It seems like American chip flavors just keep getting crazier, with each trip to the grocery store yielding a rogue’s gallery of strange new monstrosities. But this craziness is also circumscribed, pushed toward ever more extreme, overdriven concoctions, mash-ups and combinations, as well as eerily faithful reenactments of foods that have no business existing as chips. On the fast-food side of this equation, Pizza Hut has recently launched the latest attempt at challenging the Doritos Locos Taco. This hulking abomination expands the humble Cheez-It to mammoth proportions. A Cheez-It is obviously not a chip, but it's pizza-fied offspring (the end-result of years of desperate promiscuity by Sunshine, a company that needs to realize the inherent perfection of its star product and stick with it) is so wrongheaded, and so representative of the grotesquerie which defines the current state of processed food culture, that I would be remiss not to mention it. I should also mention that Extra Toasty Cheez-Its are a godsend, and almost singlehandedly balance out the damage inflicted by the last 15 years of lab-spawned, misbegotten oddities.
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Not a still, but too good to ignore (or leave unanimated). Jackie Chan's bumbling private eye finds his lust competing with his hunger, Tex Avery style, in Wong Jing's City Hunter (1993)
When fusion is discussed in culinary terms, it’s usually of the broader, cross-cultural sort, either occurring organically (Indo-Chinese, Chinese-Caribbean, Indo-Caribbean) or mandated by the exigencies of the market (any place you can get both Sushi and Pad Thai). But there are also smaller instances of synthesis, ones occurring incessantly within national cultures themselves, sometimes at the behest of foreign influence, sometimes owing to other factors. Take Delimanjoo, which is run out of a small booth in Manhattan’s Koreatown, sharing space with a steamed bun dispensary and doling out a small set roster of seemingly traditional pastries. These have individual appellations, yet here get classed together under the name of the shop, itself a portmanteau (Delicious, or Delice, the company’s name, and Manjoo/doo, for dumpling). Delimanjoo is a global chain that most famously sells these cute little corns stuffed with custard, a treat I’m convinced they did not invent, although I can find no immediate visual evidence of their existence anywhere else. Word of mouth, meanwhile, seems to indicate they’re spotted frequently within the Seoul subway system.
It took nearly three years, but at last I’m back with another chip comparison, although in this case the chips were not purchased simultaneously and one could only in the most generous definition be considered a chip. Thankfully I make the rules here.
Spotted at the Jackson Heights location of Patel Brothers: a uniquely American pepper product (with an assist from Middle Eastern cuisine), known primarily for its status as a pizzeria staple, enters the Indian market. "Pizza Chill," meanwhile, whether a fortuitous spelling error or a mere consequence of an improperly snipped label, has permanently entered my personal food lexicon.
It took over a year and more than a few trips to different Indian supermarkets, but I’ve finally (and inadvertently) found the answer to the Ching’s Secret Mystery. My original guess, that this was all some kind of reference to a Bollywood character that I was simply not grasping, ended up being not too far off. In fact, Steampunk Hat Man and the man seen below are variations on the same persona - Ranveer Ching - an invented spokesman (played, appropriately, by Bollywood star Ranveer Singh), who’s anchored a series of gigantic, cinematic commercials chronicling his gymnastic proclivity for Instant Indo-Chinese fusion. Ching’s latest outing (helmed by acclaimed director Rohit Shetty, and reputedly the most expensive advertisement in Indian history) finds him parading around a post-apocalyptic landscape as a Mad Max-esque hero, in such elaborate form that my Indian friend had assumed, from passing familiarity with the commercial, that it was a clip from a full-fledged movie. Look below for the blockbuster advertisement, as well as its predecessor, in which we’re finally able to glimpse the equally ridiculous hair-do hiding beneath that asinine hat. Every so often I encounter an ostensibly edible object which makes no immediate sense, fits into no previous classificatory bracket, and provides few visual hints as to its identity. On truly rare occasions, eating said object only makes things worse. Enter Senjed, a small dried fruit which, despite its wrinkled external texture, gives way to a shockingly fluffy interior; the closest comparison I can make is to some kind of prank jellybean filled with old-fashioned couch stuffing. The package, whose label I made a point only to read after attempting to figure out what was going on first on my own, describes a “taste and texture somewhere between dates and candy floss.” This, to me, seems a bit charitable. The highly informative bag, obtained from the venerable Manhattan Spice Temple Kalustyan’s, also offers a few different names for the item (Lotus Fruit, Silver Berry, Russian Olive, Oleaster Fruit), which helps to confirm that it is indeed a fruit, not some oddball candy hiding out in inside of one’s skin.
The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa, 1956)
The guts in question here refer to shiokara, a fermented suspension of salted sea life - commonly squid, skipjack tuna, sea urchin et al - mixed with malted rice, and sometimes kombu, to complete the marine melange. I've never had the stuff, which is favored as both an ingredient, a standalone dish and a companion for sake, but it's reasonable to assume, as this character believes, that it bears some similarity to Burmese shrimp paste (Ngapi), also the salty end product of a process designed to stretch every possible use from traditional seaside staples. This is a film concerned with exploring cross-cultural parallels between a collapsing empire and the country it briefly lorded over, and so the exchange of goods here, between Japanese POWs and a small-scale Burmese merchant-woman, is interesting on both a literal and a symbolic level. Stripped of their arms, freedom and pride, the deprived dregs of the Imperial Army are forced to consider the things which connect them and the people of this foreign land, right down to the use of salted fish guts as a flavoring and a meal base, proving that they may not be so different after all. This one was an impulse buy, purchased mostly thanks to its magnificent box, which I snapped up while trawling the aisles of a local Vietnamese supermarket. Based on the name I wasn’t expecting much, and was therefore delighted to discover the Vietnamese equivalent to halvah, a treasure trove of sweet, dusty dessert cubes, with a nice mung bean funk replacing the usually nutty twang. The exceedingly handsome package opens to reveal a tray of twelve separately packed containers (I notice that packaging within packaging seems to be a trend in Asian snacking, although I guess it is in American as well). As the box notes, this confection is a specialty of Hai Duong province, located in North Vietnam’s Red River Delta, where it’s apparently served in two distinct forms. I’m guessing this one is the dry version; the only real problem with these is actually how easily they crumble into dust, a condition that’s visible in the second picture below, which shows the little treats in its unpackaged form. The name Bánh Đậu Xanh literally translates to “mung bean cakes,” and the interplay between the beans and the rich coconut that provides the necessary fat content is pretty fantastic. Also not that hard to prepare on your own, if this recipe is to be believed.
Chukku Kappi - It’s hard to find fresh coffee in India, even though bean production is a booming local industry in the south. More commonly served is what’s known as Filter Coffee (discussed more below), a decoction of (theoretically) freshly ground coffee powder which has its charms, but is often surreptitiously replaced by a lesser instant version, whose non-freshness is then masked with heaps of sugar. Thankfully there are other options in the field of hot caffeinated beverages. Filter Coffee is also known as “Kappi,” a corruption of the original English word, and its cousin Chukku Kappi (“Ginger Coffee”) is a brew of coffee powder supplemented with ginger. An iced cup was handed given to me upon entering a hotel on a hot day, and as with many so many Indian beverages, provided the dual pleasure of cooling refreshment with a nice spicy kick.
Chutney - Derived from the Hindi word for “lick,” chutney in India has a function similar to salsa in Mexico, describing any flavorful suspension of mashed, crushed or pulverized vegetables or fruits, often bolstered by the addition of hot or pickled peppers. Really, it denotes any type of sauce, with the essential focus that such sauces are either used for dipping or combining with a main dish, rice-based or otherwise. They generally fall into one of two different categories - sweet or pickled - although many straddle the line between the two. I wasn’t able to identify any discernible pattern in styles during my trip, although I did notice that this thin coconut version seemed to be the most common. It's worth noting that Indian Chutney is substantially different from the British iteration, which is actually just the adaptation of Indian pickling methods onto traditional English canning, and thus generally involves the use of native produce like the damson, the apple or the onion. |
The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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