EatingAsia

Merdeka, Merdeka, Merdeka!

Happy Independence Day Malaysia!

This year we're in Penang, though if there were any celebrations on the island last night we know nothing about it. As per our usual Georgetown evening routine we followed a fantastic meal (braised ginger duck noodles and expertly fried baby gailan, if you must know) with an early bedtime. It may be a holiday, but we're here for work.

A few weeks ago an editor at the Malaysian Star newspaper saw my post on Islam, politics, and hidden pork stalls (EatingAsia's most commented-on post ever) and was nice enough to ask me to write a small piece for today's Merdeka Day supplement. It's nothing like the post -- we are where we are, after all -- but if you're interested you can find it in there on the page devoted to food.

Happy happy, everyone.

Hari Merdeka di Toraja: Who Doesn't Love a Parade?

Our visit to Toraja coincided with the 64th anniversary of Indonesian independence ('merdeka' in Indonesian).

On our first full day in Sulawesi, eight hours into our drive from Makassar on the southwestern coast, we were slowed by a gaggle of kindergarten-aged kids dressed as policemen (and women), army generals, navy dudes, and in various costumes reflecting Indonesia's many ethnicities. Most of the girls were elaborately made-up. It was a practice run for their Merdeka Day parade.

We were running late but stopped anyway, so Dave could photograph. The kids were hilarious, and so cute, accompanied by moms and dads and grandmas and aunties bursting with pride. But it was hot, and made more so for the kids by their heavy costumes. Many didn't look at all happy. As with many of these sorts of events one suspects this was more for the enjoyment of the grown-ups than for that of the kids!

About a week later, the day after Independence Day, we were on our way to a funeral ceremony when we came across a parade of similarly-aged and bedecked kids in Toraja's tourist center, Rantepao. They were just as adorable, and this time they looked a bit happier -- perhaps with the knowledge that after they finished parading costumes would be put away for another year.

And then the next day, a parade of middle and high schoolers came to Rantepao, consisting of 'brigades' representing every single middle and high school in the entire region of Toraja! We drove into town with the excellent cook in whose tongkanan we were staying and hung out with her and her extended family to wait for a glimpse of her son, who was marching with his classmates.

Each school's uniforms had their own personality. There were the nurses, and the Girl Guides, the Boy Scout types, the pink-and-white skirted goodie-two-shoes, and the show-offy cheerleaders fronted by thigh high-booted majorettes who worked their whistles and batons with a vengeance. There were human pyramids, drums and flutes, and even hula hoops. I have no idea if this sort of spectacle takes place all over Indonesia but if it does, my advice to you would be to find yourself somewhere, anywhere in the country when Merdeka Day rolls around.

In the meantime, check out Dave's second stab at marrying sound with images, all recorded and shot at the parades. (Click four-way arrows at lower right of the video 'screen' to enlarge to full screen.) As always, he's soliciting criticism. What works and what doesn't?

Cholon

 

Today we take a break from Sulawesi, and head to Saigon. On our last visit I researched a walking-riding tour of the city for Wall Street Journal Asia; it appears in today's 'Weekend Journal' and online, here.

The walk starts in Cholon, Saigon's Chinatown. It's a part of Saigon that took a while to grow on us. We visited Cholon maybe two or three times in all of the more than two and a half years we lived there, never finding much to pull us back. But distance and perspective have their advantages, apparently, because now everytime we return to Saigon spending one or several long mornings in Cholon is a priority.

There's a good amount of food and travel press devoted to Yaowarat, Bangkok's Chinatown, but relatively little written on Cholon. I suspect that's because the former, with its bountiful Chinese-character signage, is much more identifiable as a Chinese neighborhood than the latter. Cholon is in fact a huge area sprawling over Saigon's Districts 5 and 6. It's been in existence for hundreds of years but really began to grown in population when the French incorporated Vietnam into Indo-China in the late 1800s.

Cholon's most obvious markers are Cho Binh Tay (Binh Tay Market) and its many Buddhist temples. You need to spend some time poking around a bit to find other indicators of its Chinese (Hoa, in Vietnamese, probably from the Mandarin word 'hua') identity. And this requires doing alot of walking in what is admittedly not Southeast Asia's best walking city. But it's a worthwhile effort. Everytime we return to Cholon we're more enamored of the place.

'Weekend Journal' runs just a few photos with its Walking Tours (to see Dave's photos, click the dots on the map) and space contraints precluded me from including all of my favorite bits of Cholon in the article. So here's a highly haphazard selection of what are, for us, some of the neighborhood's highlights. Consider it a supplement to the Walking Tour.

Any visit to Cholon should start at Cho Binh Tay. We try to arrive by 7:00am, 7:30 at the latest. At this hour the covered part of the market is just waking up, but the informal market out back, on Phan Van Koe Street, is very much alive.

We absolutely love this part of the market. It's 'wild and wooly' (our friend Andrea Nguyen's apt description for Saigon itself, but especially applicable, we think, to this buzzing lane), all of Saigon's chaos, frantic energy, and entrepreneurial zeal squeezed into one tight little space.

There's lots of pushing and shoving, shoppers jostling with sellers, hawkers barking at passers-by, and endless bargaining. The smells of fresh seafood, leafy vegetables, and fresh herbs mingle with the scent of freshly baked baguettes and prawn fritters sizzling in oil.

Every time we step onto this street I pick a spot and just stand there, not moving, for a very long time, drinking in everything around me in gulps.

There are no regular stalls here. Sellers just plop themselves down on both sides of the street, whip out their wares, and get to selling. Some vendors move often, picking up their tiny plastic stools and rattan baskets or metal trays or plastic pans of veggies or prawns and whatnot and ambling up the street a few paces, where they plop it all down again and get back to business.

The sea does part for motorcycles, and monks.

There's some good food to be had on this back lane, including vegetarian banh mi (admittedly, meat lovers will find it not quite as satisfying as a pork-stuffed baguette), prawn toasts, and turmeric-scented, tofu-studded vegetarian 'broken rice' served with chili-spiked fish sauce. 

By eight, the energy here starts to flag as vendors depart with their empty baskets, and shoppers head back home to their kitchens with full ones. Suddenly, after all that racket and chaos, the lane is quiet.

Now is a good time to duck back inside the market and seek refreshment in its 'food court'. We always start with a few coffees and fruit shakes (strawberry is a favorite),

before moving on to something more substantial. You're spoiled for choice here -- there are rice-and-dish vendors, chao (porridge) makers, and bun and pho stalls, and everything looks and smells good. But time and time again we opt for a plate of noodles prepared by an always shirtless, never smiling wok jockey who likes to play with fire next to his can't-miss corner stall.

His chow mein-like deep-fried noodles topped with choy sum, prawns, pork, a bit of liver, and deep-fried bean curd skin in a thickish black pepper-spiced gravy is wonderful, boasting that scent of char that only the kiss of a red-hot wok can deliver.

On one side of the food court are a row of stalls selling whole fish and boned and skinned fish for fish paste and fish balls.

Here a vendor employs a great method for detaching fish meat destined to be pounded into a paste from its skin: fillet, then grasp the fillet at the tail end while you use a spoon to scrape the meat free. I've yet to try this at home but it makes a heck of a lot more sense than removing skin from fillets with a knife. Less waste too.

From Binh Tay we walk in the general direction of Nguyen Trai Street, an east-west thoroughfare dotted with temples. We rarely go in a straight line, instead diverting from main streets down an alley or short lane or two for a quieter glimpse of daily life.

 
We're always on the lookout for material traces of Cholon history. Many of the district's old Chinese shop houses are hidden behind signage, but they are there. Just look up.
 

In front of a fruit market on Nguyen Trai we meet Lam Ai Phuong, a Cholon native who's lived there all her life. We try conversing in English, then switch to Mandarin (I'm always surprised by how many Cholon-ites speak Mandarin), and she tells me that the first floor of the building pictured above used to be a Hainanese coffee shop. It closed after Liberation.

Phuong's husband, who was 'involved with the US military', fled Vietnam by boat after Saigon fell. She hasn't seen him since. He now now lives in the US. Didn't she wish to join him? I wonder.

'By the time it was possible I was too old. This is my home. I prefer to stay here.'

Across from the fruit market, on Phung Hung Street, is what the owner claims is Cholon's oldest roast meats shop, dating back to the late sixties. We just love the weathered look of the place, and the bas relief duck on its golden interior sign (just visible behind the lantern).

This may be the only roast meats shop where the butcher/slicer works at his chopping block while standing on top of a meter-high stool.

His positioning is strategic: he has a clear view of the street. When a customer pulls up to the curb on their motorcycle they needn't dismount; they can just shout their order up to him. He chops and slices and hands the order to his assistant, who delivers and takes payment.

A baguette seller is conveniently stationed right outside the shop. Buy a baguette from her and shout your order to him. She ferries the baguette to the shop, he splits and fills it with your choice of meat. A perfect symbiotic relationship.

On your way up Nguyen Trai you'll pass several temples,

where you can make a donation and have incense coils or a rectangle of magenta paper hung with a wish or a prayer.

We usually end our visits to Cholon with a slow stroll up and down Trieu Quang Phuc Street. This is short street is a Chinese opera and lion dance supplier zone -- there are custom scissor makers,

mask and prop makers,

and cape and costume makers like this woman, whose grandfather established the family business eons ago.

Trieu Quang Phuc Street also houses many Chinese herb shops.

You can't miss them: just look for the leaves, rinds, rhizomes, horseshoe crabs, and questionable reptilian body parts (I'm not advocating, just describing) being dried out front.

A good reason to start early in Cholon: by noon it's mostly unshaded streets are beastly hot.

Now is th time to  hail a pedicab (or a taxi), head back to your lodging, and nap through the sweatier part of the day.

 

Where We're Going

Figuratively speaking.

Dave left for Toraja packing not only his usual bundle of camera equipment but a digital recorder as well. In the coming months we're hoping to increase our storytelling ability by including slide shows, accompanied by audio, in some of our posts. No idea where this will lead but we're looking forward to seeing how far we can go with it.

Here's a teeny taste. Lots of kinks to work out -- we're taking baby steps at this point. But have a look and let us know your thoughts -- and what sort of multimedia projects you'd like to see (and hear) here in the future.

Mining Black Gold in Toraja

When we lived in northern California we bought our coffee beans from Peet's -- mostly Sulawesi-Kalosi. We like our coffee full-bodied, complex, and with a balanced acidity, which is why we've always gravitated to beans grown in the Pacific (as opposed to, say, the Americas). And we prefer a dark roast. Peet's certainly has its detractors (who feel that their coffee is 'burnt'), but for us a cuppa made with light-roasted beans is just too insipid to satisfy.

At that time (we left the San Francisco Bay Area for the first time in 1995, and for the last time in 2002) Sulawesi was just a place on a map. We knew it was in Indonesia and we knew that the island was once called 'Celebes', but at that point we'd never travelled further east in the country than Bali.

Back then we paid $13.95 a pound for our beans from Sulawesi (looks like it's gone up a buck in intervening years), so it was kind of a kick to find ourselves shelling out less than a third of that amount per pound last Saturday in Rantepao, Toraja's main tourist hub.

Toraja is in Sulawesi's relatively remote mountainous center (the drive from Makassar, on the islands southwestern coast, takes around 10 hours and Batutumonga, where we stayed for part of our trip, sits at 1,500 meters above sea level). And it's in Toraja that most -- and certainly the best -- of Sulawesi's coffee is grown. (Googled sources tell me that Kalosi, or Kalossi, is Toraja's coffee bean distribution hub. We didn't make it there.)

In Toraja coffee, like rice, is everywhere. There are proper coffee plantations but also scattered bunches of trees by the road, on the edge of rice paddies, clinging to slopes, in front yards and side gardens. Coffee is set out to dry on tarps on sidewalks, driveways, and harvested and burnt paddy fields.

One evening, in search of a perfect sunset view, we drove to the top of a mountain on the other, quiet side of the river that runs through Rantepao. After forty-five minutes of gut-clenching hairpin turns and washboard (or non-existent) tarmac we arrived in a sea of clouds. No view, no sunset. But plenty of freshly picked coffee beans, laid out to dry on a lonesome hillside (above).

At Rantepao's morning market coffee is literally in the air; you can hardly walk twenty paces without running into a vendor selling roasted beans -- whole, pre-ground, or ground to order. (You can buy green beans too). The comforting aroma of coffee envelops you as you wander its aisles and inhaling deeply delivers nearly as much of a kick as a sip of the black stuff.

For the caffeinated traveler Toraja is Paradise. A decent and often transcendent cup awaits on nearly every block. Deep in the heart of the market is a row of dark, down-at-the-heels shops serving breakfast. We stopped into one for a pick-me-up. It was delivered in the sort of big, heavy glass mugs that Westerners usually reserve for beer. It cost Rp 2,000 (about 20 US cents). And it was fantastic.

                            A mug of coffee with a view -- of the market

In Toraja, as in the rest of Indonesia, coffee is drunk unfiltered. The beans are ground to the finest talcum-like powder, which is spooned into a cup, a mug, or a pot. Boiling water is added, the mixture is stirred to release the coffee's flavor, and the grounds are allowed to settle before the coffee is poured or drunk.

This isn't at all problematic. We're not talking Turkish coffee here. The fine grounds, when mixed with water, form a heavy sludge that sticks to the bottom of the cup or the pot. As long as you don't knock your coffee back like a shot of whiskey (or upturn the pot when you pour a cup) you don't end up with a mouthful of grit.

And because this 'brewing' method exposes the coffee to hot water longer than it would be if it were suspended in a paper filter it produces a richer, stronger cup. It's the way we're drinking our Toraja brew now, at home.

Kopi susu (coffee with sweetened condensed milk) is ubiquitous in Indonesia but noticably absent in Toraja, where coffee is usually drunk black or with sugar. For as long as I've been drinking coffee I've taken it with milk. But the flavor of the coffee grown in Toraja is so rounded, so rich and beautifully balanced that I'm drinking it with only a bit of sugar, even now that I'm home.

On our last day in Toraja, on the recommendation of friends in Batutumonga, we headed to a shop in Rantepao called Rezeki, to stock up.

Owner Saleh, who named the shop after one of his sons, has been in business for over twenty years. With the help of a son (not Rezeki) he roasts beans everyday on the second floor of his shop, underneath a piece of corrugated metal with a square cut in it for ventilation.

When roasting is in process you can smell Rezeki long before you see the building, with its plumes of coffee-scented smoke wafting from the roof.

The beans, which Saleh buys from a middleman ((Palu Palu and Pangalla produce the best arabica and Rembon the best robusta, he says), are cooked in a huge, continually rotating metal drum set over an open flame.

Saleh is particularly proud of his roaster, which he built himself. He says that its unusually thick walls (5 mm instead of the usual 2) enable him to roast the beans for up to two hours without burning (other roasters limit the process to thirty minutes).

After they're roasted (goreng, or 'fried', is what coffee beans are in Indonesia) the drum is slid along a frame away from the fire and the beans poured into a shallow wooden bin. Saleh and his son rake the beans to cool them down as quickly as possible and then pick them over, discarding those not up to snuff.

Saleh isn't a coffee drinker; he prefers tea. But his product is pretty sublime -- proving that, as Rezeki's bags declare, 'Quality is the most of everything'. (The shop's logo, visible at the top of the circle, is a rocket ship. Interpret that however you like.)

Not everyone likes their coffee pitch black, so Rezeki sells arabica and robusta beans (and a mix of the two) in four roasts, from 'golden' (a milk-chocolate brown, popular with foreign tourists) to 'black'.

Unfortunately Saleh was sold out of arabica black roast on the day we dropped in, so we settled for a couple of bags of arabica Italian roast beans and two more of robusta black. (We drank quite a bit of robusta in Toraja. Despite its reputation as an inferior bean we found it to evince a pleasantly jagged-edged earthiness, with just a hint of cherry.)

We also walked away with 250 grams of arabica Italian roast, powdered to order in Rezeki's funky little coffee grinder.

We predicted that our hotel in Makassar, where we were to spend one night before heading back to Malaysia, wouldn't serve coffee anywhere as delicious as that which we'd drunk in Toraja. We were right. But thanks to our pre-ground from Rezeki and the water boiler in our room we slurped down many excellent cups on our last morning on Sulawesi.

Agri Industri Kopi Rezeki, Jalan Emmy Saelan No. 28, Rantepao. Tel. (0423) 21629. Open 7a-6pm everyday. Robusta Rp 50,000/kilo and Arabica Rp 50,000/kilo.

In Rantepao, enjoy a fine cup of coffee at Manalagi, just a block from Rezeki, on Jalan J.A. Mappanyuki steps from Jalan Emmy Saelan (Rp 6,000 for a pot big enough to share). Or head to Rumto Cafe on Jalan Bolo Rantepao, a block from the main market (7,000 for a cup of Arabica - the pisang goreng, or fried bananas, make an excellent accompaniment).

Rice, At the Source

From Toraja we're carrying home new friendships, wonderful memories, thousands of photos, a full notebook ... and rice. Bags of it. Pounds and pounds of grains red, white, and black.

Toraja is rice country, paddies carpeting valleys and marching up slopes. We arrived in the middle of the rice harvest, when some rice fields were still a lush green tipped with gold and others sported a burnt brown stubble of shorn stalks.

In Asia we eat so much rice that we often take it for granted. But to be in a rice-producing area during harvest is to be reminded of the extent to which life in much of this part of the world revolves around these little bits of starch.

On most days we managed to get out into a field or three to watch farmers and their families (or hired labor; Toraja is a relatively prosperous area, rich enough to support some hired help in the fields) cut and thresh and winnow and, finally, burn leftover dried stalks to the ground.

Like many Southeast Asians Torajaan families erect structures specifically devoted to storing rice. Their alang-alang or rice barns are architecturally similar to their tongkanan, the traditional wooden houses with dramatic upwardly bowed roofs that resemble water buffalo horns (I'll write more later about the water buffalo and Torajaan culture). Many families have more than one alang-alang, each devoted to a different type of rice (glutinous and non, white and black, maybe some red, brown) grown on the clan's land.

For much of last week we stayed in a beautiful old tongkonan built on a piece of land nestled in the bend of the Sa'dan River. Across from us, visible through our front wooden shutters, was the rice barn pictured above (one in a row of several). At night we could hear the river sing and rain made a soothing light thrumming sound on the structure's high metal roof.

At first light two roosters played dueling cock-a-doodle-doo beneath our thick floorboards -- better than an alarm clock, even though we slept fifteen or so feet above where they stood. We didn't mind, because when we rose there was strong Toraja coffee to wake us us, pitch black and aromatic, made from beans roasted by the lady of the house and so delicious that this dedicated coffee-with-milk person savored hers with just a bit of sugar.

And there was breakfast, always based on rice. Fresh white rice, harvested just two weeks before and fried into a simple nasi goreng, or glutinous white rice to eat with a rich soupy mixture of grated coconut, sambal, and a bit of water.

Perhaps our favorite breakfast featured black rice -- which is really not black-as-night black but more of a deep black-purple with spotty magenta-ish highlights. It's a fantastic long-grained variety, full-flavored and nutty.

The flavor of Toraja black rice is so fine that it begs to be eaten on its own, or with the simplest of accompaniments. On this morning it had three: fresh golden-yolked hard-boiled eggs; grated coconut; and a tomato sambal sharpend with trassi (Indonesian shrimp paste) and hot-as-Hades Toraja chilies and mellowed with caramelized onions.

Onto our plates went rice. Then a mound of coconut, a splodge of sambal, and an egg. The latter we chopped with spoon and fork before mixing everything together.

As we ate we added a little sambal for heat here, then soothed our throbbing tongues with another spoonful of rice there. Now a bit more coconut for sweetness, which would ultimately need to be balanced with more sambal. A vicious cycle. Every bite different.

By the time our plates were clean the sambal had disappeared, and most of the coconut too.

Here We Are,

...in Tanah Toraja, Sulawesi. Land of coffee (amazing, wonderful coffee ... the once-every six days market smells like it, you can catch a caffeine buzz just cruising the aisles... even the robusta is stupendous), keluak (the finest in Indonesia, we're told), meats cooked in bamboo over an open fire (including pork-most Torajaans are Christian), rock graves, and dramatic, gorgeously carved wooden swoop-roofed houses.

But not internet, at least not at a reasonable speed (and not at all where our friends live, at 1500m overlooking the Rantepao valley - oh my goodness, have we been enjoying dramatic sunrises!), so no pictures this post. And no further posts till we're back in KL next week.

In the meantime we would like to send a shoutout to Tewfic El-Sawy, a travel photograper and co-organizer of the Foundry Photo Workshop Dave attended in India last month. Thanks Tewfic, for posting a write-up on Dave and EatingAsia on your blog.

Have a great week ahead. We are going to make the most of the opportunity for lots of fresh air and terraced rice paddy hikes. See you in a week or ten days with word of a few Torajaan specialties.

A Reason to Smile

Taiwan has few reasons to smile this week as it mops up from Typhoon Morakot. One bright note - hundreds of villagers thought to have perished under a mudslide were apparently able to make it to high ground before disaster struck. Our thoughts are with the folks on Taiwan as they continue to dig out.

Meanwhile, we continue to be amazed by our Taiwan trip - the wonderful foods and friendliness that we found on that island nation -- and to sing its praises to whomever will listen. Just the thought of returning makes us smile. The thought of returning to this joint in particular makes us smile biggest.

Laopai Niurou La Mian Da Wang. The shop's name translates to something like 'Old Brand Pulled- Noodles-With-Beef King'. And that pretty much sums it up. They serve Taiwan's beloved niurou mian, or beef noodles, and they pull their pasta by hand every day. They've been around a long time (thirty years, to be precise). And when it comes to the art of cooking beef noodles, they're masters.

The King is sited near Taipei's train station, in a dark alley fragrant with the aromas wafting from the twenty or so food shops that line both its sides. It's a street food goldmine well known to locals, but we stumbled upon it by chance. And as soon as we saw the chief noodle cooker, a jolly on-his-way-to-bald man who hails from Tainan (a mid-west coast town that some consider Taiwan's 'small eats' capital), hoist high those thick ropey strands, we knew we'd found lunch.

Beef noodle preferences, like those for any iconic dish the world over, are personal. Some like their beef noodle soup spicy while others vote for a heavy star anise and cinammon presence. Shaved noodles (dao shao mian) float some boats, others prefer their pasta pulled. We ate our way through quite a few bowls of niuroumian over the course of three weeks, and it's the King's that kept drawing up back.

The hefty noodles are chewy, and the broth tastes mostly of long-cooked meat with enough star anise and cinnamon to flavor, but not overwhelm. There's the tiniest bit of chili bite to this noodle soup, betraying the alleged Sichuan origin of niurou mian. The King cooks its beef until the meat is gelatinously tender, reminiscent of mom's pot roast after several hours in the oven.

They're best eaten with a splodge of every available condiment: soupy chopped ginger and garlic, Sichuan-style la jiao (chili flakes in oil), and chopped preserved mustard greens. We enjoyed classic unadorned niurou mian, and Sichuan niurou mala mian, with plenty of chili and Sichuan peppercorn. If I had it to do over again I'd veer from my usual chili-friendliness to choose the former; in my opinion the Sichuan peppercorn interferes with the intense purity of the beef-flavored broth.

 

The King also does a mighty fine platter of shuijiao (boiled pork dumplings)

and a mean hot and sour soup. The latter is nothing like the gluey overadorned (no shredded cloud ear fungus or lily buds here) versions often served in the States, but close to one I enjoyed in Chengdu back in the day: a thin meat soup packed with strips of firm tofu and soured not only with sharp white vinegar but also tart pickled cabbage, carrots, and bean sprouts. The 'hot' element you add yourself, from the bowl of lajiao on your table.

LaoPai Niurou La Mian Da Wang, Chongqing Nan Lu Yi Duan 46 Gang (No. 46 'Alley' off of Chongqing South Road, Section 1), Taipei.

Green Papaya Fritter of (Tennis) Champions

This morning I shared a late breakfast of noodles, pork chop, and roti babi at Yut Kee with a friend visiting from Manila. It was a reminder of how long it's been since our last trip to the Philippines (a year and a half, in fact) -- and how, when we embarked on this 24/7 photography-writing thing we thought that we'd have all the time in the world in between assignments and work at home to travel for our own interest.

Not so. As it turns out I've barely got time to finish the work that sits on on corner of my desk, taunting me. And I'm so behind in posts - there's still much of Taiwan, Penang, where we've spent a lot of time over the last couple months, and even Chiang Mai yet to write about, Dave's got a bit more of India to share, I haven't blogged anything about Kuala Lumpur in months, and tomorrow we leave for Sulawesi, where we'll no doubt find many more culinary traditions to photograph and write about.

And now here I am revisiting material from Christmas 2007, which we spent in Arayat, Pampanga, on assignment. Can it really have been over 18 months ago? We returned from that trip with so much great material in the form of over 2,000 photos and three well-marked thick notebooks. By necessity there's much that didn't make it into our article, including a couple recipes.

Here's a taste.

Much of the action that week took place in Medina kitchen, a beautiful 100+-year-old grass-roofed, wood-beamed room with a wood-burning stove at its center. Saturday December 22nd was no different - that morning family cook Lucia (above, right) and her coterie of helpers (including daughter Maricris, left) were putting the finishing touches on the feast that would cap off the annual Medina Christmas tennis tournament, open to anyone in Arayat who cares to show up.

The kitchen's capiz shell-paned windows overlook the tennis court on one side and the side yard, where two whole spit-speared pigs were being turned slowly over a bed of coals, on the other. By late morning, as the tourney finals wore down and the pigs' skins cracked and began to drip fat, most of the stove-top dishes (chicken and pork adobo; balo-balo, pungent fish fermented with rice to eat with mustard leaves; menudo - pork and parts with carrots, potatoes, and red pepper) were already finished. All that remained to be cooked were the beruya (known outside Pampanga as okoy), or shrimp and green papaya fritters.

Beruya are one of Maricris' specialties (which doesn't preclude Lucia from peering over her shoulder to make sure she's preparing them correctly, as you can see above). She starts by cleaning (but not peeling) small shrimp and slicing red onion and camote (sweet potato). After grating green papaya halves she squeezes the shreds to remove as much water as possible,

and then adds in chopped onion and Chinese celery.

Beruya use a rice batter made from soaked ground rice rather than rice flour, and also incorporates egg, salt, and achuete (annatto seeds), the latter for color.

The fritters are assembled in a large shallow ladle: first a pool of batter and then on top of that a layer of papaya, a single shrimp, a piece of onion, and a slice of potato.

Then, enough batter is poured on top of it all to nearly cover the fruit-vegetable layer.

 

The spatula is lowered into hot oil, and after a few seconds the underside of the fritter is cooked enough to float free.. The beruya are done when well-browned.

The rice batter makes these fritters light and crispy. But they're also just a little bit evil, in that way that all delicious deep-fried foods are. Beruya are fine on their own (excellent with cocktails), but best eaten dipped a sawsawan (dipping sauce or accompaniment) of vinegar flavored with freshly ground black pepper, a few chopped fresh chilies, garlic and chopped shallot.

They are also known - or at least they were that day a couple Decembers ago - as snack food of tennis champions.

 

Beruya ni Maricris (Maricris' Green Papaya and Shrimp Fritters)

These fritters make an excellent hors d'oeuvre with cocktails. Best right out of the fryer, they're also quite okay if left aside for up to an hour. The sawsawan-vinegar dip is a must; it cuts through the oil and complements the sweetness of the shrimp and sweet potato. If you can't find small shrimp use larger ones cut into pieces. If you're more comfortable shelling and deveining your shrimp, so be it - the fritters won't suffer much.

The batter recipe is inexact - depending on how wet your rice is you might need less or more water. What you want is something with the consistency of thin pancake batter. It's important to squeeze the papaya as much as possible and make sure your shrimp are dry.

Batter:

2 c medium or long-grain rice

1 cup water

5 annatto seeds

1 egg

1 tsp salt

Fritters:

1 green papaya, grated

2 small red onions, finely chopped

1/4 cup finely chopped Chinese celery, including leaves

2 small red onions, finely sliced

1 sweet potato, thinkly sliced lengthwise and then cut into 1-inch-ish squares

1/2 pound whole shrimp, washed and dried (optional: heads removed)

Sawsawan:

1 cup white vinegar

2 cloves garlic, smashed

1-2 fresh chilies, chopped (optional)

Plenty of freshly ground black pepper

1-2 shallots, finely chopped

Vegetable oil for deep-frying

1. For the batter, mix rice with 1 cup water and leave overnight
2. Soak the annatto seeds in 1 cup water for 1 hour and remove.
3. In a food processor or blend grind the rice and water until somewhat, but not completely, smooth. Remove rice to a bowl and stir in annatto water, egg, and salt. The batter should be thinnish, like thin pancake batter. Add more water if necessary.
4. Squeeze as much water as possible from the papaya; use a piece of cheesecloth or muslin or your bare hands. Place it in a bowl and add the chopped celery and onions and a pinch of salt. Mix thoroughly and set aside.
5. Mix the sawsawan ingredients together in a bowl, smashing the chilies (if using) and garlic against the sides of the bowl to release their flavor into the vinegar. Set aside.
6. Add oil to a depth of at least 3 inches to a deep pan or wok and heat over medium high. Have batter and papaya, sliced onions, sweet potato, and shrimp nearby.
7. Spoon or pour enough batter into a wide, flast ladle or cooking spoon just to cover the bottom. Lightly place on top about 1 Tbsp papaya mixture, spreading it over the batter. Place a shrimp, a piece of onion, and a piece of camote on top, pressing down lightly with your finger. Spoon or pour enough batter over theshrimp and veggies to almost cover them.
8. Carefully lower the ladle into the oil and hold it there for a few seconds, then lightly shake the fritter off of it. Cook for a few minutes until browned on bottom, then flip and cook for minute or so. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper bag or paper towels.
9. Repeat with rest of ingredients. You can fry several fritters at once, but don't crowd the pan lest the temperature of the oil drop too much.
10. Serve hot or room temperature with the sawsawan.

Recommended Reading

At the end of last year I reviewed Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, Fuschia Dunlop's memoir of eating in China. If you subscribe to Gastronomica you'll find it in this month's issue. You can also read the galley proof (with a couple of typos) here.

You may not have heard of Shark's Fin -- if you've been living under a rock for the last few years, that is. Dunlop is an extremely accomplished cook and writer who, after attending the prestigious Sichuan Culinary Institute in the nineties, wrote a (rightfully) acclaimed book on Sichuan cuisine. She followed that up with a not quite as well-received (and controversial, for some) but still wonderful volume on Hunan food. These days you can often find her on the pages of the Financial Times' weekend leisure section.

In her memoir Dunlop regales us with tales of her time in Sichuan and Hunan, among other places in China. She's a keen observer, a good storyteller, and quite likeable. I had a few issues with Shark's Fin (detailed in the review) but on the whole I would recommend it to anyone interested in the ways in which food -- a deep interest in and curiosity about food, that is -- can be an entree to an unfamiliar culture.

I found myself nodding and murmuring 'Yes, yes!' while reading many passages, especially this one:

I have discovered more about China in general through my food explorations than I ever did when I was interested in explicitly social or political issues.

All in all, an excellent read, whether you're particularly interested in China or not. And some great recipes to boot.