Biryani and raw prawns
Some catchup now on non-nerdy things. Last week was the final week of Ramadan, when Muslims fast for a month in a gesture of solidarity with the poor. They eat breakfast before sunrise, and don't eat or drink again until sunset. To come together as a community and raise cultural awareness, the Muslims at Microsoft DAC (I can't remember exactly what DAC stands for, I think Diversity Action Committee?) put on a Ramadan dinner in Cafe 34 (which conveniently is in my building).
We watched a video about Ramadan (I swear the same as last year's), then tucked in for a feast from nations representing a broad spectrum of the Muslim world. You break the fast with something light (in our case, dates, hommus with crackers and little samosas), say some prayers, and then follow up with the real meal. We were treated with a delicious array of dishes -- various meat curries (halal of course), biryani, stir fries, spring rolls, not to mention desserts like Gulab Jamun and baklava (the latter of which apparently found not just in Greece, but also Iran even if the pronunciation differs slightly). Tasty stuff, now if only the cafeteria would serve such food every day instead of the generic inoffensive but unappetizing fare they currently serve up...
Speaking of food (as I often do), last Friday a bunch of us from work (Nima, Leila, Zen and I to be precise) ventured to Kozue on 45th, a Japanese restaurant in Wallingford that had been recommended to me as good value. I don't get the opportunity to visit Japanese restaurants much anymore (if sushi train places don't count, that is). I miss the broad spectrum of price and quality at my disposal in Melbourne -- whether it was cheap chicken teriyaki at Don Don's, to the it's-Friday-I-couldn't-be-bothered-cooking reliability of Japonica, to the consistently high quality of Hanabishi on King Street, where I was first introduced to the concept of beef tataki. I still remember going there with Claudine in 2001, and marvelling at the wafer-thin slices of beef that I initially couldn't distinguish from the surface of the plate on which it was served...
So I was determined to devour as much raw fish as I possibly could at Kozue... and certainly the portions were generous. I don't think I've ordered a sashimi plate that had as many pieces of fish as it did for the money... they were sliced thick, and most just melted in my mouth (which is exactly what I like my raw fish to do). The one thing I had trouble with: a raw prawn. The head was still on, but the de-shelled back part (thankfully de-veined) was just sitting there an opaque mass of white/pinkish raw prawn meat, daring me to overcome my skittishness at eating raw crustacean -- something you know is just Not Quite Right. Zen had a prawn head tempura-type thing, so we did a double-dare (I think I got the raw end of the deal, haha) and decided to just go for it. It actually wasn't bad, the flavour was a milder version of cooked prawn, with just a hint of prawn head juice :). And no food poisoning afterwards either, so all those undercooked shellfish warnings are just bollocks -- you heard it here first!
