Merrylands for Afghan Mantu: Dumplings Not Drive-by's Warm Hard Hearts

For mine, Merrylands isn’t the ‘drive-by shooting’ centre of Sydney.

It’s where my permanent-partner-in-dumplings (my wife, Suzi) and I have recently discovered mantu - not flying bullets.

Indeed, the Kabul House (186a Merrylands Road, Merrylands, http://www.kabulhouse.com.au), staffed by some seemingly hard men, makes marvellous mantu – Afghan boiled dumplings which are to comfort food as Lazy-Boy recliners are to lazy old guys like me.

Mantu fit snugly on a soup spoon. They’re made of very fine wonton-style dough with lamb mince and scallions filling. The filling is mixed through with what the recipe would likely say is ‘heaps’ of curry powder. This makes mantu green in colour and pistachio-like in flavour.

And just like accessories put the statement into fashion statement, what tops mantu is even better.  It’s chana dhal (think Indian cuisine), which is lentils stewed in a sweet tomato sauce. AND, a cold yoghurt and mint dressing. Right or wrong, we ate ours wrapped in a really hardy and hot naan bread from a kind of improvised tandoor oven. (Asking didn’t seem like a welcome option or was it, I wonder…)

All this adds up to a soft, really nutty, and fortifying feed. A feed that surely soothed the soul after, say, a rugged fortnight on some wind-blown ridge herding said sheep in the general direction of said dumplings.

It’s like some cook of the cosmos said: “Let me extract the comfort of many kitchens and put it in one dish.”

And, fascinatingly, all that comfort was served to us by from waiters and staff who seemed as tough perhaps as their ancestor shepherds. Not a nice word or smile could be extracted - at least according to our expectations. See painting on wall for general mood.

How’s that work?

‘

Maybe it shows the blessings and burdens visited on Afghans for being always on the cross-roads, always in-between.

Somewhere in-between East Asia, South Asia, the Caucuses, and Europe.

Somewhere in-between one empire and another one.

Somewhere in-between the last war, this war and what seems inevitably like a next one.

Somewhere in-between where many of its people are and where they want to be, such as Australia where many Afghan (including Hazara minority) asylum seekers have come in recent years.

Maybe, mantu are all about making peace with all the in-between.  

Maybe, mantu are a way for Afghans to smile when it’s best not to show it. That’s why I say thank you to the Kabul House’s guys for their kindness of the kitchen even if I can't read your faces.

Korean Mundoo, Textural Surfing, and Open-Mindedness

Stereotypes are like McDonalds – convenient but usually wrong.

So I am reminded on today’s “urbex” (urban exploration in American hipster, apparently) in Sydney’s western suburbs in search of Korean mundoo dumplings and a fitting start to the Korean New Year.

I’m this guy who prides himself on his pithy cultural observations, his curiousity and his acceptance of our diversity. Hey, I've got the patter of pluralism down pat.

But wheeling to Eastwood (one of Sydney’s Korean hubs together with Strathfield and Liverpool Street in the city), the loop in my head is saying Koreans are “tough”, “resilient”, “determined”, “all business” and “harder than the Chinese or Japanese”.  Huh?

Indeed, I’m seeing mental pictures of dudes with wrap-around shades and cigarettes yelling into their mobile phones to make sure their container from Inchon has landed on time at the Botany shipping terminal. Or, checking their kid has topped geometry at the after-school tutoring centre. Double huh?

Thankfully, my monkey mind still manages to read the signs sometimes and see the writing on the wall (literally), and show me how dumb I can manage to be. Here at Eastwood, there’s something really playful going on. More Pop Tarts than martial arts.

And so with TOBAWOO Restaurant at 104 Rowe Street on the “Korean” (as opposed to the “Chinese”) side of Eastwood train station. The official slogan is: “TOBAWOO Boasts in pork meat dishes cooked with the diner’ well-being in mind.”

The she-chef’s about 23. Cheerful and slim with a pink Yankees cap on backwards and make-up from what must be Loreal’s “steam-proof” range. The pigs on the tandem cycle on the wall look like they’re having a good time too (including with their random rhino friend).

My porcine buddies are well represented in the seafood soup with mundoo and sliced rice cakes that I order for the startling total of $10.

The mundoo are “full moon” as opposed to most dumplings’ “half-moon”. Their dough’s wrapped around like ballerina arms arching and just meeting. They’re strong enough though to hold the filling of: ground pork with chilli, ginger and garlic; jap chae  (the comforting and clear Korean potato noodles); bean sprouts; scallions; carrot slivers, and; heaps of yellowy scrambled egg. Unlike many Chinese dumplings where all filling ingredients are minced into a kind of gray pink paste, here the ingredients retain their proud independence and texture.

Textural surfing for the tastebuds seems the name of the game. 

From the spicy spikes of the mundoo to the mellowness of the fish broth to the hold-your-horses, pasta-like disks of the rice cakes to the four little side dishes: kim chee chilli cabbage; pickled and spiced tofu; lettuce with a reduced butter dressing, and; pickled shitake mushrooms.

Back and forth I go with the steel chopsticks – so skinny you could pierce your ears with them. My eating feels on my body and mind like jumping from the sauna to the spa to the pool. Sensational. 

Around me, Korean diners are, well, having fun. Lots of it. Waving steam off their soup with their phones (at least I was right about something). Toasting each other with water from the complementary pitchers. Asking for polaroids to put up the cafe's wall. On a Tuesday in the 'burbs...

The flip side of my mundoo (see below) looks a bit like a small brain rather than a baby's bum (see above). 

I am reminded that mine can be even smaller when I look at the world as I believe it to be rather than as it really is. I am reminded of all that I miss when I’m not looking in the right direction.

But hell. It’s New Year’s (Korean, that is). So, time for another resolution. 

How about this one? Keep an open mind. Truly.

Lower East Side Gyoza Walkabout

Eating my gyoza today, I recalled a Buddhist expression: "Comparisons are odious."

And indeed a life of "keeping up with the Jones" - whether it's in the material, culinary, creative or spiritual stakes - seems to me a life of always yearning and never earning. With billions of us on the planet, it's pretty good odds at the casino that there's going to be another Joneski around the corner who's smarter, more talented, drives a BMW or just can manage to keep his shirt tucked into his pants.

So, the older I get the more I make it my habit when in the presence of good stuff - be it good values, good aesthetics, good writing or good dumplings - to just say "wow" and "thanks". I'm not trying to be saintly just downright practical when I acknowledge the good stuff and stand grateful that's it's bounty has landed in my teeny-tiny corner of the cosmos.

These have come my way of recent days:

• the Ichiraku Japanese Noodle Bar in Eastwood in Sydney's suburbs, and; 
• Dr Alexander Motyl and his new novella, "My Orchidia", which is loosely about ambling about in another era with another rhythm in the East Village, loosely looking for a memorable old place that served varenyk dumplings (and pizza).

The first make a terrific "yin and yang" gyoza dumpling - delicate in its nearly translucent dough and gentle frying, but powerful in its pork and mega-ginger flavours. (Did I say mega? Well double it.) 

I always admire gyoza for being so well prepared - even when they are certainly not the main game of a Japanese ramen soup bar. An accompaniment but a very honourable one. It speaks to me of the Code of Bushido - even if that was apparently written in a bar in Philly or on breaks from repairing radiators in Bakersfield or some place else far away from your local Shinto temple.

And Alexander? Well, how beautiful is the following?

"Look, boyo, the perfect dumpling's an art form, an exquisite melding of lines, spaces, and textures... It takes Fingersptizengefuhl. That's Swiss for the tingling you feel in your fingertips after you've climbed a mountain and can still see the butterflies in the valley below."

Wow and thanks. Did I say wow and thanks? Well, double it.

Letting Go of Veggie Dumplings

To end 2012, I did a six day silent retreat at a Buddhist monastery in the Southern Highlands (www.sunnataram.org) and ate no dumplings. Until today. 

At the retreat, Phra Mana and his fellow Thai "forest monks" -  fine and remarkable men who built the pagoda at left starting with no skills, no stone and no schekels - had me meditate for many hours to train and clear the mind and, then, see things for what they are. 

Let me say this: it's a mind that needs clearing in the way an old cat lady's house does. The gear it regularly slips into is some combination of dishevelment, short-termism and a reasonable amount of optimism. 

It reminds me of the Bowery bums of my youth who used to smear stuff on your windscreen to get you to give them a buck to clean it off - and somehow managed to still mostly be endearing. Sometimes.

Today, we took my Lebowski-like noggin and Miss Suzi to vegetable dumplings and (accidently ordered) steamed BBQ pork buns at a Shanghainese restaurant in Eastwood. It's there that I really learned the monks' lesson about attachment, and all the angst it causes us, and, with clear mind and vision, letting go, and all the calm it gives us. 

Or, to quote that British Buddhist master, Mick Jagger, "you can't always get what you want."

I really wanted these dumplings. I'd thought about having a serving at retreat. I specifically looked stuff up on Al Gore's Internet. I invested in a fantasy about some luscious morsels that would somehow make my day and my existence on this planet all the better.

I had many expectations and, as I've heard from a friend, "expectations are pre-meditated resentments."

Indeed, what we got were dumplings - not some new lease on life or even a discount on my car insurance policy. A workmanlike serve of veggie ones with a finely-chopped blend of buk choy, baby bean sprouts, fungus, a touch of carrot and something else we couldn't figure out. Nicely constructed parcel of two chambers within the one overall piece. 

Bottom line: in the pantheon of great Chinese dumplings available in Sydney, they were good not great. 

And, my monkey-like mind - in full chimpanzee mode - went straight to all that really helpful monologue: why'd I waste my time and money; we coulda gone across the road to that other joint with the Korean mandu; what the hell do I write about now...

Then, I got lucky. I somehow managed to hit the pause button. I listened to myself breathe. I had another bite.  I realised something. 

It's aniseed, that thing we couldn't figure out. Wow, that's pretty cool. 

Then, I saw the Chinese couple at the table next to us using their oblong spoons to capture the soup from their xia long bao, Shanghainese soup dumplings. Wow, that's pretty cool. 

Then, I heard love in my wife's comment: "Do you want to order something else for art's sake?" 

By that time, I actually didn't want for much.

Or as Monk Mick continued to say: "But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need." 

"Vushka" Means "Ears" and So At Christmas I Listen

At Christmas, little ear-shaped and mushroom-filled dumplings called "vushka" swim in the red borschts upon the elaborately embroidered tablecloths of many Ukrainian homes. 

"Vushka" are a special food for a special day - whether it's celebrated on December 25th or, like most Ukrainians, on January 7th, which is it's date on the old or "Julian" calendar. Special because:

• "vushka" are only eaten once a year at the "12 courses for 12 apostles" Holy Night supper that starts with the first star in the sky;
• "vushka" are often made from the finest dried mushrooms - which at more than $300 per kilo could become the stuff of smuggling and packages Duct-taped to airplane passengers;
• "vushka" are small and fiddly and need great care and love in the making, and;
• "vushka" are shared with the people we are closest to. 

Like my Shanghai-based sister. She recently sent me a reference claiming ear-named dumplings may have come from ancient China where a charitable emperor fed them to the poor to ease a disease of their ears. If they heal ears I know not, but can attest to them helping me use my own.

At my childhood Christmases on the Shawangunk ridge of upstate New York, with cousins, sisters, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, neighbours, and uncles who weren't really uncles but had nowhere else to share the meal, the specialness of "vushka" was respected and recognised through their rationing.  To remind ourselves that goodness can be fragile and is to be cherished, each bowl carefully got an allocation of three. You ate them slowly and well - or at least that was the idea.

If you somehow got one more than the quota, it was almost as good as the presents delivered by the "angels" to the bottom of the "yalynka" (Christmas tree) after the ringing of the bells (or just clinking of cognac glasses if the grown-ups couldn't be bothered).

This year, my Australian wife said to me: "Hey, are we going to have those little ear-thing dumplings?" 

And, it made me listen. Listen to the love she gives me and those around her. Listen to her desire to make this Christmas special and better for our families. Listen to her implicit desire for renewal and connection.

I was fortunate enough to keeping listening, to really try to tune into my heart and my surrounds, down at the modern and gym-like Cathedral at Parramatta - filled with Filipinos, Chinese, Italians, "Aussie Aussies" and countless others in what's considered the world's most culturally diverse archdiocese.

As we waited for Christmas Mass, I first heard us fidgeting with newsletters and watched us checking out each other's outfits and waistlines. I looked at faces and made out that I saw worry about the success or failure of family lunches to follow, or whether the Council's gift of free parking was really legit. 

I thought about how we (okay me) get so caught up in the "business of busy" that seems to be modern life. When did a late train become so important? Why is a family member's or work colleague's off-the-cuff remark a dagger? How does the small stuff become my daily "fiscal cliff"? 

As the Go-Betweens song goes: "always the traffic, always the lights". Why is there always seemingly more noise and more clutter - or the "monkey mind" as the Buddhists call it?

But then I listened to the invited Tongan choir - flowing white robes against dark South Pacific faces - warm up by soaring through its "Gloria". And, I don't mean the Van Morrison or Laura Branigan songs. 

The choir singers as big as defensive tackles in the NFL - and that's just the girls - but with pure voices that took things above and beyond my daily chores, bores and snores. Truly transcendent "Gloria in Excelcis Deo".

Calming yet vibrant like a lush garden right after rain. I make out it was improbably but tenderly cultivated and grown in some crappy, rented Scout hall on many Wednesday nights after a working day cleaning other people's waste at the hospital, or driving a school bus of screaming kids, or getting tossed around by a road-side jackhammer.

During the sermon, I listened to the Sri Lankan priest - now safe from a brutal war - ask us to pray for tiny tots in Connecticut and how we were going to make this Christmas different.

So, I prayed - which is always harder than I care to admit. Then, I went home and put some "vushka" on, photographed them with a phone that's apparently smarter than me, and wrote what I hope are these simple if too many words. 

Because as those little "ears" float there in a soup of my making on a table in our house with my wife pottering, I am thankful to have heard the message of hope and light that is Christmas and share it with you.

Merry Christmas. Peace be with you.

(PS: Here's a link for "vushka" recipes from Olga Drozd: http://www.ukrainianclassickitchen.ca/index.php?topic=4920.msg7388#msg7388. Of Ukrainian heritage, Olga was born in Germany, raised in Australia and now lives in Canada, and I'm grateful for her really, really excellent website.)

Serious Dumplings, Serious Responsibilities and a Tragic Radio Prank

That dumplings provide nutrition and joy in the eating is well-established. That dumplings provide satisfaction in the making is also well-established.

It is, however, less acknowledged that dumplings are also a serious matter. A matter of responsibility to oneself and others, as we shall explore.

In Sydney, now in the midst of what a friend calls the dumpling 'meta-trend', that seriousness gets no more serious than where the trending may have started. 

Established around 15 or so years ago, Sea Bay* is a northern Chinese eatery on Pitt Street in the Haymarket section of Sydney's CBD, which specialises in fried pork dumplings. 

The Haymarket's never been glamorous and so it remains. It's flophouses of old - filled with wino's and guys 'known to the Police' - have been rebadged as hostels. They're now filled with Irish backpackers (read building site labourers) snapped in the arse by the tail of the Irish Tiger as he raced out the door.

Squat, dark, narrow and consisting of some dozen small cheap tables, Sea Bay stands in contrast to neighbouring Chinatown's long-established Hong Kong style food palazzos. It's all gold watches at Golden Century. Show and blow and if you don't have 40 fish tanks filled with sea creatures you don't count for nothing... 

Initially catering to newer migrants from the People's Republic of China, Sea Bay just gets on with what it has to do. Eg, continue to make among the city's finest pork and chive fried dumplings.  Dumplings that remarkably keep their firmness on this Westerner's clumsy chopstick rather than the "silky" type that flop about. Dumplings where I have to keep pondering the fine filling even though I obviously know what the menu said. "It can't possibly be just pork and chives and a bit of garlic..."

As I eat them, I also think this is a serious matter. Somebody has made thoughtful decisions to develop the recipe. Somebody has carefully selected ingredients and their suppliers. Somebody has recruited and trained the right cooks. Somebody keeps checking to make sure that somebody else - eg, me - is very pleased indeed with his feed. Somebody wakes early and goes to bed late for the seemingly simple exercise of me being about to nourish myself in a pleasurable way.

Somebody clearly knows and meets their responsibilities to their dish, their business, their suppliers and employees, and their customers. 

Or to paraphrase an acquaintance, somebody's being the adult in the room. 

This week, as I eat my dumplings and write about them, and as I read the really horrible news about a London nurse perhaps taking her own life due to the shame she felt for being radio-pranked, I am thinking a fair bit about "the adult in the room". 

Sure, I'm as interested as everybody else in the 2Day situation's permutations when it comes to the law and media ethics. But I'm more concerned to ask of myself: 

Would I have been the adult in the room? Would I have been responsible enough to ask the hard questions? Would I have been responsible enough to pull things up before they went too far and possibly hurt another? Am I consistently responsible to myself, those around me and the world - or do I just turn up when it's convenient? Am I really and fully present to the stuff that I'm doing so that I can really and fully do the right thing?

And, frankly, I can't say that I am. I seek to honour the memory of a distant nurse, wife and mother by looking at my own responsibilities. I reflect and ask for presence, patience and wisdom. The kind of presence, patience and wisdom that constantly brings me back to my connection to others and their well-being. The kind of presence, patience and wisdom a dumpling maker has shown in her small task that touches my heart in a bigger way than she might know.

* There are now Sea Bays in the 'burbs including at Burwood. The Pitt Street original remains the best - and most serious. Try also: lamb skewers with cumin; spring pancakes with jellied noodles, and; cold cucumber and garlic salad.

Pyrizhky - And What They Tell Me About Letting Go But Not Falling Down

Do we see things because we are looking for them? Or, are things we're meant to see put into our view?

I was thinking about this today when I came upon a Facebook friend's post. She'd decided to have a go at 'pyrizhky' - a Ukrainian (and presumably otherwise Eastern European) fare of pastry dough around a filling of either a ground meat with onion and mushrooms, or sauerkraut, or cheese. Unlike many dumplings, 'pyrizhky' are baked, which is similar to the 'burek' of the Turks, Bosnians and others.

And, some folks - and this I really need to try - also further cover and cook them in a creamy dill sauce. Here's a link for an amazing recipe: http://www.ukrainianclassickitchen.ca/index.php?topic=2355.0

Across 15,000 kilometres of land and sea, and some 30 years since we last spoke in person, I loved reading my FB friend's 'pyrizhky' post. It seemed filled with love for what she was doing and the places of the heart it comes from, including her getting instructions from her mom. It was also gave me a glimpse at the serious work and effort involved in her dumpling making labours. 'Pyrizhky' - with several stages of dough mixing and kneading, filling preparation, and baking etc - sure ain't like going through Drive Thru at McDonald's.

It said something to me about getting the balance right in my life - hopefully as good as the memorable guy's on the right.

I sometimes wonder - including aloud right here - whether we make our lives a certain way or they're just meant to be a certain way. Maybe, neither. I don't pretend at the final answer, but I'd like to think I at least have a good relationship with my own failures!

Indeed, the harder I have tried to make my life a certain way - the more I whipped and kicked it into a particular shape of expectations - the less it worked in the end. In fact, the more I forced things in my own drill-sergeant and arrogant way - be they relationships, jobs, material aspirations - the more stuffed up they got for me and those around me.

Some would say it's because I was pushing against the grain of stuff that's a whole lot bigger than me or that I was trying to impossibly realign the planets into an order that spells out my name (which is really hard when they've just demoted Pluto and there's only one Earth for E and no planets for T or R). 

A mate who used to work as a dealer at the casino says: "You and you're $50 - after a long night at the bar - just aren't going to beat me and my backer's billions."

Or, to put it another way that I like: "If you want to make God laugh, make a plan."

(Not that God and casino owners are quite in the same category.)

So, if only because my pain threshold isn't what it used to be, it's about balance nowadays for me. On the one side of the scales, I put my dreams and intentions. Sometimes, I think of these as hopeful seeds that I plant in the soil that is my heart and soul. On the other side, it's about the higher power of all our lives doing what it needs to do - and me getting right out of the way! 

Dumplings teach me about balance and acceptance. The right amount of pastry to filling. The right amount of frying, steaming or boiling so the dumpling's neither too soggy or too tough. The right amount of dedication and preparation so that it's still fun and fulfilling and not hard slog. The right amount of will and determination coupled with belief in my higher power and just letting go in favour of The Bigger Plan (with a really big capital B).

So, to my 'pyrizhky'-making FB friend, may you and yours have a wonderful feed. I won't be able to have even a bite, but I've already been nourished.