Wow. Okay. Remember this blog? I don’t.
Spent some time visiting Little Granny a while back, and she whipped up a batch of the finest pflinzen you ever saw. She means business. I mean, seriously, check this out:
If you’re really cool, I’ve got a pflinzen recipe right here. Even put up some more pictures. Just for you, the faithful reader.
I don’t always like to admit it, but once a year I have to face the facts and embrace my inner Mennonite. This is mostly for the purpose of stuffing my face at the MCC Sale. It’s basically a contest in which all the little old Mennonite ladies get together and see who can feed me the most. This is the kind of contest the world needs more of.
Beginning, naturally, with standing line with all the other Mennos presumably there to do the same thing.
And of course, followed up with the regular roundup of Mennonite staples. Farmer sausage, cottage cheese perogies, and plumi moos.
Round that off with watermelon and rollkuchen.
At this point, I needed a break. Dessert was still coming, and I needed some time to digest before I burst. So I checked out the music, and who was playing? Well, none other than the always-popular Secondhandpants. Unfortunately, they were missing Marlon Wyll Maynard due to a certain Intercontinental Championship. Francis here had it under control, however:
The Sound of Science!
So. Dessert: pie and platz. Can’t go wrong.
So ends another trip into the deepest recesses of my cultural group. As tasty though it may be, I’m kind of glad that it’s over: now I can go back to sin and debauchery for another year.
It’s late. I’m hungry. And I’m in Canada, so I can’t get good, cheap naan and curry in the middle of the night.
Sigh. I miss KL.
Edit: Man, I am sloshed in that video.
One thing I appreciated out there was the wide variety of fruit juices. I mean, what do restaurants here serve for juice? Orange and apple. That’s it. But Asia’s got that shit down. Watermelon, guava, mango, strawberry … all sorts of fruits that we chump Canadians just don’t juice.
So one day I decided on a whim to order the ‘coconut juice’. Much to my surprise, however, it came still inside the coconut. They just hack a hole in the top and give you a straw. Also available widely from street vendors, as is evidenced:
One is also given a spoon in order to scrape out the coconut’s meaty deliciousness. This, however, can prove troublesome, since they always seem to make the hole in the top too small, so I end up scraping up my hands on the jagged edge of the shell. However, as is seen here, getting at that tasty coconut meat can be a trying experience, even when you have the advantage of tiny Asian hands:
This is a picture of a durian.
This is a picture of a man who wants to die.
Durian is (in)famous for its smell. Its terrible, terrible smell. You always know when the grocery store has ‘em in stock, ’cause you can smell it out on the gods-damned street. The bizarre thing, I always thought, was not the durian itself, but how popular it is just as a flavour. Durian ice cream, durian candies, durian popsicles … and (as is shown here) durian pies.
I eventually got over my aversion and, in the form of this small pie, dipped my toes gingerly into the viscous pool of durian adventure.
It cannot be overstated how much I miss the banana leaf. It was the cornerstone of my Malaysian diet.
So, to make up for the fact that I didn’t post last week (Hello, new OS install! Hello, new Internet connection!), I will supply you with a video that Tya sent me for the purpose of taunting me with inter-continental deliciousity.
As if that doesn’t make your mouth water.
If there is one western food item that Southeast Asia seems to have fully understood and succeeded in reproducing, it is donuts (Edit: now all we have to do is teach them about cheese). One presumes that this is because over there deep frying is a way of life.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than Indonesia’s J. Co. Donuts & Coffee.
It’s kind of like a Tim Horton’s, I guess, except with way more donuts and it’s, uh, Asian. They’ve got about every flavour of donut you might imagine there, and quite a few you might not (I’m looking at you, durian flavour).
The line ups to get into a J. Co are ridiculous. I mean, they’re good donuts, but let’s control ourselves a bit, please.
This is a very short line, and by no means the entirety of it.
I once asked an Indonesian guy to explain the secret of J. Co.’s success. I reproduce his answer here for dramatic effect:
Watch out, Dunkin’-fuckin’-Donuts. You’re goin’ down. Read the rest of this entry »
A computer geek with an appetite.
aaron at foodpile dot net
The foodblog gets updated occasionally.
