food – Page 3 – Thiefhunters in Paradise

A pudding

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.

Malva Pudding

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.

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 the 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:

Weekly Mail Pudding

1 Egg

1/2 cup sugar (125 ml)

2 T jam (25 ml)

1 cup milk (250 ml)

1 t baking soda (5ml)

1/4 t salt (2 ml)

1 cup CAKE flour* (250 ml) (or “self-rising” flour)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. (180 C)

2. Butter a glass baking dish, at least 12″ x 7.5″x 2″. (18 x 30 x 5 cm) Preferably a little larger.

3. Beat egg and sugar and salt together well.

4. Add the jam and mix well.

5. Mix the milk and baking soda together.

6. Add flour and the milk mixture alternately to the egg mixture, beating well.

7. Pour into the greased glass ovenproof dish.

8. Cover the dish with a lid of foil.

9. Bake for 40 minutes.

10. Meanwhile, make the sauce.

Sauce

1 cup milk (250 ml)

1/2 cup water (125 ml)

1 cup sugar (250 ml)

4 oz. butter (125 g)

1 t vanilla (optional) (5 ml)

Directions

will

2. Stir until the sauce boils, to dissolve the sugar.

3. Boil mixture for 5 minutes.

4. Take the pudding out of the oven, uncover it, and stab it here and there with a knife.

5. Slowly pour the boiled sauce over it.

6. Return it to the oven, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes or until the pudding is brown.

You might serve the pudding with whipped cream, ice cream, or custard, but I think that’s overkill.

Cape Town's Table Mountain. — Cape Town’s Table Mountain.

Kitchen notes:

•No cake flour? From 1 cup all purpose flour, subtract 2 T of it. Add 2 T corn starch.

•Yes! you can use soy milk instead of dairy!

•Placing a sheet of foil on the oven floor may save a nasty clean-up.

At the Microsoft conference in Slovenia

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.

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 DÅ¾uro (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.

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.

food

Observations of Japan

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.

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.

food japan street food travel

Necessity is the mother of…

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.

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?

food hotel travel

Suckers, high and dry

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.

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.

food greece mykonos

Nut salad

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

food

Michael Pollan’s sun-food agenda

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.

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.

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.

food

Paper masala dosa

Why did we order two?

Paper masala 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 masala dosa

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).

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

food restaurant

Duck in a can

Montreal—Read anything about this city’s vibrant dining scene and you’ll be pointed to Au Pied de Cochon. You’ll also be warned: dining here entails a serious lapse in a heart-healthy diet. Pigs, of course, are featured heavily on the menu. Foie gras is the restaurant’s other specialty.

I don’t eat pigs, or any four-legged animals. I’m not big on two-legged winged creatures, either. But foie gras makes me swoon. In Montreal, it comes from ducks, not geese, and I find it slightly inferior. Slightly.

At Au Pied de Cochon, chef Martin Picard puts foie gras in everything: pigs’ feet, pizza, and a weird QuÃ©bÃ©cois dish called poutine. Poutine is a pile of fries and cheese curds covered with sauce, and often meat. What are cheese curds? I can’t think of an American equivalent. Cottage cheese curds are smaller and softer, and creamed. Indian paneer is similar: firm, dryish, squeaky lumps of milk soured by an acid. They’re good.

Au Pied de Cochon’s version of poutine starts with potatoes fried in duck fat and topped with a large lobe of seared foie gras. And get this: the sauce is made of foie gras puree, egg yolks, and cream. The eyes and mouth say yeah! while the heart runs for cover.

It was fabulous. Bob and I shared a plate, and we could have walked away satisfied after just the foie gras poutine and glasses of chenin blanc.

Duck in a can

But no. We had to experiment. Bob had a fresh bluefin tuna dish, rare and complicated. I had duck in a can. My chef brother-out-law had told me about it. The waiter brought out a piece of toasted bread covered with celery root puree. He also brought a hot sealed can, which he opened with a can opener at the table.

Slowly and ceremoniously, the steaming contents were dumped atop the bread. A duck breast, a large lobe of foie gras, buttered cabbage, a head of garlic, fresh thyme, and mysterious juices were cooked to a fragrant, unidentifiable heap that looked sort of… well, pre-digested.

It was not a pretty sight, though it smelled divine. The structure stood tall on its bread foundation for a minute, until the bread soaked up enough fat and juices to lose its ability to support such a heavy burden. Neighboring diners’ eyes bugged out. Mouths gaped. Oohs and ahs for the spectacle of the duck.

Needless to say, it was delicious. The duck was chewy and gamey, the foie gras meltingly luscious, the garlic an occasional bright surprise, and the cabbage a vegetal counterbalance. The celery root and juicy-crusty bread could have been a meal on it’s own. As you can see, the dish was enough for six people.

No surprise that the combination, foie gras poutine followed by duck in a can, was not a wise choice; I knew that when I ordered. I just had to try both dishes. There were many others I managed to pass up.

So this is my recommendation. Go to Au Pied de Cochon. If duck in a can doesn’t intrigue you, try one of their spectacular seafood platters. Or probably anything on the menu.

duck food montreal restaurant

Midnight sun in Stockholm

Actual, working pickpockets discuss their demonstrations in Bob Arno's National Geographic documentary "Pickpocket King"

$Bob Arno interviewed by Sweden\'s TV4$

A family visit to Stockholm turned into a media circus. How did they know we were in town? First was an interview for an article in the Sunday supplement of Aftonbladet, one of Sweden’s national newspapers. (See it here.) Then Bob (Arno, the criminologist) was asked to speak to Stockholm’s street cops and detectives. Halfway through his two-hour presentation on street crime, TV4 showed up for an interview and demo.

The tv news reporters had to wait an hour for us, while Bob and I analyzed some tricky footage of a bag theft in Stockholm’s main subway station. The subway surveillance cameras are excellent, with high resolution and enough frames-per-second. We recognized the finale of a version of the pigeon-poop ploy, but earlier footage of the set-up was no longer available. Video footage is only kept for a few days before it is destroyed. The department’s looseleaf “book of criminals” is thick with mugshots. Stockholm is not what it used to be, even just a few years ago. Sad.

We drove Bob’s 97-year-old father out to his country house on an island in the archipelago. The old man built the three houses on the property with his own hands, and has maintained them reasonably well until the last year or so.

The grounds have always been a loosely-controlled wilderness, but now the meadows of wild orchid, lilly-of-the-valley, lupine, and Swedish soldiers are overgrown with tall grasses that hide the colorful flowers. As we arrived, a huge male deer munching leisurely on the trees looked accusingly at us, as if we were the trespassers. Within arm’s reach of the car, it didn’t bolt until we aimed a camera at it.

The weather was glorious and the old man was happy to be at his “summerhome.” I picked handfuls of smultron, tiny wild strawberries, until I was dragged away. I find it excruciating to walk on such delicacies, but they cover the ground and there’s no choice. I brought home a tick, but didn’t find it until the next day.

Bob Arno food lecture police Stockholm street crime Sweden

PICKPOCKETS, CON ARTISTS, GANGSTERS, THIEVES, AND TRAVEL

A pudding

Malva Pudding

Weekly Mail Pudding

At the Microsoft conference in Slovenia

Observations of Japan

Necessity is the mother of…

Suckers, high and dry

Nut salad

Michael Pollan’s sun-food agenda

Paper masala dosa

Paper masala dosa

Duck in a can

Duck in a can

Midnight sun in Stockholm

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