Thiefhunters in Paradise

A Malvalous dessert.

After twenty years of baking this decadent dessert, which I’ve called by a name I’m quite fond of, I must finally, if fleetingly, commit to its spelling. I’ll take its lovely, ambiguous, oral name, so full of interpretation, possibility, and nuance, and relegate it to a finite, deficient, inadequate written one which prevents the mind from wandering.

Twenty years ago (wow!) Bob and I took a one-year contract in South Africa. We were given an apartment with two servants, a cat, and pesky baboons (another story), and a rudimentary kitchen. At some point I started baking a dessert recipe that I found in the local alternative newspaper, The Weekly Mail. Part of a flour ad, the recipe had a dull, generic name, something like Snowflake Flour Pudding, or Baked Apricot Pudding. I’ve called it Weekly Mail Pudding ever since but, not having written of it, I’ve never had to spell it. I’m sad that I must now, in order to tell the story of the pudding. Bob and I refer to it so casually that, when I serve it to friends, I forget how odd the name sounds.

Cape Town's Table Mountain.

That was the first third of the story. The third third is the recipe itself, at the end. The second third is this. A few months ago in Cape Town, I suddenly came to realize that this dessert is properly called Malva Pudding, and is a South African classic of Dutch origin. (I should also mention that pudding is a generic British term for dessert. This one is a moist cake; not at all a custardy pudding.)

Bob and I stopped at a Cape Town cafe for coffee. I sat down and opened the laptop while Bob looked at the treats on offer. He returned to the table with a gorgeous little cake, not much bigger than a muffin. Its deep brown, shiny surface had large pores and a little buttery froth, like an over-tanned face with a smudge of Coppertone. The cake was not decorated or garnished. It looked moist, and smelled like toasty caramel. Makes my mouth water just thinking of it, even now.

“What’s that?” I asked Bob.

“I don’t know, it just looked good,” he said.

“Looks like Weekly Mail Pudding,” I said.

One bite confirmed it. Examining the cafe’s display case, I saw that the cake was labeled Malva Pudding.

Carmelized comfort.

Subsequent research indicates that apricot jam is one of the dessert’s defining characteristics. I never sense much flavor from the jam. Therefore, I’ve always used whatever jam I have on hand: ginger, orange, raspberry…. I used pomegranate jam in one pictured here.

I give you my scrumptious version of this recipe on the conditions that, if you call it anything at all, you call it by its lovely, ambiguous name; that you refrain from writing its name; and that you forget any spelling of the name that you’ve seen here.

The recipe: Continue Reading »

Halliburton aluminum luggage. Goes anywhere.

I’m sure it sounds obsessive to mention the necessity of onboard watchfulness when you fly. The likelihood of theft while on an aircraft is low, granted; but it’s unpredictable, and that’s the problem. If you’re carrying valuables, say cash, jewelry, even credit cards, you may as well continue with your precautions. The risks are to the carry-on items you can’t see: those in the overhead compartment can be ransacked practically under your nose—or above your nose. Those under the seat in front of you are vulnerable if you sleep or leave them while you get up. [Read Kayla's experience, below.] I want to stress that these are low-probability scenarios, especially if you’re not traveling alone. Your degree of precaution must harmonize with your comfort level and the value of the items you carry.

Sadly, suitcases are occasionally compromised while in the airlines’ possession. The odd unscrupulous employee needs only the moment of opportunity. It’s well-known that most luggage locks are next to useless. Keys are generic, and even combination locks have certain pressure points which free latches.

Bob and I believe in hard-sided luggage. The ones we use are aluminum, made by Zero Halliburton. They’re not for everyone, being both heavy and expensive. But when our bags were forced with a crowbar or other tool somewhere on the nether tarmac of the Miami airport, the locks and hinges held tight. Shiny scars in the seam, as if gnawed by a metal-eating mouse, were the only evidence of serious tampering.

Who's throwing your luggage around?

As we watch our silvery Halliburtons trundle off toward baggage handlers in Lusaka, in Santiago, in Mexico City, filled with sound and video equipment or perhaps with our favorite shoes from Florence, we’re eternally grateful for and confident in their sturdy locking mechanisms. Even more so after trying desperately and failing to break into our own locked suitcase when it jammed once in London.

Of course bags like these do call attention to themselves and an argument can be made for using inexpensive luggage. One world-traveling couple we met swore by the cheap stuff. After repeated thefts from their Louis Vuitton cases at Heathrow airport, they resorted to department store brands, buying new bags every year or so. A small price to pay, they say, given the cost of their trip and value of their belongings. That’s their argument, but I don’t buy it. I say buy the best bags you can find and afford and use their locks [whenever possible].

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Three (part-e): Getting There—With all your Marbles

Theft on a plane

“Kayla,” a 15-year-old girl, told me how her wallet was stolen on a cross-country flight. Her mother and sister supported Kayla’s story. The thief was a 35ish woman sitting next to her. In the middle of the flight, the woman bent down and pretended to be digging in her purse. But Kayla felt something and looked, and could see that the woman was digging in her (Kayla’s) purse. Kayla said she was too scared to say anything. The woman got up and went to the bathroom. Kayla checked her purse and found that her wallet was gone. She told her mother. Then she and her mother told a flight attendant. The flight attendant found the wallet in the bathroom, missing only Kayla’s cash. Kayla was still too afraid to say anything to the thief. When the plane landed, the woman just left.

One view from Grand Hotel St. Bernardin in Portoroz, Slovenia

The Slovene driver sped along the autostrade, disco crackling on the radio, fast-chomping gum, taking and making phone calls as if he runs another business. Beautiful coastline, like Italy next door. Construction in progress everywhere. Violet lupine and red-orange poppies brilliant along grassy roadsides.

The driver dropped us at Grand Hotel St. Bernardin in Portoroz. Our suite overlooked the Adriatic from three balconies. I could almost see Venice—or where Venice should have been across the sea.

We were in Slovenia to perform and lecture at Microsoft’s industry conference introducing windows 7. Instead of the usual rushed “play-and-run” routine, we scheduled four days in Slovenia in order to do extra events there, for Microsoft and for ourselves.

As Mac users, we felt like peacocks in a flock of pigeons, but we were quickly proved wrong by many furtive glances of attendees and IT staffers as they peeked at iPhones partly pulled from their pockets.

Like a giant iPhone.

First was rehearsal for Bob’s keynote session, open to the conference’s 2,000 attendees. Here was a highlight of the trip for me: an uninterrupted opportunity to play with a Surface Table, aka Big-Ass Table, which sat on stage. Its smooth multi-touch interface allowed me to use both hands to draw and manipulate objects, while Bob and a couple of stage hands simultaneously played on the table.

I’ve been fascinated by the multi-touch user interface ever since I saw Jeff Han’s TED talk —the first TED talk I’d ever seen. (Now I try to watch one or two every night—at least once in a while. I go on binges.) It’s the same technology as CNN’s “Magic Wall,” and FoxNews’ “Bill Board;” like a giant Apple iPhone. Fun to play with.

The Surface table, with technology developed by Jeff Han.

The youngest IT staffer I spoke with, 19 years old, confided in me after chatting and playing on the table together.

“I’ve got such a headache,” he baited me.

“Why?”

“I had to load windows 7 on 32 netbooks this morning. Fifteen of them wouldn’t work. I had to take them all apart and replace cables and stuff, then put them back together and reinstall 7.”

Poor boy.

The keynote, scheduled to last two hours, ran an entire hour over. Bob (eventually) shared the stage with Slovene actor and comedian Džuro (somebody help me with his last name). Little video here.

When the whole hotel internet went down during the Microsoft conference, everyone wondered: server overload? hackers? Where’s the IT guy? Booths, demos, work, everything ground to a halt. Embarrassment all around.

30 journalists, Bob Arno, and Ed Gibson.

A long interview with the national paper, Dnevnik, resulted in a two-and-a-half page spread we’ve been told reads well. A google translation of the Slovenian turns up some hilarious lines: Reporter: “You can dance monkey dance? Bob: “Whatever Let it be loud and crazy.” Reporter: “Men in adjacent table…has bag at feet. You can steal now?” Bob: “Can.” [and he did] “in 15 seconds… embarrassment evident by redness of face.”

And Bob supposedly said “People like the sheep shearer,” and later: “Ah, no. Not like this, as we are now. You should fuck in you or something.”

Remember the children’s game of telephone, or operator? Well, call this translation. From Bob’s Swedish to his English, from the reporter’s English to his Slovenian, and finally through Google’s processor.

Microsoft had arranged for Bob to appear at a press conference with its chief security analyst, Ed Gibson. When asked about some of windows 7’s new security features, Gibson quipped: “I’d demonstrate for you, but we don’t have two hours for windows to boot up.” I wouldn’t repeat that had Mr. Gibson not said it to 30 journalists. Short videos here and better, here.

Campari aperitifs at Italian happy-hour.

Duties done, we drove to the Italian city of Trieste, just half an hour away, for sunset cocktails on the piazza. Campari aperitifs are de rigueur, as are cigarettes. (We stuck with just the cocktails.) We got a table before the joint became standing room only. Utterly pleasant, and time for passeggiata afterwards, in the right mood.

Piran: reminded me of Venice

Despite my sarcasm, I want to emphasize that Slovenia is a lovely destination. The country’s terrain is beautiful, as are it’s coastline and views. We walked to Piran, the nearby town, which resembled Venice without the canals, crowds, or cruise ship passengers, and possibly lacking a fraction of the charm.

We found our hotel’s massive restaurant dismal and oppressive with overly formal appointments and stuffy service. Heavy curtains and high window sills obstructed a gorgeous view; and given the glorious weather, the windows should have been open. Fake plants are a turn-off.

Fresh, simply-cooked bounty of Slovenian seafood.

But nearby Barka restaurant, on the harbor, was perfect in every way: patio, menu, views, quality, good Slovenian wine, and a casual-but-correct wait staff. Once we discovered it, we returned for every meal.

Leaving out of Trieste airport, a huge 20-minute-storm cancelled our flight. Waiting in the airport restaurant until an evening flight, we watched three armed policia step up to the bar for drinks.

At the end of this trip, having visited Italy, Slovenia, and Paris, we returned home with no stamps in our new passports. Perhaps these will last longer than the previous ones did.

Mala Mala, South Africa— Our mischievous rangers convinced some in our safari group of an old “African tradition” while out walking in the bush. It is a competition to see who can spit impala droppings the farthest. I was horrified to see first one sister,

then another,

select a hard bead of deer doodoo from the ground and place it on her tongue. Who cares how far they spit it? Two of my sisters voluntarily put animal dung in their mouths! Granted, it was hard and dry, but it was on the ground! These two squeamish ones are the type who avoid touching banisters and public doorknobs.

Meanwhile, we all ate caterpillar droppings,

which seasoned our alfresco breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. The stuff fell so steadily from the trees it was useless to fight it. It lodged in hair, tickled down shirts, filled pockets, and sunk to the bottom of our coffee.

“It’s just digested leaves,” our entomologist uncle soothed. Look at the dung beetle: it lives on pre-digested food. Here it works hard to roll perfect balls of fresh elephant dung for later consumption.

Just back from Japan with a few shallow thoughts:

I like the Japanese philosophies of beauty and simplicity, love the food, but can’t get used to the unquestioning, obedient nature of the people. Or that all answers are “yes,” even when it means “no.”

High-tech toilets: I like having a warm seat and a control panel. The electronic sound effects are annoying—fake waterfall or babbling brook sounds. The bidet/washing features are—um, too personal for comment.

Steam draws me, always.

I appreciate super-fast Asian internet, but my hotel wifi ate a bunch of my outgoing email without telling me. I prefer slow and reliable.

Cherry blossoms make up for the gray, cold, windy, rainy, dreary weather on the March/April cusp.

Yokohama has no trash cans. None. After I needed one, I kept looking the rest of the day as I crisscrossed the city. I never found one. Yep, there was a little trash on the ground, but only a little.

Natto beans with mustard, ready to top rice.

Breakfast: a bowl of rice with 30 different garnishes, 30 different ones every day. Wonderful. The one constant: natto beans, the love ‘em or hate ‘em fermented beans with a strong ammonia fragrance, which you whip up into a froth of snotty, stringy, viscous liquid, not unlike the stuff okra oozes. When you eat natto beans, the stuff loops from the chopsticks in long, fine, spiderwebby strings that stick to your chin and do feel like actual spider webs a minute or so later when dry.

Astonishing and confounding, how little English is spoken in Japan, including by the young people. What English exists is often amusing. The woman who was assigned to translate our presentation spoke to me beforehand and, pointing to a bald man, innocently called him a skinhead. I saw shops called “Junk Jewels” and another, “Junk & Antiques.” There’s a chain of mini-markets called “Sometimes Fresh.” Passed the “Pay Up Hotel.”

Pocari Sweat, available on every street corner.

If you’re thirsty on the street, you can stop at a vending machine and buy a bottle of “Pocari Sweat.” Vending machines also sell “Full Supporty” stockings, and tickets for full, hot meals, chosen by plastic display and then picked up from a cook nearby with never a word spoken.

Some very tall pine trees looked like cellphone towers.

A digital sign in front of a tollbooth showed an animated cartoon man waving a flag back and forth.

I’ve been to Japan quite a few times. These thoughts are not cumulative, but specifically from this visit.

Coogee Beach, Australia—From our hotel, we walk around the corner to The Globe for “brekkie” every morning. We’re regulars on the stools at the open windows. We order a “tall black” and a “flat white.” Coffee. The Globe serves toasted fruit loaf, slices of a dense loaf packed with dried apricots, figs, dates, currents, and raisons. They toast it properly: dark so it’s as black as its poppy seed crust.

Earlier, I had seen a fruit loaf in a tiny market just across the street; the poster advertising it made me drool. It was called Dallas Fruit Loaf. I asked The Globe’s waitress if their fruit loaf was Dallas. She didn’t know. Anyway, it’s delicious.

One day they didn’t have the fruit loaf. I ordered the “full brekkie,” which Bob gets, and I was sorry. Next day, The Globe was still out of fruit loaf. “But I found out, it is Dallas,” the waitress said. “If I go and buy a loaf, will you toast it for me?” I asked her. “With pleasure,” she said.

So I ran across to the little market and bought a Dallas fruit loaf. The Globe’s waitress toasted three thick slices for me and served it on a plate with a crock of butter. I took the rest of the loaf back to the hotel.

Dallas-fruit-loaf

But how will we toast it, Bob and I wondered. It’s soooo delicious toasted! I thought about what we had in the room. We can steam it with our clothes steamer to make it damp, then let it dry out and get hard on the outside. Then we can heat water in the coffee pot and set a cup of hot water on the toast to warm it. No. We can put a slice in the trouser press! Set the timer for 30 minutes… slow, but it might work. What if we forget the bread in the trouser press, Bob wondered. Okay, never mind.

Later, Bob went out for a take-away Thai lunch. I stayed on our balcony and ate an apple. And a slice of Dallas fruit loaf. Toasted.

Yes—I remembered what else we had in our room. An iron!

Why not? It’s teflon coated. I tried just a corner first. The iron wiped clean on a towel. Who needs butter?

Ice cream sandwich, Singapore-style

What sounds more scrumptious that “bread ice cream?” Scallion pancakes, Dutch waffles, and durian come to my mind, along with a hundred other street foods.

The lines are long though, at the bread ice cream carts on the streets of Singapore. For a few cents, you get a scoop or a slab of neapolitan ice cream between two slices of soft white bread. Only—the balloon bread is green and pink.

Bread ice cream, Singapore street food

I’d choose bread ice cream over fried grasshoppers, for sure. But it’s nothing like the wonderful Turkish ice cream. And Turkish ice cream comes with entertainment.

A beheaded octopus drying in the Greek sun.

I can’t remember ever having eaten dried octopus, but I’m not saying I wouldn’t. There they were, looking festive, a row of fresh ones dangling decoratively from a boat’s rigging, like signal flags spelling out a message for dinner.

In Mykonos recently, on a long stroll along the shore, I saw these plump babies strung up, baking in the Greek sun. They had clearly protested their ignoble attachment to a laundry line, given that more than a few had clutched a lifeline with defiant fists.

A boat flies signal flags that spell out dinner.

Octoperson

The sticky-fingered cephalopods had received the ultimate capital punishment—beheading—and for what? Stealing bait? Like a lowlife pickpocket going for our prop wallets, except we throw them back.

Maybe they weren’t destined for food, I don’t know. I’m not one to look at tentacles and think mmm, succulent. There was no one to ask.

Me, I’d put light bulbs in them.

Nut salad.

I got a nut salad in a place we worked recently. Better not name the place…

Streetside barbers in Mumbai's blistering noon sun.

I feel like celebrating Mumbai, a city I love to visit.

I’ve stayed in the Taj Mahal Hotel a couple of memorable times and looked out my window at the iconic Gateway to India monument. Looking down from my window at dawn, I watched men squat with tiny coal fires in tin cups, ready to cook a little breakfast for passersby. Or for those waking from a night’s sleep on the plaza. Entire lives are lived out on the Mumbai streets.

At a tea stall in the Colaba district, the chai-walla pours boiled milk onto tea leaves and spices.

Mixing the masala chai as it steeps.

After my first and second visits in the comforting embrace of the grand Taj, Bob and I chose more intimate Indian hotels in the Colaba area. Less quality control, more flavor! The neighborhood is a congested, confusing warren of small streets that run into the slums Mumbai is famous for, the kind you can walk in and start a parade of the curious and friendly, not beggars, just those smiley-shy children and adults who want to see what you’re going to do and why.

Tea leaves and spices are strained out with a cloth.

We got into the habit of buying milky masala chai from a stall near our hotel. The tea-walla always opened a new container of milk and boiled it while we waited. To his generous handful of tea leaves, he added his own mysterious mixture of “warm” spices: cinnamon, clove, cardamom, allspice, black pepper. When the tea was brewed and strained, he poured it into a take-away plastic bag, and off we walked with it, to drink in the mugs in our room.

We’ve had a few meals at Cafe Leopold, too, my favorite of which included curried eggs. Anybody who’s read Shantaram knows that Cafe Leopold is an institution central to social life for expats, locals, and tourists. It’s where the sunny and the shady commingle, knowingly or not.

Tiny cups of masala chai are readied for delivery.

For a deep look at Mumbai and all things mafia, which is to say all things Mumbai, read Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, by Suketu Mehta. Or better yet, visit the city and see for yourself.

A fruit-walla too busy to swat flies.

Michael Pollan. Photo from Wikipedia.

Last month in the New York Times, Michael Pollan wrote an open letter to the president-elect about the importance of revising our entire food policy. It’s a long letter, but I highly recommend it.

You can read his letter in The New York Times or on Michael Pollan’s website.

You can listen to Terri Gross interview Pollan about his letter on her NPR show, Fresh Air. It’s 40 minutes long.

Or you can download an MP3 of my computer reading Pollan’s letter. It’s 52 minutes of robot speech; a bit unpleasant at first, then no more irritating than reading text in a bad font. Not nearly as bad as reading reverse text (white text on a dark background). Listen carefully and you can even hear the robot take a breath at the beginning of sentences.

I’m trying to make it easy for you to ingest Pollan’s article.

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy … chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation … [W]hen we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis — a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.

Calves ready for shipping by sea.

Besides reverting to old-fashioned, clean, solar-powered farms, Pollan wants to see healthful food made affordable, nutrient-free junk food such as soda lose its “food” status, diversity in agriculture, crop rotation, feedlots opened up to the pastures, and much more.

Pollan’s core message is this: “we need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine.” He acknowledges that this is a complex and gargantuan task. He has explanations and ideas for every aspect of feeding America, starting with the Farm Bill and ending with family dinners. It’s hopeful, and hopefully practicable.

Pollan questions some of the wacky food things we do now, such as shipping American raised salmon and chicken to China for cutting up, then shipping the raw stuff back to the U.S. to sell. And he’s got a few wonderfully wacky ideas of his own. For example, he’d like to see the White House front lawn replaced by a produce garden, the excess of which should go to a local food bank. And perhaps forgive culinary-school student loans if graduates cook and teach in public schools for a spell. And committing the White House to one meatless day a week which, he says, if all Americans did would equal taking 20 million midsize cars off the road for a year.

A bull roasting.

In his Fresh Air interview, Terri Gross asks Mr. Pollan if he heard from a representative of either candidate after the publication of his article. No, he answered, except that one of the campaigns’ transition teams (unnamed) asked if Mr. Pollan could provide a one- or two-page summary for them. He refused, saying “the reason I wrote 8,000 words is because that’s what I needed to tell the story. If I could have written it in one or two pages, I would have.”

Barack Obama refers to Pollan’s article in an October 18, 2008 interview for Time magazine and appears to take the issues to heart. Good sign. We’ll see.

Michael Pollan has been one of my favorite food writers since I read his article Power Steer in 2002. Now I urge you to read Farmer in Chief.

Paper masala dosa: crisp and light as air, except for it's full middle.

Why did we order two?

Paper dosa is one of my favorite meals. I order them at every opportunity when I’m in India, Singapore, or Dubai. It was a restaurant in Phoenix, though, where I was served the biggest one I’d ever seen.

Dosas are hard to find in the U.S., but I discovered Udupi in Phoenix, where they serve 17 kinds. 16 kinds I don’t care about. It’s paper masala dosa, every time. I dream of its shiny mahogany surface complete with streaky tracks from the dosa-maker’s spatula, the intoxicating fragrance of ghee, and the traditional accompaniments. I like the drama of its arrival, even when it isn’t this gargantuan; even when I fetch it from the grill myself. And I like the eat-it-while-it’s-hot urgency, even though it’s impossible to eat it while it’s hot.

Paper dosa is a thin, crisp pancake made from a fermented batter of rice and lentil flour. They’re always large, but I’ve never before come across the three-foot long version. Then again, I’ve never before been to Udupi—the restaurant, or the city in southern India.

A giant version of the paper dosa, with its three little bowls of accompaniments.

A paper dosa always comes with a little bowl of sambar (a thin tomatoey broth) and two fresh chutneys. Indian chutneys are not the sweet-hot preserved fruit bits in jars, as sold in U.S grocery stores. Those are “pickles.” Chutneys are fresh. With a paper dosa, you get one of ground coconut mixed with chilies and fresh green coriander or mint leaves, and one other, complimentary chutney (the kind varies).

The paper dosa is cooked on only one side, with ghee (clarified butter). A hidden surprise of potato curry lies within.

If you order paper masala dosa, your dosa is rolled around a ladle of potato-onion curry, and the meal becomes hearty. They are always too much for me, but this one was amusing in its hugeness. It was no joke, though.

Indian restaurants are everywhere now; unfortunately, they all seem to have the same predictable menus: butter chicken, chicken tikka, lamb korma, beef vindaloo, aloo gobi… They’re all north Indian restaurants and they all must use the same boring, failsafe recipes. If you’ve never had the cuisine of south India, it’s worth seeking out. You’ll get dosas (maybe 17 kinds!), other unfamiliar crepes, pancakes, and “donuts,” and dishes rich with coconut and chilies.

Udupi Cafe
1636 N Scottsdale Road

Tempe, AZ 85281 

Phone: 480-994 8787