Eating in Kathmandu

                My favorite city in the world for eating is Kathmandu Nepal. This is probably not the city most people would expect me to name when one considers cities like New York, Paris, Rome, or even my hometown of Columbus. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of food when I was in the city, and as much as I’d like to, I can’t fly there to make up for it, so I will settle for describing it.  

                Nepali and Indian food are in themselves quite good, and should be sampled first by anyone who visits Nepal. Most Nepali meals consist of rice with dal (lentils) and a few vegetables like potatoes, green beans, and others. Madison, Wisconsin is the only city where I’ve found a Nepali restaurant in America, but there are probably others. Several years after I traveled to Nepal, I spent a summer in Madison studying Hindi and Urdu. I ate in that Nepali restaurant quite a few times and it brought back good memories.  A picture of the restaurant is included.

Chinese food like spring rolls are also common to Nepal, which isn’t surprising. What is surprising is the large variety of western foods to be found there. Kathmandu is a city that has for long attracted world travelers, adventurers, and hippies, and some stayed there. Unlike, India, the Nepalis learned to make aged cheese, which was different from the unaged panir that is used in India. I believe they learned the art of cheese making from the Danish. This accomplishment, more than any other, has made Kathmandu a culinary paradise for the world traveler. I had been in southeast and south Asia for several months before going to Kathmandu, so I was very much in the mood for some western dishes. I had a wonderful water buffalo steak there that I’ve always compared to other great steaks of my life (see my post on kangaroo). I also had one of the best lasagnas of my life there, as well as a great mousaka, a burrito, and several great pizzas. I believe things have changed since then, but in the 80’s the only kind of pizza one could get in India were chapattis with panir and sauce on them, which does not actually earn the name pizza. There were only 3 things that I missed about America during my 2 stays there. Classical music, hot baths, and pizza. In Kathmandu the third item was readily available (I did buy Mozart and Bach cassettes there, but I had to borrow a walkman for just one afternoon to listen to them).  One of the happiest faces that I ever saw was on a local beggar whom a friend and I gave half a pizza that we had left over.

Kathmandu is also famous for its pie shops. During my 2 months in the Kathmandu area I ate banana cream, chocolate, and apple pies to name a few. Again, I’d recommend getting to know the local cuisine first, but the rest shouldn’t be missed either. They are still Nepali businesses even if the food is not Nepali.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to that beautiful area of the world. I’m sure that there have been many changes, but hopefully McDonalds and Burger King have not invaded Kathmandu. 

Creole Food at Creole Kitchen in Columbus

                Columbus, Ohio is one of the best cities in America for restaurants. I’ve lived in the New York area, Washington, Boston, Miami, and have been in virtually every major city in the country, so I am making that statement based on experience and knowledge, not hometown pride. The variety of ethnic restaurants is astounding, and these include Italian, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Greek, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Ethiopian, Somali, West African, Iranian, Afghani, Indonesian, and Cajun, but the list goes on. The latter is what I want to discuss here.

                Cajun and Creole food is probably my favorite in all the world. I do like French food and cook it rather well, but no offense to the French, I think that the Cajuns of Louisiana did them one better. After working 5 New Orleans Mardi Gras and other festivals in the state selling concessions and novelties, selling flowers from a stand in Harahan, and working on an offshore oil boat out of New Iberia (the original Cajun settlement), I got to eat a great deal of this delicious food.

                A short while ago I found a coupon for a restaurant in Columbus called The Creole Kitchen and headed straight for it hoping to find some real Creole food. I was not disappointed. The menu included many wonderful entrees that one would expect from a Creole restaurant, such crawfish etouffee, jambalaya, red beans and rice, gator, fish and oyster poor boys, and a wide range of other delicacies. I had a special craving for a muffuletta before going there. When I lived in Harahan, a suburb of New Orleans, I lived across the street from a muffuletta shop and ate there often. It had been almost 30 years since I had eaten one and I was excited to find them on the menu. A muffuletta is a round toasted sandwich with meat and a special salad containing lots of olives. The muffuletta that I ordered, called a Toni Po Boy, was extraordinary. It included chicken, crawfish, and shrimp in addition to the muffuletta, and it took 2 days to eat. My companions had sea food fettucini, oyster and fish poor boys, and we all  sampled the gumbo. All of it was fantastic and was as good as any restaurant in Louisiana in which I have eaten, and better than most.  I make a very good gumbo myself, which I’ll write about in the future.  I won’t make any comparisons here with my own gumbo, but I will say that the cooks definitely know their stuff.

                The seating is limited at The Creole Kitchen, being more of a carryout, but the service is courteous and quite friendly. In fact, we were treated like family and will be returning as often as we can.  I will be writing about other Cajun and Creole dishes in the future that I make myself.

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Kangaroo with Chocolate Sauce

I’ll begin with a kangaroo dish. Here in America and just about anywhere else in the world, kangaroo is considered to be a very exotic meat. In Australia, of course, there is nothing at all exotic about this all too common native of that continent. There is nothing exotic about its taste. Kangaroo has a delicious rich red meat with virtually no fat. My first encounter with kangaroo was a couple of grilled steaks. My wife still describes it as the best steak that she ever had. I had a water buffalo steak in Kathmandu that I might have enjoyed more, but that may have been influenced by having had nothing but Indian and Southeast Asian food for several months prior. Venison backstraps compare, but probably the closest steaks that I have had to kangaroo steaks were ostrich steaks. I’m not sure which were better. I will be talking more about ostrich in later posts.

My first dish with kangaroo was Kangaroo in Chocolate Sauce. I used a rabbit recipe from 1001 Foods to Die For, which I modified a bit as I usually do. All good cooks, like Jazz, Baroque and Classical era musicians, should be able to improvise, but the recipe itself is below. There is no reason to equate kangaroo with rabbit. Both are pests to farmers that hop, but the comparison stops there. The meat of neither domestic nor wild rabbits, which are rodents, is closer to chicken while the meat of the marsupial is closer to ostrich or venison. Nevertheless, I wanted to try the rabbit recipe, and not having a rabbit, I used a kangaroo. It worked out wonderfully. Other kangaroo dishes will be presented in later posts.

Unless, you live in Australia, the biggest problem with preparing kangaroo is finding kangaroo. We found ours at Jungle Jim’s in Cincinnati, Ohio. It’s not cheap meat, but it is not outrageously expensive either.  We have bought both steaks and ground kangaroo there and look forward to our next trip there. It is quite a remarkable store that I will be bringing up quite often in the future.

Eating for Adventure: Introduction

Eating for Adventure: Introduction: Eating for Adventure Blog Description When most people hear the word adventure they think of things like travel to exotic places, African ...

Introduction

Eating for Adventure Blog Description
When most people hear the word adventure they think of things like travel to exotic places, African safaris, Everest climbs, skydiving, or perhaps even wilder stuff like extreme skiing. Adventure, at least as far as I’m concerned, is not limited to travel and sport. I have been all around the world a couple of times and all 50 states (all of them but 4 mo...re than twice), and have gone to school in India and Jordan, as well as Harvard, Ohio State and the University of Wisconsin here in the states. I’ve backpacked thousands of miles of wilderness in half of the national parks in America, other wilderness areas, the Alps, Himalayas, and other areas of the world. I’ve rode an elephant through the jungles of Nepal, a longboat through a jungle river in Malaysia, rickshaws in Calcutta, camels in the Thar desert of India, flown first class to Europe in a 747, rode thousands of miles of rails in Europe, Alaska, India, and Southeast Asia, boxcars in 40 some states, hitchhiked in all 50, rode a hot air balloon and a glider over Colorado, canoes on wild rivers, and a caboose from Wyoming to Chicago. I’ve climbed quite a few mountains and skydived a few times so far, snorkeled the Red Sea and scuba-dived in Aruba, and although I’m getting on in years a little, I still hope to hike the entire Appalachian Trail (I’ve hiked several parts in the past), to visit Europe again, to climb Mt. Kilamanjaro, hike a little in the Andes, and have a few other things still on my bucket list. That said, I don’t consider anything on my bucket list to be necessary for continuing to live a life of adventure. I intend on reading War and Peace in Russian, which is a task every bit as daunting and formidable as the Everest climb that I have conceded will never be due to my age and budget. Reading Les Miserables in French, Marquez in Spanish, Goethe in German, sections of 1001 Nights in Arabic, Godan in Hindi, The Blind Owl in Farsi, Orlando Furioso in Italian, Chaucer in Middle English and English classics, are great adventures in themselves that will keep me busy for the rest of my life. Watching film or live operas, especially ones that I’ve never seen before, chamber music and orchestral performances, plays by Moliere, Pirandello, Durrenmatt, and Lorca in their respective languages, Japanese Kabuki and Noh theater, Chinese Kunqu opera, Urdu Mushairahs (poetry readings), old silent movies, to name a very few, are wonderful adventures to me that can be experienced every day. The same goes for eating.
Although repetitions of favorite dishes are just as important as new experiences, if not more so, each and every day can be a day of adventure and involve a brand new experience through the palate. This may involve a new type of meat, fruit, vegetable, or cheese. It may also involve a dish from a different region of the world or ethnicity. It might involve a new and unique recipe. It might involve preparing a fancy dish myself or finding it in a restaurant; both are separate experiences in themselves. Culinary adventures are an important part of world travel, but they can be had in your own kitchen or in local restaurants. Life is exciting and barely a day goes by without having my having experienced some sort of new adventure; cooking and eating, as well as many other life activities, when approached with this attitude, can enhance life.

This is my first post on my first blog, so I don't have a lot to say right now, but I will soon. I should be up and running in a few days, but I must first learn how to set up a blog. In any event, I am a world traveler and adventurer who views eating and cooking as worthy of being labeled adventure as travel and other forms of excitement. A full description will given on my next post, which I expect to be soon.  John