McCurry restaurant owner A.M.S.P. Suppiah and his wife. Photo: Mark Baker/AP

In a fast-food version of David versus Goliath, the owner of a small curry restaurant in Malaysia has won the final bout in an eight-year trademark battle against the world's largest fast-food giant, McDonald's.

The restaurant facing the suit operates under the name McCurry, short for "Malaysian Chicken Curry," and was the first Indian fast food restaurant to open in 1999 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- serving dishes such as chicken curry, fish head curry, naan and biryani.

McDonald's wanted sole rights to the use of the prefix "Mc" to protect its brand image but the Federal Court ruled Tuesday that the fast-food chain had no such exclusive rights.

Photo: pixelens/Flickr.

When a Malaysian night club was busted and 32-year-old Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno was caught with a beer, she knew she was in trouble. Not because alcohol is illegal in the country -- it's not -- but because Kartika is a Muslim.

Under Sharia law -- which regulates the day-to-day life of Muslims, including politics, business, sexuality and hygiene -- consuming alcohol is a major offense. Though non-Muslim in Malaysia would be prosecuted under civil law, Kartika had to face Islamic courts.

"I accept the punishment," she said, according to a Daily Telegraph report. "I am not afraid because I was ready to be punished from day one. [The authorities] hope to use my case as a way to educate Muslims. So go ahead. I want to move on with my life."

On a recent trip to Singapore I fell hopelessly in love with the unholy, neon-colored love child of a Sno-Cone and a Jell-O salad, also known as the ais kacang.

The ais kacang is wildly popular in Singapore and Malaysia (where it's sometimes called an "ABC"), served in outdoor food centers and in mall food courts countrywide. In its most basic iteration, it consists of a scoop of roughly shaved ice drizzled with varicolored sugar syrups and evaporated or condensed milk sitting on a nest of corn kernels, red beans and cubes of herb jelly or gluey sago pearls.

It's the hyperstimulating carnival of desserts, with every texture -- Crunchy! Chewy! Icy! Glutinous! Creamy! -- and dozens of flavors exploding in your mouth all at once. Some versions even include a scoop of ice cream or a pile of fresh mango or (eeek!) durian. More is more, right?

Never mind that it's still 45 degrees and raining here; I've been craving ais kacang as if it's midsummer in Southeast Asia. So I decided to make my own. I simply ground up ice in my food processor and doused it with Torani raspberry syrup (the kind you use to make Italian soda) and a milk syrup I'd made by cooking evaporated milk with brown sugar. I omitted the corn and beans, but next time I'll try adding some sago pearls or chopped fresh berries.

In the Chinese communities of Singapore and Western Malaysia, the pineapple tart is the ultimate Chinese New Year dessert. The word "pineapple" in the Hokkien dialect resembles the word for prosperity, so eating the pineapple tarts is said to help bring luck and money in the coming year. For extra value, some tarts are even shaped to resemble tiny gold bars. The Malaysian port city of Malacca is considered the heart of the pineapple tart industry - in the city's colorful Chinatown dozens of bakeries are busy pumping out hot, fragrant trays of tarts every few minutes, to be placed in decorative cannisters with red lids and given as gifts. As we head closer to the Year of the Ox - New Year starts January 26 - the tarts grow increasingly expensive!

Bite into a proper pinepple tart and the ultra-flaky dough crumbles into buttery powder in your mouth. The chunk of pinepple jam inside is chewy and firm, flavored with spices - cinnamon, star anise and cloves - that reflect the influence of the spice trade on Malaysian Chinese cuisine.

If you don't happen to live near a Malaysian- or Singaporean-Chinese bakery, A Consuming Passion has a good-looking recipe for pineapple tart. These would be a great choice for a Chinese New Year party.

"Taking the international sweet tooth by storm." Surely such a phrase could only have been penned by the a PR person for an ice-cream chain.

And so it has.

This gem comes from the press release announcing Cold Stone Creamery's expansion into Mexico and Southeast Asia. I'll admit it's a better turn of phrase than "taking the international sweet tooth by cavity." Full disclosure, I've never eaten the Creamery's ice cream, I suppose I should since there's one in a mall near my house.

The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based purveyor of fresh-made ice-cream that's blended to order with mix-ins on, you guessed it, a cold stone, started scooping up international markets back in 2005, when it opened its first overseas store in Tokyo. Since then Coldstone has opened 22 more stores throughout Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan.

Its first Mexican store will open in September. There's been no word yet as to whether the Creamery stores South of the Border will forgo the signature stone slab in favor of a gigantic molcajete y tejolote to mix the ingredients with the ice cream. The company's next international markets will be Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. I don't think it's gonna happen, but I'd love to see the Creamery's Southeast Asian stores use young coconut, jackfruit and some of the brightly colored gelatinous squiggles that are a staple of the region's frozen confections.

Researchers at Universiti Malaya have created a tablet for erectile dysfunction that uses walnut extract!

40 men have tried the pills and they seem to work. And because the tablet isn't a drug, it's safer to use than products like Viagra and is probably even safe for people with other medical problems such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Supposedly the Romans and French have been doing this for years.

This is the part where you are free to make as many jokes as possible out of the words "nuts" and "erectile dysfunction." Have fun.

[via Boing Boing]

In the past it wasn't so, but now it looks like Asia has taken on the challenge and stepped up to bat in the organic produce game. Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and most especially China have moved into the game. So far China is producing 85% of the organics in the region, but the other countries are gearing up and increasing production every year. The quality they produce is very good, with China growing excellent crops at great prices.

Europe and North America currently consume a vast majority of the worlds organic produce with Asia only just starting to join in, but they are starting to catch up. Since organic still costs more to produce each of these countries consumes less by far than they export. The West consumes organics for a variety of reasons from perceived health benefits to sustainability, animal welfare, humanitarian reasons, and environmental concerns; while the East's focus is primarily on the supposed health benefits. Although "Buddhist countries like Thailand and Singapore also tend to favour organic production because of its perceived harmony with nature."

There is a tendency that as production goes up, prices should come down, and so organic foods will be more in demand domestically in Asia over the next few years as well. So expect to see more and more of the world's high quality organic produce coming from Asia in the next decade as additional countries join in, and production rises dramatically.

One of the less well know areas of global cuisine is that of the South Pacific, as you are much less likely to find a Malaysian take-out restaurant in a randomly chosen city than a Chinese, or even a Japanese, restaurant. Fortunately, Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia offers up much more than a sampling of recipes to anyone interested in learning about - and tasting - the flavors of the region. Author James Oseland is an expert, or at least exceptionally well versed, in the cuisine of Singapore and the surrounding countries. He devotes a significant portion of the book to providing the reader with the background on the foods, ingredients, tastes and techniques. The notes on ingredients are particularly useful, as many will be unfamiliar to someone who has never attempted some of these dishes and will have to be found at a specialty grocer. Oseland does offer acceptable substitutions for some of the ingredients, making it possible to get close to authentic results even if you are in an area where other resources are limited.

Despite the fact that some of the dishes require unfamiliar ingredients, by the time you get to them, you'll have a good overview of the cuisines you'll be working with. The recipes include dishes like Fragrant Fish Stew with Lime and Lemon Basil, Black Pepper Crab and the Soto King's Chicken Soup.

Why a restaurant would want to be associated with McDonald's in the first place is beyond me, but apparently the Kuala Lumpur-based restaurant formerly known as Restoran Penang Curry House, wants to call themselves McCurry.

Unfortunately, the McDonald's Corporation sued McCurry and won. A Malaysian court has ruled that McCurry will have to pay Ronald McDonald for damages. However, McCurry plans to appeal the court's ruling, arguing that "the prefix 'Mc'' was not exclusive to McDonald's and pointed to its use in surnames, including Scottish ones." Additionally, they insist that "its name is an abbreviation of local popular dish 'Malaysian Chicken Curry.'"

Hm. Don't they already know that McDonald's in India serves McCurry?! Besides, I would have gone with "In-n-Out Curry."

Space travel is an amazing thing, but it's quite clear that not everything that we have available on Earth can be made available in space. Gravity is one thing that immediately springs to mind, of course, but astronauts have had problems with food, too. Most end up craving coffee, salads and other fresh foods, since their in-flight options can be on the unusual side. To remedy this problem, famous chefs have been recruited to help improve the options for astronauts, working with the foods we know work in space to provide a more varied array of meal options.

Some, however, refuse to give up on the idea that favorites from down here can translate to a zero-gravity environment. Malaysia, for example, is sending its very first astronaut up next year and plans to have him attempt to make the country's national drink, teh tarik, in space. The tea is made by pouring "boiling-hot milky tea swiftly and repeatedly from one vessel held high in one hand into another held low, producing a distinctive layer of froth."

It seems most unlikely that rapid pouring of boiling milk - which relies on gravity to move it in the first place - is going to be successful. And perhaps a country should pick a mission that is less frivolous (and perhaps one more likely to succeed) for their first space flight.

Durian is a large, spike-covered fruit from South East Asia, sometimes known as the "king of fruits," and famous enough to make the list of 50 things to eat before you die. The fruits weigh anywhere from 2 to 10-pounds and are famous for their unusually creamy texture and rich taste to those who like it, but the most famous quality of durian is its unmistakable odor, described as everything from a combination of onions and sweaty socks to rotting fish and sewage. The smell can extend for up to 1/2 mile, drawing the many animals that like to eat it, including pigs, elephants, squirrels and even tigers, right to the ripe fruits. The ripening process continues even after the fruit has been removed from the tree, developing more pungency and a creamier texture. Due to the texture of the flesh, which is that of thick custard, it is considered to be a delicacy and a treat to many people.