Lingering on the fringes of the Asian continent, equivalently influenced by its local neighbors, international shipping routes and years spent under Spanish and American hegemony, the Philippines long ago blossomed into something of a culinary funhouse, accommodating an outsized hodgepodge of ingredients, flavors and hues. The dazzling results can be seen in exciting dishes like afritada, embutido, bibingka and halo halo (the pictures say it all, sort of), their sing-song names and vibrant colors seemingly sprung from some magical fantasyland.
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When I started writing this post, there were (to my knowledge) no Somali restaurants in New York City. There now appears to be one, in some stage of soft-opening up in Harlem. This doesn’t alleviate the fact that the entire East African coast, from Sudan all the way down to Swaziland (and excepting the obvious Ethiopian) is barely represented in the NY metropolitan area, while West African eateries dot the Bronx, Upper Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. Some useful maps here note language disbursement across the five boroughs, confirming the presence of Ethiopian Amharic speakers in the Rockaways, but little representation elsewhere. Without this access point, the best way to peek into these mysterious cuisines is a little Googling. After preparing a Somali bizbaz sauce to liven up some leftover roasted potatoes, I became curious about the specifics of more substantial meals. Perched on the easternmost edge of the continent, Somalia has absorbed influences not only from colonialist occupiers (fascist spaghetti) but from nearby Arabian-peninsula nations, as well as India. One of these, the flatbread known as lahooh (or lahoh or laxoox), has roots in nearby Yemen, which in my experience appears to be one of the world’s preeminent bread-producing nations. Producing a healthy stack of these pancakey discs from this recipe, a few mistakes were made, including an evident lack of bubbles, but the relative idea survived. These were consumed in three different forms, one involving a further transformation of this recipe, with the lahooh stacked to create a sort of frittata, with further substitutions of pimenton (good in everything) and fresh garlic scapes for the scallions. The other was an American-style riff on the traditional breakfast lahooh, served with of ghee and honey, with the addition of sweet eggs, flavored with cardamom, topped with the proprietary complement of maple syrup and bananas. The filling tasted like the top of French toast. I consumed the last of the lahooh in the most traditional manner, by itself with a generous layer of honey and butter, which was probably the best use of all.
My now-standard practice, upon discovering anyone I know is heading overseas, is to beg for food photos. Sometimes they oblige me. Even more rarely, they take the time to write up reactions to those photos and the country's food culture in general. Fresh off a recent trip to Iceland, perspicacious guest poster Emily Alta Hockaday has filed some quick impressions, covering hot dog men, demented pigs and the omnipresence of rhubarb. Still no answers regarding the mysterious popularity of orange soda in Scandinavian countries, but it's a start.
Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice takes place during a period of great, decidedly un-groovy change, set in a sun-dappled 1970 in which the dreamy hippie lifestyle is gradually being consumed by, and absorbed into, the formerly square mainstream, pulled by undercurrents of corporate greed and communal adaptation. It’s a process that’s neatly summed up by the toxic relationship of barefoot PI protagonist Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) and his authoritarian tormentor/establishment foil Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (Josh Brolin). Here, in a fitting moment for a character defined by several instances of massive consumption, the flat-topped detective wolfs down two helpings of American pancakes prepared in Japanese eatery. “They're not as good as my mother's” Bigfoot notes, “but what I really go for here is the respect.” From a tinny radio in the background comes another signifier of this process, by which American culture absorbs foreign items, then pressures or transforms them to conform to its own narrow sense of the exotic: Kyu Sakamoto’s 1961 hit Sukiyaki, which underwent a similar progression in its American renaming. As reflected by its Japanese title (“I Look Up As I Walk”), it’s an aching song about lost love / the failures of the anti-US protest movement, and has nothing to do with the traditional hot pot dish; the title is merely a slapped-on word that sounded catchy and Japanese. Look down as you scroll for a weird promotional video for this otherwise fantastic song:
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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