KSCR: Late Night Sessions with DJ Nosh

29 April 2009 22:00 PST

remix night, hip house, electronic rock

Last Wednesday night at 10pm I hosted my last 2-hour DJ set live on the air called “Late Night Sessions” featuring after-hours grooves and all sorts of genre fusions. Above you’ll find the audio for my final show at KSCR. Keep on the lookout here as I re-release some of my shows from last semester for your listening enjoyment.

On my plate: angel’s food cake with fresh strawberries. Simple, but oh so delicious

I know you’ve been to a Chinese restaurant and just as soon as you kick back and start wondering what’s for dessert, you’re handed a single fortune cookie along with the check. I know you’ve gobbled up a fantastic sushi spread at your local Japanese joint only to be offered the choice between green tea or mochi ice cream, either of which you could pick up at your local Asian market for less than the price of edamame. I know you’ve had some late night pho and been ushered out the door with nothing but a few sliced oranges. I know the closest you’ll get to sweet during your usual pad-thai runs are under the “curry” section of the menu. And I know you’re tired of it.

Bakery and dessert café in Hannam-dong, Seoul.

It’s easy to write off Asian desserts as a lost cause, or as non-existant, but a stroll down any street of LA’s Chinatown, Koreatown, Thai Town, or Little Tokyo will reveal a world of bakeries and sweet shops that tout the contrary. So what’s an angelino to do? My advice is to take some time to nibble and sample and pepper the poor salesclerk with any and all questions, because any effort you put into understanding the strange but mostly delicious world of Asian sweets will open you up to a world of new and exotic after-dinner options. Whether it’s spewing powder everywhere as you bite into mochi (soft candy from pounded rice) in Little Tokyo, eyeing the beautiful songphyun (rice cakes with chestnuts) during Koreatown’s annual Chusok festival, on the quest for the perfect botan rice candy (chewy caramel-like candy that dissolves in your mouth) in Chinatown, or asking for advice on recipes for yemas (egg candies) in Historic Filipino Town, there’s a lot of variety to be found.

Cherry flower cake: green tea biscuit, cherry flower cream, and soybean sablee.

For residents of a city so chock full of French-style bakeries and bistros, it can be hard to digest the sensibilities of Asian jellies and cake-y bread-ish-things if you’re expecting something with yeast or frosting. Do not despair! You’ve got to remember that in Asia, desserts don’t really belong as part of the meal but rather serve as between-meal snacks and as specialties for holidays and occasions. And while their American counterparts usually involve a baked pastry portion, Asian desserts are almost always fruit or fruit-flavoured. Vegetarians and vegans rejoice, an overwhelming majority of all asian jellied desserts are made with seaweed agar rather than animal-based gelatin. Once you get over the strange, usually squishy and muted pastel look of Asian desserts you might feel up to trying a few. Surprise! Asian sweets aren’t actually all that sweet. Sure, there’s the occasionally Japanese gummy candy in colours so vibrant they’ll turn your tongue purple, but for the most part Asian desserts are more subtle, more naturally flavoured varieties of the word. Expect rose-flavoured layers, broths flavoured with dates, coconut milk galore, and a whole new way to look at rice.

Tapioca pearls in coconut milk with peach, lemon juice, and jellied berry heart.

While you will find a number of custards, such as Sri Lankan vattalappam, you’re quite unlikely to find anything dairy-based on an Asian menu, as a large percentage of the population is lactose intolerant. Hence the abundance of fresh fruit, which is an expensive commodity in many countries. That is not to say Asian desserts lack creaminess. Perhaps the creamiest of all is the Vietnamese che dau trang, a pudding rich and soft, eggless and dairy-free. Japanese an pan (stuffed bread) has a variety of textures ranging from grainy to dripping, while melon buns are both pillowy soft and honeybee sticky. Korean baesook (stewed pear with peppercorn) packs a crunchy punch against spoon soft balls of mild fruit. Filipino specialty ginataang pinipig (green pinipig with coconut cream) is anything but solid, and Indian kheer is better than yoghurt. So next time you grow tired of Mars bars and ice cream, consider taking a stroll into one of LA’s many Asian bakeries.

An pan: sweet sponge bun filled with azuki red bean paste.

Where to look in Los Angeles:

Ho Won Dang in Koreatown

Phoneix Bakery in Elysian Park

Kiki Bakery in Alhambra

Queen’s Bakery in Chinatown

Yamazakipan in Little Tokyo

All pictures published under the Creative Commons license.

KSCR: Late Night Sessions with DJ Nosh

22 April 2009 22:00 PST

epic dub, acid jazz, Japanese lounge

Every Wednesday night at 10pm I host a 2-hour DJ set live on the air called “Late Night Sessions” featuring after-hours grooves and all sorts of genre fusions. Above you’ll find the audio for this week’s show. Feel free to tune in live to the show next week at kscr.org. In the meantime, enjoy.

RIYL: TV on the Radio, Hard Place, Rufus Wainwright

Of Montreal have been around for ages, and for a few years there they even produced music that made sense. Satanic Panic in the Attic and The Sunlandic Twins were electropop masterpieces, and with a collective like Elephant 6 backing you, it’s hard to believe mastermind Kevin Barnes could do wrong. Yet his experimentation in the latest releases as not Barnes but alter ego “George Fruit” just aren’t doing the Of Montreal sound justice. Sure I know his familial and psychological episodes have produced what is a contradictory dark yet still upbeat psychedelic sound, but it seems they are just one step removed from their ideal groove. Latest release Skeletal Lamping is still definitively psychedelic synth pop, but instead of a progressive departure, it feels more like a step backwards towards the band’s half-baked and inconsistent Cherry Peel days.

If you’re unfamiliar with Of Montreal’s extensive body of work, you might be taken aback by the sudden tempo changes, the constant dabbling in funk and progressive rock, the nonsensical rambling lyrics and supremely strange wordings (e.g., “I want you to be my pleasurepuss, I want to know how it feels”), but the seed is something that’s supposed to be aggressive, lighthearted, and danceable as well. For this, I direct you to Satanic Panic’s “The Party’s Crashing Us.” For attempts that fall maddeningly close to, but just shy of the mark, I direct you to Skeletal Lamping.

Fans needn’t lie in total despair, though. The hooks are still prime as anything albeit incoherent, (“Don’t you pimp out my heart” and “We can do it softcore if you want but you should know I take it both ways” among them), so at least the lyrical structures and memes are still there, but while Skeletal Lamping may appear to be up to snuff, a discerning listener will have some difficulty digesting Of Montreal’s structural ADHD. There are a few gems on the album, the funk-laced “Wicked Wisdom” and “St. Exquisite’s Confessions” among them, but overall the album is just a touch too ambitious.

Recommended Tracks:

“Wicked Wisdom,” “Four Our Elegant Caste,” “Gallery Piece,” and “St. Exquisite’s Confessions”

I have to take some time to talk about bread because let’s face it, it might be the food I consume the most. Whether I’m slathering it in goat’s cheese for a luncheon sandwich or biting into a semi-sweat breakfast pastry or using a chunk of it to soak up leftover sauce or soup, I just might be in love with all forms of yeasty and unleavened bread alike.

In Los Angeles I’ve been fortunate enough to be just down the block from the famous La Brea Bakery and able to frequent the off-beat but delightful Panaderias lining so many of this city’s streets, but nothing can compare to Germany. In Berlin I was in bread heaven. Between the bakeries on every corner and the seemingly seventeen different ways to order a roll in the same language, I unearthed not a dark history or a fascinating government or even a trendy street culture, but the epicenter of hearty, grainy breads. You get a crusty roll with your currywurst, you get a dark slab with your morning coffee, and you get a basket of it to nibble on while you contemplate your cake choices in the afternoon. You even have a distinctive type of half-bread half-donut, an effigy of the culture named after the city itself, and if you travel all the way to Berlin and don’t consume at least one Berliner, you are a bigger fool than you think.

Europe in general has the sort of carbohydrate stamina I admire, whether the Italians are using slices like a utensil or the French are creating courses dedicated bread, and I’ve always been head over heels for the European idea of a balanced breakfast: coffee, bread, and a myriad of smears including but not limited to fruit jams, nut spreads like nutella, numerous cheeses of varying consistencies, and fats like butter or olive oil, with a few cucumbers, tomatoes, and sliced oranges thrown on the side. What more could one want first thing in the morning?

Of course German bread is of a grainier variety, and you’ll find they specialise in über-elastic ryes and tantalising fried morsels, and a few other French-style look-alikes that one bite into will reveal are anything but standard. That dry-looking croissant hosts a gooey filling of apple and golden sultana, while that spongey danish is actually enveloped in a firm layer of carmelised sugar. Bread can even harbour more talents than your belligerently drunk mate. Hence the German idiom: at least bread can mold. What can you do? For one as enamoured with bread as I, the whole bread culture of Germany is impossible to avoid indulging in. And indulge I did, only to find the bread alone was worth the trip.

Sure I wax poetic about something as innane as bread, but you don’t have to buy my love of German bread at face value. You don’t have to take my word for it. Take Gridskipper’s. Or better yet, tell me about your own bread adventures in the comments section.

On my plate: sweet potatoe an pan (stuffed bread) from
Yamazaki bakery in Little Tokyo

After I ingested what amounted to more than my body mass in ramen while abroad in Tokyo, it was probably inevitable those wiggly wheat noodles would find their way into my blood, and now I simply can’t let their slippery taste go. Luckily, I am not the only one stricken with ramen infatuation. The rest of Japan spent so much time salivating over the stuff that they went so far as to invent instant ramen to shave an already short ramen-stand waiting time down to a fraction of its former self, and to ensure such a dish was available to anyone anytime of the day for under three dollars in just under three minutes. They even have a movie devoted to the quest for the perfect ramen (if you haven’t seen it, Tampopo is a cult classic). Coming from the country to have invented Iron Chef, it seems only fitting that their regional ramen be a more competitive field than the sake trade.

I have piqued your interest, I can tell. Iron Chef? you ask. Steaming hot tureens of salty goodness wafting up at you? you dare to imagine. Sliced pork? A whole egg? A hefty garnish of green onions so generous you could smuggle drugs underneath? I hope that’s what you’re envisioning, because otherwise you’re thinking of the wrong dish. I know it’s tempting to believe the good old orange packet of Maruchan or the brown styrofoam container of Nissin cup’o'noodles is the real deal, but don’t kid yourself. In a city as rife with authentic ethnic communities as Los Angeles, you’d be nuts to pass up the opportunity to get some of the most legit noodle dishes you can sniff out stateside. Last month found me wandering aimlessly in Downtown Los Angeles when suddenly I am on first street and before my feet can protest, my stomach leads me straight to a steamy bowl of the stuff. Today took me into the heart of Little Tokyo on a day so sweltering the usually packed shop was as lethargic as it was empty, where a bowl of the tskumen chilled noodles await my grumbling tummy.

It’s a one-two punch, because not only does California have more Chinese immigrants than Japan (no matter how obsessed the Japanese are with the dish, the Chinese are ramen’s original inventors), but California has more Japanese immigrants than any other state, making all Angelinos privy to the good stuff any day of the week. Of course, if you aren’t in the Japanese know, don’t subscribe to Giant Robot, can’t read Kanji, or don’t live on Sawtelle, it can feel just the opposite. Don’t panic. There is hope for you yet, because I’m giving you the skinny on LA’s most authentic ramen dive: Daikokuya downtown. Turns out, though I mentioned it off hand as LA’s heavyweight ramen stop on the circuit nearly everyone’s been dragged into at least once, not everyone knows of the reigning champion. So I thought I’d take the time to write it up as it should be, as the quintessential ramen experience, only somewhere that accepts US dollars instead of Japanese yen.

A dingy yellow storefront on a strip of Little Tokyo, Daikokuya has everything you’re looking for in a ramen shoppe: absurdly low lighting, business suited salarymen slurping loudly, long lines out the door, a limited menu, and of course, unbeatable noodles. While the oversized red lamps at the door and the misplaced ’50s kitsch won’t exactly send you into the heart of Asakusa, the marbled broth and ramune soda selection will. Best of all, for under $10 you’ll walk out of Daikokuya with both a full stomach and a full wallet, rare in the city of angels. What do you order? Do not be deceived by the multi-page menu. You’ve come for the ramen. Which one? Ha. Amatuer. You need only to utter the word and you’ll be slipped more broth than you can handle in just a few minutes time. So indulge as much as you can hold, slurp until you’ve splattered your sunglasses, and be sure to enjoy that Asahi on draft before the place closes at midnight. By the end of your excursion you may not be able to understand what the staff are saying to you (a combination of the food coma you’ve just induced and your complete lack of Japanese pronunciation skills), but it’s enough to know you’ll be back, if not for the piping hot bowl of ramen, than for the escape into the Japanese side of Los Angeles. And for that ability alone, Southern California deserves one great big arigato gozaimas.

On my plate: caprese sandwich with tomatoe, buffalo mozzarella, cucumber, and arugula pesto with fruit salad of grapes, bilberries, papaya, mango, rockmellon, honeydew, watermelon, kiwi, and strawberries

On my plate: lentil soup with carrots, tomatoe, onion, and multigrain French bread