Category Archives: Asia

by | 02/14/2014 · 3:01 pm

Glutton Abroad: Soup’s on

Maguro chazuke at Chikuyotei

Maguro chazuke at Chikuyotei in Tokyo

Fetishizing food is encouraged in Japan. Much like how having an opinion on the best chicken rice or egg noodle in Bangkok lends you social currency among a certain set in Bangkok, the genuine appreciation of a certain dish or ingredient — in the right season, of course — is considered cultured, even necessary. Knowing about this stuff seems to be part of what being Japanese is all about.

So it’s not surprising that I always enjoy my trips to Japan … even though I almost always end up committing some horrible faux pas on some poor unsuspecting Japanese person (people). Once, as a guest in a holiday house with its own onsen bath, I was offered the opportunity to bathe first. Now, I’m not a total idiot: I knew I would have to sit on a teeny tiny stool and clean myself out in the cold before actually going into the bath, which was very hot and the size of a baby pool. But maybe pulling the plug after I got out wasn’t such a great idea. They had to fill it all back up again with new water after I left the room. To this day, they have never mentioned the appalling thing I did (and I’ve never mentioned it either. Call it a game of embarrassment chicken). That level of politeness also seems to form a part of being Japanese.

One of my favorite dishes to search out when I go to Tokyo is ochazuke, which is rice served with whatever topping you feel like (raw fish, pickles, or fish eggs are common) and broth on the side. You yourself decide how soup-y (or mushy) you want your porridge (I don’t like too much broth). Rice porridge doesn’t sound like it would set many hearts a-flutter, and not many people order it outside of Japan, but to me there is no better lunch (if you are wondering, Aoi in Bangkok serves versions topped with pickled plum, salmon, baby sardines or spicy fish roe). I could eat it every day: with a different topping for each day of the week, of course.

It’s not a hard dish to get right, but it’s a difficult dish to really excel at. Which is why I think the taichazuke (sea bream porridge) at Chikuyotei (5-8-3 Ginza, across the street from Mitsukoshi and next to Nissan) is so exceptional. The morsels of fish are freshly sliced and then left to “marinate” for a bit on a tangy sesame sauce spiked liberally with sesame seeds and strips of nori seaweed. There is a big bowl of rice and pickles, and the all-important kettle of broth. It’s simple but deceptively disarming. I blame the sesame sauce.

A pity I’ve been eating it wrong all these years. Apparently, you are supposed to “savor” the delicate taste of the fish in the sauce with the dry rice before drowning all those poor rice grains in fish broth and your grody drool drops and then pouring that mishmash down your open face hole. Oh well. The long-suffering ladies who serve here must deal with this kind of stuff all the time (not really. I never see any gaijin there).  They also serve a raw tuna version that is less good, but more substantial, for those days when you really want to pig out without looking like you are pigging out (or you can just suck it up and order oomori, or a large-sized portion). Really, these triumphs in the art of rice porridge cookery are not bad for a restaurant that supposedly specializes in unagi (eel). Yay, porridge!

A great surprise, then, that the culinary wasteland known as Narita Airport also boasts its own ochazuke restaurant, in the “mall” adjacent to the check-out counters — a place I never go to normally because I am usually so late getting to the airport. Wasting your entire day at Narita might be worth it, if only for the 15 minutes that it takes to find Dashi Chazuke En, order your porridge at the counter (they also have their own raw tuna and sea bream versions, as well as fish eggs, pickles, and a cold version topped with thinly sliced pickled cucumber), and slurp that whole shebang down your throat before your waitress even knows what’s up. Sure, it’s the “poor man’s” chazuke, the Joan Collins to Chikuyotei’s Liz Taylor, but who on earth is choosy at the airport?

Dashi Chazuke En's raw tuna porridge

Dashi Chazuke En’s raw tuna porridge

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Filed under Asia, food, Japan, porridge

by | 01/17/2014 · 3:03 pm

Thai food rant

The remnants of a "gra moo" (pork crackling stir-fried with herbs)

Scraping the plate clean: the remnants of a “gra moo” (pork crackling stir-fried with herbs)

Whenever a group of people talk about the nature of Thai food, talk inevitably alights on how Thai food is “spicy” and “wild” and whatever other adjective suggests something is “too much” for foreigners. I don’t have to tell you that this drives me up the freaking wall, but I’m going to do it anyway — and tell you twice, and maybe three times. This drives me up the wall. Almost as much as when someone eats rice and curry with a fork or chopsticks (how do you keep the sauce on the rice? Drive me up the wall x2), or when someone orders something like stir-fried morning glory or thom kha gai (coconut lemongrass chicken soup), and then proceeds to bogart the entire thing themselves (it’s meant for the entire table. Drive me up the wall x3).

But one rant at a time. The origins of the myth that Thai food is too challenging for Western palates are murky, but believing in it is still considered as Thai as, well, cherishing the right to take to the streets in protest: equivalent to the French fondness for going on strike. Thai food — much like the Thai political situation itself — is too difficult, too complicated and nuanced for foreigners to understand. And, let’s face it, it’s just too spicy. Hence the need for a gatekeeper to explain it to them, to tame those culinary zigs and zags that Thais take for granted, to turn them to those neutered bowls of green curry and plates of pad Thai, things that are tailored to welcome foreigners to the bosom of Thai food instead of pushing them away. Because ultimately, Thai food — as deemed by Thais themselves — is too strange, and too “other”.

Hence the creation of parallel menus in Thai restaurants abroad, and, in essence, an entire parallel cuisine. I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to a Thai restaurant in, say, Ardmore, and had a menu taken away from me by a Thai waiter, proclaiming it “not what I’m used to”, followed by a promise that they will get me something cooked for the staff. Another gatekeeper: this time in the reverse direction. But why the need for guarding Thai food like a bouncer at a nightclub in the Meatpacking District? I used to think it was a form of self-hatred, that the feeling that Thai food was too “weird” was akin to masking one’s own quirks in order to keep from scaring off a blind date. But now I think it’s something else. Real Thai food is ours, and you can’t have it. It’s too complicated and challenging because we are special snowflakes incapable of being really understood by a bunch of outsiders (aka dumbasses). To be honest, I cannot really count myself among those special snowflakes, because I have been tainted by my long stay in the West. Maybe I am being paid off by an Isaan som tum purveyor.

So the next time someone says Thai food is too “spicy” or “difficult” for foreigners, I want to ask them why the diner can’t make the decision for himself or herself? I feel like Thai food is so wide-ranging, with so many great regional variations of incredible complexity, that it’s a shame it’s being parceled up into these foreigner-friendly packages when it doesn’t need to be. I certainly haven’t had the experience of a Brazilian dissuading me from trying acaraje or a Japanese person telling me to avoid natto because it’s grody to the max. In fact, they are quite happy to let me shove fish sperm or fermented squid guts down my throat without any warning whatsoever (maybe this is just the kind of crowd I am running with). Maybe Thais — many of whom are grossed out by pla rah (fermented Thai anchovy) and sometimes even eschew fish sauce (my husband) — could cede culinary control in a similar way. It could win Thai food — a cuisine that is indeed nuanced, and varying, and detail-oriented, and special — even more fans than it already has.

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Filed under Asia, Bangkok, food, Thailand

by | 01/03/2014 · 2:59 pm

My boyfriend

I haven’t told my husband yet, but I have a boyfriend. If he knew, he would be more bewildered than anything else. Actually, the boyfriend would be pretty bewildered too. Because he doesn’t know he’s my boyfriend.

I have never met the man. I have never even been in the same room with him. He plays the guitar. He is American. He is male. That is as far as I can get before I become embarrassed and can’t talk about him anymore. But I listen to him every day, while I’m running on the treadmill. That is our time.

You probably think I’m talking about John Mayer, because he is a big American guitarist who also happens to be male. No. I would rather gouge my eardrums out with rusty scissors than listen to that man on my beloved treadmill. John Mayer is greasy stir-fry left to cool on a dirty countertop while the waitress picks her toes. Sorry, if you are a John Mayer fan. Yes, I know you think he is talented.

I’m talking about this guy:

Jack White

(I did not add the photo directly to the post because Karen says that’s stealing. So you have to click on the link. Sorry).

I look through photos of him sometimes to calm me, when I am procrastinating from doing something vitally important. My editor is really pleased about that. Jack White is probably the reason why my book will never be published. That is OK with me. I have several “favorite” photos. One is my absolute favorite because he is staring at the camera with the same skeptical expression I imagine he would use if he ever actually met me. Like he is a heartbeat away from calling security.

But my friends do not share this love for Jack White. When I show Karen a particularly fetching one of him holding a red umbrella, I get this reply via text:

KAREN: He looks like he’s on his period.

Oh, Karen. Maybe it’s a good thing we have vastly different tastes on these matters. She is an aberration, an outlier. But then I show my friend Patrick a photo over dinner, because I am back to being 11 years old and boring my friends at the lunch table about Duran Duran.

Patrick puts on his best Miss Marple voice: “After my womyn’s studies seminar I’ll go pick up Lily in the Subaru and head to the kd lang concert,” he says. This is utterly baffling. Last time I checked, Jack White seemed very male. In fact, his complete lack of enthusiasm for wearing underwear is one of the things that bothers me about him, if for no other reason than the fact that we all now know that he dresses to the left (does that mean he is a liberal?)

I feel like we are in an Alice in Wonderland world where Justin Bieber is a real catch and Adam Levine is a major league heartthrob who is not creepy in the slightest. What is going on? Why are people going on about things that are obvious and completely, utterly simplified, the tom yum noodle versions of humanity? There is no subtlety in a bowl of tom yum noodles. It doesn’t really require a lot of extra work to do well. Sometimes, all you need are the tom yum seasonings from a pack of instant noodles added to a bit of pork broth, and there you have it. Britney Spears in a bowl.

For my money, when I go anywhere, it’s all about yen ta fo. If you read here regularly, you already know about my fondness for them, but they really are my favorite soup noodles in the world — more than snoretastic pho, more than tired old ramen, and don’t even get me started on those poseur minced pork noodles, the Fall Out Boy of street food. Yen ta fo is hard to describe: plain rice noodles dressed up in a pork broth-based sauce liberally touched with red fermented tofu and chilies, pork and fish meatballs, bits of squid and congealed pig’s blood, and a whole handful of blanched morning glories. The very best bowls have deep-fried bits of pork crackling and garlic as garnishes. Through some strange culinary alchemy, these ingredients should all combine into a melange that is somehow spicy-tart-salty, and only a little bit sweet. Every bite shows something different, depending on what you get. It’s not always perfect or even good, but then again it’s not about making choices that are easy or simple.

Yet this all gets described on most menus as “red seafood noodles” or “pink noodles in sauce.”

An exemplary bowl of yen ta fo

An exemplary bowl of yen ta fo

 

The best bowl, the one I go to the most frequently when I want this dish, is Guaythiew Pik Gai Sai Nampung on Sukhumvit 20/1 (the alleyway between Sukhumvit Sois 20 and 18). This place is actually known for its chicken wing noodles, which can be too salty for some (present-day Eddie Van Halen). I prefer the “red seafood”, which may not, at first glance, look like what you’ve been waiting for, like that thing that will see you through an hour and change on the treadmill every day. But that just means that there’s more for me.

 

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Filed under Asia, Bangkok, food, food stalls, noodles