Thursday, 21 October 2010
Photographs
The image quality on blogger has nosedived in the last couple of weeks. It's too late for me to change sites, so I will continue posting pictures but apologise for their poor resolution. If you click on an image you will see a higher resolution version, or you can look at my photos on flickr by clicking the link on the right, under MY LINKS.
Thailand: Cooking up a storm
Having survived a couple more flights unscathed and undelayed, I find myself living in a grand old Colonial style house on a quiet country estate about half an hour outside Chiang Mai, Thailand. I'm the only guy there, just a few maids, tanks full of bearded dragons and a litter of ugly little runts for company.
The house belongs to a guy named Sompon, one time TV chef, and next door is his Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School. I've not cooked much Thai food, though I've eaten my fair share. But for each of the past five days, we have prepared, and then eaten, six different dishes. On one of the days I took a one-on-one "Master Class" in the evening, thus yielding another feast that needed eating.
Here then, in a coconut shell, is what I have learned about Thai cooking, as the rain belted down all around us:
1. Thai food is fast food. Very few things are cooked for any length of time. Preparation may be ponderous - making pastes, chopping, slicing, carving vegetables, but once you have your mise en place, the rest follows très rapidement.
2. The key to Thai food is the balance between salty, spicy, sweet and sour. Saltiness from fish sauce, soy, and shrimp paste. Spice from chillies (lots of chillies) and unusually hot peppercorns. Sweetness from sugar, shallots, and palm sugar (which also adds a smooth richness). Sourness and astringency come from lime juice, tamarind and rice vinegar.
3. Lemongrass, galangal, basil, coriander, garlic, coconut and lime leaves, when administered in the right proportions, are the fragrant devices that elevate Thai food to dizzying heights.
4. A good curry, according to Sompon, is 80% paste, 20% chef. Good paste + happy cook = good curry. Making paste takes time and a strong wrist. The trick is not to grind and crush but pound, always in a downward motion. Or make at least a kilo and stick it in the Magimix.
5. Imaginative garnishes and vegetable carving abound. The more intricate the garnish, the more you can charge. If you can't be bothered to spend hours making (or at least trying to make) tomato roses and lotus flowers, get someone else to do it.
6. Stir fry works like this: careful, consistent prep. Cook in the right order, on a high heat for a short time, stirring constantly, and serve immediately.
7. Salads are about crisp, fresh flavours. And chilli. And ludicrous garnishes.
So now I am as big as a house, having consumed the equivalent of about ten meals a day for the last week. I waddle away bound for Chiang Mai with a much deeper understanding of Thai cuisine and some mean recipes to go to work with. The longer the week went on, the better, quicker and more confident I got. Even better than all that though, having cooked non-stop for five days, I remembered just how much pleasure it really gives me.
A litter of runts, with one fluffy exception
The house belongs to a guy named Sompon, one time TV chef, and next door is his Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School. I've not cooked much Thai food, though I've eaten my fair share. But for each of the past five days, we have prepared, and then eaten, six different dishes. On one of the days I took a one-on-one "Master Class" in the evening, thus yielding another feast that needed eating.
Fruits of a Master Class
Here then, in a coconut shell, is what I have learned about Thai cooking, as the rain belted down all around us:
1. Thai food is fast food. Very few things are cooked for any length of time. Preparation may be ponderous - making pastes, chopping, slicing, carving vegetables, but once you have your mise en place, the rest follows très rapidement.
2. The key to Thai food is the balance between salty, spicy, sweet and sour. Saltiness from fish sauce, soy, and shrimp paste. Spice from chillies (lots of chillies) and unusually hot peppercorns. Sweetness from sugar, shallots, and palm sugar (which also adds a smooth richness). Sourness and astringency come from lime juice, tamarind and rice vinegar.
3. Lemongrass, galangal, basil, coriander, garlic, coconut and lime leaves, when administered in the right proportions, are the fragrant devices that elevate Thai food to dizzying heights.
4. A good curry, according to Sompon, is 80% paste, 20% chef. Good paste + happy cook = good curry. Making paste takes time and a strong wrist. The trick is not to grind and crush but pound, always in a downward motion. Or make at least a kilo and stick it in the Magimix.
Red Curry with Roast Duck
5. Imaginative garnishes and vegetable carving abound. The more intricate the garnish, the more you can charge. If you can't be bothered to spend hours making (or at least trying to make) tomato roses and lotus flowers, get someone else to do it.
Som Tam - Papaya Salad
6. Stir fry works like this: careful, consistent prep. Cook in the right order, on a high heat for a short time, stirring constantly, and serve immediately.
Stir Fried Mushrooms with Baby Corn
7. Salads are about crisp, fresh flavours. And chilli. And ludicrous garnishes.
Northern Chicken Salad
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
鬼佬 Gwei Lo
I was on the subway in Hong Kong the other day. Across from me, a woman was clutching a cloth shopping bag with "The Outsider" written on it. On her left, a Chinese man was gabbling ferociously into his cellphone. He made me think how different Hong Kong is from Japan. She made me think of Camus. The Outsider. L'etranger. The stranger. The foreigner.
Asia can make you feel alien unlike anywhere else on earth. In Japan we are Gai Jin, which literally means foreigner or outsider. In Hong Kong though, we become Gwei Lo, or, literally, ghost men, and there is something wonderfully poetic about that moniker. You can imagine, as the first ships pulled up in Hong Kong harbour and these cadaverous alien sailors emerged from their hulls, how the Cantonese must have mistaken them for something even more sinister than that which they actually were.
Now it's gone from being a racial slur to a casual slang term used by ex-pats to describe themselves, with not a hint of irony. But in those moments travelling in strange countries when you are most acutely aware of how alien you are, when the differences between people seem to overpower the similarities, the feeling of being a ghost, floating unseen in their midst, comes closer to describing the sensation than anything else.
I had forgotten about all this until that evening, sipping a gin and tonic when I caught sight of the ashtray on the bar, and the word CAMUS stamped upon it. And I smiled inside at how marvellous it is that little clues and prompts for our thoughts are scattered all about the furniture of our lives so cleverly, and that every now and then we are actually lucky enough to notice them.
Asia can make you feel alien unlike anywhere else on earth. In Japan we are Gai Jin, which literally means foreigner or outsider. In Hong Kong though, we become Gwei Lo, or, literally, ghost men, and there is something wonderfully poetic about that moniker. You can imagine, as the first ships pulled up in Hong Kong harbour and these cadaverous alien sailors emerged from their hulls, how the Cantonese must have mistaken them for something even more sinister than that which they actually were.
Now it's gone from being a racial slur to a casual slang term used by ex-pats to describe themselves, with not a hint of irony. But in those moments travelling in strange countries when you are most acutely aware of how alien you are, when the differences between people seem to overpower the similarities, the feeling of being a ghost, floating unseen in their midst, comes closer to describing the sensation than anything else.
I had forgotten about all this until that evening, sipping a gin and tonic when I caught sight of the ashtray on the bar, and the word CAMUS stamped upon it. And I smiled inside at how marvellous it is that little clues and prompts for our thoughts are scattered all about the furniture of our lives so cleverly, and that every now and then we are actually lucky enough to notice them.
Monday, 18 October 2010
More lessons from a culinary genius
There are some dishes you've eaten so many times that you start to lose interest. And they've been cobbled together, bastardised and mistreated by so many people who never really knew what they were to begin with, that they've lost interest too. Take sweet and sour pork for example? How many times have you eaten it, and just how shit is it?
The answer is that you have probably never eaten it. I hadn't either until a couple of days ago. But, back in the kitchen with my new culinary Goddess, Martha Sherpa, I ate a dish of sweet and sour pork that I'd made, to her recipe, that blew every chinese, faux-chinese, pseudo-sino plate of MSG laden bullshit I'd ever encountered in my sorry life right out the kitchen window. Why? Because it was pork, and it was sweet, and sour.
She didn't stop there. We made char sui - proper Chinese barbecue pork. The key to it is in how you choose and cut the meat. Shoulder, or butt, plenty of fat and nice marbling if you can get it, then three quarter inch slices, but crucially, all the same thickness, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Marinade, roast, turn, roast. Glaze. Roast, turn, glaze, roast. Glaze, dry. And there you have it. We taste each individual piece, to understand how the meat you start with, and how it is cut, affects the end result. Another lesson learned.
Before all this though, we began the day by stuffing a duck, sewing up its backside with a metal skewer, pumping it full of air and painting its skin with a maltose vinegar solution. We then hung the poor bugger by his neck in front of a fan to dry out.
Later he would suffer further indignation when, having been roasted in the oven and sufficiently rested, he found himself on the wrong end of my cleaver. The Chinese don't carve, they chop. The entire bird, carcass and all, is hacked into bite-sized pieces. I get the hang of it after a while, using the heel of the blade and growing in confidence. The final test - chopping his head in half, which I amaze myself by ace-ing.
Martha fills the time between all the marinading and roasting with some wok skills. Hong Kong fried rice and Singapore noodles. (Actually they're Singapore noodles Hong Kong style, begging the question, why not call them Hong Kong noodles, but never mind). I've used a wok before, but never properly. She shows me how. A wet towel (so it doesn't burn, never mind your hand) in the left, spatula in the right. Wok angled at almost 45º so the contents slide back down into the centre. And turning, left side, right side, never in the middle. As you work, things slip out of line, and Martha is on hand to reprimand you. The result, unlike my technique, is undeniably great.
I've always known I could re-route my round the world trip if I wanted or needed to, but had privately resolved not to. I could never have guessed that a stern but likeable Chinese lady who makes me re-slice my ginger and pick tiny morsels of minced pork off the walls would be the one to do it, but she did. Singapore is out and a return to Hong Kong is in, just for one more afternoon in her kitchen. Or is that Hong Kong, Singapore style? I guess I'll never know...
The answer is that you have probably never eaten it. I hadn't either until a couple of days ago. But, back in the kitchen with my new culinary Goddess, Martha Sherpa, I ate a dish of sweet and sour pork that I'd made, to her recipe, that blew every chinese, faux-chinese, pseudo-sino plate of MSG laden bullshit I'd ever encountered in my sorry life right out the kitchen window. Why? Because it was pork, and it was sweet, and sour.
Sweet and sour pork
She didn't stop there. We made char sui - proper Chinese barbecue pork. The key to it is in how you choose and cut the meat. Shoulder, or butt, plenty of fat and nice marbling if you can get it, then three quarter inch slices, but crucially, all the same thickness, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Marinade, roast, turn, roast. Glaze. Roast, turn, glaze, roast. Glaze, dry. And there you have it. We taste each individual piece, to understand how the meat you start with, and how it is cut, affects the end result. Another lesson learned.
Char sui
Before all this though, we began the day by stuffing a duck, sewing up its backside with a metal skewer, pumping it full of air and painting its skin with a maltose vinegar solution. We then hung the poor bugger by his neck in front of a fan to dry out.
Pre-roasted duck
Later he would suffer further indignation when, having been roasted in the oven and sufficiently rested, he found himself on the wrong end of my cleaver. The Chinese don't carve, they chop. The entire bird, carcass and all, is hacked into bite-sized pieces. I get the hang of it after a while, using the heel of the blade and growing in confidence. The final test - chopping his head in half, which I amaze myself by ace-ing.
A deadly chop to the head
Martha fills the time between all the marinading and roasting with some wok skills. Hong Kong fried rice and Singapore noodles. (Actually they're Singapore noodles Hong Kong style, begging the question, why not call them Hong Kong noodles, but never mind). I've used a wok before, but never properly. She shows me how. A wet towel (so it doesn't burn, never mind your hand) in the left, spatula in the right. Wok angled at almost 45º so the contents slide back down into the centre. And turning, left side, right side, never in the middle. As you work, things slip out of line, and Martha is on hand to reprimand you. The result, unlike my technique, is undeniably great.
Singapore noodles before...
...and after
I've always known I could re-route my round the world trip if I wanted or needed to, but had privately resolved not to. I could never have guessed that a stern but likeable Chinese lady who makes me re-slice my ginger and pick tiny morsels of minced pork off the walls would be the one to do it, but she did. Singapore is out and a return to Hong Kong is in, just for one more afternoon in her kitchen. Or is that Hong Kong, Singapore style? I guess I'll never know...
Dim Sum
On the first floor of a pretty grim looking building in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, there is a kitchen. It is owned by a lady named Martha Sherpa and in it, she teaches people how to cook Chinese food.
Some people are good cooks, some are good teachers. Martha is both. She is also an absolute, one hundred percent, no-nonsense, ball breaker. Turn up late, she won't let you in. Ask her something too many times, she'll stop telling you. Chop your ginger into matchsticks instead of fine julienne, she makes you slice them all in half. I want to hate her for it, but I can't.
My first day with Martha is a dim sum class, all pork based. We start with the preparation: lots of very fine chopping and dicing. With a cleaver, which takes a bit of getting used to, and needs a lot of practice. You can't rock the blade like a western knife, so have to chop almost vertically, using just the last couple of inches of the blade. Don't try it at home...
First up are boiled pork and vegetable dumplings. They're pretty easy to assemble, like big cappelletti. She shows us how to fold them to plump up the centre though - if you're selling them on the street, you want to make them look like they have more filling than the next guy's. Genius. They're served on dark pickled vegetables with a spicy dipping sauce, and are absolutely delicious.
We make potstickers, fairly straightforward until you fry them, where you have to creep the fine line between crispy golden brown and burnt to a crisp.
Next up are two buns; one fried, the other steamed. Both doughs are fairly easy to work with, so rolling them into two inch rounds is probably easier than with the first ones. You have to be quick though - you can't overwork it or it heats up, but you need a perfect circle, with a thicker centre, and a slight concave shape. All in just eight turns of the dough in your left hand, and eight rolls of the pin in your right.
The shaping of these is easier than it looks, though getting them to twist shut is less simple. The steamed ones have opened at the top after proving, so that'll take a bit more practice. The fried ones are good though - crispy on the bottom, a lovely soft dough with a shiny finish and a perfectly seasoned filling. The steamed guys turn out great, just open. "Practice with dough, not pork," advises Martha. "It will be cheaper for you."
So far so good. Last up, Siao Lung Bao, steamed mini dumplings with pork and soup. The soup is solidified with agar agar and mixed in with the stuffing. Easy enough. But the casings are the real issue here. For the other four, you use fifteen grams of dough for each one. Here, you use five. That means rolling to a third of the thickness, which is nigh on impossible.
We make twenty little five gram balls of dough, in the hope that six of them might grow up to become paper thin, perfectly circular dumpling cases. They kind of did. Just about. Making them, I was thinking, with some confidence, that at least I will never have to do it again. If I do, and you're the one I'm making them for, you must be very, very special indeed.
Some people are good cooks, some are good teachers. Martha is both. She is also an absolute, one hundred percent, no-nonsense, ball breaker. Turn up late, she won't let you in. Ask her something too many times, she'll stop telling you. Chop your ginger into matchsticks instead of fine julienne, she makes you slice them all in half. I want to hate her for it, but I can't.
My first day with Martha is a dim sum class, all pork based. We start with the preparation: lots of very fine chopping and dicing. With a cleaver, which takes a bit of getting used to, and needs a lot of practice. You can't rock the blade like a western knife, so have to chop almost vertically, using just the last couple of inches of the blade. Don't try it at home...
First up are boiled pork and vegetable dumplings. They're pretty easy to assemble, like big cappelletti. She shows us how to fold them to plump up the centre though - if you're selling them on the street, you want to make them look like they have more filling than the next guy's. Genius. They're served on dark pickled vegetables with a spicy dipping sauce, and are absolutely delicious.
Boiled pork dumplings - before...
...and after
We make potstickers, fairly straightforward until you fry them, where you have to creep the fine line between crispy golden brown and burnt to a crisp.
Wo Tip - pork potstickers
Next up are two buns; one fried, the other steamed. Both doughs are fairly easy to work with, so rolling them into two inch rounds is probably easier than with the first ones. You have to be quick though - you can't overwork it or it heats up, but you need a perfect circle, with a thicker centre, and a slight concave shape. All in just eight turns of the dough in your left hand, and eight rolls of the pin in your right.
The shaping of these is easier than it looks, though getting them to twist shut is less simple. The steamed ones have opened at the top after proving, so that'll take a bit more practice. The fried ones are good though - crispy on the bottom, a lovely soft dough with a shiny finish and a perfectly seasoned filling. The steamed guys turn out great, just open. "Practice with dough, not pork," advises Martha. "It will be cheaper for you."
Sound Jean Bao - fried pork buns
So far so good. Last up, Siao Lung Bao, steamed mini dumplings with pork and soup. The soup is solidified with agar agar and mixed in with the stuffing. Easy enough. But the casings are the real issue here. For the other four, you use fifteen grams of dough for each one. Here, you use five. That means rolling to a third of the thickness, which is nigh on impossible.
We make twenty little five gram balls of dough, in the hope that six of them might grow up to become paper thin, perfectly circular dumpling cases. They kind of did. Just about. Making them, I was thinking, with some confidence, that at least I will never have to do it again. If I do, and you're the one I'm making them for, you must be very, very special indeed.
Saturday, 16 October 2010
Hong Kong
For the first time since I left London back in February, I find myself in a place I've been to before: Hong Kong. Thanks to my flight's eight hour delay, it wasn't really until the morning when, opening the curtains, I was struck once again by the complete and utter insanity of the place.
I braved the humidity for a good ten minutes and just stood on the balcony watching. Twenty six floors below me, another high rise beginning to sprout from the ground. Between it and the Peak, shrouded in mist, cloud and pollution, hundreds of others are clustered impossibly close together, making Hong Kong Island look like a giant pin cushion.
I walk out into the thick, hot air, along a street selling chinese medicine; turtle shells, the strangest contorted roots and fungi, lizard skins. I ponder my good luck as a few spots of rain fall - maybe the humidity will ease. But they're not raindrops, just specks of water cast off by the air conditioning units poking out of the giant lego towers that surround me.
Hong Kong is sculpted by its history and geography in equal measure. The colonial legacy lingers on, and it still feels quintessentially British in places, defiantly Chinese in others. The once great meets the now great in every corner here, with seemingly few problems. But when two things rub against each another, there is friction. Friction creates energy, heat. In such a small space, you can almost feel it; a buzz on the streets, something, other than moisture, in the air.
It's all around you, in all the contradictions; the guy with no arms begging in front of the Rolex store; the Star Ferry, unchanged in over a century, delivering sharp suited workers to the world's coolest office buildings. Old and new, rich and poor, east and west.
A twenty minute cab ride from the shadows of the skyscrapers and you can find yourself mercifully alone. Embarking on a trek over Dragonback Mountain perhaps, or on the beach at Big Wave Bay. And you need to seek salvation in these places, because in the crazy heart of the city, there's nowhere to hide.
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Walking through a labyrinthine subway station with my friend Nick, we are fighting against an unstoppable tide, the odd gwei lo head floating above the sea of Chinese ones. "Wherever you go in Hong Kong," he remarks, "everyone else is going the other way." Then, after a pause: "Even when you turn round."
I braved the humidity for a good ten minutes and just stood on the balcony watching. Twenty six floors below me, another high rise beginning to sprout from the ground. Between it and the Peak, shrouded in mist, cloud and pollution, hundreds of others are clustered impossibly close together, making Hong Kong Island look like a giant pin cushion.
Sheung Wan, HK Island
I walk out into the thick, hot air, along a street selling chinese medicine; turtle shells, the strangest contorted roots and fungi, lizard skins. I ponder my good luck as a few spots of rain fall - maybe the humidity will ease. But they're not raindrops, just specks of water cast off by the air conditioning units poking out of the giant lego towers that surround me.
Hong Kong is sculpted by its history and geography in equal measure. The colonial legacy lingers on, and it still feels quintessentially British in places, defiantly Chinese in others. The once great meets the now great in every corner here, with seemingly few problems. But when two things rub against each another, there is friction. Friction creates energy, heat. In such a small space, you can almost feel it; a buzz on the streets, something, other than moisture, in the air.
It's all around you, in all the contradictions; the guy with no arms begging in front of the Rolex store; the Star Ferry, unchanged in over a century, delivering sharp suited workers to the world's coolest office buildings. Old and new, rich and poor, east and west.
Two IFC, Central Hong Kong
A twenty minute cab ride from the shadows of the skyscrapers and you can find yourself mercifully alone. Embarking on a trek over Dragonback Mountain perhaps, or on the beach at Big Wave Bay. And you need to seek salvation in these places, because in the crazy heart of the city, there's nowhere to hide.
.jpg)
Escalators, The Peak
Walking through a labyrinthine subway station with my friend Nick, we are fighting against an unstoppable tide, the odd gwei lo head floating above the sea of Chinese ones. "Wherever you go in Hong Kong," he remarks, "everyone else is going the other way." Then, after a pause: "Even when you turn round."
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Turning Japanese
I had always thought the Japanese were a quiet, reserved people; fanatically traditional and presumably easily offended by my crude western ways. It's not exactly true.
They drink like pufferfish. When the cherry trees blossom in spring, they throw hanami parties and get shamelessly shitfaced under their boughs. They drink and frolic wildly in public for days on end. In order to facilitate this endless boozing, they even have vending machines that sell beer and sake. On my last night, we went to a bar that sells Suntori whisky by the hour rather than the glass or bottle.
My stereotype wasn't exactly inaccurate, rather it mistook those qualities for another, and one that the Japanese have, and exhibit, in abundance. Politeness. Whenever you walk in a shop or restaurant, you are greeted by a hail of salutations from the staff. No one would dare use their mobile phone on public transport. They play this message on the airport bus;
They keep to the left when they walk, like when they drive. And they drive surprisingly considerately for a big city. Not a bit like like Seoul, where the drivers are rude, impatient and charmless. Coming into this culture of consideration and good manners from America was a greater shock than any sense of foreignness or alienation one is supposed to feel when arriving in Japan for the first time.
The Japanese seem acutely aware of the people around them, and take great care not to encroach upon their freedom and dignity. You can get by with just two expressions in their language: arigato gozaimas (thank you very much) and sumimasen (excuse me), supplemented with lots of smiling and bowing. So long as you can bow and stay on your feet after three hours of Suntori, that is.
I think it might catch on.
They drink like pufferfish. When the cherry trees blossom in spring, they throw hanami parties and get shamelessly shitfaced under their boughs. They drink and frolic wildly in public for days on end. In order to facilitate this endless boozing, they even have vending machines that sell beer and sake. On my last night, we went to a bar that sells Suntori whisky by the hour rather than the glass or bottle.
My stereotype wasn't exactly inaccurate, rather it mistook those qualities for another, and one that the Japanese have, and exhibit, in abundance. Politeness. Whenever you walk in a shop or restaurant, you are greeted by a hail of salutations from the staff. No one would dare use their mobile phone on public transport. They play this message on the airport bus;
Passengers are reminded that portable telephones should not be used on the bus as they annoy the neighboursBeautifully put, but that's for the benefit of the gaijin, not the locals. They wouldn't dare.
They keep to the left when they walk, like when they drive. And they drive surprisingly considerately for a big city. Not a bit like like Seoul, where the drivers are rude, impatient and charmless. Coming into this culture of consideration and good manners from America was a greater shock than any sense of foreignness or alienation one is supposed to feel when arriving in Japan for the first time.
The Japanese seem acutely aware of the people around them, and take great care not to encroach upon their freedom and dignity. You can get by with just two expressions in their language: arigato gozaimas (thank you very much) and sumimasen (excuse me), supplemented with lots of smiling and bowing. So long as you can bow and stay on your feet after three hours of Suntori, that is.
I think it might catch on.
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