the confined nomad

I last left you outside of aptly named Taste Good Malaysian restaurant in Woodside, where we tried to approximate a Bruneian meal.  Since we were unable to find a specifically Bruneian restaurant, we decided to compensate by trying to find the ingredients to cook something up ourselves.

We had learned that a lot of the Bruneians who live in the area do their shopping at Top Line Supermarket, right around the corner from Taste Good, so that’s where we headed. I had chosen two dishes from the Brunei Tourism website, which has a great collection of Bruneian recipes. Udang Sambal Serai Bersantan is a red prawn curry. Serondeng Padang is chicken in a coconut-milk sauce. Most of the ingredients we needed to find were really straightforward.  We found some good frozen coconut milk, ground coconut, a chunk of frozen lengkuas (better known as galangal), some halia (or ginger), serai (or lemongrass), fresh chilis, and some fine looking tiger prawns.  That left us with just one ingredient left to find, the pandan leaf.  I asked a couple of people, got some vague directions, and proceeded to wander the store slowly losing my mind.  I finally gave up. I had run out of English-speaking store clerks to ask, and we were tired and ready to head home.  As I stood in line, resigning myself to failure and how it might affect my attempts at replicating Bruneian food, the Nomad made a last-gasp tour of the store.  I was stepping up to the checkout counter when she came bounding toward me triumphantly holding aloft an 18-inch, vacuum-packed, frozen leaf, yes, the pandan leaf.  So we were set. read more »

Brunei Darussalam?  Surely that doesn’t count.  It’s really just part of Malaysia in all but name, right? A tiny sultanate that only exists independent of Malaysia because it elected to remain a British protectorate rather than join the Malaysian Federation when it declared independence from the Brits. Now we’re just nitpicking, and I’m the one stuck trying to locate this “cuisine” in NYC?  Well loyal readers, nitpicking is what the Nomad crew does best.  Ask Noquar.  He complains about it nearly every time we go out.  Brunei is a UN member state, so it’s on our list. This isn’t Nam; there are rules. read more »