Goin' Ape

What happens when you combine my greatest interest over the last nine years (hip hop) with my current fascination (cooking)?

Rappers' Delights. I picked it up from the library. The book promises recipes from all of today's hottest hip hop superstars. Flavor Flav, Yo Yo, MC Lyte, Hoes With Attitude (HOES With Attitude?! Now I've seen everything!) and a group called Immature, which includes three kids around the age of ten, dressed like Slick Rick at his gaudiest. Don't get me wrong, you've got some legends in here - KRS One's recipe for broccoli with melted cheese sauce, Erick Sermon puts in a good recipe and so does Heavy D.

The recipes really vary in terms of quality of instruction. For example, while some have step by step instructions and precisely measured ingredients, Flavor Flav's Rice Pilaf ingredients list goes like this:
A bag of rice
Your favorite stuff
And the only recipe is written in his jerky, halting rhythm of speech peppered with many "yeeeah" and "Y'know what I'm saying"s. Later in the book there's a quote from Chuck D saying that Flavor is a liar and he never cooks anything himself.

I'm looking at this book and the whole colourful, fun, jubilant layout and I'm thinking, damn, hip hop used to be fun. Even the tough guys are giving their recipes, here. Nowadays, you wouldn't see 50 Cent's Lemon Chicken or The Game's Beef Stew. Everybody's too tough.

Then I have a look at the publishing date. 1998! I start thinking back, were these rappers still big in 1998? No. No, 1998 is when I started listening to rap and I remember who was big at the time: Puff Daddy was huge, DMX, Jay-Z was getting big, Wu Tang Clan and Method Man were big, Busta Rhymes was big, Ice Cube was making sort of a comeback. That means there was a major gap between writing the book and getting it printed. It was hokey and out of date by the time it got to print.

That makes me think of my own journey with hip hop and how I got in after the good times. The fun times at least. Anyways, I plan to make at least one recipe out of there. Too bad there are no dishes from Redman.

Labels: cooking, Hip Hop, Redman

posted by Leo 11:47 AM // |

Well, all done uni, as soon as I can figure out all this "apply to graduate" nonsense. It should be like high school, when you're done, you're done and you're out of there. Fuck man, I still desire to crash a high school prom drunk, in my puffy jacket, caked in mud, bangin' Redman on a ghetto blaster.

Anyways, since I've been done for a week, what have I been doing? Mostly Facebook. A lot of cooking and staring at pictures of food. I now consider myself a foodie. From the library I've gotten Madhur Jaffrey's Step-by-step cooking (as opposed to the not step-by-step book which just assumes you already know how to prepare Ayam Pongtay and just makes a few helpful suggestions for next time). This book is a collection of recipes from Japan, Hong Kong, Philipines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Korea and (hm?) India.
So far I've enjoyed every recipe I've made from the cookbook. I've made bulgogi (Korean marinated beef), the aforementioned Ayam Pongtay, which is a chicken and mushroom dish in black bean sauce and her HK version of Szechuan beef, which was quite good, but I overcooked the chilies and killed the heat. Chili oil saved the left-overs.
Yeah, I am seeing a girl now, yeah, she's also a foodie, yeah, she's Japanese, but no, this is not what this is entirely about. Except the bulgogi. That was 80% to impress her.
Sometimes I get concerned that Madhur (I've come to know her by first name) is "dumbing things down" - that is, removing ingredients from her recipes she perceives that we wimpy whitefolk will find too difficult to track down or whose flavours we will find offensive and foreign. There is no real way for me to know whether she is doing this or not, as, in order to know, I would have to have a grasp of East-Asian cuisine greater to her own. My only tip-off is that I am already cooking with two "Chinese" ingredients (Garlic stalks and white pepper) which do not appear in any of her recipes. But maybe they just don't belong in HK cooking. And she does advocate the use of many products with which I am wholly unfamiliar or at least have never personally bought.
And, that said, a certain amount of "dumbing down" is absolutely necessary. As incredible as Toronto is, there are certain ingredients that cannot be gotten here. What's more, many of the dishes originate from restaurants which, of course, have different cooking methods than those available to us at home.

This brings us to Bloods and Crips. During Canada Reads, the panelists were talking about the Canadian (duh) novel, Stanley Park. In it, the author outlines two basic "schools" of foodies. (I'm paraphrasing from the show here, not the actual novel, so forgive any mistranslation if you've read the book). "Bloods" tend to want to cook things authentically. They like Chinese food and street fare, generally meat. "Crips" tend to favour fusion and experimentation. Originality and collision are the greatest principles.
I will say Red and Blue because these things run as a spectrum, as opposed to a diametric opposition. Nothing is wholly authentic, nor wholly original. I would place my objectives as generally on the red end of the spectrum, but perhaps I'm deluding myself. North America as a whole is definitely Blue. Red cooking in Canada would really mean split-pea soup and back bacon. The counter argument to that is that multiculturalism, as practiced in Toronto, creates all these different Red sets you can visit and tap in to.

And yeah, that new Apple comic is coming. I feel like Dr. Dre with Detox on this shit. High five if you got that reference. Self congratulatory high-five!

Labels: cooking, food, Redman

posted by Leo 11:34 AM // |

archives

Friday, April 27, 2007

Gung for Sugared Hilltops

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Foodie Nation (rep your set)