The Road Kill Chef

Today I came across a documentary that has been uploaded to Youtube in six nine-minute segments. I’m still processing what I watched and how I felt about it, but in general I was impressed.

The documentary is about a young man in England named Fergus Drenna who has been foraging for food for 15 years. He’s a self-labeled vegetarian, but he makes allowances for meat if he comes across it freshly killed along the road. In other words, he eats road kill. He considers it wasted life, basically, if an animal unfortunate enough to have been killed by a car or truck is left to rot. And in the case of badgers, if he deems them unfresh, he drags them into the woods from which they came so that its fellow badgers may bury and mourn it (according to Fergus, badgers are known to do this).

The documentary follows him around a small town in the countryside called Sandwich as he shares his foraging knowledge with local people and then tries to recruit them for a big meal he wants to throw for whoever is interested. For the meal, he collects watercress from the local river, mushrooms (including the giant puffball and horn of plenty), blackberries, wild plums, wild spinach, wild flowers, stinging nettles, and local seaweed from the town’s rocky beaches. Rabbits and pheasants feature as the road kill meat; he would have prepared badger, too, but a health inspector advised against it, and Fergus decided he wouldn’t take the chance with his guests.

Fergus is a natural in front of the camera, and if he were on the Travel Channel I expect that he’d do just as well as Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain in attracting a huge audience. He’s personable, quick-witted, enthusiastic, and articulate. His articulateness is important, too, because his philosophies about food and nature are very convincing. (Don't worry, Mom, I'm not going to eat road kill.)

I have to admit that I was riveted by the documentary. I would love to have the knowledge that would allow me not just to find food in nature, but also to prepare it properly for consumption. In both cases, I haven’t the foggiest idea of where to start. Wild foods, as many note in the documentary, have a much stronger flavor than what is available in stores and markets. They’re also probably much more nutritious, and the fact that they haven’t been processed or transported thousands of miles is obviously a big plus, too.

Road kill, on the other hand, I’m too queasy for. If you have a well-trained nose and are comfortable handling dead animals lying in ditches – and if you’re willing to bend down in front of passing cars to sniff a dead animal – I guess that’s an advantage. So is the belief that an animal died simply because it was struck by a vehicle; he never talks about the possibility of disease factoring into an animal’s demise.

In the United States, the legal ramifications of a “road kill feast” gone terribly wrong are obvious, but perhaps the law is different in the U.K. (or people simply aren’t as litigious). Then again, maybe it’s such a “new idea” that the law hasn’t quite caught up to it yet.

If you’re interested in the documentary, have a look below.



I’ll warn you that there are a few moments that might make the more sensitive viewer turn away, but those moments are rare and, in my opinion, not particularly disturbing – PG13 stuff, in other words.

Also, in 1968 John McPhee wrote a fascinating piece for The New Yorker about Euell Gibbons, a well-known forager and wild edible plants author. Aptly named “A Forager,” it can be found here (registration required):

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1968/04/06/1968_04_06_045_TNY_CARDS_000291011

The article also appears in Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink.

If anyone reading this has done any serious foraging, I'd be interested to hear about your experiences...and advice!

Hawaiian Style Steamed Fish

This recipe elicited wolf-like howls of pleasure even before we started eating it, while our first bite witnessed our entire apartment shake with the giddiness that shot in waves from the hot, happy centers of our stomachs. Not only did this dish take a mere 15 minutes to prepare, but the flavors were intensely light yet screamingly delicious. Imagine a combination of ginger, cilantro, green onions, steamed yellowtail, and a citrusy yuzu ponzu sauce exploding all over your taste buds. Then imagine yourself not even wanting to chew your food, but to let it sit in your mouth as you savor its flavors. And then, finally, imagine looking dolefully down at your plate, mourning the fact that there’s only so much left to eat and nothing more.

It’s that good. We weren’t prepared for it to be that good.

The following recipe -- Hawaiian Style Steamed Kona Kampachi® (with my substitutions) -- was created by a private chef on Oahu named Stephen Butler and posted online here: http://www.kona-blue.com/download/KonaKampachi_Obama_Recipe2.pdf.

You can also check out this useful video of Chef Butler preparing the dish on YouTube.



Chef Butler apparently made this dish for the Obama family when they were vacationing in Hawaii.

What follows is my own adaptation of the ingredients list as well as the cooking directions. I made the changes because neither Kona Kampachi® nor macadamia nut oil were available at any of the six stores I visited near my home. Instead of using kampachi, which is expensive even when one can find it, I used a combination of hamachi (relatively expensive, too) and mongchong (about half the price of hamachi). And I halved the portions since he was cooking for four and I was cooking for two.

Ingredients:

3/4 lbs hamachi (yellowtail) combined with 3/4 lbs mongchong (yellow snapper)
3 Tbsp (I like lots of ginger) fresh ginger, diced
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
6 Tbsp peanut oil
1 Tbsp chile oil
6 Tbsp ponzu sauce (try yuzu ponzu, if you can find it)

Directions:

1) If using a whole fish, filet it, remove its skin, and de-bone it lengthwise. If using filets, slice each in half lengthwise. Each filet should be sliced in two. Slice into thin sashimi-like pieces and arrange on plates for steaming.

2) Drizzle raw fish pieces with chile oil (or sesame oil, if you must).

3) Cover each plate with plastic wrap and steam for up to five minutes (until the pink flesh of the fish has turned white). Remove plastic wrap when fish is cooked.

4) Sprinkle green onions, cilantro and ginger over fish.

5) In a pan, heat the peanut oil until just before it begins to smoke. Pour an equal amount of hot oil over each plate. I used 4 plates, which meant pouring 1.5 Tbsp of hot peanut oil on each. (Listen to the fish crackle beneath the heat of the oil!)

6) Drizzle ponzu sauce around perimeter of the plates. Serve immediately.

7) Rejoice.

Helena's Hawaiian Foods

I’ve been eating a lot of heavy food lately, something I attribute to having had guests in town for nearly ten days, which meant eating out a lot, drinking more alcohol than I normally do, and putting an arctic freeze on my exercise regimen. (Our guests left two days ago, and it still hasn’t thawed out.) And last night, when we should have eaten something light and healthy, I decided to try out a new recipe I saw in Gourmet for a Monte Cubano sandwich. Talk about heavy. After soaking the sandwich in an egg batter, I took the remainder of the yellowy liquid, fried it up, and had an omelet later with my wife. Thank god we had a salad with it. At least that way I could feel less guilty for today’s high calorie binge.

Actually, truth be told, I don’t feel guilty at all. I’m pretty pleased with myself, in fact. Today I went to Helena’s Hawaiian Foods for lunch and ordered well beyond all good dietary sense. Let me begin by saying that Helena’s menu doesn’t list a single vegetable, not unless you count the small amount of watercress that comes with two of their dishes. No, wait – I take that back. Kalua pig comes with cabbage…


In any case, Helena’s is a small restaurant of about a dozen tables, with very little parking in front, very little to recommend it from outside, but some of the greatest Hawaiian food you can get anywhere on Oahu – and some of the friendliest service, too. And I’m hardly the only one who knows this. In 2000, Helena’s was recognized as a “Regional Classic” by the James Beard Foundation, an award that’s part of what Time magazine calls “the Oscars of the food world.” It’s located in Kalihi, a working class, immigrant neighborhood that’s probably my favorite food community on the island. The restaurant has been around since 1946, when Helen Chock opened it. She passed away in 2007, but her grandson, Craig Katsuyoshi, now runs the place. The restaurant displays original Jean Charlot lithographs on its walls, as well as paintings and photographs by other well-known local artists.


I got to Helena’s early for lunch, at about eleven a.m. Even then, five of the tables inside were taken, and two other parties followed me through the door. I had a long look at the menu, and one of the women working there convinced me to order what she said were their three signature dishes: fried butterfish collar, short ribs (pipikaula style), and luau squid.

As soon as I got home, I placed all of my food on one plate and took photos. I was too hungry to realize that the photos came out blurry, but at the time this didn’t seem worth checking on.


I was most intrigued by the luau squid, which looked a lot like creamed spinach, or saag paneer, or possibly old moss skimmed from the surface of a swamp. It was a dark olive green, thick as mud, with an almost fibrous element to it when scooped out of the container I was given. Mixed in with it were small, chewy pieces of squid. Most surprisingly, however, was the almost overpoweringly sweet, fragrant smell of coconut milk. What made for the swampy green color? Cooked down luau (taro) leaves, which are mixed in with other ingredients and simmered for a long time. Despite the sweet aroma of the squid luau, I was still a little wary of it. But my first bite dispelled my wariness, and I had one of those revelatory moments that happens sometimes when your initial taste of a new food, particularly when it looks like something you could make sturdy pottery from, completely wins you over. It was absolutely delicious, though also quite rich. The coconut flavor was subtler than my first smell of the dish led me to believe, and the squid mixed in was tender – I only wish there had been more.


As for the pipikaula short ribs, which are prepared by marinating and smoking the meat, they were quite good as well. They had a fair bit of fat in them, and I really had to use my front teeth to cut the pieces, which were a satisfying half-inch thick, down to size. The outer part was cooked well enough to be slightly crunchy, almost like a casing, and the flavor came out fully in the meat and juices.


I ate the fried butterfish collar like I might eat fried chicken: with my hands. It had a deliciously crispy skin, and the meat, though buttery with fat, was appetizingly white and melted in my mouth. There were about three bites in each of the three pieces in my order, with much nibbling of the bones and skin afterward. The fried butterfish collar went great with the other dishes, though I should have eaten this and the pipikaula short ribs with poi, for dipping. Ah…next time.


Helena’s offers four different set menus, combining two or three main dishes with poi or rice, but I ordered a la carte. Other delectable items include kalua pig (cooked in an imu), laulau, tripe or beef stew, beef with watercress, chicken or squid luau, long rice chicken, pipikaula short ribs, lomi salmon, lomi or poke (ahi), opihi (limpets), fried butterfish collar, boiled butterfish collar, fried ahi, and, for dessert, haupia (firm coconut pudding). It’s all quite affordable, too – the a la carte items all sell for between $3.05 (kalua pig) and $5.50 (boiled butterfish collar with watercress).

It’s a shame that Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern never had a chance to come to Helena’s when they taped their food and travel shows on Oahu. I get the feeling that the family who owns and runs the restaurant isn’t the least bit bothered, but Helena’s feels more authentic than Ono’s, more down-home…and to me, at least, the food is better, too.

Helena’s is open from Tuesday through Friday from 10:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. You can order ahead for takeout at (808) 845-8044. Their address is 1240 N. School St.

Hue (Part 4)

On my last day in Hue, my fourth, the rain didn't let up until nearly noon. Not in the mood to get wet, or cold and windblown, I decided to stick around the hotel for breakfast. I was curious about the top floor buffet and thought it might offer a decent break from all the local fare I'd been stuffing myself with.

I should have gone out in the cold, windy rain...

About half the tables in the buffet line. It looks nice (not counting the pink chairs with bow ties on their backs) but it was standard middle-grade hotel buffet food (served in an orange and pink pleasure palace).

Not exactly an appetizing photo. It wasn't any better in my mouth.

One big reason why I ate inside the hotel this morning: rain

By the time lunch rolled around the rain had let up. I had to grab lunch relatively early because of an early flight back to Saigon, so the clearing weather was lucky for me: I got to try a restaurant whose specialty dishes I really longed for.

The restaurant isn't much to look at, and from the street one can hardly tell it's a restaurant at all. Nor is there anything about the sign to indicate that these are the pearly (if moldy) gates to gustatory heaven.

The front of the restaurant. Hardly eye-catching...until you catch sight of the food.

Inside the restaurant: again, no tip-off that great food awaits

I ordered five dishes that can only be had in Hue. As I've said before, Hue is famous for its food. I've heard it said that Vietnam can claim 1700 different kinds of food in its culinary repertoire, and 1400 of them originated in Hue. Is this true? I have no idea. All I know is that these foods are unique, delicious, and unbelievably cheap.

The first dish to arrive was called banh ram it. I'm not sure how to translate this, or any of what follows, so I'll do my best to offer descriptions instead.

Banh ram it is a crispy piece of deep fried rice, on top of which is heaped a fat slab of steamed rice with cooked shrimp inside. Scattered all over these are shavings of freshly cooked shrimp. The combination of textures is amazing, and the shrimp gives a lot of flavor. Add nuoc mam (fish sauce) to the dish and you'll blush at how much pleasure this gives you.

Extraordinary dish #1: banh ram it

My second order was banh beo. These are tiny dishes of steamed rice topped with pork crackling, shavings of freshly cooked shrimp, and nuoc mam. These were excellent, too, and somehow fun to eat.

Extraordinary dish #2: banh beo

My third and fourth orders came wrapped in banana leaves, as pictured below. I ordered bot loc cay xanh and banh nam. Want to know what they are? Then please keep reading!

Dish of rice crepes cooked inside banana leaves

The bot loc cay xanh tasted more like the banana leaf in which it cooked than the banh nam, which made it slightly bitterer. But the translucent rice was soft and chewy, and the shrimp it contained had lots of flavor and was cooked to the perfect firmness. One pours nuoc mam over the niblet and then scoops it up with a spoon.

Extraordinary dish #3: bot loc cay xanh

The banh nam was even better, in my opinion. The rice crepe wasn't as chewy as it was in the bot loc cay xanh, and the shrimp in this dish was saltier and softer. Again, one pours nuoc mam onto the crepe and scoops it up with a spoon.

Extraordinary dish #4: banh nam

The final dish, banh beo, was my least favorite. I found the rolled steamed rice crepes to be too soft, and although it comes with shavings of freshly cooked shrimp and nuoc mam I found the dish rather flavorless overall.

Extraordinary dish #5: banh uot

This restaurant was absolutely worth my effort to find, and it's not far at all from the main tourist area of Hue. Each dish cost between 15-20,000 dong (from about 90 cents to $1.20).

The restaurant is called Hang Me Number 1 Restaurant (Quán Số Một Hàng Me) and is open from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. It's located at 45 Vo Thi Sau Street; their phone number is (054) 837-341.