EatingAsia

Kickin' It Kampung Style

It defies logic, really, but great Malay food is nowhere near as thick on the ground here in Kuala Lumpur as is, say, scrumptious Chinese or ambrosial Indian. Oh, we know that there's boatloads of delicious Malay grub out there (we have fond memories of our best Malay meal ever), it's just that, we suspect, most of it is prepared in private homes, out of the reach of trolling grub seekers like ourselves. (We haven't yet stooped to knocking on the doors of perfect strangers to ask for a taste of whatever it is we've just whiffed outside their kitchen window. Never say never.)

So, a place serving memorable Malay fare is something to get on a soapbox about.

Fatimah Selera has been dishing up killer kampung kuisine (kampung means 'village' in Malay, so what we're talking about here is true 'mom'-style cooking) to its lucky Kampung Baru kustomers for several years. Since making our acquaintance with its mouthwatering offerings last December we've made a few return pilgramages. The pattern: head over for a full - I mean really full - lunch and leave with numerous plastic bags of goodies to stash in the freezer for a rainy day.

There's always a groaning sideboard-type display of dishes at the back of this modest, open-air restaurant. Affable Pakcik Nordin, Fatimah's proprietor, will happily describe every single one of them, if that's what it takes.

It's all good, but we think Fatimah Selera really shines when it comes to fish. Take, for instance, the beauty up top - ikan kembung (a smallish mackerel-y fish) stuffed with grated coconut, turmeric, chilies, and lemongrass and grilled to crackly-skinned perfection. Ikan kembung is oily and strong-flavored, making it both barbeque-friendly (crispy outside, moist within) and the perfect foil for the assertively-flavored stuffing. Served with a dipping sauce of kecap manis and chopped chilies.

Fatimah Selera also does a mean assam fish. Chunks of a meaty, firm-fleshed variety (sea bass?) are stewed in a sweet-tamarind sour, dried chili gravy. Lime leaves are in evidence on the plate and lemongrass and galangal announce themselves on the tongue. The sauce is neither so sour nor so spicy as to preclude spooning it up on its own after the fish is gone. 

The house 'relish' brings to mind claims that Malaysian is the first 'fusion' (how I hate that word) cuisine. Here we have large, more-fishy-than-salty ikan bilis (dried anchovies), chilies, onions, a green leafy vegetable of some sort ... and preserved mustard, an ingredient more often associated with Chinese than Malay food. Everything is fried together, resulting in an irresistible salty, fishy, spicy, pickley-sour, sweet (note that the onions are lightly caramelized) side dish. 

In true 'home cooking' style, it varies day to day. Long green chilies may be substituted for red, preserved mustard may be privileged over fresh greens, shallots may find their way into the mix. But two things are constant: those irresistably crunchy ikan bilis and the fact that this relish will be MIA from the table at the back of the shop by 2pm.

To say that Fatimah Selera does fish well is not to say that other items are second-best. We just happen to love seafood. The chicken curry is sublime, with (again) plenty of chilies, a rich essence of dried aromatics, and blessedly less coconut milk than your average version. It's always a ta pao (takeaway).

Pergedel (fritters) are expertly deep-fried, flavorful potato and vegetable nuggets nestled in a lacy egg jacket. Fatimah Selera's pecel jawa (blanched veggies and tofu doused in peanut sauce) satisfying and not too sweet, and the sambal belacan served with ulam (vegetables) is fresh, fishy, and hurts-so-good fiery.

Skip dessert, after a meal like that? Not with the likes of the restaurant's towering air jagung (literally, corn juice) - shaved ice, corn, and condensed milk - on the menu. This treat is tantalizing enough to silence any and all corn-for-dessert? naysayers.

Fatimah Selera Kampung, 5 Jalan Haji Yahya Sheikh Ahmad, Kampung Baru, Kuala Lumpur. Tel. 03-2692-1073.

Dancing in the Streets

 

Wedged between a freeway overpass and the port, splayed on either side of the railroad tracks, Klong Toey is Bangkok's oldest squatter settlement. Home to 'upcountry' (rural areas beyond Bangkok) migrant workers, it's most readily associated with the drug trade and prostitution. But as this site makes clear, Klong Toey is also a community, with struggling families and schools and small businesses.

A stone's throw away sits the district's market, Dalat Klong Toey. It is vast, confusingly organized, chaotic, maddeningly crowded, and very, very wet - just the sort of market to pull us from bed before dawn.

As we arrive, the sun rises over a battalion of tuk-tuks parked on Rama IV Road.

Klong Toey is already awake. Heading into its maze, we find a pair of popiah wrapper makers. Ball of dough in one hand, razor in the other, this woman churns out at the paper-thin soft 'pancakes' at the rate of about one every 2 seconds. Barely touching dough ball to hot griddle, she moves it clockwise and then lifts, leaving the barest coating of batter, then scrapes-peels it off with her razor-spatula. Dough-razor, dough-razor, dough-razor. She works at lightning speed (stopping only to wave at two gawping farang). When we leave the market four hours later she's still at it, and the stack of wrappers next to her is more than a foot high.

There's much at Dalat Klong Toey to boggle the mind - an extensive Isaan and northern Thai produce section, wild boar meat, and mounds of fragrant prepared curry pastes - but we're particularly enthralled by the extensive covered seafood section, especially its fresh, in-the-shell scallops.

Not to mention the seafood vendors, most of whom scale, gut, and otherwise prep fish shirtless. Many chests proudly display impressive amulet collections.

As we're browsing the market's inner aisles, snippets of music drift in from outside. We follow the drums to a side street and find a loud, merry procession in progress.

A full phalanx of musicians includes a piano player,

and several guitarists (some more inclined to lengthy solos than others),

and there's even bulky amplifiers on wheels.

An afro-wigged dude at the center of the procession pushes a cart holding a kaa-tin, a sort of 'money tree' - a means of collecting donations as the group moves through the market.

The celebrants are tambun, or making merit, by collecting money for Wat Chon in Lopburi . A photo of the wat rests at the base of the money tree.

Anyone who joins in the procession or donates money gets on Buddha's good side. The participants are in high spirits and there's no shortage of whooping, clapping, dancing, and clowning.

Some individuals supplement donations by collecting on their own, in bowls or with 'mini', handheld kaa-tin.

Dalat Klong Toey's sprawl straddles a major six-lane, divided street. That doesn't stop the merit makers. They proceed into the road, stop traffic, and hoist the kaa-tin cart and amplifiers over the concrete median.

A stopped bus means more potential donations, and several passengers hand down 20-baht notes.

One might encounter a tambun like this one anywhere in Thailand, but donators beware: we're told that some are scams, and the donations will end up nowhere but in the participants' pockets. Some merit-makers work on a percentage basis, keeping money aside for themselves.

This tambun seems genuine, or at least we'd like to think so. If we were taken, then we were just two among the ranks of all the shoppers and vendors who donated as much, or more, than we did. A small price to pay for an entertaining break in the day-to-day market comings and goings.

For the better part of an hour we trail the band (and are sometimes pulled into the action), through the market and back to its starting point. The music stops, the musicians put away their instruments, participants disperse, and vendors who danced the last hour away return to their stalls.

We duck back into the market.

Right place, right time. Sometimes we get lucky.

Tarry, Tarry Night

Stones for dinner? Not quite.

These rock-like objects are the hard-shelled seeds of the kepayang tree (Pangium edule), which grows wild in Indonesia and Malaysia. Known as kluwak in Indonesian and buah keluak in Malaysian, they are an essential ingredient in rawon, an east Javanese beef or chicken stew, and in ayam/babi buah keluak, a Malaysian Nonya chicken or pork specialty.

I'd been eyeing the piles of kluwak at Indonesian vendors' stalls in Kuala Lumpur's Chow Kit market for some time. It was the wonderfully rich rawon served by a Javanese vendor at nearby Restoran TAR that set me on the path to purchase.

Studded with tiny, barely sprouted soy beans, this beefy bowl begged to be eaten on a cold night in front of a roaring fire. No chance of that in KL, though I might set the aircon to high before I sit down to my own version.

The pale 'meat' of raw kluwak are poisonous. On Java, where most commercially-sold kluwak originate, they are soaked and boiled to neutralize their hydrocyanic acid. The pitch-black meat of the processed seeds is soft and oily, like half-cooled tar (some might say opium), and smells woodsy, like a forest floor after a long rain. It tastes a bit like a strong mushroom, with the barest repellant-yet-alluring hint of truffle.

Before being blended into rawon the kluwak is ground to a paste. The depth of flavor it lends to this humble dish is difficult to describe, but I've rarely been as taken by a bowl of beef soup. A better cook than I would no doubt figure a way to incorporate this intriguingly fungi-esque ingredient into a western dish or two.

Kluwak are easily available (already shelled) in the US - on Amazon, no less. Fans of (very) slow-cooked, big flavors might want to try this recipe, posted by an Indonesian food blogger, for rawon made with oxtail, or this one, for Nonya ayam buah keluak (chicken cooked with kluwak).

Medan on a Plate

Medan - most travelers hate it. (Lonely Planet Indonesia guide: 'The city has few redeeming features or real sites of interest and most tourists wisely treat it strictly as an entry and exit point.')

We can't deny that Medan lacks Padang's laid-back charm (though its residents are just as friendly as Padang's). It's awfully polluted. It's not really walkable, except in small bits. Careless re-development has meant the disappearance of 80% of its graceful colonial-era buildings. Nonetheless...

Herein lies the real advantage of traveling on one's stomach. If food is the focus - if a memorable meal makes your day and a lovingly prepared plate is your visual equivalent of a breathtaking sunset - then beauty can be found almost anywhere. We have found beauty in the ugliest places. We found it in Medan, Sumatra's largest city, on the way to the Brayan (a district of Medan) morning market.

Lontong Nasi Gurih is not a shack. It's less than a shack, just a tent-shaded streetside stall surrounded by a jumble of tables. Our motorcycle pedicab zoomed by at 7am on a Sunday, and Gurih was packed. We returned, headed the opposite direction, 4 hours later, and the place was still heaving. We asked our driver to turn around.

'Herman!' we cried. 'Emergency stop!'

We later learned that though Lontong Nasi Gurih has been in business only two years, it is known far and wide. Mention the name, or utter a vague description along the lines of 'nasi lemak di Glugur' (nasi lemak in Glugur district) to Medan-ites and chances are heads will nod in recognition. Here's why:

Gurih serves its nasi lemak on a banana leaf. Sadly, many places no longer do. The leaf's subtle perfume rises when hot rice hits. Nasi lemak served on plastic or waxed paper is an abomination but, these days, an almost unavoidable one. Gurih bucks the trend.

The nasi (rice) is perfect. Steamed in coconut water - not milk or cream - it is scented with, rather then overwhelmed by, coconut. It's not heavy, it's not gloppy, and it doesn't clump. Mushy nasi is a bummer. Here, each grain is distinct, individual , cooked through, yet the teeniest bit firm. As it should be.

Gurih's sambal is exquisite, unbeatable, worthy of worship, spicy-hot (most foods on Sumatra are), but so much more. Sweet, from palm sugar perhaps, but also from sweetness coaxed from onions and shallots cooked low and slow until golden. It's fresh-tasting, because it's made not from dried chilies but from the plump, long red and green chilies that Sumatrans favor. There's a wee bit of sweet-balancing sharpness from tomatoes and the barest hint of fishiness from trassi (Indonesian shrimp paste). We called for seconds.

The place dishes up delightful curries. The beef rendang's (lower left corner, both nasi lemak photos) deceptively mild come-on is quickly followed by a numbing chile punch. There's mellow sayur masak lemak (vegetables cooked in coconut milk - here, long beans, cabbage, and long green chilies) to soften the rendang's blow, and sprinkles of crunchy peanuts (skin-on, deep-fried) and fried shallots.

The plate is finished by thin-cut, uber-crispy banana chips. Who doesn't love chips? These lend an unusual (to those accustomed, as we are, to Malaysian ikan bilis-garnished nasi lemak) but very appealing textural element to an already amazing feed. We missed the ikan bilis - for about two seconds.

Medan on a plate. What a lovely town. Can't wait to return.

Lontong Nasi Gurih (yes, they serve lontong too, and it's wonderful - but who could pass up the nasi lemak?), Jalan K.L. Yos Sudarso, Glugur District, Medan, Sumatra. 7am-noon and 6-10p. Tel. 662-0945.

Mission Possible

When we lived in the San Francisco East Bay (a total of about 6 years between 1990 and 2002) we were lazy. LA-ZY! I can probably count on my fingers and toes the number of times that we made it across the Bay Bridge for fun (Dave went in 5 days a week as did I, for a period, for work).

There are good reasons for this. The East Bay boasts what was, for years, the area's very best cheese store (The Cheeseboard, where they don't just let you taste, they insist on it!) and tapas bar (Cesar) and what still is, I would wager, the best place to buy fresh pasta and macaroons (Phoenix). And too many great restaurants to list. The East Bay's weather rules. Folks unfamiliar with the meteorlogical vagaries of San Francisco (the summers are colder than the autumns, for one) might not appreciate this ... but we used to stand in the hot sun on our front porch and watch the fog roll in - over the City, into the Bay - and then stop, just stop and hang there, where it would stay all day.  We'd laugh, do hi-fives, and then head out with the dog for a glorious run in the East Bay hills (100+ miles of trails, trailhead exactly ten minutes from our house), followed by a slice of Cheeseboard pizza. Smugness really stokes the appetite.

Still, we do regret - at least a little bit - missing opportunities. We should have taken in, during those years, more of what San Francisco has to offer. Now, when we go back to the US for a visit, we make up for it. We stay on the foggy side of the Bay, run the Embarcadero to Fisherman's Wharf, and follow our noses to the sea lions. We do the Saturday Ferry Plaza Farmer's market and upscale restaurants. And we seek out, in the City's 'hoods, tastes that we'll never in a million years find here at home in Asia.

Which brings us to the Mission. A few Sundays ago, after Dave had done his out-of-the-hotel-at-6am-with-my-camera thing, after I started my day on a bench by the Bay with a latte from our beloved Peet's and freshly squeezed blood orange juice from a Ferry Plaza shop, we headed to the San Francisco Mission district to take in its community murals and hunt down a Salvadorean tamale.

The Mission has been a predominantly Latino area of San Francisco since the 1970's, and the murals there go back almost as far.

They are everywhere - on the sides of buildings, on fences, overlooking a playground, and lining a narrow through street (between 24th and 25th) called Balmy Alley. They are amazing, both for detail and range of subject matter, which touches upon the political, the cultural, the historical.

We wish we'd known about the mural tours (both private, by appointment, and weekly, open-to-the-public) offered by the Precita Eyes Mural Arts and Visitors Center.

Nonetheless, we got an eyeful.

Oh, by the way - we ate well too.

Twenty-fourth Street is the place to head if serious mural viewing is on the agenda. And it's possible, with an adventurous spirit and an empty stomach, to eat one's way from the 24th Street Bart Station up eight or so blocks.

We started with a panaderia (bakery) at 24th and York called La Mexicana and, applying the method we often employ here in Malaysia, when faced with way too many kuih to choose from, bought one of nearly everything. Unfortunately we know the Mexican names of nothing that we tasted, but we do recall that La Mexicana's version of the delicate pastry sometimes called 'elephant ears' was spot-on, shatteringly crisp, crackly layers glazed with just the right amount of sugar.

Further down the street (toward Mission), this sign for a BBQ place caught our eye. It's a little sick, if you really think about it, but its folk art-iness suggests that deliciousness lies within the walls on which it was painted. It was closed, unfortunately.

We drowned our sorrow in more pastries, this time at La Victoria, on the corner of 24th and Alabama. We'd had more than our fair share of sweet stuff at this point but the seductive window display was impossible to resist. (Note the pineapple tarts in the lower left corner of the photo.)

La Victoria has a great vibe about it. It's an old-style panaderia cum coffee shop (the blackboard menu lists espresso, cappucino, etc.), great for takeaway but with a few tables to eat in, staffed by young hipsters but frequented by old-timers. Everything looked tempting but we limited ourselves to a ricotta tart (below, lower right) and a pre-wrapped slice of Mexican bread pudding. The tart was superb - light but very cheesey, with a flaky crust - and the pudding incredible, moist and studded with cheese and raisins and fragrant with cinammon. One piece could easily have served four as an after-meal treat. I would return to the Mission for La Victoria's bread pudding alone.

When I went to the counter to pay for my sweets I was dismayed to see several types of fresh tamales for sale. With no kitchen to take them home to I couldn't takeaway. And I was unable to enjoy one in situ because we were headed across the street to La Palma Mexica-tessen for something I dream of often here in Kuala Lumpur: freshly made, hand-patted corn tortillas.

Kudos to the La Palma folks for allowing Dave to take photos. They said 'no' at first request, then quickly reconsidered and invited him behind the counter. We don't know La Palma's history, but we do know the tortillas are luscious.

They're available for purchase, by the bag, or to eat right there, with a choice of taco fillings.

It really doesn't get much better than this (unless you are in Mexico, or at Chicago's Sunday Maxwell Street market, I would suppose): supple corn tortillas, made to order, topped with chunks of tender pork stewed in green sauce, a dash of zippy tomato salsa, and a sprinkle of cilantro. La Palma makes each taco with two tortillas, to prevent accidents and shirt-soiling messes (it works!). We appreciate the extra dose of richly corn-y masa flavor. We had some lovely meals in San Francisco, but this was probably, next to the porchetta, the best thing we put in our mouths that weekend. Heavenly.

And substantial. Probably too substantial, given that we were headed up Mission Street to El Zocalo (3230 Mission Street, tel. 415-282-2572) for Salvadorean tamale. The place was recommended to us by our hotel's doorman, who'd grown up in the Mission, the son of immigrants from El Salvador. We figured that when it came to Salvadorean food he probably knew a thing or two.

Mexican tamale, with their thick corn wrappers and usually spicy fillings (I love them) are an entirely different animal to the Salvadorean tamale. Salvadorean cooks somehow transform masa into an ethereally light wrapper. El Zocalo's version consists of mildly seasoned (Salvadorean tamale usually are) tomatoey potato and chicken filling encased in a skin so airy it could almost be custard. These tamale should be experienced for their incredible texture alone.

We left the restaurant stuffed, happy, and wondering how we could possible work up an appetite for dinner, Dave's last of the trip, at a San Francisco institution . (Happily, we managed.)

A Word From the Photographer

Pickled mustard, Nan, Thailand

I'm of the age that I remember the great compact disc versus vinyl debates of the eighties. The CD had just been introduced, promising unsurpassed quality and convenience. Many of us (OK, myself) scoffed at the notion and swore that we'd never give up vinyl records. Nothing could compete with audiophile Japanese pressings. Like 8-track and Beta, CDs were a fad.

So, in a storage locker somewhere in northern California sits my vast collection of vinyl records. Oh sure, I'd like to have some of them (those that haven't been re-issued on CD), but for the most part they can just stay in storage until the day that I have the time and inclination to clean that locker out. I have embraced CD, the Ipod, and, in fact, much of the digital world.

So when people ask me, 'Hey Photoboy - how do you do it?', the answer is obvious: Film.

Ladies and Gentlemen - I give you FILM (pronounced FIL-muh). This media is also, for reasons that escape me, sometimes referred to as an 'emulsion'. I could bore you with the details about the silver halide crystals and color couplers that allow film to reproduce images. But I have many other things to bore you with so let's bring those issues front and center for now.

For our purposes, try to imagine a very long, thin CF card that holds 36 images and you've got a good idea what this stuff is about.

The FILM goes in the back of the camera like this.

In my camera the FILM is wound automatically. CAUTION: for safety reasons it is important that fingers, neckties, nose rings, dreadlocks, etc. be kept away from the moving parts (trust me on this).

Once the film is loaded you're ready to scream - er, I mean, take photographs.

Readers often ask me what type of equipment I use. And once I tell them, for some reason I never hear from them again.

This is my trusty Canon T90.

These babies were produced in the 1980s (no, I didn't trade my record collection for one) and they're built like tanks. They're manual focus and I use prime lenses (in other words, fixed focal length) of 20mm, 50mm, 85mm, and 200mm.

My 85mm, f1.2 lens is probably my favorite. It's just the thing for shooting markets and portraits. However, most of my photos are shot with the 50mm (which is also a f1.2). A tripod, assorted filters, a speedlite, and 12-inch reflector complete the 'standard' or 'chiropractic' package that I use most of the time.

In this day and age of instant gratification shooting and editing FILM is a relatively slooooow process. Once the images are exposed they are taken for DEVELOPING. It works like this: a mysterious man takes my bag of FILM to a local DEVELOPER.

In a day or two, after I have forked over a load of cash, he returns it to me in the form of SLIDES, also known as transparencies or 'trannies'.

After I get the slides home I view them using a 'slide sorter' and/or under magnification. I often take multiple shots of the same scene - bracketing around an exposure or playing with composition and depth of field, but mostly attempting to get a shot that does not include my thumb. For this reason, the sorting and selection process is key.

Storage is no problem, assuming that Robyn and I have bought enough shoes in the course of a year.

Now comes the fun part (or, the part that I prefer Robyn take care of). The slides are converted to digital using a SCANNER. We have a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000, which we purchased on a wing and a prayer right after we moved from Saigon to Kuala Lumpur. We - all right Robyn, mostly - saves the scanned images as JPEG files which we - yes, yes, she - then loads to this site.

As my heroes in the photo world go digital I tell myself that 'one of these days' I'll follow them. A photographer whose work I admire tremendously (and one of the few still using film) said to me a few weeks ago, 'Dave, here's the thing. You've just gotta do it.'

She's probably right. Film is getting harder and harder to find, and obviously the quality of digital can match, even exceed, film.

Still - there's something about film. Maybe it's the saturation or texture of the images, or perhaps it's the process that forces me to shoot first and ask questions later. Whatever. It would be a shame if film were to disappear altogether, forever. I would mourn its passing.

In the meantime, if anyone out there is interested in purchasing a very used vinyl version of 'Gun Shy' by the Screaming Blue Messiahs, shoot me an email....

Moon over Cubaduk Island, Indonesia

True Thai in KL

When the Thai temple's neighbors chased away the Sunday food vendors we mourned, we really did.

Well, as it turns out, Petaling Jaya's loss is our gain, because Thai grocery owner K.O. Tan has relocated his truck to the front of his newish Pandan Indah shop. There's more goodies than ever, and now, thanks to tables and stools, no need to take away (though you still can), squat on the ground with a plastic bag to your mouth, or eat standing up.

This is true Thai food, prepared by Thais for Thais. On both of our visits clientele consisted exclusively of Thais and non-Thais married to Thais. (And us.) This is a good sign (the Thai clientele, not us) - unless, that is, you prefer your aahaan Thai (Thai food) insipidly spiced and on the sweet side.

Much of the cooking is done by Tan's wife, who hails from Chiang Rai. As such, there's always kao niaow (sticky rice), as well as a few usually-hard-to-find northern dishes available. Ask for laab khua (lahb KOO-ah). We fell in love with this robust mixture of chopped pork and pork parts (liver, stomach, heart, perhaps an ear or two), seasoned with fresh herbs and ground dried spices like prickly ash, cumin, and coriander, a couple of years ago in Chiang Mai. It's not always available (though laab thamadaa - 'regular' laab, with lime juice and mint leaves, is), so cross your fingers and toes on the way to lunch.

If you doubt the deliciousness of anything featuring such an array of innards, know that I - an innard avoider until fairly recently - have been driven, by my northern Thailand-stoked cravings for this dish, to boil many a pig heart in my own kitchen (a food handling and preparation watershed pour moi).

Kanom jeen, skinny noodles of fermented rice, are enjoyed all over Thailand, but it's in the north that they're served with nam ngiaw, a soupy meat (pork here, beef for northern Thailand's Muslims) and tomato 'curry'. Mrs. Tan's nam ngiaw is superb, redolent of roasted dried chilies but nicely balanced by the slight tartness of the tomatoes. It's authentically enriched with cubes of pork blood and meant to be bulked up with accompanying veggies: bean sprouts, shredded cabbage, and salty pickled mustard.

Belacan lovers must try the nam prik gapi, a stinky, spicy 'dip' that boasts copious amounts of Thai shrimp paste (the 'gapi'), chilies, shallots, and garlic. Eat it with long beans, cabbage, raw eggplant, cucumbers, and, if the chilies light your fire, handfuls of sticky rice.

We were thrilled to find sup nawmai (a.k.a. preserved bamboo shoot 'salad') among the dishes on dispaly. I'll be honest here. Much as I love this dish it can, at times - depending on how fermented the shoots are - taste a bit too ... funky. Happily, Mrs. Tan's bamboo shoots have soaked just long enough, entering the bounds of 'preserved' without straying beyond into 'way too cheesy' territory. She tosses them with spoonfuls of nubbly ground toasted rice and chilies, seasons the lot with a bit of lime juice and fish sauce, and tops it all with plenty of mint leaves.

What else? Too much to list. Imagine an otak-otak of flaked fish so silky and moist it's almost custard-like. Thai Market's version is a fist-sized portion steamed in a banana leaf. Chopped lemongrass, shredded lime leaf, galangal, and chile figure prominently. The smart diner will eat one here and take a few home to tuck in the fridge.

There's also kanom jeen with other, non-nam ngiaw toppers, including a wonderful, mildish nam yaa bplaa (fish and coconut milk 'curry') and a personal favorite: gaeng tai bplaa (fish innard curry - opening photo). Lovers of heat and strong fishy flavors will adore this yellow-green concoction, with its chunks of bamboo shoot, globe eggplant, and bitter little pea eggplants.

Somtam (green papaya salad) is made to order. Phet-priaow (hot and sour) for me, please, but if you're seeking relief from other, spicier dishes just apprise the Mrs. before she sets to your order. She pounds her somtam with pickled paddy crabs by default, so if it's the version with dried shrimp and sans crab that you seek, ask for 'somtam tai'.

There's loads of dishes that we have yet to try. Choices vary week by week, so peruse the pots and bowls perched on the truck and make your meal a point-and-shoot affair.

Mr. Tan will be leasing the space above his shop come August and plans a full-fledged restaurant, to be open sometime in September. This is good news for those who prefer air-conditioned comfort and don't want their true Thai grazing to be restricted to Sunday afternoons. We'll certainly visit the restaurant but we do enjoy the casual atmosphere of the current set-up.

It's the closest we'll ever come to a true Thai street food experience in KL.

Thai Market Font, 43G, Jalan Pandan Indah 4/6B, Pandan Indah. Tel. 03-4296-6775. Food is served out front on Sundays only, from mid-morning till late in the afternoon, or until supplies run out. During the week a very limited selection of vittles is served in the back of the shop. If you're cooking Thai at home, find everything ingredient and utensil here, from Thai sticky rice to ceramic mortars and wooden pestles. A sizeable refrigerated case holds imported Thai produce (deliveries every Friday) such as cha-om and pak damleung, a sweet, vining green with maple-shaped leaves.

Holy Halo-Halo

En route to the US last month we stopped for a few days in the Philippines. It was Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter) and we were lucky enough to stay at the Medina house in Arayat, Pampanga province, a fantastic base from which to take in the small town's festivities.

We didn't go hungry that weekend. Good Friday may be meatless but its meals - in the Philippines, at least - are anything but spare. We began the day with a breakfast of champurrado (rice mixed with Philippine cacao) accompanied by salted fish (an unlikely but superb combination) and slabs of butter-slathered Medina ensaimada, an insanely rich sweet bread made with dozens of egg yolks and a ball of Dutch edam cheese. At half past noon Dave and I sat down, with a table full of Medina friends and extended family, to a feast. Struggling to pace ourselves, we worked our way through two fish dishes, crabs simmered in coconut milk, sisig puso (banana flower sauteed with vinegar), and other dishes, as well as a selection of desserts that included peak-of-ripenesss local mangoes (they rival Indian, in our opinion) and leche flan.

In the early evening I woke from a nap and stumbled into the kitchen in search of ice water. There, I was accosted by Alice, a gregarious local who lends her culinary expertise when the number of mouths to feed exceeds the reach of long-time Medina cook Lucia, her daughter, and her daughter-in-law.

'Merienda?' she proposed with a grin. (Merienda is a between-meal snack.)

Why not? True, it had been less than four hours since I rose, stuffed, from the lunch table ... but I was already long past the point of no return.

I took a seat in the cool, welcome darkness of the kitchen (Holy Week coincides with the white-hot dry season) and watched Alice assemble a glass of halo-halo, the Philippine version of the bean, milk, and crushed ice-based snacks enjoyed throughout Southeast Asia.

Compared to the multi-ingredient, luridly colored street version of halo-halo, Alice's was simple and sedate. She started with a layer of white beans, boiled and sweetened and stirred to a paste, and then added a generous layer of cream-colored halayang gatas, the ingredient that makes Kapampangan halo-halo Kapampangan. Alice had made the halayang gatas that morning, beating fatty carabao milk in a copper-brass pan with a wooden spatula over a low flame until it became thick, then adding sugar and grated rind of the dayap, a key lime-like local citrus.

After filling the glass to overflowing with crushed ice, and topping that with a bit of creamed corn, she poured on condensed milk, just enough to set the ice to melting and moisten the other ingredients.

Truth be told, I'd never been much of a fan of the region's beany iced treats. But that refreshing halo-halo, with its not-too-sweet bean paste and unctuously milky, delicately limey halayang gatas, was my watershed. (The halayang gatas appeared on its own, as a dessert, several times over the weekend. I never failed to indulge.)

I have many wonderful memories of Holy Weekend in Arayat. Alice's halo-halo is among the fondest.

The Call of the Cauldron

Last year about this time, at home in KL after a month or so in the States, I wrote a sappy, albeit heartfelt, ode to Malaysia and Malaysian food. This time around, suffice it to say - it's good to be back.

After passing Saturday in an appetite-killing, jet lag-induced fog, I climbed back on the horse and rode it to one of our favorite KL wet markets. Though we'd wiled away countless hours roaming the aisles of Pasar Chow Kit we had never managed, until Sunday, to time our peregrinations to the opening hours of this perpetually busy bihun sup stall.

No non-vegetarian within whiffing distance of Pak Ngah's bubbling cauldron can help but be seduced by the meaty steam rising from the long-simmering beef parts within.

The broth's depth of color and mouthwatering fragrance promise much.

Each bowl delivers.

An order of 'special' means more everything - more stomach, lung, meat, and whatever the heck else Pak Ngah has chucked into the mix. The solids are fine, but it's really the rich, intense broth that's to die for. That, and the brick-red chile sauce in the squeeze ketchup bottles on every table. It's nothing more than dried chilies, soaked and ground to a paste - but also, perhaps, roasted to impart a haunting, sweet-smoky, almost Mexican ancho-ish essence.

Bihun sup. Not found in many an American market.

Welcome home, says Dave. Thanks, answers my belly.

Pak Ngah bihun sup stall, Chow Kit Market, 11ish to late afternoon.

How the West Was Eaten

Yut Kee's Hainanese founder watches over the coffee shop's day-to-day business

KLue magazine, April 2007, Issue 102

Text: Robyn Eckhardt          Photos: David Hagerman

I had to come to Kuala Lumpur to eat Western food.

I'm not referring to the hamburgers and barbecued ribs that I grew up eating in the, um, West. Neither am I alluding to the Weiner schnitzel served in Thai beach towns to sunburned Germans unable to countenance another bowl of curry. Nor to the mutations of spaghetti Bolognese and cream of corn soup found in Hong Kong's sai chan (Cantonese for 'western food') shops.

I mean those decidedly non-Asian, yet thoroughly Malaysian culinary stalwarts like chops, mushroom soup, and chicken Maryland: the Western food prepared pretty much as Westerners might prepare it (if they still did), that is as integral to the Malaysian gastronomic experience as nasi lemak and char kuey teow.

KL-ites take these dishes for granted. After all, here in the Klang Valley restaurants, kopitiam, and hawker stalls offering fish and chips et al are as plentiful as traffic snarls. To a Westerner, however, some of this Western food is surprising, and really rather foreign.

Maybe it's because these dishes are caught in a time warp. Western restaurants in the West stopped serving classic sauced chops accompanied by peas and carrots when bell-bottoms were fashion news (the first time around, that is). And chicken Maryland? Most Westerners under the age of 50 have never heard of it. This bizarre combination of chicken and fried bananas, which probably made its way from America (though not necessarily from the American state of Maryland) via Britain, appears on a British pub menu included in the 1953-54 edition of the UK's 'Good Food Guide'.

Classically prepared chops - here, Yut Kee's lamb chop - are a Malaysian Western food favorite

Of course, KL isn't the only city in Asia where one can find out-of-date Western food. With the exception of Singapore, however, Malaysian-style Western food is unique in the region.

Malaysians owe chops and the like to colonization and immigration. The British introduced these dishes, but it was Hainanese who took them to heart. Chinese migrants settled in Malaysia in waves. Cantonese and Teochew arrived first, had their pick of jobs, and ended up controlling many industries through clan associations. Hainanese came later, and many ended up working as cooks for foreigners, garnering experience that they later put to use in their own businesses.

Which goes far to explain why Malaysian Western food, unlike that found in Hong Kong, is so, well, Western. It's not indigenized, not altered with Malaysian ingredients to appeal to local palates. You'll find no sambal in the mushroom soup, no kalamansi juice in the gravy.

Western food was as much a part of the Malaysian immigrant experience as tin mining. Hainanese cooks took pride in serving, in their own restaurants to other immigrants, dishes that tasted as they would have if served in European homes. They took ownership of these foods - not by altering ingredients, but by replicating authentic flavors - and made them Malaysian. 

Contrast the Malaysian chop, with its oh-so proper accompaniments of diced vegetables and roast potatoes, all smothered in a Worcestershire-based sauce - to the violations perpetrated against Western food in Hong Kong's old-style sai chan houses. Wok-fried pasta with meat sauce and borscht seasoned with soy may be tasty, but are about as 'Western' as American-style chop suey is Chinese. But that's OK. Canto-Western dishes were never meant to be truly Western. Introduced only four or so decades ago, they were Sinicized by local cooks for local customers, served in local-style eateries, and priced to local pocketbooks. Unlike the earliest versions of Malaysian Western food, these dishes were never meant to be eaten by Westerners.

Given its limited role in Hong Kong's culinary history, it's no surprise that see yau sai chan (literally, 'soy sauce' Western food) has become an endangered species in the SAR. But here in Kuala Lumpur, Western food is as beloved as ever.

Back in the day, pot pies and fish and chips owed some of their popularity to cache. 'The attraction was that it was 'Western',' remembers KL native Cheong Soon Gan of the chops he enjoyed as a youth.

'One felt slightly more important if one ate it with Worcestershire sauce. And one lorded it over one's classmates if one actually knew how to say 'Worcestershire' correctly.'

They're no longer status symbols, but neither are these dishes in danger of extinction. Witness the growth in recent years of nostalgically-themed coffee shops throughout the Klang Valley. Head to Old Klang Road where Tan Tun, an immigrant Burmese hawker who learned to cook Western food from a Chinese Malaysian, does a steady trade in mushroom soup and chicken chops. Or drop by the Hainan-pedigreed Yuk Kee around lunchtime any day of the week and count the number of under-thirty-somethings tucking into a fry-up.

In Kuala Lumpur, food fads will come and go. But Western food has staying power.