Following the food trail

I like to cook and have always enjoyed the  Discovery Travel and Living Channel. My favourite hosts are Ian Wright, Samantha Brown, Anthony Bourdain and Bobby Chinn. These are the people who would show you the fun of travelling to exotic places and trying out new delectable morsels of food.

So imagine my surprise when I learnt that Peter Ward of Country Choice and American celebrity chef and World Café host Bobby Chinn were going to be at the North Tipperary Agricultural Show – a  place for cattle, poultry, horse and pony showing classes and show jumping as well as many other competitions including the best floral displays, photography, art, baking, cooking, needlework, fruit and vegetable produce.

Not one with great spatial intelligence, I surprised myself by getting to the destination without any hitches and I was early as well. Peter Ward, the friendly and charming man who together with his wife Mary, established Country Choice, an independent delicatessen, café and supply business,  told me that Bobby would only be on an hour later. So that gave me some time to walk around the fair, admiring prized four legged creatures: Hereford, Angus and Friesian amongst others. 

                                

What is it about food anyway?

I firmly believe that any true Malaysian is a great lover of food. Not any type of food, but a wide variety of food. The thing about us is that we are eager to try cooking and tasting new stuff. It is not uncommon for us to ask our hostess for the recipe of the most gorgeous lime pie. Most people will happily share the recipes but some will make us swear that we will only use the recipe for domestic purposes and not to start a business.

Then there are some who would just travel for miles to other towns just because the satay is superb in Kajang or the bean sprouts are crunchier in Ipoh. The travelling may be tedious but the food makes it all worthwhile.

So far, I have tried many recipes, some of which are successful and some not. But the greatest achievement for me is baking bread, something that I would have thought impossible. Nothing beats the warm loaf wrapped in a tea towel and sitting on the window sill. Somehow the smell of bread baking in a kitchen gives the home a totally different meaning altogether.

Most times I have also altered recipes to suit my guests’ taste buds.  Tofu and tamarind-based dishes can be as strange to my guests as cold tongue and kidney pie are to me. I find that the more well- travelled my guests are, the more ready they are to enjoy and taste a variety of food beyond the bangers and mash. I made some mango custard dessert for a pot-luck at a local gathering and no one touched it. Unfazed, I made the same dessert at an international gathering and it was zapped up immediately with compliments all round.

Initially I found the Chinese takeaway dishes very strange indeed, not at all like what I am used to. As they try to cater for their customers’ tastes, Chinese dishes have morphed into a blend of eastern spices and western portions, so I could never actually finish a meal all by myself at a Chinese restaurant.

Following the food trail like any endeavour is a journey and it all starts in someone’s kitchen, usually our mother’s. Although my mother used to chase me out of the kitchen because I was more of a pest than a help, I was determined to try out all sorts of recipes. Table manners are also very different where I come from. Those who are younger will make sure that the older ones are seated first out of respect. Then we will ‘invite’ our parents or elders to eat before we did.

At a Chinese restaurant in Dublin, my daughter ‘invited’ me to eat before she started tucking in. Then I heard a Chinese mother ‘chiding’ her own daughter (probably she was born and bred in Ireland), ‘See the girl is asking her mother to eat first, I never hear you saying that.’

Another wonderful custom that we have is we like to share our food. Whether we are at home, in school or in the office, we will readily share what we have with others so we could taste each other’s food, thus forging a kind of camaraderie.

So after an hour wandering around the fair and having scrutinised the cows and horses, I went back to the Country Choice stall and saw the back of a very familiar person sitting on a chair. Like an excited teenager, I went around the chair and asked,

‘Hi, Bobby could I take a photo of you?’

Bobby grinned and said ‘Now why don’t we get someone to take a photo of us.’

Source: http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/following-the-food-trail-1.360807?cache=golhyfvvipwqzn%2F7.14219%2F7.14219%2F7.245988%3Fkey%3DKuala+Lumpur%2F7.478218%2F7.478218%2F7.478218

Strange thing about teenage years

SEVENTY thousand young people were screaming at Leicester Square, London,  on a Tuesday night. They had waited for hours; some were said to have camped out overnight on the street, and they were not disappointed. Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Niall Horan arrived in style.

Who?

The fact that I was not impressed by the names of the Great Foursome, a.k.a. One Direction, is because I had left my teenage years a long time ago. I am a parent the worst nightmare that a teenager could morph into.

The teenage years are the strangest ever. It is when everything is about I, me and myself.

If people talk, they are talking about me. If they do not talk, they are not talking about me. I speak in hyperboles. I write in hyperboles.

I even dream in hyberboles. If I fail in anything, the humiliation is magnified many times over. If I am successful, I believe everyone should know what I have achieved and if he does not, I wonder whether he is living on Earth or on an unknown meteor.

If I am committed to a viewpoint, I will defend it to death. If anyone has contrary ideas, I will have to sit down and have a very long discussion with the person ... no, not a discussion, but perhaps more like an argument. My energy is boundless and my dogged determination to get something that I like, usually a popular product that other teens have, is almost unshakable.

That is the teen in me, shouting from the mountain top.

The most common phrase a teen will use in a parent-teen argument is "You don't understand. During your time it was different". But then again, is there any difference? On the surface level, the setting may have changed.

Technology has advanced, toys have changed, holiday destinations are more exotic but underlying principles and teenage experiences, whether specific or general, have not changed much.

Now that I am a parent and am on the other end of the continuum, I can see that there is a great similarity between what I had experienced and gone through and what that young person is going through now. But, of course, when you are a teenager you do not realise that.

I was watching a documentary about the Bee Gees. I enjoyed their songs tremendously when I was a teen and there was this clip that jolted me back to my past. I saw Robin Gibb cupping his ear with his hand as he sang Massachusetts. I remember I was so engrossed in watching the very same performance over a black and white television, oh so many years ago. It was very rare in those days for national television to air a pop group singing and it must have been on one of the festive days.

So there I was watching Gibb cupping his ear, mesmerised until my mother said: "I think he has an ear ache."

I was aghast that my mother would even mention such a thing about this demi god and highly irritated that my precious time with the Bee Gees was interrupted.

I attempted to correct her by saying that he was trying to deaden the side noise so he could hear his own voice better.

Ignoring my reply, my mother contemplated and came up with another more ingenious suggestion.

"I think he must have a toothache."

My face reddened and if my mother had not gone to the kitchen to check on the rice boiling over the charcoal stove, I would not know what I could have done to her.

So now, many years later, when I see Gibb cupping his ear on a flat screen television, I laugh loudly to myself and wonder why I was so uptight over the cupping-ear incident once.

Whether it was a ear ache or a toothache or a sound technique, what did it matter?

Oscar Wilde said, "youth is wasted on the young" and there is a Chinese phrase that goes: "I eat salt more than you eat rice", meaning that the older person has gone through more experiences than the young person would credit him for.

Tell it to an adult and he will shake his head knowingly. Tell it to a teen and he cannot believe that the adult has gone through what he is going through.

I hear that in Dublin, patient parents queued for more than two hours with their excited children to get a good seat in one of the two cinemas that had premiere screening of the movie One Direction: This Is Us.

At a time like this, I am so glad my children have outgrown the phase of going in that direction.

Read more: Strange thing about teenage years - Columnist - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/strange-thing-about-teenage-years-1.351333#ixzz2eK4RZGhI