Vol. II, Malaysian Khukuris and more.

Rusty

Rusty

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Mar 8, 1999
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The first thread was getting too long.

Now I'm off to locate a url to a news story that proves I'm telling the truth about the old Mustang Ranch brothel property being wanted by the Bureau of Land Management to move their adopt-a-horse program onto.
 
Rusty.
Heh ... heh ... heh! If you are a Malaysian - you'll get a nickname Rusty the Naughty!

Yvsa.
Coconut is called KELAPA in Malaysian Langguage. Traditionally coconut tree is fully utilised by Malays. We used coconut milk in most of our daily food prepartion. It makes good curry! Almost all Malay traditional foods have coconut milk added in.
As you mentioned coconut milk can be processed to produced cooking oil. Last time I used to help my mother to prepare cooking oil - 1st crush the coconut shell - get the coconut meat - shred the coconut meat, add water and press it - collect the coconut milk & keep it for 1 night - then throw away the water layer - boil the coconut milk for 2 or 3 hours - then the cooking oil will be ready! I am not that knowledgable on the preparation of cooking oil for commercial - I guessed it is slightly different whereby the oil is produce by crushing the dried meat of coconut.

BTW, we are plucking the coconut fruit using a long bamboo fixed with u-shaped knife - sometimes we trained monkey (no joke!) to do that! Anyhow at some area we used to climb the coconut tree to pluck coconut but this one is not widely practices (I guess it is a bit dangerous!).

Haven't use my sirupati to pluck coconut by climbing the tree yet! I'm not good at climbing tree ...
 
Mohd, yup! Those curries made with coconut-milk sure taste good! Makes my mouth water just thinking about 'em
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And, all this talk about Mustang is making me recall ... back when I was in Delhi, India, there was a Tibetan settlement near my University, on the banks of the Yamuna River. It had several restaurants serving Tibetan food, nothing fancy, just your basic highway truck-stop fare, India-style. Us kids from the hills used to frequent those places whenever we missed home-food, and one of the places was called "Mustang Restaurant". The owner was an old wheelchair-bound Khampa who'd been a guerrilla fighter based out of the Tibetan guerrilla stronghold of Mustang (pronounced Moos-Tang) on the borders of Nepal and Tibet. He'd lost both his legs in an encounter against the Commies in the early 70s. The old fellow, "Pala" everybody called him, always had a Thee (Tibetan dagger) prominently on his waist. (Obligatory knife reference
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)

It was a great place, good food, until my brother and his friends got into a scrap with the locals one night (over a girl!), and after that we had to play safe by frequenting the other eating-joints.

Anyways, getting back to Mustang (the Nepal one, not the Nevada one!), I recently read "Orphans of the Cold War" by John Kenneth Knaus. A very detailed book that looks into the CIA involvement in the Tibetan struggle against China. The author, ex-CIA, was closely involved in this affair. The book details the goings-on in Lhasa, Delhi, Washington DC, etc. as well as describing what happened "on the ground" - from the roving Khampa horsemen battling the commies in the 50s and early 60s to their eventual shift to a base outside Tibet, in Mustang, which was active until the mid-70s.

Highly Recommended, even though it's a bit heavy on the details in parts. Personally interesting for me because Grandpa had at least one cousin out in Mustang. I was too small to remember but it seems he eventually found his way back to Grandpa's house in Kalimpong (India) and pased-away soon after - I understand Grandma wasn't too happy about this vague cousin who lands at their door with absolutely no money, eats like a pig, and soon after dies, leaving them to take care of his cremation
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I'm rambling again, better stop here ...

- Sonam

 
Oops! double-post!

- Sonam

[This message has been edited by gtkguy (edited 29 October 1999).]
 
Bhanis, when I was in Nepal in the early 80's Mustang was off limits. I remember one PC volunteer, a gal, who accidentally wandered into the area while on a trek. She got tossed into the slammer in the Mustang and it took intervention by the US State Department to get her out. Touchy area and tough folks up there!

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Uncle Bill
Himalayan Imports Website
http://members.aol.com/himimp/index.html
 
You know what the HI forum is beginning to remind me of?

Remember the bar scene in the first Star Wars movie? You know, the bar with all the weird alien characters in it?

And what worries me is I'm starting to fit right in!
 
:
LMAO.After five years on the rez and nicknamed Coyote,I am talking about fruit,what do you mean 'you' "are starting to fit right in?."hehehehe.

When ever Coyote is mentioned at the wrong time of the year it is a good Apache saying to use the phrase,"I am talking about frut" so Coyote won't hear His name metioned and bite you on the butt with his KNIFE like teeth.
That comes from me hangin with too many Apache.
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>>>>---¥vsa---->®

If you mix milk of magnesia with vodka and orange juice do you get a phillips screwdriver?

Khukuri FAQ


 
:
Mohd thanks for the explanation on the coconut.
I will get back to you on the e-mail in a couple of days to.
I made some curry the other night and my curry powder must be getting old.Two teaspoons wasn't near hot enough.I had bought a fresh coconut and cracked it in two with my Gelbu Special.Didn't even phase the edge!
I used the milk and meat in the curry.It was pretty good eatin anyway.I put some Habeneo sauce in mine to spice it up a little.
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I have heard tales about the legendary Curries made in your part of the world and India as well.
I also get our "sticky rice" from an Oriental food market.I can't stand the "Fluffy" rice most Americans eat.I know they have some really hot peppers they sell there too.Do you and the people in your country eat hot peppers as well?
Did you know that the Pepper plants were first cultivated thousands of years ago by the Indins living in So.America?

On the subject of food and I know we all like to eat.
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I hae a Korean friend that I used to work with.Mu was always talking about "kimchee." I kept asking him about it and he kept telling me I wouldn't like it.That Americans didn't like Garlic.I told him I wasn't the ordinary American.
One day in the paper was a recipe for Kimchee.( We later got to meet the girl who's mother made it.)I got the ingredients and made some.
I told M about it and he said bring me som.I would try the "American Kimchee." Soooo I took him some to work.His words to me after I asked him how it was,"It has TOO Much Garlic in it." I think I surprised him.Mine had a lot of red pepperin it too as well as the Garlic.
We still have Kimchee in the frig.The older it gets the better it tastes.
Maybe I ought to make some Khukuri Kimchee and cut up the cabbage and onions with my 18" AK.I will save the Banspati for the Watermelon.
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------------------
>>>>---¥vsa---->®

If you mix milk of magnesia with vodka and orange juice do you get a phillips screwdriver?

Khukuri FAQ


 
Black and white pepper originally came from the east ( they are the same thing, just different color - white is used in stuff like mashed potatoes, milk gravy, so on so it doesn't look like there are fly specks in the food at fancy restaurants ). Since it had to be brought thousands of miles by caravan or ship, it was expensive.

The american peppers from the new world could be grown in areas of europe, dried, ground, and used far more cheaply. I'm not sure where the various countries took various american peppers, but I can tell you about paprika.

Now we aren't talking about the california grown stuff that's just food coloring. I'm talking real paprika that comes from Hungary.

Hungary, after the fall of the Roman empire, was like the Palestine, Lebanon, Israel area.
If you wanted to get somewhere by land, it was a natural corridor. So the turks, who somehow had gotten a form of american pepper, would come thru Wallachia, Hungary, Transylvania, Romania, on their way to fight the europeans. Then the europeans would come thundering thru the other way to kill turks. Anyway, the Hungarians ended up with this dried and then ground hot as hell pepper ( paprika ) and someone, evidently in the Szged area figured out that the capsaicin or heat was in the seeds, inner membranes, and skins of the pepper. The meat of it wasn't that hot. So they boiled or carred the skin till it would slip and peel off. Then they'd cut it open, strip the seeds and membranes away from the meat, and dehydrate or dry the meat of the pepper that was left. Then they'd grind it and came up with 3 levels of heat. The first was mild or "noble rose" paprika. Rich flavor without much heat. The second leaving the membranes along with the meat was the medium paprika. The last, leaving membranes and seeds, was Hot. Cayenne it ain't but if you add a teaspoon of hot paprika in lieu of a 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne, nobodys going to notice a difference.

I don't know how the cheap american peppers fared in the east. Were peppers grown in India, Persia, Nepal, Tibet? I imagine so. If I recall, the chinese and thai use the real hot ones. Mohd? Sonam? Arvind? Got any family recipes that would answer that question?

Wonder if the capsicin would discolor high carbon steel?
 
Forgot: it was a hunky that discovered vitamin C. From paprika!
 
Thanks,Rusty;people here of Bohemian descent call themselves Bohunks.The hunk must refer to Hungary.
 
That's the point, Bill, the Hungarian stuff should be in the international or the spice section of the market next to you. In red (and white and green - the colors of Hungary)
cans, and with "Pride of Szged" as the brand.
There's two kinds. The Hot ( really medium ), and then there is what you want - the mild or noble rose paprika which has rich flavor, but little heat. Kind of like garlic. You can have a very strong garlic flavor without it being hot. If they don't carry that, go to the international market on the south exit of Park Lane, behind Heidi's restaurant. They ought to carry it in bulk.

Now about curry, Arvind, Mohd, Yvsa, Sonam...
Help! I know nothing other than the Sun brand Madras Curry Powder sold in the bigger supermarkets smells wonderful and is mild enough I can put as much as I want to in it.
Yvsa talks like he makes his own up. I used to order bulk spices out of New York City, but lost the address. What should I look for, what should I try out? Should I crush the spices with the side of the blade or the khuk's spine? I'm gonna stop and cook some noodles with some curry added now.
 
Rusty, there's a little Indian market up Virginia street from me which you might want to visit. There is also a Thai market not so far which carries some herbs and spices -- and commercial mixes -- which might interest you. Next time you are in Reno stop by and I'll give you directions.

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Uncle Bill
Himalayan Imports Website
http://members.aol.com/himimp/index.html
 
I remember the sixty days in Korea two years ago. Every meals were served with kimchees with few exception like Burger King. In reataurants, even in a coffee shop I found kimchee aside coffee (all free!).

Sorry off topic...no relation to Malay or khukuris.
 
I think Mizutani is right, kimchee should be plural. There is no more a single kimchee, or one kimchee recipe, than there is a set of specifications for a khukuri. (There, I worked in a knife reference!)

I love kimchee. I get it by the gallon at a local Korean market. My wife and colleagues at work aren’t as enthusiastic about me buying it though. Maybe they’ll get over it someday.

One of my old Tae Kwon Do instructors had a Korean wife. He got me hooked. They used to threaten youngsters goofing off in class with having to eat the kimchee.


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Howard Wallace
Khukuri FAQ

 
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