyed to its full potential . . . how tragic.


I suppose that is what we get for mistrusting our sources. Let this be a lesson to you, dear reader. Traverse the Little Indias of Asia and order to your heart's content . . . but know you will always be left lamenting the fact that your hunger is no match for the volume of glorious food.

Second Stop: Kuala Lumpur

An assault on the senses, in the best possible way.

Taste & See: I will ever associate Malaysia's food with, as my traveling partner A put it, "an assault on the senses-" power food, if you will:


Malaysian cuisine incorporates tastes from China to India, and the myriad places in between, including predictable regional staples like flaky roti, fried noodles, curries and rice, but with distinct notes of flavors you don't expect. It's as if the Malay chefs at an ancient culinary convention sampled the best their neighbors had to offer and said, "that's nice, but wouldn't it be better with a dash of . . . ."

The food as a whole looks like fall in the Northeast, with healthy doses of vibrant spices like nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves turning piles of rice bright yellow and infusing chunks of meat with a rich earthiness . . .


And making soupy curries in crayola shades like burnt umber, pumpkin and saffron.



Kuala Lumpur, or KL, with its 1.6 million people, felt small compared to Bangkok's sprawling urban jungle of 12 million. This, despite the presence of the famous Petronas Twin Towers, currently the tallest twin buildings in the world.


However, KL definitely won top prize in the "Inventive tropical Christmas decorations" category. And in a city (country, really) where no use of twinkle lights are spared, and no tacky decoration is turned away, this genius Santa depiction surely takes the cake.


Most of the good food I had in KL came from poorly-lit, undecorated, cafeteria-esque restaurants with unwiped tables and aluminum trays. The fancier places I saw tended to serve foreign food. I wonder if this steakhouse is halal? Most food in Malyasia is, as to be "Malay" is to be Muslim, though there are substantial (non-Muslim) Chinese and Indian populations as well.


Each of these groups represent a specific strain of Malaysian cuisine, which also include Mamak, or Indian Muslim food; and Nyonya, invented by the Peranakan people of Singapore and Malaysia and combining Chinese and Southeast Asian ingredients (Inter-Asian fusion!). But the purpose of this particular entry is not to give you the history of Malaysian cuisine, especially when people more knowledgeable than I am have already compiled such a guide. The purpose is, rather to make you hungry, so let's get to the good stuff.

If you see this:


You can expect you'll soon be eating this:


Those pudgy white balls become roti canai when grilled in massive amounts of oil, a flat, stretchy bread served with a small bowl of a curry sauce as a dipping sauce, eaten with the right hand. The tea in the photo above is teh tarik, or pulled tea, a Malaysian tea-cappuccino. It gets a frothy, foamy top (though not visible in the picture above) as it is poured back and forth between two containers, which also conveniently mixes the (usually thick and gooey) condensed milk into the tea. Teh halia is another delicious version, adding ginger for a bit of a kick. I had at least one, sometimes two, steaming, foaming glass at every meal.

Roti canai is so tasty, it is eaten twice a day in Malaysia- for breakfast, and after nightfall, for the fourth meal. Take that Taco Bell.

These photos are from a very satisfying respite eaten at Restoran Shukran, one of the unpretentious cafeterias, on New Year's Day after a long day trekking to Hindu caves and shoving my way up and down Chinatown.


Most of the restaurants of this sort offer a little of everything, from stir-fried rice or noodles . . .



To buffet trays of veg, chicken and mutton (here, goat, not lamb) curries splashing exuberantly overboard.


The roti-maker takes a break:


As does this satisfied customer:


The next day, while exploring Masjid Negara, the national mosque with a bright blue jaggedy rooftop symbolizing loyalty, an 18-point blue dome representing the 13 states of Malaysia and the 5 pillars of Islam, and purple choir robes available for rent to improperly dressed visitors; & the lovely Islamic arts museum nearby, I was pleased to discover a tidy little cafeteria directly opposite the mosque itself, saving us from the white-linen, embossed menu cafe at the museum. How to choose from such a feast?


For my traveling partner A, mutton curry, saffron rice, and pickled cucumber salad + iced milo= the picture of happiness:


For me, mee goreng, fried noodles with chicken marinated in thick red sauce, doused with a bit of lime:



I'm continually amazed by how the most beautiful dishes, full of life and color, come from the dowdiest restaurants, the humblest chefs. Malaysia is definitely an sensory assault I'd like to keep coming back to.

More to come- next stop, Penang.

First Stop: Singapore

My dear reader,

Thank you ever so much for your patience as I scurried about Southeast Asia photographing (and let's be honest, eating) quite a bit of food. The good news I have more SE Asia material waiting to be posted than I know what to do with, not to mention the backlog from the holiday season. The bad news is, well, I have more material than I know what to do with. But food photos tend to be more interesting than all this talk, talk, talk, so let's make a deal to help us both: I'll keep things a little more photo-essay, a little less essay-essay and you just enjoy mountains of photos. Of course, I'll still include recipes when I can so you can enjoy mountains of food as well.

Sound good? Then shall we begin?

First stop: Singapore, land of hawker centers and self-proclaimed "Food Capital of the World".

Taste & See: The Lonely Planet makes hawker centers look like raucous snacking Bacchanalia, full of rowdy people stuffing faces in crowded, hectic fashion. Not so. The centers I visited were all spacious and organized, with English menus and numbered tables.

One contained an enormous sign boasting in both English and Chinese the top 10 Singaporean dishes one must try: chili crab, char kway teow, carrot cake, chicken rice.

The "must try" chili crab: there's no way you're staying neat and clean when you eat it.


The always reliable dim sum: from left to right, cha siew bao (red pork bun), shu mai (pork and shrimp stuffed egg wrappers) ha gao (shrimp wrapped in translucent wheat starch). If you can't make it to a hawker center you can always buy these at 7-11 . . .


The best food I had in Singapore, however, was not on this marketing-savvy list, but in far more colorful Little India.



Drinking 'pulled tea,' chai, made frothy by pouring between the tin cup and accompanying bowl, and eating a dosa, a big crepe-like roll from South India filled with potatoes. Sources say it tastes best if you eat with your hands (right hand only!) . . .

And from a banana leaf . . . I believe the white sauce is coconut based, though I'm not certain exactly what the other accompanying sauces are. It is lovely to watch them ladled with a splash from giant messy tins.


Not everything was roses, however. On one of my last nights my traveling partner and I were stuck in the rain, desperate for (and not finding) a place to eat. We chanced upon a Malay cafe with lovely pictures of roti, and thought we'd hit gold.


Not so. This was the "roti" we got: eggs in a baguette with chili-katsup on the side. Its like Malay food goes to McDonalds- not a happy instance of fusion. (I should take this opportunity to not only credit A for not complaining when faced with McRoti, but suffering through my constant food-photography.)


Generally things in Singapore tended to be a big. Unlike Thai street food, which comes in tiny bites, the centers serve mostly meal-sized portions (dim sum, above, is one exception), preventing solo or short-term travelers from experiencing more than a few on the list.

More endearing were the mangoes as big as my head:


If I were a Western wedding, my ego would be smashed by the larger-than-life Chinese banquets served at the weddings I attended, one of which was choreographed to a light-and-music show.

The appetizer plate: Prawns with fruit salad, Fried seafood toast, BBQ pork coins, Marinated jelly fish with chili sauce and sesame seeds, Smoked Chicken


The rest of the menu consisted of Braised shark's fin soup with crab meat, bamboo fungus and fish; with vegetable crackers, Roast duck with vegetable crackers, Steamed red pearl garoupa with Superior sauce, Boiled "Live" Prawns with Chinese "Hua Tiao" wine; Fresh scallops with nameko mushrooms, Thai asparagus and Oyster sauce; & Fragrant rice with chicken and Chinese sausage wrapped in Lotus Leaf. The pile of shrimp heads left over after we'd all had our fill of "drunken-shrimp":


Such a banquet calls for a magnificent wedding cake:


We, however, were served double boiled white fungus with hashima and red dates. The cake was from a 'wedding exposition' onto which I stumbled in the Bugis area. I think I would have preferred the cake, culturally insensitive though it may be.

I did try some tastier sweets in Singapore, however. First, at hawker stands- Ice dessert: piles of ice on doused with flavored syrups on top of various jellied bits, topped with beans. Not my cup of tea, but people love it. See also, a quirky Singaporean beverage in the back with Whatever? you never know what flavor you're going to get, kind of like the mystery Airheads we used to eat at the roller rink. Anyone feel me?

Even better (call me a Western snob) was the red-velvet cake at a local cafe, Food for Thought:


This cake and other goodies are made by local women- "Aunties"- in a bid to promote their independence via cottage industries.


Food For Thought also lives out the values like "Help End Poverty" and "Build Community" proclaimed on giant posters on the wall opposite the kitchen by providing free drinking water in exchange for donations to build wells for the poor world wide, providing free tutoring classes to underprivileged kids.


The coffee was good and the milk was nicely foamed, something I'm picky about in Asia (not a fan of sweetened condensed milk, as used in typical Asian coffees).


Food for Thought is located at 420 North Bridge Road.


Singapore has no shortage of good food and interesting culinary moments, and they're not limited to Hawker centers. Try as I might, I barely scratched the surface in the few days I spent there. Thankfully I had a second chance in neighboring Malaysia (see the next few entries), both a huge influence on Singaporean cuisine and a similar a mix of many different cultures. Ultimately, delicious though Singapore was, my love of Thai street food remains unchallenged.