Spice

I have been craving some serious Chinese food recently.

Food with wok hai, food that is like mother's milk,
But that is not so sweet as to be mistaken for dessert.

Food that will put hair on you chest (if you are so inclined)

But I have yet to find that kind of Chinese food here in Israel. 1950's and '60's "Canadian-Chinese", or "Kantonese", everything flavoured with Osem Chinese style soy sauce, which is artificially flavoured and coloured as far as I can tell, and has no relation to naturally brewed soy sauce, or even LaChoy's lacklustre version. And everything tasting exactly the same, no matter if it is called Mandarin, Hunanese, Cantonese Szechuan, Hong Kong, Shanghai or Peking style.

And then, to add insult to injury, in order to eat pathetic pseudo-Chinese you have to take out a mortgage and still be careful to not order anything that has seafood in it. That is, of course, if the restaurant isn't Glatt Kosher…

Family legend has it that I first tasted Chinese food aged 6 weeks – when my mother fed me a sip of wonton soup. Ever since then I have been hooked. I remember going to the original Toronto Chinatown on Dundas Street. This was back in the early 70's and Sai Woo was considered to be the epitome of authentic. My father, in a generous mood, let me choose any dish on the menu, and me, aged about 8, and having been influenced by National Geographic articles written by Euell Gibbons, I chose an abalone dish. I don't remember how they cooked it or even the texture, but what I do remember is that it was tinned and that was a big disappointment. I had expected something that would taste special and worthy of National Geographic, but I could have been eating tinned clams, or textured SPAM or Dinty Moore chicken. That's what eating Chinese food here is like... a big disappointment.

Personally, my favourite dim sum treats are chicken's feet and tripe. Fat chance finding either of those here. Instead, I am assaulted by limp ravioli noodles filled with sweetened sweet potato {yes, you read right – sweetened sweet potato} doused in olive oil and spiced with dried coriander and cumin. I really don't think that this could be considered even bastardized dim sum. But then again, this is Israel, and nothing is sacred.

I digress.

I love Chinese food. Really love it. And really miss the real stuff. In desperation, I have managed to achieve almost authentic tasting Chinese food in my own home.

But I still wish I could just wander down the street and have my cravings satisfied...

Spicy Chicken with Cabbage and Noodles
This is flexible and you can play with the quantities to suit your taste and the number of guests {I made enough for 2 and I love spicy food}. Just make sure that you don't overload your wok and make sure it stays very, very hot.

• Egg noodles, blanched and tossed with oil to keep from sticking then allowed to drip dry
• Peanut oil or corn oil
• 1 inch ginger sliced into very thin match sticks
• 3 cloves garlic smashed and sliced very thin
• 5 Green onions sliced into 1 inch pieces.
• 1 star anise
• 10 tiny dried bird chilis
• 1 tsp whole Szechuan peppercorns
• 2 tbsp dried shrimp
• Sesame oil
• 3 tbsp {approx} dark soy
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp hot sriracha sauce
• 1 tbsp cornstarch or ricestarch
• 3 tbsp Xiao Xing wine or sherry
• 2 boneless chicken thighs, thinly sliced, sprinkled with a generous grind of black pepper
• 1/4 red cabbage thinly sliced
  You can also add bean sprouts, very thin matchstick carrots, mangetouts, or almost any other vegetable that you like, just so long as they are cut to cook extremely quickly, this was just what I had on hand
• Fresh hot red pepper – to taste –
  Mine was really hot - I used 1/2 of a 4 inch one that was the size of a medium carrot

Mix the starch, sugar, wine or sherry, soy and sriracha sauces together with a little bit of water.

Heat some peanut oil in a wok until it just starts to smoke, then throw in about 1/3 of the ginger and garlic, swirl it around the wok and then throw in the noodles and give a quick toss. Let the wok regain heat and then toss the noodles again. Basically you want the noodles to start getting a bit browned, and even lightly scorched and crispy in places. Use chopsticks or forks to help separate the noodles. When the noodles have lots of crispy, browned bits, throw in half of the green onions and a small splash of sesame oil, toss around to mix thoroughly and then put onto a warmed serving plate and keep warm in the oven.

Heat some more peanut oil in the wok until it just starts to smoke, then throw in the anise, Szechuan and dried peppers, swirl around until they get toasty. If you like spice leave the chilis and Szechuan peppers in the oil, but if you like your food on the milder side, scoop them out now. Add the dried shrimps and then the rest of the ginger and garlic, swirl around again and then throw in the chicken. DO NOT STIR.

After the chicken starts to turn a bit brown, give it a quick stir and wait until the chicken looks almost cooked. Throw in the starch/soy sauce mixture and stir thoroughly, throw in the cabbage and toss again, then cover for a minute. Toss again, then add some sesame oil, the rest of the green onions and the fresh hot pepper {saving some for decoration}. Toss one final time, and then tip out onto the waiting noodles. Sprinkle with the remaining green onion and fresh hot pepper.

Serve with cold beer and a smile.

A Birthday Party

Well, birthday parties aren't what they used to be...

Nowadays, they come stocked with dj's and mobile menageries, professional face painters, bouncy castles and more chemicals than you can shake a stick at (in the form of candies, chips, snacks and pop.

I feel my age, and older, when I go to a child's birthday party.
Because they make me remember what it was like to be small...

When I was young enough to go to birthday parties that were taken seriously, the entertainment was homegrown all the way. Pin the tail on the donkey, hot potato, blind man's bluff, musical chairs. Admittedly my family did things a bit differently. We were given the most amazing scavenger hunts to go on, with my parents hiding elaborate clues, complete with hand drawn pictures and maps, arrows chalked on the street and on walls, and balloons peeking from between the leaves of the apple tree.

I don't remember the final prize, but I do remember the hunt for clues. A flock of little, screaming, giggling girls running from tree to tree, lamp post to lamp post, looking under rocks and through post slots, racing each other through the neighbours' yards to see who could find the next clue. And when it was found, we would all gather around trying to figure out what the clue meant. It was so exciting.

And then I grew up and the wide eyed innocence of youth became something that was not cool to have. Of course, now I know better, and wish I could revert to that time of unconditional belief in everything. Where there was good and evil and everything was cut and dried, black and white. There were no shadows then, except for the long evening shadows of mid-summer, telling us that bedtime was soon to come and that a bedtime story with a happy ending would be our just desserts for existing.

Nowadays, like most adults, I live vicariously, enjoying watching joy light up the face of a child as a grubby hand reaches out for a heart shaped marshmallow. Or the unashamed participation in a puppet play, yelling at the hero that the villain was just behind the curtain, hands partly covering eyes in anxious anticipation of what was to come.

Or the tightly screwed up eyes as the all important wish is made before the candles on the homemade birthday cake are blown out.

If I could remake just one wish, what would it be?

I wish I could regain the feeling of not having a care in the world and being absolutely, supremely confident that everybody loved me just for being.

Not: just for being me.
Just for being.
There is a difference...

But as we all know, you can't tell anyone your wish or
It won't come true...

Oh well.

End of a Long Week

Hip Hip Hooray - Thursday's Here

I honestly don't know what got into me this week, but I have been dragging myself from bed to work to home and the computer to bed and back again, and that seems to be the sum total of my activities. Hopefully I will have more energy tomorrow when I go wandering off to the market, do my photographing, shopping, chatting and socializing, and then come home to cleaning and cooking.

I love having friends like Cactus,
they certainly help to get my weekend started on the right foot.

I arrived on her doorstep an hour late - I did warn her that I was doing a good deed and completely reinstalling the operating system for my old Toshiba laptop (9 years old, 6 gig hard disk memory, floppy & cd drives, 1 usb port and infrared). There is actually nothing at all wrong with the computer except that it was just not powerful enough for my needs, but for a complete neophyte... it is perfect, and that is who is getting it, once it is restored to its original pristine glory.

The neophyte is my computerless aunt. Computerless because she spends all her money looking after, and finding new homes for, all the animals that get rejected from the animal shelter. The first time I ever visited her she had about 6 3 week old kittens who needed to be bottle fed, a regular posse of about 18 cats, 11 dogs and 4 donkeys. Except for the kittens and the donkeys, all the other animals wandered in and out of the house and got on perfectly well.

Cactus, perfect hostess that she is, poured me a glass of white wine and then stuck me to work dealing with the salmon fillets that were our dinner. That was actually not too onerous a job for me, I sat and sipped and peeled and then sliced a lemon. The rest of the prep involved instructing her to turn on the oven grill, pour some olive oil in an oven tray (disposable by preference), slap the fish in skin side down, grind some pepper on top, plonk the lemon slices on artistically, sprinkle some olive oil onto the fish and throw the tray into the oven.

As we choked on the smoke that came out of the oven we dealt with the broccoli and cabbage (steamed and boiled respectively), got out the plates, and 8 minutes later most of the smoke had floated out of the open doors and windows, and dinner was ready (smart girl, she had already roasted some new potatoes).

The only thing needed was a sprinkle of salt and we had a delicious, healthy dinner.

To complete the Englishness of it (well, what could be more Brit than boiled cabbage?) we had cheese for dessert - a lovely, perfectly ripe French Brie... who needs more than that?

Driving home, I came to the unpleasant realization that up until now I have been moaning about nothing when I complained that winter was here. Tonight my teeth chattered so badly that I couldn't hear my indicator lights... So the first thing that happened when I walked in the door was to put the kettle on so I could fill up my hot water bottle. If you hear sloshing, it is just me readjusting it to warm another part of my anatomy.

Pity I can't type with it balanced on the top of my head!

Tamago-Don

Actually, I don't know if this is the right name for dinner tonight...

But it sure was good.

When I worked in Japan Katsudon was one of my favourite meals. What was I doing eating dinner in Japan? Well, the long and the short of it was that I worked for a major American TV station that was there to broadcast the Olympic Games held in Nagano in 1998.

This sounds far more glamorous than it really was...

I was employed by an Australian company who were hired to provide a muli-national, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual staff for CBS. My job description was runner with an 'A' class accreditation. The rating meant that I could go anywhere within the Olympic grounds, including the athletes village and behind the scenes at events, in fact the only place that was off limits to 'A' rated staff was the drug testing facilities... My duties were far more mundane than my rating. The runner bit had nothing to do with competition (this was winter after all). Basically I helped set up and break down the temporary studios that were built especially for CBS. And during the Olympics I made coffee and popcorn, ran errands, swept floors and cleaned the 2 bathrooms (with a total of 6 toilets) that were used by the staff of almost 1,800.

But there were perks, which included getting to tell Martha Stewart how much my mom loved her show... Hanging around with moderately famous celebs, getting to see Eric Lindros up close and personal, chatting with Wayne Gretzky's parents on a train, and then sitting 3 seats away from the Team Canada bench during the quarter finals (we love you Wayne!) and watching them lose, and getting to hike up the luge track with one crampon keeping me from slipping all the way back down the hill (we had a pair between 3 of us... hmmm how did we do it?) and then blinking every time the sled zipped around our curve.

But the most memorable and moving thing to happen while I was there was having my boss call me into his office after a 12 hour night shift and hand me a ticket for the opening ceremonies that were taking place that morning. Talk about a rush of adrenaline! I wandered around town for a couple of hours laughing and singing to myself, beyond exhaustion and punch drunk with it! Having been dropped at the Olympic stadium by one of the hundreds of buses that gave free rides to ticket holders, I discovered that I didn't have enough film (though I did have my camera). Fortunately, right at the other end of the parking lot was a gigantic hardware store.

So I waltzed in, only to realize that they hadn't officially opened yet. All of the staff members were lined up in front of me, pledging allegiance to the company and singing the official company anthem. Or rather, I presumed that is what they were doing, because I didn't understand a word they said. Of course they couldn't stop mid-oath to tell me to leave, so they just smiled and continued while I stood there feeling rather foolish for not joining in. At the end, they all bowed to me and shouted Irashaimase! So I got my film and went to line up for the cavity search they seemed to be putting everybody through.

When my turn came, the guard took one look at my 'A' tag and waved me through, not checking my pockets, not looking in my bag, just a big smile and a deep bow, pointing me towards the stadium. So traipsing and floating along in spirits as high as the clear blue skies, I went looking for my seat. I finally clued in that I wasn't at the right place when I saw all kinds of costumes and props lining the corridor leading into the grounds of the stadium. I peaked out, and then was hailed by an official of some sort who saw my tag and did the smiling bow thing and pointed me back the way I had come. So there I was, outside the inner sanctum, watching a pair of obviously Sumo wrestlers having a smoke and chatting away merrily. Not at all the serious side that you see when they toss each other around the ring. I finally found a signpost with seat numbers on it and realized I had to walk halfway around the stadium to get to where I needed to be.

Eventually I made it to my seat, but then had a 1 hour wait before the ceremonies started. This gave me a good opportunity to look around and see the crowds filing in, the different sections reserved for different groups (CBS had their staff colour coordinated, the lowliest of us had orange and black or orange and blue Nike uniforms, while the more important staff had all black uniforms. VIPs had turquoise and purple.) My seat was up at the top of the stands, just below the broadcast booth and right beside the press photographers with their forest of ultra large zoom lenses. Question, why are professional zoom lenses white and black while regular everday people have plain black?

When the ceremonies finally started Ode to Joy was sung simultaneously in all 6 continents as well as by the crowd in the stadium. There was such a sense of unity, such a sense of hope in this song written by a deaf man, that I got a lump in my throat and tears came to my eyes.

This was one of the highlights of my life, and something I will remember forever.

Afterwards, I went back to the hotel, had a bowl of katsudon and slept for a few hours before going back to cleaning toilets...

So not only do I love katsudon because it is so tasty, I also love it for the warm memories it brings back to me.

Well, tonight I didn't have any pork chops, but I really felt like katsudon, so I figured "why not make the basic flavour", and that is what I did.

Tamago-don Aja Style (serves 1)

• Onion sliced into 1/2 rings 1 medium
• Oil - sunflower, canola, corn (but not olive) 2 tbsp
• Mirin 1 tbsp
• Sherry a good glug
• Soy sauce (Japanese, not Chinese or Thai) 3 tbsp
• Egg 1
• Rice (pre-cooked and re-heated) 1 1/2 cups
• Furikake (Japanese sprinkles - I had wasabe and salmon flavour) to taste

Sautee the onion in the oil until golden brown. Add the sherry and try to burn off the alcohol. Add the mirin and the soy sauce. There should be enough liquid 1/4 cover the onions, and almost, but not quite, float the egg.

Bring to a simmer, crack in the egg and gently stir the white only into the surrounding onion/liquid, leaving the yolk to heat up, but not cook, in the center of the pan.

Gently pour over the hot rice, trying not to break the yolk. Sprinkle with furikake and enjoy.

I ate this with a simple salad of mayo (home made of course) really ripe tomato, romaine hearts and a creamy, rich blue cheese sprinkled on top. It actually worked well together!

And now I sign off with happy thoughts running around my head...
and memories of little Japanese girls screaming hysterically at the top of their lungs

Akebono!!

and I giggle.