Pan

Sarah, are you Malaysian or Singaporean? Nice stuff from you, and from everybody!

Many of us will remember the deadly earthquake that affected the Istanbul area a few years ago. My first thought in looking at the gecekondu is that I'll bet they would crumble right away in an earthquake. Has anything been done since the earthquake to crack down on violations of building codes? And a culinary question: I ate at a Syrian restaurant in Brooklyn today (Zaytoon's on Smith and Sackett, for those of you who know it). I got lentil soup, a merguez sandwich, and a milk pudding with crumbled pistachios that was strongly flavored with orange blossom water. I'm totally sure that lentil soup would be served throughout Turkey, because it's served most everywhere where lentils grow (and I've also had some at Turkish restaurants in New York), but what about spicy lamb sausages or the usage of orange blossom water in Turkey?

While they may not "correspond to how masculinity and femininity are socially constructed and perceived in society", I wonder if, over a long period of time, the words themselves and grammar of the language might not have somehow influenced the conception of gender? I think Latin may be the first language to have used this form? SB ← Definitely not. Semitic languages all give both nouns and verbs gender and number, I believe. Greek also has gender for nouns, and I believe Sanskrit does, too (but I would welcome corrections if I'm wrong). But really, is le pain (bread) more manly than la volaille (poultry) in French-speaking countries? I don't think so. If it were, we might as well then claim that la table (table) is more womanly than le stylo (pen). How silly would that be?

There were three of us there. I can put away quite a bit but not that much. ← Glad to hear it! I was starting to wonder about you.

If you do go to Wu Liang Ye, I have to disrecommend the Tangerine Chicken and Beef. I went there with my brother and cousin a couple of months ago. None of us were impressed with them, unlike many who have posted on these boards. Neither dish had enough hot pepper, the sauce for the beef was a bit gloppy, from what I remember, the slices of beef were too way bigger than bite-size, and the chicken had too much breading. Both of them should have had more tangerine peel, and I seem to remember that the beef also included marmalade?

Got to love the mayo.[...] ← Actually, I dislike mayo. I didn't see the picture right and didn't realize there was creamy mayo-based sauce on the shrimps. But I know these dishes are popular. So more for everyone else! As others have said, that pork shoulder looks amazing!

Don, how many people ate the meal at Mu Que Ca? Don't tell me you put all that away?!

sazji, I'm so happy to see you blogging! You are one of my favorite posters -- great photos, and very instructive. I'm sure we'll learn a lot and have great entertainment from this blog. Enjoy!

That'll be great, because I presume it'll be less crowded. Thanks for the report and info, Ya-Roo.

I'd love to trek out to anywhere where he might make really good chicken feet with high-quality chicken with no cod liver oil taste.

Yeah, I've been reading about it on Chowhound. What I don't remember being discussed is whether it's open for lunch.

Yeah, seems to be. It's available in Korean restaurants I patronize. You can read a funny account about my first time drinking soju about three years ago by clicking here. Don, that's funny about the 50-year soju.

I love dishes like that! What recipe did you use?

The splatter Santa looks bloody!

No kidding? That's very cool! I like soju. What are your favorite sojus? For the record, my great-great-grandparents had an inn in Lithuania around the 1850s or so and made liquor in their bathtub. That worked well, because whenever the authorities came around, they just pulled the plug -- no more evidence! I have no idea how good or bad their liquor was, but apparently, it was popular with the traders who stopped by their inn.

Depends what you're growing. The chickens I was dealing with were completely free-range and wandered the equivalent of blocks away. Not only did various wild edible plants grow in the area (including wild lemongrass), but the following crops were growing, either in front of my house, in the side yard, or just outside the kitchen: Cashew trees, limau nipis (fragrant lime) trees, coconut palms, a papaya tree, an asam gelugor (called "tamarind" in Malaysia, but actually a type of fruit) tree, long beans, chilis, turmeric, ginger, sweet potatoes, and probably some other things I can't remember (regular potatoes?). None of those crops were at risk from the chickens.

Pretty carved carrot slices, TP.

What did they do before refrigeration existed? If the shawarma tasted good and was cooked sufficiently to kill any bugs, I'm not sure it's such a big deal if it's left out overnight. When I was living in rural Malaysia with no refrigerator and electricity only at night, our landlady, who cooked for us, would regularly boil a chicken after it was slaughtered, leave it out in a gradually cooling pot, and then reheat it as a curry the next day. The same thing was sometimes done with fish and so forth. We never got sick from any of that, because it was thoroughly boiled. And frankly, the well water we were using was probably as dangerous as anything else, but OK when boiled. (Like most everyone else in the village, we did get a whipworm infestation in our intestines, probably from brushing our teeth with the well water and washing the dishes with it, but no upset stomach from bad food.)

Don, how were you able to get clear pictures of all those drinks? I think that if I had been able to have so many drinks, I would have been too dizzy to get a decent picture! How many drinks did you have in total, and how are you able to stumble home afterwards, without eating something? Lemme guess; you gradually built up your tolerance?

What does "field dressing" consist of?

Shavuot is the Jewish harvest festival.

Thanks for the great story, liuzhou!

Also much better quality than typical breadcrumbs sold in American supermarkets, which tend to contain all kinds of extraneous and artificial ingredients and just plain don't taste as good.

No kidding, venison at stalls? Is that rusa, pelanduk, or kancil? (Three different names in Malay that get translated as "deer," "barking deer," and "mouse deer." I think either the kancil or/and the pelanduk aren't actually deer, in terms of scientific taxonomy.)

See this topic: Chicken farming and meat quality.