The Wombats' World Tour

Alookar roti

2010-09-20T06:51:00.000+09:00

Somehow despite my love of flatbreads and South Asian food, I've never made parathas. Why I decided to finally get around to it late on Sunday evening before my first full week of school and work, I'm not sure, but luckily it turns out they are really easy as well as delicious.

The recipe I used was from Mangoes and Curry Leaves by Alford & Duguid (as usual), and is particular to Rajasthan, though I am sure there are close cousins to the recipe all over North India. You make parathas using a basic chapatti dough, and aside from making the filling, they're not really more work than plain chapattis, so I predict lots of experimenting using leftover fillings from other projects. In this case I didn't have anything made, and so followed the spicy potato filling recipe (similar to the stuffing in a masala dosa).

Not having any atta flour on hand at the moment, I made my dough with a mixture of local red spring whole wheat flour and regular all-purpose. The recipe says that leaving the dough to rest for longer than the usual 30 minutes, up to 2 hours, will make it easier to handle. Luckily I was making an eggplant dish and a sprouted kala chana (black chickpea) dish at the same time, so I had plenty of resting time :P

I made the potato filling by boiling potatoes, frying the spices in a little oil and then mixing in the roughly-mashed cooked potatoes. I added some coriander and mint at the end when the mixture had had some time to cool.

Assembly was easy and fun, the kind of work that makes me love making flatbreads so much. You just divide and roll out the chapatti as usual, but spread on some filling, roll up the dough around it, flatten it, and roll it out again. I experimented with a few different ways of spreading and rolling to try to evenly cover up the filling, but even where it poked through the end results were fine.

I oiled a heated frying pan and cooked them for a few minutes a side, brushing more oil on as necessary. Et voila! They were incredible, with a crisp outer texture and soft very spicy filling.

I just ate the last ones today, a week later, and they were nearly as good as freshly made. I found that microwaving them was a bit of a waste as it destroys the textural contrast and affects the flavour a bit. However, just as with plain chapattis, panfrying them in a dry pan on each side till heated through revivifies them beautifully.

On the first day I ate them with eggplant curry and kala chana dal, but on later eatings I spread them with some yogourt cheese I pressed myself, and some homemade bean sprouts (I have recently become completely addicted to sprouting things) and rolled up, they made an amazing light lunch.

Viva la paratha!

Return by way of an easy weekend lunch

2010-09-20T06:34:00.002+09:00

I finally paid a visit to HMart, the Korean supermarket in the middle of downtown Vancouver, last Sunday after a trip to the Central Library. When I'd finally struggled home through the rain, it was to a bowl of cold green noodles in broth, with some steamed shanghai bok choy and stirfried king oyster mushrooms. The day before my first class...

The noodles were tasty, though very chewy, and the broth was a bit sweet but with the fiery chile paste to add in, it was a pretty good instant meal. Especially with dark leafy greens in't.

Biscotti

2010-07-04T16:02:00.000+09:00

It's a bit silly to keep harking back to my culinary heyday in Montréal, but the fact is that I had lots of good cooking habits then. One of them was always, always having a large glass jar of biscotti on the counter. I've been thinking of it dreamily for a few weeks, but today I finally got around to making them again.

My biscotti jar held quite a variety over the years, but I tended to make a few beloved recipes over and over. My all-time favourite is the Anise-Almond Biscotti from Epicurious. I make a few changes, such as using at least six times the amount of spice, but using whole toasted fennel seeds rather than ground anise. And putting chocolate in one of the two loaves. But otherwise the recipe produces a crisp, golden, crunchy but not hard cookie that keeps for weeks and goes so beautifully with coffee, with tea, for breakfast, in a long golden afternoon sitting with a book on the balcony...

The biscotti came out of the oven into a golden afternoon, but I was just dashing out. So it was in the golden evening, after sighting the sweetpea, that I sat out in the backyard with my espresso and little pile of biscotti and little pile of books. To good old habits rekindled.

Sweetpea

2010-07-04T15:52:00.000+09:00

My poor little garden is mostly quite sad, a combination of my inexpertise and the chilly spring we've had that's extending into summertime. But tonight I got home to a beautiful golden evening after a cloudy day, and when I stepped onto the balcony suddenly there was an explosion of colour. Out of nowhere, from shy green tendrils, the first sweetpea flower! All summer in a blossom.

Vegetarian Fusion #474

2010-07-04T15:49:00.000+09:00

Some days I just cook a lot. Fresh pita, with roasted red pepper puree, and sweet potato-chickpea experimental falafelcakes (made from a puree of the salad pictured earlier) with fresh coriander, and Moroccan carrot salad. It was one of those days where everything tastes exactly perfect, and the only sad part was I didn't finish it all till 11pm and everyone else had gone to bed, so I had no one to share it with. Many more experimental falafelcakes are in the offing - but then, anything tastes good with roasted red pepper puree.

My roommate

2010-07-04T15:44:00.001+09:00

Despite the weather

2010-07-04T15:43:00.000+09:00

At least we can have summer on our plate. Local fruits, all!

Pita Meringue

2010-07-04T15:39:00.000+09:00

I had the urge to make pita, which is surely one of those acts that gives the greatest joy with the least effort. Since I was also roasting vegetables and taking names, I let the sponge sit for a few hours and ended up with...beaten egg whites. I have made bread hundreds of times and I have never seen such a light, airy sponge. It really did look like egg white only with gluten-strand patterns in it. Whether it was the ambient yeasts or a really fortuitous set of proportions, it made fabulous pita (which did not taste eggy).

Vegetarian Fusion #473

2010-07-04T15:24:00.000+09:00

Or something. Anyway, quick supper inspiration from disparate items languishing in the fridge. A fresh corn tortilla sprinkled with cheddar and then topped with the leftovers of a sweet potato-swiss chard-chick pea salad. After heating it up, I scattered it with chopped farmer's market tomato (so juicy!) and thinly sliced raw red cabbage. Mmm. I didn't make the corn tortilla, alas, but the locally-produced packaged kind are still great to have around. They last for ages and have so much flavour.

Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 10: Sakhoo!

2010-06-27T09:42:00.006+09:00

It's been a hard few weeks for the project. Well in fact, for two weeks I didn't even make an attempt to make noodles - noodle apathy! - and furthermore I suddenly got so busy I started to think about giving the whole thing up. I've had fun trying these different noodles, but it didn't seem so pressing anymore to keep going. Then this Saturday worked its habitual cooking magic and suddenly I was trying what's probably the weirdest one so far for the Western palate - sakhoo or Northeast Thai/Issaan-style tapioca dumplings.

Making the dough is very simple and yet was a little nervewracking. All you need to do is boil water, pour a packet of tapioca pearls into a bowl, and stir the water in bit by bit. That's it! But then the recipe (from Alford & Duguid's Hot Sour Salty Sweet) calls for "kneading to a smooth paste". Well. I wasn't sure if the pearls were supposed to dissolve or what, but all that happened was that I turned them out onto the counter and had a therapeutic hand massage pressing down on the pearls, while the liquid gradually thickened and got stickier - not so much of the smooth or the pasty. Eventually I gave up and returned as much as I could to the bowl, letting it rest for the prescribed hour. I figured if it proved impossible to work with I could do something else with the filling.

The filling. The recipe is for sakhoo sai moo, but of course my version would have to be mai moo since I don't eat pork. So, sakhoo sai phak. There were lots of things starting to look a bit sad in the vegetable drawer, so I ended up with a large pot of beet greens, red cabbage, carrot, oyster mushroom, tofu (pressed this time!), and flavoured with onion, garlic, ginger, green onion, fresh chile, rice vinegar and fish sauce. I wasn't entirely happy with the result but it wasn't bad either.

Moment of truth! I returned to the bowl of dough and to my surprise it was a cohesive entity, albeit a frail-ly bonded one of separate little white balls. Still, I was able to turn it out onto an oiled surface, divide it in two, roll it out to a tube and slice it up into 32 rounds. From there, the assembly: each slice is patted out to a disk between oiled palms, then stuffed with a small teaspoon of cooled filling and sealed into a little round ball.

It's a good thing that the recipe urges patience, saying that little cracks will seal up in the pot, because my dough was cracking and falling apart all over the place. I only managed a few dumplings that were fully sealed with no filling on the outside, but somehow each dumpling managed to stick to itself as a little unit.

I lined a steamer tray with cabbage leaves and put the first 8 dumplings into a pot, and hoped for the best. And, miraculously, it all worked! In about 15 minutes, the dumplings turned translucent and though some did fall apart a bit, I was able to pry them all off the cabbage leaves and cook the remaining three batches.

The result was one of the weirdest things I've cooked in some ways, and it was also really yummy. The tapioca was a dense chewy outer layer that set off the strongly flavoured filling very well. Though I didn't actually serve them in any formal sense, just brought one upstairs to be sampled and otherwise ate at the counter while cooking and cleaning up, I did eat them South-East Asian style in method at least. I got some ginger mint from the garden, wrapped each dumpling in a lettuce leaf and sprinkled it with the mint and some nam pla prik, fish sauce with chile. Oh man. I'm a little homesick for South-East Asia right now.

Anyhow, weird and wriggly they may be, but I feel revitalised by sakhoo, and whether I catch up on the three weeks I'm behind on, or just sally on, the project isn't dead yet.

Sprouted flatbread

2010-06-27T09:09:00.007+09:00

Way back in my bread heyday, circa 2005, I made this interesting bread called pitti, from the Hunza Valley in Pakistan (from an Alford and Duguid book, naturally - Flatbread and Flavours). What's so neat about it is that you don't make it from flour but instead from whole sprouted wheatberries; they are almost the only ingredient, with dried apricots and salt. They were really delicious, but I remembered them being a bit of a pain and never made them again.

Looking back with a bit more perspective, I realised that though they do take 2-3 days, there's hardly any work involved (if you have a food processor, that is), and the only thing about them that I had found annoying was having to scrape sticky wheatberries off a dishtowel over and over again while they sprouted. Being the granolaesque West Coasters that we are, in this kitchen we have sprouting trays which would remove that aspect entirely, so I've been meaning to make these since I got back from Asia.

The other day I finally got around to picking up some wheatberries at the local bulk food store and was in business! Wheatberries have nothing to do with berries - they are just whole, dried grains of wheat. You can also soak and then boil them and eat them as a grain, in salads, etc; they are featured in the Ukrainian Christmas dish kutia, mmmm. The cooked grains are also a great breakfast heated and topped with a small spoonful of maple syrup, for a Canadian adaptation.

The first step is to immerse the berries in cold water and let them sit for 18 hours. As easily done as said, except the timing part. For the past weeks I have been unaccountably busy and ended up having to let them soak for more like 22 hours. No big deal. After this, you rinse them off, and then either put them in a bowl and cover them with a towel and plate or lid, or if you have sprouting trays you just pop them in. Every 8-12 hours, you rinse and drain them again, until the sprouts are 1/3 as long as the berries themselves, at which point you're ready to make the dough.

This was a little more problematic for me, as try as I might I couldn't summon up the energy to deal with them after work on Thursday when they were already ready (I expected them to take till Friday). When I did get to them at 11pm on Friday, they had sprouted beautifully and the sprouts were now 2-3 times the length of the berries! Oops! I decided to go ahead and make the dough anyhow.

I did have to deal with one hated dishcloth manoeuvre, pouring the berries out and patting them dry, but once I can handle. Then it was into the Cuisinart, 2 cups at a time, with some dried apricots and salt. You process it until it starts moving around the bowl as one lump of dough. The grains are mostly ground up though some unevenness remains. At that point you need to let the dough rest for at least an hour - or, like me, pop it in the fridge, clean up the sticky mess, and collapse gratefully in bed.

This morning I brought the dough back to room temperature and preheated the oven. Then it was time to divide up the dough and on a floured surface roll out little round flatbreads about 1/4 inch thick. They rest on a baking tray, then bake until firm but still flexible. The result is a dense, chewy bread with soft apricot patches and chewier pockets of grain. When toasted and spread with goat cheese, it makes a fabulous breakfast.

The raw dough smelled sharper and greener for the over-enthusiastic sprouting, but there's not much flavour difference in the baked breads. And they are indeed rather delicious - I might not wait 5 years to make them again this time.

Brunch date: Weekday edition

2010-06-27T09:05:00.003+09:00

My theory is it counts as brunch if it's tasty. Quick scrambled eggs with shallot, asparagus, and young pea shoots, toast from my potato-water bread, and the sharp angled shadows of early morning. Best when eaten in a dressing gown.

Apian Haven

2010-06-27T09:01:00.002+09:00

I'm not the only one who enjoys the purple flowers erupting all over the sage, thyme, and lavender. The bumblebees buzz back and worth all day, wriggling their little bottoms in sheer nectar ecstasy.

Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 9: More gnocchi

2010-06-27T08:54:00.003+09:00

It's not very adventuresome I know, but those first gnocchi were so tasty that I couldn't resist returning to them. There was a large quantity of spinach just starting to go, and my first thought was malfatti which I have yet to try making, but since we had no ricotta and we did have potatoes, regular potato-spinach gnocchi it was.

The method was pretty much the same as the plain potato; you just chop up the washed spinach and mix it into the potatoes around when you mash them. It did make the dough rather moister, so it was a bit trickier to work with, and the end texture a little less perfect, but it was still fun and tasty.

To eat them, I panfried a portion up with nothing more than a little butter, a lot of sage, and a healthy chunk of sheep feta. And it was DIVINE.

Somehow no one else was around and eating, so I worked my way through the whole batch, admittedly getting a little less enthused as the week wore on. But they were also good with salmon and roasted onion and fennel, with herbs and tomato, and just blandly microwaved with parmesan and pepper overtop on a particularly tired day. Mmmm gnocchi.

First Harvest

2010-06-27T08:52:00.003+09:00

In a slight mystery, the swiss chard that I whimsically planted in a small pot between two chile plants is growing by exuberant leaps, while the plants that have lots of room to spread out in the earth are peaked and piny. Is there anything better for the homecook than to walk into the kitchen bearing the fruits (and leaves) of things she's planted with her own hands?

Springtime in purple and green

2010-06-27T08:49:00.002+09:00

It may officially be summer, but with all the cold grey weather we've been having, the garden is just starting to wake up. Suddenly the herb garden is awash in purple flowers, and seeing those little buds of lavender makes it easy to hope that we'll have warmth again here, soon, too.

Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 8: Spätzle

2010-06-27T08:20:00.006+09:00

It's not that I thought making spätzle would be particularly hard, but I couldn't really believe how little time it took - 20 minutes after I had started whisking the batter together, I was sieving the last little dumplings from their boiling pot. Perfect spätzle doubtless take a lifetime, but I'm here to tell you that delicious, light, chewy egg noodles can be yours in less than half an hour.

I felt like doing something a bit different, and now that my sister's Joy of Cooking has moved back into this house, knew that there would be at least one spätzle recipe there. For a basic spätzle, you stir together flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg, then beat in milk and eggs to make a liquidy batter (Joy describes it as "elastic"). Boil a big pot of water or stock, drop little squiggles into the water a few at a time, and rescue them when they float to the surface (which happens quite quickly). Finito! Much easier than pie.

Now for the notes. Making the batter was of course easy, the only difficulty in knowing what the consistency should be. Joy says to taste the first few to make sure they are light and delicate rather than heavy and dense - adding more water or milk is supposed to lighten them. Mine always were quite light but I did end up adding quite a bit more milk (there was the end of a bottle going bad). I used skim for that reason, sort of a compromise between milk and water though usually I'd prefer to cook with 3.25%.

The only real difficulty was shaping the spätzle. It didn't really matter that they were uneven in size, since it's easy to strain each out as it is cooked. It's just that by dropping them from a spoon I ended up with rather distressingly spermatozoidal noodles. I was recounting this to a friend later and she pointed out that I could just push the batter through a slotted spoon - next time!

As for eating - well, they were delicious. We have whole nutmegs in the spice drawer, and grating even that small amount in made a huge difference in flavour - it subtly permeated the mouth without being in any way cloying. My mother and I kept snacking on them plain from their platter, but we also ate them in minestrone and they went beautifully there. It is important to not pile them on each other after you fish them out - they don't stick to each other, but they do keep steaming and get a bit soggy that way.

So if you visit this blog hoping for a weeknight noodle, this is the clear winner so far - quick, easy, forgiving and pairing well with lots of dishes. There were quite a few other dumpling recipes in Joy, so I'll have expand my horizons. I don't think I've even tasted U.S. Southern-style cornmeal dumplings - unless they're akin to those amazing dumplings at Jamaican restaurants in Brooklyn? Ah, The Islands, how I miss you and and your okra 'n codfish, and your charming staff that make one not mind that one has to wait two hours for supper.

Bandits

2010-06-10T10:31:00.001+09:00

Who was that masked cake-eater? (No, I don't mean the emu.)

Peonies

2010-06-10T10:29:00.002+09:00

The Cake!

2010-06-10T10:21:00.003+09:00

And here is the cake in its full glory. First a closeup on the "experimental" placing of a square on top of a circle (two circles = three layers total), and my "hipster messy hair" approach to spreading the buttercream.

Then a cross-section:

Here you can see the layers - white cake brushed with lavender syrup, layered with lemon-chocolate ganache and lemon curd, and topped with lemon buttercream and lavender meringues. The lavender flavour didn't come through that well, but the cake is pretty tasty - even now, a week and a half later.

Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 7: Failure!!!

2010-06-07T10:18:00.009+09:00

It had to happen sometime. And actually, as failures go, this was fairly unsuccessful, in that it wasn't all that bad. For one thing, I made the failed noodles the same day that I pulled a 16-hour kitchen marathon, so that I was too tired to care whether they tasted good or not, I was just happy to stop making food. And for another reason, they didn't qualify as a kitchen disaster. Disasters, like my attempts to make dosas and injera, have to make a horrible mess that takes hours to clean up, or at least ruins some piece of kitchen equipment. Or at a minimum, they have to use up ingredients too costly to replace. All that happened here was, I made the noodles, and they didn't taste good. Moving on!

The noodle in question was the Hand-Rolled Rice Noodle, and I actually really enjoyed making them. I kneaded together the dough of rice flour, salt and water, before starting the cake layers for my mother's fancy birthday cake. The blob of dough sat resting while I worked my pastry wiles, then I did the shaping and cooking all in the time that the egg whites and sugar syrup for the buttercream were being combined and cooled in the stand mixer. So, another quick and easy recipe.

They were fun to shape, too. With slightly oiled hands, I pinched off pieces of dough, rolled them between my hands into a ball, and then into a tapered cylinder, fat at the centre in the space between my palms and thinner, pointed at the edges. This technique also felt pleasantly intuitive, except that despite repeatedly re-oiling my hands, the dough kept unpleasantly sticking, and didn't seem to be of the right texture. Sure enough, when it came to the boil, I just couldn't cook them to a pleasant texture. It's possible I missed the crucial window, but I think they segued gracelessly from undercooked to overcooked and mushy, with nothing of the spring and bite you'd expect from a rice noodle.

I had made a quick salsa to go with them, Market Stall Fresh Tomato Salsa also from Beyond the Great Wall, which was flavoured with sesame oil and chives and was really delicious. So I mixed my mushy sad little blobs of noodle with the salsa in a bowl and tried to eat them. The flavour wasn't bad, but I had this unpleasant insecurity about whether or not I was eating raw rice somehow, so I eventually gave up. After sampling syrup, curd, ganache, cake batter, buttercream, and meringues all day, it's not like there was much room left for real food anyway.

I have two theories about the failure. One is that right from the get-go I knew the dough was too wet. The instructions explain that it will be stiff and hard to work and mine wasn't - maybe I put too much water in, and if I'd kneaded in more flour as I thought of doing initially, it might all have been ok. The other problem is that I was using schmancy organic brown rice flour from the US rather than standard white rice flour. The former was probably long or medium grain instead of a stickier shorter grain Asian rice, so maybe it was just not great for the recipe. I've now acquired some plain rice flour and I'll be sure to try again...

Cake experiment

2010-06-07T10:11:00.005+09:00

I can't believe how much I cooked last Saturday. The most complicated thing was inventing a new cake for my mother's birthday. It's shown here in an intermediate stage on Saturday night, about 14 hours after I started cooking that morning.

So far, it's a basic white cake from Joy of Cooking, brushed with a lavender syrup I made from the herbs in our garden. The cake layers are brushed with lemon-chocolate ganache and lemon curd, about to be popped into the fridge to let them set a bit before receiving their final coating of lemon buttercream.

The innovation (besides putting a square cake layer on top of two round ones, a decorating choice that was more original than successful but ah well) was mostly in the lavender syrup, since otherwise I just modified existing recipes (replacing orange with lemon). Unfortunately the lavender flavour didn't come through enough. Even though I felt like I'd saturated the cake layers thoroughly, there was room for more moisture there and that would have helped - plus it's too early and cold for there to be lavender blossoms so I just had to use the leaves which yielded a less intense flavour. What I really needed to do was make a lavender buttercream, but after all those hours in the kitchen (and with 3lbs of butter at stake) I wasn't prepared to do it without a recipe...next time.

Brunch date: Birthday feast à deux

2010-06-07T10:01:00.005+09:00

Last Saturday was Maman's birthday and as it's also her wedding anniversary, we decided to have a special brunch together rather than dinner. I wanted to make it a multicourse feast nonetheless.

The first course consisted of scrambled eggs with fresh cheese, tomatoes, and mint, served with sauteed rainbow swiss chard, and a dollop of the tomato-ginger chutney leftover from the dumpling experiment.

But the real treat was the pain viennois, which I had started at quarter to eight that morning and which baked to a golden sheen just in time for us to eat at 11:30. We had it with fresh rhubarb compote, and a foretaste of the cake to come later that weekend: lemon-chocolate ganache. The bread, while pretty and tasty, was not all I hoped it would be - I think I'll have to go all the way and make brioche next time. But the accompaniments were fabulous - the compote very tart, a soft rich pink that melted into the rich bread. And the ganache was probably the best one I have ever made, so exquisitely bitter with lemon zest that you nearly forgot it was sweet until the chocolate melted on your tongue like honey.

It was a cold grey day, but the table was brightened with vast dark red peonies, and we sat with our coffees dipping baguette points into the little pots and chatting the morning away. Happy birthday Maman!

Pseudo-Russian soirée

2010-06-07T09:59:00.002+09:00

We may have been drinking champagne, not vodka, and it may not have been beluga, but we enjoyed our blinis and caviar just as riotously as we could.

Macarons

2010-06-07T09:55:00.003+09:00

I still haven't fulfilled my plan to make my own, but these beautiful macarons (from Meinhardt's) deserved a photo of their own, in all their crisp, glossy loveliness. Part of the celebration of my middle sister's graduation from King's College in Nova Scotia, BA (Hons).

Stages of another levain experiment

2010-06-07T09:46:00.005+09:00

First ferment: Here the reserved dough from the previous week's baking has just been taken out of the fridge, to come to room temperature and be combined with water and some more flour (refreshed), and left to reactivate overnight.

Second ferment: The morning after. My little buckwheat poolish (batter of flour, water, and leavening agent left to sit at least 12 hours, in order to develop the flavour and texture of the once and future bread) is ready to be turned into dough.

After only a few hours, the dough has risen to fill the bowl and push insistently at the plastic wrap covering. If anything, it's a bit overrisen here - when I pull back the wrap, the dough collapses into long strings of gluten pictured a few days ago on the blog.

Baking a flatbread. This small piece of dough was rolled out, brushed with olive oil and left to rise a short time, before being bedecked with fresh rosemary and queso fresco and popped into the brick oven. I would have been better off crumbling the queso as it didn't melt like I expected it to (the oven temperature was pretty uneven for this baking).

On the plus side, I didn't burn any loaves! Close up of the post-baking texture.

Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 6: Dumplings!!!

2010-06-05T08:38:00.007+09:00

These were amazing. Fun, easy, they came together without a hitch, and most importantly they were delicious. Avanti!

I wanted to make something different, but to begin with they were the same - same as last week that is, since I decided to use the Kazakh noodle dough that I had made the stretched noodles of the previous week. Once the batch was made and resting, I turned to the question of fillings.

The recipe I was working from, Savoury Boiled Dumplings (jiao zi), from Beyond the Great Wall, gave two fillings, both with pork in them. I decided to make two different fillings as well, but vegetarian of course (actually, I put some fish sauce in them, so not really veggie, but oh well). A rummage through the vegetable drawers ended up in a densely flavoured stirfry of onion, garlic, carrot and shiitake. I reserved a bit of this and used it as a flavour base for my second filling, otherwise composed of yu choy and tofu. I made these up as I went along based on memories of my Viet cooking mentor's dumplings, and happily they turned out well, except that in my slapdash cooking ways I didn't bother to press the water out of the tofu before I combined the ingredients. It worked out ok as I was able to just take from the drier bits at the top when assembling, but straining it would have been better as too much liquid in the fillings makes the dumpling wrapper fall apart.

Since the fillings were so easy I also had time to make a tomato-ginger chutney whilst the dough reposed - a Tibetan recipe from the same cookbook. It was tart, gingery, intense, and redoubled my enthusiasm for expanding my sauce repertoire. Mmm.

It was time to shape! After putting on a pot of water to come to the boil, I divided the dough in 8 pieces, and then each piece in 8 again, for 64 dumplings. It was so quick and pleasant putting them together that I could easily imagine a marathon dumpling-making session, especially sitting with a couple of friends chatting and drinking tea. If the idea appeals, just let me know...

There was no need for a rolling pin - I tried patting and stretching the dough and both worked. It stretches easily, but much more so in one direction, as cutting it severs the gluten strands that give it elasticity. So patting it out allows you to shape the piece more regularly, but stretching is faster. The results were about the same in the end - a piece more rectangular than round, but easy enough to fold into a half-moon shape, with dappled pinched edges.

The dumpling wrappers were much thicker than the commercial ones I'd used before, but they were actually easier to work with - they sealed better, didn't stick to the surface as long as I kept it floured and worked swiftly. Even my liquidy filling problems were solved by patting in a bit of extra flour to persuade the dough that it didn't want to give into structural anarchy. It wasn't long until I had shapely little rows lined up for the boiling.

I had been a bit apprehensive about the cooking, since I know dumplings are prone to falling apart, and the recipe called for boiling, not steaming. But I prefer to follow directions at least the first time through, so I tossed the first 8 into the salted rolling waters and hoped for the best. And - perfection! None of them collapsed, and though the cooking times, dumpling sizes, and dough thickness, were all slightly uneven, each dumpling had chewy bite without being either hard or soggy. They were seriously good. My only cooking complaint is that I hadn't fully precooked the yu choy, and I think it would have been better that way - the fillings were heated through, but they're not cooked for long enough to work any chemistry on the innards.

I decided to only cook half, freezing the other 32 (my nefarious plans for them include dumpling noodle soup, something I love but can never find vegetarian versions of in restaurants). Soon they were in two bowls, divided by filling type, and I was calling my mother up for a taste test.

I had put out three dipping sauces to accompany them - the tomato-ginger chutney, and then two simple traditional accompaniments. One was just soy sauce and sesame oil; the other was just fish sauce with sliced thai bird chiles. We dipped and sampled all six combinations, and then just kept eating. The verdict was unanimous - the shiitake-carrot filling was the tastiest, having much stronger flavour, but the tofu-yu choy went better with the intense taste of the chutney. The chutney was probably the overall winner, as everyone who passed through the kitchen that day found excuses to help themselves to spoonfuls of it on its own. I think my favourite pairing was the fish sauce-chile one, though. It's funny to remember my initial reservations about fermented fish condiments as contrasted to my love for them now. They add so much more than a salty flavour, especially when paired with chile.

I was amazed by the texture of the dumpling wrapper. Even though it had just been boiled for a minute, it was much more like a steamed bread, very light. In the photo if you look closely you can see little air bubbles in the dough, especially at the pleated top. Thickness didn't at all equate to heaviness.

These were so much fun to make, and not that much work, especially if you had a leftover sauce or stirfry you could recycle as a filling. Most importantly they were also a lot of fun to eat. They were out on the table with their sauces and before I knew it they were all gone. I found an interesting recipe for tapioca dough dumplings, so that might be my next dumpling foray. Miam!

Textures: Inside a flatbread

2010-06-04T11:32:00.001+09:00

And some of the baked result of the levain...

(baked in the brick oven, quite successfully)

Textures: A second week in levain

2010-06-04T11:29:00.002+09:00

Look at the strands of gluten in this buckwheat dough! Week 2 of my levain experiment, which sadly only made it to week 3 before I forgot to reserve some dough to keep it going. Never fear, I've already started a second batch...

Brunch date: Fiddlehead Frittata

2010-06-04T11:19:00.005+09:00

I love brunch. I love going out for brunch (preferably on weekdays; ah for my beloved Plateau lifestyle); and I love making it at home. For years and years I have kept going on about how I want to have regular brunch parties, since the food is so tasty and it's such a cosy relaxed meal to share with people. But in practice, life is busy and it never gets around to happening.

So, I've decided to take action by inaugurating the Stealth Brunch Party. For the last three weeks, I've made something fancy and/or exciting for brunch on Saturday mornings. It started with Mother's Day, continued when fiddleheads (my preferred augur of spring!) showed up at Granville Island market (albeit for a hairraising $10/lb), and then Maman's birthday was a further excuse. Sure enough, whether we all sat down together or people just helped themselves as they passed through the kitchen, everyone in the house eventually partook. I figure if I'm consistent enough, my brunch parties will become a reality.

So now you know - if you're in Vancouver of a Saturday, drop on by. Otherwise you can feast visually, as I plan to post photos on the blog. The idea is that the tradition marks some intersection of the practical (using up leftovers, in the way that cooked salmon from the previous night's dinner wound up in this dish) and the creative (not just brunch but original brunch is what we strive for!). We'll see how it goes, but so far, it goes tastily.

For May 24th, no te veo

2010-05-24T15:57:00.000+09:00

No te veo. Bien sé
que estás aquí, detrás
de una frágil pared
de ladrillos y cal, bien al alcance
de mi voz, si llamara.
Pero no llamaré.
Te llamaré mañana,
cuando, al no verte ya
me imagine que sigues
aquí cerca, a mi lado,
y que basta hoy la voz
que ayer no quise dar.
Mañana... cuando estés
allá detrás de una
frágil pared de vientos,
de cielos y de años.

poema de Pedro Salinas

Breadmaking update: Brick ovens, kabocha, and very unscientific levain!

2010-05-18T06:22:00.010+09:00

It might be the fact that I have absolutely no breadmaking agenda these days, but for whatever reason I have been baking pretty much nonstop. So much that I forgot to write down whatever I did to produce the rather awesome experimental espresso-spelt bread, though hopefully I'll be able to more or less reproduce it. Yesterday I actually had a reason to bake though - we were firing up the brick oven again, and wanted to have some loaves to show for it.

I stirred together a regular spelt poolish the night before, and planned to put the leftover roasted squash from that morning's waffles to use in it in some way. It was only Sunday morning that I remember the little lump of dough languishing in the fridge hoping to become my first attempt at the levain method someday. So I decided to go for two separate doughs, figuring that the levain might be a total failure, but even if it succeeded, the 14 people attending that night's dinner would probably be able to keep up with the eating.

Of course, I only thought about the levain when I got home from yoga at about 12:30. After a quick perusal of our cookbooks and some online sources, it was pretty clear that I wasn't going to be able even to approach orthodox levain methods since at the very latest I should have started to reactivate it the night before. Instead, I just decided to take what I vaguely remembered having read about levain some years before, and just run with it. What could happen?

It wouldn't have been your purist's levain in the best of timings. Levain is a wild-yeast method akin to sourdough. The classic French countryside technique, it involves keeping back some of the preceding week's batch of dough to start the next. Originally it would of course have been kept at room temperature, there not being any other temperature. All that fermentation gives you plenty to work with, keeps the wild yeasts alive in your kitchen. What appeals to me about levain over sourdough is that you don't have to keep refreshing the starter in a way that has always seemed rather wasteful to me (I should state upfront that I have never made proper sourdough yet, though I will get around to it eventually). Instead, you just take your preserved lump of dough, now incredibly stringy with gluten and very wet from all the reactions that have gone on during its resting time, and combine it fully into the new dough. Then before baking, you keep back a new piece, child of the current batch, for use next week.

That much I remember from my prior reading. Anyhow, now I was faced with a cold, stringy little lump of dough, which itself had been started with yeast, albeit slow-started with only a 1/4 teaspoon and left to itself to develop into a fully-raised dough. Nothing purist here, but in for a penny. I decided to help myself out a little, and make this dough in the same bowl I'd had the poolish for the squash dough in, so that the levain could get a little boost from the recent yeast activity still clinging to the sides of the unwashed bowl. I poured in a little water, and started to break up the levain in it with my fingers.

I had to start giggling for a bit, as it seemed like rather than levain, I was ending up with something else I had read about but never made - seitan (wheat gluten, the stuff Asian fake meat is often made of). You make it by developing strands of gluten and gradually washing the starch out of it till you're just left with pure strands of gluten. And that's what I had - stretchy strings of gluten that wouldn't dissolve but kept recoalescing in the water under my fingers. At least they were resilient!

After awhile it seemed I'd done all I could do, so I started stirring all purpose flour into the bowl, and made a little sponge that I left to activate for a bit, just to see whether anything was really going to happen at all in the midst of all this unorthodoxy.

While it was resting I made the dough for the squash bread. I mashed roasted kabocha squash into some yogourt, then stirred in the poolish and a bit more water, then some rye flour. All things considered, I would have liked to have given that sponge a few hours to get acquainted with itself, but instead I just gave it a few minutes and then stirred in all purpose flour until it was ready to be kneaded. After being dubious at first, I have become a total convert to Richard Bertinet's kneading method, described in detail in his book DOUGH: Simple Contemporary Bread. It's got great recipes and the design is lovely, but the best part is this method totally unlike any other I've seen described. The crucial parts are, don't flour the work surface, and rather than pressing and folding the dough over itself, you pull it away and toss it forward, so that you are always stretching the dough and encouraging its growth. There are moments where the dough seems impossibly sticky, but it has always come together for me in the end. I am sure I have been saved from many otherwise unforgivable bread mistakes by the way this knead builds cohesion and resilience in the dough.

Back to the levain, and to Bertinet's kneading again. The bubbles in the sponge showed that SOMETHING was working, and the kneading transformed my little brown blob into something that was clearly leavened bread dough. The gluten strands were short with a tendency to break at first, and the dough was definitely a bit stiffer than what I usually produce, but by the end of the kneading it was a creditable effort. Just a couple of hours to rise, and my lunchbreak.

By this time the fire was roaring, and the dough was ready for shaping. My squash dough became three loaves and 8 pizzette, the levain one loaf, 7 pizzette, and one little lump of dough back in the fridge to wait for next week's levain experiment. A la le Fromentier, beloved Montreal bakery, the squash dough was adorned with black sesame seeds, and one of the loaves got studded with pumpkin seeds. The levain stayed plain, and all the loaves were hidden under double layers of kitchen towel to rise.

Maman had requested pizzette to go along with the olives and other antipasti when everyone arrived, and overall I prefer pizza bianca so that's what we had. I plucked a handful of nearly everything in the herb garden (rosemary, thyme, sage, tarragon, oregano - I left out the lavender; and some basil), chopped them and stirred them into olive oil, then rubbed the tops of the rolled out rounds of flatbread that had already risen for 30 minutes. I had intended to serve them with feta, but it had gone off, so it was just veggies. Some I made with cherry tomato halves, others with the rest of the roasted kabocha, and some with both.

We've lit the brick oven a few times, and I have made dough for it before but not actually presided over the baking. It was slightly stressful but also really fun, spinning the disks of dough about right next to the burning logs so as to brown them evenly, learning the best in-the-absence-of-a-peel technique, and leaping madly on the errant tomato halves that tried to bake solo. A few more sessions and I think I'll have it down.

I was a bit less successful with the loaves - I only managed to bake one in there around the roast pork, huge trays of roasted vegetables, whole kabocha squashes (for an amazing goat cheese, arugula and mint warm salad) and the tray of baked pears for dessert (served with the now-legendary homemade honey-thyme ice cream). That one loaf ended up with a carbonised exterior that I had to peel off. The bread inside was quite delicious though - moist, airy, well-structured, a lovely tan colour shot through with bright orange from the squash. We passed it around picking off pieces and the whole thing vanished before supper was properly begun. I baked the other three in the conventional oven, by which time they were a little overrisen and not at their best. The crust is more hard than crisp, but the dough structure in the levain is fantastic - well aerated and spongy. The taste is subtle but good - I'll have to see if later experiments can yield a more sourdoughy flavour. The squash bread is softer and a little sweeter and cries out to be made into a grilled sandwich.

All in all a good day's breadmaking - and with 14 of our extended family sitting down together outside in the obliging evening sunshine, with the wild gymnastic displays by my boy-cousins, my nieces' kindness in sharing their dinner with my recycled My Little Ponies and the poor, pork-smeared stuffed emu; with reading some books in the glider before dessert, and fighting my toddler niece for control of our shared dessert spoon (and saving the emu from chocolatey smears to match the pork ones) - a perfect Sunday evening.

No noodles this week

2010-05-18T06:19:00.002+09:00

Too busy baking bread.

I'll try to make up the noodles by doing two in one week sometime soon. Technically, I did cook the dried Kazakh noodles last week, but that just sounds like an excuse. I may double up by making dumplings and noodles in the same week, just to mix it up a bit.

Bread post to follow!

Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 5: Hand-stretched Kazakh Noodles

2010-05-13T05:37:00.009+09:00

The Kazakh noodles, from a recipe in Beyond the Great Wall, were a departure. While the preceding four types were shaped in different ways, they were all quickly cut or torn into small rounds or squares or spheres. These long noodles had each to be stretched by hand into skinny strips, which made them a bit more time-consuming. In the end though, they were still easy and fun - and delicious.

The dough was similar to the other Asian noodles I've made so far - eggs, flour, salt and water mixed into a stiff dough and briefly kneaded. Rather than letting the dough rest in a ball before shaping, though, you divide it in four and pat each quarter out into a rectangle, and then cut it crosswise into strips (the dough scraper is very efficient for this) before covering it and letting it rest. Here's where I made my slight mistake - I rolled the quarters out instead of patting them, since the dough was quite stiff and resistant to being flattened. Although I'd read the directions through already, if I'd really pictured the process I wouldn't have done this, since it's not important how big the strips are, and I think it contributed to the problem I had of the dough drying up and thus not stretching as evenly. If you're going to let the dough sit a bit longer or you are doing all the shaping yourself, as I was, I recommend really covering it up well, with a couple of cloths (at least one of them dampened), as the dough's not as fun to work with when it starts drying out.

After the rest period, the fun begins. You just pick up each strip, and using one hand stable and pulling against it with the other, kind of like drafting for spinning, you stretch and flatten your little strip into a veritable noodle, long, thin, glorious-looking. This step was very exciting for me. As long as the dough wasn't dried out, its egg-rich strength made for a beautiful even stretch, and elegant noodles up to 40cm long. Unable to come up with an equally elegant drying rack arrangment, I just draped them over cooling racks and a couple of floured cookie sheets for their resting time. This worked fine, but someday when I'm making a big batch I think I'll clean the clothes-drying rack and use that - I love the image of long rows of noodles swaying gently in the breeze!

In a rash of enthusiasm, I turned last Saturday into a cooking frenzy, and along with these noodles I made rice and beans and vegetables, and fresh tortillas, for supper; dairy-free chocolate banana cake for our lactose intolerant friend; and some bread and pita just because. So I only ended up cooking up a small portion of the noodles for myself while they were fresh, before we dispersed to our various yoga classes and then came back to eat the Mexican food, drink wine, and watch Buffy.

Having the fondest memories of the exquisite hand-stretched northern Chinese noodles you can get at the Richmond Public Market foodcourt (pictured on the blog sometime in 2008), with their tomato-egg sauce, I made a quick but loving tribute to the more elaborate dish. Just stirfried some cherry tomatoes with lots of ginger and green onion, scrambled an egg into it, cracked some pepper over top, all in the time it took to boil my nice long noodles. Mmmm...the noodles were delicate and soft but not soggy, long enough to be comfortably slurpable, both easy to swallow yet still with that nice fresh-noodle bite to them. And tomato-ginger-green onion must be one of the great all-time flavour combinations...

The recipe also allowed for drying the noodles for a few days before cooking them, so that's what I did with the rest of them. If you see a pinkish tinge to the noodles in the photo, it's because I used swiss chard cooking water in the dough. It disappeared when they were cooked again but showed up well in the dried format - if it affected the flavour at all, it was too subtle for my palate to notice. After leaving them in an artistically random pile on the counter for a few days, I boiled them up and tossed them with another quick stirfry, this time with shallots and garlic and yu choy alongside the tomatoes and ginger and spring onion, but no egg (I don't know why I didn't put tofu in - next time). The texture wasn't quite as stellar for the dried version, but that was probably just me getting the cooking time wrong. Still delicious - especially because I had them for breakfast.

These noodles were awesome. I can't wait to make them again.

Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 4: Lhasa Egg Noodle Shells

2010-05-05T03:21:00.008+09:00

After the gnocchi interlude, it was back to Tibet and the third in the small-Tibetan-wheat-noodles category from Beyond the Great Wall. The last of these similar recipes is also handshaped, and has an egg in the dough like the Earlobe Noodles, but no oil. I made the dough, let it rest, then cut it in pieces, rolled it into logs, and divided those into smaller pieces, just like shaping the gnocchi last week. From here, you take each little piece and use your thumb to flatten it against your palm, so that you end up with a pretty little shell, thicker at the edges and quite thin in the middle (actually I thought these ones looked a lot like earlobes).

I don't know whether I made these larger than I was supposed to, but they seemed to take awhile to cook. Tasting the half-cooked ones made me a bit worried as they seemed bland and tough, so I decided to pan fry them to give them a bit more flavour. Butter, the rest of the caramelised onions, and more fresh herbs, plus a bit of crisping from the heat, and they turned out to be pretty yummy after all.

It was family Sunday dinner again, this time with my uncle, aunt, and two boy-cousins, as well as the home group of Mom, Grandma, and both my sisters. We had a huge meal that came together casually with everyone making a few things - the best kind. My uncle, the chef, had brought an enormous halibut, and after making its giant eye wobble at people for a bit, he oven-roasted it with lemon, and served it with an artichoke-tomato sauce. We ate it over a mix of brown rices and wild rice, and with the noodles of course. There was a soup to start, a beautiful deep red puree of roasted tomato and peppers, rich with ginger flavour. Then there were salads, a roasted beet, orange, and fresh fennel salad, and a crisp green one with tomatoes and avocado. For dessert, baked apples with vanilla ice cream; and for apres-dessert - three generations of women having an Abba dance party in the kitchen while doing the dishes.

These noodles were nice, but I was expecting them to have a bit more flavour, I think. The egg definitely gives them resilience in the mouth, but it's amazing how different they were from the first recipe, the Earlobe noodles. The addition of just a few drops of oil created a totally different texture and flavour. I liked all these noodles, and I would definitely make them all again, but everyone's clear favourite was the Earlobes.

The day after the dinner, I had the noodles for lunch, with leftover halibut and artichoke-tomato sauce. Homemade noodles. Mmm.

I'm looking forward to being a bit more ambitious in the following weeks. I want to experiment more with different kinds of gnocchi, and I think it's time to try rice noodles for the first time. I'd also like to try noodle sheets and rolled-out-and-cut long noodles sometime soon. I don't know what it'll be next week, but this project is only just beginning.

The Telltale Handprint

2010-05-05T03:15:00.003+09:00

My mother, modelling the latest in lululemon's spring Cakeathlon collection, especially designed for frenetic marathon wedding cake sessions. Notice the appropriate colour scheme.

We always tease my mom that she's not really cooking unless she's wearing floury handprints on her bum. It turns out that cornstarch is a much better medium for self-expression - we couldn't even get it to smudge, much less come off!

Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 3: Potato Gnocchi

2010-05-05T02:46:00.006+09:00

I finally decided to leave Tibet and leap on over to Italy. I love gnocchi, and even though I've seen it done and know it's not that hard, I had never made them myself. So for week 3, it was clearly gnocchi time. I went with the Basic Potato Gnocchi from the recent English translation of the Italian classic Il cucchiaio d'argento, The Silver Spoon.

I peeled Yukon Gold potatoes and steamed them, then mashed them and mixed in an egg, some salt, and some flour. The only tricky part was the first few minutes of kneading - I don't have the asbestos fingers of a chef, and it's important to start working while they're still hot from cooking so the ingredients blend well and the potatoes don't dry out. Otherwise it was fun, that kitchen alchemy that turns vegetables into a smooth firm dough in a matter of minutes.

Shaping the gnocchi was fun too. The dough was dense and responsive, and working quickly with a dough scraper always makes me feel like a pro. I stretched it out into logs, cut them into small pieces, then scored each with a fork before transferring it to a floured kitchen towel. As I shaped, I boiled the gnocchi in batches. They only take a few minutes to cook and it was easy to fall into a rhythm. Making massive quantities of gnocchi would be quite doable, I think, as long as you weren't dancing around too many other people on the journey from shaping surface to stovetop!

Even though we were only four for dinner, rather than the usual Sunday horde, Maman made a delicious and elaborate seafood dinner. The gnocchi fell in quite well among all the other tastes. I made a simple preparation, since mostly I just wanted to taste the noodles themselves - caramelised red onion, and lots of fresh sage, thyme, and rosemary from the garden, sauteed in a little butter.

They were AMAZING. I assumed it would take a couple of tries to get a good texture, and maybe this was just beginner's luck - but they were really, really good. The recipe warns that while too much flour makes them hard, too much potato makes them fall apart during cooking, and I'm sure it's a fine line that varies depending on your potato type, air temperature and humidity, age of flour, etc, etc. My theory right now, though, is that a good strategy is to not work too too much flour into the potatoes initially, but to flour the logs generously as you roll them out and cut them. This gives you a tender inside but a firm outer layer that keeps the gnocchi from falling apart in the water. It worked this time anyway - but I'll have to test the theory many more times before relying on it.

I only prepped half the gnocchi for supper, making the rest a few days later. By then the texture was not quite as perfect, but still enjoyable. This time I sauteed swiss chard, more caramelised onion, tomato, olives, herbs, and feta for a thicker sauce, different but also tasty.

My sister's response after tasting the gnocchi was, "How do you make potatoes DO that?!" Well, now you know. And now that I know, I suspect I'll be making potatoes do this a lot.

Khachapuri

2010-05-05T02:36:00.005+09:00

Lest it be thought that I'm neglecting to bake in the midst of all this noodlery, let it be said that I've made bread three times since I've been back (and also two layer cakes!). This is one of my favourite recipes from Alford and Duguid's Flatbreads and Flavours (their first cookbook).

I had an intense craving for them right after I woke up one morning, and because they're not yeasted, making them for breakfast was entirely plausible. You just stir together some cheese and an egg to make a filling, then knead flour mixed with yogourt as the liquid, to make a moist stretchy dough. I always put too little flour in the dough and end up with sticky, unmanageable messes - yet they always taste fantastic anyway.

Khachapuri are a Georgian cheese bread that come in many styles - but I love this one, with just a hint of cheese, a crisp exterior and soft inside. And the smell, so rich and complex from the yogourt. This time it drew my mom down from upstairs and we snacked on the first batch just as it came out of the oven, hardly waiting for it to cool. We have an ongoing debate about whether they taste better fresh from the oven, or toasted the next day, when the outside gets really crisp and the inside seems softer than ever. Since they disappear almost instantly, it doesn't take long to be ready to make another batch...

Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 2: Amdo Noodle Squares

2010-05-02T02:19:00.000+09:00

Since week 1 went so well, I decided to stick to Tibet for the next week and make Amdo Noodle Squares, also from Alford and Duguid's Beyond the Great Wall. The recipe is fairly similar to the last, but with a plainer dough - just flour, salt, and water. Instead of rolling the dough into logs after letting it rest, and pinching off the pieces impressionistically, you roll it out flat and cut it into squares.

The dough was fairly easy to work with, and as you don't have to roll it out that thin, it went quickly, especially with the devoted assistance of my niece, who lovingly patted each little square and gently placed it on the floured towel to await its turn in the pot. Ever since she could sit, she has always wanted to be lifted up onto the counter to help whenever the flour starts flying (she's 4 now). We boiled them briefly in a large pot and that was that - quick and easy despite all the commotion going on in the kitchen.

Embarrassing to relate, but with everything else going on, I almost forgot to make the noodles this week - I was just saved by a friend asking how the project was going. So I ended up making them to go with Sunday night family dinner. We ate the Tibetan noodles in a big pot of minestrone that I had made the night before.

The verdict? The noodles with their minimalist ingredients weren't as tasty or as intriguingly textured as the first week's batch, but they stood up nicely in the soup, and they paired excellently well with grated parmigiano. Tasty, if not stunning.

Spring cleaning

2010-05-01T02:15:00.000+09:00

One thing about unpacking after a long hiatus is that you never quite know what you're going to find in the boxes.

Or you get a chance to revisit old, long-beloved creatures that you know it's time to let go of...

Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 1: Earlobe Noodles

2010-04-22T07:08:00.004+09:00

I don't like to be bereft of projects (though somehow this is rarely a problem for me); and I had just been through six months where I barely got to cook at all. So before I even got home I had made major culinary plans, the most ambitious of which is the Noodlemaking Project.

Actually it's not that complicated. I just decided that as a Homecoming Resolution, I wanted to make noodles from scratch once a week for a year. I got addicted to breadmaking a few years ago and baked at least three times a week, with the result that I can improvise all sorts of bread depending on my mood, flat or loaf, leavened or un-. The plan once I get cosy with noodles is to progress to cakes, since my recipeless experiments in pastry thus far have NOT been successful. Noodles seemed a lot more forgiving (and easier to eat en masse), and so a better way to ease back into cooking.

Jet lag couldn't keep me down, so my first full day back saw me tossing flour in a bowl with some salt, oil, and an egg. I'm focussing my explorations on the cookbook Beyond the Great Wall, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, to begin with anyhow. I've ogled the photos and browsed the recipes but not really cooked from it yet, but there's a fairly broad noodle section, most of which are simple to make. I decided the Inaugural Noodle would be Earlobe Noodles, from western Tibet.

Making the dough is pretty much the same as making a bread dough - you just stir it all together, knead it a bit, and then let it rest awhile. The recipe calls for using a food processor, but I prefer to do things by hand when possible and this dough came together easily, though I may have ended up using a bit more water that way. While the dough was sleeping I made up a quick stew. Noodles are often eaten with lamb in Central Asia, but I figured a vegetarian chickpea-tomato-cabbage combination would work too.

By the time the water was boiling, my little sister had dropped by and my mother came up from her endless unpacking, so we got to shape the noodles together. This step is why I picked the earlobe noodles to start with. You just divide the dough into four pieces and roll them into long sausages. Then you stand over the bubbling pot and tear off little pieces, flinging them into the water. It got a bit crowded standing there together in the steam, but it seemed like the essence of being home, hungry but smelling the rich smells and working together for our meal.

And the noodles were delicious. Thick and soft but with a lovely springy bite; despite uneven size and shape none of them were soggy. They had enough flavour that we all sneaked a few extra noodles eaten plain while we were cleaning up. The stew coated them nicely and the vegetables were a fresh contrast to the slippery noodle rounds. If it's this easy every week, the year is going to fly by...

The morning after

2010-04-22T07:03:00.004+09:00

My first morning back in Canada dawned clear and cold, with a startlingly low snowline on the local mountains. This is the view that greeted me when I stumbled blearily into the kitchen, and true to my recent training, I immediately stumbled back to the bedroom to fetch my camera. Phew! I didn't leave all the beauty behind me in Asia. It was a gloriously sunny day, and the espresso machine blinked at me from its corner. It's good to be home.

My Wandering Days Are Over

2010-04-13T15:11:00.004+09:00

Photo: Kamakura-Enoshima Furii Kippu, day pass for a trip to the region in Kanagawa-ken, with a background of commuters hurrying for the Shonan-Shinjuku line back to the city. I had visited Kamakura for the first time on my first trip to Japan, in July 2008. It was such a pleasure to return on my last full day in Japan, in Asia, to go back to see the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) and the Kannon Hasedera Temple, as well as new discoveries like Enoshima Island. Six months on, so much to revisit, so much new to find.

You know my wandering days are over
Doesn't mean that I'm getting boring
You tell me
I'm tired of listening to myself here

I'm back! Safely home! And although, like in the song by Belle & Sebastian, "six months on, the winter's gone", I'm not filled with melancholy like the lonely circus boy and disenchanted pony. Instead I'm full of energy to leap into my new life, to settle into Vancouver, and to sort through the detritus of what seems like several past lives currently tucked into myriad boxes.

But I'm not turning my back on the trip altogether. I've transferred all 7,389 photos to my computer, and eventually I'll start sorting through them and posting some more here. Although I never got around to writing most of my planned posts on my travel music, I might get around to it now...and there are always future trips to plan.

You know my bip-bopping days are over
I hung my boots up and then retired from the disco floor
Now the centre of my so called being is
The space between your bed and wardrobe with the louvre doors

Lyrics here.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

2010-04-10T02:13:00.001+09:00

So glad we got to celebrate not too far off the day.

Offering: for March 10th and every day

2010-03-18T21:16:00.003+09:00

I first started thinking about travelling to Malaysia a long time ago, thanks to a book given to me by my auntie, my mother's sister. We shared a lot of ideas about travel, about the wonders of linguistic and cultural immersion, and I think she gave me the book to help spur me onto further travels of my own, though it was about fifteen years before I finally got to Malaysia.

Twelve years ago, I went to Costa Rica, which was a place my auntie knew and loved well. I remember the email exchanges we had before and after my trip, and I remember too my auntie berating me a little bit when I was slow to respond, teaching me email etiquette that was still relatively new to me back then.

I can't help thinking about that now that I'm finally here in South-East Asia, how much I wish I'd been quicker to write those emails, to write these ones. Because now, Auntie, you're not in any place where you can read all the things I'd like to write to you about Malaysia, or answer any of the questions I'd like to ask. We lost you on another March 10th, much too soon.

Your death was the first one for me, and at the time I had no idea how strong your presence would continue to be. At first all you can feel is the absence, which doesn't get better over time but hits you unexpectedly with full intensity, time and time again. And later anger as another kind of grieving - anger that when I finally started to study linguistics too, it was too late for all the debates we should have been able to have, the disagreements and maybe the new conclusions we could have found together. Anger at all the other things you should have had that time took away too early.

In 2008, we lost another beloved auntie, my father's sister this time, also to cancer. Another auntie who shared the delight in travel, in immersing yourself through the medium of language (and coincidentally, also a sense of deep connection to Latin America). And more grief, and more anger. I wanted to bring my children to the two of you, listen maybe a little rebelliously to your parenting advice, get to know you as a fellow adult not just as a niece and a child. I wanted you both to be able to grow old.

I won't be able to show you my photos or confess my moments of weakness or joy on this voyage of mine. But I wish that in some way you can know how much you are both with me along the way. How thoughts of you come so unexpectedly from some sharp image etched on the air, from laughter; and how the thoughts come with a sudden constriction in my throat and tears in my eyes. And how joyful it still is to think of you, to feel your presences even though I wish so much that you were still here.

I had no idea at first, how long grief lasts. But in the end I wouldn't give it up, if it meant not knowing you still. Queridas tias, os amo.

Street cart

2010-03-07T13:17:00.000+09:00

In Solo, Java, Indonesia.

More from Candi Cetho

2010-03-07T13:14:00.001+09:00

Really, really spectacular.

Street sweets

2010-03-07T13:13:00.002+09:00

Foolishly, I never tried whatever this is.

In Yogya, Indonesia.

Gamelan

2010-03-07T13:11:00.001+09:00

Wayang kulit (shadow puppet) show in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Mak toum

2010-03-07T13:05:00.001+09:00

Mak toum or bale (or beal; or Bengal quince) fruit infusion, refreshing and delicious. Tamarind restaurant, Luang Prabang, Laos.

Sunset

2010-03-07T13:03:00.000+09:00

The same field outside of Mae Sot, Thailand.

Young coconut ice cream

2010-03-07T13:01:00.001+09:00

At Chatuchak Market in Bangkok.

Fresh young coconut ice cream with coconut jelly, water coconut fruit, and toasted peanuts. Mmm.

High-tech low-tech

2010-03-07T12:52:00.002+09:00

Photo: After doing their own laundry, boarding school students hang their clothes out to dry on a barbed-wire fence, near Mae Sot, Thailand.

As I've travelled around South-East Asia of course I've seen people living with far less technology, making do with manual versions of what would be electronic in North America, or just doing without. So it's especially interesting to see some technology that we have to do without.

The item I can most see a market for is the mosquito zapper. Shaped like a tennis racket, you wave it slowly through the air and it fries mosquitoes before they can bite you. It's amazing to me no one sells this in Canada! (Or do they?)

Perhaps less practical but pretty cute is the pocket sewing machine. It's basically a stapler with its guts altered so that when you close the stapler with your hand, it produces even stitches on a piece of cloth. Not necessarily that much faster than handsewing, but adorable and seemingly sold at markets everywhere.

Bicycles, South-East Asia style

2010-03-07T12:48:00.002+09:00

This photo shows my second-favourite bike habit of the region - carrying a friend on the bike rack who holds a parasol over both your heads.

I never managed to get a photo of my absolute favourite bike trick, which takes schoolgirl fondness to a whole new level. Two girls will ride along side by side on two bikes, holding hands in between them.

Honourable mention goes to being a small child on a bike much too big for you, carrying your even tinier sibling tied onto your back with a big checked cotton scarf.

So near yet so far

2010-03-07T12:47:00.002+09:00

Women doing laundry just across a river in Myawaddy, Burma. Taken from the Thai side of the Rim Moei river.

Modes of transport

2010-03-07T12:45:00.001+09:00

Well the goats aren't actually a mode of transport. Maybe they're trying to hail a motorbike taxi. Mae Sot, Thailand.

Dry season

2010-03-07T12:44:00.001+09:00

Cracked earth on the outskirts of Mae Sot, Thailand.

Terrace life

2010-03-07T12:40:00.001+09:00

Burmese meal on the terrace of "our" house, on my last night in Mae Sot, Thailand.

Sidling sideways

2010-03-07T12:37:00.001+09:00

Past some tiny jewel coloured crabs at a street marketstall on Yaowarat Road, Bangkok Chinatown.

The famous reclining blogger of South-East Asia

2010-03-07T12:32:00.003+09:00

Courtesy of my travelling companion in Laos. Homage to the famous Buddha of Wat Pho, with all necessary apologies made...

Giant statue of a reclining blogger, podiatrical perspective, observed on a lazy cafe terrace overlooking the Nam Khan river, complete with reading material, sticky rice meals, and lots of fruit juices, in Luang Prabang.

Let there be

2010-03-07T12:27:00.002+09:00

Garden in Mae La refugee camp, Tak Province, Thailand.

Banana pancake

2010-03-03T15:47:00.001+09:00

As much as I love local food, there are some pretty tasty foreigner foods around too, like this beautifully caramelised banana pancake with honey, in Yogya.

Remains of Majapahit

2010-03-03T15:42:00.003+09:00

Candi Cetho looms out of the mist, remains of the ancient Hindu kingdom of Majapahit perched at the top of a steep hill in one of the few remaining Hindu towns in Central Java. Most Hindus fled to Bali as Islam spread through Java, but a few people made offerings to a shiva linggam as we walked through the mist.

Planting out the seedlings

2010-03-01T16:07:00.003+09:00

I don't know what it's like all over Indonesia, but the fertile equatorial islands of Java and Bali not only host three full harvests a year, but there is no season to the cycle (though rice is best planted in the wet season, and crop rotation is often practiced in the dry season - maybe sweet potato will be grown then, or soy).

So it was that along one small country road in one day, I was able to see all the steps of the cycle - harvest; the mature grains ripening; tall green shoots with no grain yet; delicate small shoots; the planting out of the new seedlings; a bed holding the seedlings in their first days; and ploughing the muddy fields.

It's hard work planting out the new seedlings, which are tied in little bundles and flung into the drowned paddies, then separated and planted painstakingly by hand. It's work mostly done by women, who in old age are often permanently bent, with rounded spines. These women were working cheerfully and energetically in the heat of the day just outside of Yogyakarta in Central Java, stopping to wave and smile as I called out Terima kasih! (Thank you).

There are seasons to other things though, and seasonal beauties just now are avocados, rambutan, salak, sirsak (soursop), and durian. It would be fun to come back when the cloves ripen on the trees - but whatever time of year it's incredibly green here. And full of friendly smiles.

Tempeh

2010-03-01T16:06:00.003+09:00

Vegetarian heaven! Crisp freshly fried tempeh with a chile sauce. Too delicious to be properly focussed, apparently, but the textures come through so well that I wanted to post it anyhow.

Gado-gado

2010-03-01T16:04:00.003+09:00

Not the first, not the last, just one of the many delicious gado-gado salads (sometimes written gado2 to my great delight) I've had in Indonesia. Vegetable and spicy peanut sauce heaven...

Nirvana

2010-03-01T15:55:00.002+09:00

After climbing a few sets of steep stone steps, you emerge blinking into the open top level of the temple of Borobudur - Nirvana.

Each of these stupas contains a Buddha statue, many missing parts of themselves after all these centuries but still majestic. The diamond shaped gaps represent the instability of human existence; the square ones, the perfect equilibirum of enlightenment. One stupa's statue is known as the Lucky Buddha, as my guide Aisyah tells me. When terrorists hid 10 bombs in the temple complex, only this one, tucked right into the stupa, failed to explode. She tells me to touch the Buddha and make a wish.

I feel a bit unsure about touching such an ancient monument, but I do anyway. I lean precariously on the rough lip of the stupa and reach my arm through the gap between the interlocking stones, wrap my fingers around the stone thumb, close my eyes and wish.

Relief

2010-02-22T20:02:00.002+09:00

Onlookers to the level of Earth, or Form, at Borobudur.

Banana leaf meal

2010-02-22T19:53:00.005+09:00

Rice and curry served on a banana leaf in Kuala Lumpur's Little India. Down the block, men were patting nan into the sides of tandoors set right out onto the street, but it had been too long since my last Tamil vegetarian meal!

Right after I ordered a fresh rectangle of banana leaf was placed in front of me, then in swift succession men came by with metal buckets ladling out their ingredients: curd rice, a little sweet, pickle, and appalam; plain boiled rice; potato curry, carrot curry, bean curry; and after I took the picture, three dals ladelled onto the rice - one with whole shallots, one with whole cloves of garlic, and a third liquidy one that blended into the tasty whole.

The waiters kept circling offering more food, and one in particular was playful about it. When I wanted "a little more rice", he gave me about 6 grains, then pulled back his scoop and just looked at me, waggling his head from side to side keeping the smile from his mouth but not from his eyes. Later when I was done, he came up and defiantly put one more sweet, smooth garlic clove into the centre of my leaf as if defying me not to eat it.

Everything was perfectly delicious (and not at all spicy - have I been chile-proofed by Thailand or is South Indian food less hot than it used to be??), so I had to get some laddu to go, too.

Borobudur!

2010-02-22T19:49:00.002+09:00

Hot off the presses from my visit to the Buddhist temple of Borobudur in Java, Indonesia, this morning. It's reputed to be right up there with Angkor Wat (and Bagan, in Burma) - oh, and it is. One of the most beautifully intricate places I've visited, from the moralistic reliefs at the base, through the reliefs telling the jataka tales of Buddha's life, to the simple, beautiful stupas of "Nirvana" at the top level of the temple.

Kopi jawa

2010-02-22T19:47:00.004+09:00

Appropriately mountainous remains of a strong black local coffee, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Burmese eggplant salad

2010-02-19T21:59:00.003+09:00

Quite different from Thai grilled eggplant salad, this version is soft and non-spicy, with raw shallot and sesame the major flavours in an otherwise delicate taste.

At Aiya restaurant in Mae Sot.

Offering

2010-02-19T21:57:00.002+09:00

Temporary new year's shrine set up outside a restaurant on Intharakiri Road, Mae Sot.

Early new year morning

2010-02-19T21:54:00.002+09:00

Making offerings at temple in Mae Sot, Thailand. Apparently even though the Burmese New Year is in April like the Thai, Lao, and Cambodian ones, it's popular for many nearby Burmese to come across the border and pray here on Chinese New Year's day.

This early, though, there were only local Chinese families making offerings and setting off firecrackers in the courtyard.

Lahpet thohk

2010-02-19T21:51:00.004+09:00

Burmese pickled tea leaf salad, mixed with fried dried beans and peanuts, cabbage and tomato, sour salty hot and addictive.

Served at Borderline women's craft collective and tea garden, Mae Sot, Thailand.

Dragon-strolling

2010-02-19T21:46:00.003+09:00

Sadly I'm missing the acrobatic dragon dancing scheduled to take place over several floors of my local KL mall tomorrow -- I'm leaving disgustingly early for Java instead. So here's a more humble, laid-back dragon going from restaurant to restaurant in the alleys of Bangkok Chinatown in Feb 14. The city was very very red because besides the Chinese New Year decorations, Thais also go in for Valentine's Day...

Kuala Lumpur is still all vibrant red and gold madness a week after the new year, with lots more going on all over the city. I'd be sorry to leave, except that Yogyakarta beckons...

Fried oysters

2010-02-19T21:43:00.002+09:00

In a back alley off Yaowarat Road, Bangkok Chinatown. Hot panfried oysters on a bed of egg mixed with rice flour cake (noodle texture, but all one piece), with green onion and coriander.

I ordered by pointing, and when I did so before at the same place it came with the oysters mixed into the cake, and with bean sprouts. I don't know the name of either dish but they're both delicious.

Happy tigers for everyone

2010-02-17T19:32:00.003+09:00

Murals depicting the Chinese astrological signs in the same Chinese temple in Mae Sot, Thailand.

It's not what you think

2010-02-17T19:28:00.002+09:00

The thing about being in a volatile place like Mae Sot and having read a little too much about drive-by assassinations, is that when you hear what sounds like machine gun-fire in the middle of the night, well, it really could be.

So it was a relief to walk around the next morning, Chinese New Year, and realise that it was actually just strings of red-paper covered firecrackers all along. As an added bonus, I also understood why there were little scraps of red paper everywhere too!

Photo: The courtyard of the Chinese temple in Mae Sot - I don't think its name was written in a script I could read but I think it's the only one, not far from the police station.

Happy New Year Again!

2010-02-17T19:25:00.001+09:00

Raising the red lanterns in Yaowarat Road, Bangkok's Chinatown.

Wombat welcomes year of tiger

2010-02-08T22:26:00.000+09:00

The wombat makes a rare appearance on her own blog

2010-02-08T22:25:00.002+09:00

Visiting a small wat in Chiang Mai.

Cryptic, yet comforting

2010-02-08T22:20:00.001+09:00

One of the many helpful bilingual advice signs in temples in Chiang Mai.

Patongkoh

2010-02-08T22:11:00.003+09:00

From China to Malaysia, Vietnam to Burma, these sticks of fried dough are sold for breakfast.

These ones are being made fresh in Laos, and were sold plain (slightly salty) or coated in sugar. They're deep-fried over a fire in a cart, then cooled in a conical woven basket the same shape as a sticky rice steamer before being dispensed to hungry customers.

Later, in Chiang Mai, I breakfasted on the same snack, served with hot sweet soy milk. It's especially delicious dipped right in the hot liquid, if a rather rich way to break a fast.

The dough sticks are yu tiao in Mandarin, and you can buy them in Chinese and Viet groceries all over Canada (though not usually as freshly made). In Laos, they're called pah thawng ko (or so wikipedia tells me) and in Thailand, patongkoh. But pointing and smiling works fine.

Market abecedary

2010-02-08T22:09:00.001+09:00

Baguettes and bamboo shoots in Luang Prabang.

River weed

2010-02-08T22:07:00.003+09:00

I just can't get enough river weed. These fresh bundles are being sold at the outdoor morning market in Luang Prabang.

I never managed to try eating the fresh weed while I was in Laos, but I'm told that it's usually stirfried with garlic, and I am confident it's delicious. Next time...

Witnessing

2010-02-08T21:35:00.003+09:00

Photo: Young monk with begging bowl, taking part in the sticky rice ceremony of alms-giving at sunrise, Luang Prabang.

It's curious to go from very touristed places to very undertouristed ones, as your presence means such different things.

In a city like Luang Prabang, which in the past years has seen a huge surge in tourism, which as a small city is awash in the visiting, mostly European foreigners, you are one of a lucrative herd. People aren't surprised to see you. They might be enterprising, they might be weary, they might be genuinely friendly, but they've seen your type before.

When you get further out, even just to the outskirts and sidestreets of the same tourist town, is when you get more of a reaction. People look twice. Sometimes they even look shocked, frightened, as if you've intruded somewhere they thought they were safe - this is a terrible feeling. More often though, people stare openly and with interest, and usually with a generous smile.

It's a whole other feeling entirely in Mae Sot, a smallish town just east of the Thai-Burma border. It's not that foreigners are particularly rare, but most of them are longer-term visitors: volunteers and NGO workers. People's friendliness is stepped up a bit. You're a neighbour, probably even a good neighbour, since you're here for altruistic reasons. So many people say hi, especially kids, and your cheeks ache from smiling back.

The impact that your gaze has is very different too, from Luang Prabang to Mae Sot. Even though I love this photo, I have misgivings about having taken it at all. One of the most popular tourist sights in LP is the early morning alms-giving ceremony. Women get up in the dark to cook sticky rice, make meals, and then dress in their best sihn and blouse, with a temple scarf draped over their shoulders. They kneel in the early morning damp, mist, and chill with woven bamboo baskets in front of them. They wait patiently for the slow approach of the orange-robed monks in single file. The monks will come holding out their begging bowls, and each woman will offer a small ball (which she has pre-rolled) of rice to each monk, each offering a blessing. While the women wait, some chat, while others sit quietly with their faces closed in private meditation. When the monks approach, all the women become still, faces relaxed as they hand out the rice with a prayer, until all the wats have had their turn, and the women can return to their daily work.

It sounds beautiful, and it is. What the photo doesn't show, though, is what a miracle it is that there are no tourists obtruding into the still moment. Even though all over town there are stern documents instructing tourists on how not to ABSOLUTELY DESTROY the alms-giving ceremony, foreigners stand with their enormous cameras right up against the waiting women. The clicks and flashes (because it is still quite dark) rob the moment of its proper solemnity. Though their faces are controlled, it's not hard to imagine how irritating it is to drag yourself out of bed at 4am as a religious duty, a gift, only to have the meaning leached out by the presence of gawky pale people in quick-dry microfibre and fleece. Of course I still went, and I still took pictures, so I am just as guilty (though at a slightly greater distance).

It's the opposite in Mae Sot. There are so many pictures I haven't taken with my camera - but everywhere my eye falls I try to fix the image in my head - faces, artefacts, detention cells. Since being here (where I tend to forget I'm still in Thailand, so Burmese a town it is) I have learned so much more about the situation in Burma, culture and history as well as current deprivation and atrocities. I have met so many open, incredibly generous people, who are so willing to give of themselves, to sit down with me and teach me, even to house and feed me, so that I'll understand.

And on a trip that is largely on the other side, the tourist side of the equation, it's good to be reminded of the impact of witnessing. There is a sense of importance just in knowing, in being able to share stories when across an imaginary line, a border, there is so much armed force commiting crimes of silence, of lies and purges and misinformation. There is a value in seeing, listening, and bringing reality to what was previously abstract.

And there's more of a value when those stories are shared again and again - which I look forward to when I am home.

Dislocation

2010-02-05T23:28:00.002+09:00

It's early, early morning in Luang Prabang, Laos.

Bananas

2010-02-03T23:37:00.002+09:00

Also at Talat Siriwattana, Chiang Mai; and a delicious presence everywhere I've been.

Broad beans

2010-02-03T23:36:00.001+09:00

At Talat Siriwattana, Chiang Mai.

tho-hmwe-t'o-da

2010-02-03T23:31:00.002+09:00

I like knitting. In Burmese.

That this phrase made the Lonely Planet phrasebook almost makes up for my other complaints about it...but not quite.

Photo: Bougainvillea in Bali.

Sticky rice mountain

2010-01-30T23:34:00.002+09:00

Winter and the dry season and the dead rice in the mountaintop fields.

Luang Prabang province, Laos.

More than that

2010-01-30T23:17:00.005+09:00

Photo: Thatched bamboo house with rice straw roof in a Khmu village, Luang Prabang province, Laos.

I associate the song "Guess How Much I Love You" by the Lucksmiths with being twenty and being in love, and finding any separation at all an ominous, painful gulf. But when I was compiling my travel playlist it felt rather appropriate too.

I bought a postcard
I'm getting close but
I haven't got around to it yet
I know I said I'd write
And maybe I might

It's harႈd to pull together all the threads while travelling, hard to live in the moment and also get to all those things that need doing. Sometimes I feel like all I can think about are obstacles; and things to feel anxious about; and the moments spent waiting for something to happen, as if all the day is nothing but in-between time.

On the map the gap's three fingers
But it's more than that
More than that

Distances can seem so incalculably large when you look at two points, if all you think of is the gulf between them. But travelling this way, roaming over the surface of the earth and finding the familiar in so many previous unknowns, I find myself thinking of it the other way around. It's not gaps any more, but just so much more space to be filled, so much more possibility.

Lyrics.

Found in translation

2010-01-29T20:45:00.002+09:00

Photo: Mekong river weed (khai pen) drying in the sunset on a plastic rice sack, Ban Xangthong, Laos.

I never get tired of coincidental links between languages - they may not have any meaning, but it's enough that they are funny. When I was taking a massage course in Chiang Mai this past week, they were careful to impress upon us the reason why Thai massages might start out too strong for us, and then just get more and more painful.

It turns out that "ow" in Thai means "more"! So the more you exclaim over the pain, the more it will hurt you...

On a related note, aroy means delicious in Thai. There was a saamlaw (motorcycle trailer/sidecar thing) driving around the neighbourhood yesterday with a recording going "aroy aroy!" (I think it was selling ice cream - something tasty anyhow). I was walking with two Filipinos, who burst into laughter. It turns out that "aroy" is the Tagalog equivalent of "ouch!"

Perspective

2010-01-28T21:49:00.002+09:00

Long corridor open to the air at the temple of Bayon, Angkor Thom.

Kaya toast

2010-01-28T21:43:00.003+09:00

The national breakfast of Singapore, minus the sweet milky coffee. Kaya toast is soft white bread toasted, then split right down the middle of the slice. Each bread half is spread thickly with butter and coconut jam (kaya) before being clapped back together. It no doubt gives Singporeans all the energy they need for a busy day of working, shopping, and more eating!

Mudra

2010-01-28T21:39:00.003+09:00

Apsara caught in the middle of a dance, Angkor Wat.

Tremulous green

2010-01-24T23:53:00.002+09:00

Tender young shoots of rice in the mountains, Luang Prabang province, Laos.

Colonial legacies

2010-01-24T23:52:00.002+09:00

Rose and building.

River weed & satellite dish

2010-01-24T23:47:00.003+09:00

The essentials of life.

River weed from the Mekong is harvested to make the local treat khai pen. Here it's drying, having been spread in thin sheets with sesame seeds, tomato, and garlic. In Ban Xangthong outside of Luang Prabang, Laos.