And finally, to return to the olives, I’m still hoping they’ll eventually turn the corner and become edible, even if it takes another six months.
I once spent a few months, in and around the summer of 2010, trying to source raw olives for a home-curing project. This quest mostly involved roaming hopelessly around Queens, checking on expired leads, and culminated when I encountered an entire slaughtered cow, broken down among two shopping carts, in the back of a small Middle-Eastern grocery in Astoria. Now, nearly a decade later, I finally stumbled upon the elusive jewels at Carnival Fresh Market, a compact wonderland of produce and selected dry goods in Kensington. Two months into the leaching process, which was only supposed to last a month, I’m beginning to wonder if my small crop will ever lose its astringency and become ready for curing. This is inspiring flashbacks to the month I spent leaching acorns to make flour for a good but not great spaetzle, and serving as another reminder that in some cases it’s better to buy rather than make, especially if you don’t have an olive tree dumping its seasonal bounty upon your head. Thankfully, this trip to Carnival did not only yield disappointment and self-doubt. I also bought some green pea cookies, continuing my personal commitment to sampling Asian vegetable-flavored sweets. As with others of this stripe, the taste is subtle, and I initially made the mistake of eating them in the company of other, sweeter, American cookies. My tastebuds battered by sugar, these delicate wafers were mostly redolent of peas, a sensation that was not unpleasant but didn't exactly inspire further consumption. Luckily, I later tried again and discovered that they need to be appreciated on their own, ideally with a hot cup of tea. Kacang Kapri Biscuits are apparently a lunar new year tradition in Malaysia, their country of origin. They’re not the same as Green Bean Cookies (Kuih Koya), another year-end favorite made with mung flour, which despite their verdant name resemble drifts of fresh driven snow. I’m curious to find out how these taste, since as I learned a few years back, powdered mung is fairly pungent, its nutty flavor reminiscent of a more vegetal halvah. There’s also a tapioca variety (Kuih Bangkit), a search for which led me into the much larger world of Kuih, an entire massive category of Southeast Asian snacks. Like any form of exploration, food research sometimes yields massive pockets of new info that must be returned to later, which I hope to do once I have a chance to visit local Kuih destinations like Let’s Makan, Kopitiam (where I recently enjoyed an interesting Honeycomb Cake) and Moon Man. As for the green pea cookies, on their own they tasted a bit like a Pecan Sandie, with the beaniness taking over for the nutty taste, not at all bad for something that comes encased in individual plastic wrapping. Regarding that quirk of Southeast Asian packaging, I realized on this encounter that it likely has less to do with the enforcement of an ideal of cleanliness than climate control, since a box of cookies left unsealed would quickly suffer severe damage in a humid climate like Malaysia's.
And finally, to return to the olives, I’m still hoping they’ll eventually turn the corner and become edible, even if it takes another six months.
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