Going With My Gut

Coming Home to the Same Old Mee

After you've been away from home for a while, what's the first thing you absolutely need to sink your chops into the minute you walk through the door, as confirmation that "Ahhhhh.....I'm finally home?"

Said a few members of my lovely Facebook and Twitter community:

@Dan: "Anything noodlely and heart clogging- bak chor mee (kae liao), hokkien mee, char kway teow or laska. Well thats also kinda whats available from the nearest kopi tiam."

@Preeti: "Dal chawal + bhindi for me (rice + lentils and okra)."

@Nick: "Sausage and mash, gammon and eggs, pie and mash, montgomery cheddar cheese on toast with lea & perrins."

@Lucy: "Rozbif and cider, innocent smoothies, middle-eastern cuisine, crumble and custard. Ramen and Formosa Delights dumplings when going back to Singapore."

@Said Hwee Li: "Laksa, char kuay teow, deep fried dough fritters with soya bean milk."

@gnoserif: "THIS IS PRATAAAAAA...."

@cupcakesfortwo: "I can't eat anything after my travels, I must have peppermint tea before I can even think about food."

@michtan: "Bak Chor Mee! Peranankan Popiah! *salivate*"

@thegardenslug: "Prata or maggi mee goreng + Teh tarik :P"

How about you?

While I always come home to Singapore with a long to-eat list of hawker food, the first taste I want is a big steaming bowl of Myojo mee (noodles) pimped up with prawns, squid, cai xin, bean sprouts, and an egg beaten into the soup. With a side of pickled sliced green chili. Wolfed down right between chucking my bags in my room and taking a shower.

My Dad started this particular food habit of mine (among others). Growing up, anytime we were coming home from a family trip, he'd call ahead and ask our longtime family housekeeper Aunty Kiew Moi to whip a bowl of these noodles with egg, bean sprouts and haybee (dried shrimp). When asked what I wanted prepared, I'd just say, "That sounds good. One for me too."

Over the years we'd experiment with adding different ingredients. There were luncheon meat phases, cuttlefish ball phases, crabstick phases, exotic Japanese mushroom phases. There were pimp-my-ramen suggestions -- including cheese and strips of bak kwa (barbequed pork jerky) -- from friends. But the recipe finally stablised into the picture above: all fresh (besides the noodles); all fast to cook, good to eat (much like the ramen TV jingles of my youth). So much so that after I started traveling on my own, there was no need to even call ahead. Upon coming home, I'd simply poke my head into the kitchen to say hello to Aunty Kiew Moi, troop to my room to put down my bags, check my mail, amble back out to the dining room to the welcoming cauldron.

Nothing's changed, even now that I've lived away and abroad for almost 4 years. Thankfully.

Asking for the same homecoming dish every time is clearly a fix of comfort food for me. But recently I've started to wonder if on some level it's also a dose of comfort for members of the welcome-home-wagon. That no matter how long or how far I've been away from home, regardless of new experiences, new ideas, new friends, wolfing down with gusto the same old mee means that, at heart, I'm still the same old me.

Homecoming Myojo Mee Recipe:

Serves 1 homesick person

Ingredients:

1 packet Myojo mee (your choice of flavour. I like chicken curry)
1 egg
1/2 handful of cai xin, cut into finger-length sections
1 handful of small peeled prawns and squid, cleaned and cut into bite-size pieces
1/2 handful of beansprouts
Light soya sauce and white pepper, to taste

Directions:

Possibly overly fussy, but this specific sequence (perfected by trial and error over the last couple of decades!) optimizes the softness of the noodle and the crunch of the vegetables and seafood.

• Bring half a small saucepan of water to a rolling boil, sprinkle in the packet of seasoning from the noodle packet
• Add the noodles, let it cook for ~2 minutes
• Gently crack the egg in. If you like an eggy soup, use chopsticks to break up the egg and stir it around. If you want the egg whole but don't want it to catch at the bottom of the saucepan, make sure it sits on top of the bed of noodles
• Add the cai xin, let sit for 30 seconds
• Add the prawns and squid, stir for 30 seconds
• Add the beansprouts, stir for 30 seconds
• Check that the prawns have turned pink
• Empty the saucepan into a large bowl (contents first, then the broth, to avoid hot painful splashing)
• Add light soya sauce and white pepper to taste, if necessary
• Garnish with slices of green chili pickled in white vinegar (optional)

Chasing Down My Culinary Inheritance in Singapore

Above: Mum and Grandma replay the finer points of making Hockchew ang chow

What are the signature dishes you grew up with? What are the tastes you most look forward to at each big family dinner to celebrate Christmases, New Years, birthdays, and festivals?

When it comes time for your grandparents, parents, uncles and aunties -- the guardians of those famous family dishes -- to join that big banquet in the sky, would you know how to recreate those much-loved clan delicacies?

I had a huge panic attack when it dawned on me that I didn't.

So I set myself an assignment for the Singapore stint of this round-the-world sabbatical. I entreated my mother, Grandma and an armada of aunties to teach me how to make all those dishes I eat and love so well.

And, bloody hell, not a moment too soon.

Asked about her famous peppery shark soup, Grandma sighed and said she's forgotten how to make it. (I don't fully believe her. I'm going to make it with her in the kitchen anyway, hoping that the setting will jog her memory and she'll protest appropriately when I muppet something up).

A couple of aunties expressed relief that someone in my generation is taking an interest, since they recently declared that their old bones just can't take cooking giant meals for Chinese New Year anymore.

More consistently, everyone involved has been amazingly generous with their time, knowledge and good humour, putting up with my endless camera clicks, questions and sometimes hilariously amateurish techniques. Dad's been a star ferrying relatives around, and Mum's been a crucial go-between -- coordinating schedules, and translating dialects and measurements alike. Some aunties, delighted to pass on even more torches, offered up additional recipes treats on the fly (I can't wait to try eggs fried with Chinese rice wine).

Above: A heartwarming bonus -- my cousin Pearlyn (right) hears about my culinary quest and gets in on the action. Here she helps Aunty Swee Cheng to make fishballs from scratch

So it's been a great steamy, sweaty two weeks so far in the kitchen in Singapore, getting a culinary education at the elbows of my elders. A quick sampling of recipe posts to come:

• Grandma's Hockchew ang chow (red rice wine)
• Ah Dah's (Grandpa's) Hakka noodles, salted chicken and braised pig trotters, via Mum and our longtime nanny and housekeeper Aunty Kiew Moi
• Pak Meh's Hakka suan pan zhi (abacus seeds)
• Tai Gu (Big Auntie) Swee Cheng's handmade fishballs and siew mai (pork dumplings)
• Mum's guiltless char kway teow, hokkien mee, fried rice and kiam chye (salted vegetable) duck soup

And the gravy? The absolutely delightful bonus you always hope for but can never rigidly plan for? The stories that percolate and waft about, when given enough memory-triggering ingredients, time, and a gentle but eager ear. Like the story about Aunty Swee Cheng's worst day as an illegal fish hawker. Like the tips from Pak Meh about what you should never eat with beansprouts. Like Ah Dah's favourite but eyebrow-raising lettuce-wrapped snack.

Hang out in the kitchen for a bit to find out...

Just A Little Taste of Aunty Shaistha's Khara Seeve (Rice Noodles with Lentils)

I said in December, at the beginning of our 2 months in India, that Babs and I were doomed to fatness and bliss. To be precise, we both put on 4kg each while we were in India. This post is about the precise moment when I pushed off down this slippery slope.

A little context for the uninitiated: One of the big ways Indian relatives show their love for you is by feeding you. (I think the other big way -- if it's a very close relative, like a parent -- is that they buy a house for you. So that they know exactly where you are, so that they know exactly where to go to feed you.) If you tell them "I'm not hungry, I already ate," it's like you're telling an angsty 14-year-old who just wrote you an epic confession of their affection that you just want to be friends.

Most of the time this results in just garden-variety overfeeding. A mandatory 2nd or 3rd helping at any given meal. Fine. We do that anyway. For better or worse, our India relatives love us for it.

The thing is, some of our them love us a little too dangerously.

"You're going to get me into trouble at dinner. They're going to ask me why I'm not eating as much," I whispered weakly that December evening in Bangalore to Aunty Shaistha.

"You're walking to dinner. You'll be hungry again by then," she whispered back.

"But dinner is at Mahboob Pasha's house."

Mahboob Pasha is Aunty Shaistha's brother-in-law. He lives in the same building. One flight upstairs.

"It's just a small bowl. Just a little taste," she says.

Just a little taste then.

My tastebuds go into overdrive. My eyes bulge. My mind races. When was the last time I had a taste of rice noodles? London? 7 months ago?

"I don't... think... I can... stop at just one bowl..."

Aunty Shaistha smiled. She knew she has me in the venus flytrap of her khara seeve casserole now. And yet dinner obligations -- inevitably involving at least 2 mutton dishes -- remained at hand. Surely I couldn't tell them the saboteur of their lovingly prepared meal came from downstairs.

And so I found myself turning into a dinner bigamist. Slippety slide. And then find out our hosts upstairs pull the exact same manovuere any time we're trying to leave their house to go to our next engagement. Slippety slide. It doesn't matter that we've just come from downstairs, or that downstairs is our next engagement "So what you've eaten downstairs? You haven't eaten up here yet." Slippety slide.

And now, in Singapore, if I'm going out to meet friends for a meal, but something yummy is cooking at home, I'll sneak a little bowl before I head out. "Just a little taste," I tell my Mum.

This dish -- Aunty Shaistha's khara seeve -- is the dish that started it all. If you are able to resist, you are clearly a better human being than I. But probably a little hungrier.

Makes ~6 servings or up to 10 "little tastes"

Ingredients

Olive oil
1 cup yellow lentils, uncooked
1 large onion, chopped finely
2-3 tomatoes (depending on size), chopped
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
4 green chili, stems removed
A large pinch of curry leaves
1 small bunch of coriander, chopped
Salt to taste
1 packet rice noodles (Mehra brand was used here)

Directions

• Drizzle a couple of glugs of olive oil in a chef's pan set on medium-high heat
• On a separate hob on the stove, boil half a kettle of water
• Add everything except the rice noodles to the chef-pan, and fry for ~5 minutes
• Add boiling water until the chef-pan is half full
• Bash and twist the rice noodles while still in its packaging, to break the noodles into small sections
• Add the broken rice noodles to the chef pan
• Stir until the rice noodles and ingredients are evenly distributed, then let sit for about 10 minutes until the rice noodles have softend and soaked in all the liquid in the pan
• Add salt to taste if necessary

Aunty Chandra's Wake Me Up Coconut Chutney

Above: Next to a tasty dosa (especially a paper dosa) and a spicy-tamarindy-tomatoey sambar, an anaemic looking coconut chutney is usually nothing to trumpet about. Then I met Aunty Chandra

I'd never really paid much attention to coconut chutney before. Sat next to the bowl of red sambar for my dosai (a South Indian breakfast-staple crepe), coconut chutney's dirty shade of white isn't the most inspiring colour. On the occasions I try it, it usually tastes like...watery paper mulch, sometimes with a touch of salt. Who's got the time and spare calories, know what I mean?

So when Auntry Chandra -- the wife of Uncle Anand, Babs's Dad's buddy from medical school -- served coconut chutney with breakfast when we stayed with her in Mangalore in December, I dipped in initially only out of politeness.

It kicked me awake and almost off my chair. My mouth was literally watering, triggered by a refreshing sour twang. As were my eyes -- always a good sign of chili-heat. Or happiness. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

I kept dipping. Then digging. In that familiar gentle but determined race with Babs to the bottom of the bowl.

Enough preamble. I need to learn how to make this. So do you. Thankfully Aunty Chandra graciously obliges, much amused.

Makes 2-3 portions

1 saucer of freshly grated coconut
2 green chilis
1/4 onion
1 thumb-sized stem of ginger, skinned
1 seed taramind, de-seeded

Combine with a splash of water and grind in a food processor. Add water a little bit at a time and continue grinding until you get this consistency (below).

Aunty Sara's KFC (Kerala Fried Chicken) Recipe

Babs's Aunty Sara from his father's side of the family is better known in India as an acclaimed Keralan writer and educator. Since I can't read Kanada (the language she writes in) I know her better for another arena of Keralan art: her Kerala fried chicken -- crispy and spicy on the outside, oh-so-juicy on the inside without being pink (a hazard when you're trying to not overfry your chicken).

Her little trick -- she kindly shared with me over lunch this past December -- is to steam the chicken a little before frying. I've read in Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life that Jamie Oliver does something similar with his BBQs; slowcooking his meats before placing on the grill for the finishing char, therefore scoring a win-win on succulence and smokiness.

Here's the Kerala fried chicken recipe as relayed by Aunty Sara. There was -- as often the case in these Indian recipe cajoling sessions -- little mention of measurements, so this writeup will need to be refined when I try this recipe out in my own kitchen. For the more sophisticated and/or adventurous cooks among you who want to go ahead and try this, it'd be great to hear from you how you made out with your own proportions.

• Joint and chop 1 chicken, preferably organic and/or free range
• Coat the chicken pieces in a mixture of chili powder, tumeric and salt
• Steam the coated chicken pieces for 5 minutes (Boil a three-finger thick later of water in a large pot, place a steaming rack in the pot, then place the chicken pieces on a tray and place the tray in the large pot, and cover)
• Remove the partially-steamed chicken pieces from the pot
• Coat the partially-steamed chicken pieces in a mixture of chili powder, ginger powder, garlic powder, cornstarch and salt
• Mix 1 egg into a bowl of plain yoghurt
• Coat the chicken in the egg-yoghurt mixture and leave to bind for 20 minutes
• Fill a medium-sized pot with frying oil (in Kerala this will invariably be coconut oil; use vegetable or sunflower oil otherwise) and heat until the oil starts to bubble
• Fry the chicken pieces (just a few at a time so as not to lower the temperature of the oil drastically) for ~ 10 minutes, until the chicken is a lovely golden brown
• Set fried chicken on a plate lined with paper napkins to soak up excess oil
• Garnish with a sprinkling of chopped coriander

Incredible India: A Taste of Posts to Come Only

It's been 2 1/2 months since we landed in India, and we've had plenty of adventures, culinary and otherwise. A very quick round up here, to be expanded on in subsequent posts.

Mumbai (Part 1): No baby steps here. On our first night in Mumbai, Uncle Waris and Aunty Samina take us to Chowpatty Beach, where Aunty Samina physically stuffs street vendor bhel puri and kulfi (Indian ice-cream) into my mouth. I kinda wish I was Catholic, just so I could cross myself.

Above: Aunty Samina preps another spoonful of Chowpatty Beach snacks to shove my way; swatch surfing at Crawford Market

The next day I'm taken to the labyrinthine Crawford Market, where I lose track of how many sets of fabric my mum-in-law buys to make salwar khameez and saris. She keeps asking me to pick one out, but when I finally do, I'm tsk-ed at and told "only village girls wear that".

Our friend Nish takes us to our first cricket match, the one where Sehwag bats 293 against Sri Lanka. (I wish it meant more to me than it does.) It takes me a while to follow the game, mostly cos I'm distracted by the stadium samosa sellers. Apparently samosa prices are set at games. I -- along with my entire section -- watch entranced as a stadium official gives a vendor a royal bollocking when the vendor gets caught overcharging. I can't tell if the rules really matter here or if that vendor didn't get his bribe arrangements sorted out.

I discover utterly heavenly Hyderabadi fish at Trishna in Colaba, but stupidly fail to order the restaurant's signature butter garlic crab. Maybe it's a subconscious ploy to come back.

Pune: This entire town seems hell bent on self-improvement, going by the billboards for educational institutions, ashrams, teeth whitening and colon cleansing. This one below is hands-down (pants-down?) my favourite.

Mangalore and Karasagod: We stay with Bab's Dad's old pal from medical school, and relatives from his hometown. A string of extended family visits ensue. Each stop (up to 5 a day) involves, juice, chai, fried samosas and meat/fish/veggie cutlets, assorted pastries, and most delicious of all, a string of delightful stories about Babs's Dad, whom sadly passed away long before Babs and I met. I manage to cajole our hosts to share a few recipes, such as

• Aunty Sara's Kerala Fried Chicken
• Aunty Chandra's Wake-Me-Up Coconut Chutney
• Aunty Ayesha's Kerala-style Spinach, and
• Cousin Sajida's Pathal, Red Chutney, and Banana Cutlet.

I predict that while in India Babs and I are doomed to fatness, and bliss. I hold my ground, now even more so, having sunk in due to the extra weight.

Bangalore (Part 1): This is Babs's Mum's home turf. More family visits, a ton more food -- including 2 test dinners for Bab's Boxing Day family reunion cum belated wedding reception -- and more recipes, including Aunty Shaistha's incredibly tasty Khara Seeve (rice noodles with lentils). I fall hopelessly in love with the fruits and vegetables at City Market.

While my parents are in town we make a day trip to Mysore, where you have to learn to be at least as aggressive as the local cows if you want to chow down on Hotel RRR's very popular biriyani.

Hyderabad: I get invited to my first full-scale Muslim-Indian wedding, where I get backstage access to the wedding kitchen. Woohoo! In between wedding events I find out how to eat well while the city is on strike, and follow the adventures of a bonafide scapegoat.

Cochin and Allepey: We manage to score a lovely houseboat and homestay experience, then join in on some very early morning Chinese-net fishing and auctioning action before returning at lunchtime to hunt and haggle for a delicious seafood meal at Vasco de Gama Square. During more humane morning hours, we discover a breakfast of champions at Fort Cochin's Kashi Cafe.

Ghana (?!): After a quick visit with Babs's uncle in Calicut, we take a one-week intermission from India to go party with some dear friends in Accra celebrating their mother's 60th birthday. The birthday girl's energy on the dancefloor sets an extremely high standard for fabulousness at 60.

Amritsar: And we're back in India for a whistlestop tour of the north! We start in Amritsar, where I'm very much moved by the volunteer kitchen of the Golden Temple, and very much tickled by the India-Pakistan daily border closing ceremony.

New Delhi: Between visiting another of Babs's uncle and catching up with an old friend from work in Singapore, I get saag-savvy at Delhi's INA market. We were perversely hoping to contract the supposedly ever reliable Delhi-belly in order to lose some of the weight we've gained in India, but we fail abysmally, even after scarfing some of the city streets' most famous jalebi and parathas.

Agra: We were pretty agra-vated when we woke up silly early to beat the crowds to the Taj Mahal, only to be thwarted by fog so thick you could make bricks with it. So while I touched the Taj Mahal, I sadly failed to see it in all its glory up close.

Above: This is usually the famous spot to pose in front of the Taj Mahal. Hmph

Above: This is about as good as it gets that morning, in between 2 rolling clouds of fog

Jaisalmer, Jaipur and Jodphur: Jaisalmer was by far the highlight of our Rajasthani jaunt, with laid back friendly people, a colourful desert festival complete with a camel polo match, and an excellent little organic cafe with a view.

Mumbai (Part 2): We're back to kick off a week of wedding festivities for friends Nish and Shloka. Days involve the haunting of various Colaba Causeway cafe-bars, a triumphant return to Trishna, and dance practice for the Sangeet (a wedding event where family and friends put on song and dance items for the wedding couple). We could do a lot worse for dance studio locations than Nirbhay's stately sea-facing apartment.

Goa: We spent 2 days in Goa at Nish's co-ed stag do. All I will divulge is, drag as a dress code is a fabulous way to break the ice.

Coorg: We trek up into the hilly coffee estates of Coorg for the wedding proper, where we are completely blown away by the hospitality of Nish and Shloka's families. I'm pretty sure I drank more Johnny Walker Black Label in the 3 days than the rest of my life put together. The choreographed dance items went great, the unchoreographed after-party dancing went even better.

Above: The wedding couple amid a sea of guests

Bangalore (Part 2): A final 2 days hanging out in Bangalore with Bab's Mum and her extended family, revisiting favourite local eateries such as Ritchies and being unable to resist the city's Chinese food offerings.

I'm sad to go even though I'm ready to move on to the next part of our voyage. I'll be back in India sooner or later. It's heartwarming to know that I now have people here, be they family or friends, both old and newly found. Plus there's so much of this vast incredible (yes I said incredible -- the country's tourist authority is not kidding about this) country to see. Someday I'll make it to Kashmir. And Calcutta. And Chennai. And a tiger reserve. And Nagaland, a curious place where all the Indians look like... me.

Above: Spot the Indian

In the meantime, onward to Singapore for Chinese New Year!

WWOOFing in Kenya: Perspectives

In short, I found our WWOOFing stint in Kenya to be utterly confounding. Three months on from our October (2009) stint, I find myself with many more questions than pithy quips or verdicts. I hope these anecdotes provide some colour as to why. I didn't have any grand ambition to get under Kenya's skin during our mere 6 weeks in the country, but I suspect Kenya's gotten under mine.

"Hallo Mzungu! How Are you? Give Me Money!"

"Mzungu" is Swahili for ATM.

Well.

Actually it means white man, or more broadly, foreigner. Many people we met in Kenya associate foreigners (especially whites) with money. Including our WWOOF host. Who asked us to contribute US$5 a day for food and lodging. Not a large sum. But because it was sprung on us only after we arrived -- despite multiple emails exchanged beforehand -- and because it goes against WWOOF's no-cash-exchange principle, it set our stint off to a sour start.

We agreed, giving him the benefit of doubt that finances on Rusinga Island were tough. But we made our view clear, that as WWOOFers we were here to offer our labour and ideas in exchange for food and lodging.

Midweek rolled along, and our host asked us to pay up for the week. We told him we were planning to go to the ATM (half hour away by motorcycle taxi) on the weekend. If we went today, it'd eat up most of our afternoon farming shift at Badilisha.

"Skip your shift today," our host said.

Evidently his view was now clear as well.

Later on we found out we got off relatively easy. Daniel and Cyrill, our co-volunteers from USA and Germany respectively, got various appeals to finance the schooling of 2 of our host's grandchildren. And a list of grocery and sundry items anytime either of them went into town.

Just before we left, our host asked if we would donate a month's worth of sorghum flour for his kindergarthen. Babs and I debated the proposition. I'd grown attached to some of the kids during our stint. But something clicked and soured further when Babs pointed out, "The guy owns his house, the guesthouse we live in, and all the land around us. None of us volunteers own a house. And he rents a separate house in Homa Bay (the nearest town 20km away). And he's making US$5 a day from each volunteer when it must cost less than US$2 a day to feed us, cos that's what the average daily wage is around here."

We heard the same requests for money from quite a few people we met while just walking to and from Badilisha or the local trading post. The schtick was pretty standard. "Mzungu! Eh Mzuuuunguuuu! How are you? Can you give me some money?"

Street kids at bus stations aside, many of these kids obviously had a home and a school to go to. That's what I infer, given they were hollering to us from their front door stoop, wearing school uniforms.

What in their upbringing has signalled that asking for money from strangers as a salutation is acceptable behaviour? Am I just being skint?

"In Kenya We Just Wait"

One evening we were all gathered in our host's living / dining room, and I asked casually "what's for dinner?" Our host replied "In Kenya the men never go into the kitchen and ask and find out. In Kenya we just wait."

There's a lot of waiting that goes on around here. For the elusive rains to come, to start planting. For foreign donations to kickstart community help programmes. For the arrival of foreign volunteers to staff them. And, so says the crackly radio news every morning, for The Hague to swoop in and "take away in an aeroplane" the perpertrators of bloody violence during the 2007 elections.

I've never been good at waiting for anything. But especially not for rain, when the island resides in Lake Victoria, the 3rd largest freshwater lake in the world. What else might be good to go, right there, right then, if only one would stop waiting?

Moving Stationery

Our co-volunteer Daniel had bought 2 packs of pencils as a gift for the kindergarthen kids. He walked up the hill with our host and us one morning to gift them. Our host gave one of the packets to my class's teacher, and told Daniel he'd hang on to the other packet.

"But I'd like to give all of the kids a pencil each," said Dan.

Our host said it was better for the teacher to hang on to the pencils because the kids would lose them. Daniel stood his ground, asking why not just give the other packet to the other teacher then.

This went back and forth, and admittedly was getting increasingly awkward. Class was starting so Babs and I went to our separate classrooms.

Later, at recess, Babs told me that our host finally came into his classroom with the 2nd pack of pencils. Then went out and ended his conversation with Daniel, who then went off to Badilisha to start his morning shift.

Said Babs: "Then he (our host) came back in, grabbed the pack of pencils off the teacher's table, and walked out."

It made me wonder, "Does he really think word won't get back to Daniel? And if he doesn't, why not?"

I turned the question on myself: To what extent do my donations to anything go to where I think they're going? How much effort do I put into finding out what portion of my donation goes to the agency's staff salaries vs the cause's receipients? What kind of seeds do programmes hailing "move towards self-sufficiency" actually give farmers? To what extent are they patented one-generation-only seeds, so that the farmers are always reliant on the aid agency for the next season's crops? Where is the longer-term incentive for subsistence farmers to grow any surplus crops to take to market, if they are constantly up against heavily subsidised food aid?

Or do I consider my work done once I get that warm fuzzy feeling after handing some money over to a philantrophic cause?

"I'm Positive"

I left Kenya pretty much ranting and raving, but I find myself unable to write Kenya off, and nowhere near giving up on WWOOFing (we hope to do some WWOOFing in Japan, New Zealand and somewhere in South America in the months ahead).

Because for every mzungu leech I remember, I can't forget those that are doing the best they can.

Like my class's heavily pregnant teacher, walking the half hour every day to and from school even though she was due to deliver the week after we left.

Like the women who sell little piles of tomatoes and onions and little blocks of cooking fat and stalks of sugarcane, from a piece of canvas on the side of the road, with their babies strapped to their hips.

Like 6-year-old Michael Jr, on loan from his parents who live in aother town, since his grandfather (our host) fell quite ill a year ago. Michael Jr's after-school chores include bringing the empty porridge bucket from school back to the house, running to and from the local trading post, setting and clearing the dinner table, helping to drive the donkeys to and from the lake to get water, to the point where he's always falling asleep in his dinner plate.

Like Esther, a woman we met one day on a village road. She stopped to say hello, and introduce herself, and thank us for visiting and volunteering on the island. And shared a little of her life story. That her husband had died of AIDS. But she and her son do as best they can. "I'm positive, and my son is positive."

With nary a request for money.

Recounting this episode to our friend Louise in Dubai about a month later, I said, "Quite sunny and scrappy wasn't she? Her husband's dead but she's stilll positive."

Babs and Louise both looked at me, incredulous. "She meant she's HIV positive."

Good God. I am such a doofus. But my statement stands. All the more.

Related Posts:

• WWOOFing in Kenya -- The Homestay
• WWOOFing in Kenya -- Mornings at Millimani Kindergarthen
• WWOOFing in Kenya -- Afternoons at Badilisha's Community Garden
• Kenyan Goat Feast

WWOOFing in Kenya -- Afternoons at Badilisha's Community Garden

While our Kenyan WWOOF host Michael Odula had plenty of land around his home (and more in other parts of Rusinga Island, some told us), there was no farming activity to be seen on any of it. We were told that the crops from the previous year (2008) failed, and he had not done any planting this season (Oct 2009) because the rains had not come.

So in the afternoons we were sent a 20-minute walk downhill to help out at Badilisha, a community centre with a garden run by Mr Odula's son Evance.

Badilisha offers HIV counseling and non-violent communication workshops to members of the community. It also houses a couple of sewing machines as part of a programme to help women to make and sell crafts (though I think I saw only 1 or 2 women using the machines during our 2 weeks there), and a small library of book related to farming methods, international aid, and spirituality. There are also ambitions to host an orphans feeding programme, but this currently remains unfunded.

Badalisha's garden hosts an array of banana, papaya, and passionfruit trees. Out here is where we spent most of our time.

Our main standalone project here was to build a chicken coop to house a couple of donated chickens. The idea was to build a structure that could harvest the chicken droppings so that it could be used for fertiliser. The easiest way to do this was to build a portable coop with a wire mesh floor.

The twist in the plot was that to build this coop we had to deconstruct and recycle a disused rabbit hutch (previously used to house a few donated rabbits... hmm). And we had to use mostly recycled nails, a hammer donated by fellow WWOOFer Dan, and a borrowed saw. All in all, more people than tools. So I often wandered off to get a start on digging and watering.

Other tasks: Starting seeds in recycled pill bottles, and watering beds of corn, tomato, cow pea, lemongrass and carrot seedlings.

A couple of the new beds we started.

We also built birdbaths from recycled mineral water bottles to hang in passionfruit trees. The hope was to attract birds so that they would eat the bugs that would otherwise eat the passionfruit. On the right is a passionfruit flower, which I had never seen before.

Digging and watering 5 days a week for 2 weeks may sound mundane, but it's not. You never know what's going to pop up out of the ground. Sometimes it's a pretty seedling. Sometimes it's a baby python. Eek! I'm trying to remember if this is how we finally managed to convince Dan to stop farming in flipflops...

After our shift is done we usually troop over to the local trading post for some warm soda. Which I am not a fan of. It always makes me burp very painfully through my nose. So instead I gnaw on a snack lovingly remembered from my youth -- raw sugarcane, at 1 Kenyan shilling per segment (see size below).

Related posts:

• WWOOFing in Kenya -- The Homestay
• WWOOFing in Kenya -- Mornings at Millimani Kindergarthen
• WWOOFing in Kenya -- Perspectives
• Kenyan Goat Feast
  

WWOOFing in Kenya: Mornings at Millimani Kindergarthen

Above: I've been told I'm the first Singaporean to show up on Rusinga Island.

During our 2-week stint WWOOFing in Kenya, we spent our mornings being teaching assistants at Millimani Academy. It's a grand name for what is a 2-classroom structure with a concrete floor, wooden beams, aluminum walls and roof, and chicken wire windows, built on our host Michael Odula's land, further up the hill from his family home. Many kindergarthens in Kenya are community-run and funded, as state funding for education starts only at the primary school level.

Millimani houses 30-40 children (depending on absentee rates) from the neighbourhood, aged between 2 and 7. Some of the kids are orphans -- raised by their grandparents because their parents (who would have been around my age) have died of AIDS. Some orphans have parents -- raised by their grandparents because their young (sometimes single) parents have gone to the cities in search of work.

School starts at 9am, usually a combination of English and Math. English usually involves learning the alphabet, and learning context-specific words (e.g. a lesson on weather involved learning words such as "sunny", "rainy" and etc). Math at this stage is about counting, and addition and subtraction. There's more class participation and leadership than what I remember from my kindergarthen years.

Above: Vivian leads the count; the class choruses. I am where I have always sat all my life in class -- at the back with the tall kids and sometimes troublemakers

Our tasks for the stint weren't set out in any particularly organised fashion. Well. Not at all, really. The kids spoke mostly Luo -- their tribal language -- and were just starting to learn basic English and Swahili. So any kind of involved spoken communication was out. Mostly Babs and I tried not to be too much of a distraction during class, and nudged the kids along during "homework" sessions -- making sure they were following instructions and trying to coach the slower kids.

One terrifying morning my class teacher was absent, so after the other teacher held a combined teaching session, I was left alone to oversee and mark the homework session. And enforce class discipline. I've grown up with teacher stories all my life, but I remain completely mystified at how my mother, Babs's mother and all our teacher-friends manage to do this.

Babs took on the younger class of 2-to-4-year olds. Only the older half of his class had desk space. The "babies" sat on the floor, learning mostly, I imagine, by osmosis. Outside of helping his older kids with homework, Babs's main focus was trying not to tread on the babies with his giant boots.

Recess runs from 10.30am to 11.30am. The kids have a huge amount of open space in front of the school building to run around in. Some of them are constanly climbing nearby trees to pluck and snack on a particular yellow pod. One of them gave me one to try, which I did, much to Babs's horror. It was unpleasantly tart, but hey, it didn't kill me.

When I was in school I played a game called "five-stones" -- kinda like jacks. The "stones" were little stitched bags filled with beans or rice. Here, many of the girls compete intensely on a local version of the game played with real stones. It took me days of watching closely, but by the end of the stint I could follow the game and call them out when they were cheating.

Sometimes the kids decided they haven't had enough class for real, and play out a pretend class. I think Vivian has teaching potential.

Sometimes they just wanna dance.

Sometimes they gather round and do some combination of cuddling up and/or poking at me out of curiosity. This was especially true when I broke out in hives due to a reaction to over-zealous use of insect spray. Averse to any kind of fuss, I got them to count along to how many spots and swells they could find on my arms. They learned some new numbers that day.

At the end of recess each kid is given a large plastic mug of sorghum porridge (made by Mama Odula in the morning and carried in a large bucket up the hill by one of the teachers or Babs). For many of the kids this is their first meal of the day, which means there is ALWAYS vicious pushing and shoving in the queue even though there is always enough to go around. Babs and I act as line bouncers -- spacing out the squished, picking up the pushed down, and pulling into line the dopey drifters. Then the teacher leads them in saying grace, the stuff is doled out from the bucket, and then there is about 15 delicious minutes of complete silence.

Finally there's a last half-hour of singing and dancing to a mix of English and Swahili folk songs. Still not convinced Babs and I add much value here. Possibly just ridiculous entertainment by singing and dancing along -- always a great cause of giggling among the kids.

It's noon. Time to go home. I'm pooped. To all the teachers out there, Respect.

Related Posts:

• WWOOFing in Kenya -- The Homestay
• WWOOFing in Kenya -- Afternoons at Badilisha Community Garden
• WWOOFing in Kenya -- Perspectives
• Kenyan Goat Feast

WWOOFING in Kenya -- The Homestay

One of the things Babs and I are trying to learn about on this sabbatical, is how our food is grown and more particularly, what methods are used by organic farmers, in defiance of industrial agriculture norms such as monoculture and usage of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.

Through WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) -- a global network of organic farms that offer volunteers food and accomodation in exchange for a mutually agreed number of working hours on the farm -- we found a plethora of opportunities to get field lessons, literally.

Last July we spent a fantastic 3 weeks WWOOFing on an olive and orange smallholding in Andalucia, Spain, where on top of helping to maintain a 1,000 year old irrigation system first designed by the Moors, we built an outdoor mud and clay oven by hand. On our days off, we poked about in nearby farming and mountain towns, greedily inhaling the local offerings of Spain's proud meat culture.

Encouraged by our stint in Spain, we decided to WWOOF for 2 weeks in Kenya last October. This time, we found ourselves on Rusinga Island in Western Kenya, a small community on the shores of Lake Victoria.

To get there, you can either take a 12 hour bus from Nairobi to Homa Bay, then take a shared taxi to Mbita. Or, take a very pleasant overnight train from Nairobi to Kisumu, then take a 2 1/2 hour matatu (minivan bus) to Cortino Luanda ferry stage, then take a 1 hour ferry to Mbita. Then from Mbita, take a motorcycle taxi to Rusinga Island.

Yes there are more complicated commutes than London's Circle Line on a weekend.

Our hosts on Rusinga Island were the Odula family. Michael Odula is a retired local high school principal, and his wife Jane is a retired social worker.

We, along with 2 other volunteers from the USA and Germany, were housed in the Odula's guest house (the white house with green trimmings) situated next to the family home (in red). Each of the 3 bedrooms in the guesthouse have a bed and mosquito net.

Above: Tanya and Michael Jr, 2 Odula grandchildren, in front of the guesthouse

The Odulas have a small solar panel, just enough to keep a few light bulbs going at night and power up their mobile phones. There is no running water or plumbing onsite. Below is the outhouse, which has a concrete slab with a hole punched through that you squat over. Mind the cows on your way to the bathroom, and remember to pack toilet paper.

For that matter, mind the chicken if you're lounging in the guest house living room. We had a laying hen who really liked an old armchair in the corner. She'd lay 1 egg every day and wouldn't mind too much if you were in the room, as long as you were quiet. We had about 16 eggs by the time we left.

We'd eat with the Odulas in their living cum dining room, usually with the local radio news going in the background. On the right, a view of Lake Victoria from Odula's front door.

Mama Odula's wood-fired kitchen is a small hut behind the main house. She gets a hell of a lot of cooking done with just one hob and one long log. If she needs a low flame she pulls out the log, and if she needs a high flame she nudges it further in and blows air through a long metal pipe aerate the flame.

Here, she's making breakfast mandazi, dense sweet-salty deep-fried dough bricks. Very addictive with chai masala. On special days Mama Odula makes animal-shaped mandazi. I think the one below is an elephant. Or maybe a camel.

Since there's no running water in the neighbourhood, rainwater is collected in a large storage tank next to the house, then decanted, filtered and treated for drinking. If there is insufficient rain (which was the case this season), children and donkeys go down to the freshwater lake to collect water in jerry cans.

Kaswanga Beach was our neighbourhood beach, but we weren't allowed to go swimming there. For one thing, the lake hosts snails which have been known to carry the bilharzi virus. And then there are the man-eating hippos.

So when it does rain, the boys run outside with shower gel.

Related Posts:

• WWOOFing in Kenya -- Mornings at Millimani Kindergarthen
• WWOOFing in Kenya -- Afternoons at Badilisha Community Garden
• WWOOFing in Kenya -- Perspectives
• Kenyan Goat Feast

Haunted by Hummus ala Beit Sissi, Aleppo

If there is any downside to travel, it's that I find myself feeling increasingly haunted by ghosts.

Not ghosts of people long gone, but of dishes long digested. Full sensory hallucinations of treats prepared in a very specific way in lands far far away. I -- pale, wild-haired, gaunt (ok fine, not gaunt) -- cut off from their delicious realms, call out into the dark trying to channel them: "Manoooooooolo Fernandez pooooooollo... Zemmmmmmmaciai pork rib boooorrrrrrscht... Gelateria del Teatrooooo watermelon granitaaaaaaaa..."

And now add to that list Beit Sissi's hummus with grilled lamb chunks and toasted pine nuts, thanks to a quick visit this past September. Creamy. Smoky. Juicy. And maddeningly far away in Aleppo in Syria, tucked into a discreet alleyway in the city's charming and labyrinthian Al-Jdeida neighbourhood.

Once you're through the multiple arches and the door, however, the restored 17th century Arab-style mansion-turned-restaurant throws open a double-storey sundrenched dining room, complete with resident violinist.

Babs and I opened with a mess of mezzes: the hummus as mentioned above, a slightly tart but refreshing eggplant rattatouille, and a dish of silky mallow leaves. All mopped up with a lot of pita bread and even more gusto.

Just as we were feeling pleasantly and sensibly full (as is always the case when we go to Middle Eastern eateries) the main meat dishes arrive.

Cherry kebab -- cooked in a lurid purple cherry sauce and garnished with yet more toasted pine nuts -- is the signature dish of this region. For me anyway, the celebrity cherry sauce tasted too tart, and messed too much with -- rather than complemented or lifted -- the natural taste of the meat.

The house-style kebabs, however, unadorned except for a flap of pita soaking in kebab juice, were gorgeous in the nude and voluptuous in flavour. Beautiful like Botticelli's Venus. Another strong candidate for the haunting list. Wooooooooooo......

Beit Sissi (aka Sissi House)
Sharia as-Sissi, Al-Jdeida
Aleppo, Damascus
+963 21 212 4362

Nuts about Kerala Houseboats and Homestays

With a little bit of luck, there is a rare and very delightful kind of nut you might find while in Kerala, India, Like everything else in nature, this kind of nut shines its brightest in its high season. In these parts that's right about now, at the turn of the year.

The scientific name of this nut is the heckwithhighmargins-wejustwantyoutobehappy-homestayandhouseboathost nut. And thanks to Babs's sister Aasha's research and organising, and a little serendipity, we came across 2 during our time here.

This week the 4 of us (Babs and me, Aasha and husband Greg) paid a mere 11,000 rupees for a 1 night stay on a gorgeous 2-bedroom houseboat with AC built just a year ago. By comparison, the Swiss couple who had the boat just before us paid a whopping 34,000 rupees for the same.

The 2 Keralan nuts responsible for this delightfully bargainous travel tale?

1) Jose who owns and runs Kattayam Homestay and said houseboat in Alappuzha (Allepey), who charges a high-season rate only during the week between Christmas and New Year (while many others extend high season till mid or end January).

2) Beena of Beena Homestay in Fort Cochin, who took only a 1,000 rupee commission to set us up with Jose's boat. (Now do some quick Math and think how much commission the Swiss couple's houseboat tout took.)

Both Jose and Beena are the real deal when it comes to homestays. They live onsite with their guests, amid a growing number of newcomers who capitalise on the "Keralan homestay" buzzword by renting a house and subletting the rooms while living somewhere else (sometimes overseas).

Beena also provides delicious breakfasts and local dinner feasts for guests (according to rave reviews from Aasha and Greg). Add that to her unusual commission-taking behaviour, and it's no wonder her homestay is so popular that she has to maintain a waiting list of hopefuls. While other homestay hosts rejoice when they get a Lonely Planet mention, Beena reportedly went into a bit of a fit because her waiting list -- already at a healthy length from word of mouth -- spurted straight to unruly.

Jose's nuttiness burst forth from its shell the minute he found out that Babs's Dad was originally from Kerala, and I from Singapore. Turns out his twin teenage sons are studying in Singapore. He immediately declared Babs and me to be extended family. He even took Babs's hand and held it swinging while walking down the street to the houseboat!

Jose did indeed treat us like extended family, in the Indian context. When we came back from town to his homestay the next evening we were sat down for a long chat about Singapore's job market. Shown assorted family slideshows. Used as a sounding board for lamenting why oh why were their sons buying iPhones, aiyoh with that money they could be buying gold. Asked when we were going to start having kids and hopefully we'll bring a baby the next time we visit. And even put on the phone to say hello to one of the sons who called home from Singapore, even though I had of course never met him before.

Ah well. The houseboat was worth it. A few peeks below.

The living and dining deck, ensuite bathroom, hallway and bedroom.

Our Captain and first mate. Nice work if you can get it.

We stopped at a backwaters fish shop to pick up some still-flapping local pearl spot, to be fried with masala later in the afternoon for a snack. (Tip: if you're serious about scoring extra seafood for your voyage, buy it in town before getting to the backwaters, where you will be charged double.)

The cruise also came with a delicious Keralan lunch and dinner cooked on board. My favourites were the veggies, fried lightly with masala and coconut stubble, as opposed to the often over-gravied concoctions in so many eateries. The little pomfrets were pretty damn tasty too.

The rest of the day was a delicious lazeabout, soaking in the view.

Neighbours.

Phat looking ramshackle house.

Waiting for the local ferry.

Padi fields. Quite ingeniously water levels are maintained at a higher level than the rice fields by man-made embankments, to facilitate irrigation.

All houseboats have to dock at 5.30pm each evening for the day, so that local fishermen can do their thing.

Kattakayam Homestay
Nehru Trophy Starting Point
Thathampally P.O.
Alappuzha 13, Kerala, India
+91 944 743 2518, +91 477 223 2380
(Contact Jose directly for houseboat hire to minimize commissions)

Beena Homestay
KB Jacob Road, Kadathanad
Fort Kochi, Cochin, India
+91 484 221 5458

Adventures of the Evil Eye Goat

Hyderabad, India. We're guests at an extended family member's wedding. Belief in nazur (evil eye) -- instigated by envy -- is strong in these parts. To protect auspicious events, rites are conducted or else donations are made to the poor, to nullify the nazur. A small example: just before Babs's sister and I set out for the evening in our pretty saris, the wizened old housekeeper where we were staying, took a cast-iron pan and fanned us in long downward strokes and tapped the pan on the ground while we faced North, South, East then West. She was chanting the whole time -- I guess to extract nazur vibes and banish them into the ground.

To nix any potential nazur cast on the wedding couple, the groom's family bought a goat. Come the end of the wedding ceremony, the goat was to be hoisted and circled in front of the wedding couple in a ferris-wheel like motion. The evil-infused goat was then to be taken to the butcher and killed, and its meat distributed to the poor. (How poor do you have to be to be happy to eat accursed meat, I wonder?)

'Twas roundabout midnight when we bade farewell to the sacrificial goat in the banquet hall parking lot. I can't even make up what happened after.

At some point between midnight and 2.30am someone notices that the goat has gone missing. Panic ensues. The groom's family's driver sets out on foot to hunt down the goat.

He scurries here and there, and comes across a cluster of shanty huts. He describes the goat, and asks if they've seen it wandering around. They all say no.

Except a rather loud and incriminating "mmmmmm..e..hhhhhhh" sounds from one of the huts. (I suppose the goat was distinctly unimpressed.) The driver barges in, and whaddaya know, there's the goat, tied up, with its unmistakeable band of blue dye across its head between its ears.

Some kind of argument ensues. The driver manages to take the goat back to the banquet hall. He ties it to a car, and instructs his son to guard it with his life.

2.30am. The family photo shoot is finally done, and it's time for the nazur ceremony. The goat is trotted over to the wedding couple. Family members by now are exhausted. And perhaps too generous about their goat donation -- after a series of attempts, it seems no one in the family is able to lift the goat, let alone whirl it around the couple.

A decision is made, then announced to whoever's left at the banquet hall. Whoever can lift the goat to do the nazur ceremony can keep the goat.

The driver of the hired wedding Mercedes steps forward. He lifts the goat. The ceremony is conducted. Huzzah! Mr Mercedes pops his reward into the boot, the wedding couple into the car, then leads the wedding convoy to the local fancy hotel for the night.

Now, since Mumbai got attacked by terrorists in November 2008, fancy hotels have all ramped up security in a big way. This hotel, in particular, demands that all incoming cars pop their hoods and boots for inspection.

Mr Mercedes tells the security guard "I have nothing in my boot, but I cannot open it."

This doesn't go down well, as you might imagine. A back-and-forth ensues. And escalates. Until finally the security guard grabs the car keys from Mr Mercedes to open the boot himself.

The goat -- doomed to begin with, kidnapped once already, then used as a cosmic sponge for evil, then transported in a car like a kidnap victim all over again -- is by now somewhere between panicked as shit and mad as hell and lunges at the security guard. The guard apparently shrieks like a girl and falls over backwards. Wedding party reinforcements stop guffawing just enough to wrestle boot and booty back down. The rest of the convoy is waved through because the security guard doesn't want to know what might be lurking in the other cars.

The groom got a telling-off from his father the next day. Not because the goat got nicked. Not because of nearly botched ceremony. Not because of the late night palava with hotel security. What really, really got the father's goat, was the groom sleeping so late that he missed the hotel's complimentary buffet breakfast. Then ordered room service.

Hyderabad, Hyderabread, Hyderablag

Quite the time to be in Hyderabad. The city's in a bit of kerfluffle. Separatists are lobbying for the state of Andra Pradesh to be split into two states. Maybe three.

Depending on how adventurous you're feeling (I'm not), you can wander into downtown hotpots hotspots (thanks CurryPuff!) to watch separatist demonstrators. Apparently there will be hordes of them, regardless of the side of the argument. Some will tell you India is a very politically passionate country. Others will tell you the demonstrators are poor people hired for the day to wear the appropriate colours and hold the appropriate banners and chant the appropriate chants. The most hardworking ones among them apparently stagger their engagements so that they can work for one party one day and another party the next.

"Nothing is what it seems in India," people keep telling me. I can't tell if they're warning me or feeling smug.

The more annoying part of all these political theatrics is the separatists strong-arming the city's merchants to go on strike. That is, goondas (hired gangsters) roam the city, making sure businesses have their shutters shut. Or else.

So the boys can't get their shirwanis (long Indian shirt-coats) tailored today, and the henna hasn't yet been delivered to girls' bridal henna session.

But nothing here is what it seems.

At various food purveyors, it's worth checking in with the security guard in front of the shutters. Sometimes, you'll be shown the side or back door, in through the delivery entrace, the storerooms, the prep rooms, kitchens and plating areas, into the establishment where it's business-almost-as-usual. (The sights enroute are a good way to test if you still want to eat there. Maybe all restaurants should be made to admit customers this way.) A network of lookouts send word by text message if the goondas are on the move.

This is how we got brunch from a well known city bakery today. We came home smug with a pile of chicken croisssants, chicken cutlets, chicken drumsticks and coffee cake.

The buttery croissants and moist mashed potato cutlets were chockful of pulled chicken, more generous that what I've seen in any other commercial establishment.

The drumsticks, on the other hand, were just a chicken legbones with chicken-leg-shaped patties of mashed potato, breadcrumbs, onions and masala. And maybe some chicken flavouring.

Nothing, nothing, nothing here is what it seems.

Thali Christmas and Henna New Year

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and all your loved ones.

Thank you to all of you who have spent time with Babs and me here, following our shenanigans, contributing your comments, reactions, encouraging words and ideas, and being patient with all my typos and experiments during this blog's infant phase.

Please forgive the recent silence. We spent the last week and a bit in Bangalore, India, not at all to celebrate Christmas. Rather, Babs's Mum (a native Bangalorean) organised a belated wedding reception for Babs and me, his brother and his Chicago-born Indian wife, and his sister and her Polish husband -- all visiting India for the first time since getting married over the last 18 months.

The ~400 guests -- considered small by Indian wedding standards -- hailed from Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mysore, Mangalore, Kerala, Mumbai, Delhi, the UAE, UK, US and Singapore. (More on the event later.)

So the lead-up to D-Day (on Boxing Day) was a nonstop flurry of introductions to my new relatives, me cajoling them for their recipes for their most delicious dishes (I've had some success, so stay tuned!), plunging into the bowels of Crawford Market in Mumbai and Commercial Street in Bangalore to procure fabric for shalwar khameez (Punjabi suits) and saris and Kashmiri shawls and all the accompanying bangles and sandals and purses (oh my), trips to the tailor to get said Indian outfits made, getting my hands henna-ed up for the first time, and multiple late-night airport runs to pick up loved ones flying in from far away.

*Exhale"

Well. And a fresh tender coconut and pomegranates bursting with rubies of every shade of purple, red and pink every day. And briyani. Oil-tankers full it. Enough briyani to feed and fatten all of India and then some for lunch the day after.

*Burp*

It occured to me at some point that this was my first Christmas ever away from home in Singapore. Away from Mum's turkey. An uncle's home-baked ham. An aunt's Hockchew wonton soup. Another aunt's fried beehoon (rice noodles) and lohr ak (braised duck). A cousin's attempt at sushi. Grandma's delectable agar jellies. About 100 aunts, uncles, cousins and their children all trying to remember each other's names. And then there are friends. Rubbing elbows with them while having the one-th too many cocktail. Bumping knees with them waiting for Christmas service to be done.

Instead, for Christmas lunch this year I find myself at Sundeheri at Woodlands Hotel in Bangalore, tucking into a vegetarian thali of (clockwise from top left below) carrot, lentil and coconut salad, coconut and red chili chutney, okra fried with coconut, spiced taro, mallow with lentil, yellow dhal, puri (diabolical deep fried dough pillow cases) and eggplant curry. All served -- in the proper old school South Indian way -- on a banana leaf.

It's all terribly tasty, and I do have Mum and Dad in from Singapore at the table, but it still doesn't feel like Christmas. I guess for me Christmas needs to be spent around not just a familiar set of people (that's some of you reading this), but also a familiar set of food. And -- as much as I hate to admit it -- a playlist of saccharine-sweet Christmas jingles. Just a few. The limit being remix version 4 of "Last Christmas" by Wham!.

This New Year will be spent in Hyderabad, attending Babs's sister-in-law's cousin's wedding. Far away from the New Year's Eve party I've hosted each year since 1995, which I've missed only once before in 2003, when I spent a poorly-thought-out week running around Eastern Europe, filling my lungs with icicles which took a couple of months after to properly dislodge. My sinuses have never been the same since.

Ah well. Nothing like stepping out from the routine of home to make you appreciate it all the more.

I hope you'll continue to drop by here in 2010. Babs and I will be poking around more of India, Ghana(!), Southeast and Northeast Asia, maybe Australia and New Zealand (depending on our cash situation) and South America before we decide where to hunker down and set up camp for the next few years.

In the meantime, my very best wishes to you for the new year. May all our days be delicious ones.

Sundeheri at Woodlands Hotel
5 Rajaram Mohan Roy Road
Richmond Circle, Bengalore
Karnataka, India

Game to Meat Up in Cape Town?

Let's face it. I'm lousy company on a safari or a dive trip.

Mostly because, in the group chat afterwards, when all the wildlife lovers are cooing "Wasn't that majestic... wasn't that just soooo cute..." I will inevitably blurt out "I wonder what that tastes like."

And then a "whoompf" of silence will descend, and everyone will wonder with raised eyebrows wondering "Who brought her?"

Eventually one of the more sociable ones will play along, and the group will discuss what they would and wouldn't eat, and someone will always end up saying "Oh but I couldn't eat that, they're just too cute!"

I've never understood this not eating cute animals business. What does that even mean? They'll eat only ugly schmugly animals? How would animals qualify for the life-saving cute category? If they've done enough Disney roles to qualify for health insurance with SAG?

I tend to think this out loud. More raised eyebrows.

If you're still reading this, and chuckling along, I think we understand each other. Read on. Otherwise, you might want to read some other post. And probably not the one about the Kenyan Goat Feast.

===

So I decided that while we were in Africa, we had to try some game meat. The farmed, rather than endangered variety. (Yes, I will eat cute, but not endangered)

The first and most obvious lead was Carnivore in Nairobi, Kenya, but we found out that Kenya had banned the sale of game meat. (Research suggests that Carnivore also has a branch in Johannesburg, South Africa, which still serves a rotation of game meats.)

Luckily, Long Street in Cape Town, South Africa -- the city's backpacker and entertainment ground zero -- offers 2 delicious and affordable options for those game for game.

Royale Eatery

Hipster-chic Royale Eatery also serves pizzas and very impressive salads, but it is first and foremost a gourmet burger joint, with offerings of beef, chicken, fish and -- what I came for -- ostrich.

South Africa pioneered ostrich farming over 150 years ago, and posh neighbourhoods in ostrich central Oudtshoorn are said to be built upon the feather fortunes. Today, vehicle manufacturers still buy ostrich feathers to be used in the late stages of the vehicle-painting process. Ostrich hides are turned into an array of leather products, eggs are made into monster omelettes and their shells painted and sold as decorations.

Ostrich meat, as it turns out, is a red meat. The best way to describe its taste? You know how Diet Coke tastes like a subtly different version of regular Coke? Ostrich -- similar to kangaroo but with a different twang -- tastes like diet beef. Lovely flavour and bite, with much less of the heaviness afterwards.

The beetroot chutney was a lovely lift to the taste and colour of the well made burger platter. The sweet potato fries were superb, especially with aioli, and sweet chili sauce.

Do also sample Royale Eatery's formidable milkshake menu. I took a shot at the Jack Daniels and Peanut Butter shake. Geeeeeenius. Even more genius than the time I chucked some JD into my 7-Eleven Coke slurpee. I should experiment with chucking JD into more stuff. Recommendations?

Khaya Nyama (House of Meat)

Khaya Nyama, which specialises in game meat, is open only for dinner and describes its ambience as "bushman cave". I guess that means this.

To sample a range of game without committing to an expensive steak portion of something you might not like, try the venison carpaccio platter, with a slice of crocodile, ostrich, springbok and kudu (2 kinds of deer).

The 3 red meats, while very tasty, posssibly had too much spices and brine to really bring out the differences between the different meat flavours. The more interesting experience was the crocodile. It looks mostly like a slice of smoked chicken or turkey, but has that slight translucent sheen of fish. Its taste had the same unusual fishy-chickeny combination.

I followed with a whopping serving of grilled warthog ribs. As somewhat expected, it tasted like a more full bodied version of pork (a beefier version of pork?). Lovely. The sides -- maize mash, broccoli, and rice, were hearty but could probably do with slightly prettier plating to match up with the restaurant's fine dining pitch.

Overall, a successful savoury safari. Thanks for keeping me company!

Royale Eatery
273 Long Street
Cape Town, South Africa
+21 21 422 4536

Khaya Nyama (House of Meat)
267 Long St
Cape Town, South Africa
+27 21 424 2917

Discovering Gold at Fynboshoek Cheese, Tsitsikamma, South Africa

"Cross the bridge... follow the detour for 4km... look for the church and the school... look for the turnoff 1.2km from the school... go 1.5km... past the neighbour's farm... left at the fork... then go to the end of the road."

We were on a treasure hunt for Fynboshoek Cheese, a South Africa Garden Route locavore haven by award winning cheesemaker Alje van Deemder, who has been personally serving lunches for more than a decade, with just about everything served being grown and / or made onsite.

I trust this is the right way...

Success! We drive up to a mustard house garlanded with many a flowering tree, and get ushered into a breathtaking sunroom, where classical music is softly playing. If they had divans here I could dawdle with a book for many afternoons on end.

There's no menu at Fynboshoek. (The set lunch costs ZAR 110 per person. Drinks are extra.) So we wait, soaking in the view. Then the opening act arrives, with quite a bang: Fried goat cheese canapes, with a dab of jam and sprigs of fresh thyme.

Next, salad caprese, with a sunny homemade mozzerella. And rosemary focaccia, fresh from the oven. Combine with a giant bowl of vibrantly coloured salad leaves for a soul-cleansing gorge.

The headline act: The Fynboshoek cheese platter, with 3 goat cheeses of varying maturity, a couple of cheddars, a smoked provolone ball, and my favourite (on the far left) a cow's milk cheese with cumin. Not being a class-A curd nerd, I sometimes find the taste of goat cheese to be too overwhelming, but the ones put forward here were gentle and gorgeously creamy.

I've never had a meal of cheese, bread and leaves this satisfying.

You can read about the health and environmental merits of eating locally -- where ingredients are grown and sourced from as close to the dining table as possible -- but it's so much more seductive to experience the difference with all five senses.

Out bread was finger-singeing hot, with salty dough and rosemary wafting about the table. The salad leaves were surprisingly sweet, having been spared nitrogen and that awful bitter plastic infusion that comes with supermarket packaging. If you have time after lunch, you can go stroll on the grounds outside the house, and say hello to the goats and cows that provided the milk for your cheese.

The other diners in the sunroom and at a long table outside were quite uniformly of the pastel shirt and shoulder-slung sweater and posh leather loafer variety. So Mr van Deemder -- possibly pleasantly surprised by the diversity of a scrubby Chinese and Indian couple -- tarried over expressos, asking what we were doing way out here in Tsitsikamma.

He was quite amused with our casual quest of eating our way around the world, and he visibly perked up when we said we focused especially on eateries that showcased local ingredients and traditional recipes. We shared laments about how so much of South Africa's best produce (especially seafood) is sent overseas while locals lap up cheaper but lower quality imports. I told him about our frustrated quest to sample Knysna oysters, and he rejoined: "Our squid and cuttlefish is top quality, so it all goes to Europe and Asia. All the squid you find here is from South America."

Tragedy! How does one hijack a South African squid boat I wonder...

The music switches to a jaunty ragtime jazz tune. Do we really have to go?

But I take heart. Fynboshoek is that kind of treasure trove that is more likely to keep keeping on if you spread, rather than hoard, the word. So go. Off-map, off-GPS, to where cheese marks, and hits, the spot.

Fynboshoek Cheese
Off the N2 Highway across from Tsitsikamma Lodge
Calling ahead for reservations and directions is essential
+27 42 280 3879

Wheeling and Mealing at Khan's BBQ, Arusha, Tanzania

How ever the town of Arusha, Tanzania may pitch itself to the world (one reference is apparently "The Geneva of Africa") it is in essence a pit stop. Arusha is where travellers from all over the world break their journey on the overland route between Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam (as we did in late October), or else camp for the night before forging onward to Serengeti National Park or Mount Kilimanjaro.

As such, Arusha's streets are chockablock with buses, safari vans and giant SUVs owned by flush tour operators. And hungry pedestrians in transit.

One enterprise that has embraced this situation with some delicious genius is wheeler mealer Zubeda Auto Spares / Khan's Barbeque. By day, it sells auto parts to vehicles trundling through town. By night, it sells some of the best damn Pakistani-style BBQ chicken parts I've tasted anywhere for the travellers pouring out of said vehicles.

Slot yourself into one of the long bench tables (or simply lower your SUV window if you want to eat in your plush vehicle), place your order, then go build your own salad that comes with each meal. I particularly liked the green tomato achar (pickle) salad.

Beware: this is one of the few eateries in East Africa where when they tell you something is spicy, they mean it's spicy (I learned this the hard teary-sweaty-snotty way).

The other thing the more sensible among you need to be aware of, is that 1 order of chicken at Khan's means 1 whole chicken. We unknowingly ordered 2. Which meant we had the most badass snacks on the bus to Dar Es Salaam the next day.

Twas the proverbial dark and stormy night when we ate at Khan's. In these parts, this often means that power cuts out for hours on end.

So while waiting for Khan's backup generator to kick in, we dined by Maglite and SUV headlight... same way the grill chefs soldiered on.

Having lived in London, I had full appreciation of their stoicism while BBQing in the rain. So we made another pit stop at Khan's on the road back to Nairobi a week later.

As tender, juicy, spicy and smoky as the chicken was, I was glad to be moving on. If Khan's were in my neighbourhood I'd find myself there embarassingly often. Eat frequently enough at a place like this, and you're bound to eventually get a spare tyre for free. And I don't mean the type you can run your car on.

Khan's Barbeque / Zubeda Auto Spares
Mosque St
Arusha, Tanzania
+255 27 2500 458 / 2544 925
Mobile: +255 713 / 754 / 784 652747

(Note: The 3 digit prefix numbers are for different mobile network providers. Calls within the same network are sometimes discounted or free)

Catch of the Day at Captain Hadji's, Paje Beach, Zanzibar

My best meal in Zanzibar found me through a thicket of seaweed.

It was low tide on a November morning at Jambiani village, on Zanzibar's south-east coast. Out into the horizon, women were either bent over picking or walking back to shore with giant sacks of seaweed on their heads. Patches of the stuff were sorted by hue and laid out to dry in front of many of the concrete and coconut-leaf-thatch huts in the village, like bonsai astroturf lawns.

What did they do with so much seaweed?

Our hostel manager said the seaweed was used for food. The dude who took us sailing and snorkelling on his dhow the next day concurred.

Fabulous. A locally foraged delicacy. Get me some-o-dat.

Except our hostel chef looked at me like I was crazy. He asked me how to cook it. How ever the villagers cooked it, I said. He didn't know, he said, he'd never cooked it before. He didn't know anyone here who ate it. Maybe I could show him what to do with it.

But...the manager said...

"No no no we don't eat it," now said the manager. "They sell to Asia. China. Japan. Asia people eat."

Tsk. If anything not fillet-able is coming out of the sea in large quantities, it's probably going to us bloody Asians (ok and maybe the Spaniards). Later in my research I found out the seaweed out here is farmed, not foraged. And it gets sent off to processing centres like Singapore to be turned into agar (vegetarian gelatin) and food stabilisers that go into all sorts of processed food, and toothpaste.

The things that happen to your food right under your nose! I had grown up on Grandma's agar jellies. So this is where they came from. But was brushing my teeth the only way I'd get to taste some seaweed while I was out here at the source?

Another walk the next morning, this time north to Paje. Much more real estate development here, but a similar seaweed scene. All that fresh, crunchy, briny sea-mineral-filled goodness, just going far far away to Asia. Bah.

Out popped this guy on the beach. A Captain Hadji, and a pitch for a fish lunch at his home-restaurant.

How much, I asked, wary of a fat bill no one agreed on after the meal.

7,000 Tanzanian shillings. (~£3.20) Very fresh, he said.

Can we see the fish? Babs asked.

"Fish not here yet," he said. "I wait for fishing boats. High tide they come back. They come, I buy fish, I cook, 30 minutes, lunch."

"Can we come with you to the boats?" I asked.

"Ok, you come, you come," he said.

One last hurdle. A long shot: "Do you know how to cook seaweed? Can we have some? With the fish?"

Captain Hadji chuckled at me.

"You like our seaweed! Yes I know. Yes ok I get some for you."

SOLD.

And so Babs and I sat on the beach and waited for the tide. And sure enough, at noon, the fishing boats came, dragged through the shallows up to shore by their various captains and 1-man crews. Captain Hadji waded out to meet them. Babs and I waded out after him.

No one had nets or lines. Just fishing spears. Little piles on reef fish. One boat had a baby shark. Fwah!

"Ok I have your fish. I go get seaweed. You come at 1pm for lunch," said Captain Hadji.

"Fine. Great," I said, still gawking at the shark.

I was happy to have some fellow gawkers for company onshore. Various villagers came to gather round the 50kg shark, including a blind boy who squatted with it, running his hand along its cool leathery skin and its many pointed teeth.

Then came the next course of entertainment and education. Next to the shark, fishermen from various boats came up with sacks and buckets and emptied out piles upon piles of beautiful giant starfish. Our little patch of Paje turned a gentle acid-trip of technicolour.

What do you do with the starfish? I asked each villager until I found someone who spoke enough English. My heart was clenched, ready to break if they said they sold it as curios to tourists.

"For fish. Catch fish. Put in traps. Fish eat. Catch fish," someone finally told me.

I still didn't feel great about what that meant for the coral reef. But it beat putting them on a shelf so that some idiot could brag to their friends about how at one they felt with marine life at some exotic location.

It was 1pm. Time for the main course. Babs and I trooped over to Captain Hadji's porch, soggy, sunburned and starving.

He was just getting to putting the fish on his charcoal grill. It was white snapper and red snapper today, he said. Marinated in salt, pepper, ginger, garlic and lime juice. With rice cooked in coconut milk.

I recognised the spots on the "red snapper". It was actually red garoupa, a premium fish in Chinese restaurants prized for its sweet, delicately flaky flesh. My Dad and I are both mad fans. Good Lord, everything in the water here must be heading for the far east.

Babs and I wolfed everything down, picking through each crevice of the heads, the cheeks and the eyes with surgical precision. Captain Hadji wasn't kidding about "very fresh". I still don't know when I'll get to eat fish this fresh again, barring joining a fishing expedition and cutting up some sashimi or ceviche on the boat.

And he did good on the seaweed. It came stir fried with a little garlic, a little tomato, a touch of masala. Crunchy briny magic. The two Swedish women who had also signed up for lunch didn't get any. They had asked Captain Hadji to remove the fish heads from their lunch, so they didn't deserve any, in my mind. I wish I had overheard them at the time. I would've demanded to rescue their fish heads. I hoped at least this meant Captain Hadji and his family would eat them.

The bill for the fish was as agreed. We both had soda. "Pay what you want for the seaweed," said Captain Hadji.

So we put in 10,000 TZS each. Our best meal in Zanzibar cost us a grand total of £9. The food and the service were both ten out of ten. The ambience, something I don't usually don't pay much attention to... in this case... out of ten... scores... to be conservative... about a million.

Captain Hadji Suleima Hassani
Paje Beach, Zanzibar, Tanzania
+255 77 883 1384

Top 10 Eats in Europe, Middle East and Africa -- My Guest Post for Guardian UK's Been There

I was delighted when Guardian UK's Been There approached me about writing a guest post about my top 10 eats so far, after 5+ months on the road.

The list in my post "Eating Her Way Around the World" covers Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and hopefully suits a range of budgets. (Well, except the uber-posh / silly expense account bracket, given my own financial limitations.)

Above all, I focused on a list of eateries that for me captured a sense of place and local flavour.

I hope it's helpful and enjoyable list for all you hungry travellers out there!

Impromptu Thanksgiving in Abu Dhabi

"Okay. So. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being 'Wen you're being an idiot, just stop this nonsense now', and 10 being 'helllllllll yeeeeeeah', where would you say you are?" I asked Babs and Louise, our fabulous host in Dubai.

"Five..." said Babs, "...not that a 1 has ever stopped you."

" 'On a scale?' You are SUCH a geek. Seriously," said Louise. She would know. We used to work together in Singapore.

We were at the poultry aisle in Spinney's, a supermarket chain in Abu Dhabi. In particular, we were all staring at a trough full of frozen Butterball turkeys. It was mid afternoon on Thanksgiving Thursday, and I was testing the momentum behind my crazy idea to throw together an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner out here in the Gulf. If we went through with it, the plan was to buy a turkey now, thaw it in Louise's car outside while we chatted over cake and coffee, and hope for the best come dinnertime. Given I usually defrost turkeys overnight, there was a serious risk of serving up turkey slices for dinner and turkey popsicles for dessert.

But I couldn't just give up now. Not when we had found any turkey at all out here in the desert. I love turkey. I love its dramatic size, carving it, how its clean firm flesh is such a great canvas for gravy and cranberry. I love picking apart the carcass after dinner, gleefully anticipating a week's worth of snacks. I love turning a turkey's lovely bones into a hearty soup or congee. I loved turkey even way back when my family ate store-cooked ones at Christmas, woefully flavourless and so overcooked you choked on its dryness with every mouthful. Back then it wasn't about eating turkey at Christmas dinners, it was about drowning mostly untouched turkey slices in gravy and mozzerella to make a very messy turkey melt for days afterwards.

Then while at university in the US, I got invited to Thanksgiving dinners with various friends' families, and learnt how to cook turkey myself. Pilgrims pillaging the New World notwithstanding, I like the ritual of sitting down with family and friends with a mountain of food, and being thankful for the year's bounty of provision and affection. So I took the tradition with me back home to Singapore, and later to London, converting (or at least feeding) a few friends along the way for whom I am thankful.

A decade on from my first DIY turkey, was I about to break with my adopted tradition?

"Hey look. These turkeys are defrosted already. And they're halal!" said Herbert, our friend based in Abu Dhabi, coming back from further along the aisle.

I am thankful for Herbert!

After coffee and cake we zipped back to Herbert's flat, and within 4 hours had a gorgeous piping hot turkey (really simple turkey recipe here ) with homemade gravy and cranberry sauce and Babs's ever reliable Rockstar Roast Potatoes. Herbert even invited over a couple of his friends in town to add to the festive atmosphere.

And so, as always, so much to be thankful for as we tuck in. Just a few mentions here:

I am thankful for Louise, who housed us, smelly backpacks and all, drove us all over the gleaming desert, and sous-chefed brilliantly for dinner!

I am thankful for Herbert, who trusted us with his kitchen even though he was flying to Singapore right after dinner. I hope we cleaned up ok!

For Josh and his mother Janet (may she rest in peace), from whom I got the orginal version of the turkey recipe.

Turkish Delight-ful News

So, sometime back I took part in Istanbul Eats' debut photo competition, with a street food culture theme.

I just got the delightful news that my photo of nazar (evil-eye charm) cookies was chosen as 1st runner up!

Here's the photo below, taken on our Accidental Istanbullu soujorn this past September. Check out Istanbul Eats for a little more chat on why I took the photo.

 

Hotel Endorfina, Kiyikoy, Turkey

Hotel Endorfina's charm started from the getgo.

Owner Mehmet came to pick us up from the bus drop-off in the tiny fishing village of Kiyikoy, Turkey. Before taking us to the hotel he drove us once around town pointing out landmarks and restaurants so that we could get our bearings. Mehmet had previously built a career in specialty chemicals before up-ending it all for the good life, setting up Hotel Endorfina in Kiyikoy, where he spent many a vacation in his younger days.

And what a good life it is.

It being low season, we snagged the room with the best views on the block -- the upper floor, on the far fight.

 

 

Inside our room. We paid 100 lira per night (Sept 2009).

 

 

The other end of the swimming pool is a great place to shoot the breeze.

 

 

Our sumptious breakfast. I could stand to start every day with such gorgeous tomatoes and olives. And then there were eggs.

 

 

By the end of our 3 nights we were severely tempted to ask about rates for loooooong-term stays. Thanks to Lonely Planet for the tipoff.

Saturday Night Drama at Kiyikoy Harbour

Early September 2009, Kiyikoy, Turkey.

Kiyikoy being one of those increasingly rare places that still have fishing dayboats rather than seafloor-scraping ocean trawlers, Babs and I decided that trekking down to the harbour to see the boats pull in would be a good use of a Saturday night.

And what a Saturday night it turned out to be.

By the time we sauntered over, there was quite the crowd of men, women and children alike at the breakwaters. Evidently the arrival of the homefleet was the Saturday Night Live event in these parts.

After finding myself a place to perch among the locals, I started to muse about how much time these people spent waiting on a regular basis for fishermen fathers, sons, husbands, uncles and brothers to come home. I also started to wonder how closely they watch each incoming catch. After all, a day's catch for me just determined what kind of dinner I could get for the day -- for them it likely determined what their lifestyle might be for the next few days or weeks.

The fleet held this line for a long time, just slightly away from the harbour. Too long. What the hell were they doing? Waiting for something? Comparing catches? Colluding on prices?

People at the pier were waiting. Watching. Pacing. Exchanging murmurs. Was this not a usual weekend homecoming party of the returning fleet after all?

"There's some drama going on here that I don't quite understand yet," I said to Babs. Oh for subtitles in real life!

More omens. A guy in a black t-shirt (below) showed up on a motorbike and whipped out a heavy-duty looking camera. And then (I can't even make this stuff up) I saw a red moon rising.

Then finally it became clear. A fishing boat had gotten into trouble and had to be towed back by a big brother of some sort. The nets were completely tangled all over the masts and it was already more than half submerged. Hopefully everyone on the boat got out in time.

By now a good chunk of the town was thronging the docks, snapping pictures with phones and cameras (I'm glad it's not just me!). There was a lot of shouting between men on boats and men on the docks about what needed to be done.

A bulldozer / excavator pulled up behind the crowd. More yelling. A lot of rope got thrown around, and tied onto the excavator's "fingers".

The excavator starts pulling hard on the rope attached to the boat. A horribly painful creaking sound ensued. I managed to grab this one photo before Babs yanked me quite a distance away.

"There's too much water in the boat. That rope is going to snap, and when it does, there's no way you want to be anywhere near it," he said.

Sure enough, whatever the rope was attached to on the boat cracked and broke away, the rope went flying, and the locals went running and gasping. Damn. Great scout / sailor / engineer instincts, Babs.

Yet more shouting. I'm guessing that in the end the plan to tow the boat out of the water got abandoned, because these 2 poor sods were told to go wade in and undo all the roping.

The attention of the crowd turned. An empty truck had pulled up to the water's edge. Somebody's got to deliver some fish tonight. Another fishing boat -- whom in the corner of the crowd's eye had been quietly sorting and boxing their haul -- now pulled up quickly in front of the truck. A man holding an order list yelled out fish names and weights and one box after another got relayed up into the bowels of the truck, none of it even touching terra firma on Kiyikoy.

I suddenly realised it was was 9pm. We'd been here 4 hours. A local man possibly realised the same, and maybe decided that I had scrambled up and down enough crates and fishnet piles and had the right reactions at the right times to earn a little street cred. He yelled out to the fish relay team to stop for a minute so that I could get a proper picture. Then he nudged me forward, pointed to the man below with his arms folded and said, "This captain of this boat. You take photo of him."

And so I did. His mates looked quite chuffed.

Quite a different look on the other boat. This image is the one that often comes to mind now whenever I'm tucking into fish, with a new sense of appreciation of what it can take to get to my plate.

Weekend Retreat to Kiyikoy, Turkey

The other Accidental Istanbullu thing we did while waiting for our Indian visas in Istanbul this past September, was to take another little vacation from our vacation.

We decided to go with the smallest, most remote seaside village we could find in our Lonely Planet Guide within a 3-hr travel radius of Istanbul. Kiyikoy on the Black Sea Coast -- population ~2,000 -- with allegedly more fish, frogs and tortoises than people, and with nary a detail on Wiki Travel and Google Maps, sounded perfect.

We weren't disappointed.

We took a long metro ride to Istabul's central bus station, then 2 buses on to Kiyikoy. True to the old adage that the journey counts for as much as the destination, we had some hair-raising entertainment(?) on our bus ride when our driver and a rival bus company driver got into a loud scuffle at one stop, got separated by their colleagues, then came storming back to each other, armed. I wasn't keen on the odds, given our driver's big stick was up against the other driver's kitchen knife. Thankfully they got separated again, properly this time.

We got to Kiyikoy in the late afternoon, and used the rest of the daylight to soak up the view from our lovely cliff-side boutique abode, Hotel Endorfina.

The next morning, we set out to walk around the little farming and fishing village nestled behind the old city walls. Sadly, there were quite a few of these gutted stone and wood houses below, as locals moved out into the "suburbs" dotted with more modern but far less charming concrete houses.

A lovely unmistakeable perfume of food being smoked wafted through the air. We followed our noses into a little alleyway between 2 houses and found this coven of women cooking peppers, eggplant and claypot stews on a wheelbarrow full of coals. My enthusiastic gestures of "smells very good!" got the women to chuckle and beckon me closer for a better look.

Onward to the water. We watched 2 boys take potshots at seagulls. I wondered if this Old Man of the Sea down below approved.

Making our way down to the beach from the cliff, I heard a gentle cling-clanging chorus behind us. I turned to find a flock of sheep about to overtake us! Would these count as salt-marsh lambs, y'think?

Their shepherd stopped for a few minutes to chat. Well. That is to say, from behind me he yelled "JAH-PAHN! JAH-PAHN! JAH-PAHN!" until I turned around and yelled back "SINGAPORE!"

He pulled up alongside, replied, "Ahhhh. Singah-puuur. Singah-puuuuur....uhn...", and then moseyed on, possibly wondering where or what the hell Singapore was. We saw him again the next day, somewhere in the middle of the village, again with his flock. No hollering of nationalities this time, just a smile and wave to each other.

We decided to join these buffalo in the river...

...though in a paddleboat. Below, the view from a few kilometres upriver. The tortoises and frogs didn't disappoint. We even saw a few jumping fish! Twas all very summertime, and the living is easy...

All that exercise sent us prowling for lunch. I'm pretty sure the eatery we ended up at didn't have a name. But it's on Kiyikoy's main street, peppered with leathery fishermen sipping tea and playing tavla, and run by this handsome gentlemen on the right. I had a good feeling about the place when the big burly guy who runs ATV tours at our hotel popped in, started bantering with the owner and poking about the tiny kitchen to see what was being made.

Hearty chicken kebab in fluffy turkish baguette aside, of special note was this corbasi (soup) below.

"Meat or lentil," the owner asked in Turkish.

Meat.

"(something I couldn't understand)?"

Errrr....

The owner points to his head, then to his gut.

Ehh???!!!...

He then showed me a box of thin-sliced tripe.

Ahhhh.

I wasn't quite in the mood for tripe, so I said the other thing, before fully realising he might have meant "brain".

Luckily, it was just little flecks of meat. Maybe face or cheeks then. And a loose scattering of rice. And -- a amazing little addition I'm going to start using creamy soups when I get home -- a spoonful raw minced garlic. So stinky, but soooooo diabolically good.

I quite like this town.

The Accidental Istanbullus

Stuffing ourselves silly with street food aside, we did a lot of waiting while in Istanbul this past September. Waiting for Syrian and Indian visas. Waiting for letters of reference from our native country consulates to furnish visa applications. Waiting for our laundry. Waiting for a pharmacy to scrounge up the inventory for our comically large order of malaria tablets to take with us to Africa.

There's plenty in Istanbul to keep a tourist gainfully unemployed -- The Blue Mosque, Haga Sofia, cruises on the Bosphurus, whirling dervishes... among countless other worthy distractions -- but we had already done a respectable chunk of those last time around. And after the break-neck pace of the last few stops in Eastern Europe, we quite relished the idea of dropping gear and allowing ourselves a gentle steep in whatever Istanbullus got up to during the quieter hours of the day.

For a large part, this meant whiling away many langourous hours on tea and tavla (backgammon), be it at swish cafes in European-style neighbourhoods, or on low stools and tables in the peaceful backstreets around a mosque, hunched with our knees almost up to our shoulders, day and night alike. Babs was devastatingly good at the game -- it took me until Goreme to start turning the tavla tables on him.

Watching locals play provided much entertainment as well. Sometimes there's money on the game, other times one's reputation (often a more serious bet than all the lira in the world). Either way, it made for a lot of stylish dice throwing, triumphant tavla-piece-clacking, Turkish trash-talking and cursing, and a seemingly inexhaustible amount of shisha, ciggies and strong black sugary tea served in svelte glasses. I didn't understand a word of the back and forth, but the body language of the players and their spectators was fantastic to watch.

A tip if you want to go shopping for, say, a Turkish carpet or lantern or other classic souvenir, and want a few minutes of undisturbed browsing before the traditional product parade begins: Find a store that has a tavla game raging on outside, and slip inside. It might just be one of those games where the owner decides he has more riding on the tavla board than you!

Dessert in Istanbul also seemed to be an all-hours-of-the day affair, even though it was Ramadan at the time. At Olimpia Patisserie in Taksim we assembled a little sampler made from signature local ingredients: semolina, pistachios and pomegranates. I was especially amused by the nazar boncugu semolina cakes. The striking blue-eye design, found on all manner of trinkets all over Turkey, is to ward off the curse of the evil eye, believed to be caused by envious gazes. But surely this sugar syrup-soaked cake is more like to invoke envy than to nullify it?

When our butts got numb sitting, we undulated through and around both the European and Asian sides of the city. We people-watched, went panning for gems in second-hand bookstores and book exchanges, and poked around and inside buildings that caught our eye.

When each little bout of waiting was done, we'd lope over to wherever we needed to be using the city's fascinating array of amazingly affordable public transport: metro, buses, commuter trains, trams, ferries, funiculars, and even cable cars. I loved the ferries for the scenery and fresh air, but the most-amusing-mode-of-transport award goes to the cable car. Through the cabin porthole the world takes on that hazy glow of photos from the 1970s.

If you plan to be in Istanbul for a few days, then do as the locals do and buy an Akbil stored-value travel card. While you can buy tokens to get around, for whatever reason the different transport systems use different tokens that look similar enough to the naked eye, but have minute variations that get picked up and rejected at the turnstiles. You could, like us, end up with a few annoyingly odd tokens at the end of your sojourn, but I suppose as far as traffic-related accidents go, such a situation might attract a few envious gazes.

Olimpia Patisserie
Siraselvilar Caddesi 117
Taksim, Istanbul Turkey
+90 212 292 2342
(Additional branches at Ihlamudere Cd. 154, Besiktas, and Nujkuyusa Cd. 329, Baglarbasi)

Moscow: (Food) Gawky Park

Above: A replica of St Basil's Cathedral made from grains, at the entrance of the uberposh Gastronom No. 1 Food Hall at the GUM luxury mall on Red Square (right across from Lenin's tomb, poetically)

Top tip on traveling and eating in Moscow? Go when you have money. Preferably backed by commodity du jour, with a side order of a English Premier League football team. Or else do a massive amount of research beforehand on value-for-money local and street food haunts before showing up. Otherwise, it's simply a metropolis of slick and expensive restaurants of every ilk of global cuisine. Very exciting for local and expat residents do doubt, but exhausting for a frugal foodie backpacker hoping to chance upon something cheap, cheerful, and core to the indigenous food scene.

Crunched on time and budget, and let down by 2 distinctly budget-busting-but-ultimately-"meh" Georgian restaurants, we did the next best thing to console ourselves; a little food gawking.

Especially amusing were these signboards below at a fried chicken shop at Gorky Park, the city's historic sprawling recreation centre and amusement park for locals.

For a while I entertained the idea that the one place on this round-the-world sabbatical that might be appropriate to eat at Micky D's would be at Moscow's Red Square. The place was absolutely mobbed (I mean crowded, not necessarily occupied by local goombas). It was a case of Russian Breadlines: The Capitalist Remix. I decided that life was too short and there had to be a better use for my already too-few rubles.

I noted with curiosity that there was a slew of sushi joints all over St Petersburg and Moscow. And peering at diners' platters from the sidewalk, the sushi actually looked credible. You can kinda tell when a city is just starting to get into sushi but sushi chefs and local palettes haven't been trained up yet. The rice looks dry and loose grains fall all over the platter. The maguro is an anaemic pink rather than a healthy deep maroon. And people are eating mostly plastic looking california rolls with crabsticks and neon pickles. But this was not the case in Moscow.

According to Peter, our guide in St Petersburg, sushi's become quite the staple for urban Russia's aspirational middle class over the last decade or so. Sushi has a great combination of a having designer look and exotic vibe, and apparently is especially popular among young Russian women looking to reduce their stodge intake.

So before camping out at Sheremetyevo Airport for the night to catch a early morning flight to Istanbul, we followed the lead of the locals and had sushi for dinner. We popped into Yakitoriya (a long list of branches throughout Moscow, and a delivery service to boot) where the sushi and ramen were credible for the price.

Next time I come back here, if ever, I'll follow my own advice. In the meantime, bring on Istanbul!

A Few Peeks of St Petersburg

A few quick glimpses from wandering around St Petersburg, Russia, in late August this year.

Statue of Peter the Great, immortalised in world literature by Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman, an epic poem about man against the elements. Peter the First envisioned a new coastal capital for the Russian empire... built on a swamp...that would be frozen for a good chunk of the year. Apparently when his engineers told him that this swamp would be completely untenable for building for many months at a time, he said something to the effect of "Well you'd better work faster then".

Old men playing chess on Nevsky Prospect.

Young men dancing in front of the Hermitage Museum. Other youths around them were practising stunt bike and skateboard tricks.

A boy peers at the eternal flame memorial at Field of Mars for those who died in the Bolshevik Revolution. Right after I took this photo he spat into the flame and scampered away!

On a bus along Nevsky Prospect.

Life never quite returned to normal for the aristocrats after the revolution, it seems. Nowadays they can be found at various tourist sites around town, posing for photos with visitors for a fee.

Walking Tour of Peter's Burg, Russia

"So what was it like to be a university student here right when the Communist Government was falling from power?" I asked Peter, founder of Peter's Walking Tours in St Petersburg, Russia. As luck would have it, Peter was our guide on our accidentally private tour this late August morning.

Given Peter and I both studied film in university (him in St Petersburg smack at the start of the historic early 1990s) and then later both did stints as newspaper journalists, we had plenty to banter about besides the sights.

My favourite part of chat was over salmon and green onion & egg pie at Stolle, which serves fabulous sweet and savoury pies unique to St Petersburg, stemming from the city's pre WWI history of hosting many an academic German expat in its university district, one of the main areas of our walking tour. The pie crusts below look like brick, but actually taste and feel like brioche.

Peter responded that among he and his friends here in St Petersburg at least, politics wasn't actually their first concern at the time. Rather, it was how to access food.

Under communist rule, all food transport, distribution and sales networks throughout the Soviet Union had been controlled by the central government. So while there was food still being grown and stored out in say, the 'Stans, there was no functioning system to move the food to cities, let alone price it. A market system eventually filled the gap, clearly, said Peter, but it didn't just pop up overnight. And during that awful vacuum, people were quite hungry and afraid indeed.

A living lesson in the fragility of food security.

But those dark days had a lighter side, it seems. International aid organizations soon parachuted into town, and distributed food on the university campus. But by this time, everyone in the city also had food ration coupons... including vodka coupons! So each week, after coupons were issued, Peter and friends -- with their campus food aid socked away -- would run around town looking for teetotalling old biddies to trade in their food coupons for the old women's vodka coupons.

"That was a fantastic time!" said Peter with a smile, amused at his own nostalgia.

Another highlight of the walking tour for me a stroll through Andreevsky Market Place (located close to Andreevsky Cathedral on Vasileostrovkaya Island), where nary a tourist (except us) was in sight.

We stop at an Uzbek bakery for meat donuts. Yes indeedy. Meat donuts. While Babs and Peter deal through the retail window, I pop my head in through the back door to get this shot of their tandoori-esque oven.

We bite into the donut, and decide we have to get ourselves out into the 'Stans at some point. One of the bakers smiles and waves at me through the door, and then hollers "I love you!"

I'm going to assume that's simply all the English he knows.

A melon stall run by a guy I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. I can't decide if telling him "nice melons" will make his smile or piss him off. On the right, some kind of sour cherry, apparently, but I couldn't get the exact name of it. Please enlighten me if you know what these are called!

Caviar for the proletariat. Red caviar is usually from salmon and trout. I developed quite a taste for these paired with blinis (Russian crepes) during our time in Russia. Couldn't afford the black (sturgeon) variety.

How many pelmeni can you count in the picture below?

Well, enough to send us on a pelmeni pilgramage after we were done with the walking tour. We found some at this no-frills eatery called Pel'mennaya (guess what they serve) on the same street as our hostel, Hostel Zimmer Smart on 2nd Sovietskaya, close to Moscovsky train station. At just 95 rubles (just under £2) a bowl, I wish we had sniffed this place out sooner.

Pelmeni turned out to be one of those instances on this journey when I went hunting for something exotic, something fiercely local, but instead found something familiar and close to home. At Pel'mennaya you can drizzle white vinegar on your pelmeni; further east we would dunk Chinese guotie and Japanese gyoza in dark vinegar and ginger slivers. In Poland these globs of comfort would be called pierogi; in Turkey and Uzbekistan manti; in Kazakhstan manty; in Korea mandu.

Where else in between and beyond do these dumplings pop up? Are they local inventions -- i.e. does every people ultimately manage to concoct some local version of dumpling, like they do booze -- or are they improvisations based on basic recipes from roaming Mongols or traders on the Silk Road? And where does the ravioli sit on this spectrum? Your answer might depend on whether you believe Marco Polo brought noodles from the Italians to China, or from the Chinese to Italy.

What do you think? I'd love to hear from you. This could be quite the lively, educational and hilarious discussion, especially over vodka... like the best of those we had in university. Now where were those coupons...

Stolle
(Various locations)
St Petersburg Russia

Pel'mennaya (rough translation from Cyrillic)
2nd Sovietskaya
St Petersburg, Russia

Tallin Tales

Simply could not get enough of this camera-friendly Nordic sunshine while in Tallinn, Estonia, in late August! Thought to share a few of my favourite glimpses and nuggets about Tallin's Old Town, some picked up from our walking tour with EstAdventures, some by meandering on our own.

Below, a sweeping view of Tallin Old Town's roof tops and spires. Across the water, a 3-hour ferry ride away, lies Finland. Apparently the ferry doesn't really need to take 3 hours, but it does so that it can maximise sales of (relatively) cheap booze to daytripping Finns!

On 20th August 1991, Estonia declared (a local might say reclaimed) independence from the Soviet Union. Large boulders such as this one below were placed at major road intersections, set up to be obstacles to the tanks that Estonians feared would roll in from Moscow.

Today, a gigantic and magnificently ornate Russian Orthodox church sits right across from the (pink) Estonian Parlianmentary building. Some locals view this as a spiteful reminder of Mother Russia's influence given 1) Those who identify themselves as native Estonians are more likely to be Lutherans, who worship in spartan church halls; and 2) the Russian government -- who is said to provide financial support for this church -- spent so much of the Communist regime suppressing religion.

An evocative outdoor theatre in Old Town.

Evidently, what people did before they had Aunt Agony columns and blogs and Twitter as ranting platforms. I love the little detail of the 3D-effect of the painting on the door.

The little lighthouse above the sign for the Maritime Museum.

A few steps from the Maritime Museum, a boy wearning a gas mask (I have no idea why) sits on the memorial that marks the tragic sinking of the passenger ferry "Estonia" in 1994 while enroute between Tallinn and Stockholm.

This little al fresco set up of an Italian restaurant took my breath away -- to the extent that I took a photo of this rather than the leg of jamon on display in the window! I don't know much about design, but I really do like the look of the wooden wine crates being used as flower pots.

Doesn't the lovely light against the medieval walls make you want to go?

Edible Plants at Tallinn Flower Festival, Estonia

While wandering around Tallinn, Estonia, in late August this year, we stumbled onto the town's flower festival, right under Tallin Old Town's much photographed towers. Delightfully, this year's theme centred on edible plants, so I thought to share some of my favourite sights from the day.

All these shots were taken on my tiny but trusty Canon Ixus 65; the close-ups using digital macro mode. I was quite pleased with the results -- a testament to Nordic sunshine!

Someday I'm going to try this at home: a curly parsley hedgerow.

Lil Miss Sunshine wins the popularity contest.

I think these are dandelions, but I'd never seen this bulbous kind before. I'm looking forward to learning how to better use them in salads and tea, when I have a kitchen again.

Not sure what this is, but thought the fractal patterns were cool.

Saved my favourite for last -- I've never seen purple cabbage look so glamourous!

Tasty Tallinn: Olde Hansa, AED, and Bonaparte Deli

Picking up where I left off chronologically on this journey, we found ouselves in Tallinn, Estonia for my August birthday weekend. The day itself was celebrated at Restaurant Ö, but Tallinn proved to be quite a tasty town at large. Here are a few highlights, if you are headed that way.

Olde Hansa

Olde Hansa -- a medieval themed restaurant named after the Hanseatic League of merchants -- might lure you in for the first time with touristy gimmicks such as waiters in Robin-Hood-style tights, lute-playing waitresses, elaborate script-font menus, and a sink that uses a tipping kettle for a tap. But it will lure you back because of the sheer quality of its cuisine.

It's a small gesture, but you can usually judge the quality of a restaurant by the bread they serve before the arrival of the meal. Here, the bread here is served not with butter, but with a generous blob of some kind of soft, creamy, savoury whipped cheese. A good omen. Food portions here are large and the cuisine is hefty, so you're going to have to wrestle with how much of that yummy cheese and bread to scarf.

Babs orders a spectacular fish platter called "Neptune's Feast". Old Hansa trumps its own whipped cheese opener by adding fish eggs to it. Medieval magic.

I order a "Game Pot" (I think some minced mix of wild boar and deer / elk), which comes with pickles, berries, cabbage, butternut squash and...just in case everything else wasn't filling enough... a pastry cement bag filled with some kind of chickpea mash or spelt. My point is, my advice above about the bread and cheese comes from experience, not preaching.

If you're dining in a group, you can apparently pre-book a medieval feast. Yet another place where we'll need to come back to with reinforcements! If you make it there before I do, I'd love to hear how it went!

Restoran AED

Call it deja vu. Jump forward a few centuries to Restoran AED (also known as Embassy of Pure Food), one of the most modern and stylish eateries in town, and what you'll find is a seasonal all-organic menu, i.e. food that was grown in ways much more akin to medieval times compared to all the chemical hocus pocus used now.

The dinner menu was out of our budget, but they have some delightful lunch bargains, best enjoyed at an outside table while basking in the Nordic sun and the fragrance of AED's herb hedge.

AED was having a carrot festival at the time. We tried the carrot and sea-buckthorn smoothie, which was an absolutely delicious and slightly less acidic twist on my much-loved carrot-and-orange juice mix. We also tried the carrot cappuchino -- a very clever take on how a drinkable carrot-and-coffee cake might taste.

AED's salads are great to look at, and deliver on taste (don't just push away the flower petal garnish; they're edible too). I can't pass up a smoked duck salad when I see one, and paired it with a beautiful beetroot soup, which I mentioned in my post on Souperb Finds in Eastern Europe.

Babs goes for their smoked trout salad, followed by a spelt pasta with rabbit. YUM.

Bonaporte Deli

Tallin's camera-friendly Nordic sunlight and its heady mix of Scandinavian, Russian, Baltic and medieval architecture make for a great day of walking around its old town. If your feet prove too itchy to sit down to eat, consider grabbing a treat to go at Bonaparte Deli (whose big brother Bonaparte is another very well known stylish restaurant in town we couldn't afford this time around).

Deli patrons -- who wouldn't look at all out of place in New York's Upper East Side trust-fund-financed apartments -- were nipping in and out collecting cake orders the entire time we were browsing. We eventually set out with a very well made anchovy and egg sandwich, and a pretty looking chicken wrap.

Snapped just in the nick of time! A very yummy Bornaparte Deli chocolate roll. Now, to walk some of this off.

Olde Hansa
Vana turg 1
10146 Tallinn, Estonia
+372 627 9040

AED (Embassy of Pure Food)
Rataskaevu 8,
10123 Tallinn, Estonia
+372 626 9088

Bonaparte Deli
Pikk 47
Tallinn, Estonia
+372 646 4024

Notes from the Narrow Band

Enjoying everything in Tanzania... except the internet signal. Posts with photos will have to be backlogged until we get back to Nairobi at the end of the week. In the meantime, a few quick narrowband notes.

Tanzania: A(rusha) to Z(anzibar)

It took 19 hours in 2 buses, half an hour in a tuktuk, 4 hours on a slow boat, 10 minutes in a taxi, 5 overnight stays, a lot of haggling, and even more bone rattling on half-paved highways to get to Jambiani beach here on the east coast of fabled Zanzibar Island.

But damn it's worth it!

The sun, the sea, the sand and the sky is every bit as ludicrous as they're hyped to be. Just the humble tide pools here are awash with hermit crabs, sea snails, sea urchins, fish egg sacs and starfish... the snorkeling this afternoon should be interesting.

And admittedly, we ate very well on the road (you can't be that surprised by now). In Arusha – pit stop for travelers headed for the Serengeti and Mount Kilimanjaro alike – we had a fantastic Pakistani BBQ. In Dar Es Salaam, we had authentic Sichuan hotpot thanks to a tipoff from G-Star, a friend from work. Zanzibar – for all its hailed exoticness, got us right in the gut because so many of its flavours and aromas remind of our Indian and Straits Chinese upbringing respectively! More detailed posts to come.

Google's Got My Goat!

In other news, I just found out that YouTube's disabled my “Babs killing the goat” video because it apparently violates YouTube Community Guidelines! How Babs could ever be a violation of a community guideline I'll never know...

Jokes aside, I'm taking it in stride because it's a fair concern. Having the full context of the blog post is one thing (and even that was understandably rough viewing for quite a few readers) and I should have made sure to make sure that context was available on the You Tube page as well. A lesson to be shared with fellow food bloggers! I've included more context on the YouTube page now, so let's see if YouTube will relinquish the video...otherwise I'll need to seek out more enlightened video hosting alternatives when I make it back to Broadband land.

But overall, I've been very encouraged by the wide range of responses to the goat post. Thanks guys! Some cheered us on as fellow foodies, some said the post confirmed their belief in vegetarianism, some said that the post was making them think about whether they were really ok about eating meat. Fantastic. It's all good, whatever decision you come to – the key thing is that the post made you more conscious about how food gets to your plate.

My favourite response, however, came from my grandmother via an email from Mum. Grandma is a constant reminder that all my adventures, at the end of the day, stand on her shoulders. Here's what Mum wrote:

“While we were at Grandma's place yesterday, uncle Steven showed her the blog on the goat slaughtering. I was observing her grimace but thought she was braver than Dad. Ming (Wen: my brother) was watching too but turned away before the end. Then she told us the story of her 1st experience of slaughtering a chicken when she was 12. The chicken got up and ran away. She stood there crying until the chicken dropped dead as there was no one around to help her. Then she went to pick it up and continued with the cleaning and cooking process amidst her tears. What a story!”

I can't wait to see Grandma when I'm back in Singapore for Chinese New Year next February.

Kenyan Goat Feast -- For Farewell Floyd: Food Blogging Event

Prologue:

• First things first. This is not going to be a pretty blog post. As a meat eater I decided it was important for me to experience something like this at some point, to see if I could face the reality of the process of getting meat to my plate. Vegetarians and animal lovers, proceed with caution.

• Thanks to Julia Parsons (A Slice of Cherry Pie) and James Brewer (Back to the Chopping Board) for coordinating this food blogging event to honour the late Keith Floyd. I was heartbroken when the original deadline passed and I had not yet gotten access to electricity and internet to post this while WWOOFing on Rusinga Island in West Kenya, but was delighted to see the deadline extension. Huzzah!

• This post is dedicated to my Dad, with whom I used to watch Keith Floyd's culinary adventures around the world. We'd always have a good chuckle at his "wing it and swig it" approach to cooking and life. I'd like to think that Dad watches me undertake my many a hare-brained adventure with a similar bemusement.

• Finally, this goat feast was very much a team effort. Thanks to Michael Odula for helping us source the goat, Samuel Odula for showing Babs how to kill it with minimal suffering, our fellow volunteers Dan and Cyrill for first raising the idea, co-financing this whopping 1,500 Kenyan shilling (~£13) enterprise, and being amazing comrades-in-arms throughout our stint. Finally thanks to the kids -- Michael Jr, Tanya, Gloria et al for being fabulous team players on the day.

So. Our fellow WWOOFer Dan walks into our living room on Rusinga Island in West Kenya one day and says "Hey I heard these WWOOFers back in July bought a whole goat and BBQed it. Are you interested in us pitching in to get one too?"

I say "YES", probably about as fast as I said yes when Babs proposed. Just possibly a wee bit faster.

And then Babs ups the ante (as he does): "Yes, but only if we buy a live goat and I get to kill the goat myself."

The week leading up to feast day was surprisingly unhyped. We simply agreed on a budget for a medium-sized goat and our homestay host Michael Odula spent a morning and an afternoon asking around if anyone in the neighbourhood had a goat from their flock for sale. He appointed his youngest son Samuel to help us through the kill.

D-Day. Our goat had arrives before breakfast. We went out to find it chilling out and snacking on a bush. Samuel reckons it weighs about 50kg. I get Babs to pose next to it for perspective.

Samuel takes the goat out to a stone plateau behind the Odula house and trusses it up. Under his guidance, Babs cuts deep into the goat's throat with Dan's camping knife. The key thing here is to cut right through the jugular. It's a steady hand and a sharp blade, and the goat stops moving in less than 3 minutes. There's less of a blood spurt than we expected.

Being behind the camera provides a strange sense of detachment but it's still a fairly intense experience watching my first food-animal kill. I wasn't sure if I would feel nauseous (I didn't) or feel huge pangs of guilt (I didn't either, given the goat had lived outdoors all its life, had a quick death, and we were damn well going to eat it nose to tail.)

It could have been scarier. Had we been with a more traditional tribe, they would have cut a pouch of skin under the goat's neck to catch the blood, then drink it as part of the ritual. I'm not ready to go that native.

A moment of solemn silence, and then Babs unties the goat in preparation for the next task...

...Skinning it. This requires some help from Michael Jr (back) and a neighbour (front) to hold up the legs while gentle but firm slits are made down the middle of the belly and down each leg.

Next, the shoulders are removed at the joints -- surprisingly easily, says Babs.

And now to remove the belly flap. This is to be done with great care so as not to puncture the stomach and contaminate the meat with half-digested stomach contents.

Samuel removes the guts into one neat pile.

Samuel and Babs section the ribs and joint the legs.

A neighbourhood dog gets a treat of spleen, lungs and kidneys. Later I remove the hooves and he comes back for those. He proceeds to follow me around for the rest of the day...hoping.

Samuel and Babs do the initial round of cleaning out half-digested greens from the small intestines. There's a lot of it. The smell, while not knock-you-out overpowering, is distinct and sticks in your head. Now I can always smell a goat (or their poop) that's anywhere in a 10m radius.

And now to empty out and scrape clean(ish) the stomach....all 4 of them.

Samuel and Babs wash and scrape fat from the goatskin, then nail it as high as they can on a nearby tree in the hope that the dogs won't get to it overnight. Idiotically we forgot this when we left -- we've asked Cyrill to wear it home to Frankfurt as a cape or something. Very Heart of Darkness, no?

Mama Odula panfries the liver for lunch on her charcoal cooker. She also stews whatever goat meat bits that won't be used for the nyama choma (Kenyan-style BBQ) dinner. The stomach and guts need a long hard soak and scrub before they'll be ready for cooking.

After lunch I get down to marinading the legs and ribs. Am keeping it simple as Floyd would have done. Wash the meat thoroughly. Place in basin. Pour Coca Cola into basin to tenderise the meat. Swig the rest of the bottle. This cooking with Coke business amuses the kids to no end. Floyd might have used local Tusker beer instead, but there was none available at our neighbourhood trading post.

Anyway, back to it. Divide 4-6 large garlic cloves into thick slices, make deep incisions in the legs, and stuff the garlic into the slits. Rub a generous amount of Royco mchuzi mix, the ubiquitous food seasoning found in these parts... Royco is a Unilever powdered concoction of constarch, salt, sugar, coriander cinnamon, fennel seeds, tumeric, ginger, garlic, cumin, methee seeds, flavour enhancers -- must be MSG I reckon -- and permitted food colouring, whatever that is.

I rope in Tanya to wave away the flies while the meat soaks.

Dan and Babs dig a hole for the fire in our "front yard" and pile up twigs and branches by size. We use dried corn cobs and corn hairs for firestarters. Not that I've ever had one, but I absolutely cannot ever go back to gas BBQ grills after this.

Waiting impatiently for the fire to reach optimum heat...

And away we go! 30 minutes of grilling, turning and basting...

And then, perfection.

Samuel was quite keen about grilling the goat's testicles...unfortunately due to the coarseness of the grill mesh Samuel accidentally dropped both into the flames while cooking them. He was quite despondent.

In the Odula living-cum-dining room, Babs carves up the legs, and Mama Odula brings in the matumbo: chopped up stomach and braided intestines stewed for hours in cooking fat, tomatoes and onions (and Royco I'm sure, judging by the colour). I try a little for my honour's sake, but it holds too strong a taste and smell of grass-half-digested-in-stomach-juices for me. Babs digs it though, having grown up with innards curry.

Gloria's had enough talk! It's time to chow down. Strictly traditional nyama choma doesn't use any wussy stuff like marinade, so our garlic adds a fabulously novel infusion to the meat.

The ribs -- between the Royco and the slow fire -- are deliciously smoky. The bits between the ribs could definitely work as a jerky snack.

Mama Odula is well impressed at how tender we've kept the meat. Mr Odula asks Babs if he's ever worked in a restaurant or a hotel.

We nearly choke on our goat laughing, but we're pleased at the compliment.

More importantly, we hope we've done the goat -- and Floyd -- justice today. A toast (of Coke) to both.

October - Kenya

By Babs

We flew to Nairobi on the 1st of October from Cairo, and stayed a couple of nights in a banda at Upper Hill Campsite in a suburb of Nairobi (ironically not Upper Hill, since they moved from there).

[banda pic to come when I can get power for my camera!]

While there, we signed up for a 4 day safari with Big Time Safaris which would take us to the Masai Mara National Reserve and Lake Nakuru National Park. The safari wasn't cheap, but we bargained it down to $100 per day (still well over our budget!) which is not too bad since the Kenya Wildlife Service charges foreigners $60 a day to visit its top rated parks and the safari includes food, transport and accommodation.



We saw an incredible number of animals at both parks.

At the Masai Mara we saw: cheetahs, antelopes, Jackson gazelles, lions, elephants, giraffes, zebra, wildebeest, hippos, crocodiles, gnus, warthogs, eagles, hyenas, jackals, maribu storks and no doubt about 100 other species that I didn't identify or have forgotten already.


Lions

Buffalo

Wabs standing either side of the Kenya-Tanzania border in the Masai MAra

Lake Nakuru was full of flamingos - it's a soda lake which a large (2 million) population of flamingos migrates to every year. We also saw white rhinos and baboons, in addition to some species which we'd already seen at the Masai Mara.

We had our safari drop us off at Nakuru town, where we stayed a couple of days, before going to Kisumu (3rd largest town in Kenya) for two nights, then getting the bus and ferry to Rusinga Island where we started our two week volunteering stint just over a week ago. We're teaching assistants at a nursery school in the mornings and working at a permaculture demonstration project in the afternoon, which is all fun, if easy work, and we're experiencing genuine rural developing country life - ie, no electricity or running water, which is trying our paitence somewhat! Only 5 days to go though!

Picnic Lunch from Riga's Central Market

Conveniently located right by the train station and international bus terminal, the colourful Central Market in Riga, Latvia, is housed in 5 gigantic Zeppelin hangars, and all the sidewalks and side streets all around and in between.

Like the other large markets we visited in Central and Eastern Europe this past August (such as Dolac Market in Zagreb, Croatia, and Stary Kleparz Market in Krakow, Poland), there was a wealth of local and seasonal produce on display by large traders and small home-producers alike.

Its clients too were equally mixed, between leathery babushka-ed housewives with old-school wicker baskets, and a peppering of younger Latvians like this leggy brunette on the right.

The mood among the vendors here, however, swung more widely than at other markets. Several fruit and vegetable sellers shoved samples at us regardless of whether we were buying, while a few dour lady butchers in their token hair-bands (think doily tiaras rather than proper hairnets) waved me away upon seeing my camera.

No matter. It was all rich pickings for a pocket-friendly picnic lunch by the river (and as it turns out, breakfast the next day as well).

Yes please to some very pretty aboli -- a kind of minature apricot as far as I could tell. No thank you to some not-so-pretty bull's ballies.

Yes please to some house-soused pickles. This lovely lady cut us a wedge from every jar at her stall to try before she let us pick what we wanted. Turns out I like 'em half-pickled and Babs likes 'em fully pickled, but we're both fans of generous use of dill and garlic.

Like shooting fish in a barrel, so they say.

We pick up a couple of smoked mackeral fillets, a little bag of seaweed salad (at least I think that's what it was) and this amusing short loaf of "boomerang bread" to make a couple of hefty sandwiches.

Wash down with a cup of kvass, preferably bought on tap from a barrel in the back of a truck! Kvass --the Slavic fast-food drink of choice since ancient times -- is made from a fermentation of bread made from wheat, rye, or barley, and sometimes flavoured with fruit, berries, raisins or birch sap.

According to Wikipedia, kvass was first mentioned in Russia over a thousand years ago, and has always been a popular drink with the working class and the clergy. Right after the fall of communism in the early the likes of Coca Cola swept into the market. In the late 90s however, a huge kvass revival emerged, partly fuelled by regional patriotism and anti cola-nisation, knocking back Coke's market share in Latvia by some 20 percentage points!

Kvass appeals without any need for patriotism, really. It has a sweet malty yet refreshing taste that hasn't yet crossed over into booze territory. I'd like to say it tastes a bit like flat root beer or saspirilla, but have decided it's a taste unto itself. Maybe those of you out there who have tried it can suggest a better description or comparison!

I fall into a fun old picnic habit: sharing the last of my sandwich with the local duckies, and then looking around, half-jokingly wondering if anyone would notice if I bagged one or two for dinner. I feel yet another Goldmine craving coming on...

Anything But A Vanilla Sky in Vilnius

To Gurm with thanks, for reassuring me that I'm not crazy!

I couldn't stop staring at the sky in Vilnius. The clouds here don't just have personality, they have violent mood swings. At one glance it'd be a heart-(or at least balloon) lifting azure, like this view of artist colony Uzupis ...

... In another glance, it'd be that particular shade of grey that foretells some disaster or tragedy of divine proportions, like at the Archcathedral Basilica below.

I'm not sure if this was originally meant to be some kind of victorious or majestic pose, but the broody Baltic sky here makes this statue of the medieval King (I can't remember his name, apologies) of these parts look like he's about to sleepwalk off a precipice.

These changing tides of light and dark became for me a metaphor of the city's own story. Now better known as a happy-go-lucky party-hardy stag do venue, it wasn't so long ago that Vilnius went through a dark era purging just about all of their Jewish population during the Nazi campaign in World War II, then lost another good chunk of its inhabitants to Soviet progroms in the post-war years.

Below is another combination of images that reminded me of the dark history just below the city's light-hearted skin: On the left, newlyweds engrave their names and wedding date on locks and attach it to Uzupis Bridge for good matrimonial luck. On the right, on the outside walls of the Museum of Genocide Victims housed in the ex-local KGB HQ (2a Auku St), are the names and lifespans of those who are believed to have been executed by the KGB inside the building. The walls cover keep going over a heartbreaking amount of space, a good number of the individuals would have been only teenagers at the time.

Food Finds in Vilnius, Lithuania

The culinary highlight of our Vilnius visit back in mid August was without a doubt Restaurant Zemaiciai (mentioned in a standalone feature and my soupy roundup of Eastern Europe), which in my mind might just be the nirvana of tavern cuisine. But I thought to also quickly share a few other food finds if you're planning to visit.

Busi Trecias, which translates to "And You're The Third", is Vilnius's first microbrewery. It offers a plethora of flavoured beers while maintaining economies of scale, by ingeniously (or sneakily?) having just a light and a dark brew, then adding a shot of the appropriate syrup for the flavour ordered. We sampled honey, lime and pink grapefruit beer, and enjoyed all 3.

The food menu has dishes with enticing names like "Witch's Tears", which eventually translates to various well-flavoured combinations of meat and stodge. Babs did have, however, a lovely grilled whole trout.

Come to think of it, for all this talk of meat and stodge, Babs and I had plenty of fish in Vilnius. There was a lot of smoked and cured herring about, and it being the start of mushroom season, there were soused girolles aplenty to go with the fish. This particular dish below was the highlight for us at Chaplin Bar (yes, named after Charlie), which had an otherwise ho-hum menu.

Another good place for herring (and food in general) is Cozy, which manages to add a splash of flash and style without compromising on the quality and generosity of the food. Cozy's renditions of the usually unphotogenic pork and mash, and lasagne (below) aren't just pretty to look at, kudos to them. There's also free WIFI, and a DJ bar at night.

Busi Trecias (And You're The Third)
Totoriu g. 18
Vilnius, Lithuania
+37...

Chaplin Bar
Labdariv g. 7/11
Vilnius, Lithuania

Cozy
Dominikony g.10
01120 Vilnius, Lithuania
+37...

Still Hard to Swallow: Visit to Auschwitz - Birkenau

The main reason I wanted to visit Krakow, Poland, wasn't food related. Rather, it was to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, on the site of the largest Nazi-run extermination camp during World War II.

Below are personal reactions to a few photos I took; by no means any kind of comprehensive write up. For more historical context, Wikipedia provides an excellent starting point.

Auschwitz-Birkenau has been a museum and memorial since 1947 -- 2 years after its liberation by Soviet troops -- but it was still unnerving to watch a group of visitors get herded through the entrance, under the infamous slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei", which translates to "Work Brings Freedom". This phrase greeted prisoners at the gates of several other concentration camps, including Dachau and Sachsenhausen in Germany, and Theresienstadt in the Czech Republic.

Electrified fences and watchtowers surround and divide camp clusters. This photo for me captures an eerie peacefulness, which in itself is disturbing, knowing that at the time Nazi guards would have shot anyone trying to escape from this vantage point, and many who lost hope would have thrown themselves at the electric fence.

Given the mass murders in gas chambers using cyanide-based pesticide Zyklon B, I found myself taking photos of any large structure with chimneys. These structures below, however, were the camp kitchens.

Our guide told us that the earliest victims of Zyklon B gassing suffered the most, as the Nazis were trying to figure out the minimum amount needed to get the heinous task done, thus dragging out the poisoning and dying process.

Many of the gas chambers were destroyed by fleeing Nazis, who knew that the arrival of Soviet troops was imminent. The ruins of the gas chambers have been intentionally left in situ. A group of young Israeli soldiers -- possibly as part of their national service stint(?) -- were visiting the site at the same time as us.

An old woman wearing the flag of Israel as a cape sits and talks with a few of the young Israeli soldiers. That their conversation is in Hebrew is the only thing I can make out. I don't know what she's saying, or whether she's the assigned guide for the group or a survivor of the camp.

The range of reactions among the visitors was an interesting study in its own right. Some started sobbing at key junctures of the guided tour. Some continued taking photos indoors and carrying on conversations on their mobiles, when both were prohibited.

This man below was quietly walking, then was suddenly overcome with emotion and sat down to compose himself.

This innocuous looking concrete pond below was one of the most mind boggling and infuriating sights at the camp for me. These ponds were built at the behest of the insurer who underwrote fire coverage for the camp. It speaks to the level of absurd forethought, organisation and corporate collusion in whole affair.

A man, his visit complete, walks towards the exit of Birkenau camp along the train tracks that brought in so many prisoners deported from various corners of Europe. It occured to me that so few individuals would have had the privilege of walking in this direction while the camp was operational.

I show the above photos in black and white because that's how I've always pictured Auschwitz (too many Hollywood movies I'm sure). I simply wasn't prepared for how lush the place looked on the mild summer afternoon we visited.

The immense size of the camp complex -- said to be 191 hectares in total (1 soccer field being about 1 hectare in size) -- is difficult to digest. The inhabitants of at least 2 towns were booted out so that the Nazis could build and carry out their operations in secrecy.

Our guide, whose grandparents lived in the area at the time, said that even from many kilometres away the smoke and ash and smell of burning flesh was hard to miss, but his grandparents said they had no concept of the scale of mass murders (more than 20,000 gassed per day). Even eyewitness reports from Polish Army Captain Witold Pilecki -- who volunteered to be imprisoned to gather information about the camp and its crimes and managed to escape -- were discounted by Allied Forces between 1940 and 1943 as exaggerations. Imagine the number of lives lost during that period because of inaction!

Imagine how many lives we, here and now, continue to allow to be lost, every time we hear of a mass injustice somewhere, and do nothing. This particular thought still sits like a rock in my gut.

Travel Tips

Many people visit Auschwitz - Birkenau with a tour group, but it's very doable to get a train or public bus from Dworzec Glowny, Krakow's main bus and train station. At the ticketing window, ask for Oswiecim (Auschwitz is the German name for the Polish town). Travel time in either direction is about 90 minutes to 2 hours, depending on traffic. A train might be more comfortable than a bus, but buses run more frequently and will drop you right at the entrance of the camp.

During busy visiting periods (designated months and hours of the day), you have to go through the camp with a guide. The guided tour takes between 3-4 hours, with a bus transit between Auschwitz and Birkenau. Then allow 1-2 hours for wandering around on your own after the guided tour.

There are regular public buses that will take you back to central Krakow. The staff at the information booth can furnish you with a schedule.

For more details, see the museum's website.

Stary Kleparz Market, Krakow, Poland

Just about when Babs was feeling like all these farmers markets looked a bit samey, my case for dawdling with a camera got renewed (whew!) when we came across these giant alien-looking discs at the traditional Stary Kleparz Market in Krakow, Poland.

After circling a few times, peering at them up close, and prodding them a little, we finally realised that these were, essentially, a large bag of sunflower seeds in their original packaging. (This may be far more obvious to some of you, but certainly not to this city girl at the time.)

To put the above in context, here's a sunflower in the middle of the seeding process, which I photographed at a flower show in Tallinn, Estonia, a couple of weeks later.

Another first-time find at Stary Kleparz Market: these luscious tomato-shaped peppers.

It being August at the time meant that locals were currently enjoying the best of 2 seasons: late summer berries, and early autumn wild mushrooms. Some stalls had mountains of both, but there were plenty of locals simply hawking just one basket of whatever they foraged or grew at home, e.g., blueberries and wild strawberries sold by the cupful.

The lack of a kitchen pained me greatly when I saw these heaps of bulbuous porcini. Fortunately, the popular Polish restaurant U Babci Maliny (which delightfully translates as Grandmother Raspberry) served up a mushroom soup that did them justice (read the post here).

The Poles take their pork pretty seriously. I'm not sure I've seen a ham display this large anywhere else. Not even in Spain. Well, not this well organized, at least.

Given Krakow is on Poland's landlocked southern side, most of the fish we saw was smoked or pickled. Up north, freshwater fish such as carp, perch and eel from native lakes are popular picks for regional cuisine.

GlobArt Hostel , where we stayed, is just round the corner from the market, which made for cheerfully cheap and downright delicious lunches, with a view of Krakow's Old Town.

A Few Prague-tical Food Tips

Ah, Prague. A city so breathtakingly beautiful that you could almost wander around all day and forget to think about food, and just revel in the fresh air and romance of it all.

Well. Only almost.

But that's what I had to tell myself at the time. Prague has a thriving gourmet scene, but many of the marquee players were well out our budget this time around. And we got unlucky at 2 Bavarian eateries we tried -- one wasn't serving food in the mid afternoon, and the other served food that was distinctly....meh.

Above: Prague by day -- view from the gardens of Prague Castle

Above: Prague by night -- view from Charles Bridge

Above: Babs peering at the Astronomical Clock in Old Town; St Vitus Cathedral at dusk

Ah well. Aside from sights, Prague did at least deliver on that one other thing for which it's known for the world over: cheap beer.

Touristy bars will charge €2-3 or more for a pint, but locals will not be caught dead paying more than €1. Apparently if you head out into the suburbs, the price keeps dropping every 20 metres.

Staropramen is the beer that's brewed in Prague itself, and after some wandering around we managed to find a basement bar that served €1 pints.

Pivnice Pod Petrinem isn't the prettiest bar, but it's fiercely local. The bar crew look like bikers, the patrons are dressed in an even mix of office clothes and paint-splattered work overalls, and everyone is chain smoking. And judging by the event flyers at the entrance and the posters on the wall, the bar is very well plugged into the local underground scene.

Perhaps a little too well plugged in for my taste.

Most first-time visitors will invariably end up at one of the atmospheric underground taverns around Old Town serving steins of beer with meat and stodge.

If you want beautifully executed Czech cuisine at a great bite-for-buck price, head over to Bar Bar. We were peering at the menu outside when an evidently regular diner said to us "just go in, it's really really good".

Even through there's African themed art on the wall and a few amusing Golem TV-light box installations (left), the restaurant has a lovely understated vibe. As does the food. Until you put it in your mouth.

The duck leg with potato dumpling was excellent -- crispy on the outside, moist and well seasoned on the inside. But the real surprise of the evening was the spaghetti. When's the last time you ordered spaghetti with tomato sauce, herbs and parmesan, and said to your dining companion, "Holy crap you have to try this" ?

Another find was Chabad Kosher Shelanu Restaurant & Deli, a good place to fortify yourself with pastrami and corned beef sandwiches as you're exploring the Jewish ghetto. (If you're going to be in Prague on a Friday night, call ahead if you'd like to partake of their Shabbat dinner.) When out and about, don't miss the heart-wrenching Jewish cemetary, a gothic mess of gravestones because people were buried 12-layers deep.

Admittedly, I've had better pastrami in New York, but yet again, this site in Prague presented its own sight to behold: a Chinese guy managing the restaurant.

A Prague-tical Travel Tip

If you're taking a train to Prague, it's worth checking to see if a JLV service is available from your originating city.

We went to Prague from Zagreb, and paid €100 each for seat-only tickets for a 14-hour overnight journey. We were told we would have to switch carriages (I can't even remember where) as our train would split at 3am. The best part was that our tickets were the old-school completely (illegibly) handwritten kind.

I had pretty much given up on sleep and comfort for the night, and was just hoping we'd get to the right carriages to actually end up in Prague.

Evidently higher beings were feeling generous. When it came time to board, we asked a train conductor to decode our tickets and point us to the right carriage. He said "well actually for just €20 more per person you can get a 2-person sleeper carriage all the way to Prague. None of this changing carriages nonsense". (Pictured left)

With A/C, power sockets, a private sink, and a shared toilet and (fully-functioning) shower to boot.

I couldn't have been happier to hear in the morning that there had been track delays overnight and we'd be a couple of hours late for our arrival.

Pivnice Pod Petrinem
Hellichova 5
Prague 1, Malá Strana, Czech Republic
+420 257 007 327

Bar Bar
Všehrdova 17,
Prague 1, Újezd, Czech Republic
+420 257 312 246

Chabad Kosher Shelanu Restaurant & Deli
Brehova 8
Prague 1, Czech Republic
+420 221 665 141

Riding in Göreme

By Babs

Well, we're now in Turkey, soon to travel to Syria, and I realise it's been a while since I wrote my own post for the blog. Well, I'm not about to catch up with this one, but thought I'd skip forward with a photo from Göreme, in the Cappadocia region of Turkey.





Have a look at the bizarre 'fairy chimney' structures in the background. They're all around the town we're staying in, and most were hollowed out and made into houses hundreds of years ago. It's quite surreal. The Göreme open air museum showcases a set of thousand year old churches hollowed out of these fairy chimneys and the surrounding cliffs.

Cooking Alaturka in Istanbul

One of the (many) things I'm keen to do on this sabbatical is to learn how to cook traditional dishes from various cuisines, be it from a family's keeper-of-recipes, or a professionally-run cooking class.

While in Istanbul, Babs and I had the opportunity to sign up with Cooking Alaturka , a €60 4-hour cooking class located right by the Blue Mosque run by Cordon Bleu alum and experienced kitchen and hotel manager, Dutch-born Eveline Zoutendijk.

The proposition: Make a 5-course Turkish meal, then sit down together with your classsmates to eat it. Practice at home with your take-home recipe booklet. Not to mention, get to play with some badass blades. Bonus! (Melf this photo's for you!)

Our merry little crew of 8 on this particular day included a 30something couple from Kent, England; a couple of Americans who work for the US governement processing refugee paperwork (who sounded like they had been to every exotic location we'd ever been to or were planning to go to), and a retired couple from Florida who regaled us with tales of how their son and daughter in law took 2 1/2 years to sail around the world. Babs and I feel pretty tame by comparison!

Right. Cay and chitchat done for now. On go the aprons, up go the sleeves.

I'll be recapping the highlights of the class, but won't share the details on the recipes here, as they are not mine to share. Happy to practise what I learned and feed you the results if you'll lend me access to your kitchen and don't mind being a gourmet guinea pig, though!

Imam Bayildi: The Imam Fainted

This fabled Turkish dish -- made from eggplant, tomatoes, onions, herbs and spices -- got its name from its effect on a certain cleric. Possibly from how amazing it tastes, possibly from seeing how much olive oil goes into making it.

Eveline shows the class how to core and peel tomatoes (lookit how RED they are!). Classmate Simon puts some muscle into machete-ing the mint.

Feyzi, Eveline's talented and tireless chef, gives Babs a lesson in putting the squeeze on sliced onions, then dollops in tomato paste and red pepper paste. The latter is made in villages all over Turkey, by cooking red peppers then sun-drying them to concentrate the flavour. I'll have to figure out where to buy this in whatever city we end up living in next.

Next, we make eggplant boats, stuff them silly, lay them in a steaming pan, and watch Feyzi lay on the olive oil...and then some, and then some. A few classmates start to feel faint...

One of the rare moments Babs bothers to photograph his food.

Etli Yaprak Dolmasi: Grape Leaves Stuffed with Meat and Rice

I've never been a fan of dolmas until right now. I've wanted to like them, but there's something about the taste that never went down well. It was just too...overpoweringly...green? Turns out, grape leaves are usually sold in brine, and the more usual way to eat them is cold. This particular dish washes the leaves and cooks them, which may explain the much mellower flavour of the leaf.

We sort the leaves by size, and fashion a stuffing of minced beef, lamb, rice, tomatoes, onions, garlic and herbs.

Eveline shows us how to roll a dolma, which I turn out to be idiotically slow at. Those of you used to rolling ciggies are likely to do better. Apparently if you are a guest in a Turkish home, the smaller the dolmas, the more honour your host is showing you, since they went through all that extra faff to make them that dainty. I can just see Babs and myself protesting "Please please we're all friends here! No need for such ceremony! Bigger is fine!"

We start a production line. Many hands make light work.

Boil in stock, then serve with yoghurt on the side. Dolmalicious.

Mantarli Sac Boregi: Anatolian Flatbread with Mushrooms and Herbs

The key to these tasty mushroom packets is the pillow casing, calledyufka. They remind me of popiah (Chinese spring roll) skin, but with more elasticity. Cut the yufka down to size, lay on the pre-pan-fried mushrooms and herbs, fold, and lightly pan-fry the packet on all sides. Restaurants are more likely to deep fry these, resulting in something more akin to samosas .

Other popular fillings among the locals include spinach or cheese. I expect if I get around to making these at home, I'll be making them with shrooms AND spinach AND cheese.

Yayla Corbasi: Meadow Soup

This hot yoghurt and mint soup turned out to be a great combination of refreshment (from the lightness of the yoghurt and mint and lemon) and comfort (from the meat stock). I'm looking forward to making more yoghurt-based soups at home, or maybe using them as a substitute for cream.

Sekerpare: Syrupy Semolina Sponge Cakes with Hazelnuts

Another production line exercise in rolling out cookie-dough balls, plonking in the hazelnuts and brushing on the egg-white glaze before they go into the oven.

My heart stops momentarily as Eveline drowns the baked cakes in sugar syrup. They are then left to sit in the syrup and soak it all in -- at commecial bakeries possibly for a day or 2. I give my heart a few good thumps to jumpstart it.

Dust with powdered pistachio and dessicated coconut. Thankfully, these tasted lighter than I thought they were going to. For all my protesting I scarf it all down, while some others at the table sensibly stop at 1.

After lunch, we peruse Eveline's little shop shelf, which offers items such as spices, home-made jam (right), ornate tea trays and even the lovely giant curved knife shown above. Try explaining that one to airport security.

The retired American couple pick up a tea tray, and Babs and I pick up a copy of Tales from the Expat Harem, a book chronicling the adventures and insights of 32 expat women from 4 continents now living in Turkey as archeologists, volunteers, artists and entrepreneurs etc.

Eveline's chapter "The Painting or the Boy" is an engaging few pages that punch through rose-tinted glasses and pinch at the raw nerves of running a business in a foreign land and culture, and grappling with managing an employee with strong similarities in work ethic and conviction, but competely opposite beliefs. I look forward to reading the other stories, and the fruition of Eveline's memoirs which she's currently writing.

As for the class, it was a very enjoyable 4 hours of getting our hands saucy and then eating our handiwork. At a class size of 8, we just about fit into the teaching kitchen, so I'm not sure how well a full class size of 10 would navigate the space. It might be ok, if you're closer to the size of the dolmas of a very hospitable Turkish host.

Eveline also runs afternoon classes than end with dinner. If you want to test her culinary credentials before signing up for the class, or just want to sample her work without learning how to cook it, her restaurant is open for lunch, and by appointment for dinner.

Cooking Alaturka
Akbiyik Caddesi 72A
Sultanahmet, Istanbul
+90 212 458 59 19

Fast Break-fasts in Istanbul

Still plowing through notes and photos from Central and Eastern Europe, but given it's already halfway through Ramadan, I thought to skip forward briefly to the action in Istanbul.

Ramadan -- or Ramazan, for the Turks -- is the annual month-long fast for Muslims. Any eating or drinking is done sans sunlight. The most electric time of day this time of year, therefore, is just as the prayer call at dusk commences, signalling the break of the day's fast. Food vendors and their customers -- having been poised at the starting blocks -- bound like coiled springs into a blur of lentil soups, mezzes and pides before digging into heavier meatier fare.

Restaurants all over town offer special Ramazan feast menus, but feeling fairly budget-battered after emerging from Russia, Babs and I mostly followed my street-urchin palette around town. I am delighted to say, Istanbul more than delivered.

Above: Evening breakfast by the fish sandwich boats at the Eminonu end of the Galata Bridge

One of the most fun, overload-your-senses way to break-fast in Istanbul is to join the crowd under the fish sandwich tents, at the Eminonu end of the Galata Bridge. Mackeral fillets are fried en-masse on viciously bobbing boats a mere few inches from you (I felt sea-sick just trying to take this photo below).

There's salt and lemon juice at every table for you to jazz up your 4-lira sandwich, and plenty of colourful pickle carts nearby if you want a side dish.

If you're good to eat on your feet, however, look for the pushcart vendors just a few steps away. This gentleman's mackeral fillets were thicker, had more bite (which means they were fresher), had that lovely irreplaceable smokiness of a charcoal flame, and cost only 3 lira.

I am still slightly sore at Babs for scarfing more than his fair share of the sandwich we shared -- he ruthlessly played the "you snooze you lose" card because I was running around snapping photos. Unfortunately, if tried by a jury of our peers, I know his defence would hold.

Only one way to remedy that. Move on to the kofte (spicy meatballs) sandwich cart a few steps on. Yes, I would like a toasted green chilli with that, please, Uncle. Absolutely gorgeous. And only 2 lira! Gawd I love this city.

What's this, what's this? A 2-grill pushcart, one for fish and one for kofte! And a DIY salad bar to boot! I found these street-cuisine geniuses at Sirkeci, right outside the entrance to the ferry to the Harem bus station across the water.

All that grilling and greens too healthy for you? How about some battered and deep fried mussels? Many touristy fish restaurants will have a mussel-stand for the casual passer-by. We found this one on Sahne Sokuk, just off Istikal Caddesi in Beyoglu.

To end your break-fast stroll on a sweet note, grab some tulumba -- deep fried dough drizzled (regularly, throughout the day... urk!) with sugar syrup. Sold as long pretzel-like rings, as below, and thumb-length stubs.

Fast Breaking News: Free Dinner at Fast-Breaking Tents

The most popular break-fast treat in town is evidently in one of the city's many iftar (break-fast) tents, sponsored by local councils. The queues start some 2 hours before dusk, and according to a friendly security guard, this tent feeds about 1,500 people a day. City-wide, Istanbul hosts some 100 tents and according to Turkish English-language newspaper TodaysZaman expects to feed some 300,000 people this Ramazan at the cost of US$15m.

In principle the iftar tents are meant to provide food for the poor and those who are not able to prepare dinner at home because of work -- according to the Muslim faith it's considered a good deed to feed those who have been fasting. It seems plenty of locals join in simply for the festive community atmosphere. We also saw a few tourists in line. In the end we decided we couldn't join in in good conscience -- our budget wasn't that battered, we're not local taxpayers, and we haven't even been fasting -- but the friendly security guard lets me poke my head in to take this photo.

Hayirli Ramazanlar, folks. Going hungry -- especially on a voluntary basis -- has never been a strong point with this particular foodie, so may God look very kindly on your faith.

Dolac Market, Zagreb, Croatia

Babs and I spent 1 night in Zagreb at the start of August, as a transit point between Dubrovnik and Prague. We spent 1 day exploring Upper Town -- made up of the historical clerical distrct called Kaptol, and the merchant and tradesman stronghold called Gradec -- and the next day wandering the parks and government monuments of Lower Town.

Smack in the middle of it all, up the steps from Ban Jelacic Square, was my favourite part of the city -- Dolac Market, where we bought and made lunch on both days for less than €4 per person.

 

Dolac Market was built between 1926 and 1930, when city authorities decided to level an inner city slum and replace it with a destination more palatable to visitors' eyes. The market is currently open from 6am - 2pm each day, and until 3pm on Saturdays.

Its centrepiece is an armada of red-and-white striped umbrellas sheltering fruit, vegetable and local craft vendors. On the far side of the square is a stairway and elevator that leads you down to 2 covered storeys of meat and cheese vendors.

The market square is ringed with cafes and bars, where you can perch and watch the grazing and haggling action, or better yet, grab a borek (cheese, spinach or meat-stuffed filo) and kava to line your stomach and clear your head sufficiently, then wade into the thick of it yourself.

We did just fall off the overnight bus from Dubrovnik, but geez, the old women around here look like they're made pretty much of the same stuff as the statue above. So, bleary-eyed schmleary-eyed! Stiff upper lip, chug another double expresso, and in we go...

Turns out, the kaleiscope of colours will jolt you awake anyway. Given it was the height of summer at the the time, there was an explosion of berries. A new find for me were these pretty yellow raspberries.

 

I'd seen curiously shaped pettipans in UK farmers markets before, but never ones of this muffin shape. Anyone know if they grow this way naturally, or if they are forced into this shape? (A long time ago as a cub reporter I covered a story on the Japanese growing cube-shaped watermelons in a bid for easier transport. Each baby watermelon would be placed in a box, and the box would be replaced with a larger one as the melon grew. I don't get the sense the idea caught on, given the amount of faff required.)

 

Another first for me -- these gorgeous beans of varying shades and speckles of purple, freshly shelled by stallholders. You'd think they were jellybellys!

 

 

On to the indoor meat section one floor below. I felt my arteries clog just at the sight of this shelf full of pork crackling (this photo's for you Jas!)

There were smoked meats and sausages everywhere, from different animals, using different spice blends, from different makers and regions.

And just in case you had a hankering for something different from all that was on offer, there was a stall that sold sausage casings and nettings for you to make your own at home.

 

And now to the cheese wing. If you hear a lot of "Sir" this and "Sir" that around here, it's not that these vendors are extra formal. Sir is the local word for cheese. The local make seems to be a mild, salty and sometimes curdy cross between ricotta and mozzerella, made simply in plastic bowls. Some had been smoked for a stronger taste. I was especially amused by the cheese cones. Sadly, these were mostly targeted at local home-based buyers and we weren't able to buy a small tourist-sized portion (or maybe we just lost too much in translation...).

We got a good taste of the goods however, as many stallholders were keen to show off their wares and give us a sample to nibble on. Hvala ti, ladies!

 

The fishmongers had their own off-shoot building. The range wasn't anything to scream about, but I was amused by this helmet-sized tuna head. Also, we saw some of the skarpina we had at Restaurant Lindo in Dubrovnik, in their original state. Very pretty.

 

On top of providing hours of entertainment, local markets are a great way to very eat well on a tight budget. We could barely eat or drink anything else after this 1.5kg slice of watermelon, bought for ~€1. The plums and blueberries would have to wait, but there might just be enough room for that half of a rotisserie chicken...

 

Souperb Finds in Eastern Europe

Sometimes I imagine what hell might be like. Firstly, I imagine it's customised, so that eternal suffering is maximised for each person. In one of my many imagined versions, it's always mid January in Eastern Europe (yes in this version I suppose hell freezes over). And the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld (or a real Nazi, given the location and history dialed to the right year) bellows at me "NO SOUP FOR YOU!" unto all eternity.

*Shudder*

It's enough to make me behave. And slurp as much soup as I can as summer winds down in Eastern Europe. I wanted to share with you my most souperb finds. The Berlin film scene has its Golden Bears; I thought I might hand out a few Golden Bowls. If you have nominees to add, I'd love to hear from you!

For Best Ensemble Performance of a Soup Menu, the Golden Bowl goes to Restaurant Zemaiciai in Vilnius, Lithuania. The richness of their soup stock blew me away, be it the very dramatic borscht with pork rib, sorrel soup with smoked meat and quail's egg, or the humble but powerfully executed potato soup. This kind of deep sweetness in a stock you can only get from a lot of lovely bones, and time. Cheating by using MSG tends to leave a hollow after-tinge. Good stock is not hard to make, but many restaurants don't have that kind of patience.

You'll know from my earlier writeup of Zemaiciai that I'm a fan; these soups are just 3 more reasons for my case.

 

For Best Art Direction, the Golden Bowl goes to organic restaurant AED in Tallinn, Estonia. Kudos for keeping this cute island of summer sprouts so pristine amid a red sea of beetroot.

 

For Best Performance Featuring a seasonal ingredient, the Golden Bowl goes to the mushroom soup at U Babci Maliny in Krakow, Poland.

Very ballsy with the boletus, and brought out in a giant bread basket to boot!

And now for a few special mentions.

For successfully making me miss every Jewish mother who ever had me at their dinner table while I was a student at Brandeis, the 2 winners are both from Krakow (natch).

CK Dezerter's beef buillion with liver balls; and U Babci Maliny's borscht with dumplings. Special congratulations to the latter for living up to its name -- Babci Maliny means Grandma Raspberry (and she has the colour on all her walls to prove it) Maseltov!

 

And last but not least, for a very special booby "Surprise Supplies" prize (say that 3 times fast), the Golden Bowl goes to the hot and sour soup by Chinese restaurant CBET BOCTOKA in St Petersburg, Russia.

My heart sank when they brought this bowl below to our table. It sure didn't look hot or sour. And it was a lot larger than the 2 small portions we ordered. Were we going to get charged for an order completely lost in translation?

 

Turns out, it WAS hot and sour soup, just not the usual gloopy orange Szechuan kind. And very delish at that! Surprise!

And yes, they didn't charge us for 2 portions. They charged us LESS. Babs and I counted the portions we had from the bowl below. We counted 6. Supplies!

The perfect tonic for being caught in the rain earlier in the day. And it made me feel souper smug for ordering our food in Chinese.

But enough with the gawdawful jokes, before it becomes your personal vision of hell. I shall repent by spending this week working on uploading my (soup) stock tips, and recipes for chicken soup, mushroom soup and tom-yum soup for you. Look out for them!

Zemaiciai
Vokieciu gatve 24
Senamiestis, Vilnius, 01013, Lithuania
+370 5 2616573

Restaurant AED (Embassy of Pure Food)
Rataskaevu 8
10123 Tallinn, Estonia
+372 626 9088

U Babci Maliny
Ul. Szpitlana 38
Krakow, Poland
+48 12 421 4818
(Note: Most guidebooks -- even the restaurants own website -- still show a Slawkowska 17 address, but this location has closed. Thanks to the kindly building security guard who sent me on to the Szpitlana location)

CK Dezerter
Braka 6
Krakow 31005, Poland
+48 12 422 7931

CBET BOCTOKA
2nd Sovetskaya 12
St Petersburg, Russia
+7 812 717 2511

Restaurant Ö, Tallinn, Estonia

This is a "thank you" post to my parents, who generously sponsored my birthday dinner in Tallinn, Estonia, last weekend.

Not wanting to squander the opportunity to wander off our normal travel budget, I did some digging around before picking Restaurant Ö, based on a recommendation by Estonian food blog Nami-Nami.

Restaurant Ö is an up and coming establishment cheffed by Roman Zastserinski, who is dedicated to bold and beautiful experiments based on what's local and seasonal in Estonia and among its Nordic neighbours. The experiments are evidently successful -- he and the restaurant have been picking up accolades like the locals pick up mushrooms this time of year.

We open with a Poltsamaa martini -- an apple martini with an orange rind twist. I'm liking this place already.

A bread basket comes around, along with a dollop of lovely herby soft cheese.

A little pre-starter from the house: White-fish caviar with cauliflower cream; and beetroot broth. The briny fish eggs were a brilliant splash against the (in this case appropriately) bland cauliflower canvas.

Starters: Scallops with beetroot and fried cheese; amazing king crab with quail eggs (with diabolically soft boiled yolks!) and rhubarb batons.

Intermission: A little palette cleanser from the house -- green apple and pine shoot sorbet. We throw a little local Viiru Valge vodka into the mix.

Absolutely superb. A spa treatment in a saucer. I was tempted to plop some of the sorbet into the vodka, just for kicks (I love a boozy slushy) ... but out of respect decided to leave tonight's experimentations to the chef.

The mains: Rabbit in little fillets, and mixed in with apple and poppyseeds in a tart, with chanterelle sauce.

Pigeon and piglet confit. Perhaps an unusual observation, but given how geogeously luxe the pigeon and pork belly were, what really jumped out was the cabbage, which was pretty much uninterfered with. It was a wonderful counter-balance. Given the central placement of the cabbage on the platter, is it waxing too lyrical to suppose that the pigeon and pork were actually a reverse-psychology backdrop to showcase the humble cabbage -- a staple everywhere in Eastern Europe -- as the true centrepiece?

Dessert: Chocolate fondant, with sea-buckthorn ice-cream. I ordered it mostly because I had absolutely no idea what sea-buckthorn was.

Turns out it's a tart, citrussy berry jam-packed with vitamin C. I went back through my archives and realised I had taken a photo of sea-buckthorn berries at the Central Market in Riga, Latvia, not having any idea what they were (see photo below). So this turned out to be a lovely Estonian take on the traditional combination of chocolate and orange.

All in all, a terribly tasty way to turn 31 in Tallinn.

Restaurant Ö
Mere Puiestee 6E
Tallinn 10111, Estonia
+ 372 661 6150

Restaurant Zemaiciai, Vilnius, Lithuania

Imagine a wooden platter. Strips of fried bread. Chunks of cheese. Cloves of raw and pickled garlic. Slices of pig tongue. Crunchy strips of pig ear. Wedges of snout sausage. A separate platter has a long strip of crispy pork belly, part-cut at intervals, so it's easily torn into chunks. Soused herring and girolles. Goose crackling. Pickles of all sorts.

And that's just the beer snacks. To go with the long line of pints. With doubleshot vodka chasers.

Then out comes the main course. It's called "Pitchfork". Because a life-size pitchfork is used as a meat skewer. Its 3 prongs hold 6 palm-sized steaks; 2 beef, 2 pork, 2 chicken, each about an inch and a half thick. The drippings get caught by a platter of roasted courgettes, eggplant, tomatoes and potatoes on a wooden platter, held below the pitchfork leaned and fixed at an incline.

This is the exact moment I missed you -- my lovely fellow food dorks -- most (among many moments) on this trip so far. This is why we all need to go back to Vilnius in Lithuania, to the cellar tavern Zemaiciai. So that we can order the same. So that I don't have to just gawk shamelessly at the table of 5 portly and increasingly ruddy-faced Lithuanian "uncles" seated at the table next to us. With enough of us, we might even be able to order other things on the menus. Magical things called "Half-metre eel" and "Half-metre sausage".

But you're not here. So on this evening Babs and I are destined for humbler fare. Namely, the Zeppelin platter aka the Stodge Sampler -- potato derivatives done 5 ways: 1) Pancakes; 2) Plain boiled dumpling, 3) Meat dumpling, 4) Curd cheese dumpling, and 5) Mashed, stuffed with mincemeat, then breaded and fried. Served on a bed of mild horseradish, and with a bowl of sourcream.

It's occured to me I've never seen Babs thump his fist on the table to motivate himself to keep eating through the pain -- the result of eating everything on his preceding very delectable herring starter plate. Yes, including the 3 boiled potatos, and all the sourcream in the onion cup.

But he did eat through the pain. We both did. And waddled back to our hostel feeling (and no doubt looking) like Zeppelins. And then! Came back the next day for lunch, backpacks and daysacks and all, just before we got on the bus to Riga.

And this time we sat outside. And got the beer snacks. Wahey!

We stank on the bus all the way to Latvia. And couldn't stop grinning the entire way.

But we still need you to pitch in on the mains.

Zemaiciai
Vokieciu gatve 24
Vilnius, Lithuania
+370 5 2616573

Dubrovnik's Edible Adriatic Aquarium

A few of my favourite fellow food dorks and I recently started an annual summer tradition I like to call "Melfi Mayhem". Using our friend Melf's birthday as a launchpad, we'd pick an idyllic location to eat, drink and be very very merry. The inaugural party in 2008 was on The Almalfi Coast in Italy, and this year we pounded the pintxos bars in San Sebastian in the north-east corner of Spain. We may have to take a meaty meander to Buenos Aires next year, but I have officially submitted Dubrovnik as a location candidate for 2011.

The pitch: Sapphire blue waters for swimming (still with various types of fish to keep you company no less, so go while you can), vermillion sunsets, an on-the-ball but chilled out service culture, and quite the formidable edible Adriatic aquarium, at reasonable prices.

Here are 3 fine fishy finds from the recce trip.

Konoba Lokanda Peskarija

This was a great first stop in Dubrovnik, thanks to the advice of our fabulous hostess at Rooms Olga. Located at the old fish market harbour, Konoba Lokanda Peskarija won us over with big pots of fresh local product at fair prices. Below, I play peekaboo with mussels while Babs parses out the risotto. The style of the risotto is more reminiscent of Portugal than Italian risotto or Spanish paella. Apparently the risotto ala terroir is the squid ink kind; I didn't order it only because I find the stuff really addictive and could end up eating it at every meal for our remaining 4 days (like I did on previous occasions in Barcelona and Venice).

Orsan

You can dine at the water's edge (literally) at Orsan, located at Dubrovnik's local yacht club, another recommendation from the owners of Rooms Olga. The octopus salad was beautifully crunchy, unlike the soggy and slightly powdery renditions in too many London locations. After hemming and hawing over mains, Babs and I embraced our indecision and got the seafood platter, with roasted squid, 2 kinds of fish and mussels. Oh for the days of a yuppy budget. Ah well. Sandwiches and fruit for lunch tomorrow it is, then.

Restaurant Lindo

Between getting a very late start and then getting off at the wrong bus stop -- which meant walking for another 30 minutes slightly uphill in the hot and muggy afternoon heat -- we got to Restaurant Lindo at the fairly awkward hour of 3.30pm for lunch. Their hospitality was as old school as their Croatian menu, thankfully.

The fish soup was simple but strong, and Babs is keen to replicate their home-made bread. Very unfortunately because we were between meal shifts I didn't get to try their slow roast meats (kept in a heavy iron pot and covered in hot ash on an open fire) as those need to be ordered in advance, but I was sufficiently placated by the house-special salad of tomatoes (at the height of their season in town judging by everyone's garden patches), cucumbers, onion, shrimp and a light yoghurt dressing. Think Indian raita pimped up with shrimp. I'll need to try making this when I have kitchen access again.

The waiter offers to fillet our grilled scorpion fish for us. We can't shoo him away fast enough. On the right is swiss chard cooked with potato, a popular local stodge-&-greens-in-one side dish.

After lunch, a little jaunt in a laser. I sit up front, clinging to the mast like Odysseus before sailing into siren-land. We scheme about coming back here sooner rather than later. Next time, up and around the Dalmation islands. With a bigger boat. And friends.

Konoba Lokanda Peskarija
Gorica Sv. Vlaha 77
20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia
+385 20 324747
(Couldn't get Gmap to pintpoint well, but this is easy to find. Just ask locals for the old fishmarket harbour, where the tour boats to the islands come and go)

Orsan
Ivana Zajca 2 (at the yacht club)
20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia
+385 20 435 933

Restaurant Lindo
Iva Dulcica 39, Babin Kuk
20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia
+385 20 448 351
(Follow directions to the President hotel resort. The restaurant is part of the accompanying low-rise retail complex)

A Spot of Dalmation Meat...

...From the Coast. Not the Dog. Which is what a teenage tourist sitting at a nearby table in Dubrovnik thought, with much indignance and too much volume. Babs and I strained not to snigger.

Anyhow, if you're in these parts -- and want a break from scarfing down the Adriatic aquarium (more on that soon) -- there are at least 2 Dalmation meat dishes you should try, which we did at Elirija, a tiny 5-table aromatic oasis of grilling meat in a street-long empire of cheap pizza in Dubrovnik's Old Town.

Cevapcici is ground meat spiced with salt, pepper, garlic, cayenne pepper and paprika, a touch of baking soda, and sometimes a drop of anise. Then fashioned into either fingers (as pictured below) or burger patties. Some chefs make it just with beef, others I hear use a beef-pork blend. I've had what is called a Hemingway burger at Cork & Bottle, a little wine cellar in Leicester Square in London, which uses a diabolical blend of beef, pork and lamb for its burger patty. When I eventually try making cevapcici at home, that's the blend I might experiment with. (Whaddaya know, a quick search for cevapcici recipes online showed exactly this pimped up 3-meat blend.)

Raznjici is simply chunks of pork on skewers, with similar seasoning.

Grill both, preferably on an open charcoal fire. Slather on an orangey red-pepper paste that is sweeter than it is spicy. Especially amazing when the grease is balanced out with rough-chopped raw onion. So we stink for hours afterwards. It's worth it.

For a grill with a view, climb as far as the stairs will take you up the city walls to Lady Pi-Pi, a magical grapevine-covered terrace overlooking Dubrovnik's Old Town, named after the statue on your right side of the photo below.

In Zagreb, a hefty cevapcici in a doughy wrap from Mrvica M Grill (a greasy spoon at the elbow of the road from the central bus station and the road from the central train station) at ~€3.50 a person was the perfect antidote to dinner the night before at Trilogija. Situated right by the Stone gate (Kamenita Vrata), Trilojia had interesting ideas e.g. seabass and squid-ink noodles, but unforgiveably bland execution. Given its menu's ambitious prices, the chef ought to be sent to the doghouse.

Elirija
Getaldiceva 10
Dubrovnik, Croatia

Lady Pi-Pi
Vl. Dinko Minjkovic
Peline
Dubrovnik, Croatia
+385 9 709 8644

Mrvica M Grill
Kneza Branimira 67, Tržnica Branimirova
Zagreb, Croatia
+385 461 4484

Cork and Bottle (for the Hemingway burger)
44-46 Cranbourn St
London WC2H 7AN, UK
+44...