Sep
2011 23
2011 23
Peril interview – Vipoo Srivilasa
Vipoo Srivilasa is a contemporary ceramic sculptor. His artworks are often playful and whimsical, while exploring complex issues of identity, politics and the environment. Born in Bangkok, Thailand, the artist moved to Australia in 1997 where he studied ceramic art at Monash University and the University of Tasmania. In 2008 Aaron Seeto, Director...
Sep
2011 21
2011 21
Torturing John Thompson – an evening’s entertainment at the dragon’s lair
A theatrical spoken word piece first performed as part of Ladies of Colour Cabaret Melbourne Fringe Festival 2009 By Loretta Mui The stage is set as the interior of a dragon’s lair. Left of stage, the HOSTAGE (a mannequin body with a foam head attached) is tied haphazardly with duct tape to a chair. The ...
Sep
2011 21
2011 21
Care and Feeding: Comfort Food for Chinese-Australian Vegans
When I have a cold my mother recommends super spicy curries with lots of chillies and often lemongrass, and when she made them for me, this usually ended up being chicken kapitan. When I am feeling down, I desperately crave chicken noodle soup, with yellow mee and soft chicken, simmered for hours in a stock ...
Sep
2011 21
2011 21
How to hold your chopsticks
I come home on a Tuesday night to a cornucopia of Taiwanese dishes. Fried tomato and egg with shallots, garlic spinach in peanut oil, diced pork and capsicum in tamari sauce, corn and radish stock soup, shredded Asian cabbage soaked with shitake mushrooms, sweet and sour chicken’s legs and a whole fish fried with basil ...
Sep
2011 20
2011 20
Poh/Pho
Without invitation, Sarah reaches over to pick at my larb gai. When it comes to meals, clothes, and perfume, my friend doesn’t recognise boundaries; she does, however, pay particular attention to the chicken on her fork, unhappy that it has been sliced, not minced. For Sarah, foreign cuisine is a marriage between her two passions: food and...
Sep
2011 20
2011 20
The Butchers
Late one July morning, Mei Lin stood in the line inside the Harrington’s, the local butchers. Sen, brought along to push the second wheeled grocery cart required for the fortnight grocery run, clutched at her mother’s skirt, peering uncertainly at the whole lamb carcass and row of unplucked chickens hanging just behind the counter. After ...
Sep
2011 20
2011 20
Cuisine
It’s very watery, the first memory, diluted from being carried so long. The colours are thin as the scene plays out slowly, as though going any faster, it would disappear altogether. Half a dozen men restrain a turtle with black cord and stand it up on its hind legs, a machete pressed against its neck ...
Sep
2011 20
2011 20
Poetry
SHINJUKU MORNING Cassandra Atherton You feed me prawn gyozas for breakfast. Early in the morning. In the Shinjuku Prince Hotel. You give each prawn parcel a little squeeze between your fleshy thumb and forefinger before you reach across the table. My mouth opens. A little pink ‘O’ and you fill it to the brim. Pink ...
Sep
2011 20
2011 20
Editorials
From Lian Low – prose editor Food is essential to our survival, it is nourishing, nurturing and pleasurable, but it can also be a way in to our remembered cultural identities. There are a number of Asian-Australians who have rode the wave as food celebrities – Luke Nguyen, owner and chef of Sydney’s Red Lantern ...
