eNewsHound

There are so many fabulous restaurants in Miami, it can be kind of difficult to decide on the ones you would like to dine at while you are vacationing there. Meanwhile, it is common to try a diverse assortment of options and that way you are sure to experience the best of the city and find a favorite among them. However, one of the standard choices for most of the guests in one of the South Beach Miami hotels is to try some of the great seafood establishments in this Southern Florida city.

Captain Jim’s Seafood Market and Restaurant is one of the best places to enjoy great crab salad and crab cakes . In addition, there are some standard meal offerings such as the grilled salmon that can appeal to a heartier appetite. Area 31 is another great place for seafood and this place also offers some incredible views of the city skyline. Chef Allen’s is a fine dining establishment that offers an atmosphere of a hip contemporary bistro. And finally, though definitively this does not complete the seafood restaurant survey of Miami, there is Garcia’s Seafood Grille and Fish . This is a dockside cafe styled establishment that has some of the best grilled mahi sandwiches in the entire city.

It’s a food that gained most of its contemporary popularity from the Great Depression, and then saw another boost in the war years. Popcorn has been around for thousands of years, and logically enough developed with the same civilizations that developed corn as a main staple. It’s hard exterior locks the moisture in, so that when heat is applied, the moisture expands until it explodes and its starchy interior turns inside out. In the U.S., the hard economic times in the late 20s spurred a great love of the snack, where something wonderful could be made cheaply. Then again, during World War II, when sugar supplies were limited, this food was an easy and economical snack.

It’s curious that something so simple could make so many people swoon. Today, in the most financially successful companies, if someone decides to microwave a bag of the stuff on a break, the whole office will start salivating. And in big cities, like Dallas, it’s enormous popularity is demonstrated by the number of companies that market and produce the product. Where 4 star hotels in Dallas attract large numbers of tourists come to enjoy all the city’s finest things, popcorn is still a treat that can cause everyone to swoon.

There is no dearth of popcorn here, and nor is there a dearth of opinions as to who has the best. Both Popcorn Papa and Pop’s Corn Shoppe can do it up simply, and also offer kinds that move into the gourmet category. It’s very hard to resist, and aside from the cautions about eating it, or anything too quickly, there’s little reason to resist it. Even some of the movie theaters in town advertise themselves as having the best popcorn anywhere. While Harkins in Southlake seems to be the popular favorite, it’s best to trust one’s own judgement and do some personal investigation.

I just spent my first day in Manhattan. I was happy to say that I just missed most of New York’s historic winter, which I heard came in early, was snowier, more frigid and lasted longer than expected. But, it seems as if Manhattan survived this Wintery blast and has begun to emerge from hibernation, not to say New York even knows how to sleep. It was still brisk outside, so I thought a nice hot and spicy food would keep me warm as I took a stroll around Central Park before I head off to see a potential client.

I heard about this Indian restaurant from one of my colleagues called the Brick Lane Curry House . He told me the cuisine is South Asian and it’s not too far from where I’m staying , so I thought I’d check it out. This place is what’s considered a curry house and their menu lists numerous hot curries, but what they are most famous for is the ‘Phaal Curry’ dish; anyone who can finish this dish gets their picture on the Brick’s P’hall of Fame, a free beer, plus a certificate with their name on it. Phaal Curry is described in the menu as an excruciatingly hot curry that brings on more pain and sweat than it does flavor. This dish is totally insane to order, because even the cook who prepares the Phaal curry wears a gas mask. There was no way I needed to warm up inside that bad, so I just ordered the Vindaloo, which is a fiery combination of fresh roasted spices cooked with potatoes and then I got to pick if I wanted that with chicken, lamb, goat, fish, shrimp, Paneer, tofu or vegetables. I picked the tofu. The meal was sheer bliss and just spicy enough to have a kick to it, but an enjoyable kick of heat.

I left the restaurant feeling all warm inside and my stroll around Central Park was fantastic. The Vindaloo kept me warm inside and my light jacket kept me warm outside. The sun was shining, New Yorkers seemed to all be at the park , running, jogging, roller blading, walking, or sitting at the park benches enjoying the fact that spring is in the air, it was really hard to leave the park to make it to my business meeting.

We checked out of our hotel in Kuala Lumpur and got on the bus back to the airport. We wanted to get there early to see if we could change our Singapore Flight to India, but unfortunately they were unable to change our tickets. After checking in at our gate on this little machine at the airport, we dropped off our bags and went to find a place to relax that had a free wifi spot in the airport. Since we were hoping to go to India instead of Singapore, I wanted to see if Singapore had a good Indian restaurant , and I found this great restaurant website that listed all the better Indian restaurants in Singapore.

While I was searching on the Internet, my husband chatted up with a guy from Adelaide , but he once lived in Singapore, then in Japan and now in Kuala Lumpur. He was travelling to Singapore for the weekend with his girlfriend. He told us that there’s a section in Singapore called ‘Little India’ and that we would at least get a feel for India there. We ended up sitting next to them on the plane and he gave us several places that we should visit.

Our flight to Singapore only lasted about 55 minutes and we took the train into town. We walked to our hotel and that gave us our first taste of Singapore, and we think our stay will be all good, until we got into our hotel room. The bathroom was ridiculously small, and a weird shape. There was a entrance for the disabled, but for the life of us we couldn’t figure out how they would fit in here. It was so small that we feared if we dropped something there was no room to pick it up. We couldn’t help but laugh.

We headed out of our hotel to find Little India. That guy we met in the airport was right, it did give us a taste of India, and that Internet site that gave me the addresses of some Indian restaurants was great. The India restaurant we had lunch at was excellent. Our meals were very delightful, but it only made us really want to experience the real India all the more. We headed back to our hotel to use the wifi to see if we could make arrangements to fly to India.

I’m happier here than I’ve been in most places, and I’m usually extraordinarily happy.  I have a sunny disposition.  I like to be aware of my surroundings, and being aware, for me, opens up the capacity for joy in all things.  All the things I care about are related, on some deep level, to food, perhaps.  That says more about me than it does about the things themselves, but then again, I love to eat.  If there is an opportunity to try something new, I usually take it, and if Indian food is involved, that’s even better.  I didn’t come to Singapore to have an experience with Indian food, but now that I’m here, I wish I’d planned it this way.
There are more great Indian restaurants here than anywhere on earth, at least in terms of how they relate in terms of the size of the population, the quality of the food, and the capacity to cause utter pleasure among the diners.  I had first suspected that I was enough to make waves of joy come rolling over us, should such things be possible, because my own delight with the food was enough to make me consider losing my memory.  If I could convince a surgeon to help me lose my short-term memory, and the procedure was a low enough risk, that would be a perfect situation.
I really don’t think I need to say that I love Indian food.  But I do.  There’s something about the cheese, something about the spice, and something about the curries, that reminds me that this world is much more complex and satisfying that we are sometimes lead to believe.  And anything that can open up the pores, the taste buds, and the capacity for joy, is worth paying attention to.  With a more carefully honed memory, one that could recall important things like directions and pin numbers, but forget exactly how food tastes, so you have to go back again and again, I might have unlocked a secret of immortality.

Between the Western Indian Ocean and China, Singapore has served as a major world trading port for centuries.  Its past is certainly as complex and fascinating as its present, and there are multiple cultures and multiple influences running through the city state.  That’s true now, and has been true for a long time.  Lately, though, Singapore has had kind of a boom in the tourist trade, and suddenly a lot of fascinating new trends in design, fashion, and visual art are emerging in world culture that’s directly influenced by Singapore.  It might be a new trend, or it may just be that the world is waking up to how much influence this place has.  The influences are rather splendid, too.  The urban population is extremely sophisticated, with sensibilities that run from pop to high culture, and there is a definite love of the arts here.  It’s very apparent from even a surface look, and the deeper you look into entertainment in Singapore, the more you’ll find, and discover that it holds endless possibilities for exploration.

The sophistication runs in the area of cuisine, too, or perhaps this is one of the places where cultural sophistication in Singapore originated.  One of the fastest ways into a culture is through its food, and with the port’s long history of contact with other cultures and other cuisines, it’s very evident here that there has been a marvelous culinary dialogue going on for years.  Today, it expresses itself at dinnertime with a spectacular flair.  With the incredible array of Chinese, Indian, vegetarian, and seafood restaurants, Singapore has some dynamic things to offer a hungry guest.  Its fascination with the sea doesn’t end with food, either, but again, probably originates there.  If you look deeper, you’ll find plenty of things to explore.  The New Maritime Heritage Foundation has set up some wonderful attractions.

One can see the artifacts from one of the most famous shipwrecks in the region, the Belitung Wreck.  This was an Arab ship that went down in the Gaspar Strait in the 9th century, and was discovered by a German prospector named Tilman Waterfang, just a few years ago, and it is a magnificent piece of history.  Thousands and thousands of Chinese artifacts were found on board, and although there are still come contestations about origin and propriety, it is a fantastic thing to see, and you can only see it here.

Singapore is amazing, and keeps getting more interesting.  It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what is so attractive about this city state, whether it’s the mix of the urban with the exotic, or the global sensibility that seems to permeate everything, or if it’s something that’s just not palpable, but it’s certainly there.  The past decade or so has seen an increase in travel, and its for very good reasons.  There are excellent world class hotels, amazing food everywhere you go, including Italian restaurants, and a cultural scene that is always growing by leaps and bounds.  One of the most fascinating things about Singapore is its ability to adapt to and adopt cultures that are not necessarily native, and that’s one of the many reasons Italian food is so delightfully good here.

It might also have something to do with its geography, with a constant supply of fresh and excellent seafood.  The culinary traditions here are extremely diverse, and the influx of excellent ingredients from all over the world make it a chef’s, as well as a diner’s, paradise.  There are many connections between Italy and Singapore besides the food, and one area where these connections are very prominent is in the art.  Art has a way of bringing collaborators from diverse backgrounds together, and projects are often a way of finding a common language.  Or perhaps it’s a matter of finding different languages that somehow communicate something anyway.  Lucy Davis, artist and professor at the School of Art, Design and Media at NTU has an impressive body of work that bears witness to this in many spectacular ways.

This artist, whose work crosses between visual art and cultural studies, grew up here, and spent a significant amount of time in the U.K. and in Copenhagen, where she studied art and developed her own art practice.  She has done a number of works in performance, installation, photography, and sculpture, and lately has been working with an interest in animality.  Her work does indeed intersect between high art and political engagement, and one of her recent works, The Tree Project, involved the planting of Hibaku trees around the world.  Hibaku trees are trees grown from seeds that were present at the bombing of Hiroshima, so the project is an enormously powerful statement, expressed in a beautiful form.

For many years, every celebration of my friends took place at Honey Bears BBQ.  This is a small business located in Phoenix, Arizona.  A small business that relies on age old recipes of Tennessee Barbecue.  Whether it was to celebrate a friend’s decision to quit being a lawyer, or a meal found after spending a day at the lake, we all just had to get to that spot, to get to those barbecue pits.  Years later I moved to Chicago.  Chicago and BBQ, hand in hand right?  Yes, for great barbecue, the city of Chicago is a great place to be.  You can go out, or you can have it delivered…it is everywhere, tasty and plentiful.

But still, I missed those flavors of Honey Bears.  My roommate, who had also lived in Phoenix and knew of this establishment.  She and I tried to recreate the flavors.  Our outdoor kitchen was stocked, complete with a sink, a grill, a work space and a few small outdoor refrigerators. We made a few special dishes, a few tasty ones, but nothing ever could compare.  One day in Chicago, my birthday actually, I was feeling a bit homesick when a UPS man pushed our bell.  He had a special delivery.  I buzzed him up, signed for the delivery, and took a look.

My roommate had arranged for a rack of ribs, with that incredible sauce, to be delivered at that exact moment.  The ribs were sealed and set on dry ice, we had a container of that sauce…and I had to wait for her to get home from work.  I called up Catherine, the Wicker Park neighborhood BBQ guru who lived next door, I told her to prepare.  When the time came, we heated up the ribs, went down the stairs and over to Catherine’s porch.  As we took our first bite, my eyes were on Catherine, I wanted her to dig these ribs.

She did.  We had a great time that night, and Catherine memorized the flavors much in the way a sommelier can memorize the obscure flavors of fine wine by simply smelling.  She promised to transcribe this recipe, from her taste buds to the grill, and she did.  Our outdoor kitchen was never the same after that day.

When you start thinking about the details for your outdoor kitchen, it can become like a pleasant game with yourself.  Imagining all the different possibilities, from the most fantastic to the most practical, and then trying to imagine a happy medium, can make for many happy afternoon daydreams.  There are a host of options with our grills, too, and something that will meet every budget and taste.  You might consider outdoor sinks, outdoor cabinets, or perhaps even sound systems and media systems.  It all depends on your style and desires.

If you’re going to be spending a lot of time outdoors, cooking as a social affair, surrounded by family and friends, cabinets are a splendid idea.  There is a convenience and ease to having everything you need at your fingertips, and the storage possibilities are pretty wide.  You can have all your spices at your fingertips, and you’ll see that spice plays a major role in your life.  Even with something as simple as chicken, there are multiple ways to spice, and you’ll soon see that every chef has their own, often very passionate, opinions about how to spice correctly.  With chicken there are marinades or rubs, or the simple method of adding a little salt to each side while it’s grilling.

A rub is a very nice way to add textures of flavor to the chicken, and there are plenty of chicken rub recipes.  The basic idea is to add dry spices, such as paprika, chile powder, and thyme, together and coat both sides of the chicken before putting it to the flame.  Another option is to brine the chicken.  This is really a fantastic alternative to marinating, and the idea is very similar.  With brining, you soak it overnight in a mixture of water, sugar, salt, and spices of your choice.  The water keeps the chicken moist while the flavors seep in and penetrate the flesh, making for an incredibly juicy grilled chicken that will really knock off your socks.  With your cabinets full of spices, there’s no end to what you can do.

At one time, families held outdoor barbecues for holidays or birthday parties, and usually only in the summer time.  However, nowadays, more than half the people in the United States cook using outdoor grills all year through.  One will notice in Chicago, grills set up on the back stair cases in the back yards of their neighbors, even while there is snow on the ground.  And in the states with the hotter climates–climates much too hot to enjoy an outdoor barbecue, people will still fire up their grills in order to save on the electricity bill, as the air conditioner will compensate for the heat the oven produces in the house.

The reason is that whether one is grilling vegetables,slow grilling port ribs, or roasting a chicken, the food just tastes different.  It tastes better, and the flavor is such that it is hard to reproduce inside using the oven or the stove top.  There are some simple food safety guidelines to follow to ensure that food born bacteria does not, for one, collect on the grill itself, and for two, steps to follow as the usual habits one uses in the kitchen may not follow them into the backyard.

One step starts in the grocery store, and should be applied whenever buying raw meat and poultry.  One should always put the raw meat into their shopping cart just before checking out, the butcher should be the last one to visit.  And it goes without saying that all meat and poultry should be bagged separate from all other groceries such as fruit and vegetable.

If the meat is to be frozen, it should be thawed completely…completely through and through before cooking.  All meats to be marinated should be done so in the refrigerator and not on the counter.  The standard is to marinate for up to two days maximum for poultry, and five days maximum for beef and pork.  All utensils and platters should be clean, of course, and one should take care not to place the cooked meat, back onto the plate on which they originally carried it out to the barbecue.  Safety is always a concern when the temperatures outside are warmer, and following these guidelines will ensure that no one at the party becomes ill.