Yellow Peril by Tze Ming Mok

New Year's dilemma: a) respond to weak little 'toot' of Brash immigration dogwhistle at Orewa 3; b) respond to Che Tibby's misguided attempt at finding Vietnamese food in the CBD, or c) lapse back into dumpling coma.

Zzzzzzzz.

Zzzzzzzz (snort, cough) whuh?

First things first: thanks to Sunil, Matt and Rik for their offers of banana trees, and to Rik for conveniently being at home during the middle of the day with a machete. The Moh Hin Gha was awesome - here's the recipe for all of you people with barren banana trees in the back and a hankering for Burmese. My hankering may return; I shall keep your addresses on file. Note: the accompaniments referred to in the recipe page are: sliced spring onion, chopped coriander, crispy fried slices of onion/shallot, crispy fried slices of garlic, lemon wedges (you need to squeeze a lot of lemon on each serving as it's so rich), finely sliced raw onion, pounded roasted chickpeas, dried chilies, chilli powder.

And thanks to Phil for offering his extra copy of Charmaine Solomon's 'Complete Asian Cookbook' - it's coming to a good home.

Okay then:

a) Brash.

If Russell had not sounded the alarm, I probably wouldn't have even noticed this bit tucked down the back of the speech.

New Zealand is a liberal, tolerant and secular society, a society that embraces the Western Enlightenment ideals of personal liberty, private property and rationality as the basis of decision-making. ...Immigration can add greatly to our society, but it also has the potential to undermine the glue that holds our society together.

Sorry, was in a dumpling coma - didn't notice the race-riots going on. Whoops, looks like the Exclusive Brethren have knocked over my secular rubbish bin and have set my car on fire. Oh well, live and let live. Hmm, I'm still a little hungry. Mmmm, dumplings... not only eating, but making dumplings on Chuxi is the perfect embodiment of Eastern ideals of harmony, community, and irrationality/intuitiveness as the basis of decision-making. I mean, thirty-five dumplings for each person? How is any one person going to be able to eat thirty-five dumplings? Bloody hell, that much xianr for just one dumpling-skin? What do you think you're trying to do mum, undermine the fragile glue that holds the dumpling-edges together? How much water do I put in the rice? What do you mean 'just put your hand in it''?? AAAAARGH, Western Civilisation is Collapsing!!!

Pretty lame effort Dr Brash. One sad little irrational feint hidden deep in the speech so hopefully his wife and his electorate-office buddy Pansy don't notice. One might wonder why he even bothered. This is the bit that made me laugh though:

Our current immigration policies have evolved without serious public discussion or debate...

That's true. They've evolved through constant employment of dogwhistle politics like the example above, and the whipping up of racist hysteria and scapegoating of visible minorities during election-campaigns.

If we had a real 'debate', who would be debating, and what would the questions be? Here are a couple of possibilities:

Do we want immigrants to be whiter (shorthand for 'increasingly from traditional sources of immigration such as the UK and Australia'), and if so, how do we say that without sounding really racist?

Will making immigrants whiter (while trying not to sound racist about it) produce better social cohesion than reducing racism and socio-economic inequality?

b) Tibby
Aside from trying to provoke me with some absurd musings on restaurants in the CBD, Che has broadly divided Auckland into four parts: North=rich whites hiding; East=Asians; West=poor whites & Maori; South=Polynesian, each incubating their own kind of interesting New Zealand culture. To some degree, sure, these are 'heartlands' - but there's a little more going on here than meets the eye. Take for example Auckland's Axis of Asian: Otahuhu; Roskill; Mt Albert; Avondale; Balmoral; CBD; Howick; Northcote. From South to North, West to East, and Central is key. You could make a similar axis for Pacific Islanders: Southside to Northcote at least, Roskill, Mt Albert and old Grey Lynn and even Kingsland holding it down for Central. Pacific Roskill is invading the CBD with 'Cafe a la Raskil' on K Road, run by Toa Fraser's cousin Gareth, who is played by Taungaroa Emile in No.2. There is no Central Auckland in Che's equation, which is a bit strange, because a lot of us live here and it's where those separate-looking worlds collide.

c) Back to dumpling coma.

Zzzzzzz.

The year of the Dog is upon us, but I'm not cooking dog for New Year's Eve dinner - for one very good reason. It's not seasonal. Dog is for winter, it's heaty. But here's a personal request: anyone in central Auckland have a banana-tree in their back-yard they wouldn't mind me hacking down and eventually eating? I was thinking about making my Burma-born mother some real Moh Hin Gha for Chinese New Year's Eve dinner - y'all love my ma, right?

Maybe I'm overdoing it. Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner on Saturday, and I start cooking on Monday night in preparation. You know you're getting on top of a good chilli sambal bajak when the neighbourhood dogs start barking and you can hear the children next door screaming: "That's where the smell is coming from! Number thirteen!" And their parents out on the stoop, just under your Chinese New Year banner, are saying "oh that smells wonderful dear" [cough, choke] "what is it?"

So - mental menu planning... a nice light nasi lemak to start with the abovementioned fried chilli sambal, and will purchase some fish-heads to pre-prepare the base for Nonya fish-head curry knocked off from the previously mentioned Nyonya Restaurant, Howick. Which will eventually include the whole fish though, for New Year tradition's sake. If I can't manage the Moh Hin Gha, maybe I'll have a go at a Burmese pumpkin curry. It's at this point that I realise none of these dishes are actually Chinese. Hmm. I know - Yunnan/Sichuan-style peanut-butter/tahini cold noodle salad, as we'll have two original vinegar-crazy Yunnan ladies present (my mum and her visiting sister) and a Sichuan-in-law.

That's right, feminists do cook. Also, due to a high level of brain-engagement on other things at the moment, I've been forced to compound the slow-news-summer syndrome by blah-ing on more about food and recipes in this post rather than get all socio-political on it. More on the 'kiwi' thing next week, if I have recovered from all the eating and can be bothered (didn't I tell you guys to sort it out amongst yourselves?).

You're meant to learn your national cuisine from your mother, but in my family, most of our Southeast Asian recipes are actually granted to us by a Sri Lankan we've never met - Charmaine Solomon, and her peerless 'Complete Asian Cookbook', 1976. Her Malaysian and Indonesian sections are excellent, the Burmese recipes are rare, and of course the Sri Lankan pages are a highlight. It's damn near impossible to find in print these days, and so our family copy spends its time being stolen by me from my mother, or vice versa. Why do we need a cookbook to cook Malaysian food? My mother never learnt Peranakan fish-head curry or chilli sambal from her mother to pass on to me, because we're not Peranakan, and my mother's mother was not from Singapore, Malaysia, or the coastal provinces of China like nearly every other Chinese in those countries, but from Yunnan.

After my mother, the most famous child of Yunnan is Zheng He - the Muslim eunuch Admiral of Uzbek descent who circumnavigated the globe for the Ming Emperors pre-Columbus and yet refrained from colonising and plundering anyone at all. Top fellow that. They have that map of his down Waikato-way at the moment. In the 1400s Zheng He got the Sultan of Malacca hitched to some Ming princess. Single male Han Chinese traders followed, married Malay women, then got those Malay wives to cook their crazy Malay food with pork and Chinese spices - et voila, Nonyas, Babas the Peranakan people and their awesome food were born.

Five hundred years later, they produced Lee Kuan Yew - go figure. His mother has a famous Peranakan cookbook, seemingly owned by all Singaporeans. Maybe it was a compulsory national purchase, I'm not quite sure. Ma got rid of her citizenship, but kept the cookbook, which says something. Here it is: 'Mrs Lee's Cookbook', 1974.

The recipes are mostly impossible for people who work anywhere but the home. In the foreword, she instructs on how she was brought up to be a Real Peranakan Woman. It involved a lot of pounding rempah, no schooling, and being incredibly obedient to one's husband (hence the need to pound a lot of rempah to work out one's frustrations).

So via Zheng He, Yunnan plays a key role in the evolution of the Nanyang as we know it. But in terms of food style and flavour there is really very little crossover between Singaporean/Malaysian Chinese (Hokkien, Canto, Hakka, Teocheow, Malay, Indian, Nonya) street-food and Yunnan/Sichuan cuisine. I know the Yunnan/Sichuan stuff from observation, so any of my recipes would come out a bit useless, eg: 'add black vinegar until it tastes right.' This is rather like, as every Chinese girl will recognise, when your mother teaches you to cook rice. How much water are you meant to add? 'Put your hand in it,' she says. What the fuck does that mean? It doesn't ever make sense, until one day it does. And from that point, whenever anyone asks you how much water to add to rice, all you can say is 'put your hand in it.'

The other stuff I can describe properly though, because Charmaine went and observed and wrote it all down. Here is the sambal, which you can have with anything, but if you want a nasi lemak experience steam some rice in coconut milk, water, salt and a pandan leaf, fry some ikan bilis and dried shrimp and peanuts, boil an egg then cut it in half, slice up some cucumber, and there you go.

Neighbour-disturbing Sambal Bajak as recorded by Charmaine Solomon

6 large red chillis
6 cloves garlic
1 large onion
3 Tbsp peanut oil (or other high-temperature frying oil)
8 candlenuts (Also known as kemiri nuts. I've never really been able to figure out whether these are just wizened old Malaysian macadamia nuts - it's entirely possible)
1/2 tsp laos/lengkuas/galangal powder (these are all words for the same thing)
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp belacan/trasi (the Malaysian stuff comes in blocks wrapped in paper, the Thai trasi is just as good really but comes in convenient little tubs which are sealed in with wax so your flatmates don't give you funny looks when they open the fridge and sniff)
5 Tbsp assam/tamarind liquid
2 Tbsp gula malacca/palm sugar (or Billington's brown sugar, which is a pretty good substitute. Though if you're going shopping for galangal powder, belacan, candlenuts etc you could probably find some palm sugar while you're rummaging around in Tofu Shop)

Contact lenses protect your eyes, and give you superhuman fried chilli sambal-making powers. Of course, you must put in your contact lenses before you handle any chillies.

Food process the candlenuts finely first so that you don't have to clean out the food processor later. Put them with the salt, galangal powder (fresh lengkuas where to get?), and belacan, set aside. Prepare your tamarind liquid, set aside with the sugar.

Food process the chillies (roughly chop first) and peeled garlic and onion until fine. If you were a Real Self-Respecting Peranakan and/or Malay Woman you would get up at 6 am and pound it in your mortar and pestle, but you probably have a job.

Alert your neighbours and people you may be living with, and pets, to the fact that you are making fried chilli sambal. Apologise in advance.

Fry the chilli, onion and garlic mixture for about five minutes, until well cooked but not brown. Add the belacan, salt, galangal and candlenuts, blend well and crush the belacan well into the mixture with the back of your cao-cai-can. Stir until mixture is well blended, then add the tamarind liquid and sugar. Stir and simmer until well-fried and the oil is separated. It should be a nice dark reddish brown. Leave to cool, then serve in a big dollop with nasi lemak or any other kind of rice, or anything at all except maybe ice-cream. You get versions of it in little saucers with your mee goreng at foodcourts.

It's bloody good. But if you're not Southeast Asian it's probably freaking you out already.

Next recipe:

Almost Nyonya Restaurant's Nonya fish (head) curry

Okay, this involves another pre-mix spice packet. Just to clarify for all those (well, one) Real Indians who wrote in to protest that No Real Self-Respecting Indian Woman would use a pre-mix - yes, there are indeed precious few pre-mixes worth bothering with. One is Baba's, for that one easy lamb curry. Baba's reputation in the Nanyang speaks for itself, but if you use it for all your curries, they'll all taste the same kids. It's best to keep it for that one recipe. There's only one other pre-mix I use, and that's for this Nonya fish (head) curry that I've been trying to copy off that one from Nyonya Restaurant for a while. Have a look at the ingredients packet and you'll see why a pre-mix is necessary in our current context. Red ginger flowers where to get? I'm not a Nonya, how would I know? Here's what I do anyhow.

Flavour base

2 onions (equivalent weight in shallots is better, but I don't have any)
lengkuas if you can find it or ginger if you can't
garlic
4 sticks lemon-grass
lots of fresh curry leaves
(so far so Malay. Where does this 'Peranakan' thing come into it? Well, you'll notice the Chineseness of the rest of the flavour-base ingredients...)
Several star anise
ditto cinammon sticks
double-plus those crazy big fat Chinese cardomoms

and 1 packet of this:

Hup Loong Kari Tumis. It's the only Nonya fish curry premix anywhere right now in Auckland that has what I'm looking for. On the back it says "Soury fish curry". It's good. It's not Lee Kuan Yew's mother squatting illiterate over a mortar and pestle, but neither am I.

Curry ingredients
1 and 1/2 kg fish-heads (snapper)
brinjal sliced length-wise
okra
red capsicum pieces or tomato
tao pok halved (prefried spongy tofu cubes)

Scale the fish heads. Hey man, no-one said it would be easy being a Real Peranakan Woman, even if you, like me, are still cheating with the Hup Loong and aren't a real Peranakan anyway. But damn there's good eatin' on a fish-head, especially a snapper-head at only $2:50 a kilo from the Auckland Fish Markets, all fresh and liquid-eyed... mmm, fish eyes... drool. (are you non-Asians grossed out yet?)

Follow the usual curry technique as outlined in previous post. Fry until oil separates, add spice powders, fry. In this case, add liquid, then add fish.

There are two ways you could approach it from this point - the fancy way or the simple way. The simple way is to cook it straight, with fish in first, veges later. The fancy way is to use some of the fish heads first to prepare the stock-gravy, and then remove the preparation heads. This way you get a lot of flavour out of them but avoid the old 'fish-head-falling-apart-in-curry' fate which more expert cooks seem to be able to avoid, but not this one (probably because I'm a feminist). Then you deep fry the 'presentation' fish/head and vegetables separately, the fish until crispy, and serve piping fresh hot out of the oil with the gravy freshly poured over the top. It's prettier that way. A pain in the ass, but pretty. And crispy. Mmmm, crispy fish head...

And yes, you can do it with the other parts of the fish too if you are grossed out by fish heads. But it's not as good.

And finally,

Southwest China dressing for cold noodles to serve with shredded chicken and pressed julienne of cucumber

Roast chilli oil
Sichuan pepper
dark soy sauce
light soy sauce
Black Chinkiang vinegar
sesame oil
peanut butter or tahini
minced garlic
a little brown sugar
chopped coriander

Combine until a Yunnanese or Sichuan person tells you it tastes right, in exchange for the core of a banana-tree.

Happy New Year!

Aunty Santha's Keralan Lamb Curry! [crowd goes wild] Rather unsurprising when you think about the voting audience in this, the land of baby sheep-eaters, despite an attempted five votes from Damian Christie for the prostituttanesca (that's what puttanesca means folks).

First disclaimer: I think the only actually Keralan thing about this recipe, is that Aunty Santha is Keralan. Second disclaimer: It's a pretty basic recipe, but as with all curries, the key is not only in the ingredients but in the way you put it together, and how much you use. I bit my tongue when Che posted his travesty of an insta-Thai... I will describe here the technique required to make a gravy-based meat curry, a real one, like real Indians make for themselves. Real Indians can pretty much skip this post because they already know how to do it.

A note on the curry powder. Use only Baba's meat curry powder for this recipe, Aunty Santha's favourite brand which I think you can now even see in general supermarkets here. If not, it is easily found in Chinese and Indian supermarkets - green bag with picture of curry on it. Think Lim Chhour, Soung Yueen, Tofu Shop, Silver Bell, Mahadeos, Yogijis, Khyber Spice, or in Wellington, Yans, Moshims, A-Mart, and that Chinese one down the end of Newtown whose name I can't remember (possibly something like 'Asian supermarket). Baba's rules Malaysia.

Yes, it does say '1 bulb garlic', not '1 clove garlic'. And 4 tablespoons of curry powder, not 4 teaspoons.

Step 1: cutting stuff up.
Take a big pot, a frying pan, and a big chopping board. Finely chop the onions (you can food-process it for finer texture) separately from the garlic and ginger. Peel and finely chop the garlic and ginger. Chop the lamb into chunky curry pieces. We usually use leg-steak, but other cuts should be fine I suppose. A nominal pescetarian, I don't know a lot about meat-usage (sorry Russell). If it's a tougher or fattier cut, I suppose you simmer lower for longer.

Step 2: sear the meat. Self explanatory - in oil, very briefly, just to seal the pieces.

Step 3: prepare the flavour/gravy base. This is the most important part. Heat the oil/ghee, add finely chopped garlic, ginger and the whole spices (cardomom, cinnamon, cloves), fry for a few seconds (don't burn or brown) then add the onion. Fry on low-medium heat (with large amount of onion you don't want to have the heat so low as to have the onion go all wet and soupy, but not hot enough for it to start browning) for NOT LESS THAN ten minutes. It's all about the bolay bolay although I don't know what that means exactly. Possibly something to do with the stir-frying motion. What you are looking for is when the oil separates from the onion, which is different from when 'the onion looks oily'. It's so key to the whole enterprise, and so many people don't know about it. The onion will have lost a lot of its moisture, and be taking on a pasty consistency.

So, the oil is separating, right? This is when you add your four tablespoons of Baba's. Don't be scared. Quickly stir it in and fry on low heat for about 30 seconds - make sure it does not stick to the bottom and burn.

Step 4: enter the meat.
While still frying the curry powder, add the lamb and blend together. Fry a little more with the paste coating the meat, and the moisture from the meat juices lifting the dry spice-stickiness off the bottom of the pot, then add a cup of water.

Simmer on mediumish until done, adding more water as necessary, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. About three-quarters through, add chunky wedges of tomato and coconut cream/milk (Coconut optional, but who am I kidding, you 'kiwis' just looooove your coconut cream. If you do so, do not cover the pot or it will curdle. And don't overdo it).

Again, you want to simmer until the oil separates. It'll be floating on the top, looking all infused with red chilli.

Salt to taste (don't underdo it), then finish with a good fat squeeze of lemon juice.

You can also cook this with potato, either simmering with the lamb from the beginning, or adding them pre-boiled/steamed/microwaved whatever, about halfway through. In which case, alter proportions of lamb/gravy accordingly.

Eat with rice, preferably the next day.

Ingredients:

1 kg lamb
Oil/ghee
2 medium-large onions
1 bulb garlic
2 generous inches ginger
4-8 cardomom pods
4-8 cloves
1 large stick cinammon or cassia

4 tablespoons Baba's curry powder
2 tomatoes
coconut cream/milk (optional)
salt
lemon

Previous Stats NZ definition of a write-in for 'kiwi' or 'New Zealander' as an ethnicity: 'Doesn't know what 'ethnicity' means. Probably white.' New definition: 'Doesn't like to think of themselves as white, so we'll just go along with it because we're sick of this stupid argument.'

NB: Recipe to come next week.

There are a few ornery Chinese and Maori out there - just a few - who won't fill out their ethnicity in the Census or in any other forms. They're 'just New Zealanders', you know, 'kiwi.' Or as some might uncharitably put it, Bananas and Bounty Bars. But we all know the rest of those Census 'Kiwis' and 'New Zealanders' are Pakeha. You meet enough of them, the ones who go on and on about not being Pakeha. Ethnic identity is self-defined and there's nothing anyone can or really should do about that. Ethnic heritage however, which is what the Census is actually trying to measure (ie where your ancestors came from and possibly when they came), is a priori - you can't just make it up. What this change means is that the Census is now going to be measuring how many people are trying to make it up.

Sidestepping most of that argument though - you Pakeha/Kiwi/New Zealanders can have it amongst yourselves - here's how my Singaporean/Malaysian Chinese corner of the country uses the word 'kiwi'.

Guess what - it means White.

As in:
'Oooh, Corrina's engaged you know or not!'
'Meet from Church that boyfriend one?'
'Yeees, gone out a long time already.'
'Chinese is it?'
'No, Kiwi boy.'
'Oh, babies will be very cute!'
[Frantic giggling ensues. Aunty Anne Bong then tells the story of how her grandfather James Bong acquired his name from a confused immigration official]

Okay, those Singaporean-Malaysianisms were somewhat exaggerated, but it's always fun to write in Singlish even if I don't speak it.

For us, as a noun referring to a person, as used by my parents' generation and to a large extent by my own, 'kiwi' means white, and a specific kind of white at that. It means Pakeha. Corrina's fiance would have been referred to as both 'kiwi boy' and 'local boy.' If he had been German or something we would have called him German. So yes, it seems feasible that 'kiwi' is an ethnicity, and Stats NZ have sensibly used it as a placeholder for 'New Zealand-European' for yonks.

In my family-friends' discursive context, 'Kiwi' can be applied to non-Pakeha in a way that straddles that difficult categorical divide between a cultural trait and an ethnic one. But for the most part, we consider being 'Kiwi' to be a cultural, not an ethnic identity because we, like, already have our own ethnicity. The thing with being Singaporean/Malaysian Chinese is that your ethnic identity already has that extra overlay of a nationality-seguing into an ethnicity, so adding another one would just be an enormous hassle.

The clearest case of the use of kiwi as an adjective, would be my parents saying, after over thirty years here, that they are "quite Kiwi." It's like saying we've been "Frenchified", yeah? Ultimately, it doesn't really matter , because when it comes down to a choice on a Census form that obviously leans towards the less postmodern purpose of measuring ethnic ancestry, ticking no boxes and writing in 'Kiwi' would be, for a non-Pakeha person, a denial of their actual ethnic heritage. And boy would they get it from their parents.

I think that for a Pakeha, the same choice is a denial of the Anglo-Celtic-Euro-settler part of what comprises their kiwi-Pakeha 'ethnicity'. It also seems a belief that 'Kiwi' is a universal ethnicity, and that anyone can be a 'Kiwi' and nothing else, just like them, standing rather defiantly and nicely against the Australian example where 'Aussie' or 'Ocker' means White. Well, it's a nice sentiment and works if you think of 'Kiwi' as a shared culture - but not an ethnicity. We non-whites can't just be Kiwis and nothing else. And a lot of us don't want to.

Meanwhile, claiming 'New Zealander' is an ethnicity rather than a citizenship-status, well that's just bizarre. I give up.

*

For reference, here's the good old Ethnicity Definition in Michael E. Brown's 'Ethnic Conflict and International Security', p 4-5.

First, the group must have a name for itself. This is not trivial; a lack of a name reflects an insufficiently developed collective identity. Second, the people in the group must believe in a common ancestry [my emphasis]... Third, the members of the group must share historical memories... Fourth, the group must have a shared culture, generally based on a combination of language, religion, laws, customs, [etc]. Fifth, the group must feel attachment to a specific piece of territory, which it may or may not actually inhabit. Sixth and last, the people in the group have to think of themselves as a group in order to constitute an ethnic community; that is,they must have a sense of their common ethnicity. The group must be self-aware."

Who else came up with this result out of the David Slack 'My Year in Bullet Points' generator? "Memory of outstanding meal at Nyonya Restaurant, Howick, all but eclipsed by appalling swill at Monsoon Poon, Viaduct Harbour."

Please forgive this post, which is pretty much just purist food-bitching. It's still the holidays where I am.

The Monsoon Poon franchise started in Wellington, specialising in Asian fusion. I cook plenty of Asian fusion food myself when lacking ingredients to construct an entire culinary ethnicity - dishes such as Five-dollah-feed-you-longtime Thai Spaghetti Puttanesca, or Sichuan Soba Surprise. But inflict this madness upon a discerning populace? Who would dare? Could it be... people who don't know any better? Could it be... Wellingtonians of Blair and/or Allen Street?

Things may have changed in the year since I left, but those in the know agreed at the time that when it came to Asian food in central Wellington, Chow is for suckas, Cha rules the skool, and if you're after Korean or South Indian or serious Mainland snackocracy well tough shit. It also might be surprising for some, but it's striking that the pride of Wellington - Malaysian noodlebars - are waaaay overrated, and too many are run by Mainlanders who have never tasted or even seen a real assam laksa or mee siam although they do their best and try to make up for it on volume, bless their souls. This also happens in Auckland, prime example being the sad decline of the Mercury Plaza stalwart 'Singapore-Malaysia Food Delight'. I wish these Mainlanders were opening up Mainland Chinese dumpling houses instead - I mean, screw gyoza, we invented these babies. Far worse is that all the roti in Wellington Malaysian noodlebars seems to be made by the same frozen roti company and is far too sweet. Bletch. And freakishly enough, the 'proper' Malaysian restaurants, which are fine but nothing so spectacular as to set them as the jewel in the crown of a multicultural city, sell... oh jesus ... meat dosas! MEAT DOSAS!!! Aaaaargh!!! KNNBCCB! You have to ask for a 'Vegetarian' dosa if you want a real one! It's ...just ...insane. They've taken a pancake invented by Indian vegetarians to be a pure and precise combination of a perfect protein - rice and lentils - and put... more protein in the middle. Meat, violating the soul of an Indian-vegetarian classic. I just don't get it. People, where are our standards? Amidst all this disheartening compromise, the horrifically named Monsoon Poon shouldn't be much of a surprise.

So perhaps Yellow Peril was destined to be unable to produce a fair review of the new Auckland Poon. Let this preface stand however: The set menu is always the worst way to judge a restaurant. We all know, don't we, that set menus are for suckers at any Asian restaurant. Right? This is Auckland, you know that by now, surely, right? Well if you take a pan-Asian fusion restaurant to mean Asian-restaurant-times-ten-ethnicities, then that advice goes tenfold. The 'less than mediocre' grading I've given this place judging by the set menu could, to be fair, come out as good as mediocre overall when ordering a la carte. But with downtown foodcourts like Food Alley and Food Asia in such close proximity, I doubt I'll ever be going back to find out (unless it was free, like the first time).

First impressions: Interestingly belaboured decor, a cute ambience generated by clientele who don't know if they're going to be able to get over the interestingly belaboured decor, and a fairly good pan-Asian beer selection. No Kingfisher, but yes Beerlao. YES Beerlao. It was mostly downhill from the Beerlao on, particularly as drinking Beerlao brings Mekong Neua to mind, or at least one of the Zaps. The food on the set menu was not actually 'fusion' as such, but more a culinary tour of the continent and subcontinent. Or in other words what you'd have available to you at a foodcourt, but not as good. The point of such a venue was unclear to me, until I realised that Wellington only has (I think) one 'ethnic' foodcourt and you can't get booze there. Will it do well in Auckland?

Let's line them up.

Monsoon Poon:
- expensive but good quality alcohol (albeit the cocktails have names worth taking to some tribunal or other, somewhere)
-around ten different ethnicities of food, directed by one chef
- result, expensive and mediocre.

Food Alley:
- cheap alcohol often transported in cardboard
- around ten different ethnicities of food prepared by around ten different chefs of the relevant ethnicities
- result, cheap everything, excellent fare, blinding hangover.

Hmm, we'll see.

On to the horrors of the set menu:

Vegetarian Mee Goreng
Depressingly bland, compared with the equivalent at half the price across the street at Food Alley. Mee goreng was not made for selfconscious pangs of inadequacy. It is a confident, rakish dish. It was like watching a jaguar being whipped, humiliated,and made to stand on a tiny chair by a circus ringmaster sporting a ridiculous moustache and jodphurs.

Pumpkin Korma
I almost wanted to cry. The rationale is understandable: Why use yoghurt or draw attention to the subtle possibilities of almond, when people just looove the heavy, mucusoid fat-and-lactose-bomb sensation of double-cream? Because it will make anyone who loves Indian food want to cry, that's why, making up for the sad lack of salt in the korma. Two birds, etc.

Butter Chicken
Came in double-served vats to cater to whitey's presumed needs. White people must be getting sick of the butter chicken stereotype by now, surely. I asked a Pakeha colleague: "is this butter chicken any better than you'd get a food court?" He said: "Not really. It's kind of dry." So there you have it - straight from the horse's mouth.

Lamb Curry
Actually rather good, and reminded me of my Aunty Santha's Keralan recipe. Could have used a double-vat. But it was probably the only dish that took a lot of effort, so they didn't want to spread it around too much. If you have to go to the Poon, go for this one.

Poppadoms
I know microwaved Pataks when I see it. But hey, microwaved Pataks is pretty good - I mean that. And it saves on oil.

Indochinese fish
Indochina refers to the former sphere of French influence in Southeast Asia. We're talking Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand - all countries that my family have some direct or indirect connection to, but all with distinct styles of cuisine and signature flavours. It would seem fairly predictable in a city like Auckland that someone of Indochinese heritage might walk in off the street and ask, as I did, which part of Indochina the fish was pursuing. However, the wait-person balked as if I'd asked her to piss in my Beerlao, and was not able to tell me which part of my heritage was about to be hideously abused. When the poor fishy (no head! sob!) appeared I couldn't figure out what was Indochinese about it, except that it had some finely grated carrot on the top, and some cooked (and therefore flavourless) strands of coriander flopping about in the sauce. Underneath, it was plain old crappy sweet & sour fish, representing Cantonese diaspora cuisine's worst blight on humanity. Well, I suppose the sweet & sour Cantonese blight also affects Indochina to some degree. Although not Laos. They got the Yunnanese - yeah baby! Try to turn the hottest, driest, chilli-palate in China into bland greasy takeaways, go on! No wait, I was joking. No, please stop. Please.

Naan bread
Quite nice. Unfortunately, served on a piece of paper printed especially to replicate Hong Kong newspaper headlines on the day of the 1997 handover. Employing historically unrelated gimmickry to offset mediocre food would have been a technique better suited to a more mediocre dish in the set menu, such as, for example, the fish, mee goreng, korma, chicken, or poppadoms.

Enough negativity! Let us turn our attention to 'Nyonya Restaurant' in Howick, behind the Howick shops, entrance on Fencible Street. Tell the maitre d' that you're a real Malaysian and that he has to look you in the eye when professing the realness of any given dish. Call them up and order the fish-head curry a day in advance - I mean it. Get the four-treasure beans. 'Nuff said.

Audience participation time: Whichever of these 'Asian' recipes gets the most votes/requests will be published in the next post.
a) Aunty Santha's Keralan Lamb Curry
b) Sichuan Soba Surprise
c) Thai five-dollah-feed-you-longtime Spaghetti Putanesca
d) Jiaozi or Guotie. Not Gyoza.