Maybe you’re married or maybe you’re not—but you know about Date Night, right? I’m not talking about the movie (which I haven’t yet seen) but the general concept: couples get caught in the routines and responsibilities of everyday life. They need a little time for themselves. They need dinner, a movie, whathaveyou. They need Date Night (remember, the Obamas raised a ruckus last summer when they flew to New York for a night on the town?). Well, lately, we’ve been chatting with a couple of friends about needing more of these “dates” more often. We exchanged recommendations—restaurants, bars, cafés. And we vowed to do better.
So last weekend, Jerry and I did something we’d intended to do for more than a year. We turned Date Night into Date Day, taking the train to Santa Fe (beautiful! relaxing! convenient! and super cheap at $7 roundtrip!), meandering through the sunny hours of a perfect Saturday.
We began just a block from the station (where else?) at the Santa Fe Farmers Market, which reflected a full-on cliché of color (see photo above). I stuffed my tote bag with garlic and onions, and a scent that followed me through the city. I noticed I was not the only customer to browse the nearby Borders in a cloud of Allium perfume!
We lunched at Zia—poky service, mostly mediocre food. But the light! It struck the table at so many angles, and it put Jerry into an artsy photographic mood…
Light on lemon in water, Zia Diner
Light on blue bottle top, Zia Diner
Utensils reflect red awning, Zia Diner
And truth be told, my gazpacho sparked a creative nerve in me—I have plans to tinker with that cold avocado/zucchini/red pepper/corn soup.
And that took us through to the moment we glanced at a clock, uttered a few naughty words, and began a quick trot back to the station. We made it—with time enough for a beer (he) and a margarita (I) at the Railyard just before sitting to a stellar sunset ride south, back home.
A taxi driver eats noodles at his regular coffee stall hangout in Phnom Penh.
In The Faster Times today, I have a primer on Asian eating. I get a lot of questions about etiquette from people traveling to Asia for the first time, wondering when to use chopsticks, what to do with sticky rice, and (primarily) how to eat without offending. It’s a big continent, and customs vary dramatically from region to region. But this quick little guide should at least help you through the basics.
I also thought I’d take the opportunity here to share a few shots of eating in Asia. Read the article to understand the significance of what’s going on in the pictures.
That is indeed a pretty white glass of milk surrounded by the lovely green leaves of cannabis sativa. Marijuana milk. Pot juice. Call it what you will, but it won’t make you high. Though hemp milk is made from the pulverized seeds of the same family of plants that addle the brain and alter consciousness, the seeds have no psychoactive power. The milk could, however, make you very healthy (it has the grassy, pasty taste of something that must be horribly good for you). Studies confirm the drink is a reliable source of protein, fatty acids, calcium and various vitamins. Plus, people don’t seem to be allergic to hemp milk in the way that many are to cow, soy or nut milk. It’s actually illegal to grow hemp (and thus the seeds) in the United States, but it’s legal to buy the milk. (Most American sellers import the seeds from Canada.)
This particular glass, however, I sipped in the cool shade of an open-air dining room in northern Vietnam. Remember Shu? She’s started Sapa’s first Hmong-owned homestay and restaurant in Lao Chai village near Sapa. Her little place is ringed by tall, bushy cannabis swaying in the breeze. Its wispy clumps of leaves almost reminded me of the desert willow growing in our New Mexico yard. Shu brought out a glass of the milk, which was earthy and herbal and contained little brown flecks of seed. She said the plant has long served as an important part of the Hmong diet, particularly because of the nutritious oil that emerges when the seeds are heated. “If you cook, you see a lot of oil coming,” Shu said. “In the past, people were very poor, and people used to cook like this for tofu.”
Ya carries her basket of beef along the road between Ban Lung and Ou Chum in Cambodia’s Ratanakkiri province.
As some of you know, I’m at work finishing a collection of travel essays to be published next year. In the past few months, I’ve wandered aimlessly (and pointedly) for hours through old notebooks and files I’d long forgotten. This is something I love about reporting: it allows me to live at least twice. I have an experience. I write it down. And ever after, I retain access to the details of that event. Years later, I’m sometimes shocked at how much of my life slips from the forefront of memory until prodded with photos and notes.
Ya, pictured above, is a Kreung tribal woman in the far northeastern corner of Cambodia’s Ratanakkiri province. She was 40 years old when Jerry and I met her nine years ago. I’d almost forgotten the encounter until I stumbled across her photo hidden in a pile of neglected files on my laptop. Yet as soon as I read the photo slug—Woman with Meat—I knew exactly who she was. And I vividly remembered the day we met on a slick muddy road to Ou Chum. Jerry and I had left the capital, Ban Lung, on foot—an unusual thing for a couple of foreigners to do, especially in a steady rain. But we donned our ponchos and walked the long route in search of an old woman who made copious batches of rice wine. We never found her—but here’s a bit of what I noted that day:
We walk and walk. The son of our hotel manager has told us Ou Chum has a woman, 104 years old, who makes rice wine every day. We walk to find her, and the chunchiet (tribal villagers) along the way think we are very strange. We pass a parade of women with baskets as we all huff up a red-dirt hill. The woman in the lead says her name is Ya, she’s 40, she has seven kids. “I don’t speak much Khmer,” she says. She tells us she has no rice, but her basket is filled with beef and a young boy beside her carries a small water bottle with fish inside—dinner. The girls walking behind Ya say they’re all going to Ou Chum, as they often do. We pass them, they pass us—again and again along the road.
All the chunchiet carry their daily needs in tightly woven baskets with little straps around their shoulders. Oranges, beef, rice, clothing—it all goes into the basket. The older folks, men and women, have drooping earlobes, sliced in two or shaped from giant plugs stuck through skin. Each man stashes over his shoulder a machete with a long wooden handle, a shoulder rest, and a sharp curved blade. The machete is his companion for any long walk.
The road twists and turns into gullies and gorges. The rain plows through earth, creating an orange landscape resembling the American Southwest in miniature. If 1,000 feet equaled an inch, this path could be the Grand Canyon.
We walk past huts, bucolic fields, a man with a pig strapped to a board behind his moto. (He has a moto, but most people walk.) We pass cows, ducks, chickens, dogs and boys on bikes. We pass through rubber trees, tapped and collected, shading the way. Past a turquoise butterfly wing, glued in mud. Past screaming babies, men toting corn. Past families draped over the railings of their thatch huts. Past little foot paths leading to thick jungle. Past indigo and ginger and hibiscous and frangipani. Past the stench of manure.
Two little girls run up beside us. One says she went to the Ban Lung market at 5 a.m., and now she returns with pomelo. She doesn’t go every day—but often. For food, for the family.
We pass another clump of girls, and one asks us where we’re going. We tell her Ou Chum, and she asks where we’ve hidden our motorbike. Do we have a moto? No moto? She can’t believe it, as though she expects us to pull one from our pocket.
Later, after Jerry and I give up on finding the old woman and her wine, we see that girl again near her house. She calls us over. She tells us she’s 12 years old, and she introduces us to her sisters — 15, 10 and 4. Their mother died four years earlier, and their father has gone to market to sell something. They have two thatch rooms—one on stilts for sleeping, another next door for cooking. The girls say they don’t go to school, they work in the fields instead. Young green rice grows around the home. A banana tree, a gourd vine, a pile of corn. No pigs, no cows, no chickens, no other fruits or vegetables. What we see is what they have. We leave them a bag of peanuts and a small wad of riel….
*****
I read my own notes, and I’m back in Ratanakkiri. That’s the magic in keeping track of life’s intricate details (I consider it a job perk). I’ve come across so many little tidbits, many of them dealing with food. And many of which will never see print—in book or article form. Yet I’d like to do something with them.
Starting this week, I’ll be posting little food-related blurbs on the Rambling Spoon Facebook page. Most accounts will be much shorter than this—great dinners, interesting kitchens, market excursions, mealtime conversations. I’ll call them “More Better Food,” taken from the title of my forthcoming book, This Way More Better. These postings are in addition to the nibbles and bites I’m already putting on Facebook. So, if you haven’t already, check it out—and stay tuned for more. You can also follow along on Twitter—just look for @RamblingSpoon, where I’ll tweet these under #morebetterfood.
Good wishes for a safe and happy holiday, everyone. I share with you a message I received this morning from a Burmese colleague, writing from a place where thoughts of freedom and independence are never taken lightly:
“I saw the celebrations of fireworks and parades for the Independence day of USA, in various media. What a great and impressed moment of 4th July, 234th Independence Day since 1776. God Bless America and God Bless You and Your Family.”
Just when we thought we knew how to eat for optimal athletic performance, the science shifts on us. For women, anyway. Or maybe it doesn’t—read my musings from the murky world of sports nutrition, today in The Faster Times. And tell me: what do you eat before and after you exercise? Does protein lift you up or put you down?
I got a yen for wild betel in Vieng Xay, in a laid-back local market that sold an assortment of lunch pickings—sticky rice, sour bamboo, tangy dollops of jaeow, spicy little meatballs and grilled buffalo (above, middle, left of the balls) that had been mixed with onions and spices, wrapped in betel leaves and grilled over flames. Something happens when wild betel is cooked. It pops with fragrance, in an earthy, minty, almost flowery bouquet. It’s stunningly delicious, and I know of no other leaf that compares. (Plus, it fights atherosclerosis—at least in rabbits.)
In Vietnamese, that leaf is known as la lot. And by the time we were deep inside Vietnam a week later, we’d eaten our way through myriad mixtures of meat cooked in wild betel (usually grilled but sometimes fried). In Sapa, our Hmong friend stuffed a batch of betel leaves with ground pork and spring onion, nothing more, and plopped them into a splattering wok of hot oil. They fried to a beautiful brownish crisp—and tasted heavenly.
We’re back home in New Mexico now, but we’re blessed with a great Asian market. I found betel (it’s sold on the stem; if packaged neatly on a tray with stems removed, it’s probably the chewing betel —not what you want for this dish). Using Andrea Nguyen’s recipe as a guide, and recalling the flavors we’d had in Vieng Xay, this is the recipe that emerged:
Ingredients:
1 lb ground beef
1 package wild betel (about 25 leaves)
1 stalk lemongrass
several cloves green garlic
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon curry powder (I used Penzeys Maharajah)
Method:
1. Soak several bamboo skewers in water.
2. Mince one stalk lemongrass (tender insides only) and a few cloves of fresh green garlic (or ordinary garlic, small fragrant cloves preferred for a sweeter, less biting flavor)
3. Mix ground beef (I used lean grass-fed, which tended toward the dry side; I might add a bit of minced pork next time) with lemongrass, garlic, salt and black pepper to taste, a few squirts of fish sauce and 1 tablespoon Penzeys Maharajah curry powder. (My brother and sister-in-law had given us a whole box of Penzeys curries just before we left the country. We’d hardly had a chance to use them; this was a perfect excuse). Let sit at least one hour.
4. Clean the leaves and flatten, placing shiny side down on the counter and stem pointing toward you. Fill each leaf with a small, long strip of meat mixture. Roll the leaf lengthwise around the meat and skewer. The skewer will hold the leaves in place. It’s OK to leave a little extra space around the ends of the meat, but don’t overfill the leaves.
5. Drizzle the skewers with oil and grill over medium heat with vents open until leaves are slightly charred (but don’t burn). Serve with your favorite spicy sauce. I made a Lao-style jaeow with smoked morita chiles pounded with garlic, galangal and fish sauce.
It was an easy, extraordinarily delicious success—thanks to those ambrosial leaves. Some recipes call for grape leaves as substitutes, but I’m with Andrea on this: grape leaves offer none of the fragrance. HOWEVER, I’ve been thinking of using grape leaves (since we have ginormous quantities growing in the backyard) in a different sort of way—stuffed with ground lamb, perhaps, and Mediterranean spices? Dolmas with just the meat and spice, minus the rice? Drizzled with lemon and olive oil, served with hummus and olives? Just a thought….
We have much to celebrate and even more to ponder this weekend, as many happenings converge. So pull up a chair and pour yourself a glass of this: nimbu pani, an Indian “lime and pepper refresher,” with recipe courtesy of Christine McFadden and her book, appropriately named, Pepper (wonderful book, and I can’t wait to try her recipe for homemade peppery truffles—yes, the chocolate kind). This simple drink is relished as a perfect antidote to hot weather. Though Jerry and I didn’t drink this nimbu pani in India and Sri Lanka, we downed myriad spice-infused beverages revolving around a sour/tart base. The combination quenches the thirst while cooling the body with a zippy kick.
Just four or five small-ish limes, a tablespoon or two of sugar, a pinch of salt, lots and lots of freshly ground black pepper, a bit of chilled water and ice—that’s all you need to serve two. Squeeze the limes, mix with the rest, pour over ice and top with water. Add more pepper if you like. This is one helluva zinger drink.
I served this to a couple of friends last week. Usually, when the four of us gather, we dive straight into a barrel of adult content—no non-alcoholic drinks in our little crowd. But I wanted them to savor this—and savor we did, smacking our lips at the hot limey goodness.
And then we got to thinking.
Tequila.
Oh yes.
Oh yes, yes, yes!
Add a jigger of tequila to the above recipe and you have what the four of us believe to be the best summer creation so far—perhaps of all time. So pull up that chair and take a swig.
Now, then, what are we celebrating? And pondering?
Saturday is the 65th birthday of Burma’s most famous lady, whose name is least uttered within her country. (She’ll spend the day in detention, as she has many birthdays before.) Sunday, in these parts, is Father’s Day. It’s also World Refugee Day. And Monday is the official start to summer, the Solstice. I’m not sure how these events need or need not intertwine for everyone. But I’ll raise my glass in praise of dads, and this wonderful universe that gives us summer every year. And I’ll wish for a world of calm, with peaceful homes and happy birthdays for all.
Let me begin with disclosure: this review comes with attachments. I share entangled endeavors with Kim Fay, author of the newly released Communion: A Culinary Journey Through Vietnam. Her publisher, ThingsAsian Press, will publish my next two books. And I have contributed essays to Kim’s guidebook series, To Asia With Love. Though Kim and I have never met in person, sticklers for objectivity would argue that I cannot write an unbiased review of her book.
But I can write a fair review.
And in fact I’ve waited months to do just that. Back in October, with days growing shorter and winds colder, Kim sent me a draft of her manuscript—double-spaced type on 8 ½ x 11 paper, no photos except a rough copy of the book’s cover. But now I have the real thing, nearly 300 pages of intertwined essays and full-color photos taken by Kim’s sister, photographer Julie Fay Ashborn. It is one of the heftiest, most beautiful food and travel books I’ve seen from Asia. (The type is a bit tiny—my parents would have trouble reading it—but the photos are big and bold.)
“I thought about how much better food tastes when it fits into a narrative.” With this, Kim captures the nugget of great food writing. Ingredients are important—yes—but context is so much more so. (If you know this blog, you might notice I’ve said this before. Stay tuned for a forthcoming essay on this topic.)
Communion doesn’t simply tell us what Kim thought about the crispy fried eggplant she ate in Hoi An. Instead, it guides us through the life of Miss Vy, the restaurateur and instructor who opened her history to Kim. By the time we reach the recipe for that eggplant, “as delicate and flavorful as Miss Vy,” we know all about the chef’s upbringing, her family’s post-war struggles through Doi Moi, and her thoughts on communism, poverty and sexism. In turn, I am all the hungrier for her food.
I’m reminded of Paul Theroux, who wrote years ago about how Conrad, Hemingway and the other greats “had not done Africa justice.” Their writings “ignored Africans or else made them insubstantial figures in a landscape.” They wrote of Africa with out any Africans.
I see the same today in writings on Asia. I see it in the travelers themselves, and I find it in the ever-burgeoning world of food lit. “The tourists I met when I was young were better,” a Hmong woman recently told me. “Before, they come because they love Vietnam. Now, they come because they are just traveling.” Just traveling—with iPods in the ears and eyes cast inward (or hidden behind tiny digital cameras). I don’t want to know about their fave banana pancakes or their perception of Saigon’s best noodles—not unless their opinions reflect something more than themselves.
Tell me, instead, about the woman serving those awesome noodles and how she came to be behind a steaming wok on the street. Tell me her history and ideas. Tell me how her noodles fit—or don’t—into the texture of modern-day Asia.
Of course, no writer succeeds at this all the time—but it is what I strive to do. And it is what Kim Fay has done in Communion.
I particularly love an exchange she had with a “stylish” Vietnamese friend on the subject of a trendy restaurant resembling a series of street-food stalls, minus the grime. It’s popular with locals. “I don’t have to sit near sewage while I’m eating,” the friend said. “I can get fruit juice or coffee, or even both if I want, and I can eat all sorts of different foods. My kids can have one thing, and I can have another. Maybe it’s not the best, but we can each have whatever we like. And when we leave… my hair doesn’t smell like cuttlefish.”
There. That right there is what I want to read in a story on Vietnamese—or Thai, Lao, Khmer, Malaysian, Indian or Burmese—eating. Kim questions whether sitting at a stall, sucking on exhaust is an essential part of the street-food experience. And it very well might be for many of the glossy-eyed foreigners who write glowingly about such settings. But the vast majority of my Asian friends choose cleanliness when given the chance. They like indoor restaurants with tables and chairs, too. Imagine that.
Kim does express worry over the incremental sanitization of Asia leading to the sanitization of Asian flavor—a legitimate concern, considering the popular restaurant in question served a mediocre bowl of bun bo Hue that needed more shrimp paste. But thank you, Kim, for including your friend’s perspective. So many culinary missives fall flat on scope and view. We get street food, 24/7. But Communion covers the spectrum—from fish sauce aficionados to the “master grafter” of Dalat’s famous fruits; from humble bowls of clam rice to the haute creations of Didier Corlou. It portrays the breadth of a Vietnamese palate as varied as the people themselves.
I open books, blogs and magazines with cravings for Asian food and the people who deliver it. Too often I find, instead, another foreigner in a vacuum. I read Kim Fay and I feel I’m meeting Vietnam all over again.
Welcome to my ramblings on food, drink, travel, politics, history and all the other avenues that converge in life. I’m a journalist, author and media trainer; and for five years I was Gourmet's Asia correspondent until the magazine's recent closure. I’m a bit obsessive in the kitchen. Much like my mother, I start thinking about dinner well before breakfast….
My books:
