Archive for the 'Food and Drink' Category

While we were on holiday in Crete recently, we spent many long, lazy dinners at the tavernas in our little mountain village. The tavernas spread their tables out in the open air under a light bamboo canopy or a shelter naturally woven from grape vines. Looking up at the stars beyond, we could see the nascent grapes begin to bulge on their tiny stems.

After the meal, we would sit back, stuffed on barbeque lamb or pork chops and baclava. They would then bring us a complimentary fruit basket and a small carafe of Raki on the house.

Raki is a clear colourless spirit, like vodka and seems to be a local speciality which the taverna proudly served us with a flourish. You pour it from the chilled carafe into small thimble shot glasses and knock it back. And feel the burn.

It made me think of arak, a clear colourless spirit, like vodka, that is drunk in Malaysia. I wonder whether how Raki found its way to Malaya (as it would have been back then in the past) from Crete to evolve into arak. Or perhaps it travelled from Malaya to Crete? Most likely, it would have been through the traders from the Middle East, just a short hop East from Crete and regular visitors to Malaya and Indonesia many centuries ago - and who still have a strong connection with modern Malaysia. And both Crete and Malaya in that distant time were hubs in major trading routes from East to West.

I savoured the strong aromatic alcohol burning my palate as I enjoyed this unexpected global connection. It was not my favourite taste - rather like medicine, or even methlyated spirits. Still, I toasted the ancient international adventurers and took another acrid sip.

Photo: thanks to AcornMan at virtualtourist.com

Here is a fabulous site to get you set for the weekend. It’s a site completely dedicated to cakes from around the world, called Cake Tourism. The bloggers there have this to say: “We are intrepid cake tourists, travelling the globe in search of amazing cake. Aghast at the lack of cake information in tour guides we will tell you the reader where to go for the best cake, wherever you are in the world. Obviously this may take some time but we’re willing to do what it takes: eating lots of cake.”

Every post is a review of a cake eaten somewhere in some part of the world and illustrated with the most mouth-watering photos you’ve ever seen of cakes, glorious cakes.

The site is also on the look out for Cake Submissions: “Got a cake tip? Send us a photo and a few words about the cake and where you ate it and we might feature it.”.

The best cakes I’ve had were in Austria. There’s something about the land of mountains and goatherds and music that also gives them the creativity and ingredients to create the fluffiest, creamiest, tastiest cakes in the world. They are like those classic images of ladies in white floating about the ballroom floor to the lilt of a Viennese waltz. In contrast, their savoury dishes don’t quite have the same pizzazz, in my view, being somewhat bland and heavy.

In contrast, the cakes in the UK tend to be quite stodgy and heavy - think fruit cakes and Victoria sponges. They are the sort of things to give you energy after a cold, bracing walk across the moors and eaten to the sound of Morris dancing, perhaps.

Asia doesn’t really do sweet cakes very well. The strength of Asian cuisine for me is in the savoury dishes that are tangy and aromatic and light. Without easy and cheap access to wheat flour, traditionally, sweet things are made from rice flour and the texture can take some getting used to for the Western palette.

What do you think? Am I being unfair to Asian cakes? Am I wrong about UK cakes? Or perhaps you have a view on Austrian dishes? Add a comment and share your views.

The durian is a South East Asian fruit that is so stinky it is banned from airplanes and smart hotels. The smell lingers like a bad fart combined with the ripest blue chees and crusty hard fetid socks that have been worn for weeks in hot humid weather without a change. Mmmmmm! I bet that’s made your mouth water.

But that’s what Asians - and in particular, Malaysians - love about the fruit. The smell is hideous. But as you eat the sticky, custardy, soft flesh, the taste is aromatic and sweet and creamy. And then you have to live with the most dreadful halitosis rotting sewer breath for hours on end.

So some smart guy has come up with a variety of durian that doesn’t smell. Thai scientist Songpol Somsri apparently spent 30 years of his life researching this project, according to the Seattle Times. The article goes on to say that in Malaysia, durian is prized as an aphrodisiac and a farmer is quoted as saying, “If the durian doesn’t have a strong smell the customer only pays one-third the price.”

I picked up this story from Seth Godin, the marketing guru, who uses it to make a great analogy for marketers who try to fix what they perceive as a problem - by focusing on the people who are not buying the product. So marketers aim to fix the problems in order to get the non-buyers to become buyers - in the meantime, destroying the key qualities that the enthusiastic existing buyers rave about and thereby turning away their core customers.

Personally I’m not a great fan and whenever my family have a great durian feast, I have to keep my distance from them all when we’re chatting afterwards! Still, it seems unnatural and sacriligeous to be tampering with the distinctive quality that makes a durian a durian. I’m not sure I’d eat more durian if I was offered the non-stinky variety - the taste and texture of the eating experience just doesn’t do it for me. I’m much more of a mango fan and I’d choose mango over any other fruit any day. So I guess I’m inclined to agree with Seth. What’s the point of a non-stinky durian if the core customers don’t want it - and neither do the ones who never wanted it in the first place?

Photo: thanks to the Seattle Times

I was talking to a friend last week about the etiquette of an English dinner party. In the old days there used to be fairly rigid rules about how to behave but in the 21st century, where we’re all much less formal, you’d think that when someone invited you to dinner, it was just dinner and you would turn up and eat and that was all there was to it. But the more we explored it, the more there still seemed to be unwritten rules and rituals around the English dinner party. Here’s a list of things my friend and I came up with as essential etiquette when you’re invited to or giving a modern English dinner party:

1. These days you’re usually invited by email or telephone. Gone are the days of hand-written letters by fountain pen for your run-of-the-mill dinner parties. And with that, much of the over-formal formalities.

2. Most people ask what they should bring and are usually told: nothing, just yourselves or red or white wine. A Chinese young man newly arrived in England brought a bottle of sherry to a dinner we were both invited to although I specifically warned him ahead to bring wine (”Oh, I like sherry,” he said) and then spent the whole evening beating himself up that he’d brought the wrong thing when he handed over the bottle and the host had looked bewildered.

Even if you are told to bring nothing, you should always bring something - the best bet being a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates. At the more casual end among good friends, you might be asked to bring dessert - we reckon that anything gooey and indulgent from Marks & Spencers should do the trick.

3. At dinner, the host usually has an idea in their mind of a seating arrangement even if there are no name cards for the table. The idea is to get a good mix round the table of people who don’t know each other but who might get on well, splitting up couples so they don’t end up next to each other or opposite each other while being not too far away from each other (diagonal seems to work best, we decided). In the old days, the host would also have to worry about seating boy-girl-boy alternately but in these modern times of girl-girl and boy-boy couples, that rule is by necessity much less rigid.

4. The old adage “no sex, religion or politics” still applies. The most painful dinner parties I’ve been to have usually been the result of someone unaccustomed to dinner parties ranting on about one or other of those topics. Everyone ends up feeling bruised and exhausted.

5. The idea is to be amusing, witty and entertaining, keeping business talk to a minimum. The objective is to end the evening with a warm glow from the food, wine and company. The rest of the world can be out there battling it out over sex, religion and politics and you’ve got the grind of making a living and whatever difficulties may be challenging you at that point. But for a few hours one evening, the world is that convivial dinner table and you can laugh with some friends and delight in a good meal and feel that life is good.

Pic: thanks to allposters.com

When I met Lydia Teh for lunch in Kuala Lumpur, we went to Delifrance in one of the many malls - a chain of cafes selling French-style pastries and coffee. In the UK, the equivalent is Delice de France and it sells croissants and chocalate or almond croissants with savoury flavours such as Chicken Feuillette or Ham and Cheese Croissant.

In the KL Delifrance, I was tickled and delighted to find Green Curry Feuillette and Beef Rendang Feuillette, the ultimate in fusion food. I had the Green Curry Feuillette and it was spicy and yummy, the combination of curry and flaky pastry reminding me of curry puffs.

If you know of any other fusion foods like this, do email me or add a comment!

It was only one week. I was in KL for only one week. And yet, I seem to have got very round and chubby from all the eating I did.

My parents and I spent much of the time trying to work out which restaurants I absolutely had to go and eat at. I only had a limited number of mealtimes in my week - lunch and dinner times 7 days equal 14 meals only! I needed to maximise them efficiently - rather like the best 5 Malaysian books to bring back with me in my suitcase, I had to identify the best 14 meals to have.

Let me say that of those 14 meals, the ones below ranked in the top 3:

Pic 1: Roast Suckling Piggy at Green View Restaurant, Petaling Jaya. Crispy, crunchy pork crackling to die for!

Pic 2: Giant prawns in chilli and garlic sauce, also at Green View. The pic is a bit blurry as I was too excited by the site of them! Each one was larger than my hand and full of succulent, tasty flesh.

Pic 3: The best “char siu” (barbecued pork) in the world, with roast duck, curry chicken, sour spicy vegetable and “archar” (curry pickle) at Siew Ngap Fei, Pudu. In London, the char siu is usually dyed red to con you into thinking it’s barbecued but here, it is truly barbecued with a caramelly, crunchy juicy crust. I used up two lunches eating here!

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There’ve been some terrific comments over the last few weeks. I don’t have space to highlight all of them but here are some that you might enjoy.

The podcast interview with James Wood drew a number of comments from poets and poetry fans, O’Shea Jackson, Rob and Calvin Broadus. James’s remark about Scottish poets lacking ambition prompted a quick retort from Rob. Calvin gently mocked James’s way of adding multi-textual references in his manner of speech but also cheered James on, saying that everyone MUST read James’s poems.

My post on the joys of malt loaf awhile back drew a recipe request from Kim Lewis. Yeeton has kindly responded and posted up a recipe for malt loaf in his comment – I hope Kim will come back and let us know how she gets on if she uses that recipe. Pedro defends the loaf as being healthy – especially if you are a runner or cyclist. I definitely agree that it’s great for an energy boost when you’re outdoors doing vigorous exercise.

Jennifer comments that she always checks out guys whom she sees knitting and she is clearly familiar with the film about guys knitting that I posted up. The pics of knitted cupcakes brought comments from émigré and Annegret, who marvelled at the skills of the creators. I laughed out loud at Wei’s response to the cupcakes: “like men… cute, but pointless.”

Rj gave me a link to a Singaporean online radion station in response to my post on listening to the wireless. Thanks for that!

Ted Mahsun, whom I mentioned in my post on where to submit your manuscript, has complemented that post with some advice on how to submit short stories to US magazines on his blog. Thanks for adding to the community of knowledge, Ted.

Vandana is a Daphne du Maurier fan and will be visiting the du Maurier festival in Cornwall this year. She asked me to recommend a place to stay and I emailed her to say that I Googled for a self-catering cottage and suggested she could Google for a B&B. I’ve asked her to write up a short report of her tour of the festival if she does go and to submit it to Fusion View – I hope she will as it would be great to have an “our reporter from Cornwall” piece on all things du Maurier on this site.

You may remember Nicky Harman, the translator whose first-person piece I featured awhile back. She was looking for an agent for her translations of a Chinese novel into English. Her article about the translation process posted on Fusion View was spotted by a publisher in China who contacted me, wanting to get in touch with Nicky. Nicky emailed me a few weeks ago to say that that publisher has now invited her to discuss a possible translation project and she is also in discussions with a literary agent in the UK who checked her out on Fusion View. Rock on, Nicky!

The discussion about how the Japanese occupation on Malaya is written continues with a comment from jack who tells how his Japanese friend in college did not know about the past of his own country.

Rosaline Ting adds a comment to tell Fusion View readers about her play Journeys at the Wimbledon Theatre in London. Let me know if you go to see it and would like to contribute a review to Fusion View.

Kenny Mah, a Malaysian writer, has created a cool banner for the sidebar of his blog displaying details of the LitBlogger event that I will be taking part in on Saturday 24 February in Kuala Lumpur - he shares the link to it in his comment that he posted here. Thanks, Kenny!

Tunku Halim makes a good point that people who use obscenities too much in their daily speech just makes them boring rather than shocking. He also queried where he can buy my books - Tunku, you can get them from www.amazon.co.uk, or click on the links in the sidebar of this blog. Or you can order them at a good bookshop in your area.

Peter added a thought-provoking comment on a previous comments roundup, highlighting the differences between different Chinese communities in the UK. His picture of the diversity within the Chinese overseas groups makes me think laughingly of the recent case when a Scottish judge let off a Chinese person from a driving offence because we all look alike and it couldn’t be ascertained without a doubt that the accused was the person driving the car in the traffic camera photo. We don’t look alike, really we don’t, your honour.

Finally, my post on maintaining an authentic image prompted some musings from yeeton on blogs and blogging and also some advice from Sandy Dumont encouraging me to try some light lipstick instead of throwing out make-up altogether!

Photo of cattle round up thanks to boss lady ranch.com

In some ways, I suppose it was just as well that we were offline last weekend, which was the 13th anniversary of Angie and me getting it together. Being cut off from the virtual world meant that we could spend time with each other in the real world without being distracted by emails etc.

We went for a walk along the Thames from London Bridge eastwards to Rotherhithe, taking in views towards London across the river that we had never seen before. It was a gloriously sunny day, and deliciously warm for early February. The warehouses and docks along the south bank of the river had now been transformed into lovely apartments and housing right up against historic pubs and important archaeological sites.

We came across the Mayflower pub right on the river, where 400 years ago, the Mayflower taking the Pilgrim Fathers to America was berthed. The Rotherhithe Tunnel that now features on daily traffic reports was built by the Brunels, father and son, its location marked by a giant red iron machine that looked like iconic modern art.

For foodies, I really recommend Borough market by London Bridge station on a Saturday. We headed there for lunch after our walk and it was thronging with trendy crowds, buying organic foodstuffs from the stalls and chomping on freshly made roast meat baguettes and spicy oriental barbecued dishes as they strolled along the streets. We had lunch at Fish! Restaurant with superb views of Southwark cathedral through its glass ceiling – I had yummy grilled swordfish and Angie had fish pie, followed by sticky toffee pudding: perfect for a winter’s day.

It was good to be reminded of these things that we’ve always loved doing together (apart from being netheads) – exploring hidden corners of London, taking long walks and indulging in good food!

Today, I’d like to share some highlights from comments that were posted on Fusion View in the few weeks before Xmas.

First, thanks to jennifer for her Christmas wishes. Happy New Year to you, jennifer - and also to all Fusion View readers and visitors.

Thanks also to everyone who added comments and emailed me following the feature in StarMag about this blog, in particular to julie yee, say lee, senghooi, lmsell and bibliobibuli. Bibliobibuli discussed the question of reading habits in Malaysia, prompted by my Book Lovers Poll - the current results of the poll show that of 47 people who voted, the majority (46.8%) read more than 40 books a year. 23.4% read between 2 and 10 books a year. The remaining number of voters read between 10-40 books a year. The poll isn’t very scientific of course but I like to infer from it that Fusion View readers are generally pretty literate, genuine book lovers!

We also got a query from sonia , another British resident in France who is keen to make malt loaf and doesn’t know where to get malt extract. Can anyone help? Sonia, I wonder if you might have to get it by mail order eg from Fortnum & Mason or one of those stores that deliver overseas.

Returning to the literary theme, pey and burhanuddin have added some more background information on Yiyun Li, the award-winning short story writer from mainland China. Silvia shares her experiences of writing in numerous languages and how German helps her hide her emotions and how she finds herself expressing her thoughts naturally in three different languages!

On mind and body matters, frank fernandis picked up on my post on painful feet awhile back and notes the lack of support for women with bound feet while andrew and tera ponder on how we can learn from water, in response to the film of a bursting water ballon.

And there is always the subject of food on Fusion View - yeeton advises us to to boycott bad restaurants in response to my post on the concept of “heong”.

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We’ve been having a great discussion about language and identity on Fusion View recently, with a number of comments from American and European perspectives as well as the East/ West view. I’ve also featured the longer comment by Matthew G on how being bi-lingual in English and Japanese brings out different aspects of his personality.

I had all these thoughts present in my mind this week when we went out to eat in London and found ourselves yet again having an extortionately expensive and depressingly untasty meal. It’s tiring to have one’s tastebuds dismayed and one’s wallet emptied so many times in London. It’s not just English food I’m feeling grumpy about - it’s cuisine from anywhere in the world served up in England, and specifically London. Perhaps in London and the high rents and a sense that the city is so huge that you don’t really have to offer great food, there’ll be enough people coming along to keep your restaurant afloat. Or perhaps it’s a state of mind.

When talking about food in Chinese, we have the word “heong”, which has no direct translation into English. In my mind, it means a combination of tasty, delicious, aromatic and lip-smacking. The taste occurs in the nose and palate as well as just the tongue. It involves more than just a taste like salty or sour or sweet - there are flavours and aromas and scents that happen as you chew and savour your mouthful. Sometimes, it’s about fried garlic or caramelized soy sauce or coriander or any other spice and other times it’s just about the aroma and flavour of whatever is the essence of the dish emerging.

I think it’s significant that there is no direct equivalent word or direct translation of this concept in English. If you don’t get the concept, how can you get the thing itself?

So if no-one around you cares about food being “heong”, why bother to try and create that experience for them just as a matter of course?

It is of course not true to say that all restaurants in England are awful and I am not saying that at all. I just think that there are a great many that are outrageously priced for the kind of tasteless dishes they offer up and it takes a lot of effort to find a good reasonably priced restaurant in England. In Malaysia, you can go to any road side stall run by someone from the back of their motorbike and have a really yummy laksa or fried noodles or satay for the equivalent of 50p. People expect their food to be “heong”, even at that end of the spectrum. Sigh. I feel very homesick for some “heong” food right now!