Tag Archives: viking.Myanmar food

Viking Five: Chicken

28 Feb

On account that I find it fun and easy to compile lists of things, I am starting a new feature on my blog: Viking Five. These will be lists of what I consider to be exemplars of any given category. In most cases, I don’t have the experience or knowledge to create what might be called definitive “top five” lists, so these are simply five personal recommendations. Please add to the lists by leaving comments!

I’m starting the feature with a food that is often overlooked – but when it’s good, damn is it good. Chicken is so frequently bland and dry, a rather pointless thing to eat when prepared or processed witlessly, but if it’s prepared well, then there is almost no meat I’d rather eat.

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Zankou Chicken
Los Angeles, California

Taco trucks aside, there may be no LA food institution so cherished as Zankou Chicken. The darling of streetsmart food critics like Jonathan Gold, Zankou is beloved among all strata of Los Angeles society, including the loyal Armenians that invented it. It’s so good that Beck name checks it in a song about having a threesome on Midnite Vultures. I must say, there is something very nearly sexual about the buttery, delicately spiced skin and the voluptuously tender and juicy meat of a spit-roasted Zankou Chicken. And that garlic sauce is a wicked aphrodisiac.

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Yangon Restaurant’s Hot and Sour Deep-Fried Chicken
Bagan, Myanmar

All of the chicken I ate in Burma was really good, which I suspect has a lot to do with the fact that there aren’t any industrial chicken farms there. “Free range” isn’t even a meaningful category there, because the chickens just roam free around people’s houses. Our drivers had to hit the brakes a lot to dodge them – along with cows and lots of dogs. The Burmese chicken that stands out in my memory was a searingly spicy, addictively tangy dish of crispy and succulent fried chicken, perfumed with an immoderate amount of garlic and green onions.

Jitokko Sumibiyaki
Miyazaki, Japan

One thing I miss about Japan is the thrill of discovering new meibutsu. The Japanese present their unique regional cuisines to the rest of the nation with an enthusiastic pride, and the rest of the nation eats it up. Food and drink, along with flowers, temples, and hot springs, really seem to be what drives domestic tourism in Japan. For salmon, go to Hokkaido; for soba, go to Nagano; and for chicken, go to Miyazaki. There are at least two very famous Japanese chicken dishes originating in Miyazaki: the tartar saucy chicken nanban, and my favorite, jitokko sumibiyaki: literally, charcoal-grilled local chicken. It’s as simple as it sounds, and so very good. Miyazaki chicken has a firm texture and a fantastically buttery quality that sings beautifully with the smoky, blackened flavor of charcoal grilling.

Chicken Truck
Kitakyushu, Japan

One more for Japan – they do chicken right. At one of the schools where I taught, I used to walk to a nearby supermarket pretty much every day for lunch. I usually got some fruit and onigiri, maybe a pastry. But on certain days, there was this truck there. I think the truck was an outpost of a local restaurant, but I can’t remember the name of it. At any rate, this truck sold chicken – really good chicken. You could get the chicken wraps, or you could just go for a huge chunk of chicken, simply grilled with salt and pepper and probably MSG. I think it was the back quarter of the bird, neatly boned and flattened, full of fatty skin, just about as juicy and flavorful as chicken gets. It never failed to brighten my boring days as a human tape recorder.

Homemade Roast Chicken with Sausage and Chestnut Stuffing
Wherever you live

There’s nothin’ like a chicken you roast yourself – expecially when you rub it up with butter and herbs and serve it with a rich, moist sausage and chestnut stuffing. I’m not really much of a roasting guy (I’m more of a sautéing guy), so this week I took it upon myself to try something new. The result was a lovely, exceedingly juicy chicken with a delicate skin and deep flavor. Together with the stuffing, it is a rather rich dinner, so I served it with a palate cleansing salad of arugula and pea shoots with a lemon dressing.

The Chicken

1 4.5 pound chicken (get the free range kind, you cheapskate)
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
a few bunches of fresh herbs (try rosemary, lemon thyme, oregano, thyme, and flat leaf parsley)
3 bay leaves
1 onion
1 lemon or orange
paprika
salt
pepper

  1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF (205ºC).
  2. Clean the giblets out of the chicken, if they’re in there.
  3. Rinse the chicken inside and out with cold water, then dry thoroughly with paper towel. The bird should be very, very dry on the outside especially to help crisp the skin.
  4. Finely mince the herbs and mash them together with the butter and a pinch of salt.
  5. Quarter the onion and lemon or orange and stuff them into the cavity, along with the bay leaves and anything else you have to flavor the chicken: celery greens, additional herbs, apple peels, and garlic cloves work well. Pin the skin together to close the cavity with a toothpick.
  6. Rub the herb butter all over the bird, then season well with salt, pepper, and paprika.
  7. Put the bird on a rack and place in the oven. Roast for 10-15 minutes at 400º, then decrease heat to 375º (190ºC) and roast for another hour and a half (basically, you should cook the bird for 20 minutes per pound, plus the initial 10-15 minutes at a higher heat to crisp the skin).
  8. Remove the chicken from the oven and let rest for 10-15 minutes before carving.
  9. Thicken the drippings and add a spritz of lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce to make a gravy. Add a bit of chicken stock and/or cider or beer if there aren’t enough drippings.

The Stuffing

500 grams sausage meat
250 grams cooked, peeled chestnuts, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
1 apple, cored, peeled, and chopped
1 onion, chopped
1/2 pound (about six cups) stale bread, lightly toasted and cubed
about 1 1/2 cups medium-dry cider and/or chicken stock
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
about 1/2 cup fresh sage leaves, chopped
4 tablespoons butter
olive oil
salt
pepper

Preheat the oven to 375ºF.

  1. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and cook until browned. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain the grease.
  2. Add the butter to the pan. Sauté the onion, celery, and fennel seeds along with salt and pepper until the onions are translucent.
  3. Add the chestnuts, apple, and sage and sauté for another few minutes.
  4. Add the bread cubes and sauté until they have absorbed almost all the butter.
  5. Add the cooked sausage, then the cider or stock a bit at a time, until the bread is quite soft but not mushy.
  6. Scoop the stuffing into a buttered baking dish and bake for about 20 minutes, or until top has browned. Serve with gravy.

Myanmar Stream of Consciousness: Week 3 ミャンマーの旅の意識の流れ・第三周

26 Jan

Oh and now you’ve had your fun
Under an air-conditioned sun
It’s burned into your eyes,
Left you plain and left behind
I see them rise and fall
Into the jaws of a pestilent love

Beck, “Tropicalia”

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This trip had a way of oscillating between utterly, desperately, I-want-to-go-home awful and breathtakingly, deliriously, I-never-want-to-leave wonderful; for every boring-ass Buddha there is a mercilessly flavorful curry; for every mountain of monkey poo there is a ride in a beautiful balloon. On rare occasions, these lows and highs happened simultaneously.

We touched down in Heho around four in the afternoon. It was a joy to get out of Kyaing Tong, especially since I was in the early stages of what would prove to be an ugly bout of Montezuma’s revenge (Thibaw‘s revenge?). I was feeling alright at the moment – the view  of the surrounding area was lovely, and when we got to the car, a pack of strange men hustled towards us, and began massaging us. It was unsolicited, and weird, but damn did it feel good. At least, it did at the time – but soon I would come to feel nothing but remorse and anger for paying them 7000 kyats.

The drive to Pindaya was beautiful, in an unexpected way – the landscape would not have looked at all out of place in southwestern England, or central Wisconsin. Rolling hills, a quilt of crops – yellow and ochre, green and red. Cotton candy clouds. I wish I had asked the driver to pull over, like the van full of Japanese tourists ahead of us had done, so that I could take photos.

But I just wanted to get to the hotel as fast as possible. My tract was buckling and convulsing as we drove on; a war was being waged as savage microbes fought to colonize my insides. The typically bumpy Burmese road (not something one gets used to quickly, as it turns out) didn’t help the situation, and neither did that massage. That massage – I don’t know what those people did to me, those horrible little con men, but my muscles have never felt worse. It started as an ache, a patch of discomfort somewhere between my shoulders, and then it expanded into an encompassing, disquieting, pulsing pain throughout my upper back that caused me to sweat, glare at our guide, and curse this rotten trip, curse this vulnerable body, curse this insufferable country.

It was dark when we got to the hotel. I took six Pepto Bismols and three paracetamols, ate a plate of plain white rice, drank a glass of rice whiskey and went to bed. Tomorrow, I decided, would be much better.

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At least until the night I spent vomiting and defecating into a toilet that wouldn’t flush in a millipede-infested treehouse in the middle of a jungle in southern Thailand, that drive to Pindaya was the nadir of my trip. I was in pain from that regrettable massage for a while longer, but otherwise the rest of the week was just lovely:

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A cave of eight thousand Buddhas, a stunning demonstration of traditional paper and parasol making, and a trek through the mountains near Kalaw on a clear day.

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Next stop, Inle Lake: calm, glassy water filling a wide-open valley, surrounded on all sides by mountains, many capped with the distinctive brown patchwork and green terraces of hill tribe agriculture. But down here, the people live on the water – literally. Houses, shops, restaurants, markets, and resorts built on stilts hover just above the water. Transportation is by boat. Schoolkids row their way home at the end of the day, as fishermen pull in their final catches; there are no lights on the water, so it’s important to be home by sundown.

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It’s amazing, the resources the people here have found in this lake – obviously there is seaweed, and seafood (lakeweed, and lakefood?); but also lotuses, prized not only for their blossoms but for their stems, which contain a bundle of strong, thin fibers that are woven into beautiful and durable (and expensive) fabrics.

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And then there are the tomatoes – possibly the best tomatoes I’ve ever tasted, and grown in an ingenious way. Hedges of buoyant seaweed are lined up neatly atop the water, then soil and compost is layered on top of the seaweed, then tomatoes are sown in the soil. Little floating farms, bringing forth the sweetest, savoriest, sauciest tomatoes. There must be something in the water.

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And then it was onto Ngapali: this was the much-awaited “vacation” portion of the trip. In the four and half weeks since I started my trip in Taiwan, I hadn’t had a single day off – in fact, I had barely had an afternoon off. The trip had been non-stop sightseeing, non-stop hotel inspections, and non-stop yammering from our guides until our two days in Ngapali. No guides. No temples. No Buddhas. No bumpy drives. And we only had to see five hotels and we could do that whenever we wanted to – so it was time to relax.

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(I’m afraid I may have used too many superlatives in these posts about Burma, so this is the last one, I promise:) Ngapali is the most amazing beach I’ve ever seen. Now, I haven’t even been to that many beaches, so I suppose that isn’t that great of an endorsement, but I should mention that I don’t even like beaches very much – too much sand, and you never know what’s gonna brush up against you in the water (jellyfish, kelp, fast food containers, children… ugh). But I liked Ngapali. I reeeally liked it. The sand – fine, flaky, and ivory in color. The water – crystal in your hand, and so delightfully warm. Perfect weather. Gorgeous sunsets. And the best part? No people.

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I actually feel a bit conflicted just telling people about Ngapali. One one hand, I feel like people need to know about this beach; on the other hand, I don’t want anybody to go there. But if you do go, you have to get out onto the main road and head to one of the local restaurants for a dinner of fresh, tender grilled squid with an electric sauce of lime, chili, and ginger. (You can thank me later.)

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Finally, we flew back to the dusty haze of Yangon, relaxed, tan, and more than a little annoyed that our short break was over. Of course, we didn’t know that we would be stuck in Yangon for the next week with nothing to do while we waited for Thai protesters to leave the airport. In the end, I left Myanmar satisfied, but knowing that I will return.

Myanmar Stream of Consciousness: Week 2 ミャンマーの旅の意識の流れ・第二週

14 Jan

bagansunset

So it’s finally happened. After three weeks complaining about my trip, diverting myself with powerful Asian alcohol, pining for England and all those wonderful English people and things therein, hoping and secretly dreading this would happen, it’s happened:

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I’ve come to a place so beautiful, so awesome, it’s countered all my complaints and redeemed the entire trip: Bagan.

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The cold shadow of the government can still be felt here – they uprooted a huge population of farmers to turn Bagan into a World Heritage site – but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Yes, there are temples (and I thought I was sick of temples), but these are different: the red bricks set stark against the chartreuse fields of lentils and sesame, more than eight hundred years old and absolutely stunning. Pictures can’t do it justice – and neither can words like stunning, mysterious, breathtaking, or Indiana Jonesy. You’ve really just got to see it for yourself.

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And if you can afford it (I can’t – being a travel agent had it’s perks!), you absolutely must book a $250 trip with Balloons Over Bagan.

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As it turns out, Bagan has more to offer than just gorgeous vistas and thrilling balloon rides. There are also palm trees. Okay, the sight of palm trees probably won’t excite most of you, but how about the taste of palm trees? In Bagan you can visit little palm-farming communities, taste the toffee-like palm sugar they produce, quaff the “sky beer” they ferment, and sip the palm rum they distill.

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The sky beer is like a cross between traditional cider and traditional lambic – its wild, fruity sourness makes it exceptionally refreshing, and really good with a plate of Yangon Restaurant’s fried chicken, smoldering in the heat of pulverized garlic and chilies.

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Remember how I said Bagan redeemed the entire trip? Okay, well, I lied. After visiting the palm farm we drove for two nauseating hours to an equally nauseating mountain, Mt. Popa. After climbing Mt. Popa’s 777 steps, each one of them covered in unpredictable macaques along with copious amounts of their piss and shit, you are rewarded with an ugly temple and a shrug-worthy view of the surrounding area (you can’t even see Bagan). Oh, and did I mention you have to do this barefoot, since the whole mountain is considered part of the temple? Give me a break. Nope – no break. After Mt. Popa it’s another two-hour drive to Salay, site of an equally unimpressive wooden monastery and a hideous, gilded, twelve-foot lacquered Buddha. And the dirt-road drive back to Bagan? Please – don’t remind me.

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I left Bagan suspecting that nothing would top it in the next five weeks of my trip – and nothing did, but that doesn’t mean that Mandalay wasn’t really cool, too. The workshops here are incredible – this is the destination for Oriental knick-knacks to decorate your dining room/body: bronze, gold, silver, jewels, woodwork, puppets, embroidery, tapestries, silk, cotton, lacquer – Mandalay has all of it in spades.

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And while you’re there, make sure you take a trip to Amarapura to see the world’s longest teak bridge – cooler than it sounds.

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Whatever goodwill this trip earned in Bagan, it totally squandered in our next destination: Kyaing Tong. Kyaing Tong is probably a fine place to visit if you like rat-infested hotels without enough hot water and extremely awkward encounters with impoverished tribal villagers; but otherwise, steer clear. I suppose there are some deluded tourists who think it will be fun to “discover” these people, but at this point most of the villagers, including the children, are accustomed to being objectified and whatever little interest they have in interacting with tourists quickly dissipates once you’ve handed over the candies and medicines that Lonely Planet has instructed you to bring. Phooey to visiting hill tribes – but the treks did offer some nice views.

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Then again, they aren’t as nice as some of the views to come: next week it’s off to Pindaya, Inle Lake, and Ngapali Beach – the best beach I’ve ever been to.

Myanmar Stream of Consciousness: Week 1 ミャンマーの旅の意識の流れ・第一周

28 Dec

When they beat on a broken guitar
And on the streets, they reek of tropical charms
The embassies lie in hideous shards
Where tourists snore and decay
When they dance in a reptile blaze
You wear a mask, an equatorial haze
Into the past, a colonial maze
Where there’s no more confetti to throw

Beck, “Tropicalia”

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“Let’s send him to Burma!” Okay, where is that exactly? And isn’t it called Myanmar now? And isn’t there some reason I’m not supposed to go there? Sure, whatever – I need this job, so who am I to argue? But I really don’t want to be away for Christmas. I’m flying in from Taipei with six hours to kill at Suvarnabhumi. Burger King – a welcome break, then a disappointing break, from Chinese food. Meeting up with Nick, landing at Yangon. The airport is surprisingly modern – the city, not so much, but in the dark it looks a bit like LA. Our hotel is rubbish, the windows don’t shut and there are bugs in the room – but it’s only one night. Gmail is blocked; the military plutocracy makes its presence felt for the first time (but at least they don’t block Facebook, thank goodness).

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shrimpcashew

Driving to Kyaiktiyo with a stop at a WWII cemetery. Lunch – a tasty Chinese stir-fry with peanuts as a starter. These peanuts – they’re unusually crunchy and robust! Bottled water and a flatbed truck ride overflowing with people halfway up the hill to the Golden Rock pavilion (I heard one of them tipped over last week and killed eight people) – then a refreshing hike up the rest of the way. The Golden Rock – huge, and gold. I wonder when it will roll off the cliff and kill a dozen pilgrims, but it’s beautiful in the sunset. A crepe filled with palm sugar and coconut. A dance performed by tribal insurgents. A stunning sunrise. How high up are we, anyway?

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Walking, then driving down the mountain – the same guy who carried our suitcases up the mountain on his back carries them down. Wow. I bought some spicy fruit preserves then let myself get ripped off by a flirty banana vendor. What the hell am I doing to do with all these bananas?! The drive to Mawlamyine – impossibly uncomfortable and bumpy through miles and miles of rubber plantations. Half the road isn’t even paved. It’s hard for people to get around, and I suspect the government likes it that way.

Mawlamyine – an hour on the internet at a cafe costs less than 50 cents, and Gmail works here! What the hell, this government is so rubbish they can’t even censor the internet properly. Y’know what else costs less than 50 cents? A glass of draft Myanmar beer! But isn’t it brewed by the government? Who cares? It’s cheap and I’m bored. I’m also starting to get sick of temples (but not Burmese sunsets – yet).

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The next day was rubbish. Another torturously bumpy drive, first to a pleasant war cemetery, then to a wholly unpleasant former Japanese onsen and POW camp. If I had known I’d be trudging through a muddy river and sulphuric muck I’d have worn sandals. I’m probably going to get worms. At least lunch was nice – stunningly fresh seafood from Setse Beach. Back to the hotel to get slightly less drunk than I did the night before.

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Driving back to Yangon via Bago for six hours – not nearly as horrible as I expected (I was actually able to sleep in the van). More peanuts come with lunch – why are the peanuts in this country so good?! I am getting sick of mosquitoes, and of Buddhas, but these four in Bago are remarkably cool. But not as cool as our hotel tonight in Yangon – The Savoy. Damn, I wish we could stay here for more than twelve hours! This is colonial chic; I wonder how many temples were plundered to decorate this place. And the happy hour is a damn good deal, too, but you call this a Manhattan? I’ll stick to ABC Stout for the rest of the night – one good thing about the British Empire is that it brought extra stout porters to the most unlikely corners of the globe. The sun never sets on decent dark beer.

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Waking at 5:00 to catch a 7:00 flight to Bagan. Bye bye Savoy! (Sometimes this job is awesome.) A glimpse of Bagan’s red brick temples from the plane, of what may be the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life.

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