This is the accompanying piece to my earlier post Who is an Asian?
One day an Aussie friend asked whether I, an Asian, ate just Asian food at home?
He meant of course the style of Australianised Hongkie Chinese food that he has been familiar with, in Ausssie Chinese restaurants or takeaways – mostly mucho deep fried stuff with lots of very dark, awful tasting soya sauce that for some inexplicable reason Aussies love – to be fair, it's not unlike Malaysians oo-ing and ah-ing over a bottle of Kaiser Stuhl moselle, which I found out recently they served in a (ice-coffee type of) glass full of ice cubes.
Oh, I squirmed whenever I watched my Aussie friends poured, yes, oozes of that stuff on top of their deep fried har-kow (prawn tim-sim). Banishing the gruesome thought of the el cheapo soya sauce from my mind, I gave thoughts to what my friend had just asked - do I eat just Asian food at home? But as I have blogged earlier, my definition of Asian and thus Asian food has been considerably different from his, and thus, the pseudo Aussie-Hongkie stuff?
His query set me off reflecting on Asian food, starting from Japan in the Far East and then working from there westward, sampling or skipping over fares of the various countries and regions as I allowed my tummy to fantasize.
Immediately my gastronomic juices started to flow as I conjured up a simple but magnificent repast of sea-fresh sushi, light-battered tempura and unagi (eel) in sticky sweet but good ;-) soya sauce with miso soup, washed down with copious doses of warm saki.
Yes, I have always associate wine with the adjective 'copious '- they do go so well together.
Yummmm, but then I changed my (most fickle) mind to gado-gado, the magnificent Indon salad with quartered hard-boiled eggs, tofu and generous helpings of rich thick peanut sauce, satay and, why not, nasi padang as well.
Talking about nasi padang, there is a fantastic warung (stall) in Jakarta that serves up the most wondrous Sumatran-style curry of various dishes including babat or perut (tripe), grilled terung (brinjal or egg plant) smothered with chillie oil, and fragrant rice, accompanied by sambal terasi or as Malaysians call it, belacan - a side-dish of fresh pounded chillies mixed with grilled prawn condiment and lemon juice with just a wee sprinkling of salt, and if one is from Penang, a dollop of the incredible hare-koh, another type of prawn paste.
The only way to do justice to the sambal terasi is to have ulam with it - SE-Asian salad, with plenty of cashew tree shoots (pucuk ménté or in Malaysian, pucuk janggus), and a refreshing iced makisa (passion fruit) juice.
BTW, there is a restaurant in Bogor that does an incredible grilled carp dish served with rice, ulam and sambal terasi. I saw the hugh fat golden carp swimming around happily in the pond under part of the restaurant (yes, it was on stilt) before it ended up on a plate before me. I pretended not to recognise that fish.
Ere I completed my visualisation of the piscatorial feast, once again I allowed my gluttonous imagination to fantasize a feast of tom yang soup, pad thai (Thai fried rice noodles), green beef curry, chilli fried fish and grilled pandan (screw pine leaves) chicken.
Then I did a super-leap across the Indian Ocean for a good spicy-hot southern Indian okra-ed curry lunch (okra - ladies' fingers), all complete with the fragrant banana leaf and a jolly good Indian tea (Darjeerling natch!).
Zipping up north and north-east to the land of tandoori chicken, chicken tikka masala, nun bread fresh from the kiln, briyani rice and ……….....
See how the very thoughts of Asian food could torture a food lover like me. Mind you, I haven't even touched yet on Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese (oh, their Pho Bac Biet with basil), Filipino and the incredible range of Malaysian food. Oh, forget about Singapore – it has only a wee reputation with fish head curry and fried beehoon, two dishes already excelled by Malaysian.
I woke up from my reverie and finally replied, "I wish I do" but he was never wiser by what I had meant.
Related post:
Who is an Asian?
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