Stomachs on legs are proud to present

"Kedgeree" with brown rice and split mung beans, boiled egg, lime pickles and raita and crossword


"Kanom Jeen" creative reconstruction attempt



"Kanom Jeen" and macbook



Wakame and silken tofu soup with crossword


Parsi style scrambled eggs and silken tofu with avocado on rye


Udon Salad


Lentil, spinach, celeriac, onion and carrot soup with chorizo


My latest excellent Sunday morning fry up creation - paratha bread, with chickpea vege pattie, fried egg, tomato kousondi and raita

Wellington's famous for at least two things. Music (rastas, the jazz school, Flight of the Conchords, dub fusion bands, Mu), and Malaysian food.

Above you see my best-friend-when-I-was-16's toyboy postman musician boyfriend, tucking into a rather average laksa at Rasa, a Malaysian-South Indian restaurant in Wellington, NZ.

I'd love to know the population of Malaysian people in Wellington: if anyone knows how to check that out, let me know.

Malaysian's been a staple takeaway food for Wellingtonians since the '90s. In some cases it's become totally kiwi-fied: I guess it's the only place in the country where you can get nasi lemak to go with a burger and chips. What I'm still dying to have is a super-hot egg sambal like I used to have when I was a teenage lacto-ovo-vege, from Bandong Country Kitchen. I tried to replicate it at home once: it worked out OK.

To keep the locals happy, nasi lemak usually comes with a coconut beef rendang type dollop on the side. I think I only found one place that does plain fatty rice with condiments and peanuts etc.

By the way, this site must get at least one google hit a day from a previous post titled Nasi Lemak Yo Mama's Pussy.

Nasi lemak:


Ring a ding rendang: (this was actually fiyah)



Whatever you do, don't Pay the Dosa-man (Pictured: Wellington rappers Erik Ultimate & Kidz with Gunz)

This is getting to be a bit like that game 'Follow the Leader'!

I too am a fan of Oh! Calcutta - but my personal fave spot is Satya. I love the crispy dosai (although I am not such a fan when stuffed with heavy masala), I love the use of tamarind and what seems to be a lighter spice blend to that used in the North - dried red chillies, curry leaves, coriander seeds, fresh chilli and fresh ginger, fenugreek, mustard seeds, lots of fresh coconut, and more of an emphasis on fresh vegetables -

But I guess it's not for everyone. Erik really liked Satya but I suspect his heart really lies with the dense flavours and tandoori ovens of Northern India. Maybe South Indian food is a bit girly. I'll admit it.

My first published restaurant review (as part of an abortive food column that lasted for about 2 issues in Pulp magazine!) was of the original branch of Satya South Indian Cuisine, when it was located on Hobson St. Using the bathroom required going through the postage-stamp sized kitchen, where a 50-something woman in a sari worked manically over a small kitchen stove, and then down an outside alleyway which involved ducking under washing lines. I had found out about it from a flyer at a local yoga studio, but Satya wasn't going to stay the province solely of butter-tofu and rasam (tamarind tomato soup) craving yogis for long - as I discovered when the owner invited me into the kitchen to watch TV. Satya was about to feature on a segment about dosai on Peta Mathias' Taste New Zealand show.

We revisited the K-Rd branch of Satya on our trip to Auckland: usually when visiting an old haunt I want to go for the old favourites, which I did on one count: the (so far unparalleled) Satya 3-piece dosa with fresh ginger, onion and green chilli.
(The dosa - a pancake made from fermented rice & bean flour - does not actually come in three pieces). See photo below.

But instead of going for Satya's delicate and fresh Palakura spinach curry or the dry chicken curry with soya sauce, vinegar, ginger and green chillies (I'm all about the ginger and green chillies), I brashly went for the vegan green bean curry -
and it was DAMNnnnn good. Dry curry with south indian seasoning (mustard seeds etc), beans crisp not overcooked, coconut chutney light and great texture. YUM.

Skip the digestive betel leaf afterwards.

My local Indian take away joint when I lived back in Auckland just happened to be the best Indian food in town....

Whenever I go back home I always end up getting take-aways or dining at the restaurant.






Although the fish in the goan fish curry was a bit rubbery, it's still in my books the best Indian food in Auckland. Its so good in fact that its a wonder that they ever have to engage in marketing and promotions. This being Auckland however, it seems to be a must to drawn in the punters mid-winter who would otherwise drive directly home after work and stay locked up inside their suburban houses eating ready to eat microwave meals in front of the flickering tv lights until the dawn of another dreary morning. One of the more memorable promotions that certainly brightened my days a few years back had a picture of the diminutive Indian male owner holding a tray of food and dressed in a chef's jacket and nothing else below the waist except for suspenders, stockings and high heels. The caption below read "the tastiest little indian in town". Indeed! I wish I could find a copy of the promotion on the internet but alas, since then they've opted for more traditional images of Indian hospitality on their website...and there is not one small cross-dressing Indian chef to be found!

Oh Calcutta
Parnell Rise
Auckland

In Singapore I recently had my first Indian mango...and what a revelation it was too.

Indian mangoes are squishy, sweet and delicately fragrant....they have a certain...perfume taste to them which makes them ten times a more exotic mango than your common all garden Southeast Asian mango, which are nice and mangoey but do not possess the same floral undertones as the Indian mango....overall I highly recommend Indian mangoes, they have lifted my enthusiasm for tropical fruits once again, just at the point when I thought there was little else to discover.



Another favourite fruit sampled in Singapore was durian, although Phil describes it "like eating vanilla custard in a latrine". I tend to think that people that say this have not had a perfect durian in season. I agree that out of season they can taste a bit like this, but in season they are like a warm sweet avocado with what I can only describe as a certain nyum nyum -ieness.

The smell that most people complain of is imperceptible to me. I am, it appears durian proof. So I bought one on the street in Singapore. I was all excited until Hock reminded me that I could not take it back to the hotel, in a taxi or on the train. So I opted to eat it on the street.

As I stood there nibbling on large fleshy soft chunks of durian a group of Indian women wandered past and peered inside my polystyrene container and I overheard one proclaim just within earshot


"oh I didn't know that they could eat that"