If this doesn’t make you drool, well, try the lower photo. Sfogliatelli must be the most exquisite pastry ever invented. Found only in Naples, Italy, unless you know the few secret bakeries beyond that make or import this special treat. The one pictured above is a two-inch giant (but not too much to eat, no!). I prefer the smaller version—then I can eat them twice as often!
The crisp, flakey pastry holds a delicate, aromatic surprise:
a creamy ricotta filling, only slightly sweet, scented with bits of candied orange rind.
Sfogliatelle Mary, the most famous purveyor, doles them out warm, as they should be. Powdered sugar is an option—unnecessary in my opinion. All that’s needed is coffee which, in Naples, is the smallest, darkest, strongest, richest of any I’ve had anywhere. I can’t bring home sfogliatelli, but I always have a pound or two of Caffè Kimbo stashed in my luggage.
Sfogliatelli make me happy. They make me happy to visit this unique part of Italy. I especially like place-specific delectables, and I even like that they must be enjoyed in their native locale.
Oh, I can smell the warm, delicate orange perfume, I can taste it, I can hear the pastry crackle as I bite through the hundred paper-thin layers. But where great things lurk, confusion abounds, waiting to trip us up. Be sure you get “sfogliatella riccia,” and not the vastly inferior, unflakey sfogliatelle frolla. Perfection in a pastry.
Here’s a restaurant in Singapore I didn’t try. In addition to its famous pig organ soup, the specialty restaurant pushes portions of pig livers, pig feet, pig stomach, pig uterus, pig spine meat, pig kidney, and “meat balls.” The unspeakable mystery and horror of “meat balls” is transcended by the promoted delicacies.
Indulge in any of this offal with a side of rice or a choice of noodles. Can’t decide? Choose pig fried rice, or take your chances with “Double Delight.”
I’m an adventurous eater when I travel, but I do draw lines. Nothing with four legs. Nothing with a mother. And nothing directly hot-wired to the ick factor. Pig parts are out on three counts.
Just part of the line of people waiting to get into Mamak.
Mamak is worth standing in line for. Bob and I waited 50 minutes for what is actually rather ordinary Malaysian food. But you can’t get these dishes just anywhere, and here, they’re done to perfection. I’d call this restaurant perfect in every way my single visit allowed me to experience. Let’s start with the entertainment on offer…
Mamak window showcases the making of roti.
After standing in line for 30 or 40 minutes, you finally creep up to the glass wall of the kitchen. Two roti-makers work like machines at their stainless steel counter, stretching small balls of dough by flinging them over their heads until they look like giant, translucent handkerchiefs. You just know one is going to become a kite and sail onto the head of a grill cook. Or one will rip and fly into shreds. They never do. After the final toss, the dough lands on the counter stretched into the size of a sheet of newspaper.
Dough thrower
That’s when the roti is given it’s specific form. It might be quickly folded into an air-filled pillow and simply thrown on the grill, where cooks hover over the rotis, pressing them, flipping them, and rushing them off to drooling diners. Or the dough might first get a sprinkling of red onions. Bob and I ate rotis often when we lived in Singapore. In their most basic form, they’re simple flat breads served hot off the grill with a bowl of curry sauce for dipping.
A filled (and filling) version is called murtabak. An egg is broken onto the stretched dough, which is then topped with a smear of curry sauce, a toss of onion shreds, and possibly shredded chicken, mutton, or sardines. The gossamer dough is folded into a many-layered square, cooked on the grill, and served steaming hot with a bowl of spicy curry sauce. Perfection! Mamak serves murtabak. I wish I could have tried it, but we ordered other items.
Mamak kitchen
I’d gotten a menu to look at while in line, so we’d be ready to order right away. That’s the one tiny improvement that could speed Mamak’s turnover just a tad: menus outside so diner’s can use the waiting time to peruse the offerings.
When you finally enter the restaurant, all primed for a roti (but which one???), the fragrance of baking bread slays you. The urgency of the cooks and waiters increases your heart rate and your stomach announces its presence and desires. Luckily, Mamak is fast! Your order is in and out in moments.
Mamak cooks a small selection of Malaysian dishes (most of which are traditional street foods) which keeps the menu from overwhelming people unfamiliar with the cuisine. They do a variety of rotis, two kinds of satay, several curries and stir-fries, and spicy-fried chicken. There’s the classic nasi lemak, which is fragrant coconut rice with condiments (which we ordered), and a couple of fried noodle dishes.
Rojak and lime juice
We also ordered rojak. I’ve had it many times in Singapore, but never like Mamak’s. Typically a salad of crisp and crunchy fruits and vegetables, julienned yambean and cucumber, fried tofu, and prawns, it’s coated with a spicy peanut sauce and garnished with hardboiled eggs. Mamak’s version was heavy on the sauce, sweet, tall, and… delicious.
Crisp and fluffy roti cania looked to be the most popular item on the menu. So simple, yet so satisfying. You lick your finger to pick up every last flake of the toasty bread.
Making roti planta
The rich and exotic roti planta requires a time-consuming process. Twenty or so little dabs of butter are spaced out along one edge of the stretched dough sheet. The sheet is then rolled into a lumpy, air-filled snake, the buttery dots along its length like undigested mice. The fragile tube is then carefully coiled like a sleek-skinned cobra, and set on the grill to crisp, melt, sizzle, and brown.
An egg roti and one with red onions inside puff and sizzle on the grill
Mamak also offers a variety of Malaysian tea and coffee drinks, and two typical desserts: ice kachang and chendol. I ADORE chendol, a complicated ice dessert composed of many ingredients. Instead of trying it here though, Bob and I chose to go next door to the Taiwanese dessert shop called Meet Fresh. Yeah, funny name! I got “handmade taro-balls #4” with peanuts (soft), pearls, and red beans. I could have ordered it hot, but chose to have it over ice. Bob got mango sago coconut soup.
Taro-balls #4 was nice, but it’s no chendol. Come to think of it, chendol needs a post of its own. I dream of chendol, but only a certain kind. It must be topped with one particular fruit. I will tell you… soon!
In addition to the selection and quality of its food, Mamak gets a gold star for speed. Our meal arrived eight minutes after ordering it. When we left, the line was as long as when we got into it an hour and a half earlier. And guess what? After we finished dessert next door? Yep, the Mamak’s line was even longer.
On Goulburn at Dixon in Haymarket, on the edge of Sydney’s Chinatown, Mamak is a winner.
Denouement. None of us wanted to leave the park. After the demos, the dinner, and the as-yet-untold experience on the buses, after the conversation, the exchange of trade secrets, the trust, and yes, the new friendships, we sort of bonded. And I mean all of us: the band of thieves, the filmmaking crew, and the Arnos in the middle.
We stand there in the park in two concentric circles. The inner circle is Bob, Michele, Frank, Andy, and Marc. The outer circle is Van with the Red on his shoulder and his assistant holding his shoulders to guide him, director Kun, producer Kath, fixer Rosie, and me. None of us want to say goodbye.
Work finally pulls Marc and Andy away, but Frank remains. And finally, after two complete rounds of hugs and kisses, Frank straddles his bike, snaps on his helmet, and rides away. Van follows him with the camera until he’s out of sight.
We’re all physically and mentally exhausted; spent. I don’t know how the crew kept going; they were up hours before us every day and working for hours after we said goodnight. Yesterday they went nonstop from the market to the thieves’ restaurant to the second restaurant without a break, setting up and taking down equipment repeatedly. They are champions, all of them.
Making this documentary allowed Bob and me to fulfill certain long-held dreams. It allowed us the time in which to develop relationships with our subjects. It allowed us to have top-notch translators, especially my hero Michele. It enabled us to host our gang of thieves at a meal that Bob and I alone would need investors to fund, but which was integral to the building or our relationship, which gave us the ability to dig deeper into the life and times of pickpockets. And lastly, the documentary gives a soapbox to the subjects, a platform for the pickpockets themselves to explain their methods and motivations, their regrets and their desires.
Writing these stories has been difficult for me. The “easy difficulty,” if there is such a thing, has been simply finding the time to write in the midst of our action-packed days, and then finding an internet connection to get them online. But that’s just a technicality. The true difficulties have been several.
First, whitewashing our incredible host city [Naples!], and by necessity, the characters and true identities of the men in our story. How I had to restrain myself! As a writer, I tend to be of the descriptive sort. I would never say we drank “liqueur!” I want to say what kind [Limoncello], what color [sunshine yellow], and how lovely the fruit it was made from [lemons]. I want to tell about the marvelous restaurants we visited and the wonders of the local cuisine. I want to praise our cliffside hotel [San Francesco al Monte] and describe the view from its terraces, that you can see all the way to …
Sigh.
And—wait a minute! What will this film do to tourism in this mystery town? Will we repel visitors, or intrigue them? Our goal is to balance the stardust with the dirt, to spotlight the unique riches this place has to offer. We hope it comes through in the film. I certainly left it out of these stories.
And there is something of a moral dilemma. In an exchange of thievery techniques, are we teaching known criminals how to steal more and better? We don’t think so, but how do you see it? What about the techniques the general public will learn from watching the film—should we be concerned about how that knowledge may be used? We don’t think so, but we agree that it looks bad—as if we’re teaching how to steal.
I’m afraid of what the public will think of Bob and me in our pursuit of thieves. Will you chastise us for not stopping thefts when we see them? Or will you understand that our method, getting “in” with these criminals, has a greater end? Will you think us awful for liking the pickpockets, despite knowing what havoc they wreak, what distress they cause? In the film, it will be up to Kun to portray us honestly alongside our motives. But here in these writings, it was my responsibility. Do you think it’s all fun and games for us, that we dine with thieves for a lark? Do you understand that as outsiders, allowed into an underground brotherhood of thieves, we are able to gather knowledge for the greater good? Please comment. We need to know if we should hide under a rock when the film comes out.
We are incredibly grateful to film director Kun Chang, who has pushed this project forward for more than four years already. Bob and I have complete faith in him and have no doubt that he’ll put together a documentary that is as beautiful and dramatic as it is fascinating and educational.
While the shooting isn’t over, the exciting part is. What’s left is hard work, mostly by Kun and his editing team. It’s impossible for me to imagine how they’ll make sense of the vast amount of gripping footage we have accumulated. I also recognize that my perception of the experience is not the same as Kun’s. The sterile, stripped-down story I told here, missing highlights (believe it or not), missing local color (of which there’s tons), genericizing everything for the sake of the eventual film, may have little resemblance to Kun’s vision. We will all be surprised at the film: you, readers; and Bob and I.
This is Part 21 of THE MAKING OF OUR NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTARY, PICKPOCKET KING. The film is about us, Bob Arno and Bambi Vincent. We are “thiefhunters in paradise.” The paradise we chose for the story is the warm and wild city of Naples, Italy, home to the world’s best pickpockets. The documentary premieres December 2 at 8pm ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel.
—Originally posted 10/5/10 and soon thereafter password-protected at the request of the producer.
Dinner with thieves, continued. Carafes of white wine land on the table. I join Andy and Lou and have beer. Among much laughter, the feast begins, family style. Plates of bruschetta arrive, and large rounds of mozzarella draped in prosciutto. Andy stands, carves the cheese, and serves everyone. Before he finishes, platters of fried items are placed on the table. Fried cheese, fried mashed potatoes, fried fishballs on sticks, fried squid, fried octopus. Before anyone begins, all glasses must clink all other glasses. Then men stretch across the table, serving themselves and each other with their hands. Ed puts handfuls of crisp-fried squid on my plate, and squeezes a lemon over it all.
Pickpockets love seafood, too.
Bob and several of the pickpockets are standing again, clowning around and swiping stuff. Watch me! No, wait—try it this way! Our plates are cleared and fresh ones laid down. The room is thick with smoke and loud with laughter. Ed is taking pictures with his mobile phone, or maybe he’s taking video. Bowls of stewed octopus come, and others heaped with steamed mussels. Bob borrows someone’s lit cigarette and pushes it though a handkerchief—no hole!—no burn! The men love it. More beer, more wine, more bread… Bob calls for dessert—”maybe some fruit.” The thieves laugh. Not yet! We have more courses coming!
Bob Arno and the pickpockets of Naples enjoy an endless dinner interspersed with theft demonstrations.
Michele is translating for six pickpockets and Bob, as fast as he can. In such demand, he sometimes forgets he’s also sound recordist for a big-time film and someone has to remind him: “Michele, the boom!” I make a little conversation with Ed, on my left, but since I don’t have a translator, I mostly just observe.
Paccheri with seafood. Delicious!
A huge platter of pasta comes, covered with buttery mussels and a variety of clams. Its fragrant steam masks the cigarette smoke for a few minutes. It’s a work of art. The pasta is thick and chewy, the clams sweet, garlicky, divine. This dish, served in the den of thieves, is my favorite of all the spectacular meals enjoyed in our host city. It pains me to withhold credit where credit is due. I want to shout the name of the restaurant, and the city we’re in. I will… later. [Naples!]
A seafood feast with pickpockets in Naples.
There’s serious eating for a while. This is food to pay attention to, and these men are no strangers to fine cuisine. Another platter is added to the table, this one heaped with shell fish, crustaceans, and fish. Really, it is too much. Yet Ed is popping baby squids into my mouth with his fingers, and I’m enjoying them. There is some metaphor here—something about the fingers of a thief being exempt from all rules.
Eat-til-you-burst in Naples, with thieves.
The men rise for more demonstrations. Bob swipes the restaurant owner’s wallet, then Andy shows how he can take cash without removing the wallet. Finally, they get to that special front pocket technique, unique to this city. Andy crushes against Bob, as if on a lurching bus. Frank holds Bob in place from the other side. Andy removes bill after bill from Bob’s front pocket, handing them off to Marc. Then Andy turns and skulks away. Playing along, Bob shouts “who took my money!” Marc passes the cash back to Andy, who presents it to Bob with a half bow and hand up in apology. Bob accepts the cash and Andy departs.
Left: Andy takes cash from Bob’s front pocket. Right: After Bob’s accusation, Andy returns the cash—but his left hand palms half of it in a practiced short-change move.
“We return the money when we have to,” he explains, “but it’s never the same amount.” Exactly like a magician, he has palmed half the cash before returning it. The victim never counts it on the spot. Andy grins hugely, full of pride.
Lou, now retired, sits out most of the demonstrations, but can’t help getting into the action to show his own wallet extractions. He rocks the wallet—zig-zags it out. The demonstrations and raucous laughter extend through dessert and beyond; through coffee, through liqueur. Then it’s time for picture-taking. All the thieves want to get between Bob and me for a photo.
Bob Arno and five pickpockets at dinner in Naples.
There’s a surprise: everyone signs full releases agreeing to be in our film, faces shown. We are ecstatic. The thought of blurring these expressive, lively faces was distressing. Now these men, the true stars of our pickpocket documentary, will be laid bare; not only their identities, but their emotions, their humanity.
An impromptu pickpocket demo. The most difficult steal.
And there’s a challenge. The pickpockets have admired Bob’s steals, but insist their work is different. Can he perform in their world? Has he got the heart? By that they mean the guts—the nerve. They summons Bob to a test. We’ll meet in the park. Tomorrow.
This is Part 18 of THE MAKING OF OUR NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTARY, PICKPOCKET KING. The film is about us, Bob Arno and Bambi Vincent. We are “thiefhunters in paradise.” The paradise we chose for the story is the warm and wild city of Naples, Italy, home to the world’s best pickpockets. The documentary premieres December 2 at 8pm ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel.
—Originally posted 10/210 and soon thereafter password-protected at the request of the producer.
Paccheri pasta, prepared by the pickpocket’s wife.
The shouting at dinner surprised me. It was like the stereotypical Italian dinner: loud and full of gesturing, standing up and leaning forward, voices rising over other voices and at the same time everyone is putting more food on each others’ plates.
But we were talking about the steal business—about pickpocketing—and the window was wide open. All the neighbors could certainly hear us discussing the thievery profession. Anyone within a block could hear.
Yet, the thief’s ten-year-old twins were farmed out for the evening to shield them from talk of daddy’s job. How could they not know if all the neighbors and passers-by hear about it?
Okay, so you now know we were in Italy. Well, it’s a big country. I’m giving you this much.
It was a nice apartment, neat and spotless. Two computers, huge flat-screen TV, dishwasher, even a Vitamix-type appliance for the serious cook. A dust-free collection of miniature silver clocks was displayed on dark wood shelves below the good china—for more important guests, I presume.
Our host maneuvered gamely at the kitchen counter, clearly not used to practicing the culinary arts. He sliced a fresh peach into a pitcher of white wine while explaining that the business was much easier ten years ago. Things are changing in this town. Younger plainclothes cops have joined the force; they’re more aggressive and harder to spot.
Mrs. Pickpocket had prepared a feast for us. Mozzarella balls, prosciutto on melon, hunks of provolone, olives, gorgeous crusty bread, marinated anchovies, octopus salad, cold eggplant… and that was just the antipasti. She had opened her polished wood table to seat all nine of us.
The home was ordinary—only noteworthy for its means of support. For twenty years, the family breadwinner has financed it all out of other people’s wallets.
Except when he’s in prison, of course. Then it all falls to his wife, who’ll get a job—or a couple of jobs—cooking, cleaning, whatever she has to do. Not easy in a town with perennial sky-high unemployment.
The thief used his skillful hands to grate the parmesan while his handsome wife brought out the pasta. Very al dente paccheri with a delicate sauce I think she called King Ferdinand. She learned to make it when she worked as a cook.
Another pickpocket was at the table with us—best friend and partner of our host. He’d brought his glamorous blond wife, who busied herself clearing plates and serving as if the kitchen were her own. As a couple, the two looked like any professionals you’d see at the bank on lunch hour. In fact, they’d had a life on the law’s side. A 30-year legit career had morphed into outright thievery. “I’ll explain how that happened next time we meet,” he told us.
The men kept hopping up to wash and reuse all the dishes and silverware between courses. Everyone except Bob and I and our translator smoked continuously. Thick slices of cold roast beef and chilled carrot puree came out long after Bob and I were fully satisfied.
“Sometimes police see us at work and look the other way,” our criminal friend explained. His handsome face looks almost angelic from some angles. Then I see something hard around his archer-bow mouth. Just nerves? Tension? “The police know there are no jobs here and that we have families to feed.”
Interesting! I had always assumed that cops looking the other way meant payoffs and corruption. The humanitarian possibilities hadn’t occurred to me.
A giant cream-topped baba cake was sliced for dessert, and tiny glasses of limoncello, a lemon liqueur, were poured. It was after midnight by the time we were drinking espresso and told not to worry, we’d sleep just fine.
I won’t bore you, readers, with technical talk of the pilfering profession. The evening was long and jovial, loud and serious, sad and enlightening. As I said in To Like a Pickpocket, we are conflicted in our relationship with this thief. One can’t suppress affection if that feeling exists.
This man comes from a world so different from ours. It’s not just his profession that is the inverse of ours; his country, his temperament, his education are all antithetical. Yet, on a baser level, a human level, we want the same things, feel the same emotions, have the same needs. If you pay attention, you see through a fake smile. And you recognize a real hug.
You are lucky indeed if you ever get the opportunity to experience a kaiseki meal, especially one in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn. You’ll enjoy a long, relaxed procession of delicacies in small portions, exquisitely presented, and usually specific to the season.
I had the incredible good fortune to indulge in a week of kaiseki lunches and dinners in Japan. One meal featured tofu in many forms. One featured tempura. Another was Buddhist vegetarian. The most breathtaking were those served at Yagyuno Sho Ryokan in Shuzenji, on Japan’s Izu peninsula.
I’m in awe of Takashi Shibayama, Yagyuno Sho’s chef, who showcased an endless variety of glorious creations in perfect balance, meal after meal. As you’ll see in the following photos, his magnificent presentations are the synergetic result of his ravishing edible works of art complemented by precious serving pieces, and owe a nod to whimsy.
These photos are from a single kaiseki dinner titled “A Picnic Under the Cherry Blossoms.” A menu was provided in Japanese calligraphy, along with an attempted English translation.
One Kaiseki dinner
Cold sake in iron pot
The meal begins with a treasured sake poured from iron pots into flat red lacquer bowls. Just a sip, it’s a fruity and fervent taste bud wakeup call, accompanied by a tiny red lantern glowing with a short-lived candle. In a deeply-textured covered bowl, a surprise awaits.
Foie gras Japanese style
Surprise indeed! Who would expect haute cuisine—and foie gras, no less? It’s a silky paté “with white radish agar (moon) and salty meringue (cloud),” a garnish of gold foil and cherry blossom petals—an edible haiku in beige. How about…
Fat goose flies in spring
Cherry blooms, moon in cloud, his
Liver is dinner
Kaiseki understatement: “Simple Meal”
A wooden tray is presented. Paradoxically called “Simple Meal,” it is anything but. In the gorgeous little covered bowl: “bamboo shoot, udo, butterbur dressed with young Japanese pepper and moso.” In my excitement, I forget to take a picture of the opened bowl. The central plate of gold-leaf floats on a gold-leaf-spattered strip of handmade paper. It holds “sushi balls, picnic dumpling, and dried wheat.” On the black ceramic dish, sesame seed tofu with caviar. In the beige: “rape blossoms with dried wheat gluten.”
Gluten makes frequent appearances. Itself bland with a pleasant, chewy texture, it’s an excellent sponge and carrier of flavors.
Cold sake
Our cold sake arrives in crystal glass decanters deep in red lacquer bowls of ice and flowers. You must not pour your own sake—but look after your neighbors, and make sure their cups are full. I can’t help noticing the uniformity of the ice—crushed to perfection.
Small soup in big bowl
A small “clear soup with red sea bream dumpling” is in a large lacquer bowl, black with gold bamboo on the outside, dark red on the inside. We are reminded that we are not expected to like or consume everything, but I can’t help myself. I do and I do.
Covered boat sashimi
Boat-shaped dishes with tantalizing covers are set before us. Our chopstick rests are swapped for porcelain cherry blossom petals. We begin to wonder how large the ryokan’s tableware pantry is.
Sashimi revealed
Lifting the bamboo roofs, we discover sashimi: tuna, sole, and horse clam. We’re gently instructed on which condiment highlights each fish. All the garnishes are edible, including the cherry blossoms.
Hot stone at table
Done with delicate for the moment, a hot rock is brought to each of us wrapped in fresh juniper branches in a wicker basket. We are served at meals by the same women who look after our rooms, and now they cook for us. Izu beef, shrimp, squid, and a green chili pepper are placed on each heated stone, which sears the food in a minute or two. I get two fat scallops instead of beef.
Dengaku
These colorful popsicles are called dengaku: “grilled tofu and dried wheat gluten on skewers coated with miso glaze.” They’re balanced on a bamboo cane on a rough plate the color of bamboo.The plate is a mossy pond whose surface is disturbed by koi kissing air.
Steamed icefish on raw sea urchin.
Steamed icefish on sea urchin. The tiny white fish are complete with little eyes. The beautiful bowl and urchin-colored saucer are paper thin. We’ve learned to recover our bowls when finished with a dish. The staring fish and raw sea urchin gonads are too much for some; their bowls are quickly covered.
Tomato juice
“100% fresh tomato juice.” It is thick enough to eat with a wooden spoon, and very cold in a crystal shot glass. A concentrated flavor break between two hot dishes.
Bamboo shoot in liquid starch
In a brown and gold covered lacquer bowl, “deep fried bamboo shoot with liquid starch.” There must be a better translation for “liquid starch,” but the Japanese haven’t found it. Enriched broth? Thickened consommé?
Miso soup mystery
This one has an element of mystery. The menu translation is “dark brawn miso soup with bean curd tofu skin.” Is that dark brown soup or dark prawn soup? Either way, it is delicious. Ahhh… another bottle of sake, please!
Rice finale with small shrimps
Finally, and always last, comes the rice. It’s in a stunning stoneware bowl with an accompaniment of cooked small shrimp. A plate of pickled vegetables on the side.
Sweet summer yellow orange
And for dessert, something small, cold, and light on a silver dish. “Sweet summer yellow orange,” a strawberry for contrast, and a sweet drink made from fermented rice with soybean milk pudding.
Breakfasts at the ryokan are just as spectacular, but served expeditiously, in well over a dozen different little plates and bowls. I’ll spare you the photos.
Over five dramatic meals on the property, I never saw the same serving piece more than once. And all of this was managed just days after the earthquake and tsunami, under the threat of nuclear meltdown, between scheduled rolling blackouts. Praise and thanks to Yagyuno Sho Ryokan and its wonderful chef and staff.
Every frequent traveler has a personal list of what he misses about home. The list varies depending on the type and length of travel. Items high on my list are gardening and cooking.
My garden at home is of the type a frequent traveler can maintain. Specifically, that means it will survive, if not thrive, with a sprinkler system on a timer. Save for a few herbs there’s nothing edible, since I’d certainly miss fleeting moments of ripeness.
We’ve spent this spring and summer bouncing around Europe. By the end of September, we’ll have been on the road five straight months. Flying every three to six days, changing time zones, putting new names and faces into short-term memory, packing and unpacking, all while trying to keep up the administratrivia of business.
Between business trips, we made Stockholm our base, and our Swedish garden is what kept me sane. Growing food thrills me. Picking the bounty of the garden is a joy. A fistful of fragrant parsley makes me breathe deeply. A bowl of basil leaves or a palmful of oregano make me salivate for the possibilities. Weeding brings tranquility, and flavor explosions in the form of smultron, tiny wild strawberries found throughout the yard.
When we arrived in May, the rhubarb was ready and the cherry trees were flowering gloriously above it. I carried long, thick bundles of the red and green stalks up to the kitchen the afternoon of my first day, chopping and baking it into a crispy-topped pie. Later in the season, I simply chopped it and cooked it in a pot for ten minutes with nothing but a little sugar and cinnamon.
The elderberry trees burst into big, feathery flowers. They’re called fläder in Swedish, and we make a sort of juice-concentrate from the flowers. Worth a separate post.
Cherries, huge black ones and shiny white ones, required long ladders to harvest. The birds like them before they’ve reached their peek and, with easier access, always win the lion’s share. Those we manage to gather are too delicious to eat any way but out-of-hand. But why, we wonder, do the birds have to take a little bite out of each cherry? Why don’t they eat a whole one instead of pecking at a dozen?
Raspberries ripened next; I all but ignored them for my garden favorite, the deep and complex svart vinbär, black wineberry, aka black currant. These I gorged on—plain, on ice cream, with yogurt, thrown into a pan with a roasting chicken. It’s no wonder the most interesting red wines tout “flavors of black currant.” (Sure beats aroma of cat pee!)
Black currants are tedious to harvest, as they hang in loose, delicate bunches of only a few berries. But our bushes were so laden I could fill bowlfuls without moving my feet. Before each trip I took in July, I cooked a pot of these for five minutes and filled a jar to take with me.
Snails love black currants, too. The adorable baby ones, smaller than a bedbug, are impossible to see among the black berries. They quickly flee to the rim of the bowl though (as quickly as a baby snail can go), when I fill the berry bowl with water for a few minutes.
As the black currants dwindled, the red ones ripened, the berries becoming so dark and heavy in their grape-like clusters that the lower branches of the bushes laid in the grass. Red currants are easy to pick, and a fork quickly strips them from their little stems. They’re gorgeous, like little ruby marbles, but I find them too tart and one-dimensional in flavor. Still, they’re excellent over ice cream…
Golden green gooseberries fattened to perfection, overlapping the black and red currant weeks. My thumbnail was black for a month from topping and tailing them. I baked them with curried chutney chicken and chopped them with sugar for the freezer, to be eaten slushy through winter. Turns out they’re sublime arranged cut in half on a peanut butter sandwich. I always start eating the gooseberries too early, and only realize it when they’ve turned honey-colored and thin-skinned on their branches, and half of them are already gone.
Now the rhubarb has gotten a second burst of energy and the plums are ripe. These plums, called Victoria, are sweet as sugar, another favorite of the birds, and alas, this year, a little wormy. I can’t eat them without cutting them open for examination. But that just requires a bit of knifecraft.
It’s September 4th, and we’ve already had to turn on the heat. Sunny nights are long gone. The days are more often gray, rainy, and windy than otherwise. Bob and I are packing up, leaving Sweden for the last time this year, full of antioxidants and phytochemicals and glowing with good health. From our upstairs windows, we look down on reddening apples, but we’ll miss them.
Is there a more phallic kitchen tool on the planet? Or one more ridiculous?
You should see the thing in action! This is an espresso-maker for the coffee-obsessed traveler. To work it, you grab the black “head” and pump vigorously. I am not kidding.
Of course, first you need a source of boiling water, which sort of spoils its promise of convenience. You can’t just pull to the side of an endless desert road and pump out a shot of espresso; or whip one up on a beach blanket. But in a hotel room equipped with a water boiler, it makes a passable coffee with a nice crema. You need to carry around the coffee, sugar, and the right cups, too. Maybe even a grinder. It’s not my idea of convenient. For all its trouble and the extra stuff that must be carried, it’s not, in my opinion, trip-worthy.
But it sure is amusing to watch a man operate it. I don’t mind drinking the coffee, either.
Bhel puri just might be my favorite Indian food. A snack commonly prepared and served on the street, you can find it in restaurants, too. It’s hard but not impossible to find it in the U.S., where Indian restaurant almost always means a predictable menu of Northern Indian dishes, often dismal and boring.
The dish is a perfect mix of sweet, sour, hot, and spicy, plus soft and crisp. It always includes sev—delicate crispy yellow noodles—and puffed rice. There’s usually chopped potatoes and onions, and sometimes tomatoes. It’s all tossed with a spicy sweet-hot sauce and topped with green coriander leaves. It must be eaten as soon as the ingredients are combined.
Bhel puri walla, Bombay, 1989.
I discovered bhel puri in 1989, my first trip to Bombay. I was intrigued by the long line of people buying from this humble bhel puri walla. Using only his hand, he mixed fistfuls of the ingredients in a bowl, then transferred the concoction to another bowl for the customer to eat from, right there. Yep, I got in line. Nope, I didn’t get sick.
Bhel puri cart, Bombay, 1989.
Bhel puri and other street food for sale, Bombay, 1989
Once I recognized the ingredients, I began to see dramatic displays like these all over the city, each more artistic and appetizing than the next. I ate at many of them.
Savoring the last few bites of bhel puri on Chowpatti Beach
In March of 2010, I saw very few street food vendors, no bhel puri wallas. Perhaps I just didn’t walk in the right streets, though I criss-crossed the city and spent much time in Colaba, as I did in 1989. The food stalls on Chowpatty Beach, long famous for bhel puri, have been swept into a permanent organization of stainless steel stands, similar to Singapore’s street food culture.
Chopping onions at Chowpatty Beach.
I had excellent bhel puri (and many other dishes) at the vegetarian Kailash Parbat on Colaba Causeway. Across from the restaurant, they run a sort of glorified street food stand, at which one can order all the standard snacks and sweets. I had incredible panipuri there, one after another until I had to hold up my hand and reject the last of the six that come in an order, handed over one by one. Panipuri are crisp hollow spheres, punctured and filled with spicy potatoes or chickpeas, then topped off with spicy, cumin-flavored water. The entire fragile globe must be placed in the mouth, sometimes a tricky maneuver for a small mouth. The payoff is a satisfying burst, a crackling, a flood of liquid, an explosion of flavor and texture like no other.
Delicious do-it-yourself panipuri at the upscale restaurant Soam, in Mumbai.
Mysore paanki, steamed between banana leaves, is peel-and-eat spiciness.
The vegetarian restaurant Soam is a few block’s walk from the north end of Chowpatty Beach, and definitely worth the trip. The small, trendy place serves upscale versions of street food and Gujarati home cooking. Bob and I loved it.
Jackfruit for sale in 1989 Bombay. I didn’t see any this time, though it was the same month.
Beer is served in tall, iced dispensers at Leopold's the famous cafe that was bombed in 2008.
I drank fresh coconut every day from this vendor around the corner from our hotel.
Reviewing my 1989 photos, I found the same heap of coconuts in front of the same temple on Colaba Causeway.
