An oft-repeated open secret of Thai-American restaurateurs, one likely applicable to those adapting other foreign cuisines for spice-averse palettes, is that when cooking for Americans not familiar with the cuisine, the safest method is to prepare the food as they do for children, with spice levels pushed way down, and sugar content way up. This leads to legions of syrupy pad thais, bogged down with ketchup and peanut butter, the sharp, sparkling flavors of the cuisine buried in viscous goop. I spend an inordinate amount of my time figuring out how to avoid such goop, and yet sometimes it’s worth surrendering to the allure of something intended specifically for a child’s palate. Enter Happy Soda (a.k.a. Gembira), a roseate cartoon beverage overflowing with mysterious sweetness. I spotted this one at the now-monthly Indonesian Food Bazaar, held inside Elmhurst’s St. James Episcopal Church, where vendors gather to sell homemade batches of native meals and snacks. The onslaught of unfamiliar items (Indonesia being another of those countries whose dozens of regional cuisines I’m only beginning to understand) forced me to do several laps to take it all in before ordering, and on these the thing which kept standing out to me was not any specific food item but this glowing soda, clutched in the hand of many a dawdling child, the source of its color still a mystery. My initial suspicion after purchasing one, which was prepared fresh before my eyes, was strawberry; a little research reveals the answer is actually coco-pandan syrup, a mixture of two maritime Asian staples, blended with condensed milk over ice, filled out with a healthy pour of seltzer for the requisite fizz. A tad too sweet for me, but I’m glad to have added this particular shade of pink to my rainbow of consumed beverage colors.
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In most cases, souse refers to a variant of head cheese, an aspic of skull padding and organ meats pickled with vinegar. Picadillo, throughout Spain and Latin America, points to a swirling of spiced ground meat seasoned with tomatoes and peppers, plus various aromatics and spices. In Panama, as I learned from a recent visit to Crown Heights’ Panamanian Independence Day festival, things are a little different. There, souse instead refers to the other extreme of nose-to-tail eating - pickled feet, usually of the porcine or bovine variety - a denomination which actually applies all over the Caribbean. Historically connected to that other souse, it demonstrates an inventive way to make use of spare parts, via a spicy, citrusy preparation that can now also be prepared with chicken feet or conch. Sharing the vinegary base of the European variety, the one here also comes smothered in quick-pickled cucumbers, ribbons of white onion and rounds of Scotch Bonnet pepper, the entire thing immersed a tincture tinged with lime. Further flavor is provided through the addition of culantro (aka Chadon Beni), cilantro’s brawnier cousin.
The result is both bracingly fresh and a bit unsettling - the sensation of nibbling cold gelatinous flesh off of a pig’s hoof making me glad I didn’t order the cow version - although it’s ultimately not much different than a plate of pork belly. |
The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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