Monday, June 29, 2009
Birthday Weekend A Success; Nation Cheers
Josh and me in the minibus on the way to the Thai border.
Uhhhhhh.... right. This is what Josh is around for. READ THE SIGN, MONKEY! No, really, he's totally good at reading signs and I am proud.
Raul (we named our car Raul. Get on board.) has many cousins in Thailand! His name is Pracornchit. No seriously.
Oh god THE FOOD. Coconut Curried Fish and Braised Pork with Green Chili, over jasmine rice. OH GOD THE FOOD.
Even better with a bottle of $2 ice cold Singha beer. OH MY GOD THE FOOD.
From left to right: red beef curry with coconut milk, red braised pork in ginger-wine broth, sour tamarind curry, chicken curry with sweet potato. Did I mention: OH GOD THE FOOD.
Our Thai friends, excited that we could eat "village style". I think it was called village style because there was a pig laying in some mud about fifteen feet to the left and a chicken was sitting under the table at one point. As if farm animals are going to keep me from eating curry.
Me, swimming in a waterfall, in the jungle, the day I turned 32. Swimming in the waterfalls in the jungle was seriously one of the best, most refreshing things I have ever done and I never want to forget about it. Although, two minutes before this, the Thai kids in the picture were laughing at me histerically because I fell into the water, cause I am totally awesomely coordinated. Hope the government doesn't mind my passport being soaked.
This picture is blurry cause it was night and everything was moving and Josh had drank like four beers at this point, but look very carefully at what I am petting. AN ELEPHANT. That's right. I fed it sugarcane and it put its weird, wet trunk on my head and I felt very special.
After many more beers, Josh decided he needed the "Fat Girl Special" from 7-11, which is instant noodles with a spicy hotdog inside. No really, it's called that.
So in summary, Thailand is awesome. That is all.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Is this irony, or not irony? It's confusing.
I got robbed while I was riding the previously mentioned motorcycle ON THE EXPRESSWAY. Yeah, I didn't even have to slow down to get robbed. The douchebag rode up beside me, grabbed my bag, gave my bike a shove, and was off. My bag, which had an unfortunate amount of stuff I would have prefered not to lose, was snatched right out of the basket and I was forced to wave goodbye to my phone, camera, notebook full of recipes, watch, ring, mp3 player and my backpack itself, which was awesome. Also, my water bottle.
I chased the twatwaffle who grabbed the bag for awhile, but he obviously had done this before, and I wasn't in the mood to be robbed and die in an accident in the same day. At least I wasn't hurt, and things can be replaced. Cold comfort, but still. Not dead at the end of a robbery is a fine consolation prize.
Luckily the asshat on a bike turned the corner too fast and ran into a petrol truck and died in the ensuing explosion. [This is what I like to call imagined reality. It's the best. Try it.]
Motorcycle!
So walking around town was fun, but RIDING AROUND TOWN is AWESOME! Josh keeps making fun of me because I like to act like this awesome bike is some sort of bad ass chopper, instead of what I think is considered a "non-licensed vehicle" at home, meaning the engine is so small not only do you not need a driver's license to operate it, but that it doesn't even need tags in most states. Plus, it costs $90 a month to rent it, and a dollar to fill the gas tank.
But, the Honda X5 Dream is the first step towards the middle class for millions of Asians, so I am justified in renting this motorbike because it can be considered research. That's right. Justification is fun.
Whheeeeeeee!!
PS. Mine does not have that retarded basket on the front. That is for total losers.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Langkawi
Just north of Penang Island is another island chain, called Langkawi, which means eagles butt or something in Malay. We went there for two reasons: need more beach time, and it's a duty free port. Which means that a can of beer is 50 cents. Also, this happened on Langkawi: met cute Dutch boys who turned out to be 18, met Finnish girls who were drinking buckets of vodka (no really, buckets- the bar was serving booze in buckets), and went midnight swimming under the southern cross. A very good weekend, all in all.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Nasi Lemak
Nasi lemak actually refers to just the rice, but it is normally served with a protein as well. I decided to go crazy traditional Malay: dried tiny anchovies. Yeah, I know, sounds gross. But really, they came out excellent. You can easily substitute peeled shrimp or pieces of fish or chicken. The tiny anchovies are friend until they are golden brown and crunchy, and really, they sort of remind me of bacon. Fish bacon.
Just a note on getting all this to come together, I put the rice on and then fried the fish and the peanuts, and then made the sambal. It was all done about the right time.
The How To:
Coconut Rice
240 ml / 1 c rice
240 ml / 1 c coconut milk
80 ml / 1/3 c water
2 pantan leaves or 1 bay leaf
¼ stick cinnamon
1 whole clove
pinch of salt
Put everything into a saucepan with a tightly fitting lid. Bring to a boil and then reduce to the lowest flame possible (just barely simmering). Let cook undisturbed for 20 minutes.
Sambal
1 small red onion (really, should be ¼ small red American onion- we seem to have gargantuan produce in North America)
4 small shallots or 2 large
2 cloves garlic
10 whole dried red chilies
5 fresh hot red chilies
1 t shrimp paste (substitute anchovy paste, normally sold in the Italian section of the supermarket in a tube, if you can't find it at an Asian shop)
¼ t salt
1 T sugar
4 T tamarind paste, dissolved in 1 c water for 30 min, then strained
You can do this by hand, like I did (because I don't have anything else to do it with, not because I am better than you), or use a food processor. I wholeheartedly approve of the food processor. Basically, grind the onion, shallots, garlic, dried chilies, fresh chilies, shrimp paste, salt, and sugar until they become a chunky paste. You might have to add a bit of water to the mixture to get it to blend smooth, but try to add as little as possible. When you have a paste, heat four tablespoons of oil in a wok. When the oil is shimmering, add the spice paste and fry about two minutes, or until the garlic smells fragrant and the chilies start to smell toasted. Add half of the tamarind water, and mix well. Continue cooking over high heat until the oil begins to separate out from the sambal. That is your signal that it is done. Reserve the sambal and the remaining tamarind water.
Garnishes
60 ml/ ¼ c raw shelled peanuts, fried in 2 T oil for few minutes, until golden
½ English cucumber, sliced into small pieces
Protien
2 oz dried ikan bilis (small whole anchovies)
-or-
4 oz shrimp, peeled and cleaned
-or-
4 oz boneless chicken meat, chopped into small cubes
If using the dried anchovies, fry them in a ¼ c of oil until golden brown. Strain.
If using chicken or shirmp, sear in a hot wok with a spoonful of oil until nicely seared but not done.
Add the protein and 2/3 of the sambal mixture to the wok, and add the remaining tamarind water. Bring to a boil and cook until the meat is done and the sauce has thickened (you want the sauce to be like thick chili, basically).
To Serve:
Mound the rice and top with the protien in sambal sauce. Serve the remaining sambal on the side as a condiment, along with the cucumbers and peanuts. Eat, and be mad you never had this before.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
The Servants are Stealing Sugar
So on Monday, Josh went off to a conference at the Eastern and Oriental Hotel to meet and greet, and I started searching for an apartment to rent, holding a gin and tonic and yelling at the maid the entire time. If you used to read my other blog, then you remember the multitude of apartments that we went through to get our current place. I vowed not to repeat that experience.
Armed with the Malaysian version of craigslist (craigslist does actually exist here, but no one uses it, ever), the newspaper, and my mobile phone, I discovered the following things about myself: (1) I am not a Muslim. (2) I am not Chinese. (3) I do not wish to rent an apartment for two years. Granted, none of this was new information, but apparently my love of bacon disqualifies me from furnished apartments owned by Halal-keeping Muslims. Halal is the Islamic equivalent to Jews who keep Kosher (there is a statement designed to get you beat up in both Tel Aviv and Cairo). I didn't realize this, but cooking bacon while smooching my boyfriend and drinking a beer at the same time basically means that the apartment owners have to burn it down and start over. Seems drastic, but there you go.
In America, if you state in your apartment listing “Chinese Only” or “Black Only” or whatever, it's basically an invitation to go to court, twice. First as guests of the federal government, and second as a class action defendant. I like that system. It's cruel but fair. In Malaysia, it's totally ok to be all “Chinese Only, peeps, Whiteys Smell Like Butter and Can't Trust Indians, so Later Skaters”. I called a couple “Chinese Only” apartments just to see if they were serious. The sound of getting hung up on indicates that they were.
Short-term apartments are not really that common in the US, but normally you can find a student's place or something to sub-let. I could not, here. Everyone wanted me to sign a two year contract, and asking for a shorter contract involved a lot of teeth sucking and hand waving on the part of the agent, only to be offered a one year contract. Asking for two months caused the sky to rip and frogs to rain from heaven.
But, persistence wins. (Persistence and cheating. They both win.) I found an agent that was familiar with the concept of short-term rental, and who didn't care if we were Chinese Muslims, and now we live in a three bedroom apartment on the twenty-first floor next to the ocean.
Totally didn't see that coming.
This is the view of the Straits of Malacca from our balcony. Just across the water you can see mainland Malaysia.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
More Satay, and What I Wouldn't Do for It
Monday, June 1, 2009
Last Meal in Indonesia
Actually, our last meal in Indonesia was at Pizza Hut. Yeah, I won't apologize for it. It was excellent. I'd do it again in a second.