Fasting & Feasting by Anita Desai & The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

          It took less than a day to complete this highly readable novel by Anita Desai. Initially, I thought it was a novel about the Ramadan or family food rituals and celebrations. A reader commented online how the title of this novel was inappropriate or misleading but I disagree.

            Fasting and feasting is not to be taken literally as there isn't a lot of it in the book until the second half where we get the feast part in America. Rather, fasting and feasting is symbolised in the deprivation of Uma or India's young girls brought up for the marriage system. They are deprived of desires for autonomy, careers and education while their brothers and sons are force fed all the best opportunities in life. So fasting would describe Uma's fate and feasting would describe her little brother, Arun's fate. 

The following youtube video brings out the idea of fasting and feasting very well. 

          In the second half of the novel, where Arun is in America, I begin to find the familiar extremes eating/health habits which strongly echoes Michael Pollan's view about Americans' eating culture in "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals", which is an important book on food politics in this age of industralisation of food  production. In Pollan's book, he talks about Americans' eating habits and the food fads control people's lives and reveal how people had no idea how to eat healthily.  

           Pollan talks about an America over-spilling with food; "the astounding productivity of American farmers proved to be their own worst enemy, as well as a threat to public health". The abundance and feasting is as big a problem as fasting. 

Watch the following video to get the gist of Pollan's book:

America's Food Crisis: The Omnivore's Dilemma

To discover more, watch the following:

Michael Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma

          A character documented in Pollan's book, Joel Salatin, a revolutionary farmer speaks the following words worth chewing over. The words, "to eat with reckless abandon" is strikingly similar to the scenes portrayed in Anita's novel, especially in the character Melanie. 

Image from Eatluv.

CLICK here for an excerpt on The Young Reader's Edition of The Ominivore's Dilemma. 

Spice Power

Curry masala (top left), vegetable curry served with Ikea flatbread (top right)

vivid colours of grapefruits and navel oranges (bottom left), juice (bottom right).

See Instagram. 

Despite the intense heat of the day, Mom & I decided to make curry. It's her typical vegetarian day where she intends to settle on simple stir-fried greens. But I thought it'll be perfect making a curry so I could toss in the Indian cottage cheese, i.e. paneer, I bought at Mustafa a few days back. 

I settled on Jamie Oliver's Curry Base Sauce recipe as a reference to make my own spice blend/masala today. 

Of all the ingredients, I ended up with the following for today's curry:

I carrot

1 cauliflower

3 potatoes

1 bowl of paneer

a bunch of organic long beans

a bowl of pasteurised milk

a bunch of chopped coriander

salt

water

______________________________

For the blend:

1 tablespoon ground coriander

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

half tablespoon black pepper berries 

(I misread teaspoon as tablespoon)

1 tablespoon paprika

1 tablespoon red chili powder

1 tablespoon turmeric powder

I didn't have garam masala, so I added

3 Bay leaves

half a teaspoon of cloves

1 cardamon seed

Perhaps it was because I added 4 times the black pepper needed because of my misreading, the curry turned out really hot and we had to add sugar to it. Otherwise, it would have been the perfect curry for today. Mom enjoyed it despite the spiciness. Grandma had trouble trying to stomach it. Dad was nipping the beans off. So I guess today's kitchen experimentation went ok! Yes! *Curryskill Unlocked!* 

Later, it was suggested some cold juice might help quell the fire in our tongues and I got my paws busy squeezing juice. Although I drank none of the juice, it was nice knowing the juice was gone right after it was made. 

A Personal Reflection on Babi Pongteh

Image from Annielicious.

Although my mother was never capable of making dishes using exquisite ingredients that graced the tables of the affluent, I will always regard her as a good cook. Even though she knows nothing of preparing Shark’s fin or abalone and such, I will remember her cooking—especially her Babi Pongteh.

My mother arrived in Singapore three decades ago, from Malacca, in search of employment. She found work in manufacturing in a company producing cassette tapes and met my father. Since her marriage, she seldom returned to her hometown. But on the occasions we do visit her birthplace, we remember the eating.

Her place in Malacca was surrounded by farms producing kangkong, chillies, asparagus and all manner of popular Asian greens. She grew up eating free fresh vegetables tossed into the wok with sambal belachan and chilli padi. When my maternal Grandfather was alive, he would wander into the asparagus fields—half naked, and only dressed in a sarong—to pick the shoots for the dishes that would welcome our arrival. He was an intuitive cook who learnt to cook like most chefs in the older generation; he was one who learnt to cook by watching, rather than from recipes like we do today. It may be hard for many of us to imagine doing the following, but he made all his delicious food on charcoal and wooden stoves under a tin-roof kitchen. Among all the dishes he made, the Babi Pongteh was the one my brothers and I missed when he was gone. The person who made it afterwards just did not made it the same.

It was the dish my mother tried to replicate in the modern kitchen in Singapore. Without a doubt, it was different from the one my grandfather made. But this particular dish is what connects my family and me to the asparagus field of Malacca and the memories of my grandfather in his sarong. For those who grow up in the Singapore today, the links between our country and Malacca may not be very obvious. Yet the Babi Pongteh reminds me of this link, of the time when Singapore was part of Malaysia, when people on both sides of the shore shared blood ties and a common heritage.

Despite the heritage importance of the Babi Pongteh, it never fails to make me wonder, just like the Singapore Rojak or Laksa. I find myself imagining the moment when this dish was born. What could have been the inspiration for this fusion dish whose tau chioh (or fermented beanpaste) speaks of its Chinese-ness and the copious amount of onion paste, giving it a heady aroma points so strongly to the indigenous influences it has wonderfully soaked up? This marriage of onion and fermented bean paste created under the sultry heat of the tropics holds plenty of promise for us. It points to something in the atmosphere here, conducive for wonderfully delightful marriages between unlikely elements.

So I will bring the Babi Pongteh along with me when I move out and have a family of my own in future. It will be a precious heirloom I hold close to my heart and make for my children. It would not taste the same as my mother’s or my grandfather’s. That doesn’t matter. But it will remind my children, of where we come from, especially when my future father-in-law is a great Teochew cook and would make plenty of traditional Teochew dishes rarely seen anywhere these days.