Adventures in Southeast Asia

...more commonly referred to as "shopping on Argyle Street." I was baking a coconut cake for a dinner with some friends, mostly because I had some leftover coconut milk and coconut flakes from two unrelated projects. The difficulty was that I also needed coconut flavoring, yet had none. I struck out at both Pakistani corner stores, then realized I should just go talk to the Asians, who have more experience with coconut-related food items than pretty much anyone else on earth.

I managed to find the flavoring display without any help, but to my dismay most of the small bottles contained flavors with which I was not familiar. I went to Foreign Food Plan B and started looking at the little pictures on the bottles, zeroing in on one labeled "Buco Pandan" that seemed to feature a green coconut and another plant. The liquid inside was virulent green. The cash register lady was pleased to answer my question of "Is this coconut?" "Yes, yes. And pandan."

"What is pandan, please?" At this point I was more than ready to make coconut pandan cake, but I wanted to be able to explain the exotic cake to my guests. "Pandan... pandan..." She was mentally searching for the words to explain the flavor of a fruit that this gringo had never even seen. (Have you ever had to explain what a pineapple or a peach tastes like? It's not easy.) She brightened up a little. "Pandan... it tastes green!"

I looked down at the bottle of green, looked up at the lady, looked back at the bottle, and figured I'd go for it.

The cake did have a bit of a green flavor to accompany the green cast given it by the flavoring. Nobody seemed to mind.