Baking: Chocolate Raspberry Bundt Cake Soaked in Raspberry Syrup

Posted on 18 September 2011 by christao408

Chocolate Raspberry
Bundt Cake

Soaked in Raspberry Sauce

Recipe Source:‎

Week of Menus

Time: About 2 hours
Taste: 4/5
Fancy Factor: 4/5

One of my favorite cooking-related websites is Week of Menus. Written by Joanne Choi, a mother of young children who tries to provide, as she puts it, good cooking for people with too much on their plate. I’m sure we can all relate to that feeling. Recently, she’s done a series of recipes about bundt cakes and the chocolate raspberry bundt soaked in raspberry syrup caught my eye.

Something nice about bundt cakes is that they have a high degree of fancy with a relative minimum of work. The pans themselves are very grandly designed, some with arches and vaults worthy of a cathedral, others with giant ridges, and still others with rose patterns. With such a beautiful cake, there’s no need to frost or ice them, although a nice glaze moistens the cake and makes the architecture even more beautiful.

The ingredients are pretty simple (you can go to Joanne’s website for the exact recipe): All-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, unsalted butter, granulated sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, sour cream, a chocolate bar broken into pieces, and raspberries.

First you combine the flour with the salt, baking powder, and baking soda. The recipe does not call for sifting the flour, but the organic Australian flour I buy here in Thailand is a little coarse, so sifting helps combine the ingredients while also lightening the flour. Next step, cream the butter in a mixer until it is light and fluffy, then beat in the sugar.

After the sugar and butter are combined, add the eggs one at a time, beating for about thirty seconds between each addition. Of course, you need scrape down the sides of the bowl every so often along the way (or buy a BeaterBlade, which combines the paddle attachment with silicon edging that scrapes down the bowl as it mixes) so that the ingredients are well-combined.

Then start adding the flour mixture and the sour cream (to which I had to add a little bit of yogurt as I didn’t have quite enough sour cream) in alternating parts.

The final step is to fold in the broken chocolate pieces and about half the raspberries. Now, the recipe calls for fresh raspberries but I found that frozen works just fine. Manually incorporate the chocolate and berries instead of using the mixer, so that you are sure they are evenly distributed.

Put the batter into a bundt cake mold and bake. I didn’t have a bundt cake mold but had been thinking about buying one. This recipe gave me the incentive to make the purchase. While comparing models, I decided to buy my first silicone baking mold. It is less expensive and supposedly easier to use (no need to butter and flour the mold – it just peels right off) than metal baking pans.

Overall, I was impressed by the ease of use, but for some reason the batter shifted in the pan, causing one side of the cake to be larger than the other. Maybe I need to place the pan on a tray before putting it in the oven?

While the cake baked, I made the glaze. This is a combination of the remaining berries, some sugar, and a little bit of orange juice. The berries are pureed and strained so you get a rich raspberry juice. The juice is then combined with the sugar and orange juice and cooked for a few minutes until the sugar dissolves. You can easily imagine how other fruits could be used instead of raspberries to produce tasty alternatives to the raspberry cake.

After the cake was done and had cooled a bit (although not completely), you begin brushing on the glaze. Notice how lopsided the cake is! I also think it is a little overcooked. When I checked the cake initially, the toothpick was coming out dirty, so I gave it a few more minutes. By the time the inside was done, the outside was a little too brown. Perhaps I need to lover the oven temperature a little?

I added the glaze in two layers, allowing about ten minutes for the first layer to absorb. There was a point where the cake seemed adequately glazed and I had used only about two-thirds of the raspberry glaze. In hindsight, I would go ahead and apply a third layer as there is not much risk of the cake being too moist.

The final product, served with some white chocolate and raspberry ice cream from New Zealand Ice Cream. You can se this slice came from the thin side of the cake! Overall, the flavor was nice, although I think the cake was slightly overcooked and just a little dry. I would like to play around with this recipe again, maybe adding more berries to the batter or else maybe a little more sour cream. In any case, thanks to Joanne for this nice recipe!

Cooking: Easy Taco Salad

Posted on 16 September 2011 by christao408

A picture posted by my cousin Jane was all it took to inspire me to try making taco salad at home. But something I didn’t want to deal with was deep frying tortillas to make the taco bowls. Not only does deep frying add a lot of fat (and, thus, heaviness) to the meal, but it is also more work than I want to deal with. The key was finding an easier, lower fat way to make the taco bowls.

After some searching on the internet, I found two techniques for baking taco bowls that sounded promising. The first involved spraying a tortilla with cooking spray (Pam, Crisco, or another brand). The second technique involved pouring a tablespoon or so of oil on top of about an inch of water in a large container such as a roasting tray and then dipping the tortillas into the water. Regardless of which method you used, you then shaped the tortilla between two oven proof bowls and baked for about five minutes in a 400 F oven. Ofter that, you remove from the bowls and bake the bowls another five minutes until crisp.

Both techniques work well, although if you are going to spray the tortilla you need to be careful about overdoing it. It also works better if your tortillas are at room temperature or even zapped in the microwave for a few seconds before trying to shape them, otherwise they may crack or tear. The flavor of the baked bowls was very enjoyable, albeit less oily than with the fried bowls.

As for ingredients, you could use whatever suits your budget, sense of taste, and amount of prep time. I used chopped romaine lettuce for a base, although mixing in some spinach or other greens would have been a nice alternative.

To the lettuce I added chicken and beans. The chicken had been marinated in a coconut chili sauce that I had handy, although simply sprinkling the chicken with some salt, pepper, and cumin and pan frying would have been fine, too. For the beans, I drained a can of kidney beans (no black beans were available at the store), then cooked them for just a few minutes with some chopped onion and chopped red bell pepper.

On top of the protein, I aded freshly boiled corn, chopped tomatoes, and some more red bell pepper. For a dressing, I used homemade tomato salsa, although if it were the right season, some homemade mango salsa would have been spectacular.

Garnished with some shredded pepper jack cheese and sliced green onions, these taco salads made for a healthy and tasty treat. Many thanks to Jane for inspiring me.

Cooking: Making Pot Stickers

Posted on 15 September 2011 by christao408

Pot stickers, known as guotie in Chinese or gyoza in Japanese, are my favorite type of dumplings second only to xiao long bao, of course! I recently had the opportunity to learn how to make them, particularly the tricky art of correctly folding the seams, when I visited my friend Tehlin in Hong Kong.

Tehlin and I went to university together. Of Chinese heritage by way of the Philippines, she has tried to teach me how to make pot stickers on previous visits but my fingers were to clumsy or my patience too thin. This time, though, I overcame the obstacles and learned how to turn out a proper pot sticker.

To make the filling, you use fresh ground pork and, if you like, chopped shrimp meat. Finely chop Napa cabbage, mushrooms, and a small amount of garlic.

Once the vegetables are chopped, add a teaspoon of salt to the cabbage, stir it, and let it sit for a few minutes. This will draw the water out from the cabbage.

After the water has been drawn out, squeeze the cabbage and then add it to the mushroom, garlic, and meat mixture.

Mix well, seasoning with some soy sauce, sesame oil, and ground white pepper. If I understand the proportions correctly, about 1 kg (2 pounds) of meat will make about 100 pot stickers.

P1160757

The hardest thing for me to comprehend and do was to correctly seal and fold the seams. While I finally figured it out, I’m still quite clumsy about the process. First, place about a tablespoon of filling in the middle of a wrapper. We bought them premade from the local noodle vendor. Wipe the edges with water then hold like a taco. Start by pinching one end.

Then, using your index fingers, create a flap about one-quarter of the way across the edge of the dumpling. The flap will fold over towards the already sealed end of the dumpling and is then pinched closed. Make another flap about half way across the edge of the dumpling, folding it over and pinching, too.

A final flap is made about three quarters of the way across the edge of the dumpling. After is it folded and pinched, the unsealed end is pinched together. It looks so easy when Tehlin does it, just a blur of dumpling origami.

Me trying it was another matter. Ultimately, I found it easier to set the wrapper on the table after making the first pinch, instead of trying to hold it in my hand. After a few rough starts, I got the hang of it.

We soon filled two trays, a mixture of Tehlin’s beautiful pot stickers and my less consistent ones. Nonetheless, they turned out looking pretty good and I look forward to making some back at home. Oh, and they tasted great, too.

How Does My Garden Grow – Pt. 3: Back to Seedlings

Posted on 13 September 2011 by christao408

In the early part of July, I began my grand adventure as a container gardening condo dweller here in Bangkok. Within a few weeks, I realized that my approach was all wrong: starting seeds in large pots, planting during the rainy season, trying to grow plants on a balcony that doesn’t get sun until mid-August. Still, I pushed forward. Eventually, though, it was time to retrench, both literally and figuratively.

This picture exemplifies the twofold problem I faced: The rain was both too frequent and fell in too great a quantity, and the soil was too clay-like and not porous enough. The result were poor seedlings (carrot and beet root in this particular picture) that were growing in an environment more suited to rice than anything else.

My first response was defensive. Every time the sky started to darken (which is often during this time of year here in Thailand), I would pull the containers off the side of the balcony and move them closer to the sliding glass door.

This kept them away from the full force of the monsoon rains, but of course did nothing to help the quality of the soil. Oh, and they were also a pain in the nether regions to move.

Finally, in late August I broke down and bought thirty small plastic containers, each large enough to start a single plant. At first, I tried to transplant several of the existing plants including the two healthiest cherry tomato plants and several carrots. I also started planting new seeds. This tray-based system didn’t do much to improve upon the soil quality, but made it easier to get the plants out of the way of oncoming storms.

The new system seems to be working better. With the exception of one storm that struck when I was away from home and had forgotten to bring the plants off the edge of the balcony, these seedlings have had the opportunity to grow in a much drier environment. I’ve also been able to stagger plantings, starting a few new seeds each week.

You can see that they are doing much better. There are a few golden beet root plants on the right, and Dr. Zakiah’s methi seeds are going gangbusters on the left.

Best of all, one of my transplanted cherry tomato plants has continued to grow and seems to finally be hitting its stride. In another two weeks or so I will transplant it into a somewhat larger container. Before that time, though, I need to address the issue of soil quality. I’ve brought the other planters in from the edge of the balcony so they can begin to dry out a bit, then I will go to the nursery and see what sorts of soil amendments I can find. My father, who spent several years growing a massive garden in my childhood home, suggested chicken or horse manure. Tawn isn’t so keen on that idea. Stay tuned to see how much shit I have to deal with… literally.

How Does My Garden Grow – Part 1: Defying Gravity
How Does My Garden Grow – Part 2: A Move to the Sunny Side

An Attempt at San Francisco Stuffed French Toast

Posted on 12 September 2011 by christao408

Back in June we enjoyed a tasty breakfast at Starling Diner in Long Beach. They serve this amazing dish called San Francisco Stuffed French Toast, which is a baguette filled with mascarpone cheese, dipped in creme anglaise, and broiled – not fried! – until golden and crisp. (Full entry about that meal here.) Ever since that visit, I’ve been curious to try making that dish, just to see if I can understand its mechanics.

Finding myself with an extra half of a baguette last week, I turned to the internet for potential recipes. While there wasn’t an exact recipe, I was able to piece together a few recipes to guide me. I had to resolve three key issues: make a creme anglaise, create a tasty mascarpone cheese filling, and then figure out how to construct and cook the baguette so it came out with a crispy exterior and moist but cooked interior.

The ingredients were pretty simple: a slightly stale baguette, mascarpone cheese, milk, cream, egg yolks, and vanilla, and some fruit to serve on the side.

A creme anglaise is basically a custard sauce. In and of itself, it isn’t terribly complicated, although I suspect that my technique would improve if I had more experience making it. I whisked three tablespoons of sugar into three egg yolks until pale yellow. Ideally, you would use ultra-fine sugar rather than regular granulated sugar, to make it easier for the sugar to dissolve.

Next, you heat a mixture of half cream and half milk until it is not quite to the point of boiling. Then, pour the milk into the egg mixture slowly, whisking constantly so the eggs do not scramble. The mixture is then returned to the stove and cooked gently (stirring constantly) until it reaches 160 F. It can then be strained through a wire mesh to remove any clumped bits of egg and then allowed to cool.

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While the creme anglaise cooled, I whipped the mascarpone cheese with a little sugar, a tablespoon of juice from some canned peaches, and a pinch of salt. Something about that caused it to coagulate a bit, so next time maybe I’ll just stick with a splash of honey and leave the salt out.

The big challenge was figuring out how to stuff the baguette. Slicing it open seemed problematic as the cheese would easily ooze out while cooking. I tried sticking a serrated knife into one end of the bread, cutting a small pocket. Then, I piped the mascarpone mixture into the bread. All in all, this worked fairly well although it makes the dish a little more complex and dirties a few more kitchen implements.

Next, I let the stuffed baguette rest in the creme anglaise, turning about once a minute, for a total of about four minutes. I then place the baguette pieces on a parchment lined baking tray and put under the oven’s broiler, turning once, for a total of about eight minutes or until crispy and golden.

While the bread broiled, I whipped a little cream to use as a condiment. You could also prepare any fresh fruit – berries, bananas, peaches, etc. – to go with the dish. I opted for canned peaches as I had a jar open in the refrigerator.

The finished product. The mascarpone filling melted, which I recall being the case with the original, and gave the interior a rich sweetness. The outside was crispy, although I’m not sure the baguette was really stale enough to get the right texture; it was still a little soft when I started this process and not as dry as would probably be best. All in all, I think it turned out nicely and would be worth playing around with a bit more. However, it definitely takes more effort than other versions of French toast I’ve had!

Uncle’s Egg Noodles on Ekamai

Posted on 9 September 2011 by christao408

How good would a bowl of bamee, the ubiquitous and simple Chinese-style egg noodles, have to be in order to justify a wait of ten, twenty, or even thirty minutes? For many residents of Bangkok, they would have to be as good as Uncle’s.

While practically everybody knows about this noodle shop, I only learned about it by reading Chawadee Nualkhair’s “Bangkok’s Top 50 Street Food Stalls,” a handy and well-written English language guide for anyone who is serious about eating good Thai street food.

You can find Uncle’s noodles (the stand also goes by the name “slow noodles” because of the wait) at the corner of Ekamai and Ekamai Soi 19. His cart is built on the back of a small pickup truck, a nifty arrangement that reminds me of the food trucks of Los Angeles, except with no Korean tacos. You have to place your order by writing on a pad – in Thai, of course. Best to have a friend come with you, write out your order in advance, or as Khun Chawadee suggests, if you are brave you can just copy the previous customer’s order!

The menu is quite simple: bamee (egg noodles) served either in soup or dry, with barbecue pork (“red pork”) and pork wontons. The ingredients are on display: your guarantee of freshness. Say, what are those black things in the display case? Nothing like a few phallic good luck charms to ensure good business. It seems that they’ve worked!

All of the seating is on the sidewalk, either on the Ekamai side or heading down the side soi. Orders to go are welcome, too. I’ll say that the location is a bit of a curse from an enjoyment perspective. There are a lot of big trucks traveling on Ekamai at night and the smoke and fumes take away from the experience. The stand doesn’t open up until after 8:00 each night, so at least the gridlock of cars isn’t there anymore. That might be worse.

Every noodle shop in Thailand – and I do mean every – offers customers condiments to dress their own noodles. Dried chili flakes, sugar, vinegar with chilies, and fish sauce (sometimes with chopped chilies). This allows each customer to perfect the seasoning.

Here’s my bowl of bamee with barbecued pork, chopped pork, fried pork fat, and a special ingredient: soft boiled egg. Pork-a-palooza! If you order the red pork at a rice and red pork stand, boiled egg is a standard condiment. However, at a noodle stand, the soft boiled egg is an unusual addition.

The question is, what makes this particular bamee so special? As I mentioned, people will wait up to thirty minutes to eat it and, honestly, at a certain level I think that bamee is bamee is bamee. But, there are a few things that separate good from mediocre bamee: Noodles are fresh, tender, and flavorful. Broth has a rich flavor. Ingredients are of high quality and are fresh. Uncle’s noodles has all of these qualities. The addition of crispy fried pork fat adds a little extra texture that is very flavorful, and the boiled egg is a nice addition, too.

We also ordered a bowl of wonton soup, which featured beautiful fresh wontons with a tasty interior along with some more of the red pork and chopped pork. Something that set the wontons apart is that the wrappers were especially delicate and thin, not chewy at all.

All in all, Uncle’s noodles are well worth searching out, although the location makes for a less than ideal dining experience.

James Bond on the Khlong Saen Saeb Express

Posted on 7 September 2011 by christao408

After two trips to the old city on Saturday to visit a lock store (which gave me the opportunity to see horses on the expressway while driving there), I needed to make a third and final visit on Monday, since the store was closed by the time I arrived on my second trip Saturday. This time, facing the prospect of weekday traffic, I decided to ride the Khlong (canal) Saen Saeb express boat into the old city.

I’ve written before about the Saen Saeb express boat in an entry about a journey on seven modes of transport in Bangkok. It is an 18-kilometer water route that cuts east-west through the middle of the greater Bangkok area, running from the northeastern outskirts of Bangkapi all the way to the edge of Rattanakosin Island, stopping adjacent to the Golden Mount. While the water is filthy and the boats are very crowded during rush hour, the express boats are not only an interesting way to get around, they are also a bargain with fares topping out at 20 baht, or about 65 American cents.

While the inbound ride was packed – some 50 people sitting and another 30 or so standing – the return trip from the heart of the city at 9:00 am was almost completely empty, just me an a handful of passengers. This gave me a chance to appreciate the breeze, which makes the canal express boats one of the coolest ways to travel. However, with the murky water sometimes splashing over the plastic barriers, your risk of Hepatitis A infection is also higher on the boats than on any other form of transit.

While enjoying the less crowded ride back home, I noticed the safety equipment that is lashed to the inside of the boat: flotation devices with a rather sinister man demonstrating their proper use. His reminds me a bit of Sean Connery as James Bond. What disturbs me, though, is not that James Bond is demonstrating the floatation devices. What disturbs me is that the man appears to be standing in water that is only hip-deep. If you’ve seen the water in Khlong Saen Saeb, you wouldn’t blame him!

Horses on the Expressway

Posted on 6 September 2011 by christao408

Saturday I had to drive twice to the old city to visit a store that sells door locks. This particular store because they are the only place that sells the particular knobs and locks we have on our doors. Two visits because I didn’t bring everything I needed the first time to get the right replacement part. While driving on the expressway into the old city, I saw what appeared to be a horse’s head sticking out of a truck a hundred meters or so in front of me.

As traffic thickened on the expressway, I pulled up alongside the truck and found it carrying four horses. Based on the police truck providing an escort, I concluded that these horses are part of the Royal Thai Police force’s mounted division. The police are using mounted units to patrol Sanam Luang, the 30-acre ceremonial field near the Grand Palace that reopened a few weeks ago after a year-long, US$6 million renovation. Interestingly, the first question that crossed my mind was, did the horses get loaded in alternating colors randomly or intentionally?

Helping Abandoned Buildings Shape Up

Posted on 4 September 2011 by christao408

The skyline of Bangkok bristles with the skeletons of unfinished buildings. These ghostly structures, frozen in various states of incompletion, number in the hundreds and most are a result of the Asian economic crisis on 1997-8. Recently, though, I’ve noticed that some of these buildings are being incorporated into advertising schemes.

One that caught my eye was this pair of buildings that appeared to be on a diet. Viewable from the expressway, I had passed the buildings several times but wanted to get a better shot. Sunday morning, I set out early and drove around that area of the city, somewhere between Khlong Toei and Rama III, to see if I could get a clear view and a good picture. It took about an hour to narrow down the location, but finally I eventually found a great view from the front gates of the Colgate-Palmolive complex right where Ratchadapisek Road parallels the Mahanakorn Expressway. Veering left onto a frontage road that continues under the expressway before turning right towards the railway tracks, I turned on the emergency blinkers, pulled to the shoulder of the road, and hopped out to take a picture.

The advertising is for Naturegift, a Thai company that makes powdered beverages (coffee, cocoa, and ginger) as well as capsules that claim to provide various health benefits. The message reads something to the effect of “A Mission Well-Suited for Naturegift.” The buildings’ columns have been cleverly altered with the use of black paint and temporary set pieces to make it look like they curve in at the buildings’ “waists” – giving the buildings more pleasing hourglass shaped figures. The “belts” on the buildings are also temporary set pieces. The use of black and red for the two belts implies that Naturegift is good for men and women.

In addition to making good use of abandoned buildings, Thai advertising has a knack for being quite clever. In this 30-second ad for Naturegift, which ran for many months before movies at cinemas here in Thailand, we see the promise that Naturegift will give you confidence. The inside joke from a cultural angle is that the women depicted here, while all being skinny, don’t have what would be considered typical beauty in a Thai sense. But they are most definitely confident!

Skytrain Sukhumvit Extension Opens

Posted on 1 September 2011 by christao408

Another piece of Bangkok’s transit network puzzle fell into place on August 12, as the 5-station extension to the BTS Skytrain Sukhumvit line opened. After more than a year’s delay caused by a problem ordering track switching mechanisms on time, passengers can now travel all the way to Soi Bearing (Sukhumvit 107). This extension gives access to the Bang Na district, a very congested area of the city that has long been in need of additional mass transit.

Updated map on the ticketing machine obscured the day before opening.

The BTS Skytrain, the first of Bangkok’s three rail transit systems, opened in December 1999 and currently operates a 55-km network composed of two lines and 32 stations. An average of about 472,000 trips are made on the system each day, with many days exceeding the half-million mark.

The five new stations all have the same design with the the tracks running through the center of the station and two platforms on the outside of the tracks. An improvement in these news stations, along with two stations on the Silom line that opened last year, is that the roof covers the entire space. The original stations have an opening in the area over the tracks, resulting in passengers being partially exposed to the elements, especially the when the sun is lower in the sky.

One improvement – all the new stations have elevators. Most of the stations in the system do not have elevators, making travel by train inconvenient for people in wheelchairs (who would have a hard time with most of Bangkok’s sidewalks, too) and parents with strollers. In front of the elevator doors are three safety posts, the purpose of which is not clear. Perhaps they are meant to keep someone from rolling out of the elevator and onto the tracks. I guess if someone was backing out they may not see where the edge of the tracks is, although they would have to travel a couple of meters before reaching it.

One challenge to mobility is that the stretch of Sukhumvit Road on which these new stations are built, has narrow sidewalks. The placement of station stairs and escalators essentially blacks the sidewalks, leaving no room for wheelchairs or strollers or even for two people to pass each other. This seems like a problem that could have been overcome, although I have noticed that the traffic lanes actually narrow as they pass beneath the stations, so perhaps squeezing out more space was impossible.

Fortunately, there are signs of some amount of foresight in the construction of the track viaduct and support structure. At the point between Udom Suk and Bang Na stations, the track viaduct is wide enough for two pairs of tracks. In the picture above, just above the pedestrian bridge, you can see the end caps for two additional tracks.

Turning 180 degrees and looking southeast along the tracks, the left side of the next support beam has a pad on which one of the track viaducts could rest. The train track passes between two levels of the expressway at Bang Na. One of the planned future extensions, although there is no specific timeframe in which it will be built, is to have a spur line branch off from the main Sukhumvit line and head northeast along the expressway. This extension would include a stop at the BITEC convention center. Currently, the closest station (Bang Na) is about a kilometer away, although an indoor walkway is being constructed to connect the station and the convention center and looks set to open in a few months.

The problem with the new five-station extension is that it is projected to add some 100,000 additional trips to the system each day, but during rush hour the system is already at peak capacity. This view of Asoke station, taken at 6:30 pm on a weekday, is too typical.

The layout of station entrances, something that would be difficult to change significantly, is narrow and results in ticket machine lines running into the fare gate lines running into still other lines. The entrance areas at the new stations seem to be wider, which will hopefully help. Another thing that would help at existing stations is to remove small retail kiosks adjacent to the fare gates. These consume real estate that could ease the congestion of foot traffic.

The capacity problem is less about station entrance design, though. It is primarily an issue of not enough train cars. There are 35, three-car Siemens trains on the system. Last year, following the opening of two new stations on the Silom line, 12, four-car Bombardier trains were added, running exclusively on the Silom line. This additional capacity was immediately swallowed up. In October 2010, the operator of the Skytrain ordered an additional car for each of the three-car trains, although it seems these will not arrive until at least next year. Also next year, an additional four-station extension will open on the Silom line. Dr. Pichet Kunadhamraks of the Ministry of Transport’s Office of Transport and Traffic Policy and Planning, indicated by email that he thinks these additional train cars will satisfy demand.

Earlier this year, the Transport Minister asked for residents’ patience until 2015, by which point some 60-plus kilometers of additional rail lines will have opened, adding to the approximately 103 kilometers currently operating. It will be interesting to see whether these new lines and extensions open on time and, if they do, what impact they have on the city’s traffic. Bangkok is a city that would be well-served if it had a comprehensive network of rail transit. It would also be well-served by a bus network that feeds into that network, rather than largely duplicating it. That, however, is a topic for another day.