Food, Travel, and Politics

Haikus for the Humble Papadum

2008-08-15T01:35:00.006-04:00

Papadum Haiku # 1:

Pretty papadum,

Oh so beautiful and round,

You make me happy.

Papadum Haiku # 2:

Papad and chutney

Brim with sensuality.

I want to bite you.

In the days leading up to my final PhD comprehensive exam, I barely have time to sleep, much less eat. Papadums and mango chutney are therefore godsends - they are the perfect study snack and are infinitely better than (ugh) bags of crisps or popcorn. Rewarding myself with papadums after hours of studying is the only way I've been able to get through dense, dull texts.

On a random note, FR, who I befriended for unethical foodie purposes in Santo Domingo last summer, sent me an email. Apparently, he is now in Australia. I wonder if his dad has now started working for a 5 star hotel at Sydney or whether he is now cooking for a famous celebrity, such as Nicole Kidman - after all, his credibility cooking for celebs was established after a few years' whipping up specialties for the Rolling Stones. In any case, FR's email served to remind me of the stark contrast between my carefree DR existence last summer, and my nerdy PhD-student-existence this time around. Sigh. Welcome to EA's pity-party-for-one.

Now I really do need papadums to stop being despondent. Wish me luck and I will emerge from my graduate-school-induced doldrums in 5 days...

Cheap Food and Booze Toronto (2008 edition)

2008-08-06T03:41:00.017-04:00

Theoretically, graduate students are so passionate about their respective dissertation topics that everything else - financial security, a normal 9-to-5 work schedule, adulthood - can be put on the backburner. Indeed, we soon discover that 'normal' people consider us a peculiar group of masochistic nerds embodying a bewildering series of paradoxes: on the one hand, we carry a wealth of knowledge on the most obscure academic topics imaginable as a result of doing a lot of reading but we are also, on the other hand, woefully unable to participate in standard 'adult' topics of conversation such as real estate, the stock market, and investment portfolios; on the one hand, we obviously have some book smarts but on the other hand, no one reallyunderstands why we would 'waste' our twenties and thirties in academia when our purported intelligence can be put to 'better' use in more pragmatic (and arguably more meaningful) fields like law or finance; on the one hand...well, you get the drift.

In order to survive years of graduate school-induced penury, we need to learn how to stretch our below-minimum-wage scholarships to cover food, rent, and 'entertainment' expenses. Behold, then, my 2008 list of cheap eating and drinking establishments in Toronto; while we may not be able to comfortably retire to our $300 000 Queen Street West lofts or discuss our (lack of) investments, we can at least prove to our non-graduate-student friends that being in academia does not mean that we are penniless killjoys:

Cheap Meals:
1. Restaurant Nazareth (969 Bloor West) - Small and unassuming, Nazareth is a hidden treasure located a few steps west of the Bloor/Ossington TTC stop. It is the best Ethiopian restaurant in the city: the tibs, kitfo, and vegetarian platter are all plentiful, savoury, and delightfully spicy. Best of all, if you invite another person, two platters and a drink cost under $10.
2. Yummy Barbeque (561 Bloor West) - Yummy BBQ has $3.99 barbecue lunch specials every day; of the specials, my favorite is the spicy pork barbecue and rice, which comes with four side dishes! The dinner combo for two people is also a good deal because it contains a sampling of the various barbecue dishes they are offering, as well as deep fried zucchini, macaroni salad, and rice.
3. Sarah's Falafel and Shawarma (487 Bloor West) - Falafels and shawarmas for me are usually a hit-or-miss affair. More often than not, what passes for a falafel or shawarma in Toronto is a joke. There are numerous establishments where the falafel balls are dry and puny, and where the chicken shawarma has a bizarre rubbery consistency. Sarah's has decent falafels and spectacular chicken shawarmas, all for under $5.
4. Tacos El Asador (690 Bloor West) - Toronto's most authentic Salvadorean restaurant, El Asador is completely packed everyday from 6 to 8. While the cramped wooden benches are a tad off-putting, the service is always friendly, and the food is fantastic. Order either the nachos, the chorizo tacos, or the cheese and bean pupusa - you won't be disappointed.

Nachos:

5. Jumbo Empanadas (245 Augusta Ave.) - Beef empanadas, consisting of beef mashed with eggs, olives, and raisins, are a steal at $4. If you are in the mood for something light, I would recommend the Chilean Salad (greens, avocados, tomatos, broccoli).

6. Aunties and Uncles (74 Lippincott St) - Aunties and Uncles has drool-worthy Belgian waffles and also has excellent breakfast 'pockets' that contain eggs, mozarella cheese and tomatoes. Make sure to get there early, however, because the cooks only make a limited amount of waffles...I can't count the number of times I've gone to Aunties disappointed because the waffles have ran out.
7. The Real Jerk (709 Queen St East) - A Toronto institution, the Real Jerk is a bet of a trek away from campus but arguably has the best goat roti. Their meat specials are also quite delectable: why choose between jerk chicken and oxtail when you can have both?
8. The Burger Shoppe (688 Queen St East) - The Burger Shoppe serves fresh beef, thereby putting it on a different league altogether in comparison to your standard fastfood burger joints. Although I've always had the classic burger and not the more expensive organic beef burger, friends have told me that the latter is tastier. In any case, the classic burger is basic, beefy, and beautiful. Bonus points to the proprietor for serving real poutine, complete with the cheese curds and the gravy.
9. Udupi Palace (1460 Gerrard St East) - At $5.95, the Masala Dosa is simple and delectable. Accompany this dish with a side of $3.95 onion pakoras with mango chutney and you are well on your way towards having one of the most delightful culinary experiences ever.
10. Lahore Tikka House (1365 Gerrard St East) - I can confidently say that Lahore Tikka House - alongside Udupi Palace - ranks as the top two South Asian restaurants in Toronto. The butter naan is a tad too greasy, but everything else is good. Try any of the tandoori meats (the lamb kabab is especially good). Indian restaurant standards like palak paneer and butter chicken are good too.

Palak Paneer and Butter Chicken:

Cheap Drinks:
1. Green Room/Red Room (296 Brunswick Ave./444 Spadina Ave.) - Going to the Green Room or the Red Room is a rite of passage among graduate students. While its food hygiene standards are a bit dubious, surely the copious amounts of cheap alcohol that one imbibes is antiseptic enough to clear away most of the germs...
2. Waterfalls (303 Augusta) - Waterfalls is not exactly cheap food-wise - the vegetarian pakoras, for instance, amount to a ridiculous $8 per plate. However, it does have $5 drinks specials. A personal favorite is the $5 mojito Tuesday special.
3. Bedford Academy (36 Prince Arthur) - The Bedford Academy tries to be a 'pub/bistro/bar' but in reality is the go-to watering hole for poli sci graduate students eager to escape from studying/researching/dissertating. It is a standard pub, with your standard selection of draughts and cocktails.
4. Sweaty Bettys (13 Ossington) - Sweaty Bettys has a decent selection of music in its juke box, and, more importantly, has random alcoholic beverages like absinthe and sake.
5. The Madison (14 Madison Ave.) - Over the last year, I've tried to avoid the Madison because every time I go there, I run into one of my students who stare at my ashen-faced and open-mouthed. (It seems as though our dear undergrads cannot fathom the idea of their TAs having lives outside the classroom). Then again, the Madison has a decent rooftop patio, which is perfect in the summer. As well, it serves $5 appetizers between 5 to 8.

Blast from the Past: A Return to the Eatery and to Ebisu

2008-07-21T05:53:00.027-04:00

I am always excited about coming back to Vancouver because I get to have my fill of sushi. To say that sushi in Toronto is terrible is to make an understatement: though I am now willing to (grudgingly) concede that Toronto does have its myriad strengths as a city, I still think that its sushi selection in comparison to Vancouver is rather dismal. Toronto is good for 'non-sushi sushi', i.e., sushi for the California roll connoseuir. Thus, while I can happily imbibe copious amounts of 'sushi pizza' courtesy of New Generation Sushi at the Annex, I recognize that this isn't the real deal. My bi-annual trips back to Vancouver entails massive OD-ing on sushi. Hence, my friends know better than to ask me where I want to eat whenever we make lunch or dinner plans - it's nothing else but Japanese food for me, thankyouverymuch. After all, I need to eat as much sushi as possible to accommodate months of sushi withdrawal in Toronto.

Fortunately, my last visit to Vancouver was longer than usual. In contrast to past summers, which consisted of me zipping away to work in exciting locales, I have nothing else to do this year except to present papers at conferences and to do massive amounts of reading for my godforsaken degree. As such, I used my free schedule as an opportunity to spend 5 weeks in BC, giving me ample time to revisit old sushi haunts. Alas, I soon learned that returning to places I used to love may be followed by an inevitable sense of disappointment. In these instances, either the memory of long-gone meals has led to a romanticized recollection of not-so-perfect dishes or the food quality has invariably deteriorated.

This observation rung especially true during my visit to The Eatery on West Broadway. As an undergraduate, Epicurean Adventurer was the Eatery's biggest superfan: I was there thrice a week, and even had several of my pictures taped on their wall of patrons. The Eatery was the place where I dragged my roommates whenever we were too lazy to cook, and was the site of many a debauched evening. Back then, I not only appreciated its proximity to campus, but also enjoyed its assortment of eclectic Asian fusion sushi. Moreover, its funky decour consisting of ubiquitous Astro Boy images, Andy Warhol inspired prints and cute emblems like "miso horny" appealed to my puerile twenty year old self. (As an aside, I never did take potential boyfriends to the Eatery - perhaps looking at the 'miso horny' signeage was too obvious, even back in the days when disclosures of attraction over MSN was seen as the height of romance).

I decided to return to the Eatery with MAF, fellow Eatery patron, ex-flatmate, and all-around impressive person. Although I have obviously been back to Vancouver since leaving the parental homestead in 2003, I curiously never had the chance to return to my favorite restaurant circa 2000-2002. Initially, all seemed well. Although the restaurant expanded in size and now encompassed two rooms, it was still the same dark, dingy place with a retro-cool sensibility. Candles were wedged into root beer bottles on top of wooden tables, funky prints adorned the walls, and loud rock music blasted through the speakers. The menu, though different, still had some of the same items - there was still a selection of standard don buri bowls and Japanese curry samples, and the Andy Warhol (mango, tuna, salmon and mayo) and Sweet Little Suji (asparagus, tempura prawns, and aggae) rolls were still available.

That said, I found new additions to the menu slightly off-putting because I was skeptical of their culinary merit. For instance, while the Bagel (cream cheese, smoked salmon, tomato, green onion, cucumber, avocado) and the Charlie rolls (avocado and tempura tuna) seemed like legitimate additions, I seriously doubted whether the KFC (chicken cutlet, avocado, mayo) and tex mex (california roll with a salsa of tomatoes, avocado, roe and salmon) rolls had anything else going for them except for their trendy monickers. In fact, browsing through the menu showed that the Eatery's copy writers are working double time. The name assigned to the roll and its accompanying descriptions clearly showed a lot of effort on the part of the copy writers to make tired-sounding ingredients sound fresh and funky.

These apprehensions aside, MAF and I proceeded to order. We had the sweet little suji, tuna crunch (tuna, tempura bits, mayo) and viva las vegas (crab, eel, avocado, cream cheese, and spicy mayo) rolls, as well as the pork gyoza okonomiyaki. While we waited, we observed that the servers were likely hired because they embodied the management's understanding of how 'funky' is personified - skimpy black lycra, midriff baring tops, multiple piercings and heavy kohl eyeliner was the norm. After waiting for half an hour, during which no one asked us whether we needed more water or more tea, our food finally arrived without much panache. MAF and I eagerly dug in and were...disappointed. The okonomiyaki was 50% smaller than I remembered it being. Back then, it was served sizzling hot, with okonomiyaki sauce and mayo liberally sprinkled on top. The okonomiyaki in front of me was cut into five pizza-like slices, was cold, and had the consistency of rubber. The sushi, meanwhile, was average. While the tuna crunch and sweet little suji were acceptable, the viva las vegas roll did not live up to its promise of gargantuan proportions. The menu described this roll as having killed Elvis because of its decadence, but I suspect Elvis - had he eaten this roll - would have instead died out of boredom.

The lesson I learned from my meal that evening was that maybe some memories are better left in the past. According to the Eatery, good sushi comes with a huge dollop of mayo and an even bigger dollop of forced funkiness, which might have been good when I was 19, but not nearly good enough years later. As someone in her mid-twenties, I would rather eschew coolness in favor of quality; seeing that the Eatery has too much of the former and hardly any of the latter, I can safely say that the love affair is over.

All was not lost during my explorations of former sushi haunts, however. Following my disastruous sushi encounter at the Eatery, my family and I headed to Ebisu, a Japanese restaurant in Richmond (with another branch in Vancouver) that used to be known as Daimaru sushi but has undergone two or three restaurant and menu makeovers since 2002. As a result, my trips back to the restaurant were never the same; it seemed as though every time I returned, the restaurant has once again made improvements. In so doing, of course, it allowed itself to evolve and to fall in line with its clientele's changing tastes; thus, it has survived in Vancouver's notoriously fickle restaurant industry, where Japanese restaurants are a dime a dozen.

Indeed, comparing and contrasting Daimaru and Ebisu shows that Ebisu is far superior. Whereas Daimaru sushi used to be a standard, slightly dumpy, but still fantastic all-you-can-eat restaurant, its incarnation into the sophisticated Ebisu barely showed any traces of its pedestrian past; Ebisu, unlike Daimaru, bills itself as a tapa-style restaurant, with nary a bento box special in sight. Ebisu's interiors are cool and chic, with an impressive sushi bar occupying the middle of the room, modern wood panelling, and spacious tables. Interestingly, some of its former serving staff still remained, including two sushi chefs whose creations were always dependably solid. Our server knew us from when my brother was still in grade school; in turn, my family knew her before she got married and had children. Consequently, eating at Ebisu was quite comforting: it still retained enough of the same attributes to be recognizable but had instituted enough changes that one felt that the restaurant was always trying to evolve for the better.

Due to its attempts at self-improvement, Ebisu's menu has genuinely unique items that, unlike the Eatery, were obviously included not to fulfill some bizarre 'trendy' criteria but to showcase the strengths of its sushi chefs. The tapas-style menu allowed us to try different dishes without being restricted by size or, indeed, by price. We started with the excellent sashimi salad, which had thin slivers of salmon sashimi atop spinach and grated carrots and sprinkled with hot sauce. We then had oyster motoyaki, which was served in a hot white bowl with a slice of bread and had generous chunks of oyster and green onion; though I did not think the bread added anything new to the dish, I was impressed with the creamy richness of the sauce. Bear in mind that oyster motoyaki is very easily ruined by its sauce; other restaurants serve oyster motoyaki as being either too salty or too bland, and Ebisu's oyster motoyaki was neither. The prawn-and-cream cheese gyoza followed, which I enjoyed because the gyoza wrapper lightly skimmed the prawn and cheese interior, making each dumpling light and delicate. Following this, we had the fantastic roll, which consisted of avocado, cream cheese, salmon, and papaya, and the crunch n' munch roll, with eel, avocado and prawn tempura. Both were good, and my brother and I ended up having a chopsticks duel over the last remaining roll. The highlight of our meal, nevertheless, was the toro sashimi. Toro, which can be found in the fattiest part of the tuna, is the big daddy of sashimi - tuna and salmon sashimi may do when one is on a budget, but if one wants good sashimi, toro almost always hits the spot. Ebisu's selection of toro was particulary noteworthy because it is obvious that their tuna was especially fresh. All in all, I was exceedingly satisfied.

Crunch n Munch Roll

Salmon sashimi salad

I still do not know whether the Eatery was this mediocre a few years ago, or whether it has simply gone downhill. Quite frankly, I don't really want to make a return visit to see which is which. Ebisu, thankfully, has remained consistently fantastic by taking risks and adapting to the trends of the market. I eagerly look forward to my return to Ebisu months from now, for surely, new innovations will have once again been included in the menu.

Life as an English Rural Housewife and the Joys of English Pubs

2008-06-26T07:22:00.022-04:00

As a young child, I was a voracious reader. I devoured the books scattered around our spacious Manila house greedily, eager to read stories that allowed me to escape from the doldrums of a run-of-the-mill Filipino childhood. Even then, I was aware of the imprint of colonialism; books that were about the Philippines, for Filipino children, weren't taught in my exclusive all-girls Catholic school, and everything that pertained to England was venerated. Even before I could really figure out where England was on the map, I lived vicariously through Sara Crew's travails under the hands of the horrible Miss Minchin in her stiff English boarding school in "The Little Princess." I excitedly anticipated the delightfulness of tea and scones alongside Enid Blyton's prim and proper protagonists. I dreamed of the day when I, too, could wander around Covent Garden like the children in my beloved "Dancing Shoes" books by Noel Streatfield. The idyllic image of a proper British manor house, with a proper British garden, and a proper British accent implanted itself onto my impressionable brain.

Growing older, my childhood Anglophilia somewhat diminished, though the mental colonialism wrought by the aforementioned English literary exports left such a huge mark that I continued to idealize the English countryside. I confess that when I was fifteen, I went through a period when I thought that living in an English country estate was my destiny. At that age, I saw myself living in a huge manor house amidst verdant greenery, married to a Mr. Darcy lookalike and enjoying a life of quiet serenity (ok, so these images are directly lifted from BBC's "Pride and Prejudice" - who says I was original?)

The past month put to rest such naive fantasies. Living in rural England with CB as an academic-turned-housewife was enlightening; indeed, remembering the delight I previously expressed on being a housewife in a previous entry seems kinda funny now. Though I did initially revel in cooking meals for CB, the epiphany that living in rural England will never suit me soon became clear. The peaceful serenity and the picturesque scenery straight out of Jane Austen at first seemed so pleasantly pastoral. Seeing the rolling green hills, sheep gently eating grass and cows dumbly standing by the roadside was so exotic and so fascinating - there were no gray high-rises in sight and there were so many trees!!! Nevertheless, after the first flushes of excitement, the old adage that 'you can't take a city girl out of the city' soon became an apt description for yours truly. No wonder Sylvia Plath went bonkers - living in stifling silence with no one but wailing toddlers and annoying farm animals for company would also have driven me to hit Ted Hughes with a cast-iron frying pan!

To be more clear, initially, it was great to have the whole house to myself. After months of PhD stress, I was pleased to have long stretches of time with absolutely nothing planned. During the first week, life was great: I got up past noon, did the laundry, hung the laundry in the garden, cooed at the sheep ambling at the other side of the fence, watched back-to-back episodes of the British Apprentice, took long showers, made elaborate lasagnas and stir-fries, and read newspapers. Everything was grand - I had no marking, no papers, nothing. Everything that was British and rural was delightfully quaint. I was amused to read headlines and watch local newscasts bemoaning the theft of several free-roaming chickens (surely this is evidence of growing social decay). I was also an eager patron of local farmer's markets. I tried different sorts of local food products, particularly local cheeses. Nevertheless, at the start of the second week, I grew antsy. There was no local transit system, the sheep's bleeting was annoying rather than endearing and made me dream of mutton, doing household stuff induced nausea, and cooking wasn't so enjoyable when one's regular patrons preferred Tesco dinners over elaborate pastas. Most of my friends were in London and weren't easily accessible. Working on my dissertation was not an option because I was engulfed by a lazy sense of ennui: I was bored, yes, but not bored enough to do something productive.

What soon became my saving grace was...drumroll please...the English countryside pub. Yes, folks: you read that correctly. While I certainly did not become a lush when I was a housewife, my adventurous side kicked in. Pubs, rather than, say, restaurants or coffee shops, are the glue that hold British communities together; thus, a good first step to becoming acquainted with rural Britain is getting to know the local pub. Pubs, after all, are the place where townies discussed the latest chicken thefts and football scores over lager or cider. Even though I went to a wide range of pubs, from opulent gastropubs that served partridge and guinea fowls to simple establishments where bangers and mash and fish and chips were time-tested staples, most had that air of history and familiarity that are rarely found in Canadian and American pubs. This is most evident when one considers the names of British pubs: for example, "The Rose and the Crown" refers to the proprietor's loyalty to the English monarchy whereas "the Fox and the Hound" alludes to the fact that the pub used to be a haunt for fox-hunters. I was pleased to know that I was frequenting the same places where people have been debating football scores and discussing politics for centuries! Then again, you can't deny that it is pretty damn cool to drink in the same place where Civil War rebels waged war. Maybe even Cromwell went to some of the pubs I visited!!!

In any case, visiting different pubs daily became the highlight of my time in rural England. I got to know various pub's menus so well that I was soon aware of various deals. I knew where to find half-price lunchtime meals before 3 and knew which pub served the best fish and chips. I quickly understood that Toronto's 'British pubs', such as the Duke of York, with its duplicitous rotund bartenders and mini-skirt-clad waitresses are but crass, Canadian imitations more similar to TGI Fridays than to its purported British predecessors.

Of the pubs I went to, the Plough and Harrow remains my favorite; it was the first pub I visited when I had my 'meet-the-in-laws' meeting years ago, and has since become my go-to-pub every time I'm in England. Located in Drakes Broughton, the Plough and Harrow has a comfortable, cozy ambiance. Large wooden tables and comfortable wooden chairs are scattered around different sections of the room, with a fireplace providing much needed warmth in the winter. The menu has its share of hits and misses: non-British dishes were generally unappealing, such as the Thai green curry and the chicken terriyaki, though the pub classics such as the home battered cod, the filet steak, and the steak, guinness and mushroom pie were wonderful. The desserts seemed good, though I only tried the 'Eton Mess' (crushed meringue with fresh raspberries and blackberries, topped with crème raspberry ice cream), which, despite having too much meringue and too few raspberries, was an appropriate ending to a solid British pub meal.

Eton Mess:

Since discovering the joys of pub-crawling, life in the countryside began to be more fun. Now that I had something to do and had the chance to go out of the house, time no longer stood at a standstill. Now my image of the pastoral housewife has changed: perhaps the reason the mothers in those bloody children's books always appeared so perky had less to do with their satisfaction with doing domestic chores and more to do with mid-day dashes to the local pub for a stiff pick-me-up drink!

Musings on India and Indian food

2008-06-13T04:57:00.013-04:00

Having lived in India for a year in my early twenties, it is at times difficult for me to contain my excitement for the country and the culture. Of course, the last thing I want is to be seen as someone who jumps head-first into the sea of cultural appropriation. Indeed, for me, one of the most frustrating aspects of living in India was watching privileged Westerners with thick American/Australian/British accents wearing the garb of the traditional sadhu and proclaiming religious 'enlightenment' - the fact that they are in all likelihood only experimenting with religious piety and were only playing at being poor was to me quite abhorrent, especially since some of them were competing with impoverished locals when begging for money despite having daddy's bank account back home. I appreciate and respect Indian culture, but I do not want to culturally appropriate it as my own.

This preamble aside, there are certainly moments when I feel rather defensive when it comes to outsiders' flawed perception of India; I can get really affronted when moronic dumbasses make stupid comments. This was made all the more clear when I first returned to North America permanently. I distinctly remember attending a friend's party my first weekend back and being absolutely dumbfounded when a fraternity boy drunk on whiskey and (misplaced) self-love proceeded to ask me a series of ridiculous questions, such as "did the country smell?," "how did you deal with the poor people?," and - this takes the cake - "aren't there a lot of sewers in India?" These questions are akin to the types of questions xenophic hicks have always asked me about 'other countries', such as the Philippines and Hong Kong; hence, my tolerance level for stupidity is surprisingly high. Thus, rather than entertaining the ignorant ramblings of someone whose idea of a great adventure obviously involves partaking in a Contiki tour of some sort, I instead left the idiot mid-sentence and got more shots. Adjusting to reverse culture shock is made all the more difficult upon the realization that no one really gives two shits about your time away; people only talk to you in order to confirm stereotypes that have long been established. Alcohol, as such, becomes one's sole recourse...

The bizarre thing is that my group of buddies who I lived with in India never truly "got over" India. Recent reunions with my Safdarjung Enclave beloveds made me realize that we are perhaps looking at our stint in Delhi through rose-colored glasses. We were there relatively young, posted in our first jobs abroad, and with enough gumption and enough energy to withstand the frequent hassles that one faces when going around the country. Had we gone to India years later - heck, even now - we probably would not be as flexible or as accommodating. We probably would not have withstood long, tumultuous 18 hour train journeys in cabins full of inebriated military personnel passing bottles of whiskey and guns around nor would we have agreed to stay in some of the 'guest houses' we randomly found (the highlight was when we were showed a room at the rooftop of the building, with only a light blanket stretched overhead providing coverage; a stray dog woke us up the next day in time for the sun rise). We might not have been so willing to shrug our shoulders nonchalantly when plans went awry. Our year in India occurred during a time of our lives when the whole world was in front of us. India, for us, represented endless possibilities.

Chandi Chowk, Old Delhi: one of our regular hang-outs

I am sometimes hesitant to go back to India. After all, I've built up my stay there so much that inevitably, the magic imbuing my recollections will falter when faced with harsh day-to-day realities. Nevertheless, I hope to return, this time traveling to the South (with the requisite stopovers in Delhi to see my family there, of course). There are so many places I have yet to see...the glittering skyline of Mumbai, the vibrancy of Bangalore, the langoruous beauty of Chennai.

In the meantime, thank God for the global South Asian diaspora. Going to Little India on Gerrard Street East in Toronto allows me to 1. buy DVDs of the latest Bollywood hits (though admittedly, my copy of Jodha Akbar leaves much to be desired, with a random man coughing at intervals and only half the cinema screen showing), 2. get my eyebrows threaded, 3. drink a brilliant cup of Kashmiri chai, 4. eat at one of its many fantastic restaurants (notable mentions include Udupi Palace for the BEST dosas and Lahore Tikka House for, well, everything), and 5. buy groceries. Following my Little India sojourns, I happily return home armed with bundles of DVDs and Indian snacks; I've spent many a Saturday relaxing in front of the screen watching Hrithik Roshan baring it all just for me while eating Kurkure...

Unsurprisingly, not having access to these aesthetic, cultural, and culinary mainstays is for me a source of distress. Toronto, Vancouver, and yes, Geneva, all had decent Indian restaurants, and decent Indian convenience stores. While the costs of buying Kurkure in Geneva were prohibitive - buying a pack there would have been enough to buy me an entire box of Kurkure in Delhi - I was willing to sacrifice on other food items to ensure I got my fix.

Funnily enough, my month-long stay in England almost gave me withdrawal symptoms. This, my friends, was unexpected. After all, I've heard all along that curry has been integrated into British cuisine. I am also aware that there are Indian convenience stores aplenty all over the UK. Unfortunately for me, in rural England, Indian food has been bastardized to suit English tastes such that it has effectively become Anglicized, making it, well, unpalatable. Imagine my distress upon ordering random "curry" dishes at your local pub - these dishes were nothing but random bits of (undercooked) chicken doused in Uncle Ben's or Marks and Spencer's "chicken korma" sauce! After having learnt that getting curry at a pub is perhaps not the wisest decision, I made several forays to Indian restaurants in the area, mostly in Upton and Worcester. The results ranged from mediocre to disastruous. Though CB took me to passable restaurant in Worcester that served pakoras that somewhat resembled the pakoras I enjoyed in Delhi, the Upton restaurant was almost insulting in its attempts to pass off certain food items as "Indian." For instance, the palak paneer I ordered ended up being little more than heated spinach with stringy Kraft cheddar cheese melted on top; there were no spices and no squares of paneer. There may be hundreds of restaurants serving "Indian food" in English suburbs and rural areas, but "Indian food," I soon understood, had become similar to "Chinese food" or "Italian food" - all three types of cuisine bore no resemblance to food in India, China, or Italy and instead are used to describe generic mainstream dishes like chicken tikka masala, chop seuy, or pizza. Ifever I were to move to Worcester, I am relieved that Birmingham is a relatively short drive away; at least there are decent Indian restaurants there.

"Indian" curry via M&S

As it is, I am relieved that I live in Toronto; at least I will always have Little India. Fortunately, I will always have my fond memories of India to keep me satiated till my next trip back.

Yes Please to Good Cheese

2008-05-02T00:47:00.014-04:00

Epicurean Adventure was completely snowed under by massive amounts of research, teaching, marking, and writing over the last five weeks, which explains her hiatus from this humble blog. Seriously, folks, the last few weeks have been intense. I was averaging perhaps 4 hours of sleep a night because of looming deadlines - when I did have the time to sleep, I would lie wide-eyed and paralyzed, too afraid to rest.

That said, now I am relatively free...no more silly students asking silly questions, no more book reviews, no more annoying ass-kissing colleagues whose brown-nosing ways make me livid! I am also done with course work forever; while I might take a Spanish class in the fall or maybe even sign up for pilates again, I will no longer have to take another mind-numbingly boring course for my degree! To celebrate, I will be heading to England and to Germany in May, during which I will read, eat, sleep, and try out recipes from the Betty Crocker cookbook I picked up for $9 at BMV books the other day.

Yes, dear readers, I will try to morph into a British housewife! Though I doubt whether I will be willing to wake up early enough to cook CB breakfasts, I am eagerly awaiting my descent onto CB's kitchen. Needless to say, in true WASP tradition, I will also make sure to have a ready supply of dry martinis on hand just to be subversive...like the embattled women Betty Friedan wrote about 3 decades ago, I will cook but dammit, I need alcohol for sustenance! Of course, seeing that I have too much melanin to really be a WASP and have undergone 20+ years of Catholic Boot Camp to buy into what those Protestant heretics have to say, I will likely slip up and stray from Betty's recommended menus and make, say, hot pot or adobo.

One thing that I have taken from Betty is the importance of a fantastic cheese plate, which is a tradition I hope to enforce in future dinner parties, starting in England. I have written about cheese plates in the past, but truth be told, it was only this spring that I discovered the wonders of Kensington Market's cheese establishments. Oh sure, I would visit regularly and buy my regular dose of parmesan, ricotta, gorgonzola, and cheddar, but I was always too timid to assert my right to try as much cheese as I want without paying for it. The difference between Kensington Market, and, say, Borough Market in London, is that the cheeses in the latter were pre-cut. Thus, all you had to do was swipe a handful of slices without having to engage in small-talk with the eagle-eyed proprietor. This spring, however, I realized that I was the only one in the store who was uncomfortable asking for my rightful share of unpaid cheese. While it was difficult to ask for different samples at first, I have now become accustomed to trying before buying. In fact, I have become the expert at scowling and wrinkling my nose thoughtfully after taking a bite and through osmosis have learned the right kinds of questions to ask. As a result, over the past few weeks, I've ended up increasing my cheese expenditure by 50%.

I've discovered a world of new cheeses and am completely enamored with the following:

1. Smoked Gruyere Normally, I am not a fan of Swiss Cheese. After living in Geneva, I found that Swiss cheese, as a general rule, was good for fondue, but was lacking in imagination compared to, say, English or French cheese. I reluctantly tried the smoked gruyere in front of me because it was being offered at a good price; at $2.50 per 100 grams, I thought it was a good deal. Once I bit into the smoked gruyere, all of my apprehensions about Swiss Cheese faded! It was sweet but still had a hint of smoky saltiness - it was not overpowering and left a lingering aftertaste that was so subtle yet so delicious that it gives me goosebumps thinking about it right now. Each bite leads you to another bite and then to another bite, all in an attempt to recapture the flavors of the bite previous. Mysterious and scintillating, smoked gruyere is akin to a chorus of a long-forgotten song that is always going to be evocatively elusive.

2. White/Red Cheshire Cheese It is a good thing I am going to England in less than a week because I look forward to gorging on English cheese. If you know me well, you know that while I may poke fun at the British and occasionally blame CB for the harms wrought by his colonial ancestors, I am an unflinching Anglophile. I believe that England has made tremendous contributions to the world. It is true that traditional English cuisine is globally derided. Nevertheless, English cheeses are the redeeming feature of English cuisine. They are generally reliable and robust - the fact that cheddar, which is made in England, is the most popular cheese in the world is illustrative of the merits of English cheese. Cheshire cheese ranks above most English cheeses. Semi-hard and slightly salty, it is best eaten after it has aged for a bit and has attained a more full-bodied taste. I personally like cheshire cheese mixed with cranberries.

3. Manchego Cheese I can still remember my 22nd birthday in Barcelona. Not only did I gorge on cheap red wine and tapas, I also enjoyed lots of manchego cheese, which I know is just about as cliched as ordering paella or sangria or watching a bullfight. Nevertheless, to say that I love manchego cheese is insufficient to express how much joy I derive from biting into its creamy underside. I've had a diversity of manchego cheeses but I prefer mine aged. At this point, the cheese reaches its full maturity and you can really discern its earthy roots.

Based on my top three picks, I suppose it is obvious that my cheese personality is simple and unfussy. Not for me are the overly complex flavors of Irish cheeses mixed with Guinness or gouda laden with clove, nor do I enjoy cheese accompanied with complex breads and crackers. As part of my indoctrination into the English 'housewife' lifestyle, I will endeavor to try as many different types of English cheeses possible to supplement the aforementioned list! (as an aside, where can I get manchego or smoked gruyere in London?) From Red Leicester to Double Gloucester, I will drag poor CB with me to whatever cheese shop we can find so we can relax on our couch with our nightly cheese platter, as per Betty Crocker's recommendations...

Restaurant Nazaret, the Best Ethiopian Restaurant in Toronto

2008-03-20T01:36:00.013-04:00

For the last month, I have been obsessed with Nazaret Restaurant, an obscure Ethiopian restaurant located at 969 Bloor Street West. In fact, my obsession has now reached new heights - one might even call my love for this restaurant an addiction because I've frequented Nazaret five times in four weeks. I also have a copy of their menu, printed at the back of a non-descript business card, which I look at every once in awhile just so I can dream of what to order the next time I am there (as an aside, while the awning clearly says "Bar Nazareth," the card says "Restaurant NazareT," which I prefer to the former because it is devoid of biblical connotations). I am afraid that Nazaret might even supplant the terrific Tas in that spot in my heart reserved for my favorite restaurant, which, funnily enough, occupies only a marginally smaller space than my love for India and for Pico Iyer. (CB, of course, takes up the most room in my heart. I wuv you, my cutie patootie. Ok, for all of you voyeurs, please stop gagging).

The truth of the matter is that Nazaret, from the outside, doesn't seem deserving of such foodie love. It is located next to a dingy dive bar and a small Carribean canteen and is a few blocks west of Bloor and Ossington, which residents like to say is still part of the Annex but which true-blue Torontonians - in a fit of geographical 'othering' - deny; it is closer to Dufferin than to Christie, after all. Indeed, someone who isn't in the know might walk past Nazaret altogether because there is really nothing about its exterior that beckons people to come in, with the exception of a small sign advertising cheap Ethiopian food.

Upon entry, one's apprehensions aren't assuaged. There are two television sets at each end of the restaurant, and mirrors lining the walls, perhaps to give the cramped restaurant the illusion of more space. Colorful African art decorate the interior. There is a small bar at the end of the restaurant, with a kitchen visible behind it. There is a total of five tables squished together, enough to fit perhaps 20 people max, 25 if people squeeze together.

That all five tables have always been crowded the last few times I've been there shows that appearances can be deceiving. It is telling that no one really seems to mind the waiting time, which might span anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour on any weekday from 6 to 9. Everyone seems to understand that Nazaret is, essentially, a one-woman operation. Thus, trying to demand a table 'right away' is counter-productive and will most likely lead the other patrons to label you a douchebag of Bay Street proportions, thereby making them eat more s-l-o-w-l-y to increase your exasperation. Eating Ethiopian food is a communal affair, and so it is quite easy to spend 2 1/2 hours eating, drinking, and conversing.

While there are only seven items on the menu, there is enough variety amidst all seven dishes to keep even the most finicky of palates satisfied. I have always been of the opinion that quality is better than quantity, and Nazaret ensures that each dish lives up to the owner's exacting standards. Thus, there is a vegetarian platter with five or six different types of unidentifiable but still yummy veggie dishes, which includes a lettuce, tomato, and cheese salad, served on top of round sour dough which - for those unfamiliar with Ethiopian food - you use to sop up the various servings; the injera included in the veggie platter, along with this brown lentil dish, are the highlights. There is also kitfo, consisting of spiced minced beef, which ML, who first introduced me to Nazaret, loved but which TGMF found good but "not phenomenal"; I was personally enamored with kitfo and thought that the spices were nice complements to the slightly acrid sour dough.

Nevertheless, the dish that took the cake for me - and which inspired tons of porn-star like moaning upon my first bite - was the tibs. The menu describes tibs as "chunks of beef sauteed in seasonal butter" but such a formulaic description doesn't do the dish justice! There is something about the tenderness of marinated beef simmering in a lightly spicy, almost curry-like, sauce that inspires admiration; there is a subtlety to the mixture of flavors that encourages you to take bite after bite after bite, if only to 'capture' what it is that makes tibs so damn good. While the vegetarian platter, which I first ordered, made me think, "ok, this is good," and while the kitfo compelled me to return to Nazaret for the second time, it was the tibs that led me to return the third, fourth, and fifth time. I've also had the gored gored (beef in hot sauce) and the kikel (lamb in a more watery sauce), which were comparable to the kitfo in terms of taste. I haven't had the chicken yet because, well, it seems so bland in comparison to the other dishes, but I will probably order it at some point. I also don't know what Nazaret has in terms of desert - remember that I don't have a sweet tooth! I've had their freshly brewed Ethiopian coffee, served in little clay pots, which might be better than Turkish coffee.

The servings, mind you, are gargantuan, yet the price range is student friendly. You can easily share one platter among two people, which amounts to $8 in total, so $4 each. I've gone to Nazaret in groups of two, three, and five, and have only spent perhaps $15 on all occasions, the latter because we also ordered a bottle of wine.

Minor quibbles include the beverage selection. I ordered the mango juice, which was watered down and was easily consumed in two gulps - at 2 bucks, I would've been able to buy 4 bottles of mango juice wholesale at TNT. I also was a bit perplexed that the coconut juice was weirdly salty, but hey, Nazaret imports coconut juice from Egypt and I am used to the ones imported from Taiwan and the Philippines, so perhaps I have different expectations of what 'real' coconut juice tastes like? A friend of mine also said that while she liked the food, she thought that it was a little bit too oily, which I found preposterous; bear in mind that this was in the midst of a conversation where we were fighting on whether Nazaret was really the best Ethiopian restaurant in Toronto, so I suspect she was grasping at straws to make her point. (I haven't been to the place she is recommending because it is in Greek Town, which I am sure is also as good, but I am still suspicious - why make the trek all the way to the east when Nazaret is within easy reach?)

Based on this glowing review, I hope that more people come to this joint, though please try not to come in an obscenely large group because you might take over the restaurant and I might not have a place to sit. My suggestion for you, dear readers, is to come to Nazaret with at least one other person, so you can at least order the vegetarian platter with the tibs. Ideally, you can go to Nazaret in a group of four, thus enabling you to order all three of these dishes. In both cases, there will still be sufficient food leftover for lunch the next day.

In sum, Nazaret has slow service but has great food at obscenely cheap prices - the reason why it is so great is because it showcases home-style Ethiopian cooking, unlike Ethiopia House on Yonge Street, which has diluted its flavors to suit mainstream tastes (ugh, I shudder to think what those bastards at Restaurant Makeover will do to Nazaret if given the chance). Nazaret is a hidden culinary gem and anyone who belittles it will be answerable to this foodie's rage. Now I just have to figure out when I should go this week...hmmm...tibs....hmmm....is anyone up for going?

Should Foodies who Fancy Prince Harry Care About His Love for Big Macs?

2008-03-03T17:42:00.012-05:00

Epicurean Adventurer had a fantastic weekend, going for two Ethiopian dinners, once at Restaurant Nazareth, which I will write about soon, and once during a dinner party for a renowned professor. Following dinner the second time, I then proceeded to have pints with my academic peeps, during which the conversation vacillated from discussing qualitative research methods to assessing the merits of stand-up comedy to bemoaning students who do not recognize when boundaries have been crossed. (With respect to the latter, while I don't really want to divulge private information, allow me to say that any email asking for an extension that begins with the phrase, "my boyfriend was here last week and I now have a urinary tract infection that causes a burning sensation when I urinate" is surely unnecessary). After pub night, I stopped briefly at GJ's house, and then proceeded to a delightfully quirky 'leap year' party next door, where the combined presence of opera singers, dot-com geeks, academics, bankers, and earnest English students led to a myriad random conversations on, well, David Eggers, the merits of the new Apple i-book, and traveling escapades through Australia. The next day, I also had another little soiree, where there were loads of delicious cheeses (brie, aged cheddar, paprika encrusted gouda, etc.) and scrumptious mini quiches. There were also different types of martini (the crantini was the best) and killer sangria.

Needless to say, the presence of good food and good people (not to mention a good selection of alcoholic beverages) makes this normally stressed out academic happy. Thus, although I spent most of Sunday mildly hungover and curled up in the fetal position - I attempted to recover from this weekend's excesses by sipping tea while reading Crawford Young's take on cultural pluralism - strangely enough, I remained bizarrely calm in the face of the impending deadlines of the coming week. It was as if letting loose the previous weekend led me to inhabit this protective bubble, where the good buzz the weekend generated was enough to allow me to withstand the stressfulness ahead. When I finally felt strong enough to venture to the kitchen, I summoned up the energy to make green curry chicken, where generous sprinklings of cilantro and brown sugar gave the dish a little extra something.

Today I attempted to be productive. I made a valiant attempt at working, reading, and researching. And then, lo and behold, I saw the following pictures of my Prince Harry posted in various news sources online, which have invariably affected my ability to be productive:

I know that Prince Harry and I are likely not going to get along in light of his 'lad's lad' thuggish demeanor, as manifested in dim-witted interviews with the press; the fact that he seems more intent on recapturing the adrenaline rush he experienced when fighting in Afghanistan makes me wonder whether he was truly cognizant of what this entire military operation entails in the larger scheme of events. Furthermore, a little bit of Internet research has unearthed P rince Harry's preference for "junk food" and "McDonalds happy meals," which is the exact opposite of my culinary sensibilities. When he has access to the best restaurants in London and can probably afford to frequent all of Nigel Platt-Martin's famed establishments, indicating a willingness to forego foie gras for Big Macs is blasphemous.

Prince Harry's favorite meal:

These complaints aside, from a purely aesthetic level, seeing the Crown Prince in all of his six-packed glory has unearthed a variety of visceral emotions. This, then, leads me to wonder - hypothetically speaking, of course - whether culinary tastes and political inclinations are really that important when faced with this:

In retrospect, I realize that Prince Harry is good for nothing but a fling. But even if he is the type to do something so pedestrian as to...drag me to grab a kebab after a night of lustful romance or to have Guinness beer breath when snogging...I wouldn't protest too much. After all, a fling with the Prince Harry types is similar to eating a Happy Meal: both are quick, satisfying, and indulgent, but are lacking in substance and are bad for you in the long-term.

Three Reasons why the Food Network is Starting to Suck

2008-02-27T14:37:00.015-05:00

It will likely come as no surprise to all of you that I am perhaps the Food Network's biggest fan and its biggest critic. When given the choice between reading about Latin America's 'failed' transition to industrialization or watching Restaurant Makeover/Nigella Express/Dinner: Impossible/etc., I will most likely opt for the latter.

Thus, seeing that I'm a Food Network junkie, I am probably well-suited to offer a few constructive criticisms with respect to its programming. Please note that I've developed these criticisms after hours upon hours of non-productive television watching - I've spent far too much time: contemplating the recipes presented on their programs, wondering whether the Barefoot Contessa is really my long-lost mother or thinking of ways to make Igor from Restaurant Makeover my real life handyman (and yes, I mean this literally...heh).

Before I begin my list, Food Network execs, please email me if you have any questions. Also, if you want me to be one of your food judges on Iron Chef America, I'll be more than happy to offer my services. Surely having an opinionated food blogger on your panel offers you lots of street cred. Compared to that ashen-faced celebretard from the Bachelor, whose sole claim to fame is his ability to 'romance' (i.e., sleep with) a dozen ladies at the same time, I can talk about food quite knowledgeably, thankyouverymuch.

In any case, behold, dear readers, my List of the Top Three Food Network Annoyances:

1. A lack of culinary diversity - Why are there far too many programs showcasing WASPy food and not enough programs featuring, e.g., Asian fusion cuisine or Ethiopian food? While the Food Network powers-that-be may claim that non-WASPy dishes are integrated into their regular programs, you cannot look me straight in the eye and tell me that including Asian-recipes-for-non-Asians such as 'Pad Thai chicken burger' (as featured in the Ultimate Recipe showdown) justifiably constitutes culinary diversity. Some might allege that the inclusion of Simply Delicioso is a sign of progress; after all, Ingrid ostensibly cooks Latino food and is, well, probably Latina (though her last name is the decidedly WASPy 'Hoffman'). Unfortunately, Ingrid's program is an exception to the rule. A quick, cursory glance at the Food Network's list of programs shows that Simply Delicioso is the only show hosted by a minority and is also the only show where non-WASPy food is the focal point.

Ingrid Hoffman from "Simply Delicioso"":

If the Food Network is worried that Asian/African/Latino/Caribbean food is too 'out there,' its executives might want to consider the way sushi, jerk chicken, empanadas, wat, etc. have entered mainstream culinary consciousness. In fact, the West Coast suburbs where my parents live - known primarily for its branches of Boston Pizza and Earl's - has recently been experiencing a restaurant renaissance of sorts, with local Ethiopian and Afghani restaurants popping up right next to your average Starbucks. At the very least, food network execs should consider including a segment of Wok with Yan.

After all, every city and every town in the world has a Chinese restaurant. Thus, I am certain that a Chinese cooking show is marketable, especially if one includes 'mainstream' Chinese dishes such as Lemon Chicken alongside, say, more exotic dishes like fresh jellied eels.

2. A lack of programs displaying culinary innovation - The bulk of the Food Network's programs seem to target your average Middle American, for whom convenience rather than good taste is more important. While I am most adamantly not a foodie snob - in fact, I've previously indicated my admiration for Rachel Ray, whose insistence on being a cook rather than a chef was for me indicative of her brilliance - I believe that it is important to achieve a balance between programs along the lines of 30 Minute Meals and programs that showcase culinary innovation. Food network execs, please try to develop shows that do not merely try to pass off Italian food as being 'exotic but easy to cook'; rather, think of shows where the art of cooking is actually key - not every dish can be or should be dumbed down for Jane Doe from Wisconsin who aspires to be the next Rachel Ray!

Cooking a la Julia Childs is a difficult, onerous task that should at times be reserved for the elites - I, for one, would like to watch the grand masters laboring over their creations, wowing me with their ability to unflinchingly use barnacles or marinated jellyfish in a dish. I like living vicariously through the tv programs I watch, which explains why I was such an avid fan of Buffy back in the day (I wanted to slay vampires and have hot invisible sex with Spike!). This also explains why I watch cooking shows: I am all too aware of my too-pedestrian cooking and seek ways to diversify my palate by watching imaginative dishes being prepared.

3. Giada De Laurentiis - Pretentious, annoying, and untalented, the Food Network's unceasing hero worship of Giada is an insult to foodies around the world. I, like many others, loathe the way she pronounces words that sound vaguely exotic with an irritating pseudo-Italian inflection. (Hence, 'spaghetti' becomes 'spah-get-Tee', etc.) I, like many others, feel a bit nauseous with her peppy, look-at-me-I'm-so-cute mannerisms. Most importantly, I, like many others, feel like Giada is a sham. Her recipes are simply not good enough to justify her overexposure. While I realize that her latest cook books have in all likelihood been ghost written by poor, hapless Food Network scribes, I find it insulting that her (supposed) recipes are being marketed as the greatest thing to happen to Italian cooking since the invention of pizza. I have tried the following Giada De Laurentiis recipes: spicy baked macaroni, asparagus lasagna, spaghetti with olives and tomato sauce, among others. Although these were unobjectionable, they were by no means exemplary - they were trite, unoriginal, and, in some cases, bland.

In a way, I think it is a shame that Giada is losing creative control over her recipes, most of which seem hastily executed to meet the demands of her frenetic taping schedule. The fact that Giada is becoming less involved with actual cooking and is being marketed as the Food Network's most reliable celebrity is a pity. If anything, Giada should try to return to her culinary roots by going back to the kitchen and creating validly good recipes, rather than filming such hackneyed shows like Giada's Weekend Getaways or appearing as the Today Show's resident cook.

In conclusion, I would like to exhort the Food Network to aspire to be THE one-stop channel for foodies. Try to think outside the programming box. I know that 30 Minute Meals (and other 'fast cooking' programs), reality tv shows, and programs fronted by perky bimbos like Giada are understandably necessary in order to attract crucial advertising dollars; however, every once in a while, would it kill you to produce a program where good, creative cooking is actually the point of the show?

Eggstacy on Bay Street is anything but Eggstatic: Why Justin Timberlake has Poor Taste in Brunch Food

2008-01-29T23:51:00.000-05:00

Eggstacy Toronto, 1255 Bay Street

I am reclined underneath a thick woolly blue blanket in our living room, randomly googling random articles, and half-listening to Stephen Colbert. In reality, I should be working on my two consultancy reports, reading Barrington Moore and Susan Moller Okin, answering emails, and doing something productive. However, I am feeling complacent because the stressfulness of last term - though at times traumatic - actually didn't lead to academic disaster; in fact, I did pretty well, all things considering. As a result, tonight, I see nothing more compelling than listening to the bombastic (yet funny) ramblings of my man Stephen and typing random entries onto Google to see what pops up. Inevitably, I've started reading Toronto-based restaurant recommendations because, well, why not? It is always good to see how my opinion of certain restaurants compares to other's.

For the most part, I seem to be in agreement with other bloggers on which restaurants are good and which are bad. The notorious Pho Hung has apparently treated other customers equally shabbily, with some people commenting that management had accused them of stealing as well. There seems to be some consensus that the pho at Pho Hung really doesn't compare to other places, like Pho 88, which I will endeavor to check out this weekend. The fantastic Trattoria Fieramosca on Bedford and Prince Arthur has also received rave reviews. CB and I have eaten there three times, and while the service was a bit slow the last time we were there, the food was excellent - CB had pizza a la bomba, which reminded me of the slices of pizza I had in Rome, and I had linguine with seafood and chicken, which was the way pasta was meant to be cooked. Remind me to write a full review of this restaurant in the future.

What boggled my mind, however, was the fact that Eggstacy, on Bay St at Yorkville, has been on the receiving end of foodie orgasms. I've been accessing article after article where the authors were drooling over Eggstacy's "delicious, innovative dishes," "wonderfully homey ambiance," "New York style food" and "generous proportions," and am wondering whether these glowing reviews were written by people who were paid by the proprietors or people who are merely willing to affirm Justin Timberlake's 'exemplary' taste in brunch. (As an aside, Mr. JT and It Girl Jessica Biel were spotted at Eggstacy a few months ago; I looovvee Justin as much as anyone who grew up making out to N Sync's 'This I Promise You' during school dances, but with bigger named celebs visiting Toronto every other week, Justin really isn't that big of a deal. Unless, of course, he is reading this blog, in which case -- Hey! Justin, dump the girl with the hot-but-overrated ass and go for a feminist foodie academic!!!)

Needless to say, eating at Eggstacy was anything but eggstatic for me (sorry, bad pun). CB and I went on Sunday and trudged through melting snow to find ourselves at Eggstacy, where we encountered a queue 20 minutes long. While I would normally have shrugged my shoulders and gone to either Grapefruit Moon, Mel's Diner, or heck, even Dooney's, I, like a lemming, insisted that if Eggstacy warranted a line-up longer than The Devil's Martini on a Saturday night, then dammit, I would wait too. It was interesting to observe the restaurant's primary clientele. Seeing that Eggstacy is located in Yorkville, there was an assortment of your usual suspects: yummy mummies dropping by for low-fat egg white omelets after pilates with their mats neatly rolled up alongside the latest Coach handbags, students from the nearby university curing their hangovers after a crazy night-out, couples barely acknowledging each other while thumbing through the Sunday Times, groups of Mastercard misses with perfectly blow dried hair and make-up languidly sipping freshly squeezed juice while gossiping about their sugar daddies, older women in fur coats (!) in groups of four looking like Carrie, Miranda, et al at 65, hipsters who were too cool for school to really care that they are eating in the most mainstream establishment ever.

CB and I finally got seated close to the kitchen, uncomfortably close to a pair of yapping twenty year olds whose well-coiffed blond highlights remained intact even in the dead of winter. Our server was polite but perfunctory and brought us our coffees (strong and richly brewed) immediately, along with the menus. I noted that the menu was certainly not innovative - other restaurants have also figured out that sprinkling feta cheese onto eggs and labeling it a "Greek omelet" has better copy than simply saying 'omelet with feta cheese' on the menu. The menu, in short, was more...standard. You had your eggs benedict, omelets, fritatas, eggs with bacon/sausage/ham/etc., alongside a choice of sides like home fries, toasts, hashbrowns, fruit, etc. Though it was impressive that the menu showcased five types of toasts, this benefit was lost on me since I don't eat bread that much. Also, while I suppose it was good that your hash browns could come sprinkled with chives and sour cream, or bacon and cheese, for an additional dollar, I doubt whether this in itself was a particularly mind-blowing innovation. Heck, if you are seeking a hundred different ways to cook eggs, even the highly institutional Eggspectations at the Eaton Center offers more options!

In the end, I decided to order the 'Forest Hill special,' which was an omelet with smoked salmon and cream cheese, while CB ordered the Greek omelet. We both ordered toast, pancakes, and hash browns for our sides, forgoing the bacon bits on the hash browns. While waiting for the food (and we waited for a full half hour), I tried to see how the decor was 'homey.' It was chic - with brightly painted walls, colorful prints, and a plasma tv decorating its walls - but certainly it wasn't warm or cozy or inviting.

By the time our food arrived, both of us were starving and ate our food without much conversation, CB pretty much inhaling his plate full of eggs as if he hadn't eaten in months. I was a bit disappointed that the proportions weren't gargantuan. For all the hoopla about Eggstacy's generous servings, I half-expected a bigger, fuller plate; perhaps I am judging this by Toronto standards, for certainly, I've been served bigger breakfasts at random diners in the States, where proportions are usually bigger. In any case, my food was, well, okay. I wasn't entirely convinced that the smoked salmon and cream cheese worked with the dry, salty omelet; indeed, the saltiness of the eggs overshadowed the smoky flavors of the salmon and did not complement the cream cheese. After three bites, I ended up eating the salmon and cream cheese separately, and had a much better meal, especially after dousing the eggs in HP sauce. The hash browns were also dry and slightly cold - I prefer my hash browns moderately greasy, and not congealing in separate clumps. CB's greek omelet was better; in fact, CB loved his omelet and seemed resentful whenever I stole bites from his plate. The feta cheese worked well with the eggs, and the olives added a little bit more flavor into what would otherwise be a lackluster dish. The highlight of both of our dishes were the pancakes, which were thick, buttery, and fluffy; the genuine Canadian maple syrup made the pancakes even yummier. Of course, if your supporting actress is stealing the thunder away from your main star (much like the way Jennifer Hudson stole Dreamgirls away from Beyonce, ha), then you need reorganize your priorities.

HP Sauce made an otherwise unpalatable meal taste better.

Thinking back to my experience at Eggstacy, I guess the reason why it is so popular is not because of the good food but its prime location. Yorkville isn't exactly teeming with brunch possibilities. Indeed, its only competition in the area is Flo's Diner, and what self-respecting yummy mummy would dare go to a restaurant that didn't have (gasp) low carb options? Also, Yorkville being Yorkville, the fact that a diner attracts A-list celebs and is willing to cater to picky eaters (blondie at the next table had a ridiculously long list of dietary needs - egg yolk omelet without salt or spices, organic sausage, grilled hash browns, etc.) makes it worthier than, say, Mel's Diner, where similar requests will probably be met with derision. I say give me Mel's Diner or Grapefruit Moon over Eggstacy's yuppie pretensions any day. Eggstacy, in its quest to emulate 'New York style dining,' has lost sight of what good brunch food is supposed to taste like.

Best/Worst Restaurants of 2007

2008-01-20T15:09:00.001-05:00

Perhaps my biggest character flaw is my tendency to be 10 minutes late for every social occasion. However, it is a bit shameful that I am 20 days late in posting my "Best/Worst Foodie Moments of 2007" on this blog. Please accept my fervent apologies, dear readers, and thanks again for your constant perusal of my writings.*

Worst Restaurant of 2007

1st Place: Pho Hung (Toronto)
It is rare for me to write a retraction, but I now fully admit that including "Pho Hung" in my list of "good, cheap restaurants in Toronto" was an appalling oversight. I have since realized that cheap food does not mean good value; in fact, there are other establishments that are more worthy of your $5.

I came to this epiphany over the course of last semester when I noticed that Pho Hung's servings have grown smaller, and also that their pho, spring rolls, and vermicelli have begun to taste less like the real deal and more like...well...edible cardboard with generous sprinklings of MSG. Their house special, which promised a plethora of meat, seemed to include meat left-overs randomly chucked into hot, overly salty soup; the vermicelli with tofu consisted of unpleasantly chewy vermicelli and rock hard tofu; the spring rolls were too oily, too greasy, and consisted more of flour than vegetables/meat fillings.

The kicker, though, is the horrific service. Now, having grown up in Hong Kong, where service is less friendly but more efficient, I realize that 'good service' is a highly subjective criteria. Pho Hung's service has lately become less friendly and less efficient, particularly towards students, their primary clientele. Please note that I have been informed by reliable sources that the service is abysmal because management essentially treats their (sometimes illegal) workers like crap , giving their servers wages below the set Ontario standards and ensuring that tips are being placed in management's coffers. This, I feel, is even more reason to name and shame Pho Hung for their oppressive labor practices; to be clear, the blame, for me, lies not in their servers but in their managers.

In any case, out of all of the moments of bad service that I have experienced, allow me to relate two incidents:

a. I was mildly annoyed last November when the server misread my order and gave me vermicelli with shrimp and spring rolls rather than the House Special Pho that I had indicated on my order sheet; I became even more annoyed when the server just shrugged and essentially told me that there was nothing he could do about changing my order because the vermicelli was cooked already.

b. Perhaps the experience that took the cake, however, concerned the time a friend and I were randomly accused of not paying a $10 bill. While I for one can understand why the manager would be angry if this were the case, the fact remains that a. we would never run away on any bill, much less a ten dollar bill and b. random accusations of stealing seemed to be the norm for Pho Hung proprietors - a friend told me that the manager had accused her of stealing the menu when she had asked them to bring her one because she had been waiting for ten minutes (!) while another friend told me that the manager had asked to look into their bags to see if they had pilfered bottles of soy sauce before leaving.

I realize, of course, that it can be frustrating for restaurant owners to be incessantly faced with cheap, grubby university students rather than, say, Yorkville's yummy mummy set or Bay Street's high power brokers. Still, antagonizing anyone who gives you your primary source of income is indicative of poor business sense.

In short, I vow never to set foot into Pho Hung again.

Bad Pho at Pho Hung:

Runner Up: Deli Pepe (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)

In the DR, I was surprised to realize that it was common to get food delivered for lunch rather than leaving during your lunch hour. For some reason, people at the UN loved getting food from Deli Pepe, so much so that the woman who took our phone deliveries recognized some of our voices and merely asked whether we wanted the 'same thing.' In a lot of ways, ordering from Deli Pepe was convenient; the owners faxed a copy of their weekly menus, and all you had to do was pick a starter, a main course, and a side, and in 30 minutes, your food magically appeared in front of you. Alas, much like my disdain for Pho Hung, my disdain for Deli Pepe stems from the reality that you get what you pay for. In Deli Pepe's case, the food was substandard. The Pollo Al Horno was so dry that it was an effort to chew and to swallow; the mofongo was too greasy and flavorless and had too little pork; the lasagna was less a lasagna and more like...well...burnt noodles slathered with tomato sauce and inedible beef. Its redeeming dish was the eggplant parmigiana, but maybe this particular dish only seemed good because the rest of the selection was just so terrible.

Wagamama (London)

Seriously, why why why do British people think that Wagamama is representative of good Japanese food? The fact that Wagamama even assumes the moniker of 'Japanese cuisine' offends my foodie sensibilities. Wagamama is overpriced and over-hyped, serving broths of udon that barely tastes like real udon and that contains sparse cuts of vegetables. To be honest, Wagamama for me is 'Japanese food' for the culinary dunces. It is barely a step above your average Tokyo Joe's in the US. Ugh.

Flavorless Udon at Wagamama:

(Un)notable Mentions

1. Thai Basil (Toronto) - The pad thai, the red/green/yellow curry, the spring rolls were all terrible. People of Toronto, stop thinking that this is what Thai food really tastes like.
2. Spring Rolls (Toronto) - See complaint above. I really should stop frequenting restaurants that cook Asian food for, well, non-Asians.
3. Sausalitos (Munich) - Sausalitos pretends to be a Mexican restaurant in Munich but is in reality little more than a sub-standard pub that just happens to serve pitchers of margaritas. The food here is a step below Taco Bell.

Best Restaurants of 2007

1st Place: Guu (Vancouver)

Ah, Guu. A staple of my Vancouver culinary experience and the king of izakayas, Guu serves home-style Japanese food at reasonable prices. My undergrad BFF, MK, introduced me to Guu one summer day during our third year. Ever since then, I have gone to Guu repeatedly, usually with MK or with other foodie friends. Guu stands out from the millions of Japanese restaurants in Vancouver because it deviates from the generic 'California roll, teriyaki, tempura, etc' type of menu and serves unique dishes that showcase a random sampling of flavors. I also like that the dishes are tapa-style, which means that you can order a sampler of several dishes with a group of people and emerge feeling happily satiated. The menu, in fact, vacillates on a daily basis. Recent highlights include the sweet shrimp sashimi, beef tongue, and tuna tataki. The raw oysters and the beef sashimi are also fantastic. As a tip, don't order the Japanese restaurant standards like chicken karaage. Try to order dishes that seem exotic because these are Guu's specialties.

Beef Tataki at Guu:

Runner Up: JW 's Steakhouse (Toronto)

It sometimes shames me to admit that I can be an unrepentant carnivore. There are moments when I have insane cravings for steak, perhaps as a result of living in India for a year and being deprived of beautiful beef. JW Steakhouse, perhaps more so than Ruth & Chris Steakhouse or The Senator, serves steaks the way they are meant to be served - big, juicy, and brimming with meaty goodness. The 7 oz Filet Mignon is tender in the right places and therefore tastes both delicate (for its tenderness) and strong (the flavors of the meat was nicely overpowering) while the 20 oz T-Bone is a culinary orgasm, with a robust flavor of grilled garlic infusing the steak. The sides were...well, okay. We ordered the mashed potatoes and the mushrooms. Of course, who goes to a true-blue steakhouse for the sides?

Runner Up: Pat e Palo (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)

I am generally skeptical of restaurants recommended by the likes of the Lonely Planet, Frommer's, the Rough Guide, etc. From my experience, most of these restaurants barely merit all of the accolades heaped on them - the only reason they were included in the first place lies in the reviewers' laziness to explore other hidden gems. Hence, when CB and I first frequented Pat e Palo, located at Santo Domingo's Zona Colonial, I was only moderately excited; I was there more for the ambiance and less for the food (as an aside, this was the case for El Museo del Jamon, a restaurant right next to Pat E Palo - good pina coladas, average food). Imagine my surprise then, dear readers, when I opened the menu and noticed that it was quite innovative - there was an assortment of seafood, vegetarian, and meat dishes, as well as a selection of delectable deserts. I half-expected your usual Dominican fare of meat, meat, and more meat. While the selection of the cold cuts and cheeses was quite good, as were the salads and lamb chops, CB and I really liked the pasta dishes. The spaghetti carbonara and the gnocchi were simply delightful: the carbonara had real bacon and real cream, whereas the gnocchi was obviously home made (rather than imported in bulk from Europe). I also appreciated the fact that sweet potatoes were used to create the gnocchi. Overall, this was one of my culinary highlights in the DR...

Pat e Palo Exterior:

Notable Mentions:
1. Tas (London) - duh. Everyone here knows my love for Tas.
2. Hundskugel (Munich, Germany) - Never before have I encountered so many types of sausages. And the beer selection helped too.
3. Boga-Boga (Santo Domingo) - N and I went here to have our fix of Spanish tapas and paella. The service was exemplary, as was the food. The lobster was also quite good.
4. Mt. Everest Restaurant (Toronto) - Great lunch buffets, even better dinner services, with fantastic lamb curries and even more fantastic pakoras. Every evening, they also have live sitar music, which adds to the atmosphere.
5. Ruth Chris Steakhouse (Seattle) - The venison was fantastic, and the t-bone with a blue-cheese crust even more so. The service was a bit lackluster, but with steak that good, who really cares?

*Then again, it strikes me that a few of you stumble upon this blog randomly. If you are one of those people who found my blog by typing in the phrase "Boca Chica sexy girls," all I can do is ask you to leave and go take your perverted Internet searching elsewhere. PS. PERVERT.

Good Food, Good Wine, and Good Conversation: The Three 'Goods' My Grandfather Taught Me

2007-12-30T04:36:00.000-05:00

Has it really been more than a month since my last lust-induced post? December has passed by so quickly. I can hardly believe that over the last few weeks, I've:
a. ... turned a year older (in honor of this milestone, I had a fun little drinksfest in Toronto and in London)
b. ... crossed the Atlantic twice and traveled from the East to the West Coast of Canada once
c. ... spent more $ than I care to remember (if I don't check my online banking details, my gargantuan credit card bill will just disappear, no?)
d. ... realized again and again and again why CB is the cat's pajamas - the wasabi to my soy sauce, the crackers to my Camembert, the rosemary to my roasted chicken,
e. ... understood why hanging with my parents and my bro can be just so damn fun,
f. ... eaten so much that my delightfully blunt mother has taken to laughing at my expanding girth, resorting recently to patting my belly and proclaiming me to be three months pregnant. (Isn't maternal love great? I've also been told than on top of resembling a pregnant woman, I'm also...gasp...starting to bald! Thanks ma, love you too).

This blog desperately needs an update because I've had absolutely orgasmic meals all of December. From drool-worthy platters of tapas in Lisbon to exotic (but expensive!) dishes of dim sum in London to sushi in Vancouver to the best venison ever in Seattle, this foodie has literally eaten her way across not one, not two, but six cities, therefore giving me months of blog-worthy material. In my quest to escape the bewildering stressfulness of the past semester, I deliberately sought epicurean adventures, leading me to the wondrous epiphany that no matter how annoying Dr. Snootybottom gets - no matter how mind-numbing my research can sometimes feel - at the end of the day, all that really matters in life are the three primary 'goods' in life: good wine, good food, and good conversation.

For this particular blog entry, allow me to be a little bit sentimental and expand more on why I've since realized that pursuing these three goods are my life's true purpose. I will do so by writing about my grandfather. First, though, I will say that 2007 for me has been particularly challenging: aside from your usual run-of-the-mill existential crisis, 2007 was the year when I felt like I've had to grapple with being a full fledged adult, mostly because of a slew of family deaths taking place one after the other in the latter part of the year. In fact, if this entire year of my life could be made into a movie, it would be entitled, "Death Doesn't Become Her: Five Funerals and Zero Weddings." Still, tragedy hasn't entirely permeated the year. If anything, the trite adage that one should "live life to the fullest" has ironically never rang more true in spite of the seemingly unceasing pathos that accompanies each unexpected death. This saying, coupled with my aforementioned love for the three 'goods,' are maxims my now departed grandfather lived by.

My mom's dad, my lolo, was a commanding presence; he was an inspirational figure who came of age during the second World War, went to law school as a self-supporting student, and from there, rose to the top of Manila's banking industry and became Vice President of one of Manila's biggest banks. He was, like all members of my family, a foodie. He was known to send back dishes that he felt were substandard, and expected not only good food but also exemplary service. My favorite anecdote involves my grandfather sending back the plates and the cutlery at the Manila Hotel because they were "defective" (i.e., the plates were obviously made from cheap ceramic and the cutlery wasn't a shimmering silver), leading the waiter to take out the expensive bone China and the gleaming silver forks and spoons reserved for dignitaries. The poor waiter also had to make repeated trips back to the kitchen afterwards because my grandfather found the food lacking. I can see why his exacting standards might have been a sign of snobbery but I saw this more as being in keeping with his basic belief that you get what you deserved; such resilience was what gave my grandfather the drive to become one of the Philippines' major banking honchos, despite not coming from a traditionally privileged background. Whatever my grandfather lacked in terms of affluence or title, he more than compensated for in terms of determination.

My grandfather's love of food, coupled with my grandmother's love of cooking, spoiled me when I was younger. While it would be impossible for me to enumerate all of the fantastic meals (and conversations) I've shared with my grandfather, I particularly remember our jaunts to Manila's Chinatown, where we would indulge in piping hot congee with bits of chicken, quail eggs, and occasional bits of fried wonton on top. Sometimes, we would eat congee alongside big buns of siopao as big as my entire face; each bun would be brimming with either sweetly marinated beef asado or seasoned egg yolk, pork bolabola, and spices. Such culinary expeditions would usually precede his trips to the casino or to the barber shop. When my mom and I were unable to accompany him to Chinatown, he would always come by our house afterwards and bring boxes of siopao. He always made sure to bring an equal number of beef asado and pork bolabola siopao, for even then, my tastes were erratic and I did not have a clear preference.

I can remember the last time we went to our regular Chinatown haunt. It was 2005, and I was visiting Manila after my stint in India. My grandfather first visited the same barber he had been frequenting for the last fifty years, the two of them chatting about politics casually, the barber occasionally throwing my grandfather sad glances whenever my grandfather would 'disappear' from the present, which happened more frequently during those days. Afterwards, we jumped into the freezing air-conditioned car, and headed to the restaurant, where by-standers eagerly assisted my grandparents out of the car in hope of receiving the 100 peso tip my grandmother was prone to dispense all-too-willingly, and where the proprietors were appropriately deferential. Though we were there for only half an hour, I felt, when consuming the congee and the siopao, that this specific meal was laden with meaning. Perhaps I am becoming too sentimental in hindsight, but even then, it struck me that this was perhaps the last time I would be with my grandfather in Chinatown, the last time I would see him savoring the salty texture of the congee and the sweet/salty flavors of the siopao.

Chinatown Manila

If I had known during that particular trip to Manila that this would be the final time I would see my grandfather, would I have said something more...special? Probably not. My grandfather was a man of few words; he had no patience for what he called "wasted sentimentality" and was fond of telling his children and grandchildren than anyone who cried unnecessarily was weak.
He grew up in a time before psychobabble and the Doctor Phils of the world made emotional vulnerability a universal malaise; hence, he wasn't particularly expressive. Therefore, in honor of my grandfather and to his role as the Supreme Grand Foodie Patriarch of our family, I vow not to get distracted by the Dr. Snootybottoms and all the other everyday annoyances of academia and of life. At the end of the day, it's really just the company of our nearest and dearest while eating meals as simple as congee and siopao that counts, isn't it?

Sweet sweet fantasy baby

2007-11-29T21:12:00.001-05:00

One more week till England. Yay! In the meantime, I am facing an ever-increasing pile of work as well as challenges on the home front, which has almost led me to throw in the towel and buy a ticket far, far away from academia and Toronto and life and adulthood, and responsibilities. Still, quitting was never an option. As well, I cannot stand partaking for too long in a one-woman pity party and have therefore adopted CB’s stiff-upper lip attitude, where compartmentalizing emotions seem to be key to getting through the day.

Also, I’ve been indulging in absurd bouts of fantasizing these days, not only as a coping mechanism but also because it’s almost Christmas. With Christmas comes gingerbread lattes, warm fuzzies, egg nog spiked with rum, hugs, sweaters, Christmas trees, glitter, and fairy dust. I say, bring out the Holiday rom coms, with Love Actually and Bridget Jones Diary I and II leading the pack! (I realize that no British man is as posh as Colin Firth or as cheeky as Hugh Grant, but who watches these films for realism anyway? If it’s realism you want, go read Jude the Obscure.) I should add that holiday-induced warm fuzzies has led me to feel the need for lots of loving. This, coupled with my desire for forms of mental escapism, has led me to google pictures of the world’s hottest men and women, which in turn has motivated me to play a ‘picture association game,’ where each celeb evokes particular food types.

Behold the following (please note that all of this is written completely tongue in cheek - no offense intended! CB, you are still the bees knees!):

1) Scarlet Johanssen: have any of you seen The Other Boleyn Girl trailer? Holy Jesus, Scarlet practically sizzles in her love scenes with Eric Bana, who plays Henry VIII (and here I was, thinking that good ol’ Henry was fat, prematurely balding, full of warts, and suffering from syphillis). Hence, whenever I think of ScarJo, I think of succulent, ripe papayas brimming with flavor. I would give anything for a chance to...um...taste ScarJo’s papaya.

2) Abhishekh Bachchan: While Abhi is now married to Aishwarya Rai, the Queen of Bollywood, I still harbor the hope that he will realize the error of his ways and see that Aishwarya really isn’t suitable. After all, how much mental (and physical) stimulation can you get from someone who purportedly thinks Hamlet was originally a Mel Gibson movie and who maintains a strict diet and sleeping schedule in order to keep her looks? (Aishwarya is so the type of woman who would purse her lips like a granny when Abhi leans down for a kiss, lest he smudge her lipstick). Abhi makes me think of a big, sizzling plate of chicken tikka, which, like Abhi, can be gobbled in a matter of seconds. I'm pretty sure that Abhi is a cuddler who will solicitously feed his woman (me!!!) sips of chai and strips of chicken tikka afterwards.

3) Prince Harry – A true lad’s lad, I would go out and party with PH over his balding brother, who has unfortunately begun to look more like his father. (Anyone who does the robot dance without irony at a posh London nightclub deserves ridicule). Harry is the type of guy who most girls would go home with after doing one too many body shots. Harry would also inevitably be tough, gruff, and rough, all the more appealing because he would also, paradoxically, be sensitized to your needs. Indeed, Harry reminds me of a straight shot of pure vodka: you know it’s a bad idea to swig vodka/snog Harry, but after a few shots/snogs, your inhibitions fly out of the window and pretty soon, tongues start wagging about your scandalous behavior but you just don’t care...eventually, you wind up inside the plush confines of one of the royal palaces, doing the dirty on top of every conceivable antique furniture while the dead eyes of Queen Victoria and the Queen Mother gaze at you disapprovingly from 6 foot tall portraits, all the while keeping your momentum going by swigging vodka straight out of the bottle. Harry is also the type to suggest something completely creative, such as eating sushi off your body, with wasabi and soy sauce swirling in your belly button. I can also see him rakishly suggest a quick rendenzous at Trafalgar Square, during which he would ask for a snogging/shagging session right on top of one of the lions. Regret of course comes the morning after, along with a killer hangover/incriminating love bites...

4) Daniel Radcliffe – Is it wrong for me to lust after someone 7 years younger? Am I an awful person for wanting to play Cho Chang in the Harry Potter movies just so I can play Daniel’s girlfriend on the silver screen? Remember that scene in the Order of the Phoenix where the two kiss under the mistle toe? That was such a chaste kiss – worthy only of a 13 year old! (As an aside, were they supposed to be 13 during the movie? Hmm). Had I been cast in the role, I would’ve taught little Daniel Radcliffe a thing or two about snogging, though maybe if I had my way, the movie wouldn’t exactly be suitable for young audiences. (Let’s just say Harry Potter’s wand and magical skills will be put to good use. Accio Orgasm!) In any case, Daniel Radcliffe reminds me of plain cheesecake: so good in its unadorned simplicity and its wholesomeness, and yet so satisfying. I can definitely imagine Daniel being kid brother annoying, though, with a puppy-like eagerness to please. After a couple of unreturned phone calls, I am sure Daniel will get the hint.

Agony in Academia and the Importance of Comfort Food

2007-11-20T05:01:00.001-05:00

(Warning: The autopilot numbness characterizing my last post has once again been replaced by plaintive despair, caused largely by the intense work load currently befuddling this humble PhD student/foodie. Read the first section only if you can handle gloomy thoughts. The last section, however, contains pictures of sweets, so jump ahead to that part if you don’t want to deal with my lamentations for the fourth entry in a row!)

As my last few posts have shown, being a PhD student has led me to experience a rollercoaster of emotions, from moderate highs to intense lows. Thankfully, there are a few people in my department who feel similarly, therefore leading some of us to conclude half-jokingly that forming a “circle of affirmation” at regular intervals is necessary; during this circle of affirmation, we would remind ourselves that: 1. yes, our respective projects provide valid contributions to academic discourse, 2. yes, we are worthy people, and 3. we’re not the only ones feeling the same angst. Seriously, never before have I called into question my intelligence to this extent. I almost feel like there is a Darwinian experiment at work, where the weak get eliminated. To a certain extent, the fact that we all have a secret numerical ranking known only to the department head honchos increases our feelings of self-doubt. Such a hidden ranking system is absurd because in no way can you legitimately compare and contrast people’s research! Who is to say that studying electoral reform is more valuable than studying feminist activist movements? Who is to say that institutional design is evidence of better ‘political science’ than migration studies?

I feel that I am in a surreal alternate universe, where my fellow citizens are more interested in the quantity of models and buzz words they can generate rather than in actually concretely dealing with substantive issues. Now, more than ever, I want to leave this cesspool of constant self-doubt and ego-tripping, and go back to Delhi? London? Geneva? Anywhere but here. It really doesn’t help that I am surrounded with other miserable, misanthropic types (with the exception of my peers in my circle of affirmation, of course). Misery loves company, yes, but there is also an intense case of schadenfreude at work, where collegiality and tact are seen as unnecessary and intellectual sniping becomes the norm. Thus, because it’s my blog and because I can write whatever the hell I want, I would like to say, completely on the record, that I want to give a poop sandwich (my foodie version of two raised middle fingers) to the following institutional barriers and crappy personas characterizing academia:

Academic isolation: Why is it that there is hardly any institutional support provided for graduate students who are constantly confronted with feelings of inadequacy? Why can’t graduate work be more supportive rather than destructive? Why can’t the department acknowledge that there is a bloody problem with the system when around 50% of students drop out of the program? A friend of mine who went to get free psychological counseling at the graduate student clinic told me that when she first went there, she was afraid that there would be people she knew who would see her there, and subsequently judge her. Her fears abated, however, because while standing in line, she saw not one, not two, but five people in her program who also came for counseling help; none of them made prior arrangements to go for counseling together – all were equally surprised (and relieved) to see that there were people from the same department experiencing the same anxiety.
Dr. Snootybottom: Seriously, seriously, seriously, your egocentric pomposity has to stop. It isn’t fair for you to chastise someone because they disagree with your perspectives. Of course I know that this whole notion of free academic discourse is a sham; at the end of the day, those who do not fall in line with certain ways of thinking are forcibly disciplined and are placed in an academic straightjacket. However, at least make a cursory attempt at engaging with other perspectives…hey, maybe even you - the self-professed golden god of academia with award-winning book manuscripts magically materializing out of your ass – might even learn something new from a lowly PhD student.
Graduate Student Abuse: Underappreciated, underfunded, and living well below the poverty line, PhD students are vulnerable to abuse. Graduate departments use and misuse PhD students and get us to do the bulk of undergraduate teaching in exchange for the opportunity to study in the department. Funnily enough, we are expected to be grateful for the opportunity to “enhance our teaching dossiers,” when really, all we are confronted with are self-entitled, ungrateful undergraduates who are less interested in learning and are more interesting in getting a decent enough average to get into law school. (As an aside: Why did I say no to law school again? Yes, I like to think I have possession of a soul but right now, I’d happily exchange my soul for a pension).

Leaving this pathetic pity party aside for the moment, allow me to feel better by showcasing pictures of sweets that I rely on to get me through these intense few weeks:

Apple Pie: I have always been a sucker for warm apple pie, topped with vanilla ice-cream. I like biting into freshly baked crust, where apple and cinnamon syrup lie in wait. I like all variations of apple pie: Swedish apple pie, apple crumble, etc. In fact, I prefer pie over cake (controversial, eh?) I don’t have much of a sweet tooth so I appreciate the subtle flavors pie generates.

Green Tea Ice cream: My love for green tea ice cream falls in line with my advocacy of delicate sweetness over the intense, rich, sweet, flavors of, say, chocolate. Green tea ice cream, a Japanese restaurant desert staple, infuses ice cream with the slightly bitter intensity of tea.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins: I would argue that lemon poppy seed muffins are better than blueberry muffins (how trite) or carrot muffins. I particularly like the sweet-sour flavor of the lemon accompanied by crunchy poppy seeds. Eating these give me a needed energy boost to start my day.

Pan Chocolat: Though I have yet to find a decent pan chocolat place in Toronto, I eat these mostly out of nostalgia for my Geneva days, when bakeries were literally in every corner. Pan chocolat is like your typical croissant with a chocolatey twist. How can you go wrong?

To paraphrase BQ, my fellow grad student and partner-in-crime, being PhD students has led both of us to be miserable and fat: miserable because of the isolation we feel in the university system; fat because we have to rely on the aforementioned comfort foods to get us through the day.

Contemplating Quiche and Chicken Wings

2007-11-08T02:24:00.002-05:00

First comes the panic-attacks. Then comes the soul-crushing existential angst. Finally, there comes acceptance in the form of auto-pilot numbness, where all one really has to do is execute tasks automatically. Comparative Politics paper? Check. Marking 60+ papers in two days? Check. Teaching? Check. Consultancy work? Will be done tomorrow. If not, it will get done the next day. Until then, I just have to keep plugging away, trying not to get too antsy because London and Lisbon are coming up in a month's time!

With London comes: theater, culture, food, friends, greasy Weatherspoons dinner specials, fish and chips, my girls, graduate school reminiscing, the sartorial splendor of clothes at the High Street, red phone booths, ambling drunkenly through SoHo, faux British accents, getting caught up to speed on British politics, the Marks and Spencer food hall, Hello magazine, the Tate Modern, Tas, decent Indian food, the BBC, exorbitant transit fare, and of course, CB.

With Lisbon comes: port wine, port wine, port wine, and port wine. I also turn a year older during my trip; after this birthday, I really will be well into my mid-to-late twenties, and will no longer be able to legitimately claim the girls on the Hills as my peers but will soon count - ugh - the Sex and the City lasses as my tv counterparts. Pretty soon, I will be watching repeats of the Golden Girls and thinking, "oh gee whiz, that Dorothy is one swell cat!" (PS. I realize that in ten year's time, I will be reading this blog entry and will be rolling my eyes at my twenty-something histrionics).

Anyhow, lest I get ahead of myself here, allow me to reassure my concerned readers that the last few entries, which I now admit were a bit despondent, were in no way an indication of me turning into a misanthrope. While I still hate Dr. Snootybottom and am struggling to finish my work, my despair, as mentioned, has turned into acceptance. To top it all off, I'm actually finding time to...eat! Because of the stresses of the last few weeks, I have to admit that I've lost some of my appetite, but now I've almost gained it back. I've had two excellent meals this week, which I will now write about.

1) Asparagus and ricotta cheese quiche
Quiche, to me, is the ultimate convenience food. I buy pre-made pie crusts at the grocery store, beat 5 eggs with milk, fry some veggies (broccoli, mushrooms, whatever), some left-over meat, place them all in the crust, and top everything off with whatever cheese I have in the fridge. My most successful quiche endeavor consisted of broccoli with feta and goat cheese. In any case, my roommate, the wonderful MS, saw that I was making quiche and asked me for the recipe. I told her the basics, and she said she would make quiche the next day. Mind you, MS is a great cook - she just has this innate knowledge of what spices work best, and can whip up a healthy, delicious meal in the amount of time it takes me to slice an onion (I don't dice and slice all that rapidly). Today, MS kicked my ass in the quiche department and made asparagus quiche using a slightly sweet gluten-free pie crust blended with oodles of ricotta cheese. The end result was fantastic - I was eating with one hand, holding the receiver on the other talking to CB, and trying to mute my moans as I listened to CB discuss - oh, I don't know - computers? After all, what guy wants to know that his girlfriend has a tendency to moan like Linda Lovelace when confronted with good food?

2) Beer and chicken wings courtesty of St. Louis Bar and Grill at the Annex -
My energy was dwindling on Tuesday evening because I had five hours sleep over the last two days. When TGMF invited me to take advantage of 5 dollar wing night at St. Louis Bar and Grill at the Annex, I was apprehensive. TGMF and I had stopped by the place one evening to check out their dinner menu and were confronted by an openly 'hetero-uber-male space,' with Plasma TVs broadcasting various sports games, frat boys with baseball caps cheering for their teams, and neon signs on the walls. Since I usually treat hetero-uber-males with sub-conscious derision - hey, these guys made fun of my bespectacled thirteen year old self in high school - TGMF and I predictably did what geeks have done since time immemorial. We smirked at all the hetero-uber-males chest thumping in the corner, made some disparaging observations, and left. We ended up going to a soulful Tibetan/Himalayan restaurant with appropriately earthy sitar music.

When I returned to St. Louis on Tuesday, the atmosphere was similarly raucous but because we were in a group of four, we felt less vulnerable. We ordered a pitcher of beer, and two baskets of chicken wings, asking for four flavors: cajun, hot spice, honey-garlic, and hot-and-honey. When we received the baskets, we were impressed that the wings came with thick chunks of fries, alongside ranch dipping sauce. The fries themselves were nicely salted, crispy, and hot - combined with the dipping sauce, they were phenomenal. However, the wings were the star of the show: they were relatively big pieces (not like the dinky pinkie-sized ones at some pubs) and were doused with the sauces, though not so much as to overwhelm the texture and crispiness of the chicken. I also like how they were served piping hot; this to me was an indication of freshly cooked chicken wings, not chicken wings that have been precooked and reheated. Beer, fries, and chicken wings? You can't go wrong, plus each basket with 18 pieces cost 9 dollars! I will definitely be braving the hetero-urban-male space again. Hey, maybe I can launch an overhaul; I'll bring all of my Steve Urkel like grad student friends and stage a takeover, transforming the place from being a bastion for frat boys to being a refuge for the physically-feeble-but-intellectually-gifted.

Suffice it to say that school becomes almost bearable when I know I have good food within easy access...

Will tonight's Halloween party scare grad school-induced pressures away?

2007-11-02T15:11:00.001-04:00

It is that time of the year when everyone in grad school-land is feeling the pressure of papers, marking, teaching, research, and conference proposals. Our stress is exacerbated by the following:

1. silly students who don't do their readings and who ask inane questions ("Isn't Socrates, like, you know, Spiderman?")

2. power-tripping/unreliable authority figures (Hey Dr Snootybottom: being a tenure-track professor doesn't give you license to treat grad students like shit. I understand that your position in the academy is still precarious but lashing out at grad students brings bad karma. Oh, and by the way, halitosis, even for academics, is never a good thing. PS. I would consider Botox. You look like Winston Churchill with a wig).

3. a lack of alcohol

4. financial insecurity, compounded by the impending holiday season

5. a lack of a social life

6. Non-grad school friends, who look at us aghast when we explain the pressures we are facing. ("But you are getting paid to go to school. I, on the other hand, have more important real-world concerns." To my dear friends in corporate law, while I understand that the stresses of being an overpaid corporate law minion can lead all of you to have an inflated sense of self-importance, please understand that grad students are faced with different, though similarly mentally exhausting, schedules. While your work day has a designated 'end time,' ours is continuous. Besides, none of us can resign to our $350 000 designer lofts at the end of the day - instead, we have to think about our research for 24/7. I remind you that we are living not on a salary but on a stipend - hence, we can hardly afford to numb ourselves to capitalist purchases. Of course, if buying $2 500 espresso machines makes you feel less like the tool you are, so be it. Quit your self-righteous pontificating, buy me dinner which you can charge to your firm, and we'll call it even).

To alleviate all of the pressures we are facing, I will be hosting an epic Halloween party tonight for my academic department, which will hopefully be so debauched that we will forget, at least for one night, all of the looming deadlines we have to meet. Needless to say, I am pretty excited about this party. I will be donning a pink wig, false eyelashes, and excessive face-paint - the effect is supposed to be 80s punk rock star, though I realize I am probably going to look more like RuPaul. What the hell. Drag queens have all the fun; maybe I can even stuff myself using a sock to get into character.

Since it is a little fiesta I am helping organize, food and booze are obviously pretty important. Also, KC, the co-hostess, puts Martha Stewart to shame. Her culinary skills and party hostessing skills are impeccable, so whatever she prepares is bound to be fantabulous.

We will be having a cheese platter. As a caveat, purchasing all of the cheeses that we desire depends also on our budget and on the other organizers. So part of this list consists of me letting my gluttony get ahold of me as I type this - I doubt whether the department will be willing to fork out $50 for a pound of European cheeses.

All of these will be served with crackers and bread. Coincidentally, did you know that when creating a cheese platter, protocol mandates that you serve an odd number of cheeses. I read this in an etiquette book once. Apparently, odd numbers are more aesthetically pleasing. Whenever I make cheese platters, I like to make sure that there are 7 types of cheeses. 7=good luck, no? The cheese platter, needless to say, will be the highlight of the event.

Next to the cheese platter, we will have a chips, veggies, and dip table, with home-made hummus. I find that the best hummus recipes are the ones with lots of garlic and lots of tahini; I prefer moderately chunky hummus, enough so I can taste the texture of the chick peas. KC will cook fabulous mini quiches. One type of quiche will have cheese, apples, whipped cream, and thyme, another one will have all of the above ingredients, although this particular quiche will have black olives rather than apples. KC will also make mouth-watering vegan filo wraps - perhaps filled with pureed black beans? Hmmm.

In theory, I also want to have bruschetta on bread shaped like little stakes (you know, the ones you use to kill vampires), but our budget doesn't allow for it. In theory, a Halloween sushi tray might be a good idea as well. Perhaps we can serve salmon sashimi next to sushi; the black seaweed juxtaposed with the orange-hued sashimi will look decidedly Halloween-y.

We will also have baked goods: squares with jam inside, various types of cookies, and lots and lots of Halloween candy.

Now, dear readers, if I had the money, I would also love to have a Halloween chocolate fondue fountain, an assortment of fudge shaped like ghosts, and pumpkin pie.

Lastly, we will have a wickedly spiked Halloween punch designed to make the most misanthropic grad student dancing on table tops by midnight. My secret ingredient to our Halloween punch is raspberry vodka, which deceptively deludes partiers into thinking that the punch they are drinking has little alcoholic content. Flavored vodka=god's gift to people who don't really like the strong taste of alcohol.

Alas, knowing our little motley crew, it is more likely that said inebriated graduate students will get into an ideological debate. Hopefully, such debates are kept to a minimum; maybe I can persuade KC to coat the cookies with Ecstasy to encourage love rather than war?

Thinking about tonight's festivities is making me less and less inclined to do work. Thus, I shall go and start preparing. Happy Halloween!

Portugal, Port, and Portugese Stew: The Light at the End of My Academic Tunnel

2007-10-21T17:31:00.001-04:00

So here I am, on an obscenely lovely Sunday, stuck at the library yet again. I am trying to muster up the energy to care about work. I am surrounded by students typing with a ferocious intensity, although I am a bit concerned that the cookie-cutter blonde girl next to me is merely being ferocious in plagiarizing: she is copying and pasting texts from a Wikipedia article on to a Word Document, highlighting paragraphs with seeming abandon. In contrast, I am listlessly flipping through Partha Chatterjee’s book that assesses whether post-colonial nationalism is derivative of Western nationalist models, only half concentrating on what my man Partha has to say.

Dear readers, I am struck by a horrible, debilitating ennui, where anything but school and work and research is fascinating. Perfecting how to make pad thai? Yes. Deconstructing BBC News political coverage? Yes. Avidly following the American Elections? Yes. Comparative Politics? Nope. You see, over the last few weeks, the growing realization that I might be a PhD student for the rest of my twenties is leading to self-destructive behavior on my part. Of course, allow me to qualify this by saying that self-destructive behavior, according to my pathetic standards, need not mean debauchery of “Grad Students Gone Wild” proportions. I am not dancing on countertops, drinking body shots off washboard abs, and snorting coke. (I undertook all of these activities, with the exception of the latter, during the “Glory Years.” Times they are a-changing). What I mean is that rather than giving a shit, I am now on auto-pilot, merely doing the bare minimum without exerting much thought into the work I am producing. Thus, my life right now is characterized by intense periods of last-minute reading and writing, inevitably followed by uber-intense partying, which is THEN followed by the onset of a calm, Zen-like state where I see nothing more worthwhile than contemplating the fluff accumulating in my belly button while my work accumulates in the corner. I feel like I am on the path towards becoming an academic non-entity, though this in itself is not a dismal prospect, particularly since my heart still belongs to the non-profit human rights/development sector. Hence, my growing laziness and my inability to reconcile myself to my academic lifestyle, when combined, lead me to feel like an impostor. Sigh.

What do I need to do to get out of this academic rut? Why, traveling of course! The light at the end of my tunnel is the prospect of future trips ahead. To celebrate my transition from being a nubile youngster in her early to mid-twenties to being a not-so-young and not-so-nubile existential-crisis-plagued freak fast approaching her late twenties (by no stretch of the imagination can 26, or even, really, 25, be categorized as being in one’s early to mid-twenties), CB and I have decided to take off to Lisbon this December. Initially, I was pressing for Marrakesh because of dirt-cheap Ryan Air flights. Unfortunately, Marrakesh did not work out so off to Lisbon we go, indulging in the best that Portugal has to offer = port wine and cozido à portuguesa.

I, for one, have been in love with port wine ever since SJ and I – along with FI – got ridiculously inebriated in her Cambridge, MA dorm room chugging glass after glass. (As an aside, my existential crisis is exceeded only by SJ, who, like me, sees her PhD as a means to the end of exciting adventures). Port wine is sweeter, heavier, and contains far more alcoholic content in comparison to regular wine, therefore making it ten times more potent. In fact, why is there a rule among culinary circles that port has to be a dessert wine? I see nothing wrong with combining port wine with all parts of the meal. I know that port can overwhelm, say, a light appetizer of salad or bruschetta, but if we accept that port is the main star of the show, then we can easily justify the integration of port into all components of the meal. Besides, I am hardly the dessert girl. Yes, I like tiramisu, and apple pie, and light sweets. But the most important part of the meal for me is, obviously, the main course. Thus, why should I be forced to just have port during dessert when I would happily skip desert for, say, another serving of the main course?

And on that note, why not combine port with cozido à portuguesa, aka Portugese Stew? Cozido à portuguesa is a veritable cornucopia of different types of meat, and thus, different types of flavor and textures. The addition of smoked sausage, in particular, adds that little extra zing to an already hearty, heady mixture. Plus, the addition of cabbages, turnips, and carrots supplements the meats’ heavy tendencies. Meat, vegetables, and stew makes cozido à portuguesa a well-balanced meal.

With Port and Portugese stew in the horizon, the piles of papers and readings in front of me don’t seem too insurmountable. Wish me luck.

Dreaming of Duck

2007-10-11T01:36:00.001-04:00

Being stuck in a 24 hour university library trying to summon the motivation to write a paper assessing the roles states should play in fostering economic growth is more difficult than walking away from an all-you-can sushi dinner. Inevitably, my mind starts to wander to past and future travels. It doesn't help that most of my good friends are also bitten by the travel bug. Currently, a close friend and I are corresponding over email assessing the possibility of getting university funding to learn Spanish in Argentina this summer. Ah, Buenos Aires, I've heard so many good things about you. Maybe I can pack in a whirlwind backpacking trip going through Argentina and Brazil?

AHH. You see? You see how my mind wanders? One minute, I am trying to concentrate on headache-inducing economic rationale for state involvement, the next minute I am envisioning myself hobnobbing with Giselle Bundchen's compatriots, eating platters upon platters of Brazilian barbecue while downing glasses of Caiparinha!

This is the reason why, dear readers, it takes me forever to go through dense academic texts. Inevitably, whenever I need to concentrate on a particularly difficult paragraph, I either start thinking about holidays, food, or both. I also start getting intense hunger pangs, leading to repeated trips to the kitchen to sample my delectable hummus and Baba Ganoush dips or to one of the many 24 hour Pho/Japanese/Korean restaurants in my neighborhood.

Bizarrely, though, over the last few weeks of mind-crushingly intense schoolwork, I have been craving duck. Yes. DUCK. As in, those cute little animals most popularly personified by Donald Duck. In fact, thinking of the annoying Disney-created duck with the shrill whine is making my tummy rumble; I would eat Donald in a heartbeat. I really do not know why I've been craving duck lately. It doesn't matter how ducks are cooked, I crave all of them: Peking Duck, Barbecue duck on rice, crispy barbecue duck in noodle soup, roast duck with cranberry sauce, wild duck in gravy, etc. Perhaps my desire for something unique, something 'exotic,' is a form of resistance against the dullness of my life right now. Or maybe it is a form of nostalgia for my Hong Kong days, where I ate Peking Duck every other week (my dad's job necessitated numerous family business dinners with colleagues, so we regularly went to fancy Chinese restaurants.) Or maybe an ex-lover in a past life has been reincarnated into a duck, and I am trying to avenge past humiliations by eating as many ducks as possible in the hope that I will wind up eating this ex-lover.

In any case, there are numerous reasons why ducks are all they are quacked up to be (get it? Get it?). First, the texture and the rich fatty flavor of ducks are far superior to the bland predictable texture and flavor of chicken, and, heaven forbid, turkey. Second, when a duck is barbecued, the way its layers become crisp and laden with salty/sweet flavor is a sensory experience one cannot replicate when barbecuing, say, a chicken. Third, unlike the ubiquitous chicken, ducks add a little 'extra' something to even the most mundane dish. Have you ever eaten a roasted duck? It puts its roasted chicken counterparts to shame! Now, the downside to the delectable duck lies in the cumbersome presence of far too many bones, which makes it hard to get to the 'meat'. However, this problem is easily rectified through patience and perseverance. Besides, there is something distinctly satisfying about putting in all this effort to eating when the end result is worthwhile. For all of these reasons, ducks are currently my preferred bird of choice.

Now, there are people who have complained that my love for duck is unethical. (This blog entry really isn't the first time I've waxed eloquent on my craving for ducks). Why is eating a duck more reprehensible than eating a chicken? Or any other type of meat for that matter? Maybe if we had a euphemistic term for duck meat to enable people to disassociate fluffy images of cute yellow rubber duckies from the duck dish in front of them, there wouldn't be as much aversion. In other words, if we can euphemistically call cows 'beef,' and pigs 'pork,' why can't there be a similar code word for ducks? I realize that chickens, too, do not have a code word, but chickens are the exception to the rule. Besides, I don't know too many people who find chickens cute, compared to the happily grazing cow or the adorable talking pig of 'Babe' fame. Thus, people won't have problems acknowledging that they are eating chicken because chickens aren't generally regarded as 'cute,' consequently making it unnecessary to have a euphemism for chicken. In contrast, people think cows and pigs are lovely creatures, and therefore need euphemisms to justify their consumption of these animals.

To end my ode to the duck, here are a couple of mouth-watering pictures of various duck dishes:

1) Peking Duck
2) Barbecue Duck

3) Duck salad with watercress

My Secret Crush on Gordon Ramsay

2007-10-03T00:22:00.000-04:00

Those of you who know me are familiar with my horrible taste in television; I try to lie about this when asked at, say, a cocktail party and demurely maintain that all I watch is BBC International and the Daily Show “when I have the time,” but almost inevitably, the truth slips out because I will insert a pop culture reference a second later. (Such as, “O-M-G, what Prof. X decided to do to Prof. Y was so like what Elodie did to Heidi!”) Yes, I do watch the BBC and the Daily Show, but more often than not, I say, bring on The Hills,

America

’s Next Top Model, The Bachelor, Newport Beach! In my defense, I make a living reading and writing and researching, which invariably means that when I go home, hours of mindless telly is just what I need to relax. Liking trash tv is not an indication of negligible mental aptitude nor is it an indication of bad taste; maybe it is just an indication of a person’s need to live vicariously off of other people…

These days, I have discovered a new reality tv obsession: Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. I am chagrined to realize that I have previously made fun of Gordon Ramsay, alluding to his over-the-top histrionics. Furthermore, I remain skeptical of his actual culinary prowess; the fact that he keeps filming food reality tv shows in both the US and in Great Britain makes it seem like he is overly enamored with his celebrity status, which has a negative effect on his being, you know, a chef. In other words, since he’s so busy with his reality tv shows, when does he actually have time to, well, cook, create, experiment, and be innovative? How can he keep tabs on how his restaurants are doing? And on that note, there is something quite off-putting about how his restaurants are inevitably named after himself. Gordon Ramsay has become more of a celebrity than a chef, and so I suspect that his restaurants are akin to, say, the Planet Hollywood theme chains or the Michael Jordan restaurant in Chicago – people don’t really go there for the food but to bask in G.R.’s celebrity. Has anyone gone to his restaurants? Is the food actually good? Of course, just based primarily on these scrumptious pictures from Gordon Ramsay's restaurant in London, maybe Gordon really does live up to the hype:

That said, I cannot help but buy into the hyseria Gordon Ramsay generates. There is nothing sexier to a foodie than another person’s perceived passion for food (conversely, those who are afraid of food are automatically placed into my list of ‘people-who-cannot-be-trusted,’ alongside Ann Coulter, G.W. Bush, and Spencer Pratt). Gordon brings on the drama and, in doing so, brings back the sexy.

Take these quotes, for example; imagine someone with a slightly rakish British accent yelling these out loud contemptously:

"You do not put caramelized pears with bangers and mash! AHHHHHH," he yelled during one episode to a frightened chef trying to be innovative when cooking bangers and mash.

"This salmon is burnt, it is charred, and IT HAS LOST ITS FLAVOR. Salmon is supposed to be grilled and SUBTLE. Do you not understand this, you imbecile?," he once screamed.

Oh no! Caramelized pears with sausages and mashed potatoes? Burnt salmon? Why, that is an atrocity! Let’s put the perpetrators to shame! Let’s humiliate them, bring them to breaking point, cause them to scream and fight and complain and cry, until they learn the errors of their ways, mainly through Gordon, after which they can be redeemed. This essentially sums up the standard plot line for Kitchen Nightmares, making each episode completely predictable, and yet, so comforting in its familiar plot twists and turns.

My favorite part of each episode is when Gordon exposes the mistakes each restaurant makes. As someone who loves eating and cooking, I have no knowledge of how restaurants are ran, and it is truly enlightening to see the various hierarchies embedded in the service industry. It is also quite enlightening and, in fact, quite appalling, to see how some of the restaurants Gordon exposes are still running. There was one Indian restaurant in New York infested with cockroaches, rotten vegetables, and unfamiliar hunks of meat. There was another Italian restaurant in Maryland where the owner saw the restaurant as his own personal kitchen, causing delays by eating meals meant to be served. There was a ‘continental’ restaurant in Britain (in the British version of the show) where the chef had no formal training and merely copied his recipes off tabloids.

I also like the part when Gordon takes over, donning his bright white chef’s coat to show these idiots how to cook. There is something simply erotic about his ability to dice zucchini; the fast, precise way he slices the zucchini alludes to other types of, er, manual excellence. The way he swirls and drops garlic into a sizzling hot wok and immediately places tomato sauce, some of which skids onto his coat, is a well-executed dance. And the results are so divine! When the camera lovingly pans over each new dish, my mouth begins to water and I am engulfed with the unbearable sensation of longing. And then I inevitably have to rush into the kitchen to eat something – anything – to make the longing stop.

You see what Gordon does to me?

Sigh.

Lamenting the New Yorker Food Issue

2007-09-23T17:18:00.000-04:00

Dear and loyal readers, forgive me for I have sinned. It has been a month since my last blog entry. In my defense, I have been terribly busy. Over the past four weeks, I have:

1) facilitated a workshop and finished my DR project;

2) hobnobbed with Dominican rock stars and experienced the excitement of being asked to pose for a picture for some random DR broadsheet (and pose I did, though my crazed leer might be more suitable for an ad for Psychotics Anonymous);

3) explored Las Terrenas via horse-back;

4) suffered from a mild panic attack when riding a claustrophobia-inducing gua-gua back to Santo Domingo because the person squished next to me was clutching a huge dead rooster (I can eat birds but prefer not to share the same space as them);

5) said bittersweet goodbyes to my nearest and dearest in the DR;

6) flipped out when I discovered that Delta Airlines had cancelled my flight leaving Santo Domingo when I got to the airport;

7) had a lovely reunion with my London ladies in Atlanta as a result of said flight fiasco;

8) had a whirlwind stopover in Vancouver with my beloved family and

9) amassed knowledge on different sorts of airline food and ideal napping nooks in airports in three different countries (although all in one continent).

During the plethora of flights I had to take, I once again realized that ‘good airline food’ is an oxymoron. During one of my many Delta flights, I found myself eating a rock hard sandwich that consisted of stale Kraft cheddar cheese encased between two slices of papery wheat bread, accompanied by a Mars bar; during another flight, I was eating a decidedly pathetic ‘pasta’ dish simmered in tepid tomato sauce and weird random bits of pepper and tomato. West Jet at least did not offer a hot meal service and only gave me packets of ‘snack mix’ (3 pretzel sticks, 5 peanuts, and 2 cheerios) every two hours, though even then, surely they could’ve provided at least snacks of significantly better quality. (If there are any West Jet personnel reading my blog, I will be happy to give you a list of suggestions – how about pita bread and hummus, for example?)

Thus, for a foodie having to stay in an airplane for hours without any good food in the vicinity, distractions are direly necessary. Thankfully, I had in my greedy hands a copy of the coveted annual New Yorker food issue. <insert ooohhs and ahhhs>. Ever since I discovered that the New Yorker is a viable ‘geek girl’ alternative to the Economist (too capital L liberal) and to the Atlantic Monthly (annoyingly smug), I’ve been faithfully devouring issue after issue, even reading a rather compelling article on the politics on filibustering while sitting astride a recalcitrant camel during an interminable camel safari trip to Jaisalmer. The annual New Yorker food issue and the travel issue are therefore cataclysmic events in my foodie-life. I fondly remember the insightful article on the joys of eating tongue written three years ago and can still remember, among many articles, a well-written piece on the history of ketchup (it seems boring but really isn’t, and almost persuaded me to leave the ‘mayo’ camp for the ketchup club).

Imagine, then, my distress after I thumbed through this year’s food issue to realize that the articles I have eagerly been awaiting for the past year are, for the most part…well…sub-standard. I thought the New Yorker food issue was supposed to be written by people who genuinely loved and appreciated food!

There was a bizarre series of essays on ‘Family Dinners’ that was meant to use the common theme of family dinners as a starting point to explore cultural and historical nuance. Unfortunately, some of these articles merely reinforced cultural stereotypes. E.g., Gary Shteyngart’s piece on craving McDonalds as the first-generation son of Russian immigrants seemed pulled out of the Amy Tan school of East versus West plot maneuvers. Nell Freudenberger’s article on going to Southern Bangladesh to eat at a friend’s grandmother’s house struck me as being clichéd: of course there was a group of eccentric aunties, one of whom made “dirty jokes about sex” and had a blood red mouth due to incessant paan chewing; of course there was an “Auntie Number Three” doing all the cooking in a little hut with the assistance of a “dangerously gorgeous servant girl with kohl-rimmed eyes”; of course there were groups of “old women with covered heads and bright-red mouths.” Edward Said couldn’t have explained my frustration over these two articles better. Here’s a thought: rather than rehashing the same old stereotype of an immigrant child wanting to gain American peer acceptance through Big Macs or of a white woman becoming more culturally exotic and enlightened after a brush with the Natives, why not present the alternative perspective? I.e., get a story of how immigrant groups in the US hybridize cultural tradition with American norms to create exciting family dinners (as explored by Gurinder Chadha in her excellent film, “What’s Cooking?”) or a piece devoid of Orientalist sub-texts! The other articles in the “Family Dinner” segment were just…okay. I mean, yes, I guess one could say that a random guy’s struggles in gaining a French family’s acceptance by eating (horror upon horrors!) an artichoke is amusing, but again, it struck me as hackneyed. After all, how many other accounts have been written on the eccentric food practices of the French?

As for the rest of the issue, I was particularly excited when I saw that there would be a piece on street food in Singapore. And though the article itself wasn’t that objectionable, I was a bit disheartened that the descriptions of the food items were formulaic; that is to say, they didn’t really provide a glimpse of what the taste, texture, smell, etc. was like. When reading about food, I want to be transported and to almost feel the sensory rush being experienced by the author. There was also another piece on “weird food” full of self-satisfied bravado; yes, John McPhee, you are so cool because you were able to write about people who have eaten so many exotic food stuff. I bet you also have a big penis.* The rest of the articles were too bland (“Fruits of the five boroughs in New York”??? uhh, okay) to merit any attention.

Here’s hoping that next year’s food issue would be better. If not, I might have to put the New Yorker food issue into a permanent spot in my foodie hall of shame.

*Dude, this is sarcasm. John, if you are reading this, I really have no thoughts on private parts of your anatomy. This particular article of yours just sucked.

Tas, the BEST Turkish restaurant in London

2007-08-23T16:15:00.001-04:00

There are times when my food-obsession reaches the height of desperation. When I was an undergraduate student in Vancouver and living in residence, I would have intense cravings for pho at 2 am and would not able to sleep, read, or do anything noteworthy until I had my pho fix. Therefore, I would sneak out of residence clad in my black hoodie and pajamas, walk for twenty minutes to the bus loop at the center of the university, and hop on board the 24 hour 99 B-Line until I reached my favorite Pho Hoa, the all-night one-stop shop for Vietnamese food. I would usually order one of their medium bowls of ‘Special’ pho with all the trimmings (lean and fatty beef, beef balls, tripe, fatty flank and brisket), accompabied by an abundant sprinkling of spring onions and garnished with sprigs of basil and handfuls of bean sprouts. Depending on my mood that evening, I would add oyster sauce or soy sauce or fish sauce to the broth, or even some chili powder. Occasionally, I would also order Cha goi, which are deep fried spring rolls filled with meat and vegetables, or ‘fresh’ rolls, which are rice paper spring rolls containing vermicelli and vegetables. If I was feeling particularly indulgent, I would finish the meal with iced Vietnamese coffee, which was made all the more delicious because the proprietor would usually include a lot of condensed milk. In retrospect, my nocturnal pho fixations were probably a tad dangerous. A year after I left Vancouver for chic, cosmopolitan London, I heard that there was a drive-by gangster shooting in this restaurant after midnight, caused in part by burgeoning gang violence in the area. (“Foodie Killed by Gangs: The Dark Side of Gluttony,” would be the resultant headline had I been present during the shooting, coupled with a gratuitous shot of me splayed on the linoleum floor, mouth hanging open mid-bite).

Speaking of chic, cosmopolitan London, the best restaurant, hands-down, in the city is Tas. Some of my fondest memories of London have involved this restaurant. I distinctly remember the time when I went there with my Butler’s Wharf flatmates to celebrate Easter dinner after AM and PP insisted that they needed to adhere to their Eastern European roots and celebrate with lamb. Hence, off to Tas we went, ignoring our paltry student budgets in order to savor a truly festive meal, although when it came time to order dessert, we opted to share kayisi tatlisi (apricots doused in almond, cream, and pistachio) between six people in an attempt to decrease costs. I also remember the time when I dragged CB with me to Tas after living in India for a year, during which I was eager to eat as much meat as possible following a near-vegetarian diet in Delhi; this was a brilliant but costly meal where I spent 50 quid (a gazillion rupees or about $100 dollars) to satiate my cravings. During my tri-annual trips to England, Tas is definitely one of my stops.

I recently discovered Tas’ interactive website and I have been perusing the menu listed on the website in between writing mind-numbingly dull paragraphs on migration and co-development. Perhaps as a result of my frequent perusing of the website, I have to confess that over the past three days, I have been having dreams of Tas; last Tuesday evening’s dream involved me caught in a foodie crossroads: should I order the metze menu, which featured a range of dips (humus, baba ghanoush, etc.) with borek and tabule, or should I order the hummus kavurma (hummus with pine nuts and lamb chunks) followed by Incik (lamb simmered in tomato sauce)? In other words, should I have minute samples of delectable dips or should I have a full, proper meal; i.e., is quantity more important than quality? I woke up that morning famished and irate, never having made my decision. The other night I dreamt that CB and I had disembarked from the Waterloo station tube stop and made our way to my beloved Tas, where we discovered – horror upon horrors – that Tas had closed down permanently, replaced by a garish branch of Hooters, where we saw my human rights heroes Amartya Sen and Louise Arbour eating chicken wings with Ann Coulter (opportunistic fame-seeking bitch) and Renee from America’s Next Top Model Cycle 8 (ick).

My bizarre dreams aside, Tas is # 1 in my personal foodie hall of fame. Yes, the service can be a bit abrupt and impersonal, with the serving staff frequently seeming at a loss when it comes to dealing with regular clientele. (“Yes, we can sneak you into the table at the back, but you only have half an hour to eat because someone else is coming,” snapped the host one evening. “But I’m here all the time,” I protested. “Yes, I know; so just skip desert and you’ll be fine.”) Yes, it is annoying to have to tolerate the disdainful sniffs of our servers when we asked for regular water rather than bottled fizzy water. Yes, the house wine tastes a bit too much like balsamic vinegar for my taste, though I realize that had I paid for a more expensive bottle, this problem would have been easily rectified.

These complaints aside, the fact remains that I have never had a horrible meal at Tas – ever. Who really cares about the occasionally indifferent service when the food is just so heavenly? The aforementioned hummus kavurma and Incik are my favorites, but the hunkar begendi (eggplant and Kasar Cheese puree with diced lamb) mousakka are equally good and have made me roll my eyes in orgasmic ecstasy on one too many occasions. The seemingly banal “Tas Special” is anything but because the lamb casserole works well when doused with oregano and simmered in tomato sauce. The vegetarian dishes are good as well, though a little bit more variety would be nicer because that section of the menu contains too much aubergine. Oh, as a caveat, allow me to add that CB, ever the picky eater, had insisted on ordering a weird pasta with tomato and chopped lettuce (!!!) dish, and was quite dissatisfied with the result; therefore, I would advise that you stick to the Turkish food and eat pasta in an Italian restaurant.

The dessert section, on the other hand, satisfied even CB. I like Tas’ light dessert menu. As mentioned, the apricot dish is fantastic and is still my favorite. The baklava and the kunefe also provide a nice finishing touch to your meal and are best accompanied by thick, grainy espresso cups of Turkish coffee or sugary sweet Turkish tea.

Though there are apparently numerous branches of Tas, I always frequent the original Tas restaurant at Waterloo. I am certain, however, that all the other branches of Tas serve the same quality of food. Now if only I can open branches of Tas in Santo Domingo, Toronto, and Vancouver…

Steak, Salad, and Sexism

2007-08-20T23:18:00.000-04:00

With only three weeks left in the Dominican Republic, I was hoping to spend the next few weekends gallivanting around the country, perhaps going horseback riding in the Semana peninsula by the waterfalls or witnessing the weekly Haitian-Dominican market at the border town of Pedernales. This past long weekend was supposed to be the perfect holiday weekend but that bastard Hurricane Dean thwarted my plans, ensuring that I spent three nights in a row stuffing my face with food and chugging bottles of wine with DG, my Dutch neighbor who lives upstairs, and the famous N. Truth be told, I did have a fun girlie weekend – girl talk at its best involves lots of vino, lots of conversation fodder, and lots of ex-boyfriends to jeer at, no? Still, after the third day of being cooped up in my bunker, I was suffering from cabin fever (and wine overdose), and therefore decided to drag a friend with me to Boca Chica. The sun was shining, Hurricane Dean has moved on to Belize, and everything would be perfect….

Or so I thought. We were in Boca Chica for barely half an hour when we saw gray clouds looming overhead. Within ten minutes, the downpour started; rain as hard as small pebbles hit our backs as we ran to the bus stop. Defeated, we eventually made our way back to Santo Domingo, leaving me in the most wretched of wretched moods, one of those moods where I would happily kick a forlorn puppy crossing my path or strangle a doe-eyed toddler asking for a hug. CB and other close confidantes know me well enough to steer clear when I am like this; I have, after all, been known to be physically abusive when overtaken by vicious, vicious vitriol. (E.g., CB’s attempts to thwart my world-renowned haggling tactics at Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar warranted a violent slap).

After a few hours shaking my fists at the sky, I realized that hey, rage can be productive. Besides, it is decidedly pathetic to challenge the weather Gods to a duel; doing so is as futile as Britney Spears’ attempts at a comeback or Amy Winehouse’s stints at rehab. (As an aside, I apologize for the copious amounts of pop cultural references; Hurricane weekend also entailed catching up on celebrity goss via TMZ).

Therefore, I am now channeling my rage towards Allen Sankin, the pedantic patriarch who penned the NY Times Style Section article, “Be Yourselves Girls, and Order the Rib-Eye.” Though I have read (and seethed over) this article since it was first published on the 9^th of August, I haven’t been able to summon up the requisite amount of self-righteousness to write a scathing indictment of Sankin’s so-called journalistic piece until now.

For those of you who haven’t read the aforementioned article, Sankin, ever the intrepid NY Times journalist, decided to investigate women’s culinary dating tactics, ultimately concluding that the days of women ordering a salad are long behind them not because gender equality has advanced far enough to enable women to decry such archaic norms as bullshit but because “meat is strategy.”

Specifically, ordering a steak gives the impression that one is low maintenance, laidback, and drama-free. As a recently engaged carnivorous convert beamed, “Red meat sends a message that [I am] unpretentious and down to earth and unneurotic…that I’m not obsessed with my weight even though I’m thin, and I don’t have any food issues.” This woman - who until recently was a vegetarian but changed her ways when she realized that marketing one’s carnivorous impulses via dating websites led to a purported increase in one’s desirability- has a diamond ring as proof that switching from no-meat to all-meat is a fool-proof dating strategy. After all, every woman wants to “be the girl who drinks the beer and eats the steak and looks like Kate Hudson.” Bear in mind that a woman’s value increases not only if she orders meat but also if she can wax eloquent on the origins of Kobe beef and other tantalizing bits of trivia. This then means that our poor vegetarian sisters are left at a literal no-man’s land, for vegetarians in the Manhattan dating scene are associated with an “unappealing mousiness” and are considered “wimpy, insipid, childish, vapid and uninteresting.”

Though the article attempts to make it look like Sarkin is drolly in on the joke, with Sarkin winking at us from behind the masthead, his references to “girls” (even though the women he interviewed were in their late 20’s and 30’s) and his analogies to “conventional dating wisdom” exhorting women to eat a meal first before going out on a dinner date are not retro in a cool ironic way, but rather retro in a Leave it to Beaver “let’s-laugh-at-these-silly-women” way. In fact, I would not be surprised if Sarkin and those women who penned “The Rules” frequently swap tidbits of dating advice. If Sarkin was truly interested in writing a piece on increases in meat consumption among Manhattan singletons, perhaps he would have been better served making the link between this and the larger sociological patterns of trendy ‘cause’ affiliations, which has turned Greenpeace-vegetarian-activism into yesterday’s passé fixations and has ushered other causes like Bono’s pro-Africa movement and other practices such as meat-eating to the forefront. But hey, I get it, this type of article would not have had the sexy hook NY Times editors are after.

But is there the possibility that Sarkin’s article is reporting a true phenomenon? Are women deliberately shunning vegetables in favor of meat in order to snag the man of their dreams? Though it is clear that Sarkin’s piece was by no means an evidence-based piece of reporting and is likely based on a very select sample size of middle-class urban singles, I do not doubt that some women really do believe that changing their preferences (food or otherwise) is mandatory in order to catch a man. I also do not doubt that there are men who have set requirements of what women should and should not eat (trust me, I’ve gone out with a few of them; one of them committed the cardinal sin of ordering for me on our first and only date).

And much as I am tempted to shrug my shoulders and say, “to each his/her own,” I will have to say to these women - as a foodie and as a feminist - that relationships based on culinary deception really do not bode well for the future. Lying about food or about anything (hobbies, political beliefs, music preferences, etc.) is evidence of a lack of self-respect and reeks a little bit too much of Eau de desperation. Though it is tempting to delude your potential partner into thinking that you love the taste of dead animal carcass/ enjoy eating vegan food and attending organic food fairs/ would forego Miller’s Light for a glass of Shiraz/ etc., what happens years down the road, when you realize that putting on a charade of being a carnivore/vegan/wasp really isn’t you? What happens when, despite years of trying, you just cannot muster up the enthusiasm to eat at that new steak house/ go door-to-door selling boxes of organic eggs/ attend the wine-tasting at Martha’s Vineyard/ etc.? Furthermore, what if you miss out on your chance of meeting someone who you is your culinary match because you are ensnared in a faux relationship with someone else?

I speak from experience. (“Hear we go again,” I can see you groan. Indulge me; this is my blog after all). You see, back in those seemingly halcyon days of yore, I once tried convincing this avowed environmentalist that the only reason I ate meat was out of bad habit, that I was aware of all of the ethical reasons to be vegetarian, and that I really and truly wanted to be reformed by him. Though I was naively going for the ‘bad-carnivore-needing-to-be-reformed’ angle, I could see that he saw that the only reason I was feigning chagrin over my meat-eating ways was because I wanted to, um, eat his falafel. I persisted, he resisted, I was heartbroken and finally knew that I always had to be true to my foodie self. (Well, it took me a few more years to realize this, but you get the message).

In closing, I will exhort all my readers to order salad or steak because you truly want to, and not because you are trying to guess what your date would like to see you eat. This leads to a self-defeating, disempowering game of mind-reading; your energy is better spent on other matters, such as figuring out what to have – or do - for dessert. And if the imbecile you are with criticizes you for what you ordered, the s/he is not really worth going out with in the first place.

Gluttony be Damned: Lessons on Love and Deception Learnt

2007-08-13T13:33:00.000-04:00

Operation FFF (Free French Food) has been aborted. In fact, if I could delete all previous postings on FR and my attempts to be wined and dined with Merlot and Mechoui, I would; alas, doing so is reminiscent of an Orwellian attempt to rewrite history, so let history (and the Internet!) forever name and shame me for my gluttony.

You see, dear and loyal readers, although I am a self-professed epicurean, there comes a point where politics ultimately trumps food and travel. My political standpoints explain why I will not go to Burma despite my appreciation for Burmese cuisine, which, coincidentally, amalgamates Thai and Indian culinary tactics, leading to the creation of dishes such as Nga Baung Doke (fish simmered with turmeric, garlic, ginger, and coconut milk) and Hinnunwe (a spicy Burmese take on stir-fry). Similarly, my political standpoints also explain why Operation FFF has now officially ended.

Allow me to backtrack. I have hung out with FR a couple of times since our first meeting, usually making arrangements to go out for quick drinks or to the cinema. During our encounters, I was able to discern that FR’s dad used to be the Rolling Stones’ personal chef in the 70’s, at the height of Mick’s debauchery, and had a few stories of his own to tell about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I also found out that both his brother and sister are pastry chefs, making FR’s family, essentially, the culinary equivalent of the Kennedy’s or the Windsors.

Let it go on the record that I chilled with FR not necessarily because I was intending to weasel my way into FR’s ‘family friends’ list and get invited to regular dinners; rather, FR seemed like a genuinely nice guy and it was good to have a list of ‘after-work drinking buddies’ to satisfy my post-work pina colada needs. Oh, also, up until our second meeting, I deliberately refused all of his romantic overtures and maintained a friendly (yet ambiguous) demeanor, yet soon had to clarify that I was dating CB after FR swooped down and tried to kiss me after taking me home, during which I jumped aside, pushed him back, and yelled, “you-seem-like-a- nice-guy-but -I-have-a-boyfriend-can-we-just-be-friends.” My revelation, tellingly, did not seem to bother him, and indeed seemed to make him more eager to hang out. My conscience after that was clear, so we continued to maintain close contact, though I was always careful to make blatant references to CB and to have a third party present when it came time to say good-bye.

Hence, all seemed to be progressing as planned. I was no longer really in an ethical morass (notwithstanding FR’s persistence in hanging out ‘just as friends’ after my disclosure); I had received the coveted invitation to drop by the hotel for lunch or dinner ‘anytime’; and I made a new buddy to boot. All’s well that ends well, right?

Wrong. My misgivings heightened after the two of us met for pina coladas at Hard Rock Café (I know, I know, don’t judge me). During our meeting, we started talking about religious and multicultural diversity in the Dominican Republic. I observed that there was a blatant amount of prejudice against Haitians, and that there seemed to be a marked unwillingness for Dominicans to acknowledge blackness, an identification automatically conflated with being Haitian, which is a huge taboo in the DR. The fact that certain clubs unofficially refuse entry to people with darker skin tones (regardless of whether they identify as black or not) is but one example of acrimonious racial politics in the DR.

Instead of engaging with my thoughts, FR said, “well, it does not matter to me. All Dominicans and all Haitians are lazy.”

I almost dropped the glass I was holding. A myriad challenges rose to my brain, but remained unarticulated. I then began noticing rather suspicious aspects to FR’s family’s lifestyle in Santo Domingo. Why was it that they have lived in Santo Domingo for nearly a year and yet did not really know a word of Spanish? Though my Spanish leaves a lot to be desired, my day-to-day Spanish is comprehensible enough to enable me to, say, order food, call a taxi, converse with shopkeepers, etc. Perhaps FR’s inability to speak Spanish stems not from his inability to grasp intricate Spanish grammar but rather from an aversion to the language, and thus, to Dominican culture itself. The fact that FR looked at me blankly when I made previous references to Dominican food or Dominican musical forms seemed to exemplify such xenophobia. Seriously, you would have to be living under a rock if you do not know what bachata is or why love "estan dificil", according to the band Aventura!

Finally, FR broke the silence by explaining how it was hard for him to really grasp ‘other’ people’s traditions because they were so ‘different.’ (Um, isn't that why you travel?) As an example, he cited his difficulties understanding Islam, as practiced in Morocco and Egypt, where he had lived previously. He ended this anecdote by jocularly declaring that he thought all women wearing the hijjab in Morocco and Egypt should stop doing so; otherwise, how could he truly see their faces and physiques and judge their attractiveness.

Now, I realize that the hijjab debate is mired with controversy and by no means would I like this food blog to be my personal political platform pontificating on my beliefs. However, dismissing an entire religious/cultural practice as being barbaric even after having lived in specific countries where said practice is contextualized strikes me as being ignorant. For the record, I believe that France’s policy mandating students not to wear all religious insignia, including head scarves, turbans and the like, is preposterous; why the sudden focus on the hijjab now when French students have been wearing crucifixes for decades? That said, I have had engaging debates with French friends on this very issue and I am open to partaking in informed discussions with anyone who disagrees with my opinions. FR’s dismissive, sexist stance foreclosed any possibility for discussion.

Whether I am overreacting or not is contentious. In any case, my growing apprehension towards FR was heightened this Saturday, after I took him with me to HE’s going-away party. During the cab ride going there, FR had made inquiries into the nature of me and CB’s relationship, which I firmly (and a tad uncomfortably) answered. I made clear that CB and I were not in an open relationship. I was inwardly repulsed that he thought my having a long-distance relationship gave the two of us free reign to get jiggy with it.

Perhaps as a consequence, FR seemed even more determined to get some action that night, and proceeded to hit on very inebriated women, finally settling on S, HE’s friend from the UK, who had had one too many vodkas. I felt a bit guilty because I brought FR as a guest, and FR was clearly not getting the hint. S’s judgment, admittedly, was impaired, but not impaired enough to allow him to swoop down for a kiss, nor impaired enough to allow him to touch her ass. Despite these adamant ‘no’s,’ FR persisted, plying S with more vodka in a transparent attempt to ensure her compliance. During these overtures, I asked S repeatedly whether FR’s advances were welcome, and S more adamantly told me that they were not. Finally, at the end of the evening, FR, S, and I shared a taxi home together ,with me sitting in front observing via the rearview mirror FR’s (failed) attempts to kiss S. In retrospect, I guess I should have sat with them at the back, but I underestimated FR’s desperation. S, thankfully, had sobered up at that point and was being more vocal in her resistance. To all men reading my blog, despite what that prune-faced harpie Camille Paglia said, no really does mean no!!!

I see this sad little escapade with FR as a form of karmic retribution. Here I was, thinking that I could get free gourmet dinners through deception. In turn, I end up being saddled with a racist loser who I suspect is one roofie away from being your friendly neighborhood sex maniac. Hmmm. Maybe what I just said is unwarranted but I. am. still. fuming.

In any case, I have learnt my lesson and will endeavor to buy or cook those damn gourmet dinners myself. Perhaps eating Bon chocolate and vanilla ice-cream will calm me down. Grrrr.

Eggplants and sausages

2007-08-10T14:22:00.000-04:00

Suffice it to say that I am still mired in an ethical dilemma concerning my 'thing' with FR, though I think that events over the next few days will provide some resolution. I promise to write an entry on the latest developments with respect to my Machiavellian ploy to get free gourmet food, but for now, all I will say is that maybe this really isn't the best idea. There are times when my insatiable love for good food and good wine can be superceded by other considerations, such as political standpoints and personality traits. Oh and yes, CB knows (and is rolling his eyes over) my diabolical intentions, so my relationship with CB is not my main deterrent from pursuing gourmet dinners via FR.

Speaking of CB, I previously compared him to a warm, gooey, delightful slice of simple, sticky, unadored yet oh-so-delicious chocolate cake that looks like this:

Lately, after the five-week mark of our last meeting (boo to long-distance relationships), I have been craving eggplant:

Therefore, I have been eating a myriad of eggplant dishes, ranging from eggplant stuffed with rice, shrimp, tomatoes, basil and garlic Dominican Style to baba ghanoush.

However, I have also been craving German bratwursts, and am trying to see how I can access the grilled wursts CB and I had eaten in Munich, which are tastier when accompanied by ice-cold pints of Radler (German beer mixed with lemonade):

Until I see CB, I am going to indulge in repeated bouts of food therapy. Food can never trump love nor can love ever trump food, but when one is absent, repeated doses of the other becomes a dire necessity.

All is Fair in Love and Food?: An Epicurean’s Ethical Dilemma

2007-08-07T17:33:00.000-04:00

Other women will go through any lengths to nab a hot guy with a smoking investment portfolio, a mansion in Nantucket, a chalet in Italy/France, and a cherry-red Ferrari. While I harbor no ill will towards these women, a part of me cannot help but feel, a la Gloria Steinem, that these women really should stop chasing after men with the proper attributes but instead focus attention on acquiring these prized possessions themselves through, you know, hard work. You see, I come from a family of strong, opinionated women. My grandmother started her own school for girls in the Philippines in the early 20th century, my mother and my aunt are all ambitious career-women, and my female cousins are pioneers in the fields of medicine and finance. Consequently, my own personal career trajectory has been deeply influenced by my counterparts. It was never a question of “needing a man” to achieve personal self-fulfillment but rather a matter of tried-and-tested true-blue self-reliance. (My grandfather, in fact, had told my mother and all her sisters that they risk getting disowned if they got married before obtaining a university degree. He also told them that he would not be attending their graduation ceremonies if they did not graduate with honors).

Alas, as a foodie, I am forced to confront the reality that perhaps I am a wee bit hypocritical in maligning women for going after rich guys with fancy sports cars. There comes a time when all men or and all women, regardless of socioeconomic and cultural background, are thrust into an ethical cross-roads, where one’s moral code is put to the test.

For me, this epiphany occurred two Sundays ago. It was a slow, sultry evening in Santo Domingo. I was exhausted following the events of Saturday night but was determined to meet my friend DC for a hip hop Dominicano concert. Like always, I spent no thought on that night’s outfit. As mentioned previously, my fashion philosophy prioritizes comfort, and so I ventured to the venue wearing what I wore the whole day: black capris, sandals, and a cerulean blue top, my hair in two little buns at the top of my head, making me look less like Gwen Stefani and more like Princess Leia. When I saw DC, she, on the other hand, looked like Beyoncé, an observation corroborated by other hooting passers-by. She was accompanied by two guys, Kiko, whom I had met before and whose resemblance to a cuter and less cadaverous Mark Anthony becomes more pronounced every time I see him, and FR, who I found out was French and was DC’s neighbor. Because the concert took two hours to start, I engaged in small talk with FR, who was representative of a lot of other men of his ilk: nice enough, cute enough, smart enough and therefore quickly relegated to the status of NTMF (non-threatening male friend). Besides, my mind is always drawn to CB, who, in my humble and completely objective opinion, is just about as tasty as dark, gooey, rich chocolate cake, therefore making it impossible for me to be tempted by other men.

In any case, in the middle of our inane ramblings, FR let slip that his father worked as a chef for one of Santo Domingo’s five-star hotels. After a little more prodding, he told me who his father was, leaving me awestruck – his father was the expert when it comes to French fusion Moroccan food, renowned for his creative usage of ingredients culled from his world travels. He is famous for using culinary techniques culled from his stays in France, England, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, experimenting with flavors in order to produce intriguingly delicious dishes; he teases one’s palate by making it difficult to discern exactly what it is that he added to the dish to give it that little extra bit of something, while simultaneously making you want more.

In the light of this revelation, FR began to seem more interesting. Following the concert, FR offered to walk me home, which was quite considerate, especially because the danger of getting mugged along Parque Independencia is quite immanent. We had established a friendly rapport, talking about language faux pas, the movie Babel, and life as a perennial Third Culture kid. I was intrigued by his father’s cooking, and asked a few questions in this regard; I remember thinking at that point that if I was lucky, I’d be able to meet the grand master himself and maybe emerge from our meeting with a generous slice of succulent apple crumble or even a plate of creme bruleé.

When we reached my door step, FR asked for my number, which I gave willingly. Expatriates everywhere know that this in itself does not mean sexual or romantic interest; when living in a new city, it is difficult to meet other newcomers so numbers are easily exchanged to facilitate the establishment of convenient social networks. Before leaving, however, FR turned around and said, with his thick French accent, “I would like to have dinner at some point with such a nice and pretty girl.”

That, dear readers, was my ‘eureka’ moment. Despite my resemblance to a Star Wars character that evening, FR was…interested? Notwithstanding the English-as-a-second-language cheesiness of his pick-up line, I quickly realized that I need not only aspire for a few servings here and there of various pieces of desert. Rather, through FR and his easy access to free gourmet dinners, my remaining weeks here in Santo Domingo could be spent enjoying glasses and glasses of full-bodied Shiraz and Merlot, accompanied by exquisite slivers of Bleu d’Auvergne, garlic-infused Cancoilotte, and Roquefort, which naturally precede cumin and paprika encrusted Mechoui.

Therefore, dear readers, I am ensnared in a moral predicament: should I take the honest path and tell FR about CB and risk losing my access to a plethora of culinary wonders lying in wait? Or should I indulge in a little bit of moral relativism by allowing myself to be wined and dined by FR, leading him to think that there is a little bit more to our relationship than mere friendship, while secretly knowing that nothing will ever come out of it? Indeed, one could argue that I have taken tentative steps towards the latter option. FR has been sending me increasingly flirtatious phone messages, all of which I have responded to in a vague, friendly manner, leaving the question of my relationship status ambiguous. Though cheating on CB is most adamantly not an option, is there really any harm in going out for fantastic five-star dinners with a man who does not know I have a boyfriend?

Conversations over stir-fry

2007-08-02T16:59:00.000-04:00

My fondest travel memories have almost always involved good food, good wine, and good conversations. When I am 85, I will likely bore CB, our children, and our grandchildren with recollections of travel and food. I can only imagine that at this stage, CB will have followed the path of his British male predecessors by resorting to ‘stiff upper lip’ tactics when confronted by the incoherent ramblings of others, which I will happily live with, seeing that CB will also still be climbing pyramids and trekking through rainforests with me. (This better be true, CB!) Hopefully, my children and grandchildren will eagerly await stories of my past travels, though I think that my repeated threats extolling them to ‘listen-to-granny-or-else-you-won’t-get-money’ just might act as an effective incentive.

Two nights ago, I had one of the best food and travel experiences, something which I will recount for years to come. By way of introduction to this anecdote, allow me to say first that living in Santo Domingo was initially difficult because of language and cultural barriers. I was spoilt living in Delhi and in Geneva because there was a more established network for newcomers, which helped ease the initial cultural transition. Thus, my first weeks in Santo Domingo were characterized by a myriad of language and cultural faux pas, among which included my realization that “un bolso” in the DR does not mean “a purse” but rather refers to male genitalia, or my epiphany that “un sankie” is not a type of alcoholic beverage but is actually Dominican slang used to characterize flashy men seeking sugar mommies. In retrospect, being caught unaware has made this experience more challenging, yet also more rewarding, in some respects. More so than my other experiences abroad, I’ve had to really immerse myself in the language and the culture, and also find my own social networks.

Thankfully, after two weeks, I met HQM, a charismatic, dynamic, and passionate American human rights and development journalist. HQM helped ease my transition into Dominican norms and values. Through HQM, I met other impassioned women. I have spent many evenings sitting in HQM’s comfortable living room, chewing handfuls of peanuts and olives and tortilla chips, swigging Presidente or Brahma beer, and…talking. Nothing invigorates me more than talking to a group of opinionated, fascinating individuals with diverse life experiences, where frank conversations flow as loosely as the alcohol circulating around the group.

In any case, two nights ago, at the eve of HQM’s departure from the DR, we once again gathered in her house. There were four of us: myself and HQM, as well as SB, a gender Peace Corps expert from the Southern United States, and N, a Haitian development studies student. HQM kindly served us a simple, yet delicious, stir-fry, which consisted of broccoli, onions, green pepper, and chicken marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, and jalapeno, the latter of which added that little extra zing to the dish. Afterwards, we had huge slices of chocolate cake, accompanied by dollops of whipped cream and chocolate chips. Buoyed by our dinner, we then spent the rest of the evening talking about everything, from politics to religion to Grey’s Anatomy to past romances to cultural clashes to funny anecdotes. Though it would be pointless (and too time-consuming) for me to recount all of our discussions, here are a few conversational highlights, which range from the serious to the amusing to the banal:

1) Race and aesthetics in the DR – Living in the DR is an eye-opening experience with respect to people’s different aesthetic norms. I have noticed that Dominican women dress superbly, with perfect hair and perfect outfits. My fashion philosophy has always been dictated by comfort rather than style, and in the DR’s sweltering weather, this has meant that I have really stretched the definition of ‘office-casual’ in my workplace, with nary a hint of make-up (ha) or hair products (double ha). Perhaps one of the most controversial issues here has consisted of hair straightening (an issue that is interestingly also a point of debate in African American communities); according to my Dominican female friends, a good chunk of women’s incomes are spent on salon treatments, where chemical relaxants are lathered into their hairs, which eliminates frizzy hair and leads to straighter, ‘more beautiful’ hair. N has been defying such aesthetic norms and wears her hair naturally curly, which has occasionally prompted strangers in the street to ask her why she chooses to ‘make herself ugly.’ N also told us her harrowing experience obtaining her driver’s license, where under ‘ethnicity,’ she was listed as ‘Indio’ rather than as ‘black’ because being described as ‘black’ in the DR is seen as an insult. Do these cultural norms evoke Said’s ‘orientalism’ or are they merely representative of a different type of aesthetic? Hmmmm.

2) Religious (in)tolerance – This conversation subsequently prompted SB to recount a (darkly) funny anecdote. Growing up in the South, SB had her share of religious evangelical teachers, whose educational tactics involved explicit attempts at religious conversion. In grade six, SB had a pious teacher who was on a mission to ‘save’ as many heathen (unchristian) souls in her school district. Thus, all of the clubs, lessons, and school plays sponsored by this teacher had ‘Christian’ messages; of the latter, a self-penned play entitled, “If Anne Frank had survived” was the most atrocious (and also the most comical, in the South Park type of way). In this play, our heroine, Anne, gets rescued by Southern American Baptists, who promptly bring Anne back to the US and teach her the importance of Christian values. The rest of the narrative describes Anne’s attempts at religious assimilation. The ending, of course, shows Anne Frank – arguably the most famous symbol of the need for religious tolerance – becoming Baptist. (!) You see, folks, if only Anne Frank had discovered Jesus sooner, then she might have been saved! If you don’t see the irony and the humor in this anecdote, please stop reading my blog. I am still chuckling and shaking my head. What is the world coming to?

3) Travel Stories – inevitably, our conversation turned to travel horror stories. SB, N, and HQM have all traveled and lived in Haiti, and share a deep appreciation and respect for Haitian culture. Leaving the tumult of Haitian politics aside for a later entry, SB, N, and HQM have all come to the conclusion that anyone who chooses to travel to Haiti without being aware of the special circumstances (and risks) travelers face are better off not going. This conclusion was spurred by their respective travel experiences with high-maintenance princess types who are surprised that Haiti does not have a well-organized Western style transport system, that there is an absence of paved streets and that the streets are not as ‘orderly.’ I heartily agree, and will recount my own terrible travel tales with self-entitled idiots whose ethnocentrism and Western bias prevent them from appreciating different cultural contexts.

Cheap Food and Booze Toronto (2007 edition)

2007-07-31T16:46:00.001-04:00

There are lots of ways to lord it over other people who aren’t in grad school, particularly when one is a graduate student in Political Science (although hardly anyone knows exactly what it is that we study, ‘studying’ Political Science invariably gives my fellow grad students a whole lot of political credibility – after all, we are the experts, no?). Unlike our peers who have opted to sell their souls to the corporate world or who have opted to, well, be grown-ups, with investment portfolios and RSPs, financial security and families, we are the exploring new academic frontiers and creating knowledge. Nevertheless, one cannot live on Kant or SPSS alone. Years of penury scrambling after competitive funding opportunities and lucrative book deals await us. Therefore, scrimping and budgeting becomes a dire necessity, where one oftentimes has to pick between, say, purchasing a new laptop or going on an unfunded research trip to Belize. Other graduate students have personally told me that the choice usually boils down to food or beer. Well, fear not, dear readers. With this handy dandy top ‘cheap eats and drinks around campus guide’, you can have both your nachos and your pint of Strongbow…

“I-can-only-afford-to-pay-for-one-meal-today” Restaurants:

Sushi on Bloor/New Generation Sushi: Great 5.99 lunch specials, but beware of long queues. PS. NGS has been known to give free green tea ice-cream to persistent U of T students. Don’t be afraid to aske!
Little India Restaurant: I have been on a one-woman search for the best butter chicken in Toronto. Little India Restaurant, located at Queen St. West, has by far the best butter chicken in Ontario, with thick, generous slices of chicken immersed in sweet, simmering gravy. Aside from butter chicken, L.I.R also has a scrumptious $9.99 lunch-time buffet, providing everything from pakoras to paneer to ice-cream! On weekends, L.I.R offers a $30 meal-for-two combo, which includes five dishes plus desert.
Korea Town: Walk past Honest Ed’s and there you will find Korea Town, which has been an absolute god-send for all of us bulgogi lovers. My favorites are Yummy Barbecue, for its gargantuan servings of spicy pork, beef, and rice, as well as Ka Chi Korean Restaurant, famous for its $6 spicy pork bone soup and $5 vegetable dumplings. All meals come with unlimited side dishes (kim chi, bean sprouts, etc.)
Pho Hung: On Bloor across from the ROM and on 350 Spadina, Pho Hung serves cheap, big bowls of original pho, with all of the expected trimmings: raw beef, tripe, pork, beef fat, etc. You can also order regular pho with chicken if you do not have an adventurous palate.
Noodle Bowl: I have mixed thoughts about Noodle Bowl, but its proximity to Robarts Library makes it ideal for a quick, cheap meal. Their seafood pad thai is decent, but go elsewhere if you want pho.

All-day brunches:

1. Boom Breakfast (Ossington and College): Cheap pancakes and waffles, unlimited coffee.

2. Mel’s Diner: Montrealers whine that the smoked meat sandwiches served at Mel’s Diner really isn’t authentic. Still, they serve hearty $6 breakfasts, which include hash browns, bacon/sausage/ham, and eggs.

3. Mitzie’s (Sorauren Ave.): Though this diner is a bit of a trek from campus, it is well worth it. Every week, there are innovative brunch creations. Of these, I always try their gourmet omelet selection.

Cheap drinks + cheap food

The Green Room/the Red Room: Though the musty décor leaves much to be desired, the Green Room on Bloor and the Red Room at Chinatown are student staples. I have spent many a night in these establishments pontificating on the relevance of Kant while chugging $10 pitchers of beer and munching on nachos. Honestly, though, I would stick to beer and to bar food (nachos, hummus, etc.) when frequenting either of these two places. Their sangria tastes more like Kool-Aid, and their selection of mains taste, for the most part, like edible cardboard.
Insomnia: Right across from Honest Ed’s, Insomnia is popular for their $5 martini nights!
Pauper’s Pub: Every night, Pauper’s has food and drinks specials. I highly recommend their cheap wings, which taste better when accompanied by pitchers of lager. Unlike other pubs at the Annex, Pauper’s is relatively free of pesky undergrads.
Sneaky Dees: Good tex-mex food, cheap drinks.
Futures: Yes, Futures does serve beer. I consider Futures my one-stop establishment. They have cheap brunch, cheap lunch, cheap coffee, cheap desert, and cheap beer.

In Praise of Rachael Ray

2007-07-30T15:55:00.000-04:00

The most common misconception people have about foodies is that all our meals are meticulously planned, using only the freshest and most labor-intensive ingredients possible. Therefore, it is said that true blue foodies must all give a scornful no to salad dressing, pasta sauce, and condiments bought at the local Safeway, saying yes only to anything organic and home made. It logically follows that foodies also say no to Rachael Ray and other ‘quick-cooking’ chefs and yes to Marco Pierre White and to Julia Childs.

Now, if I didn’t have work and school and life commitments, and can spend hours on end traipsing around organic food markets looking for quality ingredients, then maybe I would be able to successfully call myself Marco and Julia’s acolyte. Alas, like the vast majority of people, I cannot allocate hours on end searching for ingredients, writing brilliantly original and innovative recipes, and cooking.

In fact, I - for one - appreciate the likes of Rachael Ray for making good cooking accessible. After a long day at work, the prospect of whipping up a gourmet dinner is about as feasible as me brokering the Middle East peace process.

Japanese/Greek/Chinese/Thai/Korean take-out becomes a god-send. (Please note that I would never consider Mickey D’s or Burger King or KFC for take-out; with Toronto as my usual home base, I am fortunate to have a plethora of other dining options). When I am penny pinching, cooking simple, yet good and hearty meals a la Rachael Ray is my other option.

Here’s what I would like to say to Rachael Ray detractors. I agree that the woman is annoyingly perky. I agree that her almost-artificial peppiness is grating, reminiscent of the bouncy ‘happy-happy-joy-joy’ cheerleaders in my high school who I wanted to throttle. I agree that in the age of hot, smoldering, temperamental food chefs, Rachael Ray can hardly compete with the innate sexiness of our friend Marco and his cooking tantrums, or Gordon and his screaming fits. In the culinary world, where high quality cooking is valued as much as the drama instigated by celebrity chefs, Rachael Ray just seems so…simple, so inept, so…happy. How Middle-America, no?

Nevertheless, I admire what Rachael Ray represents. I like her refreshingly realistic perspective on food and on cooking, and the democratic ethos that infuses her recipes. Though she is by no means part of the cool kids cooking club a la Marco and Julia and Gordon, she is admirably free of self-importance and of snobbery; good cooking, Rachael asserts, is not limited to the select few but can be learned by everyone. In other words, she realizes that not everyone has the luxury to emulate a Michelin-rated chef and spend five hours on a meal. She understands that for most people, to actually get the energy to cook a meal - rather than resorting to take-out - is an achievement in itself. As a sign of her entrepreneurial abilities, she realized that ‘meals in 30 minutes or less’ can actually be of relatively high quality, an epiphany that led to the creation of her culinary empire. I, for one, am a big fan of her Hazelnut Crusted Chicken with Gorgonzola sauce recipe, as well as her curry chicken in a hurry or her asparagus with prosciutto.

Though I have no desire to join the ‘Minivan Majority’ (term courtesy of http://www.laineygossip.com/) any time soon, my admiration for Rachael Ray stems from my appreciation of a woman devoid of irony and pretension, someone who I can imagine inviting me to her kitchen, where we would subsequently cook – and drink – together. Marco and Gordo would probably throw a knife at me if I dare set food in their kitchen. Actually, Marco would probably consent to letting me watch him cook after I agree to sleep with him, since it is known how much of a leering pervert the old man can be when confronted with young women. And Gordo would probably yell obscenities at me before throwing a knife in my direction.

I would of course eat food prepared by Marco and Gordo in a heart beat. Still, on a day to day basis, I say, absolutely devoid of irony and sarcasm: Rachael Ray all the way!!!

Being ‘Outed’ as a Glutton: The Trials and Tribulations of an Epicurean at work

2007-07-25T15:28:00.000-04:00

So here I am at work, attempting to be productive rather than feigning productivity. Thus far, I have read, translated, and transcribed several policy documents and have sent key emails to important contacts who can assist me with my project. Unfortunately, my eyes keep wandering towards the corner of my office stacked with food. Today, I have packets of butter popcorn lying in wait. Earlier this week, I had plates of fresh papayas that burst with an explosive healthy sweetness after each bite, which I naturally paired with obese chunks of pineapples that leave a heady aftertaste. All of last week, courtesy of CB, I had boxes of Dutch shortbread cookies that were coated with a light-yet-satisfying layer of chocolate. The week before that, I was eating half-melted chocolate ice-cream which in retrospect was not as good, as, say, Haagen Daz, but did allow me to plod through the rest of the afternoon, bolstered by bites of chocolate.

I am afraid that in all of my past work places, my identity as a secret glutton has emerged, sometimes in the most embarrassing of circumstances. Of course I was the one caught by our director, along with two visiting ambassadors from important Latin American countries, attempting to remove copious amounts of chocolate stains on my hands; thank God that tradition here mandates not a handshake but a light kiss on the cheek or Madam Director would’ve had her suit soiled by yours truly. Of course the big boss in India just had to be the one opening our locked office doors whenever I snuck out to purchase my afternoon snacks of Kurkure, samosas, pakoras and glasses of “Coffee Day” iced coffees three afternoons in a row, prompting him to voice his concern in the middle of a staff meeting about my eating habits and encouraging me to stay away from unhealthy, cholesterol inducing foods. Of course my cravings for hummus were broadcast by amused-but-well-meaning colleagues in my work place in Geneva, along with my appreciation for UNHCR’s regular Friday ‘burgers’ (which, as an aside, were grilled to perfection and contained a perfect assortment of lettuce, tomatoes, and condiments for your liking). Heads almost rolled when nefarious, power-tripping security guards did not let me in one Friday because I lacked the proper UN authorized identification; like a teenager sneaking into a dance club, I therefore had to borrow a colleague’s ID in order to gain access into the UNHCR’s cafeteria. Of course I have been observed stuffing my face with exotic cheeses (gouda, Camembert, brie) in office parties, my cheeks as round as a chipmunk. During office parties, others can have the cheap boxes of wine; just leave the food to me please. Hence, depending on what particular food product I was craving most intensely during my various office stints, I would be associated with that specific type of food by my colleagues. Thus, in India, I was the pakora and paneer girl; in Geneva, I was Ms. Hummus, etc.

What is it about workday monotony that induces intense food cravings? Today, for some reason, I am craving deep-fried wonton with sweet and sour sauce. If I close my eyes, I can almost hear the light “crack” of the crisp wonton breaking in my mouth and then taste the quick rush of saltiness emitted by the wonton and beef, which worked well when coupled with the cloying sweetness of the sauce. For this lazy Wednesday afternoon, deep-fried wonton would be a delightful snack, and would arguably even spur me into action: for every paragraph I type, I get one wonton! Perfect. (Hmmm. To all Human Resources personnel reading my blog, keep this in mind as part of an employee incentive program). Until then, I guess I have to stick to butter popcorn. Ah well.

When Harry Potter Trumps Food: The Challenges of One-Hand Eating

2007-07-23T13:19:00.000-04:00

Food, for me, almost always trumps all other considerations. When I received job offers following graduate school, I narrowed my choices between working for organizations in India (butter chicken, dosas, anything paneer, lassis galore) and in Thailand (see previous entry on Thai street food). My stomach acts as a supernatural psychic force, weeding out potentially disastrous destinations and discovering fantastic ones. Therefore, I decided to live and work in India because I had visions of myself diligently drafting excellent human rights exposés, pausing in between reports to gulp sips of sweet, spicy masala chai given an extra zing by the bits of ginger added to the broth. Although the first organization I was assigned to ended up being ran by a pathetic megalomaniac whose Napoleonic complex led him to make unethical decisions I was uncomfortable with, I was reassigned to another organization after a difficult two weeks, during which I cast doubt on the effectiveness of my ‘stomach’ test and subsisted for several days on cold Domino’s cheese pizza (!) as a way to punish my errant stomach. (“No eclectic plates of thalis for you! You have disappointed me!”) This other organization was headed by an inspirational, jovial man, who, as it happened, was every bit an (ethical) epicurean as I was. The move led to another one of my glory years ™ and led me to realize that the stomach test is as effective as ever.

Alas, there were moments, like this past weekend, when other considerations trump food. The beginning of new relationships usually lead me to forget about scrupulously planning my meals, even previous relationships with the erstwhile PG and LP. According to SJ, who is a previous travel buddy and is on the top ten of my list of favorite people, one is “fed on love” during these moments; though I am sure this saccharine sentiment was better expressed by SJ in French, I cannot deny that there is some veracity to her observations.

However, I am sorry to disappoint those of you who are reading this entry to read salacious tidbits of gossip, but this past weekend was not spent twisted like a pretzel in the arms of a sultry Latin lover, which I am certain comes as a relief to my ever-beloved CB. This weekend, I was distracted from my usual culinary musings, because I was lost in the world of Hogwarts.

To all of you who are quick to dismiss the Harry Potter phenomenon as too pop culture, please, there is nothing more trite than refusing to read a book (or watch a movie or listen to a band) because “everyone” else is doing. You, sir/madam, are no Holden Caulfield; deriding a book/film/band because it is “not counter-culture” enough is redundant and reeks of wannabe hipster-ism.

To those of you who, like me, have been following Harry Potter since the Philosopher’s Stone and who think nothing of living vicariously through the burgeoning romances of Ron and Hermione, and Harry and Ginny (on that note, a part of me is still gutted that he didn’t choose Cho Chang; pick one of my Asian sisters, Harry!!), here is a list of the top three dishes for those moments when you are using one hand to flip pages and one hand to eat:

1) Spinach dip or freshly made guacamole or roasted garlic dip – Spinach dip, when well made, is best combined with sour cream and artichokes, with melted bits of cheese on top. Yesterday, while I was reading all about secrets unearthed during Dumbledore’s youth, I methodically scooped crunchy, hot nachos into the white, creamy dip, equally enthralled by Rowling’s revelations and the delectable dip. Following that chapter, I realized I had more nachos and so I therefore proceeded to make fresh guacamole from two ripe avocados, generously squeezing lemon juice onto the thoroughly mashed avocado pulp, later adding sprinklings of garlic, tomato, and green onion. Had I been back in Canada, where roasted garlic dip is within easy access, I might have eaten nachos garlic dip instead of guacamole. Of course, upon further contemplation, my allegiance to avocado might make me to still opt for guacamole, but I have to think about this further…

2) Chicken and pork satay with peanut sauce – satay is excellent for one-handed eating. The grilled crunchiness and juicy interiors of the chicken and pork are enhanced by the cloying sweetness of the peanut sauce. Though some prefer to lightly dip their satay skewers into the peanut mixture, I am a douser: I swirl and swivel my skewer into the peanut sauce making my skewer revolve like a crazed ballerina until I am satisfied. Unfortunately, this means that globs of brown invariably stain the book’s pristine pages. Ah well.

3) Hummus and baked pita – if you have not realized it by now, I am a garlic fanatic. In fact, I would much rather receive a tub of hummus than a box of chocolates (controversial, I know). The most aesthetically pleasing feature of my grandmother’s kitchen in the Philippines were those garlands of garlic adorning her walls, which were obviously a focal ingredient in various types of Filipino food. Therefore, hummus, with bountiful sprinklings of good quality olive oil and garlic, as well a light sprinkling of paprika, can usually provoke me into shamefully gluttonous actions. For example, I have been known to lick almost empty tubs of hummus to ensure that I get every last bite and have also been observed by previous roommates eating hummus like soup and discarding the bread when I thought I was eating unobserved (and unjudged).

Reading Harry Potter this weekend has also led me to neglect anything Internet related. Indeed, I have been isolating myself in my little flat, only emerging to cook and eat. A fun foodie exercise, of course, might be too concoct our own versions of Butterbeer while reading Harry Potter, but I will stick to the aforementioned list of munchies as I plough my way to the last chapter.

Would Sharukh Khan like cheese fondue?

2007-07-20T02:27:00.000-04:00

Cultural negotiations and mishmashes characterize my life. To use a pretentious academic buzzword, my self-inflicted "transnational hybrid identity" means that I usually have to make cultural adjustments. Though it sometimes gets a bit onerous (e.g., I still cannot be zen about this entire machisimo thing in the Dominican Republic and have to resist the urge to let loose a stream of choice Spanish curse words when men hiss at me), for the most part, it is a source of amusement, particularly culinary cultural clashes. Of course eating habits and eating preferences are culturally divisive. Think about it. A given culture's (purported) food preferences are oftentimes the inspiration for vindictive taunts. The French are 'frogs' or 'snails' and Southeast Asians are 'dog-eaters;' South Asians 'smell like curry' whereas Koreans 'have kimchi breath.' (Actually, frogs, snails, dogs, curry, and kimchi, when cooked well, are quite yummy -- wait, I am kidding about dogs!)

Random cultural mishmash memory:

Looking back at pictures of my time in India, during my "glory years" (TM), I was reminded of the time when SC and other colleagues from India visited Geneva. SC is a soul sister: we are united in our love for Bollywood, literature, and, crucially, food. I spent many an evening at SC's comfortable home, where I enjoyed an unlimited supply of deep fried onion, potato, and cauliflower pakoras, whose crunchy, salty exteriors were enhanced by the tart sweetness of fresh mango chutney. I would drop each pakora in my mouth while lying lazily in SC's big, airy room, listening lethargically to the ceiling fan whirling overhead, and gossiping idly with I and Y.

In any case, it was SC's first time abroad and, as one can imagine, she was quite excited; this was SC's opportunity to see the real Switzerland beyond the cartoonish depictions of early 90s Bollywood movies. (That said, of course we bought cow bells for our friends in India in honor of Sharukh Khan and Kajol's dancing and singing scenes in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, which was the Bollywood romantic blockbuster of the 90s and was filmed in Switzerland.) Ever the good friend, she made sure to bring me bags of 'Masala Munch' Kurkure, my India junk food staple, as well as packets of pakora flour mix and colorful rainbow totes from Janpath market.

I first took SC to one of the many Lebanese owned Kebab shops in Geneva, where we munched on falafels sprinkled generously with tzatziki sauce and/or hummus. Seeing that Geneva burnt a whole in both of our pockets, the falafels, at 10 CHF, may seem expensive but were actually of good value. Given a choice between falafels or a McDonald's Happy Meal, we opted for falafels; this was clearly a no-brainer.

Afterwards, we went sight-seeing, gaping outside the storefronts of various chocolate specialty shops, rivulets of drool dripping down our chins. After strolling (and drooling) around the city, catching up, we decided to meet NI, another one of our former colleagues, who, having worked in India and at that point living in Geneva, was eager to expose SC's group to the quintessential Swiss eating experience.

We ended up going to a non-descript cafeteria-style restaurant with a view of the lake. It was a deliberately informal setting, where huge groups huddled together as a form of protection against the biting February cold, squeezing as many people as possible on the wooden benches. There were only two or three 'servers'; burly men in plaid flannel shirts bringing people's orders, in the no-nonsense, orderly manner perfected only by the Swiss. After a day walking around the city, our group of Indian visitors were eager to eat; in fact, like SC and I, the others only had a small lunch in anticipation of that evening's culinary excesses.

Within a matter of minutes, our waters and hot chocolates were dispatched. Then, burners were placed on the table and were lit to heat the glistening red pot placed on top, where Swiss Cheese soon bubbled; brandy or kirsch was previously added into the mixture, along with nutmeg and, I think, white wine.

Fondue skewers were circulated and pieces of hot, freshly baked, crusty French bread were placed in baskets in front of us. Within a matter of minutes, we pierced our skewers into the pieces of bread in front of us and dipped them into the hot, cheesy mixture. Several baskets of bread were quickly devoured, with our efficient servers making sure to give us an ongoing fresh supply. Outside, we could see people walking briskly, obviously in a rush to reach their destinations to escape from the cold. We were happy to be inside the warm interior and the cheese fondue and hot chocolates made us snug and content. We ate, we drank, and we were merry.

Until...

"So when is the main course coming?" someone asked NI, after spooning the last of the cheese mixture onto the last piece of bread.

An awkward silence ensued. If this had been a high-level UN summit, this long pause might have been interpreted as either the beginning of a detenté or the beginning of a long, acrimonious, negotiation process.

Thankfully, the former prevailed. Someone broke the palpable tension and laughed. Relieved, we all chuckled, then laughed, then chortled, all nearly rolling around the floor in spasms of amusement. It seemed funny that, whereas Indians were used to seeing at the very very VERY least two courses for every meal (usually rice or chapati or naan, and a main dish) and were more likely to enjoy five courses for dinner, the Swiss found bread and cheese to be sufficient for dinner. Bread and cheese would, after all, only really be an in-between meals meal, something to eat to satiate small pangs of hunger. (Even then, why have bread and cheese when you could have, say, rotund triangles of samosas bursting with potatoes and peas?) Our by-now hysterial hilarity heightened when we were told that each person owed 20 CHF, the rough equivalent of 1000 rupees!!! "Ho, ho, ho! 1000 rupees would have bought us a round trip train ticket to Amritsar plus a good Punjabi meal," someone snorted. "1000 rupees would've been enough to give us 28 servings of paneer tikka at Rajinder da Dhaba," I observed, in reference to a popular "Indian barbecue" place close to where I used to work.

Despite everyone's misgivings, the cheese fondue meal was deemed worthwhile. It was a good "Swiss" eating experience, one I repeated many times with other visitors, although only after warning them that those with hearty appetites might want to eat something beforehand.

As for SC and co.? They ate at an Indian restaurant the next night. And the next night. And the night after. Still, do not fret, because the India-Switzerland culinary cultural exchange can still be considered fruitful. All of them, SC in particular, grew particularly fond of various types of Swiss chocolate and ended up bringing back 15 pounds of chocolate back to India.

Can BLT and sashimi live happily ever after? A Tale of Two Palates

2007-07-19T12:06:00.000-04:00

In my opinion, a potential partner's culinary preferences - along with willingness to travel and political standpoints - invariably determines our ability to sustain a relationship. Therefore, past relationship failures have partially been determined by the other person's inability to satisfy at least one of these three criteria. According to the ever-reliable Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell other people consider, say, future ambitions, investment portfolio, and 'trophy wife' qualities. I, on the other hand, would say that food, travel, and politics are excellent indicators.

For example, when I first met PG, his "good-on-paper" attributes (political junkie, pleasant personality) were almost enough to compensate for his admittedly limited culinary and travel experiences. After all, far be it for me to criticize someone for not having left North America or who thinks that Red Lobster and Earls are at the height of food excellence. I have been lucky that my upbringing has necessitated frequent continent transfers, with an adventurous mother who was reluctant to buy clothes that are not on sale - frequent jaunts with mum to the black market clothing stores in TST in HK marked my adolescence - but who would be willing to shell out big bucks to eat an exemplary meal. Alas, I soon realized after PG ordered vanilla in a gelato shop showcasing 150 different types of gelato flavors that maybe, just maybe, his food preferences were determined not by ignorance but by a sheltered, almost-ethnocentric mindset.

This epiphany was strengthened during later dates, when, of all the restaurants in our culturally and culinarily diverse hip West Coast city, he suggested going to the Old Spaghetti Factory and TGI Fridays for consecutive dinners, shunning my suggestions to have, say, sushi or tapas or even risotto instead. (Risotto is not that 'exotic', right?? Right??) The clincher, however, came when he told me that in his 23 years, he had never left North America nor had any desire to. "After all," PG smugly asserted while I watched him take a huge bite of his 'Texas style big burger', "we have everything we need here." Our relationship thereafter sank faster than the Lusitania.

Other relationship fiascos include LP, who thought cooking spaghetti bolognese was a concession to cultural culinary diversity, and BAU, who may have brought me to the best paneer and chicken tikka place in India, but who later told me that though he did not like to "befriend 'local' men," he would like to "get to know the 'local ladies'" because he was "down with brown." (BAU, therefore, might have had great taste and traveling stories, but he was one of those types: the cultural fetishist slash neo-colonialist).

Therefore, it is no wonder that there were moments, particularly in the beginning, when I was pessimistic about the longevity of my relationship with CB. Yes, we have traveled extensively together but why, pray tell, would he insist on finding the nearest Subway and Quizno's for his beloved BLTs or McDonalds (!) for his favorite oily breakfasts almost as soon as we reached our destination? Why does he express a preference for Pizza Hut pizza over paellas? Why did he gag when I made him try sashimi or fish kebabs at Istabul's seafront or deep fried Greek calamari? Why did he sulkily play with his food when we ate Thai? Why did he refuse to try half of the dim sum entries we selected in my favorite dim sum restaurant in Geneva when he could not identify the contents of each dish, and, during the same meal, wolfed down a plate of chow mein along with the other gweilo? (My dim sum, and indeed, food philosophy has always been "eat now, ask later.") If CB had told me he was allergic to certain ingredients, fine. And I even understand (almost) people's dislike for seafood. But CB's food grievances has accumulated over time, till finally, I am forced to wonder: "Can BLT and sashimi live happily ever?"

Think about it, dear readers. Culinary pickiness might be an indication of a more deeply seated personality and cultural clash that might pose unresolvable problems for our future. I shudder at the thought of me having children with CB, children who would throw their plates of kare-kare or pancit on the floor during dinner and ask for ham and Kraft cheddar cheese in white bread instead.

Perhaps there are possibilities for fusion. A conversation today with TWO indicated that maybe BLT and sushi can be combined. Maybe we can concoct, say, a BLT fushion roll. Small bits of bacon with smaller bits of lettuce enveloped into a rice roll with...tomato? The tomato will ruin the roll!

But then, there are moments of hope. Despite CB's fast food preferences, we do enjoy eating various Spanish tapas together, washed down by a cool pitcher of red wine sangria. We also bond over Indian food, holding hands while eating chicken biryani and pakoras. (I refuse to order 'chicken tikka masala,' because, really, this is yet another British distortion). And also, how can I forget the time when we went to Milan and I dragged him to the local open-air food market, where CB forgot me (and I him) because he was too busy sampling different types of chocolate and drooling over hunks of parma ham and salami?

In conclusion? Despite his frustrating love for Quiznos and his insatiable desire for all-things-with-bacon, this epicurean believes that ultimately, it is his love for (albeit occasionally pedestrian) food that matters. That, and I can usually coerce him to go gallivanting around the world with me...

Lunch time cravings

2007-07-18T11:49:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I created an online photo album entitled "Food Pornography," which showcased pictures of various, eclectic meals I was craving that day. Faced with the painful prospect of eating day-old spaghetti with sliced chorizo for lunch (lunch options in Santo Domingo are a tad limited), I had an overwhelming urge to reminisce on previous food adventures as a form of escape. Therefore, each tasteless bite of spaghetti was magically transformed into a bite of piping hot Singaporean laksa or a bite of sinful lechon kawali. I haphazardly compiled a list of pictures, with accompanying text, waxing eloquent on the delectable attributes of each entry.

I wrote an ode to the okonomiyaki, a poem for palak paneer, and a paragraph of platitudes for pad thai, among many entries:

1) Ode to the Okonomiyaki:

Oh oh oh okonomiyaki!!! How I love thee. Biting into your differently textured layers is like returning to the arms of a favorite lover...from the soft, creamy underside of the breaded potato, to the chewy grittiness of seafood and meat, to the creamy silkiness of mayonaise and, lastly, to the ethereal, transient taste of bonito flakes. AHHHH.

Best okonomiyaki memory: as a teenager living in Hong Kong, I would oftentimes ride the bus to Pacific Place after school and walk to Seibu's food court, which, in contrast to the KFC and McDonalds offerings that normally constituted 'fast food' in the West, had a dizzying selection of gourmet quick-meal selections. More often than not, I would gravitate towards the now-defunct okonomiyaki food stand and order a thick slab of mixed-meat okonomiyaki, never forgetting to ask for a generous dollop of Japanese mayo on the side.

2) Palak Paneer Poem

A controversial entry, I nevertheless uphold my adherence to palak paneer (Spinach with cottage cheese chunks). Here is a haiku in honor of the much-maligned-yet-still-fabulous palak paneer:

Ah, palak paneer,
spinach and cheese - oh yes please!
You taste like heaven.

Best palak paneer memory: GJ, the erstwhile go-to office boy and chef in the organization I worked for in New Delhi many moons ago, undoubtedly had very basic food preferences. Every lunch time, all the staff members and fellows would traipse to the rustic "dining room" upstairs to see what GJ had to offer. (Yes, yes, I know, why complain when I get a free meal for lunch from work everyday??) Every lunch time, there was always: a. undercooked rice, b. hot, perfectly round chapatis, c. potatoes and green beans simmered in a random curry sauce mixture, and d. yogurt. Every lunch time - after the initial two week long honeymoon period where I devoured it all like an inmate receiving her last meal - my stomach would protest against such monotony. However, during my last day at work, unbeknownst to me, GJ departed from our standard rice/chapatis/potatoes combo, and cooked...palak paneer! Although I admit that the paneer was a tad undercooked and the spinach in moss-like clumps, memories of that lunch time meal remain with me.

3) Pad thai platitudes

An explosion of flavors assault my taste buds when I first bite into well-cooked and authentic pad thai. Indeed, I argue that when pad thai is made by a true artist, eating it becomes an out-of-body sensory experience, where you are first teased and titillated by the cacophonic medley of oil hitting the skillet and ingredients dancing and jumping in harmony, then you gaze at the aesthetic interplay of onions-and-multicolored-vegetables-on-shrimp-and-egg-and-rice-noodles, then you savor the sensual smell of robust basil merging with a mysteriously enticing yet anonymous sweet sauce, till finally, you caress the rough edges of your chopsticks and taste all these flavours blending together.

However, when pad thai is badly cooked, well, it becomes an insult to discerning pad thai fanatics. Pad thai has been distorted as the latest urban Asian-inspired fast food trend. I am livid that trendy so-called chefs (I am thinking at you, owner-of-Spring-Rolls-restaurant-in-Toronto) have the audacity to drown rice noodles in a bizarre sweet ketchup sauce, add chopped chicken and crushed peanuts, and use the moniker "pad thai."

Best pad thai memory: I arrived, sweaty, lethargic, and grumpy, in Bangkok on the 1st of July, 2005. Having discovered that my hostel lost my reservation, I had to resort to walking aimlessly around the city, weighed down by my backpack and carry-on case, attempting to find suitable accommodation. After going to five hotels to no avail, I finally settled on a 70s era hotel, which I suspected was the meeting ground for rich Thai and Japanese businessmen and their ladies. (This suspicion was corroborated by the selection of tv programs on offer by the in-house hotel entertainment division). Upon depositing my bags in my room, I therefore went in search for one of Bangkok's ubiquitous food markets. Within ten minutes, I discovered one, merely three blocks away from my hotel. Ever the intrepid food explorer, I walked around the market, sampling six sticks of satay for a mere 30 cents, drinking fresh pineapple juice for 20 cents, and taking a whiff of all the assorted smells emerging from different stalls.

Finally, at the edge of the market, I saw...her. Her stall was by no means as flashy as the others; there were no hyperbolic signs aggressively extolling today's food selections nor were there pictures decorating its exterior. Instead, it was just the master chef, standing authoritatively over her one, solitary wok, beside jars of spices and tubs of seafood, scrambled eggs, peanuts, and vegetables. Drawn by the smells emanating from her wok, as well as the long line of appreciative customers, I, too, approached. Her stall had one option: pad thai. After all, why offer a cornucopia of food options when your efforts are best served perfecting one dish? Pad thai was the star of the show; there was no need to have, say, limp spring rolls detracting attention away from pad thai! Quickly, all of the customers before me were catered to, and then it was my turn. Within two minutes, she presented me with a fresh dish of pad thai, adding thick fat pieces of pink shrimp upon my request. The result? By far the best pad thai I have ever tasted, enough to warrant more trips to Bangkok in the future.