EatingAsia

Saveur Magazine's First Annual Food Blog Awards - We're Nominated

Call us surprised, and very flattered -- Saveur magazine has nominated EatingAsia in two categories (Best Culinary Blog and Best Special Interest Blog) in its First Annual Food Blog Awards.

We're up against some pretty formidable competition, so if you're so inclined please hop over the the Saveur Food Blog Awards page and vote. If you're not registered with saveur.com already you'll need to do so before voting. (Warning: the captcha can be fierce. You may need to reload several times to get through security.)

Winners will be announced in April. Thanks to the folks at Saveur -- and a hearfelt 'Cheers' everyone who's ever visited EatingAsia and returned. You are one of the reasons we keep doing what we do here.

Ban on Dog and Cat Meat in China? Not Exactly

One thing that struck me in Chengdu was how many pet dogs there were.

Little dogs, medium-sized dogs, a few huge dogs -- dogs were everywhere. Most wore jackets or sweaters (it was the depth of a chilly winter, after all), some rode in bicycle baskets. Dogs in shops, dogs in parks (Chengdu's municipal government should be lauded for its efforts at creating green spaces), dogs cradled like babies, dogs on chairs and on laps, dogs inside homes and outside, patrolling their patch of sidewalk. And not mean, wild dogs either, but well cared-for, well-fed dogs who've obviously been raised as companions, not guard animals.

It's something you just wouldn't have seen 15 years ago. It's a sign of rising affluence, I suppose, a burgeoning middle class with money to spare. But who knows? Maybe it's a sign of something else too -- a slowly changing attitude toward an animal often called 'man's best friend'.

Coincidentally, the evening we returned to Kuala Lumpur I stumbled across (while enjoying a free, unrestricted browse of the internet for the first time in three weeks) a link to story in the Chongqing Evening News about a possible 'ban' on dog meat. We'd been in Chongqing just a week before; judging by the number of restaurants advertising xiang rou ('fragrant meat', as dog meat is known in China) and dog hot pot, the possibility of dog disappearing from menus in China seemed rather slim. So I decided to investigate a bit.

It turns out that the proposed ban is not really a ban, and is unlikely to be enacted into law in any form any time soon. That doesn't mean it might not happen some day, though. You can read our story about China's 'dog meat ban', and why the media hoopla over it is much ado about not much at all, over at Zester Daily.

The Zester story is an analysis, not an opinion piece. But this is a blog, so I'm going to use this space to alert you to Animals Asia, an organization based in Hong Kong that has been working to change attitudes to dogs, cats, and other animals such as bears, in China, Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia for many years -- well worth checking out if you're an animal welfare advocate.

Far From Home: Scenes From a Tibetan Refugee School in Northern India

Last August, a chance encounter on a bus in Himachal Pradesh (northern India) led Dave to a school for young Tibetan refugees, where he spent several days photographing the kids and their daily routine. His contact was a young man who walked across the Tibetan-Indian border when he was just five.

Later today American President Obama meets the Dalai Lama for the first time. Dave thought it was a good time to revisit the Tibetan Children's Village. See the slideshow (be sure to click on 'captions') here.

Debut

After much hemming and hawing Dave has finally started a photography blog. Look for a little food and lots of, um, other stuff.

Just one post so far, but he swears he's on a roll.

Happy New Year

                                           Raise a glass to 2009

Yesterday was Dave's last day at work. Not this work, or that work, but the other work, the office work, the work he's been slogging away at for a couple of decades. From today he'll no longer be managing a staff, just himself and a couple of cameras.

Scary, but exciting. A big change, but change is good.

What does this mean for EatingAsia? Not much, initially. We're in the throes of annoyingly time-consuming transition-related tasks. But once we've settled into a new routine we may tinker. I'd like to write more ingredient-focused posts. The photographer will be lurking in the kitchen more often, so you might see a few more recipes here too. And more Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia-focused posts, now that we'll again have time to explore our own backyard. Then there's that site redesign we mentioned last September.

We'll be traveling more (in the very near term, Penang and Jogjakarta) but, free now of time limits imposed by the fact that one of us has a full-time other job, we'll be traveling differently. Some of the best stories come when you've got time to just hang out, observe, become part of the wallpaper - something we haven't been able to do in so long. Now we will, at least sometimes.

We're looking to get started on some larger projects too, some related to food, others not. We'll keep you updated. The latter you'll be able to follow on Dave's photography blog, which should be up and running in a few weeks.

It seems right, today, to thank you, for visiting EatingAsia once and then coming back. We've so appreciated your support and your comments. What a difference three and a half years makes!

New year, new life. Best wishes for 2009 - we hope it's a great year for you.

Cookbook Purge

We're moving house in a few weeks. This will be our 16th move and I believe I can say with a certain amount of authority it doesn't get any easier. Nonetheless, we are viewing this chore positively, as an opportunity to pare down, lighten up, downsize.

That's what we tell ourselves anyway. In reality when I look at the amount of stuff we'll be giving and/or throwing away I can't help but feel we really haven't risen to the occasion. Cookbooks, for instance. I have a stack of just 15 giveaways -- out of hundreds. Logic tells me that cookbooks should be like clothes - if they haven't seen the light of day in more than a year they're out the door. Given the amount of cooking I do (much less than when I wasn't writing about food, ironically enough) there's no way in Hades I could use all of my books in a year. Yet for whatever reason I can't bear to part with most of them.

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to list the titles now sitting on our dining room table, ready to find new homes with friends or in a trash can. I don't dislike any of these books; my tossing them out is not a commentary on either their authors or their content. I only know I won't miss them. Many fellow food bloggers have written about their favorite cookbooks. Here's a list of of ones that I can do without:

Baking in America and Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts    I used to bake a lot, but now my cake pans lie unused, my cookie sheets bereft. I use the oven more for warming plates than I do for making anything sweet. I bought the first book a couple years ago, and I've only cracked it a couple times, never used it once. My mom gave me Heatter's book when I was at uni. It's well-used, and I topped off some memorable meals with its creations. But I'm not sentimental. I loved it then, but I couldn't care less about it now. Out it goes.

If I do get the urge to bake I've got this book, which is probably one of the most overlooked baking tomes out there, perhaps because its author died much too young some years ago. I've made countless desserts from it - cakes, cookies, pies, tarts, compotes, puddings, you name it - and they've all been of 'that's the best I've ever tasted' quality. It's all the baking book I need. But I've also got this one just in case I want to whip up something sweetly exotic.

The Minimalist Cooks at Home    Who doesn't love Mark Bittman's columns in the New York Times Wednesday Dining Section? I always read them but I rarely cook from them. Same with this book. Buh-bye.

The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook    This might be the first cookbook I ever owned. It's mammoth, a sort of Chinese cooking newbie's bible. I never took to it, preferring instead Kenneth Lo's Encyclopedia of Chinese Cooking (which I rarely cook from now but do use for reference). We eat a fair amount of Chinese around here and these days I'm mostly using two Sichuan cookbooks. The latter is relatively unknown, but its recipes are quite authentic (if confusingly written). It was given to me by my future mother-in-law shortly after Dave and I returned to the US from Chengdu, where we taught English in the 80s - a very good omen for future in-law relations, I think.

Kitchen Conversations    I like the idea of this book: recipes accompanied by discussions of how different flavors and ingredients work together, and input from a sommelier (the author's son) on pairing wine with the dishes. When we moved to the San Fran Bay Area in 1990 I bought the author's first book and cooked from it extensively - like, cover to cover - and I still think it's fantastic. But I just couldn't get that excited about this one.

Simply Tuscan, Food of Southern Italy, Italian Farmhouse Cookbook     My bookshelves hold almost as many Italian as Asian cookbooks, so I probably should have forced myself to part with more than three. These have sat untouched for too many years. My go-to for Italian (besides, of course, Marcella Hazan) is anything by Lynne Rosetto Kaspar, whom many readers (in the US, at least) know from NPR's Splendid Table. I was cooking from her books before she became a radio star; The Italian Country Table is probably the most oil and sauce-splattered book in my entire collection, and The Splendid Table (about Emilia-Romagna, not the radio show of the same name) combines history and recipes to great effect. 

Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin and The Paris Cookbook    Though I loved Loomis' memoir of living and cooking in a French town my affection for a few other French or French-ish cookbooks left little room in my kitchen for her cookbook. It looks like a good one, but I only cook so much French; I know I'll never get to it. As for The Paris Cookbook well, what can I say? I've never been to the City of Lights (gasp! yes, it's true) and many of the recipes are just too rarified for either my palate or my humble kitchen.

Rustic European Breads From Your Bread Machine     What was I thinking? I've never baked bread. And I don't even own a bread machine. (But I'm hanging onto a couple other bread books. You know, just in case.)

Paula Wolfert's World of Foods     Wolfert is a true culinary anthropologist. I am totally in awe of what she does, have all of her other books, and at least read, if not cook from, them pretty often. But this collection of unrelated recipes I really don't need, so I'm chucking it.

Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza, & Calzone     I don't make pizza, calzone, or pasta. If I decide to, I've got a gzillion other books I can consult (see Italian entry above).

Japanese Cooking and Practical Japanese Cooking     Japanese food is a fave but cooking it isn't. I do hotpots, noodles, miso soup, and that's about it. These titles have been idling on my shelves for perhaps a decade. Shame on me. Let them belong to someone who will pay them some attention. (I'm keeping this one though. Who knows, I may get inspired one of these days.)

And a reprieve: Glorious Foods of Greece sat at the top of my pile last night, but I rescued it this morning. I've cooked from it maybe once, and recently bought this book which is now my Greek food bible. But Glorious Foods includes recipes for so many interesting and little-known regional specialties that I want to hang onto it just in case we ever go to Greece - it would serve as a great guide book.

What cookbook(s) could you do without?

Thanks Times Online...

Because no post is complete without a photo (Nang Leong neighborhood, Bangkok)

...for placing EatingAsia Number 2 in your list of 'World's Top Ten Food Blogs'.

And thanks specifically to blogger and author Simon Majumdar, who wrote the piece. Earlier this year Simon chomped his way around SE Asia as - erm - 'research' for his upcoming book (chronicled on the book's blog). I convinced him to include Malaysia in his itinerary (I was, unfortunately, in the Philippines when he passed through). He was not disappointed.

We're so pleased about being included in the list that we're willing, for the moment, to turn a blind eye to an article on the same site about 'the world's best street food' - in Singapore. Sigh.

In Indonesia, Drawing on the Obama Dividend

We'll get back to the all-important topic of sate soon enough, but for now we just have three words: Thank you Obama.

We've been on Java since last week, and as per usual nearly every Indonesian we've met has asked us where we're from. Over the last seven years or so saying we're American has rarely elicited the kind of overtly negative reaction that some Americans abroad have described (in fact, the only time that sort of thing happened was three years ago, in Italy). But the reception to our self-identification as Americans has certainly often been cool.

Wow. What a difference an election cycle makes. This past week, every Indonesian has responded to our being Americans with one word: 'Obama!'  And, sometimes, with three: 'Obama! Obama! Obama!'

'Your first black president,' an elderly villager said to me yesterday, nodding with approval. 'Isn't his father Muslim?' asked a teenager. Smiles all around.

It feels great.

Hey, we're not proclaiming for or against. This isn't a political blog. But whatever your political leanings, there is no denying that being an American abroad is a whole lot more pleasant post-November 4 than it used to be.

Call it the Obama Dividend.

Does this really matter to the bigger picture? Will the good vibes that much of the world is sending in America's direction evaporate overnight?

Who knows? We're just going to enjoy it while it lasts.

Us, Revealed (Sort Of)

At any rate, more than you ever wanted to know about Dave and Robyn can be found in this interview on the Filipino food blog Table for Three, Please. Many thanks to our interviewer Franco, who with his thoughtful questions actually manages to make us seem somewhat interesting!

Intelligent Food Writing or Kittens?

Phil's not-unfounded rant about food journalists who parachute into Cambodia and write about nothing but spiders and dried frogs  has sparked a discussion touching on the alleged dearth of interesting, entertaining, and intelligent food writing (don't agree), the crisis in food writing readership (pretty much agree), and the greater appeal, to the average reader, of cute kitten photos over thoughtfully-penned screeds on any food-related topic.

To prove or disprove the latter (and because I may not have time today to write a proper post) I offer here indisputably cute photos of our latest addition. The stats will not lie. (Also, they might suggest that Dave should launch a second career in studio pet portraiture. Pugs, anyone?)