December 10, 2004
Dabba Wallah - git yer tiffin while it's HOT
You're a dutiful wife (actually I'm temporarily in-between relationships) and nothing short of your own love-imbued cuisine will suffice to nourish your office-bound husband for his lunchtime meal. Problem is you're out in the suburbs of Mumbai and he's situated downtown for the lunchtime hours. How are you going to get something hot in Lovey's tummy?
You pay 150 rupees (EUR2,55/USD3.40/GBP1.70) per month for a Dabba Wallah service and let the 'tiffin guy' or lunchbox carrier bring the Mr. his grub.
In Mumbai (pop +16 million) there are reported to be more than 5,000 Dabba Wallahs. A "Dabba" is a 'tiffin' or 'lunch box', a 'Wallah' is a man or the carrier. The Dabba Wallahs deliver home cooked meals, picked up piping hot each morning from suburban households, and distribute them to more than 170,000 office workers spread across the entire city. This system relies on multiple relays of Dabba Wallahs, and a single tiffin box may change hands up to three times during its journey from home to office.
No matter that few Dabba Wallahs can read or write, they interpret a series of colour coded dots, dashes and crosses on the lids of the lunch containers, indicating the area, street, building and floor of the Dabba's final destination. The Dabba Wallah margin of error has been calculated at an one mistake in eight million deliveries, an accuracy that has earned the Dabba Wallah system a Sigma 6 rating by Forbes magazine. 'Sigma' is a term used in quality assurance if the percentage of correctness is 99.9999999 or more. Here comes the math: for every six million tiffins delivered, only one fails to arrive. This error rate means that a Mumbai tiffin goes astray only once every two months. Anyone else we know who got this same Sigma rating? Oh that would have to be Motorola.
Dabba Wallah distributed system has been going strong since 1890 according to some sources. In doing the 'research' for this entry I came across the term twice in a list of internet innovators under the header 'packet protocol'.
For more information take a look at the following urls:
Tiffin Bites, the package, but not the distribution. This English company sells neat lunch packages that one can buy from stores not yet stalls and definitely not delivered to office. Their tiffin containers are made of plastic and not aluminium because, 'We're not made of money!'
Here's a nice story on the Tiffin Bites website about the Dabba Wallahs.
Dear Jouke tipped me this film: Dabba Wallahs.
A well written article about the Dabba Wallah.
Posted by debra at 12:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 16, 2004
The Banquet Years
I know what we did last summer... we had a banquet!
Maybe because my last entry looked so pitiful, the colourful cakes and the leaden November sky. I thought it was high time to upload some images from this summer's culinary activities - and not just to some dank place in the culiblog archives. These images and the images in the linked pages are all photographs by Kristine Malden, a friend who thankfully was our guest that August evening.
Posted by debra at 05:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 06, 2004
Fade to Beige
What, you don't like my spork?
How silly of me to not realise that there would be entire spork communities online. I'm not going to link to them, google spork yourself.
The long and short of it is that this particular spork is more beautiful than the normal spork used by fastfood chains in the Old Country. It is made from recycled plastic and was bought in a pack of 20 in Barcelona (although made in Italy). I always keep a few with in my purse, you never know when a picnic will spontaneously occur.
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October 03, 2004
Fashion Food
And indeed, what is UNfashionable about a fake black lacquer bowl filled with instant Tom Yum noodles? Especially if you recycle the fake lacquer bowl and use it again and again for your own stylish soup lunches.
I came across this product researching what I will do for my contribution to Museum N8. J.P. of Mediamatic has asked me to come up with something for the theme pret a porter. Unlikely that I'll do something related to the noodles (because I'm leaning towards fruit leather) but I am amused by the product design.
Of course the ingredients inside don't resemble the picture on the front. But I know this product comes from a 'keeping up appearances culture' and I can accept the discrepancy. Also, normally Tom Yum doesn't have noodles. Translation issues to be sure.
I LOVE the fake lacquer bowl and can't wait to collect a few of them for an urban picnic making a lunch kit with my own ingredients. Blonde miso, soba or udon noodles, slabs of fresh tofu, sliced green onion and radish, fresh coriander leaves, a bit of kim chi...
Posted by at 12:04 PM | Comments (6)
July 14, 2004
Presentation is Everything
I feel like this little raisin.
Bet you can't find the raisin now...
I'm off to Ganges.
At 6.00h tomorrow.
A bien tot ziens.
Posted by at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2004
If it Bleeds, it Leads
That's was one of the more memorable lines in Michael Moore's, 'Bowling for Columbine'. Moore is speaking to a TV producer, asking him to explain why there are so many fear evoking images on the US nightly news. The TV producer replies self-evidently, 'If it bleeds, it leads'.
I thought the line was a fitting title to the next few entries of Culiblog in which I will document a workshop that I followed at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht this last February. Onno Faller led a workshop titled, 'Cooking as Genre' the last two days of which were devoted to a little dead wild boar. Above you see Natasha and a handsome bald bloke, BOTH VEGETARIANS, skinning the poor dead beast.
Although I have killed hundreds of animals for food and skinned them and prepared them, I never find this an easy task. I find myself gritting my teeth as I remove their jackets. I am not repulsed, but I feel sad for the animal, I feel the extreme tension of the killing and of a death that I initiated by wanting to eat the animal. Every animal, even a lobster, fights for its life as we would do. And it never ceases to amaze me that once the animal is skinned, it becomes just a piece of meat to me and my mind switches to the matter of the marinade.
If you want to see the entire process, click further.
When skinning a boar (or most furry animals for that matter) you begin by cutting around the foot. You want to cut through the skin layer, and then a line down the arm vertically so that you can 'get in there' with your knife. Your damn sharp knife.
Taking great care not to puncture the skin (because you're a pre-Iron Age chef and you're going to make soup in it tomorrow) you 'shave' close to the meat, pulling away the skin with the other hand.
Oddly enough, the Jan van Eyck Academie metal shop was the perfect place to skin a boar. The overhead tackling system made skinning a lot easier than it would have been if we had just used the table. Whenever possible, try to get gravity on your side.
Here's a very handy tip for your work surfaces: cover the tables with THICK (240 grams) paper. This is an easy solution to solving the hygiene issues associated with preparing (wild) animals. You will still need to thoroughly wash the tables afterwards, but maybe a little bit less throughly than if there weren't a layer of paper. By the way, its the outside of the animal that's really dirty.
Tomorrow I'll show you what we did with the big pieces of meat but I promised marinade, and marinade you shall have. Beer, onions, lemons. That's Russian for kebab marinade. And as it says in the Talmud, 'Do not refridgerate the thing that must not be refridgerated'. That is to say, 'wine cellar cool' is cool enough for marinating overnight. Whenever possible try to get the enzymes on your side.
Posted by at 01:28 PM | Comments (4)
July 01, 2004
Taiwanese Bean Beverage
Yesterday Dan said that Latvians are lucky.
But today is another day and for breakfast I decided to serve up this Taiwanese Bean Beverage to my Latvian guest *Emils. Just a little good morning experiment. Emils remained cheerful throughout the tasting although shortly after fulfilling his task as guinea pig he dashed out of the house supposedly to buy a shirt - but I think he hauled off and got a bagel.
Discorea Mixed Congee ingredients: water, sugar, adlay(?), discorea rhizome (?), chickpeas, glutinous rice, red beans, kidney beans, millet, oatmeal, oats.
* Emils Rode is a Latvian artist currently participating in the show BREAKTHROUGH in Den Haag. This exhibition in the Grote Kerk spotlights artists from the new European member states. http://www.grotekerkdenhaag.nl
Posted by at 02:41 PM | Comments (3)
Smart Taiwanese Packaging (because you never know when you're going to want to tuck into that Discorea Mixed Congee snack that you've been stowing away in your purse for special occasions)
The spoons that come with the Taiwanese bean beverages that I bought yesterday snapped neatly into the lid. Unfold and click and you're ready to suck up all the goodness.
Posted by at 02:04 PM | Comments (2)
June 25, 2004
More Chinese Food!
Yes, that's a hedgehog riding a donkey! This Chinese cookie is made from fortune cookie dough. Normally I never eat fortune cookies, but these were so beautiful... that I can't eat them either.
And this is a frog flying kites in it's mouth!
Posted by at 11:59 PM | Comments (4)
Tonijn voor het Publieke Domein
That's Dutch for Tunafish Salad for the Public Domain, the title of the bad weather picnic that I designed (and produced with the generous help of Tracey Prehay and Anne Schiffer) for the opening of my student's exhibition at the Balengebouw in Roombeek (Enschede). (Website is forthcoming!)
tunafish sandwich (broodje tonijn voor het publieke domein)
baggie of pickles (zakje zuur - pickles, zilver uitjes)
baggie of sweeties (zakje zoet - bitter koekjes, nep ouderwetse drop)
peach (perzik)
water
Posted by at 11:48 PM | Comments (2)
June 07, 2004
Camper's Flagship Restaurant
The wall mural menu at 'Foodball'. These last days in Barcelona I had the opportunity to meet up with designer Marti Guixe to talk about our food-related projects. He showed me the newly opened Camper flagship restaurant that he designed.
Posted by at 11:34 PM | Comments (1)
May 03, 2004
Nomadic Banquet
Mobile kitchen number 59.
This nice chef made me a wonderful breakfast in Nanjing. I was her last customer of the day.
Posted by at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)
April 30, 2004
Cooking out of doors
An outdoor kitchen on a Shanghai street corner. This restaurant was serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Interior view of a communal kitchen on the same street as above. This kitchen was shared by 7 families and a motorscooter.
This woman was kind enough to show us her kitchen (above) and its beautiful water feature. The only light in the kitchen is the flash from my camera. I think she's performing a secret dance.
Posted by at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2004
New Logo
This is not a KFC.
Posted by at 01:18 PM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2004
A Single Grain of Rice
Yi Li Mi = A Single Grain of Rice in mandarin neon. A Single Grain of Rice is a project for a culinarily oriented fasting restaurant that I am initiating. Future entries will explain this project in greater depth, but at least I've got the neon sign.
Posted by at 12:49 PM | Comments (1)
April 24, 2004
Water Distribution by Bike
2L PP PD = Two litres per person per day.
Get it out there.
Posted by at 06:09 PM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2004
Nomadic Banquet
A tea jar holder in a taxi.
Posted by at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2004
No Drinks in the Lecture Hall
Nanjing University Students leave their thermos' of hot water outside the lecture hall and somehow remember which one is theirs when they leave the building after the lecture.
Posted by at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2003
00ze: GooseFood4HumanFood
00ze. That's zoo spelled backwards, sort of. Natalie Jeremijenko has asked me to be the culinary artistic director of her 00ze project - bat bars and goose-steraunts. Animals and humans come into more competitve contact in a situation in which they actually share the same menu.
The Goosesteraunt is gearing up for a November gig. I have been experimenting and so far there is high-res documentation and 24 distinct recipes. Invite yourself over if you're interested in a taste-testing session. Recipe testers needed.
'Mock Larva' Dumplings
(description: rice flour dumplings. Looks like larva)
- Watercress dumpling
- Seeds (black seeds) dumpling
- Sea coral (nl. zeekraal) dumpling
- Seed and sea coral 'worm-cigar' dumpling
Posted by at 05:50 PM | Comments (2)