The Imposter in the Garden

The healthiest plant in my garden these days--and for quite some time now--is what is known as a curry plant. This frosty-green perennial is available for purchase at the gardening center alongside herbs like oregano, thyme, parsley, tarragon and sage. While, I've never known what to do with it, I've been happy to let it coexist with all the other herbs that regularly make their way into whatever I happen to be cooking.

 While the aroma of the curry plant is vaguely similar to that of a generic curry of some sort, no curry seasoning blends actually contain this plant. Recipes for curry are innumerable, with each cook possessing the secrets to family favorites. Different spice blends lend themselves to particular dishes, whether based on chicken, fish, vegetables or tofu, and to different seasons as well. Some curry blends make you sweat and cool you off in summer, while others help keep you warm in winter. Most curries include some combination of cinnamon, coriander, cumin, nutmeg, fennel seed, cardamom, fenugreek, turmeric, saffron, tamarind and quite a number of other spices and flavorings. But no curry plant.

Yesterday I finally became curious enough to do a little research and find out what this plant really is and how to use it. I discovered that we have an imposter in our midst. It turns out that this plant has neither culinary nor medicinal qualities. Except for its use in potpourris and wreaths, it does nothing to merit the space it takes up in the garden. I realized that I've been had by a plant! How sad is that? I fumed about this at dinner.

"I'm going to rip that plant out of the ground and throw it into the dumpster tomorrow," I told Himself. "I feel like going out there with a flashlight and pulling it up right NOW!"

"Feeling just a bit vengeful, are we?" he chuckled.

So I picked a frond of the pretender and nibbled a bit of it. Not much flavor, really, just enough chlorophyll to let me know I was chewing on a plant. Then I slept on it (on my decision, not on the plant. Sheesh, you readers!). In spite of its dishonest ways, it is greenery, and it does smell nice. It's pretty, too and one of the few things thriving in my deserty backyard.

Oh, what the hell? For now, the imposter stays.

Week #29 Sri Lankan

Sri Lanka (formerly known as Ceylon) is that tiny teardrop of an island that falls into the Indian Ocean from the eastern tip of India. It is a land of spices and curries, so if you like your food bland, best select a different holiday destination!

Himself and I visited Priyani Ceylon Fusion Oriental Cafe, just a stone's throw from UC Northridge. Our Sri Lankan host was proud of his cuisine and his cooking, and after he waxed poetic about the menu's offerings, we asked him to bring us what he thought we should have. He seemed quite pleased with our deference.

First he brought us a plate of appetizers or "short eats," all containing a filling of fish that was boldly seasoned but well balanced. On the left are pattis, which look for all the world to me like empanadas. In the middle are Chinese rolls (if only the fish sticks in school had been so good!) and to the upper right are cutlets. All were pleasantly spicy even without the homemade hot sauce--which pleased our tongues and cleared our sinuses.

"lump rice"

"Lump rice" isn't a very sexy name for a dish, but don't let that put you off. It's essentially an entire meal bundled up and cooked in a single banana leaf. Himself gently opened that steaming leaf to find eggplant curry, roast chicken, green banana curry, onion sambal and basmati rice nestled inside. I managed to swipe a few bites, but Himself guarded his meal jealously. I'll just have to go back and get my own next time. Everything in the leaf was tasty, but most surprising was the green banana curry. The dense, starchy consistency of the cubes of unripe banana had us puzzling for a few minutes. What kind of tuber is this? Or is it yucca? We finally went back to the menu and realized that the texture was so different from that of either ripe bananas and cooked plantains that we hadn't recognized it as banana. It's always puzzling when you encounter a familiar food that you can't recognize because of difference in culinary context.

Biryani

My biryani was made of basmati rice and loaded with cashews, raisins, currants and an array of spices. Buried inside this mound of rice were several pieces of roast chicken. (To my eyes it looks more like what I'd call "lump rice" than Andy's "leaf rice!") The biryani was topped with a roasted egg and served with a dense sweet eggplant curry on the side.

 "roasted egg"

It seems a little odd for a dish to show up with a twice-cooked egg perched on top (boiled and then roasted), but I'm finding that this is actually a common accompaniment for biryani. I'm also discovering recipes that call for deep-frying boiled eggs and making a curry of them.

 Watalappam

For dessert we shared a dish of watalappam, a custard flavored with an array of spices and a type of unrefined brown sugar called jaggery. It has a darker, more sophisticated taste from the jaggery and spices and plenty of richness from the eggs, cashews and coconut milk, so sharing a piece was smart.

Both entrees and the dessert are Muslim in origin, which might seem curious, considering that Sri Lanka is majority Buddhist and minority Hindu. But the history of civilization is the history of food, of food and food preparation methods being carried by immigrants, missionaries, merchants, armies and wanderers, so nothing should really surprise us when it comes to the culinary influences of one place on another.

Asian cooks know their spices like pianists know their keys. When a world of spices grows in your backyard, you don't have to shell out anywhere from $4 to the-sky's-the-limit for a single tiny bottle. So you can step out your back door, harvest freely and experiment to your heart's content to come up with the spice blend you like best. And every cook has his and her own favorite blend.

My friend and colleague Carol Selva Rajah shares one of her favorite Sri Lankan spice blends:
3 Tbsp. coriander seeds
1½ Tbsp. cumin seeds
1 Tbsp. fennel seeds
2 tsp. whole peppercorns
¼ tsp. fenugreek seeds
¼ tsp. cloves
¼ tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. cardamom
Dry roast the spices and grind in a small coffee grinder. Add chili powder and fresh curry leaves to flavor if needed.

Raw ingredients for a rich and heady spice blend: 12:00 cinnamon bark; 1:00 cardamom seed; 2:00 a bit of show-and-tell: smash these cardamom pods and you'll find those little black seeds inside; 3:00 cumin seed; 6:00 coriander seed; 7:00 black peppercorns; 9:00 fenugreek seed; 10:00 whole cloves; in the center, fennel seed which, incidentally, I got from my own garden right here in LA!

I toasted the coriander, fennel, cumin and cardamom seeds and then put everything in an electric coffee mill and gave it a good spin. I keep an extra mill on hand specifically for grinding spices--a metal one, as plastic absorbs the oils of the spices and imparts them on the next batch, even if you don't want that particular blend!

 Coriander seed toasting in the pan: Use an uncoated pan and medium heat, and pay attention, so they don't burn! Let your nose be your guide.

This may look like a lot of work, and you may give in to the urge to cheat and go buy a jar of pre-made curry or jars of pre-ground spices to make a curry (and who knows how long those jars have been sitting on the grocery shelf?), but if you take the time, you'll be rewarded with the most amazing explosion of flavors. And you can make this in large batches to use for more than one dish. Just don't make too much at once. As soon as these seeds are ground, they immediately start to lose their zazz.

The finished spice blend: If only you had a scratch-n-sniff computer screen!

  Throw a generous amount of one of these spice blends into a pot of simmering meat or vegetables, and the heat will open up the aromas and perfume your house with the most beautiful blend of fragrances imaginable. And of course, you'll have an amazing dinner, too.

Sri Lanka's wealth of spices lured many a ship from Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. With all those neatly organized rows of tins and bottles of spices in the baking section of the grocery store at our disposal, it's difficult to imagine expeditions being prompted by the allure of something as ordinary--to us, anyway--as pepper and cinnamon. But the more I learn about spices and cook with those amazing blends, the more I understand what the fuss was all about!

*Special thanks to Carol Selva Rajah for her knowledge and insights. If you want to learn more about cooking with the abundance of spices and flavorings from Asia, look for her book, Heavenly Fragrance.

Week #16 South African

South Africa. Now here's a place with some amazing culinary influences: various African tribes, numerous waves of European settlers including the English, Portuguese, French, German and Dutch contingents, and a healthy representation of Indian, Malaysian, Filipino and others from around Southeast Asia. As for the terrain, this country is capable of producing most anything you'd care to eat or drink. The land sustains a veritable smorgasbord.

Himself and I trekked to Springbok, a combo restaurant and sports bar in the Sepulveda Basin area. We were a little concerned about making one of our culinary expeditions into what we feared would be just another sports bar with generic pub grub. Not to worry, though--this place is owned and run by four Afrikaners who miss the vibe, the sports and the food of their home turf.

Chicken Livers in Peri-Peri Sauce

We started with an appetizer of chicken livers in peri-peri sauce. This sauce is made of tiny birdseye chile peppers. It's hot enough to get your attention but not so hot that it detracts from the flavor of the dish. Aside from tasting great, the sauce lightened the density of the livers--no mean feat. While liver isn't my favorite thing to eat, I do find myself craving chicken livers (no other type!) about once a year. This was a good opportunity to satisfy the annual craving while having livers that hadn't been breaded and deep fried. I like this combination a lot, and I'd certainly order it again.

 
Boerewors Roll with "Train Smash"

 I had the Boerewors roll for my entrée. It's a traditional South African sausage ("boerewors" means "farmer sausage" in Afrikaans) served on a homemade bun. With its dry texture and rather un-tame flavor (although I wouldn't exactly call it "gamey"), I assumed this sausage was made of some sort of wild game. It was a tremendous surprise to discover that Boerewors is actually made of beef in a beef casing. I guess so much sausage is made of swine that I'm accustomed to the fattiness and more luxurious mouth feel. (Boer, of course, has nothing in common with pork, but rather is a person of Dutch descent in South Africa, also known as an Afrikaner. I knew this, but when I heard of a sausage with what sounded like "boar" in the name...).

The Boerewors was served with what they amusingly call "train smash," a stew of sautéed onions in a tomato sauce with some peppers added in. Perhaps more peri-peri? I think I was supposed to pour it onto the Boerewors, but I dipped in a few of the fries and ate the rest with my fork. Instead I poured peach chutney onto the sausage.

Durban Lamb Curry: I love the way they rolled the pappadum and used it for garnish.

Himself had the Durban lamb curry over rice with sambals and pappadum whirled into a nice little garnish. The curry was pretty mild, but good, and the lamb, delicate. The sambals, shredded coconut, chopped tomato and grated carrot with cilantro added sweetness, freshness and variety to the curry. Durban is in southeastern South Africa, along the Indian Ocean coastline. Indian curries are prevalent here, hence the name.

While Springbok (named for the South African rugby team, which named itself for the antelope) typically carries beers and ales they import from home, the taps were dry when we were there, an aberration, we were assured. I hope so. We both want to return, and it will be good to try the local brew with the local food. As they say, if it grows together, it goes together.

When Aid Africa held its fundraiser a few weeks ago, I won the raffle for the basket of goodies assembled from all over the continent. Three of the items are from South Africa and were perfect for my breakfast the morning after our South African dinner.

 Rooibos tea with oatmeal & fig jam

 Himself watched in a combination of amusement and disbelief as I ripped open the packet of instant oatmeal, poured it into a bowl, added hot water, stirred it and then took a picture.

"It's instant oatmeal. What are you going to say about it?"

"Not much, I don't imagine," I replied. The most interesting feature is that the oatmeal is "Jungle" brand and has a tiger on the package. That amuses me. To sweeten it I stirred in a generous spoonful of South African fig jam, and it turned out to be the best fig jam I've ever had. The occasional length of citrus peel added a nice texture and contrasting flavor. It turns out that figs grown in the Cape area are some of the world's most delicate and flavorful. I hope to find that out someday by actually traveling there, but for now, I'd have to say they make a pretty fine jam.

Speaking of amusing brands, the name of the jam was "Something." As in, "I brought you Something from my trip to South Africa." Something turns out to be a company that scopes out those foods it thinks most adequately represent the flavors of South Africa and imports them into the U.S., things like spice rubs, marinades, teas and the like. Turns out the peach chutney I had on the Boerewors roll came from these guys.

As for the Rooibos tea, dang, it's red! And mildly flavored, more floral than herbal. Delicately sweet, so I didn't feel the need to add sugar or honey. Rooibos (Afrikaans for "red bush") is a tea grown in the Cedarberg Mountains in the central part of South Africa, just north of the Cape of Good Hope. It produces a tea that is a deep mahogany color. Rooibos has no caffeine, since it is an herb and not a tea, so I enjoyed a cup of it before putting on a pot of coffee. A little quick Internet research tells me that rooibos has a rather iconic place in the South African heart and is something that Afrikaners often carry with them when they leave home. That's certainly easier--and more legal--than developing an attachment to the ham or cheese you miss from home.

We enjoyed our foray to Springbok enough to return (just not on karaoke night). There were several other menu items I'd like to try, like the braai, the South African take on barbecue. Coming from barbecue country myself, I'm interested in seeing what they do with it.

Week #7 Cambodian (Khmer)

Asian food and I are old buddies. I've had plenty of Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese and Korean food, but never Cambodian. Not until now.

We trekked out to the San Gabriel Valley, the stronghold of many of LA's Asian populations, in search of a cuisine that most people don't think of first when they think of Asian food. We saw only one other Caucasian during our visit to Battambang in San Gabriel, which is always the sign of an authentic restaurant outside of the West. The menu was immense--it would take us months to sample everything, so we had to do the best we could with just the two of us. This is definitely a place we want to return to and bring a group of friends. The large round tables with giant lazy susans in the middle certainly encourage parties and sharing food.

All the dishes arrived simultaneously, which is the custom in Cambodia, an overwhelming sight. There's no easing into the meal with the beverage and then the appetizer and then the salad. It's Ta-da! time in rapid order.

 Bánh He

 Our appetizer was Bánh He, a plate of fritters filled with rice and shallots, deep fried and served with a sweet-hot dipping sauce. The combination of shallot with the sweet sauce in the rich fried coating make this the perfect food to order in large quantities with a pitcher of beer. Seriously, Bánh He should make it onto bar menus. It would be a great alternative to jalapeno poppers and those overdone fried-onion monstrosities.

Pork broth, chunky style

Among the dishes on our table was a large bowl of pork broth. We didn't order it, but apparently this is as standard to a Cambodian meal as salt, pepper and sugar would be on most Western tables. It was quite literally pig juice, with three large bones in the bowl, and some shallots and cilantro leaves stirred in. We enjoyed a sip of this broth after every few bites of food--a great digestive aid.

Fish Curry

Himself ordered a fish curry that we ladled over a bed of jasmine rice. I could have made an entire meal off this--it was fishy-salty, with some heat on the back end. No doubt, it was made with prahok, a salty fish paste that's used a lot in Cambodian cooking. I can imagine this being a great thing to eat the morning after a night out on the town. Satisfying and rejuvenative. I could use these words to describe everything on the table. (If we'd been there for breakfast, this fish curry would have been served with a baguette, a culinary holdover from the French colonial period.)

 Beef Luc Lac on a bed of jasmine rice, with pickled veggies on the side

My Com Bo Luc Lac, a.k.a. "shaken beef" was really good, too. I kept expecting to find a sweetness, but that didn't seem to be too prominent in the array of flavors we sampled. The richness of the meat was tamed by the tang of the accompanying pickled vegetables and lightened by the jasmine rice. (By the way, the method of cooking, by agitating or tossing the beef in the wok is what makes it shaken.)

An assortment of cool, green veggies: cucumber, cabbage, lettuce, green beans and one I still can't identify--the one in the top middle of the photo with all those peppery seeds.

In addition to the pickled vegetables, we had a plate of assorted raw green veggies to crunch along with our rich, cooked foods. We were surprised by the melon-looking vegetable that tasted smooth and cucumbery, but that contained seeds that were quite peppery when we bit into them. This item remains a mystery, even after questioning, cookbook perusal and internet research. It was difficult to ask too many questions, since the amount of English spoken by those working there, including servers, the manager and a busser--all of whom tried to help us--was quite limited. Even if we could speak a little Cambodian, it would probably be confined to "hello," "good-bye" and "where's the bathroom?" Questions like "What kind of bones are in my soup?" and "What is this vegetable called?" don't typically show up in basic language courses, either Cambodian OR English. Still, such mysteries are great fun. I felt like we were in good hands, so it didn't bother me at all that I couldn't identify everything I ate.

Pennywort Drink

Himself blanched when I suggested ordering the durian drink (I'm sure he'd have been able to smell it from across the table), so I opted for an intensely green beverage made of pennywort leaves. It wasn't bad but then it wasn't exactly scrummy, either. I think that if you boiled, puréed and strained a big bag of iceberg lettuce, then added sugar and green food coloring, you might have an idea of what it was like. I did a little research on pennywort and discovered that it's also known as gotu kola, which you find in abundance at health food stores as an ayurvedic remedy. It's supposed to be good for curing leprosy and helping opium addicts kick the habit. That's good to know, should my life ever change in ways I don't anticipate.

Unlike in Thailand, where dishes contain a balance of salty, sweet, sour, bitter and spicy, Cambodian food is either salty, sweet, sour or bitter, with various hot condiments that you can add as you wish. They don't typically blend these four flavors--instead, you get a separate dish with each component of the flavor spectrum.

Cambodian food reveals simplicity and adaptability. There aren't a lot of what you'd call traditional dishes in their repertoire, because culinary evolution (among other things) has suffered in this country that has been savaged and ravaged by a succession of invading armies. But the food is good, and the hospitality in abundance. We'll be back, and we'll take friends next time.