My Big Fat Face

Luang Prabang kao soy face off

2013-03-26T03:36:00.000-05:00

For the last two days I've been eating Laotian kao soy in Luang Prabang, at the urging of Robyn from EatingAsia and Mark from Stickyrice. They each have their favorites, so I was sent, backpacker-cum-chef in tow, to decide which was better. We had two kai soy Lao to try, the first, Mark's recommendation, was located across from Wat Vatsensoukharam. The second, the EatingAsia recommendation, was

Impatient pickles

2013-02-21T04:47:00.001-05:00

Elizabeth Andoh's Washoku is one of my all-time favorite cookbooks. It introduced me to a cuisine that I didn't know existed (Japanese food that wasn't sushi or ramen) and to a completely new vocabulary. Within that cookbook, one recipe stood out: Impatient Pickles. Not because I loved the recipe--I didn't--but because of the name. Was it me who was too impatient to wait five days for pickles

Cooking Middle Eastern in Cambodia, Part 2

2013-01-20T11:45:00.000-05:00

Finally, a follow up to my post Cooking Middle Eastern in Cambodia. I spent a week earlier this month cooking from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden. My overall rating is that it's a really wonderful cookbook and surprisingly, it's not too hard to get the necessary ingredients to cook Middle Eastern food in Cambodia. The time of great suffering is over, perhaps it's time to

Cooking Middle Eastern in Cambodia

2013-01-05T22:51:00.000-05:00

I've just treated myself to a number of new cookbooks, which is always dangerous. Buying more than one cookbook at a time usually means that most are ignored in favor of the most exciting one. So this time, I decided to cook exclusively from each cookbook for a week. Turns out to be a genius plan, anyway, because each cuisine really requires a few staple ingredients, and once you already have

Ramen in the Southern Hemisphere

2012-08-20T10:07:00.000-05:00

One of the things I forgot to take into consideration when booking my flight to Australia is the seasons. Crazily, Australia is located in the Southern Hemisphere and as such, has Christmas in summer. In the dark recesses of my foggy, American memory I recall having heard this before, but my association between August and heat is so strong that I only realized I would be traveling in deep

First impressions of Australia

2012-08-15T09:32:00.001-05:00

I've long known that Australians were serious about food. Years ago, while consoling me about a terrible breakup I was enduring, my friend Holly made me ricotta hotcakes from Bill Granger's cookbook Bill's Open Kitchen. I promptly recovered from the failed relationship and went out and bought the cookbook. I'd pore over it, open-mouthed, entranced by the practically-Asian recipes and the

Noodles, salads and Burma

2012-07-15T14:39:00.000-05:00

It's the hip new thing to go to Burma/Myanmar these days. Luckily, I managed to go in November moments before the hordes descended, giving me the right to yawn and say, "Oh, Burma is so over," whenever anyone mentions wanting to visit the country. In Rangoon/Yangon the big, touristy market is called Scott Market (by the British) and Bogyoke Aung San Market (by the Burmese). There, on the east

Larval dinner in Laos

2012-04-19T02:58:00.002-05:00

One of the less pleasant aspects of getting older is being confronted with one's own inadequacies. As young people, we believe that we're invincible, that we can eat anything. As it turns out, we can eat anything, but we'll then spend months of our lives blogging about how sick we've been. I've been meaning to post these photos (taken by my BFF, Frances) of my birthday dinner in Luang Prabang

Cambodia "gastro bloggers"

2012-04-09T11:52:00.000-05:00

Header: BIG FAT FACE. One of most appealing things about living in Cambodia is the occasional bout of "big fish small pond" syndrome. This week I got a taste of it when I was featured in Cambodia's AsiaLife magazine, in a feature on food blogging. Mainly because I write one of the two English-language food blogs in town. Freelance writer Lina Goldberg's blog mybigfatface.com also highlights

Asia's ten greatest street food cities

2012-03-26T12:53:00.000-05:00

So here's what I spent most of November and December working on. 9,000 words about 100 street foods in Penang, Taipei, Bangkok, Fukuoka, Hanoi, Singapore, Seoul, Xi'an, Manila and Phnom Penh. Read more: Asia's 10 greatest street food cities | CNNGo.com

Is it or isn't it? Ribs on Kien Svay

2012-03-20T02:10:00.000-05:00

I know a group of guys who go on a journey to visit Restaurant 522, in Kien Svay, Kandal province every now and again. The rickety restaurant is built on stilts; it sits on, and threatens to fall in to, the Mekong river. The restaurant is reached by a ramshackle boat that's loaded up with a cooler full of various local beers to be consumed during the journey: Anchor, Angkor, Cambodia, Klang.

On having, and not having, worms

2012-01-29T11:55:00.000-05:00

I was at a party recently--the type I've only just started to be invited to--filled with long-term Cambodia expats. There are a few touchstones for expats, topics that we can discuss with each other that people in the real world would shudder at. Tropical diseases are one such topic, bowel movements, another. So at this party when a friend of mine launched into a detailed conversation about her

The story of how I made hot and sour soup

2012-01-25T07:34:00.000-05:00

When I was a young person living in a studio apartment in the East Village, relying on post-World Trade Center unemployment checks to survive, my comfort food was hot and sour soup from Fei Ma restaurant. Fei Ma was a tiny, shitty Chinese takeaway with what was probably completely unremarkable food, but to my eager and unrefined palate, it was exotic and perhaps most importantly, cheap. Since

How to be a bad tourist

2011-11-23T09:48:00.001-05:00

Here are a series of photos I took of some tourists and a young Burmese girl near Amarapura in Burma earlier this month. This is why when I travel, I try to only take pictures of food. I'll just straighten your hair so you look a little more "ethnic." Hold those necklaces up high, girly, I might buy one when we're done with this! The Burmese sellers watch with resignation during

Smoked salmon for breakfast...not in Cambodia

2011-11-16T07:53:00.001-05:00

File this under first world problems, but I can't get a decent western breakfast in Cambodia. I rarely want one, anyway. I'm not a breakfast person and if I am going to eat breakfast, I'd rather have bai sach chrouk than toast and tea, anyway. But once every few months I want a breakfast that includes smoked salmon. As I begin my rant, I'd like to say that smoked salmon is available here, at

Char...it's what's for dinner

2011-11-01T21:45:00.000-05:00

Meals are simple affairs in Cambodia...when it's not a wedding or funeral or engagement party or the King Father's birthday or an auspicious day to open a new office or Pchum Ben or one of the other seemingly bazillion Cambodian holidays. Beef and lotus rootlet char, from a roadside stall in Kandal province. But on an average day, for an average Cambodian, char is what's on the menu. Char

7 things you didn't know about Cambodian kitchens

2011-10-18T05:22:00.000-05:00

Or maybe you already knew all of this. But I certainly didn't when I first moved to Cambodia. 1. No ovens Ovens are not a traditional part of Cambodian cooking, which relies most on stir-frying, grilling and soups. The only way to get an oven in a Cambodian flat is to rent an apartment that's been tricked out for Westerners (and if you have an apartment with an oven, you're probably paying

Some Cambodian food stories

2011-10-17T05:48:00.002-05:00

I've had a couple of food articles out lately -- if you're looking for more info on the Cambodian food scene, please check 'em out. Outtake from the delicious Cambodian dishes -- taken at 54 Langeach Sros on St 178, Phnom Penh. 10 Delicious Cambodian Dishes at CNN Go Destination Cambodia: It'll all end in beers. An article about Phnom Penh beer gardens -- where to drink and what to eat.

Finally getting on the bento train

2011-08-23T05:49:00.003-05:00

I've been interested in bento since I was a teenager and discovered the Sanrio store at the Fairfield Mall. I can't say that I actually made lunch with any of my Kerokerokeroppi accessories more than a few times -- my bento box seemed far better suited to carrying my collection of mentholated cigarettes and hairclips. When I traveled through Japan on my grand tour, I wistfully looked at all

On hunger and tropical fevers

2011-08-15T00:07:00.001-05:00

I've recently recovered from a whopper of an illness that included a staph infection caused by itching a mosquito bite, and a tropical fever, thought to be dengue, that quite probably sprang from the same mosquito bite. This my friends, is tropical living at its best. I spent about three weeks in bed, crying mostly, and watching DVDs (thank goodness for lax copyright protection in Cambodia,

The mile-high supper club

2011-07-11T19:30:00.002-05:00

There are a few things in the world that I'm obsessed with: Italian disco, flat-footed squatting, street food, and collecting miles. There's no way around it, I'm a miles junkie. This is an addiction that has paid off, and with a little help from the FlyerTalk lending team on Kiva, I did my most recent trip "up front." Of course what I find most exciting about business class is the food. I can't

Intestinal fortitude: The good, the bad and the home-made yogurt

2011-05-22T11:39:00.001-05:00

I’ve been a negligent blogger as of late. I’ve got this whole other blog that I actually get paid to write, and that’s been sucking a lot of my creative attention. That and I’m lazy. But let’s talk about yogurt. One of the things that living in the tropics has done is to make me increasingly aware of the fragility of my own health. Cambodian doctors are more likely to kill you than make you

Ten ways I managed to ingest sugar as a child, over parental objections

2011-02-11T11:57:00.002-05:00

1. Breakfast Cereal When I was a girl, when we went to the supermarket my mother would come up with an arbitrary number, I think it was around five or six, and say that we could only have cereal that had a lower sugar count per serving than this number. Upon reflection, I suppose it wasn't arbitrary, because it managed to eliminate anything tasty from our breakfast options, including that

Back to Penang: Hoikken mee twice for lunch

2010-12-27T11:29:00.000-05:00

I was about to write a potentially very boring post about how much I love Hokkien mee in Penang, and then I realized that I already wrote that post last March. I'm here for the holidays and harboring fantasies about moving here and spending the rest of my life doing nothing but eating hawker food. George Town is one of the best food cities I've ever been to. Last time I visited I didn't quite

At the Seoul Airport

2010-12-14T11:22:00.000-05:00

Korea's campaign to promote Korean food is bigger and better than ever this year. They have a website, a blog, ads in Times Square and the sort of airport decorations that my ideal model home would have. When I stepped off what I can only describe as a hellish flight from Phnom Penh to Seoul recently I was delighted to get onto a moving walkway that sped me past a quick forecast of what my next