The United States of Friendship Part 5 - Nina

Kari Udang Dan Terung

Take…

600 g uncooked prawns, medium size
8 shallots, halved
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon sugar
50 g ghee or oil
300 g onions, sliced
500 ml coconut milk
250 ml water
480 g finger eggplants, chopped
4 dried curry leaves

Step 1 - Shell and devein prawns.

Step 2 - Blend or process the shallots, chili, turmeric and sugar until the shallots are finely chopped.

Step 3 - Heat oil in a wok and add the onions and cook stirring until soft.

Step 4 - Add the shallot mixture and cook stirring until fragrant. 

Step 5 - Add the coconut milk and water and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes.

Step 6 - Add the eggplants and curry leaves to the coconut mixture and cook uncovered about 15 minutes or until the eggplants are tender.

Step 7 – Stir in the prawns and cook until prawns are tender 5-10 minutes.

Step 8 – Smile when you hear a friend declare “Mmmmm….. beats Layang Layang any day.”

The United States of Friendship Part 5 – Nina

Some people are into fashion.

Some people into gadgets.

Some into sports and games.

Some music.

I am into food.

I realized I was into food in my mid 20s, and decided I should find a way to declare it.

So when I applied to Contract Advertising to become one of their Creative Group Heads, it went on to my resume in the hobbies section.

Reading, Writing, Dancing (a story for another post), Composing (we know where that got me). Food.

At that time, I still did not know how to cook.

So “Food” meant discovering a new dish at a restaurant, or at someone’s house which made my palate sing, which was magic to my taste buds.

It would be a huge thrill for me to discover a new entree, appetizer, dessert, or even a soup and become an evangelist for it.

Tom Yum Soup was one such discovery, and I think I must have introduced at least 4 or 5 different grateful people to it.

In different friend’s homes, they were used to me swooning over something as simple as “mor kuzhambhu” (which I couldn't wait to get to Sharada's place to have) or "rasam", especially Shreekant Jha's version of it.

When I moved to America and started cooking, my appreciation for food increased.

The public libraries were well stocked with recipe books. And it was from a book I checked out at the Evergreen library, I found the recipe for pachadi, which became my earliest and most broadcasted cooking accomplishment.

One of the first things I did when the internet became available was to spend time searching for recipes for my favorite foods.

It was fun to learn to make some of the things I could only eat at a restaurant, a friend’s house, or a family member’s house earlier.

The people in my family are great ones for cooking, if you remember my Cake Boss Family post.

While I would never successfully learn to make chappathis, appams or medu vadas, I did learn to please my palate with my cooking.

Sometimes I'd do everything from scratch.

Other times, I would use ready-made mixes.

I discovered you didn’t always have to sweat it.

Idlis made with Gits idli mix turn out very nicely, thank you.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

With my interest in food, it was very exciting when life brought Nina, a fellow foodie, into my life.

Nina and I began a discovery trip of Bay Area Asian foods.

Coworkers at Palm, a love for Asian food drew us to begin lunching together.

A tradition we have kept up for over 10 years now.

Meeting 3-4 times a year for lunch.

Thanks to Nina, I have visited many different Indian, Chinese and Thai restaurants in the Bay Area.

And when Banana Leaf and Layang Layang, the first Malaysian restaurants, opened up in Milpitas and San Jose, thanks to Nina’s finely tuned antenna for these most important developments, I was among the first to find out and become acquainted with their offerings.

I was an instant convert to Malaysian food and would be willing to wait for up to 2 hours outside Banana Leaf to get a table just to eat their Roti Prata and Mango Chicken.

What lengths we will go to for food we like!

Food is an endlessly fascinating universe if you are interested in where it will take you.

Which people like Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern get.

It doesn’t stop at “eating” food.

Food also makes riveting viewing, riveting reading.

One of the best books I read in 2012 was surprisingly "The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance" by Thomas McNamee, a biography of Craig Claiborne, the famed New York Times food critic.

I could identify with Craig Claiborne’s delight in finding and promoting new foods.

You might remember me going ga ga about Green Papaya Salad in my post How To Become A New Person.

This is how I am.

Recently, thanks to Nina, I tried Indonesian cuisine for the first time at Bay Leaf in Sunnyvale.

What did I think?

How about….. “I am Minoo Jha and I approve this message: ‘Indonesian food is da bomb, dancing fish, stink bean (peteh) and all’

Nina and I.

For fancy's sake, I would like to think of us as the Lewis and Clark of Bay Area Asian food restaurants.

Or the Mimi Sheraton and Ruth Reichl, if you will.

We do love Asian food.

If we got jobs as food critics of Bay Area Indian, Chinese, Thai, Malaysian, Korean and Indonesian restaurants, it's possible we’d do a decent job.

“Berry possible” in curry flavored spelling bee speak.

Or “highly probabilistic” in Mangaloreanspeak.

We both fret about how we come across in our written communication.

And it shows.

Nina is a nifty communicator.

She is compelling and readable and entertaining and can turn an ordinary e-mail or an online posting into a shining example of charm and wit.

I am still trying to worm a guest post out of her.

It will be called “Don’t forget the sambal”

Last year, when we hadn’t gotten together for lunch or dinner in a while, because my sporadic income from contracting necessitated some belt-tightening on my part, Nina sent me an e-mail saying “I’m cooking.  Come hungry”

I was really touched.

Life is tough in the US. 

Finding time even to cook for oneself, or one’s family is tough.

Entertaining even tougher.

But here was Nina, empathetic about my situation, deciding to cook rather than have me spend money at a restaurant.

I was amazed at what she turned out.

Nina is a native Malay.

The Malaysian seafood dishes she cooked that day were so good, I had to pay her the ultimate compliment (or penultimate compliment in Mangaloreanspeak), the one which me and my sis Rosie trot out to anyone who cooks a meal we would pay good money for….

“My, this is fantastic. You should open your own restaurant!”

I ate admiringly.

And gratefully.

But my friendship with Nina is not just about food.

2005 was a tough year for me.

Having made the decision to move my mother to an assisted living facility in late 2004, I watched her deteriorate and she eventually passed from our lives on June 5, 2005.

When Nina called me in July of 2005, she and I had been out of touch for a couple of years, and I brought her up to date on my professional and personal circumstances.

Besides learning of my mother’s death, she learned that after a 6 month break from work, I was looking to start working again.

Less than a month later, I received an e-mail from her about a Commissions Analyst opening at a company called Extreme Networks. She said several ex colleagues from Palm were working at Extreme and she gave me the contact information for Kara who was one of them.

Nina had come across the job on a then little known website called LinkedIn.

Before a week was out, I had interviewed at Extreme and was accepted for the job.

It would put the food on my table for the next 5 years.

Extreme Networks was conveniently located next to some of our favorite restaurants such as Bombay Garden, and Nina and I were able to resume our lunching tradition.

In recent years, when tax season rolls round, Nina and I have been tackling Turbo Tax together. 

Taxes are supposed to be as painful as removing teeth.

But we somehow always find ourselves cackling.

Over silly things like when meaning to say “yes”, she blurts out the Turbo Tax end-of-page prompt “Continue” to me.

Or about some of the wackier tax deductions on Turbo Tax.

All this talk of food is making me hungry.  So I gotta go and get me something to eat.

But before I do, I would like to say thank you to Nina for the gastronomical experiences.

And thank you for being my friend!

Dear Reader – thanks for coming along with me on this culinary memoir about a cherished friendship.  Hope to see you next week for the next installment of the United States of Friendship…..M…..a Pearl Seeker like you.