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| Gaeng Kati, or coconut curry, is a generic southern Thai dish of pulverized chilies, onion, garlic, lemon grass, black pepper and kaffir lime, blended with coconut cream. |
| It’s good with most meats and seafoods, but its relatively delicate flavor unsuitable for strong-tasting game. For a real taste treat, this holiday season try it with turkey. A specialty of Phuket, learn to cook the authentic recipe during our upcoming food tour to Thailand’s paradise islands Phuket and Samui. |
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| June 4-9, 2010. Details, click here. |
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 In mid June we also return to fabled Burma/Myanmar, hosting a food tour to the land where time stood still.
Register your interest for either (or both) trips now.
We are running dates back to back, with a free bridging
night in Bangkok for those subscribing to both. read on >>> |
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Another Thai island favorite is spicy and salty gaeng tai pla, made of fish viscera, turmeric and pepper. More delicious than it sounds, this is a Thai curry you’ll scant find overseas, let alone in other regions of the kingdom. The sauce is eaten here with khanom jeen noodles. Fittingly for an island progressively settled by waves of immigrants – from Chinese, to Thai to Malay Moslems – these semi-fermented rice noodles are traced to Mon Burmese settlers. Tellingly, the world khanom jeen in Thai inappropriately translates as Chinese sweet while in Mon means, variously, noodle or grab it and cook.
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 By the way, it's pronounded Poo-Ket. |
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| With new budget airlines increasing flight schedules, Phuket now attracts a stream of both backpacker and prestige clients. By contrast, Ko Samui clings to its airport monopoly, with high fares and prestige hotels to match! And for those wanting more than just beach sunning, our next group here discovers old Phuket town's Sino-Portuguese architecture. We're hiring a specialist university professor in tow. |
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We’re delighted to hear Aung Sang Su Kyi now supports tourism to her country. So long as Myanmar tourism is part of private, and not government, enterprise, travel will help draw more world-wide attention to the plight of the Burmese people, comments Daw Su Kyi. As one Burmese campaigner says: The call to boycott Burma has had no impact on the military’s stance. It has only managed to isolate the ordinary people by encouraging the world to look away. |
We couldn’t agree more, which is why we have long rallied to end this misguided boycott. read on. For more on the subject, read The River of Lost Footsteps, by Thant Myint U, grandson for the former UN secretary general. read on>>> |
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| Come join us in Myanmar/Burma June 10-21, when we travel to Rangoon/Yangon, Pagan/Bagan, and Mandalay. Taste the country's best Mohinga fish stew, learn to cook local mutton curries, and whip up tart lemon salad. Register your interest now at the bottom of this page. |
| Yunnan is regularly proclaimed as China's most beautiful province, and its capital city Kunming for eternal spring climate. It certainly boasts the country's bluest winter skies, and January is a great time to visit without the domestic Chinese tourist onslaught. Better yet, the nation is revving up for Chinese New Year, this year falling on Valentine’s Day, so shopping is never better. |
Globetrotting Gourmet still has a few scarce seats available on our upcoming Yunnan Tour January 12-22 + post tour to Shangri La Jan 22-25. But final registrations must close early December. Contact us now. |
| • BOOKS |
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David Thompson’s pink silk bound Thai Food is considered a Bible of its genre. And it’s certainly as thick as the latter. Now comes an even larger tome, Thai Street Food. It is a coffee table book in all manner: size, girth, sumptuous photography, and content. From Lantern, Penguin Australia at a hefty A$100.
www.penguin.com.au |
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Buon Ricordo, How to Make Your Home a Great Restaurant. Armando Percuoco has long served some of Sydney, Australia’s best and freshest Italian fare. This latest collaboration with author David Dale encourages children into the kitchen and families talking together round the table. Well said! www.allenandunwin.com A$65. |
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| Koto, a Culinary Journey through Vietnam. We missed reviewing this book when it came out last year, but that makes it no less fresh. Based on recipes from the Koto project in Hanoi, training at-risk street kids a career in hospitality; we laud both its goal and its contents. Co-author and former Melbourne chef Tracey Lister now heads the Hanoi Cooking Centre, where our recent tour group to Northern Vietnam (July, 2009) was feted with black sesame sweets. A$45 from Hardy Grant www.hardiegrant.com.au |
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| • HOTEL RAVES |
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| With a dearth of up-market boutique properties in Hanoi, we quickly latched onto Maison d’Hanoi, a trendy looking hotel of just 65 individually designed rooms on a street riddled with lesser 2 and 3 star abodes. Good location in the center of Hanoi’s Old Quarter. Size does matter! |
Classic rooms are Lilliputian, reminiscent of Singapore, but fitted with a great bed and sumptuous pillows, wide flat screen TV. Deluxe rooms range from small to sizeable, and definitely worth the upgrade. Moreover, classic rooms have no viewing windows, merely glass bricks for daylight. Free (and fast) internet in all rooms, but air conditioning is noisy, and aimed directly at the bed head in many rooms, so terrible for the sinus. Excellent breakfast, but give the bitter espresso a miss, as well the cheap Lipton tea bags steeping an indifferent cuppa. Oreo cookies incongruously served at check and even sold in room. Couldn’t they source a Vietnamese cookie instead? read on>>>
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| We love a massage bargain, and Tai-Pan’s aromatherapy/oil massage at 75 minutes for B500/$15 is practically a steal, and cheaper than street-side massage joints. This package comes with the ambiance of a comfortable hotel setting. Although only a 3-star property, the Tai-Pan’s location on busy Asoke and Sukhumvit streets is great, and right next door to Grand Millennium |
When a luxury resort hotel turns down evening turn down service, the economy must be bad. But when the property is in low-labor cost Vietnam, more than eyebrows are raised. We stop turn down service for the environment explained guest services at Hanoi’s chi chi InterContinental, on prestigious but surburban West Lake. Presumably, maids must be using too many extra towels when refreshing rooms in the evening, but quite seriously, it is one of the deciding factors between 4 and 5 star ratings. We’re already asked to retain the same bed sheets for several days, as well as bath towels (although they never seem to dry sufficiently). But an extra spiff up before retiring to bed, along with the chocolate on the pillow, just seems too much to forsake. |
| We regularly challenge hefty hotel internet rates, especially considering so many of us today travel with IPhone, Blackberry, and laptop. Worse, traveling with two laptops makes a mockery of most hotels in-room wireless and cable connections. Hotel single user wireless passwords exacerbate the situation. |
| Thankfully, Hanoi’s InterContinental came to our rescue, with their IT man spending a good half hour installing our personal in-room wireless modem. So are two computer families a sign of things to come when travelling? Expect the upgrade to be glacially slow. Standard internet rate at the InterContinental is US$24++ per day.At Shangri La and Traders hotels worldwide, it is free! For other properties offering complimentary wifi www.wififreespot.com/hotels.html |
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| • TAXING ISSUES |
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In the US, there’s a move afoot to raise tax deductions on business meals and entertainment to 80%. Treasury officials must be sweating, but restaurateurs applauding. The lawful deduction on such expenses has been 50 percent since it was slashed from 80 percent in 1993. Increasing the deductibility of business meals and entertainment expenses will aid small business owners who use meals to market goods and services, retain customers and attract new business, says a lobbyst for the American Travel Assn, claiming the enhanced deduction would boost meal sales by $6 billion and create an $18 billion increase to the overall economy. Spare a thought for taxpayers in countries such as Australia, where entertaining is neither tax deductible, and worse, taxed as a fringe benefit. |
| • RESPONSIBLE DINING & SUSTAINABLE TOURISM |
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| We relish a good sting, especially when it nets a supplier serving an endangered catch. London’s Michelin-starred Nobu restaurant, co-owned by Robert De Niro, was caught serving endangered blue fin tuna. Even worse, staff lied about it! According to the Evening Standard, hidden camera footage showed a Nobu waitress claiming “It’s not listed as endangered. It’s something that’s becoming endangered, possibly if the over fishing continues.” |
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| Another employee says “It‘ s an endangered species but the source that Nobu gets it from is sustainable.” Other nebulous claims: the restaurant “worked together” with Greenpeace. To which Greenpeace sniffily retorts: Unscrupulous companies like Nobu are profiting by selling an endangered species. |
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A past tgtgNewsletter lauded the book The End of the Line, which details European Union fishing practices. Its formidable research has now become the basis of a documentary film of the same name. |
| In the past, we’ve highlighted the plight of the Mekong giant catfish, likewise the falling numbers of sable fish (black cod). We were attacked subsequently by an Alaskan Fisheries spokeswoman. So we went to David Suzuki’s website which rates British Columbian-sourced fish as sustainable, but with the caution “Keep an eye out for this stock to be re-ranked. Conditions exist that could reduce its sustainability.” www.davidsuzuki.org |
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| Likewise, we’re delighted to see a young generation of affluent Asians eschewing shark’s fin, and loudly jettting it from marriage banquet menus. Let’s hope blinkered Mom and Dad don’t consume all the remaining fins before endangered sharks all but disappear. While there are some 400 varieties swimming the oceans, Blue, Hammerhead and Silky sharks are the most highly traded in Hong Kong, while Mako and Thresher are also popular. Even Australia’s Great White of “Jaws” fame is sought. Typically (although illegal), sharks are caught and their four fins cut away while still alive; the fish then dumped back into the sea to die. In other words, do not eat shark’s fin soup, and when it’s offered to you -- even at a formal banquet -- decline politely. Its trade is unsustainable. |
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Another related read is Seasick by Alanna Mitchell. Considering that we are probably the last generation to eat wild food, the future prognosis for the world’s oceans is dire. |
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And finally, the next time you think carbon pollution only effects greenhouse emissions, spare a thought for resulting mercury poisoning in our waterways. |
| • WINE |
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| Screw the cork! Australian consumers have long adapted screw top sealers for even their priciest plonk. Nearly seven our of every 10 bottles sold Down Under use crew caps now, more than any other country. Research indicates as much as 2% of all cork-sealed bottles are off, while an astronomic 10% tainted. Metal screwed bottles, by contrast, do not suffer, although some studies indicate they do the job too well: lack of seeping air prevents true maturation and improvement. |
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| Now comes a grassroots campaign marketing cork as the ethical choice. Under the teaser Save Miguel the beleaguered Portuguese cork industry contends nearly 5 millions tons of (good) carbon dioxide emissions emit from that nation’s cork forests. By contrast, a ton of aluminum screw caps generates four times more (bad) greenhouse gas. What the Portuguese don’t include is international shipping costs to the environment. Nor have they successfully eradicated cork taint. |
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| Asian ladybeetles have become an increasing threat to wine production: when crushed with grapes they emit high levels of alkyl-methoxypyrazines, which makes wine taste of under-ripe low-quality fruit. Surprisingly, storing wines in cartons may rescue plonk’s future. Boxed, or flagon wine, usually comes in a carton masking a bladder bag, an air-tight cryovac packaging. Such wrapping is even cheaper than bottling with metal caps, hence its popularity -- especially in the vins de table category. Unfortunately, polythene layers allow seepage, which is generally a bad thing. Unexpectedly, unpleasant taste molecules stick to the aluminum components of bladder bags, segregatint them from the wine. |
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Laurent Severac heralds from several generations of French perfume manufacturers, so his decision to focus on fruit liquors in Vietnam may seem a strange choice. He was in Hanoi meeting our latest food group, presenting a tasting from his 100% natural range. Severac also supplies leading chefs with not only alcohol, but also essential oils of herbs and spices, from green star anise to vanilla. Clients include Pierre Gagnier, runner up for Best Restaurant on the ’08 San Pellegrino List, just behind Adria and Blumenthal. We especially loved the ratafia from bitter oranges, which we consider the consummate aperitif served chilled before dinner. The word ratafia is based on the word ratify, and was traditionally the liquor served when armies signed peace agreements. For more: the Perfume Hunter, a documentary film by Rolf Lambert & Bernd Girrbach.>>> |
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Thanks to the GEC (Global Economic Crisis), champagne consumption is down by a quarter this year, with French vineyards holding four years’ reserve, or some 1.2 billion bottles in the cellars. Look for French farmers receiving cheaper prices for grapes this season, plus less yields per hectare. As for bargains at the sales counter? That’s anyone’s guess. |
| • BROWNIES |
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We’re not quick to wax lyrical about this American treat. Usually too cakey (it is supposed to be unleavened and slightly chewey), or too much like thick fudge or a thin mud cake. But when someone gets the perfect balance, Wow! |
Exhibiting at Taste Melbourne this year, we ran across a Queensland Australia brownie maker, Dello Mano, and we can’t rave enough. Utterly delicious! And the secret? It's the quality butter, admits Bien Peralta. www.dellomano.com.au |
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| Popular folklore traces brownies’ origin to a New Engliand housewife forgetting to add leavening to her chocolate cake, and served them anyhow. During the first decade of the 20th century, Fannie Farmer printed a version with melted chocolate, but even earlier, the 1893 Columbian Exhibition is also credited with its debut. That recipe from San Francisco's Palmer House is glazed with apricots. Blondies, by contrast, contain neither chocolate nor cocoa powder, instead flavored by a penuche-like base of brown sugar and butter. |
| • MISCELLANY |
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| We just wrote the Food & Drinks chapter for Lonely Planet Greater Mekong edition, so this region is near and dear to our heart. Synergies between Asia’s longest river and North America’s longest, The Mississippi, may not quickly spring to mind. But that’s exactly what’s happening, with foreign ministers from the US and four countries in the lower Mekong basin (Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam) meeting last July. As both waterways are equally polluted, the Mississippi is a possible template for Asian nations. It’s early days, but stay posted. |
| Drought sparks the most unexpected reactions. And with India’s poor monsoon rains this year, farmers in its east asked their unmarried daughters to plough parched fields naked. They hope this will embarrass the weather gods to bring badly needed rain. Such antics are not unique to India, however. In Thailand and Laos giant rockets are shot skyward to bring on the monsoons, while on ground drunken cross dressing antics and brandished wooden phalluses anger the heavens. |
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| • AIRLINES |
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| Aussies love a cold beer, but perhaps too much these days. Hand in hand with de-regulated pub hours comes binge drinking, and its culture now |
| permeates the mile high club. Citing unruly behavior, mostly from drunken mine workers heading home after a couple of weeks working in the parched desert, national carrier Qantas recently banned full strength beer and spirits on all flights within the state of Western Australia. This follows similar prohibitions on spirit sales on intrastate flights in other parts of the country. Low alcohol suds and wine are still available. The alcohol ban does not affect Qantas international flights. |
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If you asked us for a ranking of the world’s best airlines, we reply anecdotally, but accurately: Qatar, Ethiad, and Singapore, in that order. Forget Emirates when travelling economy. They removed all foot rests for weight reasons, and even the longest legged passenger will sit uncomfortably with dangling appendages. |
| Qatar Airline promotes Balik Salmon on First Class, which had us racing to our cooking library. Balik is smoked salmon prepared in the time-honoured traditions of the Russian Czars. Around 1974 Hans Gerd Kubel chanced a meeting with the grandson of the imperial court smoker Israel Kaplan, and the two embarked on recreating the original smoke ovens as they existed in the days of imperial Russia. But it was only in 1984 when the president of Caviar House tasted -- and later acquired -- the product that Balik’s reincarnation grew in stature. Basically, it’s Norwegian farmed salmon salted and cured in Switzerland. (Which has us asking, why isn’t it wild?) Fillet is the preferred cut, although true aficionados will probably go for unctuous belly, if truth be known. Confusingly, balik is now being marketed by American competitors as simply the salmon’s centre cut, with no mention of its processing pedigree. |
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| Charging for checked in bags has always been an insult, and it’s only getting worse. After 9/11 we presumed airlines would improve on-board security by discouraging large carry-ons. Alas, just the opposite occurred, with passengers now slugged ever increasing charges for checked luggage. Worse, weight limits drop from 32 kg to 22 kg. Meanwhile, boarding becomes more time-consuming, and fights for overhead compartments worse. |
| United Airlines has a new travel option: Premier Baggage, geared for frequent travelers bogged down by baggage fees. A yearly subscription covers two bags on an unlimited number of United and United Express flights for a year but not oversized and overweight bags. Best, up to eight companions traveling under the same confirmation number are also covered by this paid subscription of $249. In other words, 16 bags. For large groups, that is a plus! read on >>> |
| • UPCOMING FoodTOURS |
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| Globetrotting Gourmet® has re-scheduled dates for the Isan Food & Wine Festival, in the heart of Thailand’s Khao yai wine district. It is now delayed until mid 2011. REGISTER YOUR INTEREST NOW … |
Come join us mid-year ‘2010 to the island paradises of Phuket and Samui. We continue with a 11 day, 10 night tour of Burma/Myanmar to all its top spots: colonial Rangoon/Yangon, ancient Bagan/Pagan, a river cruise and Mandalay. We’re scouting new destinations as we speak.
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Cheers,
Robert & Morrison |
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