Sanctuary from The Mad World
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch. - Orson Welles

by Julian Barnes

I guess the new kid in literary town currently is food writing. Used to be chick lit a few years back after the success of “Bridget Jones Diary” but now everyone is into writing about food and cooking. I was surprised when I read that Julian Barnes wrote about food. Even more amazed when, while browsing Amazon.com, I saw a recipe collection by Pat Conroy of “The Prince of Tides” fame. Now we have it all: literary writer cum food writer, lawyer cum food columnist, cook cum writer, captain cum restaurant reviewer.
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First published in the Jakarta Globe. 

Disheartened with the recent encounter of a very popular Japanese restaurant chain in Jakarta which serve crumbling sushi, limp sashimi, and over-seasoned everything else, I was wary of a new Japanese chain called Ootoya which claims to serve home-made Japanese food. 

by Janet De Neefe

The book is written by Janet De Neefe, an Australian married to a Balinese. She is also the owner of Casa Luna (restaurant, cooking class, guest house, furniture and handicraft shop). It is part autobiography, part fact book on Balinese culture, and part cookbook. Written in an easy, informal manners, it contains funny lines occasionally. Stories weaved among her young, hippie days, her experience settling down in Bali, and food. It’s good because readers can feel and imagine life experiences through her eyes. For example, she uses a section on her father-in-law’s death to briefly discuss the Balinese cremation rituals. She helpfully, for her target audience of Australian readers I guess, provides glossary of various names, places, terminologies, places, spices, Indonesian words, etc.

HOWEVER….
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Not to be confused with the more common, bright-red and sticky sweet and sour sauce coating fried, breaded pieces of pork, this is a Hunan specialty as described in The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook from Fuschia Dunlop.

I modify this recipe slightly because I wasn’t keen on doing too many steps and I’m not keen on asking the butcher to cut the spare ribs into bite-sized pieces (they may charge me for labour cost!) but the result is wonderful thanks to the sauce: it’s sweet, sour with an end alcoholic note coating the meat.

Ingredients:
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I used to love the buttery and crumbly Walker’s Scottish shortbread but recently, I am bothered by the ‘factory’ after taste. I scoured the internet to find a recipe because shortbread is actually very easy to make especially with this trick. Instead of rolling the dough, use an ice-cream scoop to form the soft dough into rounds. No sticky dough on plastics, no smears on counter-tops!

Some recipes call for the use of rice or corn flour but I think it’s crumbly and ‘melt-in-the-mouth’ enough with all-purpose flour. So I skip it. It’s important to use the sea-salt though. It truly makes a ton of difference.

The recipe below is modified from the wonderful 101 Cookbooks.

Ingredients:
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