hola como estas new orleans

For those of you who are totally ignorant: New Orleans is a great, great food city. New Orleans may not boast the sheer number of restaurants that places like San Francisco and New York City do, but it makes up for it with style: New Orleans has its own distinct cuisine that just so happens to be among the most delicious in the world. Utilizing a knock out combination of cooking styles - ranging from Cajun to Creole to French to African to Italian to soul food and so much more - NOLA'S cuisine is the USA's finest indigenous cooking style.

Rich as sin but purely satisfying, New Orleans cuisine isn't much concerned with notions of low-calorie or all-natural or delicate-nibbles. It thrives on the elemental flavors, the ones that get deep down into the human lizard brain: fat and butter, cheese and cream, meat and lobster, chili spice and decadent sweetness. Although many contemprary chefs have created excellent riffs on classic rich Creole cuisine, New Orleans food has retained a refreshing authenticity to its original spirit.

And authentic it is: good food in New Orleans can be found at the grungy gas station in the ghetto or at the revered Creole dining rooms of the French quarter. You can spend very little or you can spend a hell of a lot, and you'll still find yourself a very excellent meal. Fried oysters and white bread from the dive oyster bar coexist with John Besh's decadent oyster preparations at August: both stem from the same cultural origins and the same love of fresh and unashamed cuisine. New Orleans peo

People in New Orleans care about food, in the single-minded and rabid way citizens of all great food cities do. Screaming arguments can be easily begun over here by disagreements over the towns best gumbo, po-boy, or BBQ shrimp, and you better believe everyone has an opinion. This is a town devoted to edibles and that is a large part of why I've decided to move here - it's one of the Big American Food Cities.

Anyways, my posts from here on out will involve a whole lot of New Orleans eating.....(I'm going back to August this weekend since I am a little snot.) I'm hoping to get a grasp on what makes this city tick one way or another, and a big part of that involves delicious food. I do live a life of travail and injustice.

(It is currently tropical storming over here as we catch a smack or two of Ike, which I am not loving so much, although it's a bit of a change from Sacramento's non-existent weather. And hey, at least I'm not cold anymore.)

indian street food: chaat

INDIAN STREET FOOD



Perhaps the first advice offered to vistors to India is "Don't eat the street food." You would do well to completely ignore this. Gastric complaints go away (generally.) Happy memories last forever.

India has an incredibly strong street food tradition, putting the roving dirty-water hot dog stands of our own country to considerable shame. This is due to India having less regulations about basically everything, which means both more variety and more opportunity for sorrow and woe. (Life is like that anyway.) You can pick up everything from kebabs to fruit salad to fried fish to chaat on the street, and variations exist in almost every town and region and state. An exhaustive survey of the delicious treats to be found across India would take much more time and patience then I have, so here's what I encountered. Let's begin with chaat.


The chaat stand near my office in Bangalore. Note the bags of pani puris to the left.

- Chaat is the most famous Indian street or fast food, a catchall term meaning "to lick or taste." In common usage, chaat just stands for delicious, savory snacks that are eaten either for lunch or at some time between the usual meals. Chaat is almost always vegetarian and generally comprised of some sort of delicious carbohydrate - common ingredients include chickpeas, yogurt, tamarind and chili sauce, and chopped tomatoes and onions. Chaat masala, a distinctive spice mixture featuring dried green mango (amchoor) is also a major player - I bought a bunch of the stuff back home and enjoy sprinkling it on fruit salad. There are roughly two million different varieties of chaat which vary from city to city, which indicates you should probably try as many kinds as possible if you know what's good for you.



Chaat may be found everywhere from gungy and slightly scary street stalls to fancy expensive restaurants - pretty much everyone adores it. I favor getting my chaat from stalls that are one notch above moveable carts (to avoid picking up a stray amoeba), but you can be a wuss and go to a real sit-down restaurant. I guess.


A fancy-schmancy version of bhel puri served up at San Francisco's commendable Dosa.

What chaat varieties do I recommend? Bhel puri is my absolute favorite chaat dish, composed of puffed rice mixed with sev (fried noodles), potatoes, papri puris (little wheat crackers), along with tomato and onion. Chutney is usually added to the mix: I consider the dark sweet kind, composed of dates and tamarind, to be about on level with crack. I put it on everything. Mumbai is reputed to be the ancestral home of bhel puri and I'd believe it. I ate a lot of bhel puri in Bangalore: I must admit, the simple version dished up from Juice Junction was the best. I have many happy memories of spending my lunch break balancing a plate of bhel puri on one knee and a fruit salad on the other, watching the little punks from the Bishop Cotton boys school across the street order up an after school snack: good times.

Pani puri is also delish and everywhere, composed of puffed fried dough filled with a watery broth of tamarind, chili, and potato. These little suckers are pretty much impossible to miss and usually sold by the piece: a nice way to cool down on a hot day. Try extra hard to avoid the super sketchy stalls with these as there are occasional unfortunate issues with nasty water. Occasional. It's best to eat these in one gulp as there could be spillage. You don't want spillage.


A delicious, delicious bowl of dahi papri. Scuse' me while I lick the screen.

If you're in a dairy sort of mood, it's hard to beat dahi puri, which consists of tangy Indian yogurt seved over crunchy puri rounds, mixed with chutney, sev, and god knows what else. Dahi papri is also delicious, featuring fried wheat crackers broken up into chunks and served with the same delicious yogurt topping. It's sort of like Indian nachos with cheese sauce. Only not really. (The person who successfully markets nachos in India will become incredibly wealthy. I am considering it.)

Pav bhaji is another Mumbai speciality, composed of super-tasty buttery buns (the pav) and a spicy potato and vegetable based curry (the bhaji.) Prepared in giant pans on the street most everywhere in Mumbai, it's a tasty and carbohydrate rich former factory-workers lunch that has earned the love of the Indian populace. I'm trying to learn how to make it at home.


A few of Chowpatty's food stalls.

Any mention of chaat would be remiss without bringing up Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai's near-legendary snack food capital. The beach itself is attractive enough and even moderately clean these days, but the real attraction is the food sellers, who shill just about everything from suprisingly elaborate stalls, working out of an authorized area. It wasn't always like this: selling food on the beach used to be illegal. As my friend Aneesa remembers: "You'd be buying a juice or something and in the middle of making it, someone would spot the cops and they'd just all run away and leave you standing there...it was really quite funny."



Chowpatty Beach is all legal now and the hilarity factor has diminished, but the food is still there: bhel puri and pav bhaji are particular specialities, along with milkshakes, ices, kulfi, and falooda, a kind of Persian ice cream parfait. If you want to get all fancy, you can even sit down on plastic chairs. It is now unlikely your juice seller will run away in the midst of making your drink. Sigh.


Here's some pav bhaji - or rather bhaji bit - waiting to be served up on Chowpatty. The bhaji is prepared beforehand in big, impressive rings.

Chaat is one of India's many unexpected and delightful treats: you must not miss it when you visit. It's almost everywhere and seems to be the nations secondary real-people cuisine. Also, it tastes unspeakably good. You cannot possibly lose.

some more food surveys

I am not entirely sure why I love doing these so much. In any case, here is a desperate attempt to add some content to this poor abandoned blog.

Favorite food to crunch: Kimchi and Korean cucumbers. Barring that, dried seaweed, papadum, or any kind of fresh, fresh fruit. And of course fresh summer grapes.

Favorite comfort food: Singapore chili crabs, grilled lamb, bulgogi, papaya salad, and the occasional bout of Peking duck. Well, that's what I crave when I feel the world is kicking me around anyway.

Favorite picnic lunch: Krystal burgers with extra mustard. The omni-present cold fried chicken. Cheese with black truffles and cheap butter crackers. I actually don't like picnics much. They usually involve wasps and things being squashed that should not be squashed.

Favorite food scene in movie: I honestly can't think of any. I certainly get drooly when watching Iron Chef and the more salubrious moments on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations.

Favorite food lyrics: Lots of chocolates for me to eat, someone there to rub my feet...oh, wouldn't it be loverly....

Best food smell memory: The smell of my grandfather's grilled salmon coming off the grill when I was very small - served with buttered rice, big yellow pats. Fried grouper, lifted out of my father's dinky little white portable frier, crumbly and with a stark white interior. And of course gumbo that has been sitting and spice-infusing quietly away all afternoon. We're not much for baking, in these parts.

Favorite summer snack: Big, juicy tomato slices with goat cheese and lots of salt and pepper. Heirloom tomato soup, served cold. Fresh briny oysters. Late summer grapes in a million different varieties and flavors, served up like bountiful jewels from wooden crates (I love my California farmers markets.) And of course popsicles: in Red, Orange, Purple, or Green flavors.

Food that reminds me of the ocean: Grouper for my earliest memories, clam chowder for my cliched ones, and delicious dry-chili crabs for Hong Kong and Lamma Island, where they fish them out of a tank and kill them gently all for you, set under flickering little white lightbulbs, asses in plastic chairs.

Favorite winter snack: Root vegetables, caramelized in the oven. Fresh, hot masala chai. Little snappy gingerbread wafers. Cranberries in any variety. Big joints of beef, cooked and falling apart. (Maybe not a snack, but....) And of course pomegranates, give me all the pomegranates you have and will ever have.

Most likely to eat for lunch: Salads composed of anything fresh and left over in the fridge. Rice noodle soups with plenty of vegetables. Idiot-proof stir fries. Edible frozen entrees. In India: tandoori gobi and chicken tikka, just because.

Least likely to eat for lunch: Anything greasy or fast-foodesque. I do not profess to be a saint but I like my food fresh and recognizable as food. I do not like walking around with a recumbent grease slick in my insides.

Makes me gag: Squashy and un-fresh things. To be honest, not much makes me gag anymore. I'm even coming around to bananas and I used to leave the room in protest when people ate bananas.

Food tradition I love: Getting whatever the hell I want for my birthday. My dad's usual summer kick-off BBQ with lots of pork ribs. Standing rib roast with greens and Yorkshire pudding on Christmas, and of course thanksgiving - the turkey is swell but I'm in this for the oyster dressing and cranberry sauce. Super Bowl parties: I always eat until I get sick. And then I eat some more.

Food tradition I loathe: Any gungy canned gloppy American standby. Just because your family enjoys tapioca and jello molds and casseroles that taste of glue does not mean I will. It may be your Aunt Mildred's recipe, but your Aunt Mildred may have shot her taste-buds with nicotine long ago and does not need to inflict her evil on a latter generation.

Favorite wild foods: Wild blackberries, stolen from someone else's bush. (This adds allure and danger.) Tiny, crisp wild strawberries. Freshly caught fish. Grapes from the arbor or growing by the fence. For comedy value: live black ants, which I swear on my life taste like lemon sourballs.

Favorite medicinal food: Jello is medicine in my family but I believe this is voodoo. And I do not like it. I enjoy drinking various elixir-ish teas. And ginger ale cures all ills. And ice cream.

Food that reflects my heritage: Gumbo, pork ribs, okra, cornbread, molasses, peanuts, etouffe, bourbon, hummingbird cake, pepper sauce, crawdads, pulled pork, fried catfish, spicy chili, moon pies, cheerwine, collards collards collards.

Food most like me: Chili crabs: messy, overt, in your face, little gain for the effort!

Favorite raw food smell: I love to stick my head in fresh ozone-filled vegetable gardens and just inhale. I do love the smell of raw corn.

a nice day in town?

A Nice Day In Town?



I know: this doesn't have much to do with food, other then the inherent deliciousness of Siam Square's pad thai-in-a-take-out-box. But I thought it might be nice to provide some context, to let me know where I'm coming from in my intermittent posts about New England as filtered through Western eyes. I might be residing in New England for a bit, but I love California - even Sacramento. I am going back to Northern California permanently after December 13 when the semester ends, and I am already counting down the days.

I like the Berkshires. I really do. It doesn't have ostentatious natural beauty like the mountains I know (or even my beloved Blue Ridge range.) It doesn't have a developed local cuisine, the skiing is kinda lame, and you can't swing a cat without hitting a deeply self-satisfied hippie. But still: the fall is glorious, the springs are verdant explosions of life, and the sunsets can sometimes be a wonder. And yes, it's true: New England knows how to make a good pizza. Us Californians can't. At least not without putting homeopathically empathetically grown tempeh artichokes on it anyway. So it's not all bad here.

Small secret: I don't like Simon's Rock. Not one bit. In fact, "passionate hatred" has become my main opinion on the place. Still, I can appreciate (to a degree) the charming Norman Rockwellesque character of Great Barrington. I can generally enjoy myself in town, even if I do tend to find myself dying for a banh mi or a decent lunch under 10 bucks or some semblance of culture not run by really old Ivy League graduates. But it can be a pretty place.

Today's venture into civilization began with me hitchhiking down the hill (usual.) I nearly sprinted over to Siam Square, my standby Thai place, weak with hunger. The friendly lady running it immediately recognized me, what with me being in there twice a week, and took my to-go order of Pad Thai.



I don't know if it was my hunger or the beautiful Indian-Summer day or what but it tasted good. I plonked down my little takeout box on the park bench, all alone beside the firestation, and happily chowed down on my tamarindy-noodley lunch. They'd even prepared it in such a way to get just a little oh-so-good char on the noodles, which combined with the meaty chunks of chicken, made me a happy puppy.

I then read another 100 pages of Jack London's, "The Sea Wolf," which is totally un PC by most liberal arts college standards. I don't care if he wasn't being Culturally Sensitive or exposing the Massive Flaws Inherent In Our Philosophical System (though he kinda was trying to, what with Wolf Larsen commenting a lot on our essential...yeastiness.) I love good adventure yarns.



And then I went on one of my usual strolls through town, taking incredibly awful photos as I went (I'm good at that.) I walked down past the Co-Op and to the middle school, where a baseball game played entirely by laughing, light-hearted middle aged men was going on. I watched them flop around for a while, then parked myself by the bridge and watched the river go out. The quality of light was gorgeous, and as I heard the clink of the bat and watched the jet-trails spin overhead, I momentarily thought, New England ain't so bad.



But then I remembered winter and the lack of banh mi and I wanted to go back to California again.

Attack of the Locavores: Hide the Cheetohs

Wherever you look, they’re there: those happy Marin-county infused people who only eat things from Nearby, thank you very much. With sturdy, healthy hands, they drag themselves to the farmer’s market bright and early every weekend ready to scrupulously vet the location, whereabouts, and personal affinity of every animal and plant they put into their mouths. They’re happy about their eating habits, all right, and they want you to know about it – so be prepared for a look of disdain when you’re popping open a bottle of Italian wine or chowing down on some so-not-local Hawaiian Mahi-Mahi.

It’s not enough to eat organic, humanely raised, biodynamically farmed personally massaged food anymore: it’s gotta be local. And everyone from the Sacramento Bee to the New York Times to every food blogger under the planet is jumping on the bandwagon, breathlessly detailing their personal attempts to eat within a 100 miles or within 20 miles or within about 20 feet. (True story.) Local food is in. Local food is hip. Local food is within, well, spitting distance.

I think this local business began after the end of the initial organic onslaught, where it had to be all or nothing organic or you were TOTALLY GOING TO HELL. Then the socially conscious set (Berkeley residents) came to the startling realization that the organic tomatoes they were mixing into their Mario Batali endorsed veal sugo came from very, very far away. Thus the seeds of something else to get indignant about were planted in their casually coiffed heads. Add in Michael Pollan, the monolithic Ferry Building Farmer’s Market in San Francisco, and the always fad-happy New York Times, and you have the beginnings of the next big moral food junta. Run and hide.

Now, I have nothing against high minded eating. I actually read and finished Michael Pollan’s by now ubiquitous Omnivore’s Dilemma, and I like his message: that we need to be aware of where our food is coming from. The localvores are correct on that count. We are helping to steward the planet by eating food that didn’t emerge from a vacumn-refrigrated-monster-truck that began in El Salvador. We are aiding our community by giving support to local farms and local producers. We are eating better by avoiding mass-produced corn infused foods and turning again to wholesome fruits o’ the earth. I get it.

However, why the hell does it have to be so rigid?

I happen to be a big fan of exotic food. I love to eat food from all over the world, as often as possible. I would happily eat a different world cuisine for every meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner. (Well, not Chinese cereal. That’s gross.) But local food, despite being big on tradition, seems to indicate that the exotic flown-in-ingredients often used in these cuisines are bad bad bad.

And of course, exotic ingredients from far away aren’t the worst of it. What about all those delicious, shelf stable snack foods most of us like to indulge in? Those sure as hell aren’t being produced within a 100 miles of my Sacramento home. My little Kettle Chips problem is not being fed by my local foodshed. And neither is my sushi one either, unless they happen to be farming big meaty ahi tuna in Folsom Lake now.

My high-heeled foot is on the throat of the farmer’s market seller, the environment, and possibly Alice Waters herself if I refuse to give up my tamarind or my hamachi or my Goldfish crackers, the ardent Locavores seem to say. If I really want to be a conscious member of the planet, an eater with a conscience, a supper with a soul, organic and humane and biodynamic ain’t good enough. No, I need to severely constrict my diet and my choices for the good of us all.

And I reply: bullshit.

For one thing: we live in an incredibly globalized city. A lot of Northern California progressives seem to think that’s a terrible thing, a harbringer of a future filled with boxes made of tickey-tackey and Quizno’s sub shops sharing carnal relations with Wal Mart shoe emporiums. I don’t see it that way. I see this globalization and interchange of ideas, products, and yes, food as a damn good thing indeed.

Globalization is the reason why I love California: because I can listen to 30 different languages and eat 30 different cuisines whenever I step out my door, because almost everyone I see on the street is in some way manifestly unlike me. And if eating a traditional ethnic dish made with ingredients that don’t grow so hot in the Sacramento region means I’m giving a pass to the Locavore idealogy…well, too bad.

Trying new things and exploring California’s ridiculous wealth of diversity is another way to strengthen the community, even if it doesn’t involve a pleasingly rustic farmer.

Futhermore:why isn’t trying good enough? You might reply that that’s a cop out. I’m not sure. I have heeded the warnings of the proponents of organic and local food, and furthermore, I try to follow their guidance. I visit my farmer’s market as much as I possibly can. I avoid the chemically laden plasto-fruits in favor of produce grown with soul (and hopefully nearby.) I enjoy local yogurt, cheese, fruit, and even local Merlino’s Fruit Freezes. But I can’t adhere to this plan all the time. Sometimes I want that damn Maine lobster tail or that buttery slab of sashimi from Japan.

Sometimes I need a bag of artisan free trade potato chips. Maybe I really just want a (horrors) Oreo. But that’s okay. At least it should be okay. If I’m trying 70 percent of the time to eat local and organic, I’m making a difference. I’m supporting the side of angels, deliciousness, and the beatific gaze of Alice Waters. I am not perfect (and never will be) but at least I am aware.

And that’s good enough for me and should be good enough for the Locavore Lobby as well.

Now off to enjoy some local Jelly Bellys! Score!

On Eating Alone

(photo from CitizenShift.com.)

Having just returned from six weeks of dining alone as a 19 year old female in China, I am torn on the subject. Dining alone like everything else contains good and bad. It is complex - often scary, often intensely satisfying. I wouldn't want to do it all the time, but it is grand for travel, for special occasions, when people just piss you off.

There are perks to dining alone.

I love not having to debate with everyone else about what to eat. I don't have to worry that so-and-so already *had* Mexican this week and that whoever *can't stand* squid and the infinite other permutations you get into with groups. I can order whatever perverse, icky, spicy or expensive dish I want and no one gets to complain.

I also don't have to deal with people wussing out on sharing the bill. ("Oops! How did I forget my wallet?") I don't have to suddenly discover that a close friend has ridicuolously appalling table manners and that everyone around me is staring. I don't have to deal with anyone horse-laughing, getting sloshed, or being mean to the waitstaff.

In China especially, dining alone truly is a good way to meet people. Unlike in the states, the Chinese have no compunction whatsoever with seating a lone diner next to another group or another person. This can sometimes be awkward, especially when people shoot you hairy glances or are obviously dining with a signifigant other, but it more often led to my meeting people I wouldn't have otherwise met.

One night, I was dining at my usual place and was seated alongside two middle aged businessmen. They immediately took a shine to me and began plying me with baijiu (super-strong Chinese liquor), mutton chunks, and fish. They critiqued my chopstick skills and I drew them pictures of dragons and terrified sheep. The older one kept on topping off my class until I admitted I had just turned 18, whereas he responsibly cut me off; "Xiao haizi!" (Little girl.) Of course, I was already pretty drunk by then. In any case, they ended up buying me dinner and I promptly forgot their Chinese names. But I will remember their kindness. And the headache.



Another time, I popped into a deeply beloved Xi'an noodle place near the Lama Temple in Beijing. I was seated across from a beautiful Chinese woman wearing sunglasses, who I initally ignored, figuring she didn't speak any English. She immediately looked up and said, "Hi! I'm Cindy from Washington DC!" Turned out she was a banker who went to Georgetown, visiting her parents in Beijing. She was genuinely concerned with my welfare; "You're here all alone?" and insisted I take her phone number. She also managed to pay my bill without me noticing. Thankfully I never had some sort of horrible international emergency that necessitated me calling her, but I hope I can extend that same kindness to someone else next time I'm overseas....

But dining alone can really suck sometimes, especially when you're really alone, when everyone around you is celebrating a birthday or something and you're stuck with a tremendous portion of food you can't possibly finish, people glancing at you like you're some sort of desperate social outcast. Then yeah, your thoughts turn dark and you wish someone was there with you, even someone who splatters their food and hits on the waiter.....