Filed under: Food and Drink
Food travels…and winds up at my house.
“The world in my dining room” is what goes through my head as I examine the row of fixins’ assembled before me on Thanksgiving morning.A row of little tubes, powders, bottles, and fresh bits.Coriander, fish sauce, kaffir lime (galangal), garlic, ginger, lemongrass, cashews, and more.I dice onions until I am teary eyed.I use scissors to snip the thinnest, finest possible bits of kaffir lime leaf, while fantasizing about a food processor.
Manchurian/Guangdong Mom drives on over with an all American Honeybaked ham crusted with sugar.The Chinese Southerners (as in Georgia and Kentucky) come over and help me fry up Thai corn and tofu fritters.Besides their culinary expertise*, they bear Chilean wine & Kahlua bundt cake.
I modify a Chinese American Pineapple fried rice recipe with vaguely Indian flavors using imported curry powder & cashew nuts, and throw in some Mexican grown bell pepper.
The turkey we won last weekend is baked after a drenching in Australian Chardonnay, Italian Olive Oil, and seasoned with Peppercorns my former student brought from her hometown in Vietnam, and Bay leaves from Turkey.
A tomato and onion stuffed Pilipino fish arrives with my beautiful nieces, who are more interested in eating mini Nathan’s hot dogs which I’ve baked into Pilsbury croissant dough, or in the Central American bananas.The turkey skin winds up being a big hit with the kids as well.P’s cousin comes with Thai snacks, sugared and dried Tamarind fruit pods and spicy cuttlefish strips.
We drink shots of 21 year old Scotch and brew green tea leaves from Taiwan, chamomile from Poland, and serve Heineken beer and Italian blood orange soda.
Geez. No wonder it’s so difficult to be a locavore!
*ancient Chinese / Atlanta secret:
How to tell if the pool of oil in your wok is hot enough to properly fry stuff like corn fritters in yet.Stick an unvarnished wooden chopstick, yeah, one of those cheapo restaurant ones, into the oil.If a mass of little bubbles form around it, it’s ready for fryin’!
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