• April 13th, 2008mr meanerasian food, recipes, vegan stuff

    Mr Meaner’s mantra about restaurant food is “If they can make it, so can YOU!”. And the corollary is often “BETTER”. Here’s an example of creating a dish from scratch with nothing but the taste memory of some truly outstanding airport food.

    Golden Curry

    On a recent trip back to LA from wine country, we happened to hang around in SFO for an hour or so while waiting to board. The post-vineyard pangs of hunger began to set in, so I was wandering between Baja Fresh, Subway and a minimalist food court in Terminal 3 when I happened upon “Tomokazu Japanese Food”. An unassuming little place with two very helpful Japanese serving ladies who were only too happy to explain that the only “non meat” thing on the menu was Curry a with a choice of Chicken, Beef or Tofu.

    Moving on from the “non meat” Chicken or Beef curry, I focused on the Tofu option asking if it had anything animal-derived in it (chicken stock, cream, milk powder… The usual questions). One of the servers pulled out a flip book with the ingredients listed, and showed it to me. Indeed, it had nothing remotely animal in it, so I went ahead and ordered the dish.

    Two minutes later I was eating one of the most satisfying tofu/sauce/rice bowls I’d ever come across. It was spicy, yet very flavorful and the bed of rice (which the sauce soaked into) was absolutely divine. After boarding my flight back I spent quite a while thinking about how to emulate the feast.

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