Bring Food to Feed Monks Elmhurst
(Many of the fairs, festivals, and other wonderful food events that usually fill my calendar each spring have been postponed or cancelled. This post is based on celebrations in previous years.)
Elmhurst, in April, is not as dependably warm as Thailand. For Songkran — the Thai water festival that marks the Buddhist New Year — there's little of the traditional "water play" that soaks friends and strangers alike. One tradition that does carry on at Wat Buddha Thai Thavorn Vanaram, however, is the building of sand stupas. These are meant as symbolic compensation for the dirt that congregants have carried away from the temple, on the soles of their feet, during the past year.
Another tradition is the food. As during autumn's Royal Kathin Celebration, the offering of respects to the temple, and the monks, is accompanied by food prepared by congregants and Thai restaurants. All are welcome to partake, bearing in mind the spirit of the occasion. A donation to the temple is welcome, too.
For more from multiple years of this celebration, see my photos on Flickr.
Songkran Festival at Wat Buddha Thai Thavorn Vanaram
76-16 46th Ave. (76th-78th Sts.), Elmhurst, Queens
www.Facebook.com/pages/Wat-Buddha-Thai-Thavorn-Vanaram/137256256319623
(The 2020 celebration has been cancelled)
(Many of the fairs, festivals, and other wonderful food events that usually fill my calendar each spring have been postponed or cancelled. This post is based on Thingyan celebrations of previous years.)
From sunnier days: tofu thoke, a salad made from yellow chickpea (besan) flour, prepared on the spot, by hand (gloved hand, even then). This annual celebration of Thingyan, the water festival that marks the Burmese New Year, is organized by the Light of Dhamma Buddhist Association (LDBA) for the benefit of Visoddaryon Dhamma Ramsi Vihara, a local Burmese Buddhist monastery. For more photos from multiple years of the festival, see my album on Flickr.
LDBA Thingyan festival
Parish hall of St. James Episcopal Church, 84-07 Broadway (St. James-Corona Aves.), Elmhurst, Queens
(The 2020 festival, previously scheduled for April 11, has been cancelled)
Lady fingers and rat tails: okra in belacan sauce, pungent with fermented shrimp, and stir-fried pearl noodles, as they often are called in polite company. If the rat-tail name gives you pause, however, the belacan aroma might stop you short. Neither was an impediment at our group lunch; see more photos on Flickr.
Coco Malaysian Cuisine
8269 Broadway (Elmhurst-Whitney Aves.), Elmhurst, Queens
718-565-2030
www.CocoMalaysianCuisine.com
In midafternoon, a masked, gloved presenter for China Central Television — presumably reporting on the coronavirus from his home country — speaks onscreen above a near-empty dining area. Nearby: birds on bare branches.
Seen at, and just outside, the HK Food Court
8202 45th Ave. (82nd-83rd Sts.), Elmhurst, Queens
(This venue is closed.) Duck, duck, duck — "swimming," crispy, in salad — at this tiny Thai restaurant. Not shown: still more duck, and several menu items entirely duck-free.
Raan Kway Teow
7814 Roosevelt Ave. (entrance on 78th St.), Elmhurst, Queens
929-424-3315
www.Facebook.com/Raan-Kway-Teow-294648997878943
(Update, February 2020: The Super HK Food Court has reopened.) Someone forgot to tell a tankful of large gaping fish, but everyone else seemed to have pretty much cleared out. This food court, which replaced a mini-mall in the basement of the Super HK market, opened in November 2018 with some two dozen stalls. The original vendors served food from Shaanxi, Jiangnan, Shaxian, Wenzhou, Lanzhou, Shanghai, Sichuan, and Taiwan; a recent addition served Uyghur cuisine native to China's Northwest.
The market on the ground floor remains open (and busy). The sibling HK Food Court, in Elmhurst, remains open, too, although only half of its stalls are occupied. Beyond the language of the sign itself — "until further notice" — at the moment I can't offer more.
Super HK Food Court
3711 Main St. (37th-38th Aves., in the basement of a like-named supermarket), Flushing, Queens (reopened, after about two weeks)
HK Food Court
8202 45th Ave. (82nd-83rd Sts.), Elmhurst, Queens (remains open)
From the most recent food fair, a well-dressed bowl of warm tofu over rice noodles. Extra bread on the side for me, please.
Previously: At home in the high country of northern Burma, the Kachin people once had little access to cooking oil. Traditionally, Naomi Duguid writes in Burma: Rivers of Flavor, they relied on "grilling, steaming (in leaf-wrapped packages), or boiling to cook their food." These days, she adds, many Kachin live at lower altitudes, where they have "less access to wild-gathered leaves" but find that oil is more available.
Kachin cooking techniques have evolved accordingly, Duguid notes. Even so, an old-school banana-leaf bundle like the one shown at bottom, filled with steamed fish, greens, and chiles, will always find room at the table. For more food-fair highlights, see my photo collection on Flickr.
Kachin Traditional Food Fair
Parish house of St. James Episcopal Church, 8407 Broadway (St. James-Corona Aves.), Elmhurst, Queens
www.Facebook.com/events/448390215801737
(The 2019 food fair was held on November 30)
(This venue is closed.) Mine were meant to be burdock rice rolls, but perhaps Jin Ma was running short of the root crop; for the same low price, lots of beef was piled on, too. When I took a breather, a fellow customer offered that this shop serves homey, "country" cooking of a sort not generally found in restaurants. I didn't think to ask her about the secret behind another dish, which I still know only from a handwritten sign.
Jin Ma Bakery
8622 Broadway (at Justice Ave., inside a mini food court), Elmhurst, Queens
646-258-7011
www.JinMaBakery.com
Pandan leaves lent these crepes their bright green color. Durian contributed a perfume that was lush and pervasive: After a spell in close quarters, ordinary cream had become durian cream.
Previously: Although both tinutuan and bubur kampiun (shown below) are Indonesian porridges, you'd never mistake one for the other. The first is also called bubur Manado, after the capital of North Sulawesi province; this version added corn, spinach, and kabocha to a base of rice congee, while salty fish and a fiery sambal (not shown) provided finishing touches. The second, literally "champion porridge," is a West Sumatran dessert medley that combined glutinous rice balls in syrup, plantain with palm sugar, and spiced custard, all on a base of rice flour cooked with coconut milk. One is savory, the other, sweet (and, for me, both were on the house).
That these two porridges look nothing alike helps illustrate the range of Indonesian regional cuisines. Consider that, in the United States, the whole hog barbecue of eastern North Carolina and the brisket and ribs of the Hill Country west of Austin, Texas, are separated by some 1,300 miles, as the crow flies. Add a further 400 miles to the flight, swap out the crow for the Javan hawk-eagle, and you'll have an idea of the distance from North Sulawesi to West Sumatra. Indonesia is a big country, with many different foodways; this monthly bazaar is a great place to explore them.
Indonesian Gastronomy Association bazaar
Elmhurst Memorial League, 8824 43rd Ave. (near Whitney Ave.), Elmhurst, Queens
www.Facebook.com/IGA.Bazaar
Monthly, more or less
(Photo album expanded with eight additional dishes.) At the first sight of dried scallops with squash, you might ask, where are the scallops? The featured ingredient is present throughout, but — after being cooked and dried near the fishery, then rehydrated in the kitchen and torn to bits to release as much flavor as possible — the shellfish muscle meats are near-impossible to recognize. The beige tidbit in the center I teased out just for the photo; most of the scallops were in shreds.
Like salt-cured meats, dried scallops are rich in umami, but the marine saltiness of their home waters is tempered with a sweet undercurrent. When this dish is on the table, you'll need no prompting to eat your vegetables.
For English speakers the menu identifies the second dish shown here as "ginger chicken with sesame oil," but to customers who read Chinese, the characters that signify "three cup chicken" are more evocative. Equal parts sesame oil, rice wine, and soy sauce are cooked down, often in the presence of ginger, garlic, chili peppers, and sugar, until their flavors are absorbed by the chicken; basil is commonly added as a finishing touch. Since the liquids are largely reduced, when served the dish often sizzles. At a minimum, it should glow; so will you.
For more dishes from several meals, see my photo album.
Taiwanese Specialties
84-02 Broadway (at St. James Ave.), Elmhurst, Queens
718-429-4818
www.Facebook.com/Heart.Of.Taiwan
Source: https://www.eatingintranslation.com/elmhurst/page/3/
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