July 2, 2006 Archives

So I finally acted upon my urge to make something Middle-Eastern/Central Asian. Lamb skewers and kebabs (raw), and tabouleh with a few ingredients missing...

The lamb skewers were inpired by Manchurian and Uighur restaurants I went to during the past year. For the skewers, it was lamb leg meat, cut in cubes and marinated in a lot of ground cumin, a bit less paprika and some olive oil, because the cumin wouldn't, err, dissolve. I added salt and a bit of sugar for taste.

The kebabs were ground beef, with ground fresh parsley, ground scallions in bulb or germinated, very little garlic (nothing I cook ever goes w/o garlic) allspice/Jamaican mix, and a zest of lemon for taste.

The salad is tabouleh/tabouli, less the bulgur wheat. Very easy to make, and a fine alternative to lettuce salad. Use a wad of parsley (curly leaf variety) and have it chopped. Press the juice from a single lemon. Throw in two diced Italian tomatoes. Douse with olive oil. It was a tad sour, so I'd maybe try adding some sugar or something next time.

There you go. If I had a summer party this year, then I'd probably be serving this type of alternative BBQ (along with Vietnamese bbq stuff).

My brother and mother are both leaving for HK next Saturday for 3 and 6 weeks respectively. It means... A two-people household for most of the summer. It also means shopping by proxy. Probably more intense this time, since I now know all about the goodies you can get from HK and not anywhere else. Mostly, it's the clothing: a bargain is to be found all the time. Another thing is consumer electronics, especially what's called "seuil fo", goods that some HK companies import from other markets and sell back without warranty or some minimal store warranty, but at a much reduced price (if you bargain right) and no taxes, b/c HK has no sales taxes.

Combined with a super favourable exchange rate (thank you Alberta), everything is cheap cheap cheap. A combo at McDonalds is about 3.50CAD (20-25HKD), as a reference, and has been the ruin of many visiting CBCs, ABCs. Curiously, a mezzo latte at Starbucks is also 20-25HKD, which is about the same price as in Canada. Foreign magazines and English newspapers (the SCMP) are particularly expensive - the SCMP is 7HKD, but then it caters to expats, visiting CBCs/ABCs. Obviously, one of the free weeklies in English has an upper-class yuppie feel to it (ads for expensive restaurants, beauty salons for men...).

I've been also shopping at Uni-Qlo, b/c I know they make cool designed tees. My first visit to a Uni-Qlo was in nowhere Iwate town Ichinoseki, on the Tohoku Shinkansen line between Sendai and Morioka, where Uri picked me up to drive me to the village where he teaches English. The store looks and feels like a Gap, and yet, I am not very used to the type of clothes they sell. Maybe it's trendier, per Western standards? Or simply, the different styles makes me feel as if it's trendier. In any case, the HK prices are about like in Japanese stores, which is more affordable than in NA or Europe for nice nice clothes. I looked at prices, and while I think Uni-Qlo in the Chinese market (another Uni-Qlo I've been to was the one near Xintiandi in Shanghai's old French Concession) positions itself as more higher-class, even if it's about the equivalent of Old Navy in Japan, just like the usual HK shops (Giordano, Bossini, Baleno, etc) sell at about their HK prices on the Mainland despite the different standard of living.

But still, shopping at Uni-Qlo is probably still cheaper than shopping at Gap... You get the trendiness at a bargain, what an easy win-win situation...

There might be a Little India in Montreal, and it's on Des Sources / Pierrefonds. Around the same corner, we can count at least three Indian restaurants. There are also other ethnic restaurants and grocery stores (Chinese, and Arabic/Mediterranean - as the Adonis Supermarket is just a bit down on Des Sources), which seems much less White as the area where I live in.

(As an aside, the mini shopping strip nearby where I live does happen to have a "Chinese Restaurant", probably held by Cantonese, that serves the usual combo of "Thai-Szechuan", with a back kitchen that smells like any Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, but with prices and setting that is more suitable for business types and impressionable suburbanites. There's also a sushi restaurant.)

I went with my parents to eat at Bombay Choupati, which is located in the commercial strip at the opposite corner than the Super C's, and facing the Tim's, on Gouin-Des Sources. Went there a few months before for a small high school gang get-together, as my friends wanted something in the West Island, while I wanted something "special". But in the West Island, if you don't look, all you're going to find are Italian restaurants with servings that are too big and which make you feel as if you've eaten an anchor with diced tomatoes on it. So, while remembering eating at an Indian restaurants a few years ago (which was closed), my mother suggested "Bombay Choupati", which her coworker suggested.

Last time, we had stuff from the combo menu. It wasn't a very busy day - a Sunday maybe, 5-ish, and since my friends and I didn't know anything about Indian food, we got the usual stuff, combo-ified (butter chicken, curry, or chicken tandori). This time around, with my parents, the restaurant (maybe 30-35 seats at most) was fully packed, and we had to stand for 20 minutes. The good thing, is that we had the chance to visually sample what people took, which, besides the usu stews, also included giant folded pancakes, chip-like appetizers, and shells of various sizes. I forgot the name of the crepe, but according to this review, it's called a "masala", and it's lentils based! We ordered some of the shells, the bite-sized ones, which you have to break the top and put filling in it (potatoes, fresh coriander and chick peas) with a bit of tamarind water.

It's worth going back (the day I decide to pass my license - which is another story, but yesterday, I spent an hour or so in an Canada-Day-empty parking lot in my second time ever behind the wheel, practicing manual transmission...), as the lady cunningly points out, because there's always something new to try on the menu (perhaps a different shell, different combo of filling?).

For the main dish, I tried the chicken tandoori, while my parents went for the chicken and goat curry (I also had a veg curry on the side). The combos are served in those metallic trays, which I've seen at Jolee - a constant at Indian subcontinental restaurants? The naan bread was great, with what seems to be liquid butter spread on it for the addiction factor. I had a sweet yogurt drink - homemade (it's lassi).

Around $60 for three, with taxes/tips. Credit cards accepted, but no Interac.