Photos: Passport & Plate - Of minotaurs and mousakás

mikaontour — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 13:29:00 GMT

Ingredients
3 egg plants
1 kg potatoes
1 onion
1 kg mincemeat (beef)
½ cup of white wine
2 pureed tomatoes
30 g flour
30 g butter
½ liter milk
salt, pepper

How to prepare this recipe
Wash and slice the egg plants (roughly 0,75cm), peel and slice the potatoes. Put the sliced egg plants and potatoes in the oven (180°C, 15 minutes).
While waiting, roast 1 diced onion in a pot with the mincemeat. Add the wine (or water, if preferred), the pureed tomatoes and salt and pepper. Let it simmer for 15 minutes.
When the sliced vegetables are starting to get golden, put the potatoes in a casserole dish. Layer them carefully and try not to leave space between them. Add the minced meat and cover with the eggplant slices.
Then (lightly) sautée the flour in butter and add the milk. Heat up and stir until the flour and butter have dissolved in the milk. Pour it over the dish and put it in the oven (180°C, 30-40 minutes).
Enjoy!

The story behind this recipe
Of minotaurs and mousakás

When I was four or five, my family started going to a newly opened Greek restaurant. After a few dinners there, I –greatly inspired by Disney- decided to fall in love with the owner, Yannis, and marry him. As every romance needs flowers I convinced my parents to let me buy a single red rose, which I shyly presented to Yannis. After a little confusion, he accepted it with a big smile and in return gave me an orange: a huge, brightly colored fruit, emitting the most intense, mouthwatering summer-smell.
When my family returned to the restaurant a couple of days later, Yannis was talking to a gorgeous woman. Not knowing that the exchanging of rose and orange meant we were engaged at least, he introduced her as his wife. My world shattered. Sobbing I told them all, that I wanted to marry him and that I’ve already decided so last week. Instead of laughing at me, Yannis’ wife very soberly apologized for marrying my future husband.
When I stopped crying, she asked me if I wanted to help her cook the secret family recipe. When I nodded, she took me to the kitchen to introduce me to her little daughter, who was roughly my age. It was my very first visit to a restaurant kitchen and I was overwhelmed with the sight, with the laughter and singing, and, most of all, with the smell. Yannis’ wife got a worn recipe book from a high shelf. “Normally, we don’t tell anyone about this recipe,” she told me, “but as you almost married my husband you are family.”

Then she started to prepare mousakás. Helping with cooking, I quickly realized, mostly consisted of sampling and smelling the ingredients, sampling the dish various times and listening to stories from “back home”, that were half history and half fairytales and went perfectly with the dish.

When we left that day, she gave me a copy of the recipe. Eventhough I was way too young to prepare the dish myself back then, I kept the sheet of paper safe. Years later it was the first meal I cooked myself.

Catching a Moment - The it-tasted-like-chicken-people

mikaontour — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 02:10:56 GMT

"There are no tourists in the old market", Chamron tells me and spits a stream of reddish brown tobacco onto the side of the road, "None of these it-tasted-like-chicken-people!" He had stopped his old moto when I have told him my next destination and refuses to take me without discussing it. I insist, stating that I'm not a tourist, but a traveler; and as annoyed with those people lacking the creativity to describe the mouthwatering taste of uncommon meat. His smug smile tells me he doesn't believe me at all, and that for him all foreigners are the same; but he agrees to take me anyways.

When we arrive I at first circle the market. Here in Cambodia, markets are their own little ecosystems. I like being at the edge for some time before I enter; anticipating the coming adventure, the exhilarating smells, the strange food, the hectic life inside the boundaries of the outside stalls.

Then I enter.

The market swallows me at once, as the twilight of yet another power outage engulfes me. The dream begins. Letting the stream of people, who push against me on the cramped walkways, carry me without any specific destination, I breath in deeply as we pass the food court. Foreign spices, boiling brown meat soup in deep pots, fried rat and monkeys with their heads split open make up an intoxicating aroma. I ask what kind of meat is in the pots. Chicken? Beef? Pork? People smile at me and shake their heads. No. Other meat.

The next second it smells like all kind of human waste products, and the brownish goo on the floor gets thicker. I take a turn and look upon rows and rows of pitch-black, luscious hair, neatly cut and hanging in thick strands from the ceiling, waiting for the next girl who wants extensions for Khmer New Year. The next turn brings hundreds of hens, still alive, but apathetic from the heat. A little boy forces water down their beaks. Another turn: bloody meat on hooks and big, heavy fish trying to escape on the muddy floor. Then, a beauty salon with people lying in rows after rows, with creams on their faces and their hands in lemon water. After that: little stalIs covered in plastic bags full of fried cockroaches and waterbugs, crickets and ants. When I am overwhelmed by the experience I pass the women selling fruit - jackfruit, mangosteen, bananas - and go back to the food court.

While leaving the market I'm eating a bowl full of other-meat.
It tastes like chicken.

Mika on Tour

Photos: Passport & Plate - Of minotaurs and mousakás

Catching a Moment - The it-tasted-like-chicken-people