the confined nomad

I like peanut butter.  It’s my favorite butter hands down, so I might have gotten a little overexcited when I saw that the fine folks of the Central African Republic also enjoy crushing peanuts into a paste and using it in their cuisine.  Peanuts are actually a pretty common component of a lot of west and central African food, and in hindsight, I probably should have sought a little more diversity in deciding what C.A.R. dishes to cook.  Instead, I prepared what certainly goes down as the most monochrome of the Nomad meals so far. read more »

We went to three places to fulfill our Canada mission:

1) TPoutine (168 Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan 10002) because they specialize in poutine, a Quebecois heart-attack inducing heap of fried potatoes, gravy and cheese curds.  At TPoutine you can make your poutine even more cholesterol laden by topping it with things like bacon, eggs, meat, etc.  Yum.  They also serve burgers, sandwiches, and ice cream, all slightly Canadia-ified.  Poutine was great, burgers so-so, didn’t try dessert (read on…). read more »

Didn’t think we’d find authentic Cape Verdean food in NYC, did you? You figured that even though there are more Cape Verdeans in the US than there are in Cape Verde, but that most of them live in New England and the only Cape Verdean restaurants in this part of the country are in Boston, that we didn’t stand a chance. Well, consider yourselves wrong, because not only did we get incredible authentic Cape Verdean food prepared by an authentic Cape Verdean chef, we got authentic Cape Verdean food prepared by the chef of the Cape Verdean Ambassador to the UN! read more »

Once again, Team Confined Nomad’s progress has been delayed due to overseas travel.  This time, I was in India for a month, teaching in the international course SOIMA: Safeguarding Sound and Image Collections, organized by ICCROM.  This was my second time in India, and I’m happy to report that I experienced none of the gut-wrenching encounters with parasites and other food-born bugs that I did last time I was there.  In fact, nearly every meal I had was splendid.  Although in the end I was getting a little tired of paneer and naan, after a week back in NYC I’m really missing it. Well, I guess that gives us a good excuse to go out to Jackson Heights, or perhaps pay a visit to the Lexington Ave location of South Indian chain Saravanaa Bhavan that happened to have a location two blocks from my hotel, whose thali‘s I’m dreaming about even now.  My only regret is that I spent too much time enjoying my food, and not enough time taking pictures of it.  Or writing down the names of the things i was eating.

Here are just a few culinary shots of my trip. read more »

I really thought Cameroon was going to be easy.  There are nearly 200,000 Cameroonian immigrants and refugees in the United States, and New York would seem like a natural place for a lot of them to settle.  It became clear pretty quickly though that we weren’t going to have a whole lot of options.  There’s apparently a swank bar in the East Village owned by a hip Cameroonian-born DJ, but the menu seemed to have little to no Cameroonian influence.  That was about all I found on the interwebs, so it was time to make some phone calls.

In the spring, when we were searching for Beninese food, and I called around to see if anyone could point me in the right direction, I had done no prior research regarding what dishes I might actually be seeking out.  As a result, I spent most of the conversations I hemming and hawing and making apologies for my total ignorance.  This time was going to be different though. I spent more than two minutes Googling Cameroonian cuisine, and I learned that the national dish is ndolé, a bitter leaf stew, usually cooked with fish or goat meat (bear in mind though that Cameroon has something like 200+ ethnic cuisines).  Armed with this information, I called up the Mission to the U.N., our old stand by when we’re completely out of other ideas.   When I asked the nice lady who answered my call if she knew of any place where I could find ndolé, she laughed hysterically, an appropriate response really, as if she were predicting the ridiculousness that would ensue. She asked if I wanted a restaurant, or if I would prefer someone to prepare it for me.  I said I’d be happy with either, so she took my number down and told me that someone would contact me within the next few minutes.  Less than five minutes later, I got a call from a woman who said that she could  prepare ndolé with seafood for us on the following Monday. read more »

A disclaimer:  Cambodia is one of my favorite countries in the world.  I spent three weeks there in December 2003, and fell in love with the landscape and the people, and developed a long-standing fascination with the country’s painful history.  I will add that although it is not one of my top 5 food destinations in the world, I have some great culinary memories from Cambodia: fresh crab purchased right off the fisherman’s boat; whole grilled frogs; a chicken nabbed from the yard, plucked, and served piping hot 20 minutes later; fruit shakes at roadside stalls; lots of cold Angkor beer.  Now, I assure you I was not expecting to re-create these experiences on a cold rainy fall day in NYC.  But maybe I was just hoping for a few reasonably priced dishes, an un-pretentious dining atmostphere, and warm Khmer smiles. Too much to ask? read more »

Bordering Rwanda and plagued by similar, simmering ethnic tensions that have led to years of political strife and civil war, Burundi is one the poorest nations on earth.  Despite also having one of the highest rates of emigration, we were unable to locate a Burundian restaurant in the New York metropolitan area.  So, we once again cooked at home.

Burundian cuisine is heavily dependent on staple crops like sweet potatoes, corn, and beans.  Meat intake is very low by Western standards.  The cooking itself was not difficult at all, but time-consuming because the main ingredients, notably beans and bulgur wheat, had to be soaked for a number of hours. read more »

Not much progress was made in our alphabetical eating during September, but there’s good reason.  Supereg was in Las Vegas and then England for a couple weeks, while Noquar and I spent three weeks in the Netherlands, Istanbul and Greece.  As one might expect foodies like us, we spent a lot of time eating and drinking.  Every place we went offered fantastic new tastes and textures.  We snapped a few photos to savor the moments, and share with our dear readers. read more »

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 »

Several factors went into our decision to eat Burmese rather than Myanma food.  We here at the Nomad have our fingers firmly on the pulse of geopolitics.  As a citizen of Great Britain – emphasis on the “Great” – I was strongly in favor of recognizing the colonial-era anglicism of the country’s name.  From 1886-1948, the Brits not only built schools, railroads and most importantly, prisons, but also exploited Burma for its abundant natural resources and relegated the Burmese people to third-class citizens beneath the Chinese and Indian workers who were brought in to accelerate integration with the rest of the Raj.  I say. Well done!  I certainly didn’t want our global influence as participants in the World Wide Web to go towards legitimizing the present corrupt military government.  Noquar, on the other hand, being a militaristic fascist at heart, argued that we should follow the UN and respect Myanmar’s self determination by using the junta’s Western phoneticization of the country’s name.  Since 1962, the junta has crushed dissent, destroyed the economy, and left its citizens nearly completely cut off from the international community. Boo, hiss!  Ultimately, the solomonic Nomad herself settled the debate by pointing out that, in fact, regardless of whether it’s spelled Burma or Myanmar in the Latin alphabet, its pronounced exactly the same way on the streets of Rangoon. Or is it Yangon?  Whatever, the most important determining factor for our alphabetic gymnastics was that the annual Myanmar (ignore them) Baptist Church Fun Fair was being held on the Saturday directly following our Burkina Faso mission.  Fun fair?  Yes, please. read more »