Stomachs on legs are proud to present

NZ visual artist Ben Buchanan (who moonlights as rap-thug Erik Ultimate) has long been an inspiration to me. Not least due to his skills with a knife. As well as making fantastic artwork with spliced adhesive tape, his knife has been put to good use in many of Wellington's so-hip-it-hurts kitchens.

A life lived by the knife is not without its hazards - when we visited NZ's capital city to eat rendang and roti with him two years ago, Ben was fresh out of hospital with a cast on, due to an unfortunate incident with a mango during the brunch rush. (The exact words of his text message at the time were: "currently in hutt hospital after accident with a mango!!" Apparently there were at least two other chefs in the emergency room that day, also with knife wounds).

Here's an excerpt from a Q&A with BB after his Sleeping installation, hosted by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

You are quite a dab hand in the kitchen. What do you prefer to cook: risottos, rich reductions and masculine proteins, or deconstructed frozen sushi?

Hmmm...would have to go with rich reductions and masculine proteins. Definitely slow cook comfort stuff. I spent a year working in kitchens in Dublin and was kinda looking for the Irish cuisine. Aside from gaining a fondness for skate wings and Guiness, the best thing I found was at the chippers: chicken curry and chips, which is like deep fried chicken with chips and this awesome gravy with lots of curry powder in it. Sooo good... So my fave thing to make at home is to joint a chicken, marinate it in special crispy chicken coating from the Asian grocer [you gotta leave it in the flour stuff for a couple of hours]...then fry it with as much oil and butter as will fit in my or your pan [hey this is kind of a recipe], then roast with plenty of spuds... Whilst this is goin' [you wanna put the spuds on first]... Fry onions, garlic and mushrooms in butter. Add gravy powder from the dairy (get 2 packets, it's like 80 cents) and curry powder and dried chili, then boiling water, and stir etc. God damn, then yummo. So good....

What music genre best describes your culinary style?
Maybe Venga Boys doing a Van Morrison track.


.....Read the rest of the interview and see pictures of his latest artworks here.

New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, has a few good bowls of noodles up its sleeves, especially those of the Malaysian variety - though we somehow didn't manage to fit in a decent laksa on our last trip there. We stopped at R & S Satay Noodle House on Cuba St before we began the nine-hour drive back up to Auckland. Erik's laksa was not too compelling - a few fish balls and bean sprouts floating a in a watery broth - but this 'Khmer satay soup' (pictured above) was rather tasty. In consistency, spiciness and lemon-tinged acidity it hovered somewhere between a Thai soup and a Malaysian laksa. There were plenty of al dente rice noodles and it was generously heaped with strips of tender white chicken flesh (no dodgy bits - not that I'm averse to a clump of skin or fat every now and then). The ground peanut was barely discernible except towards the end: it served mostly to thicken the soup.

Is this a genuine Khmer-style soup? Perhaps the Cambodian food experts on the Gut Feelings team can lay down the law.

I'm still not sure if this Bialetti stove-top coffee can, seen at Habitat in Neumarkt, is supposed to be taken seriously - but in terms of volume it might represent my daily coffee consumption quite well.

When serious baristas talk about the ideal ratio of coffee grounds to liquid extracted, they're obviously talking about real pump-driven espresso - not these stove top abominations. So let's not bother to try and figure out just how overextracted the grounds in this Bialetti would become.

One of the first 'articles' I wrote for our school newspaper The Flannel was about the characteristics of proper espresso and the history of coffee-drinking in New Zealand's capital city.

It was a tumultuous saga of Swiss, Polish and Italian immigrants, of a hard-bitten lamington-serving cafeteria called the Matterhorn giving way to dutiful Italian espresso machines embraced by hordes of government employees and academics.

Sure, a teenager writing about espresso is 'just a tad' pretentious. But being a student at the inner city Wellington High School is all about skipping school, hanging around Cuba St when you're supposed to be in biology class, snacking on apples and Cookie Time cookies, then bumping into your mates and getting coffees, 'cause you're too old for shoplifting now.

Early on I was dragged to cafés with my mother, where we would look at expensive import magazines or read library books (one of Wellington's good spots used to be the Lido opposite the Civic Square and public library).

Later, when working at a café with a punk chef, a horny gallerist and a gay linguist, I learned to take due care with each cup. A flat white with corn fritters or dark Whittaker's Sante chocolate bars, a heaping spoonful of kiwi familiarity and a dollop or two of sarcasm, please.

I would honestly rather drink a strong stove top coffee or even a strong cup of plunger coffee than a weak espresso. Other forms of coffee can be appreciated on their own merits, I feel, though I am not really down with the cult of Bodum drip as practised in the USA and Japan.

As defined by Lord Jeffrey Steingarten, the predominant flavours should be "caramel, flowers (including jasmine), fruit, chocolate, honey, and toast - but only if you do everything right." (i.e. two tablespoons of 192 degrees fahrenheit water forced through seven grams of finely ground coffee under nine atmospheres of pressure for 25 seconds).

Otherwise, as Jeffrey notes: "One false step and you are totally doomed. One false step and you will never taste the jasmine."

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)

Voila: my husband. (I still get a kick out of how arcane that word sounds). He hates this photo.

#2: Gamely eating fried fish with soon-to-be in-laws at the Fisherman's Table Restaurant, Wellington, NZ



Nice location, but this restaurant is decidedly not good.

Actually this farmers market isn't in Upper Hutt (birthplace of the first Kiwi hip hop group Upper Hutt Posse, whose member DLT went on to release Chains, a solo career-launching single for Che Fu), but in nextdoor city north of Wellington, sunny Porirua.

The Moore Wilson Farmer's Market (located in a big shed next to an outpost of the trendy wholesale resaler) could be evidence of the spread of the idle bourgeois playground usually called a 'farmers market' and typified by luxury items alongside organic produce,

but despite some pretty delicious manuka-smoked chilli-flavoured venison salami and a German baker, this market keeps it real .....with garlic chucked on benches, yummy apple juice sold by an old bloke from Grey Town, produce from Hawkes Bay, and the crowning glory of any kiwi enterprise: a pie-warmer stocked with a few potato-tops.

Expect a few food miles incurred by that salami and the Hawkes Bay stuff, though, eco campers.

BBQ ribs from the sausage maker who has a little factory on site: GRIMEY. But good.



The same sausage maker whips up a paella which was pretty good though i'm not a huge paella fan:



Germans would be well catered to with this:



And this:

Been fantasising lately about the killer Egg Sambal I used to get as a teen in Wellington (where Cuba St is to burning chilli & roti takeaways what Brick Lane is to tikka masala or vindaloo delites). Then I moved away and not sure what happened to that restaurant. Sounds like KK and Satay Kajang are the new kids on the block these days in Wellingtown.
For some reason Malaysia's erstwhile national dish, coconut rice, was never offered, but having heard about it from Han, I found a recipe online and will share it at the bottom of this post. I also took a recipe for dry egg sambal and beefed it up to approximate the nostalgic sambal I remember from my gory days, using onions, fresh tomatoes etc, and will post that soon. It worked. Yums!

Who better though to consult about the tang & the bang in Malaysian cuisine, than dj Han Baby?
Han Baby is well known in Auckland's shady ghetto-fabulous electro bass underworld as the ying to the Coco Solid pu-yangy, tuff on the outside but soft-hearted &creamy like coconut rice on the inside. He granted a rare interview divulging his fatty rice expertise.



What do real gangstas eat in KL?

Well, it's been years since i've been hustlin in KL, so i can't
really speak for the johnny-come-latelys, but back in the day, we
would eat anything. it kinda depends on the crew that you're bangin
with, really. as u know, malaysia is made up of 3 main races, the
malays, the chinese and the indians. so it goes with the turf, but a
multi-cultural OG like me run with all bangers. when i'm with my
malay boys, we're hitting the warongs (warong=malay for foodstall)
for satay (meat skewers, super delicious, but not like the ones u get
in western countries, it's smaller and grilled on charcoal before u,
and u have with peanut sauce) and ketupat (rice dumpling wrapped in
woven palm leaf pouch, very cute and kampong(village)-like, u also
have with peanut sauce). when i'm with my indian brothers, we're
kickin it at the local mamak (malay/indian mix foodstall) where u can
have all manner of rotis (roti=malaysian-style bread) with your
favourite curries. when i'm with my cousins, u can find us at 24-hour
yum chars talkin shit about other chinese families. it's totally ok
to cross turfs but u need to know people of the race turf so others
won't wanna pick a fight with u. the malays don't normally eat at
chinese establishments cos we eat pork and that's against islamic
beliefs.

Where can u get the best nasi lemak in Malaysia?

Boy, u got me thinkin. But my favourite has to be the joint in
senibong. senibong is a coastal village close to where i grew up in
johor bahru, by the straits looking onto singapore island. like most
coastal villages, there are many restaurants/collection of foodstalls
that are built on wood out to sea (can't remember word for it) where
u walk a length of wooden planks and eat out at sea. here u will find
cheap awesome food of all varieties. the straits is really dirty on
malaysian side so it's not really a tourist destination, only locals
go there. everytime i go back, i go with my best mate G to eat there.
they make the best nasi lemak i've ever tasted and so humble too. as
you're eating it, you're thinkin, "this must be what they serve in
heaven". you are high.

Here's a photo i found of us eating there, on the right is pot (G's
brother, G took the photo).



Does Nasi Lemak really mean rice with fat?

Literally, rice=nasi and lemak=fat (not verb, but actual food fat).
as u know, it's rice cooked in coconut milk, traditionally high in
fat, therefore, it's known affectionately as fatty rice.

Do u cook with that Belacan [shrimp paste] stuff in NZ?

Wow, how did you know about belacan? it's like the malaysian secret to
super awesome flavour. i must kill u.
ps. no i don't cos i'm too lame, but i frequent many places that do
in nz. pretty good too, i hook u up.

Where is the best malaysian food u have had in NZ?

Mang, ur asking some toughies. but i gotta go with kk on manukau road
in auckland. they cook awesome penang-style food (chinese). and when
you're there, u gotta order the kk special eggplant. it's eggplant
with (u guessed it!) belacan! best in nz i've had so by far. in fact,
i just had it the other day. this chick asked me out to dins and said
she wanted some malaysian, to which i replied, "are u coming on to me?"
ps. i didn't hear a "no".

What is the most gangsta-hot malaysian dish and what are the side effects?

Most malaysian dishes are hot to begin with, but u can always request
it to be made extra pedas (HOT!) and kick your party into overdrive.
side effects include driving your shit crazy and wishing u could live
life this much to the max all the time.

What wheels do gangsters drive in KL?

The last time i was back, the city was overrun by motorcycle gangs.
they be driving down the highway in the dozens, and i'm not talkin
harleys here, these are bad boy 120cc bikes terrorizing cars and
trucks and the like. these days though, u will probably find these
road warriors on a different highway, the information superhighway
(internet), such as u and your gang of misfits on your blog.
ps. everyone gets real flashy with their rides, but we're ghetto so
we just drive G's dad's car. whichever one has more petrol.

What is a hardcore malaysian diss?

"Pukimak" is a common malaysian one, it's means your mother's pussy,
kinda like "(fuck your) mother's pussy". the chinese say "kan ni na",
which literally means "fuck your mother's pussy". if you're in
berzerk mode, u say "cau cibai" (even the malays know this one),
which means "(your mother's) smelly cunt". seems like mums get a bit
of a beatdown in these parts eh.

What is the most common liquor in Malaysia for gangsters?

U know what, i can't stand drinkin beer in malaysia, but can't get
enough of it in nz. maybe it's the weather or somethin, but hard
liquor is the shit in malaysia. i love whiskey and johnny walker is
very popular. not just among the kids but also with business men at
karaoke bars. they be shy and shit but after a few drinks, they're
belting out their favourite ol-skool jams in front of everyone.
shameless.
ps. good luck with your cooking and all the best to your culinary
journey.