I guess I am currently in the middle of what one would call, a blogger limbo.
We have “officially” moved out of Beijing, so to speak. But in the next 3 weeks when our apartment is under renovation, we are going to be staying in a hotel where the closest thing to a cooking vessel is the bathroom sink with hot tap water (hotel sous vide?). How do I create something delicious when the mere act of making fruit smoothies posts challenges? Then I realised, the answer lies just around every corner in this city.
Cantonese-style roast pork. Something as abundant in Hong Kong as Starbucks are in New York. This awesome thing, is everywhere. Even if you didn’t live here, chances are you’ve seen it in your nearest Chinatown, a staple in Cantonese cuisines.
Typically served with rice, which I’ve always had my doubt on. I mean, it is a great piece of roast pork, with salty yet juicy flesh and gloriously blistered skins. But on its own, and paired with yellow mustard, in my opinion, it just isn’t the most flattering companion for steamed rice. It is however, the most perfect yet most under-utilized sandwich candidate, practically an half-way porchetta sandwich.
Here’s what you do. You chop up a whole box of these porky awesomeness, then you make a “dressing” out of minced scallions, ginger and red chilis, with pungent savouriness from fish sauce and a tang that cuts through the grease from red wine vinegar. You let this “dressing” seep through the nooks and crannies of an unapologetic pile of the chopped roast pork, into the thirsty holes of a toasted crusty roll that catches it all. Then you cap everything up with a few slices of provolone cheese, and you draw your finishing touch with a smear of yellow mustard.
Porky, crispy, drippy and zero-cooking involved. What can I say? Hotel meal.
YOU LET IT SEEP THROUGH THE NOOKS OF AN UNAPOLOGETIC PILE OF CHOPPED ROAST PORK, INTO THE THIRSTY HOLES OF A TOASTED CRUSTY ROLL.
In the past few years, for more times than I’d like to admit, I have allowed myself to dance dangerously around a question that is as simple as it is complicated, as imaginable as it is hopeless, a secret irritation that haunts us all who have ever fell in love with a corner of this beautiful land they call Europe, but had to depart soon after. You know you ask yourself this, we all do.
Why. Why can’t I live here?
EVERY SIMPLE DELIGHTS FROM EVERY ASPECTS OF LIVING, RESTRAINED IN SMALL SERVINGS, BUT CONSTANT, AND IT DOESN’T STOP COMING
It’s a cliche, of course, for someone who doesn’t know or has travelled to Europe that much. But is that what romance requires, muchness? From the first time I landed a foot in Paris back in spring 2012, around the time when I just started this blog up till now, I have only been to a handful of European cities and each affair lasted no more than a week. And yet, the immense imagery of lost stories behind every architectures and cobble streets, the courage I seek to enjoy life with ease that they breath daily as a birthright, the endless sceneries roaming from hill to hills, the effortlessness, irritating almost, the fact that they can take their dogseverywhere (!!!)… All of it, everything, had left me in a stench of discontent at the boarding gates, the sense that I was going back to a place that was very much less so. I feel at my most content when I am traveling these places; I wholeheartedly recommend that you get out into the world for yourself and seek out these experiences too. Of course, the cost is always going to be an issue when visiting locations on your bucket list. This can be helped by a cash injection from a loan – check out Lending Expert for more information.
But having said that, it was a general infatuation for a region as a whole. Specifically, if you asked me, I could never quite pinpoint a city, or a country even, where I could actually see myself living in. As indisputably beautiful as Paris was and always will be, living there felt like being in a relationship with someone who would never love me more than I loved him. As authentically ancient and charming as Rome, the even more hard-wired slowness stirred a sense of restlessness in someone who wasn’t embracing retirement just yet. As much as the melancholic pessimism of Lisbon was alluring, it would probably deem unhealthy for me who’s equally negative, to marinate in large dosages. As for London, which I haven’t mentioned, the idea of moving from under one sky blanketed in smog, to another blanketed in overcast, was… just depressing to say the least. Then there was Nice, and Monaco… but who am I kidding?
That was, until Madrid.
I wanted to live here. But more importantly, I felt I could actually live here.
Even with the inevitable unfamiliarity with its pace of life and various language barriers here and there, everything felt natural, easy. It felt right. Madrid, I hope we could all agree, wasn’t the most beautiful European city, or the most prosperous. It wasn’t even the most convenient, given that few Asian airlines offered direct flights (but that’s gonna change this summer for Hong Kong). But there was something about it, the perfect mixture of ease and vibrancy, like it ran in its bloodstreams of knowing when to slow down and when to party, and it carried us, without even thinking, into the same infectious rhythm. An energetic morning, a late but overbearingly sumptuous lunch, a slow afternoon easing into the night, then a bubbling and munchy social scene to end it all perfectly.
Every simple delights from every aspects of life, restrained in small servings, but constant, and it doesn’t stop coming. That was what it felt like, as least for me, Madrid’s promises.
After what seemed as long as forever, but now, feels as short as a blink of an eye, five weeks of traveling in and out of 6 different countries, I am now, finally, back home.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to sum up a journey as long as this one in one post. It began in Hong Kong, then Taipei then back to Hong Kong, then it departed towards London, then Madrid, and Lisbon, then finally, passing by Germany, back to Hong Kong, then back to Beijing. It was a zig-zaging montage of cityscapes, sounds, smells, flavours, stimulations… but also disorientations, sense of aimless drifts, dubbed by a relentless seasonal flu somewhere at end. How do I tell such a story I have no clue. I suspect I would be inadequate but I shall try.
I shall try, starting with Lisbon.
Why Lisbon? I don’t know. I guess there are moments in life that didn’t feel particularly monumental at the times, but somehow, years and years later, they stay with you whenever you feel like looking back. Lisbon, in the best sense, felt as such. There are cities where we go to feel the future. New York, London, places that strut at the tip of our times, erecting glories built in glasses and steels, forward. Lisbon, as rare as it is precious, is not that kind of city. Lisbon, to me at least, comes into the scene as an ageing beauty. Her allures permeates in a lingering perfume of melancholy, on the surface of every faded tiles, behind every half-closed wooden windows, cut deep into every folds of her stone-paved labyrinth. She is old. She is complicated. There are a lot of bygone glories, loss and pain in her untold stories, some remembered only objects that cannot speak. I found myself striken by a sense of wounded dignity at her unguarded moments. In fact, sometimes her unpolished cheeks marked with spray paints and the crumbling of her once beautifully tiled facades, like a ripped silk dress, made me feel impolite to stare. But, I guess, that’s why Lisbon felt so unique. Holding her own, almost carefully, with a flustered sense of self-esteem… she sits quietly, a city by the sea.
A place like her leaves an impression. She made me wonder about the life she’s had. She made me want to dig deeper. She made me wanna do things that I’ve never done to any other places, beyond the politeness of walking through her streets and allies, beyond gorging the foods that she cooked. I wanted to get more intimate. Closer. I wanted to hear her sing. And if there’s one thing that I think you should do in Lisbon, however cheesy it may be, you should hear Lisbon sing.
And she sings Fado.
OF COURSE, WE HAD TO FINISH THE MEAL WITH A SANDWICH. WE JUST HAD TO. THAT’S HOW IT’S DONE.
BUT THIS TIME, WE WEREN’T SORRY THAT WE DID
First of all, it might help to mention that I am not a music person. I have almost zero song downloaded to my smartphone, and in the 7 years I’ve dwelled in New York, a trip to New Orleans, I have never stepped a foot inside a jazz bar. Curried goat, yes, but Bob Marley who?
So no, I don’t usually do this.
But to come to Lisbon without listening to a bit of fado, a music as burnt into the soul of this country as anything can hurt, is a regret that I wasn’t planning to walk away with. However, before I go on, I warn you, that a fado experience in Lisbon can prove to be borderline awkward if you have some kind of personal distance-issues. Chances are, as we were, you’d be seated on a stool tucked in between the elbows and knees of total strangers, so crowded it’d be difficult to reach down to your phones to take a selfie. Chances are you’d be forced to share foods, and drinks, too, oh hell, conversations even. If you got problems with any of those things as I almost do – oh fuck did I mention that they smoke indoors, too – chances are, it would be uncomfortable.
But again, chances are, you would regret it if you didn’t.
A young woman in her 20’s came into the tiny spot reserved for performers, professionals and amateurs alike. Carried only by a couple of guitarists sitting a feet away, she started singing… no, more like… pouring her heart out on the floor. There was so much passions, longings and losses that I felt through a song that I didn’t understand. Her body moved like a stringed puppet, cringed, shaken, pulled by the very own emotions in the melody that she sang. Her voice, at times almost inaudible, at times piercingly loud, communicated words without any translations. It felt… brave, almost, bleeding this much feelings to a wall of strangers staring within an arm’s length. Just when I thought I got a sense of what fado was, after her, came an old man in his 80’s. He was more talking then singing, waving and pointing his hands in every possible gestures, sometime as if in an argument, sometime as if in mourning. It was comical but not funny. It was crude but endearing. I can’t say I know fado, but if you ask me, the beauty of it is not in the perfection of vocal skills, but in the generosity of common strangers, singing their hearts to you on a sleeve.
We left the bar a bit in awe, with a couple of new German friends who were forced to share their chorizos with us. Walking home on her crooked slopes echoing her voice in heart-strung melodies, Lisbon felt more mysteriously beautiful than before I got to know her.
History had it, that whenever two polar opposite cultures are smashed together, often under reluctant or even violent circumstances, despite hardships and losses, something mutated but beautiful eventually comes out at the other end. That something, is usually food.
No doubt that America has its unspeakable history from the time of slavery, but what was left from its ugliness, was the unapologetic creole and cajun. Taiwan’s predominantly Fujian and kejia culture (derived from China’s southern coast) adjusted to 50 years of Japanese rule by nurturing an uniquely categorized cuisine all of its own, which, some say, may be the last-standing pride of this politically fading island. So on… what unfortunate events gave us the Vietnamese coffee, and so forth… what conflict left us the baba-nyonya? Food, among sadness and realities, always knows how to find its own humble delights. Food, is always optimistic.
And right now, standing in Hong Kong where such experiences were no stranger, I’m holding in my hand, a glorious testament of such history. A legacy from Portuguese’s colonial time in Macao, the pork chop pineapple bun.
Macao’s pork chop bun compared to Portuguese’s bifana, obviously, is another life. It uses bone-in pork chops instead of cutlets, reflecting Asian’s general preference for flavour over convenience. On top of which, it deploys soy sauce as part of the seasonings, and baking soda, a typical and effecient meat-tenderizing agent in Cantonese cooking. But perhaps the most controversial act of it all is that, in one version, it stuffs the shallow-fried pork chop, without a blinking of an eye, in between an iconic pastry of this particular region. The pineapple buns.
It can’t be right. It shouldn’t be right. But in between the crispy and salty edges of a well-seasoned and juicy bone-in pork chop, and the sweet and crumbly crust of a buttery pineapple bun, it miraculously is. To be honest, I don’t even know why I doubted it in the first place. Salty and sweet. A proven equation that works. Really, give it a chance. No matter how unseemly and conflicting the idea may sound, like the clashing of the cultures that nurtured it, pork chop pineapple bun is a tasty mutation that made the best of it all.
And don’t forget to serve it with Hong Kong-style English milk tea.
What has this world come to? Or, all along, this is how we always have been?
I know. This is a food blog, rainbows and marshmallows and summer noodle salads. Politics, world affairs… are not palatable, instead, I should be talking about pumpkin pies. But you see, this is the thing. Talking about foods, in a time like this. How can we, so at ease, not taste the irony between the bettering tolerance for flavours on our dining tables, and the boiling hostility on just about everything beyond? Food-wise, in the history of mankind, the world has never come so open-minded, so intimately close to sharing and tasting the very same beliefs that are being enjoyed from the other side of the map. We can all agree on the cold silkiness of a piece of raw fish on a small nub of tangy rice. The cool creaminess of hummus meandering around the sizzling spiced kebabs. The good funk of cheese melting into the chewiness of a hand-torn crusty baguette. A sip of wine. It registers the same. The contentment in common. The smile radiating from our torsos. Ah, yes, that wonder you’re tasting over there, I’m feeling it right here too, understanding, happy-ing, at the same time, over the same things. How is it that we could relate so much in happiness, and yet, empathise so little in suffering. Can we really talk about foods, without thinking about politics? Or is it, let’s eat now and kill each other later?
Really bad things happened in Paris. Here we all mourned, in shock, in disbelief, compassionate. Meanwhile, the exact same really bad things, just as bad, sometimes worse, happens not that far away almost every week on that side, perhaps your side, stacking up silently like morning pancakes. Beirut 3 days ago, Ankara last month, other cities of dwindling lights. But… that was just inks on newspapers, no hashtags in its grief. Has even my sympathy, where I decide to spare it, become part of the problems? Why is it only you and I, yours and mine, and nothing in between? We’re all micros teeming on a speck of dust in this universe, but somehow, we still manage to divide beyond our means, to sever what is better as one, to split the atoms. I don’t. Wanna. Exist like this.
MY DUMPLING COMES WITH AN EXTRA DISK OF SALTY, CRACKLING, DRAMATIC BUT ALSO DELICATE PERSONALITY. IT MIGHT NOT BE FOR EVERYONE WHO LIKE SMOOTH RIDES, BUT IT’S MY DUMPLING AND I LIKE IT EXACTLY THE WAY IT IS.
I’ve always liked western funerals.
Or to be more specific, I’ve always liked the meal that takes place afterwards. The kind of… you’re-dead-let’s-eat attitude, the striving positivity in what I would like to call, “party-grieving”. Call this meal a “repast” or whatever, but as far as I’m concerned, when a large group of friends gathers and gets drunk plus smothered in casseroles, even if it was after an eternal farewell and no lady’s mascara was fully intact, hey, it’s a party. So yeah. I think it’s nice. I think it’s dignifying. When I have my funeral, I’m going to make everyone listen to Gaga’s “(now you really) can’t read my, can’t read my poker face”, and like it or not, eat sardine casseroles. So a few weeks ago, when the reality of what was going to happen started to settle in, I pressed the soft paws of my fur-son Dumpling against my wet face and said… hey, don’t you worry, mommy’s gonna throw you the best party ever.
Except that… ironically, Dumpling hated parties. If he had known about this mass “trespassing” taking place under his roof, he would’ve taken out his shotguns and barked everyone off of his lawn. Don’t take it personally. That was just Dumpling, my sociopathic dog who was really more of a human that hated dogs, and would love nothing more than to remove a harmless chunk of meat from your annoying ankles, no hard feelings. Chances are, if you knew him, you wouldn’t have liked him much. In fact, more than being anti-social, he was also a self-absorbed, snobbish, toy-despising and politically incorrect racist… Basically, an asshole.
ONIGIRI COULD BE NONE BUT A BALL OF RICE, UNTIL YOU’VE HAD A REAL ONIGIRI AND REALIZED WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT…
A BALL OF REALLY GOOD RICE
The weather in Beijing is driving me mad. Rainy, swampy, relentlessly brownish grey. In all the fond days that I’ve been in this dump, all five years and counting, the summers have never been this wet. Soaking wet. I mean let’s face it, nothing here is pleasant to begin with I’ll give you that. But for this region, a supposedly semi-desert climate for fuck sake, that for what it’s worth, the relatively dry summers and butt-cracks used to contribute as the pitiful silver-lining of being in this hell-hole. The cherry on a very bad cake. But lately, no. Not this summer. Every morning begins with a slow poach inside a thick tarred and slimy cloud of grossness – think the colons of Jabba the Hutt or inside Donald Trump’s comb-over under a baseball cap – then, comes the almost guaranteed torrential rains around 7 pm that marinates everything in a wet mop-like humidity. Then the next day, it repeats. Did I mention that the pollution congeals even more enthusiastically in its special sense of sarcasm? Did I mention that it’s been like this, for weeks.
It’s an understatement to say that these days, I’m not happy much. All the recent riots of Instagrams flaunting farmer’s markets, elf-like human beings and basic living bliss, only make me bleed jealousy and really hateful thoughts. If I could stab your heirloom tomato in the abdomen right now, I’d gladly do so with gruesome gratifications and throw in all its cousins for good measure. It’s also safe to say that these days, I don’t go out much. The joy of grocery-runs has been reduced down a battle of mind-dragging chores, not to mention, that at any given seconds, the heaven could punish me with an acid-fueled downpour for daring optimistic thoughts. These days, I made do with what I have.
…BUT IT DOESN’T STOP THERE. THE REAL MIND-BLOWING PART IS THE LAST DESCENDING SPRIGS OF THE UNIMAGINABLE… FRESH CILANTRO LEAVES
If you were those who like to travel to unfamiliar places, see unfamiliar pictures, eat unfamiliar things, chances are that for many times, you have been caught up in moments where I’d like to call – the encounters of food paradox. Foods that don’t make sense, shouldn’t make sense, but the moment we put one in our mouth, the argument between logics and instincts all quiets down, and the only sensation left with any capacity for thoughts, is how defiantly delicious it stood against our prejudice. It changes everything, on top of the very least, our palette henceforth, will never be the same. This post, I hope, is about exactly that.
I have been longing to find a way, an accessible angle, to tell you about a thing called, ice cream-spring roll. It’s a common street-food in Taiwan, not particularly flashy or groundbreaking. In fact, among the immensely competitive and ever evolving Taiwanese street-foodscape, one may even argue, standard stuff. But if you have no affiliation with the food-culture from this island proud for nothing but, the concept of this ice cream-spring roll, with its deceivingly predictable name, may just very well be your next big revelation. Up front, what is expected surely is that there’s ice creams, most likely local flavours like taro or mango but could also include strawberry and vanilla, which are rolled inside a chewy crepe made with simply flour, water and salt. No innovation there. But to make things more interesting, a tall pile of sweet nutty and salty ” sandystreusels” is being shaved directly from a ginormous brick of peanut and caramel brittle, matching its proportion to the ice creams to almost 1:2. The shaved/ground peanut caramel brittle alone, already completely push the texture and flavour of the spring roll to another dimension, but, it doesn’t stop there. The real mind-blowing part, is the last descending sprigs of the unimaginable, the last to belong in the dessert isle, the controversially pungent… fresh cilantro leaves. What?!
You know I would describe it to you if I could. I’d say it’s melty, creamy, sandy and crunchy all encased inside a film of chewiness. I’d say that it’s sweet with pops of saltiness, the permeation of powdered peanuts and caramel and a whiff of herbs in the back-note. But for the life of me, I cannot describe to you the immense confusion upon the impact of the first bite, then the gentle surrendering into the next, then a breeze of exhilaration on the last. So I won’t. You’ll have to try this one out yourself. Because, that’s the beauty of a food-paradox isn’t it? One that does and should be lived outside the limitation of words. Maybe you’ll hate it. Maybe you’ll love it. Whatever it is, we will celebrate the forever-forward exploration that is eating.
