The Runaway Cook

A diary of culinary adventures

Leaving

Posted by Elizabeth Wednesday, September 29, 2010 comments (0)



Today, everyone is flying home . . . well, most people are flying home. A few brave tadpoles in this pool have decided to venture off into the wild and chance being eaten new habitats. I happen to be one of those insane individuals. I'm fly to Dubai to connect with a flight to Rome. Yes! ROME!! I am going back to Italy to learn about and explore the country on my own and any other that I might run into on my trek to Hamburg, Germany.


I am nervous and worried. I fear this trip may be more challenging than I had imagined before. I fear that maybe not all the fish in this new pond are willing to let this tadpole continue swimming and growing unharmed. Perhaps this new adventure will be the time of my life, changing me, and showing myself that I am stronger than I had ever imagined. Or will it be the event that tries my sole and finds me weak, uncertain, and false. The worst part is I am not sure what the answer will be.


There are so many "what-if's" that I feel like I'm jumping to my death. I am pretty sure that I will not be sleeping in the next 24 hours and that is making my really worried. I can't speak much Italian and that might be a problem along the way. What will I do and how will I get to Salerno and Amalfi? How will I ever figure this out?. . . I wish I was not so alone in all this.




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The Last Night

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How strange to be putting an end to this chapter tomorrow only to begin a far scarier one alone. I can hardly believe that it's been a month since I arrived in a panic from Rome to Singapore.

With only hours left to my stay here in Singapore I have once again traveled to my favorite place, Little India. I feel so natural here, comfortable in the alien parallel universe that it is. I love the people here. Shop keepers are sweet and care about who you are, not how deep your pockets are. I love how genuine and dirt-under-their-fingernails it feels in this cubicle of the city. I just can't get enough of the smell here. I know that it seems like all I talk about is the smell here, but it's just that this sensation overwhelms your body and imprints a memo
ry that covers you like a blanket every time you get a whiff of it.

Tonight I spent the whole evening walking up and down the shadowy streets with friends. Stopping of course to eat at our favorite place Anjappar. This small Indian restaurant is where the best food is. If you go to Singapore you must stop to eat here.

On the menu for us:
Filled flatbreads
Chicken tikka
Biryani
Curried vegetables
Idli
Paratha
Yogurt sauce
Lime juice



These are all favorites of mine. The warm rice pilaf of poultry, spices, herbs, fruits, and nuts that is biryani can calm all my nerves in a second. But beyond the dense curries and refreshing yogurt raita, the most amazing array of Indian foods that are the base to the meal, literally, the bread.

Paratha
My favorite is called Roti Paratha, what I like to say is the baby of a croissant and a tortilla. (See Recipe Below) This flatbread has buttery thin layers just like puffed pastry, yet is cooked flat in a pan like a tortilla. I can't seem to get enough of this stuff and plan on making for myself at home and school.

This bread makes the perfect edible utensil to eat pretty much anything. I love sopping up my curry sauce with it hehehehe. This bread is sold all over and can be made so that the little air pockets are filled with cheese, cinnamon and sugar, or even egg. It's pretty amazing. TRUTH- i actually smuggled in parata to this restaurant from a street vender that makes it just as good but for half the price- eek shhhhhhhh.

Idli
My second favorite is called idli. This is like a pancake made from a sourdough-like, fermented rice and lentil batter. The batter is steamed and comes out with a cake-like texture. Perfect for sopping up anything. I love the flavor of this, it's very similar to a sourdough pancake. . .but better and goes perfectly with juicy curries.

Lime Juice
Lime juice is actually a kind of "lemonade" drink made with these little dark green limes that are not nearly as harsh as the limes we are used to. So imagine lime-ade with none of that acidic harshness in the back of one's throat... that's a "lime juice."

After stuffing ourselves with more Indian food than we ever should have co
nsumed, I tried to slowly walk it off as we hobbled home. Seeing this place at night is like seeing behind the scenes of a magic show. Steam and smoke waft out of the market as they toast spices and prepare for the next day. The music plays louder, people in temple sing and twang their instruments, the incense hang in the cooling air and shops change shape.

I will miss this place like a friend.

Paratha

31/2 cups All purpose flour

11/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. Granulated sugar

3/4 cup Ghee, room temperature

(divided)

1 lg. Egg, beaten

3/4 cup Whole milk

1/2 cup Water


  1. In a bowl or heavy-duty stand mixer with a paddle attachment, ombine flour, salt, sugar
  2. Add 1/4 cup of the ghee and rub together with fingertips (or run on low with dough hook)until mixture looks mealy.
  3. Add egg, milk, and water. Using one hand, mix until a cohesive dough forms. (Continue to mix
  4. with paddle until a smooth elastic dough is formed.
  5. Knead into a smooth, soft, elastic dough, about 8 to 10 minutes if or longer if your kneading is not so strong
  6. It should be a bit moist and soft, but not wet. Cut into eight equal pieces, about 4 oz. each
  7. Coat a 12” round of the table with about 2 Tbsp of ghee. Coat hands liberally with ghee.
  8. Stretch the dough into a sheet by flattening and pulling dough
  9. Be sure that dough is coated in ghee on all surfaces
  10. Taking one edge of the round pull dough up into a rope letting the sides ripple into each other as the hang
  11. Swirl the rope into a rosette and let rest 10 minutes
  12. Roll out rosette into ¼ inch round
  13. Using a hot pan, preferably non-stick, add a bit of ghee to the pan and brown dough on both sides
  14. Once cooked and golden brown remove from pan and squish flatbread towards itself to exaggerate the air bubbles
  15. EAT IMMEDIATELY


*** Oil may be substituted for the ghee used in the cooking process and partially within the dough- ghee gives flavor so try to use as much clarified butter/ghee as possible




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Goodbye Malaysia :,(

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Terima Kasih Malaysia. . . we will miss you.

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Whoever Said Blue Food Wasn't Natural?

Posted by Elizabeth Sunday, September 19, 2010 comments (0)


Believe it or not, but that blue color to the left is all natural, no blue number five here. This delicious coconut rice bar tastes like oatmeal with a caramel coconut layer. Sweetened by palmsugar it has the most refreshing sweetness without losing the salty contrast. This treat happens to come in many colors, pink, yellow, and green, but this blue is my favorite.


So where does it come from already

Well, in an old garage that's down a little alley in Melaka, there are a couple old woman who take the beautiful blue out of the flowers that grow in the street. It's not just how they take the color that makes this place amazing. Their garage is stocked with durian caramels, little malaysian cookies and enough of these bars that even our bus of hungry cooks would get sick on them.

Maybe next time you're thinking about eating that blue raspberry candy that's colored with artificial who-knows-what, you can think of the real malaysian blue and boycott these sorry impressionists.

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Don't I need khakis and a safari hat for this?

Posted by Elizabeth comments (2)

Holy cow! Was that a snake. . . or just a branch?! I'm not sure and I'm not going to take my time to figure it out. I've had about enough of the lizards around here. I'm not about to make friends with any other reptiles.


Gosh theses trees are tall. I never realized how huge a palm tree could get. They're practically prehistoric: rough scaly trunks with a diameter of closet and let's not forget the long, feathery, draping branches as that could seriously wound someone if it fell on them. We are in the thick of it now my friends!

So why am I surrounded by rows and rows of palm trees the size of a dinosaur? We are traveling through Melaka, Malaysia and our tour guide doubles as a palm oil farmer.

Oil palm happens to be the main agricultural crop around here. This tiny country grows some 600 million trees, which takes up over half of their agricultural land. (20% of Malaysian land is farmed) Palm isn’t just farmed here. No, 60% of the country is covered in forest, including some of the worlds oldest virgin forests.


The unique thing about processing palm is that it makes two oils from one plant: palm kernel oil-made from the fruit’s core and palm oil made from the fruit’s flesh. Palm is the only fruit to produce two chemically different oils.


Many products we buy at the grocers have palm oil on the ingredient list. It’s not just an affordable fat, but unrefined palm fruit oil is full of vitamins. It is a great shortening for baking as it is naturally solid at room temp, needing no hydrogenation. This means it has no trans fatty acids, and because it’s not an animal product, it is free of cholesterol.



I have to be truthful, being surrounded by all this agriculture made my eyes start to moisten. It just felt so homey here. . . and our tour guide was such a sweet man it was hard not to miss the sweetness of the cornfields and my father back home. I guess you can take the farmgirl out of the farm an throw her into the jungle, but you can’t take the farm out of the girl no matter where she goes.




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Visiting the Mosque

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I never imagined that in the 100F blistering hot summer tropics I'd want to put on a 15-20 pound coat that covered my body from crown to ankle, an that after I had been instructed to wear a sweater and pants. But that is exactly what I did today.

Part of our touring Malaysia, a muslim country, included visiting a mosque. I was especially excited to visit this place since, in the last month, I had visited a Buddhist temple complex, a Hindu temple, Saint Peter's Basilica, and the Sistine Chapel. Learning about all these different places of worship and the different religions that meet inside them has been very eve-opening. The most shocking thing to me has been how similar ideas can be between two groups and yet how different they can honor those ideas and the vice versa.

Today's experience was quite different from all the others. It wasn't just a matter of washing our feet before entering, or making sure our shoulders and thighs were covered. No, even after we dressed to cover our bodies from wrist to toe (yes toe, we were instructed that would not be permitted to enter with open-toed shoes), the women in our group were still made to wear thick blue cloaks to cover our whole bodies. It's one thing to see how the muslim women of this country dress, but it's another to put on that same heavy cloak even if it was for just 15 minutes.
While we visited today, there was a funeral taking place and a bride waiting in the wings for their ceremony to end and hers to begin. It was strangely ironic, a feeling I seemed to pick up everywhere today. Even the the blue sky seemed to be the opposite of the bright pink dome of this structure.

To me, the idea of modesty is rather romantic. Dressing in a way that keeps your body a kind of secret seems to make our bodies seem more sacred. But seeing such a stark difference in the rules for men and women made me feel so frustrated. If an arm is "immodest" to show for a woman then why is it not immodest for a man?

I guess in the end this place that seemed like it was focused on reverence and worship felt like was focused on rules and distinction. I feel honored to have seen such a beautiful structure with unique architecture and traditions. But more importantly I feel so grateful for the freedom I had in taking off that heavy coat once I stepped outside the door.





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