Pony: I am eating my way through southeast asia.
11.14.2005

Last week Kiff and I went to Little India on Gerrard to replenish our spice jars and came across a piece of the most vibrant yellow silk imaginable. From India. A bit costly here, but over dinner we reminisced how in India we could get bolts of bright silks for so little (not that we'd need further instigation to return).

We have both been having huge urges to go back to India. Prash is getting sent to paint for three months in Varanasi ("the oldest living city in the world!") and had a big sale of his work at his gallery on Queen East (packed with vivid colours and a whole mass of prash-lovers). We bought a tiny canvas of a maharaja.

Thank God I am going to the gym regularly or I would be busting out of my clothes. I am sublimating my travel lust by eating warm, spicy food from southeast asia.

We made elaborate curries three nights last week. Wednesday night Christy and I went for Sri Lankan. At lunch I ate Thai coconut curry. Friday night kiff made kashmiri apricot chicken and a thick lentil stew with these tamarind-like fruits called kokum.


Last night my mom took me and Kiff for chinese. At Jan Wong's recommendation, we went to New Sky chinese restaurant, "the only" place in Chinatown she endorses, according to the Saturday Globe and Mail.

It had been a long time since I ventured outside of the Gold Stone-Swatow-Lee Garden triangle of safety. As soon as we walked in we saw a steaming hot pot of fish and vegetables and tofu at a table. It was a the "grouper" hot pot. Fresh fish lightly breaded with corn starch; bok choy, mushrooms, and seasoned with fresh strips of ginger and scallions. It was gorgeous and delicous in its simplicity.

Less brilliant was Wong's recommendation of chicken steamed in lotus leaf. It had delicious mushrooms and subtle flavour but the meat was bony bits with thick fatty skin: chinese cuisine is far less squeamish about animal parts. For whatever reason, westerners (and by westerners, I mean me) prefer their meat pristine, skinless, and devoid of anatomical information.

Note: If you go there, check out what everyone else is ordering and ask about it. I have the feeling that it is one of those places where the chinese menu is a whole other world of discovery. And order the hot pot!

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