MORE THAN APPLE PIE

As the fare in many Thamel restaurant attests, many fearless chefs try cooking western food in Nepal, only to produce insipid grub that makes westerners feel misanthropic, and sends Nepalis scurrying home of dal-bhat-tarkari. How to cook a pancake that isn't rubbery? How to make a soup that actually has taste? How to make an apple pie that is more than just a heap of spiced apples? Such mysteries have baffled many local chefs.

Now, to demystify the art of western cooking in Nepal, Mike Frame (the Mike in Mike's Breakfast) has written Mike's Breakfast: Cooking in Nepal and then Some, parting with trade secrets that have made his restaurant the favorite hang-out of all time for Kathmandu's jet-setting classes. The loyal fan base of Mike's Breakfast includes long-term expats discussing the elusive long-term visa, showy young professionals flashing mobile phones, foreign-returned Nepalis agonizing over culture clashes, INGO and NGO working hosting business lunches, mountain climbers tucking into chicken sizzlers, and stray cosmopolitan souls who have slowly lose their bearings if they cannot eat western food that tastes the way western food is supposed to taste.The food that makes them flock to Mike's Breakfast can now be cooked at home.

Yet Mike's Breakfast will appeal even to those who have no interest in cooking, because Frame writes like a seasoned writer not just about his recipes, but about his forty-year-long experience in Nepal. He arrived in Nepal as a teacher in the Peace Corps in the early 60's and came back for a variety of jobs in the agriculture sector until he hit upon the idea of beginning a restaurant in the mid 80's, and found Devesh Shrestha, Dilip Baniya and other Nepali partners to collaborate with.

Mike's Breakfast is by turns hilarious, informative, irreverent and contemplative. Frame writes of having to drink much tongba in order to get the spent grains of millet muffins. He mourns the replacement of Nepali majors such as the maund and dharni and saer and pau by other more standardized measurements. Any one who wonders how to obtain fresh lard or tongue or cream in Kathmandu can find out by reading this book. The author also shares his experience in growing a kitchen garden, in smearing the kitchen with cow dung, and on buying such tricky items as local cheese, flours, vegetables and fruit. He lists recipes local buffalo, wild boar, pig, goat and chicken dishes as well as recipes for Swedish meatballs and pork ribs. And those who feel that pie is among the best contributions that they US has made to Nepal can learn much from the recipes for apple, pears, peach, apricot, raspberry, rhubarb, and strawberry, mince meat, sour cream raisin, meringue, chocolate and pumpkin pie. Throughout the book Frame provides the suggestions for what to do when the basic ingredients for these dishes cannot be found, or when the quality of these ingredients varies wildly form shop to shop.

One of the best chapters in the book though, is dedicated to that all Nepali staple, rice. Now Nepalis get very finicky about the rice, and obviously, Frame has listened to too much conflicting advise about how to cook rice perfectly. His recommendations spoof the Nepali obsession for perfect rice: "rinse the rice or don't rinse the rice in cold or lukewarm water...cover pot or donot cover pot..stir pot continually, intermittently, at critical times, when you remember, only once, or not at all. Stir either vigorously, lazily or making very little disturbance...The rice may be like porridge, sticking, breaking into individual particles, al dante, or hard and may or may not have a hard or scorched layer on the bottom, but it will be delicious!".

The fact is that it is very hard to go wrong with rice. Another excellent chapter is on a famine in the village of Kathare, in north west Dhankuta district, where Frame served two years in a Peace Corps as one crop after another produces low yields, villagers begin to stop selling grains, to kill their chickens, to buy controlled-price rations from government stores. The bi-weekly market starts to dwindle. Schools close because teachers cannot buy grains. Villagers begin to pawn their jewelry in order to buy grains to get them through the lean winter season.

Whether contemplative, as in this chapter, or witty, as in much of the book, Frames writing is rooted in his experience without being about himself. This is what makes Mike's Breakfast such a good read. Here is a book that Nepalis expatriates, and visitors to Nepal alike can enjoy, and also learn from.

Back to Mike's cookbook page