Celebrating Birthdays and Fine Dining

This is my (Marcie) birthday month. Yes, I'm a Scorpio and proud of it, though obviously I had little to do with it. Unlike many people who shun birthdays, I love mine...not the aging part, just the celebrating part. In fact, I enjoy it so much, I celebrate for the entire month. David's a good sport about it and calls it Marcie's birthday season. Each time we head out in November to explore, we count it as part of my birthday celebration. A weekend in Parbo? Yup, part of my birthday. Walking tours, zoos, butterfly parks … definitely part of the birthday package. Gifts, birthday cakes and candles? Not so much. Well … maybe a few gifts.

It's a fine time for culinary exploration. We've been eating out at roti shacks and warungs (Javanese food stalls). We've had our fill of curries and nasi and bami for the time being. After all, at some point during this month, I felt entitled to a grand birthday dinner. A bit of research and we settled on The Garden of Eden, a highly rated Thai restaurant.

From the moment we walked in, I could tell it was going to be a fabulous evening. We were all “duded-up” or at least as finely dressed as possible considering our sketchy wardrobes. We were greeted at the door and seated outside at a table with an umbrella. Tiki torches burned. The ground was covered in white sand. Thatched cabanas offered private seating areas. Flowering trees, shrubs and plants bloomed. Bamboo and palm trees formed a pleasant, airy canopy overhead.

A hint of jasmine mingled with delicious food smells emanating from the open air kitchen. It really couldn't have been more lovely or romantic.

It was one of those evenings when everything meshed. Our server, Elliot, was attentive, but not obtrusive. Chilled water with an herb sprig came first. We ordered cocktails. I had a pina colada made with local coconut, pineapple and Borgoe rum. David tried a Hazelnut Absolut martini … served chilled with whole hazelnuts and described on the menu “like angels pissing on your tongue”. How could he pass up that description? It was so good, he ordered a second.

There were so many fine little details of the restaurant and the service that added to the overall ambiance. The menus, displayed in three languages, were inserted in rattan folders with a fan inside each one. Rattan napkin rings encircled red linen napkins. Fresh flowers adorned the cocktails and the meals.

We ordered different menu items to share. An appetizer of Thai Sate Gai (chicken in a spicy peanut sauce) and Tom Kha Gai soup (chicken and vegetables in a tangy, rich coconut milk broth). David tried Homak Pla (sea bass in red curry wrapped in banana leaves) and I tried Yam Sam Krob which they described in English as “inkfish” with mango and roasted peanuts. It was, of course, squid, i.e. calamari and it was fantastic. All served with jasmine rice. We ate and sampled each other's dishes until we could eat no more. Doggy bags, please … a Thai breakfast for tomorrow morning? We lingered and savored the evening.

A ginger flower was my parting gift.

The only negative? The lighting was so dim, David couldn't count out our taxi fare. He had to rely on a torch at the exit.

All in all, a wonderful birthday dinner. But, of course, there's more to come. It's only mid-November … another half month to celebrate … and then there's Christmas.

Dutch word for the day – verjaardag – birthday

Namibian Food and Drink

Seeing the Joy of Cooking on Ian's bookshelf yesterday, reminded me that I haven't given much consideration to Namibian cuisine. Every country we've visited has its own particular foods and drinks and Namibia is no exception. Because of its colonial heritage, there's significant German and European influence here. For instance, the breads are good here in Luderitz, especially the brotchen that we buy fresh every day at the supermarket and the hearty dark, seeded breads. The strudels aren't bad either!

Eisbein seems to be on every menu in every restaurant in Luderitz. This is a pickled ham hock, prepared in the German tradition, usually served with sauerkraut. I've avoided it. Sausages and wursts are common and folks still “braai” in the Afrikaans tradition.

The local beers, both produced by NamBrew, are Windhoek and Tafel, brewed locally, but in the German tradition. They're quite good and we've loaded a case aboard for future consumption.

Tripe, also known as afval, is a traditional food here. The Afrikaans word afval translates to offal (or in my vocabulary ... awful). It's cow and sheep stomach and it's sold in most grocery stores. They make it more palatable (as if) by preparing it in a potjie (the traditional slow-cooking pot) and adding curry. Of course, my mom grew up on a farm and they ate pickled tripe and there are a zillion recipes for preparing tripe worldwide, so this isn't just an African thing. Then there's pluck which is a hardy combination of heart, lung, kidney and livers of animals prepared with potatoes and onions and served in a spicy sauce. No matter how well it's prepared and how lovely it's presented, I just can't get my tongue around it.

David has tried all sorts of game meat … kudu, springbok, oryx … and he compares them to the venison and elk that he's eaten in America.  They're served as steaks and in stews and ground up for meatballs, etc. It seems reasonable that native folks would eat what was plentiful and the “boks” (bucks) are plentiful here. There's also zebra, crocodile and ostrich available. Ix-nay on the zebra and croc (I'm sure they taste like chicken), but ostrich was actually pretty good.  Biltong, dried, salted meat like jerky, is eaten frequently here and is sold here in bulk or you can grab a piece out of a jar at the grocery check-out. It's available in all those “gamey” varieties.

I saw “mahangu” in the flour section of the OK Grocery and wondered what it was. Mahangu is grown as a subsistence cereal crop here in Namibia and we'd know it as pearl millet. It's served at most meals to stretch the budget and fill the bellies. It can be cooked into a thick porridge and shaped into balls to be eaten by hand with stews. It can also be fermented and turned into an alcoholic drink called oshikundu, sold by local women on the streets up north.

There's local asparagus, Luderitz oysters and crayfish, Kalahari truffles, and omajowa, the large fleshy mushrooms that appear for a brief period at the foot of termite hills in the north shortly after the rains in February. But, the pièce de résistance … a delightful, pop-in-your-mouth snack that's sure to please … mopane worms. Actually, they're the caterpillar phase of the Emperor moth (gonimbrasia belina) and not worms and they're found in mopane trees, hence the name. They're considered quite the delicacy and provide a major source of protein for some of the Namibian indigenous people.

They're prepared by squeezing out their green guts and boiling them in salt water. They can then be dried or prepared fresh … sauteed in oil with a little garlic, onion and tomato or some spicy peri-peri sauce maybe. The locals tend to eat the dried ones like peanuts … salty and crunchy. Yum. No … I did not try them. I think they'd be considered meat and, well, I don't eat meat. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. And, no, this is not a recipe for our cookbook.

The Joy of Cooking...in Africa

I was doing laundry at Doris and Ian's house the other day. While waiting for the washer to finish (what a luxury!), I spied an old copy of The Joy of Cooking on a kitchen bookshelf. What young bride in America didn't have a copy of The Joy of Cooking at some point in her married career? I remember getting a copy as a gift on my first anniversary … a not-so-subtle hint, I think. Seeing it on a shelf in Africa, however, brought back many memories. I started thumbing through.

The Joy of Cooking was originally self-published by an entrepreneurial young widow, Irma Rombauer in 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression. The daughter of a German immigrant family, she sold copies of her recipe collection out of her apartment in St. Louis, until an expanded edition was published in 1936 by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. The rest is history. Irma's daughter worked with her in the compilation of new editions and the “Joy business” has now been handed down to Irma's grandkids and great-grandkids. What a legacy! This cookbook is considered one of the premier cookbooks in the USA and has been revised constantly to reflect changes in the times. No more Depression era cooking where shortages and substitutions were key considerations for any recipe.

Ian's copy was given to him by a Peace Corps worker and it was an early 1970s vintage. It was quite a trip back in time to read it as I waited. Some recipes were actually of interest like Mulligatawny soup, which I think I'll try in the near future, and chicken tetrazzini and an eggless, milkless spice cake which required beer! Calf brain fritters, and the preparation of raccoon, beaver tail, bear and woodchuck were not of interest … mostly because the fresh ingredients would not be available as we sailed (as if!). I was particularly enthralled by the illustration of skinning a squirrel. I'd never really gotten the knack of that and now know that I should have employed my foot to aid in the process. Duh!

There were helpful hints throughout like how to poach eggs without a mold or prepare a Parkin, a traditional cake for celebrating Guy Fawkes Day. I learned about new veggies like cardoons (in the thistle family like artichokes) and how to prepare fern shoots and fresh bracken. The instructions for preparing skirrets were very specific.

I enjoyed reading about creating a birthday bread horse and Easter bunny biscuits. Shucks … David's birthday was in July and Easter's not for another seven or eight months. Well, maybe next year.

The proper serving of beer and ale and other alcoholic beverages was interesting. Temperature, using the correct glasses and recipes for highballs and rickeys were all part of the discussion … which made me think grabbing a bottle of the local beer out of the bilge storage and handing it to someone was probably not the proper way to handle things. I need to give this some thought in the future.

Well, the laundry finished, I hung it out on the clothesline and returned to the kitchen table for a bit more Joy. Though there were no recipes for zebra, gemsbok or kudu (thank, goodness), there seems to be a place for Joy of Cooking in most every kitchen … even in Namibia.

The Joy of Cooking is still available on Amazon, but I doubt you'll get directions for squirrel skinning.