EatingAsia

On the Turkey's Black Sea Coast, Autumn's Bounty

No doubt about it, we are very, very behind. Behind in posting from our autumnal travels in Turkey and from our rainy season time in Chiang Mai. And in posting from Hanoi, and Kelantan before that, and from Taiwan before that.

Where have the last five and a half months gone?

It's almost Thanksgiving (we'll be spending it in Chiang Mai, where we find ourselves once again). To make up for our absence, we're offering a great recipe for Turkey Day leftovers, and a story and slideshow to go along with it. Autumn's abundance on show in markets on Turkey's eastern Black Sea coast, and comfort food from Sinop: islama, an over-the-top dish of butter and broth-soaked lavash (or yufka) topped with turkey (or chicken) and crushed walnuts.

Jump to the story and slideshow, our latest for food and wine website Zester Daily, here.

(And it's still a great dish, even if Thanksgiving isn't in your near future.)

Kastamonu: Here's the Beef

Last January, en route from hamsi (anchovy) node Sinop to Ankara we made an 18-hour pitstop in Kastamonu, capital of the Turkish province of the same name. The sky was dull gray and the sub-zero wind unrelenting; by necessity our explorations were punctuated with stops in tea houses where we could thaw our frozen feet. Coal smoke hung in the air and soot coated buildings. Early Sunday morning, when we ventured out in search of caffeine, the streets were all but empty.

Still, there was something about Kastamonu that made us know we'd be back. Maybe it was the city's trove of crumbling old konak, or mansions, or its romantic situation on the slopes of two hills separated by a river, one hill crowned by the ruins of an 11th-century castle and the other by a late 1800s tower with a still chiming clock.

Perhaps it was the chorus of calls to prayer that we heard at dusk fas we watched a nearly full moon rise from the the courtyard of Ismail Bey mosque, high up one of Kastamonu's slopes. Or the thousands of starlings that appeared in the sky over the crest of the opposite hill right after, swooping and diving in wildly shifting formations.

It could have been dinner: superb kebabs that in their charred glory tasted all the better for being our first bites of meat after more than a week of eating primarily fish.

At any rate, we did return to Kastamonu last month, driving straight from Ankara's airport after a flight from Istanbul. We returned to the same Sunday market that we briefly lighted on in January -- and were treated to our first taste of this fall's hamsi catch -- and feasted on spit-roasted lamb in the nearby town of Taskopru, known for its garlic. We poked around the brick-paved streets in Kastamonu's market neighborhood, and found a good restaurant serving local dishes, including a version of etli ekmek ("meat bread") very different from the etli ekmek we ate last year in Mardin, in southeastern Turkey (a town which, coincidentally, is also built on a hill).

And we ate enough meat to fortify us for the self-imposed nothing-but-seafood diet we had planned for the next two weeks, which we would spend on the coast.

When one thinks of Turkish food it's lamb that most readily comes to mind. But in many parts of the country (like Kars) beef is the preferred red animal protein. Most of Kastamonu's kasab, or butchers, display not sheep but cow carcasses. And pastirma -- cured, air-dried beef -- is a local specialty.

In Kastamonu, beef, pastirma and garlic from Taskopru

Pastirma is usually associated with the eastern Anatolian city of Kayseri, where it is heavily flavored with garlic. Kastamonu's pastirma is also garlicky but less so. We know this because we carried some in our car for most of a day with minimal stink. A decade ago we bought some pastirma in Kayseri and attempted to do the same, but after two hours the interior of our car was so heavy with garlicky-ness that we were forced to pull over and eat the culprit.

In Kastamonu pastirma is preserved with and without an orange coating of ground seasonings -- garlic, fenugreek and paprika -- called cemen. The former is eaten as is while the latter is cooked into etli ekmek (which is then known as pastirmali ekmek), stewed with vegetables, or pan-fried with eggs.

Monday is beef delivery day in Kastamonu's pastirma/butcher area. Early in the morning we spotted men dressed in blood red uniforms unloading huge sides of beef from a truck. We followed them through a maze of passageways to a butcher shop, where we drank tea (of course) and chatted a bit with the shop's owner..

Kastamonu native Bayram Sari has owned his butcher shop, where he sells beef and his own pastirma and sucuk (sausage), for a little over 15 years. The enormous sides of beef hanging in his window are from Simmental, a breed of dairy and beef cow that can weigh up to 400+ kilos.

Bayram Bey makes his pastirma in a "secret" location about 45 minutes from downtown, he says. Curing is done from September to November, after summer has well and truly finished but before the worst of Kastamonu's bitter winter begins. To make the pastirma, beef loin and flank are rubbed with salt and air dried it for one to two months; the cemen coating is added after the meat is dried. Kastamonulu love their pastirma -- Bayram Bey figures he sells about 1.5 to 2 tons of the cured meat every year.

"That's no good," he said, pointing to a bag in my lap bearing the name of a pastirma shop next to the truck from which Bayram Bey's carcasses were being unloaded. "You have to try my pastirma!"

He had his shop assistant shave us a couple hundreds grams off a hunk in the display case. It was indeed delicious: not quite as dry as bresaola, supple and rich in flavor, tasting of beef first and then of garlic and spices. He also gifted us a few links of delicious sucuk which, with their hit of cumin, had me wishing for a soft corn tortilla. Go figure.

It's fair to say that when it comes to curing meat Bayram Bey is a maestro. After bidding him "Gorusuruz" (See you again -- and we will) we headed back to our hotel and packed our car for the drive to the coast.

We tucked the pastirma and sucuk into a bag with other edible souvenirs of Kastamonu -- sour plum fruit leather, "black" bulgur (coarse bulgur made from emmer, aka farro -- one of the province's specialty crops) and freshly harvested walnuts. Halfway to Inebolu the sun came out and we made an impromptu pitstop at cafe perched on a hilltop, where we refueled with tea, bread and Bayram Bey's pastirma (opening photo).

Suitable for Framing II: Famous Garlic and a Market

Famous Taşköprü garlic, Turkey, October 2011

Market in Mardin, Turkey, June 2010

This is the second post in a series that we're running every Tuesday through early December.All images in the series are for sale, via Photoshelter or directly from Dave.

To learn more about the series visit the first post, here. Images can be viewed full screen in Dave's Suitable for Framing gallery, here.

About the photographer:

David Hagerman is an editorial and commercial photographer specializing in food, travel, portraiture and street photography. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Saveur, Food & Wine, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, Wall Street Journal and other publications.When not on assignment or otherwise gainfully occupied Dave offers private photography workshops in Penang and elsewhere. Contact him at drhagerman@gmail.com.

Well Hello, Hamsi!

We love hamsi. If you've been a visitor here since last January you know this. You know that we journeyed to Turkey's Black Sea coast in the middle of winter just to eat hamsi -- anchovies -- at the source.

We're back in the region but still inland, in Kastamonu. Yet we've already had our first taste of the Black Sea's beloved cold season bounty, thanks to a few generous balıkçı (fish sellers).

What is it with Turkish guys who sell fish? They see you snap a photo or two of their product and they want to feed you.

When this bunch at the Sunday market in Kuzeykent, just outside Kastamonu city, saw Dave photographing the basket of beautiful hamsi perched over the grey coal ash in their grill one of them grabbed a thick piece of bread, loaded it up with cooked specimens from the pile on their dining table (opening shot), squeezed over some lemon juice and handed the lot over.

The fish were delicious, perhaps better even than those we ate at our fish seller friend Mert's shop in Sinop nine months ago. It's early in the season and hamsi are still small; these specimens were no longer than our little fingers. Their bones are still tender -- entirely, easily edible. We popped the fish into our mouths whole, though our new balıkçı friends carefully stripped the backbones from theirs.

After we finished our first shared slice of hamsi bread (köy ekmeği or village bread, from a dense, chewy wheat flour -based loaf baked in a wood-fired oven) the cooks threw strips of roasted red peppers onto a second open-faced hamsi sandwich. When a third was offered we had to beg for mercy.

This man, a regular at the market who -- like us -- was drawn from a far corner to this fish stall by the scent of hamsi cooking over an open fire, was happy to take up the slack.  

Suitable for Framing (First in a Series)

Noodle vendor, Hanoi, August 2011

Scene from a wet market, Hanoi, August 2011

It's that time of year again. At least that's what the Christmas carols ringing through the shopping mall told us yesterday.

For the next ten or so weeks Dave will select some of his favorite images from Asia, Turkey and America -- two or three that can stand alone or would work well together -- to post under this new series we're calling Suitable for Framing. Posts will go up every Tuesday.

The idea is: if you're in the market for a gift, seasonal or otherwise, we hope you'll consider a David Hagerman original. To purchase any of the images in the series go here. If you're not buying, just enjoy the show.

(It goes without saying, but any photographs that you see on this site, or on David's not-always food-focused photography blog, on his professional website, or in any of his Photoshelter galleries are also available for purchase. Got a special request? Looking for a specific type of photograph? Questions? Contact Dave directly: drhagerman@gmail.com).

For those new to EatingAsia, some background on the photographer:

David Hagerman is an editorial and commercial photographer specializing in food, travel, portraiture and street photography. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Saveur, Food & Wine, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, Wall Street Journal and other publications.When not on assignment or otherwise working Dave offers private photography workshops in Penang and elsewhere.

In Istanbul, A Perfect Lunch and the Call to Prayer

Eating seafood by the water in Karakoy, Istanbul -- such a cliched tourist experience. But Istanbullu eat seafood by the water in Karakoy too. And because of these fish, these fried hamsi (anchovies), we found the best spot in the city from which to listen to the call to prayer.

On a gauzily bright afternoon last January we walked through the small fish market at the northern end of the Galata Bridge. We like the little restaurants there. They tout a bit and a menu may be waved in front of your face, but there's nothing overly aggressive about the salesmanship.

Prices are clearly marked, and reasonable -- especially if you stick to what's in season (and avoid prawns/shrimp). The service isn't to white tablecloth restaurant standards, but if you've dined at white tablecloth restaurants in Istanbul you might think that's not a bad thing. (Our tolerance for snooty waiters is pretty low).

The food is basic, and good.

We walked to the "restaurant" at the very end, the one with tables right on the water. We sat in the sun and drank in that view that's impossible to tire of. We ordered hamsi and a mackerel-y type fish and a salad. After many trips to Turkey we still marvel that a beautiful salad is so easily had no matter where in in the country you find yourself.

The fish arrived griddle-fried and crispy outside, moist and sweet within, accompanied by big fleshy leaves of peppery rocket and wedges of lemon. Our salads (greedy for the tangy pickled red cabbage that's a component of this tri-color assemblage, we ordered one each) were dressed with a drizzle of olive oil and the lemon juice we squeezed on top.

We ate whole anchovies, leaving aside only bits of head, and picked flesh from mackerel bones and soaked up lemony olive oil with chunks of bread, and felt absurdly lucky to be there, dining outside comfortably in the middle of January and drinking in one of the world's most beautiful skylines.

After lunch we hopped on the small ferry we'd watched chug back and forth between our "restaurant" and Eminonu, on the opposite bank. We could have easily walked across the bridge, or taken the train. We could have stayed in Karakoy; we had no reason or desire to be in Eminonu.

But it seemed right, after a simple meal of fish and salad by the water, to ride close to its surface on an old-fashioned ferry. So we paid the ridiculous foreigners' price, equal to almost half the cost of our cheap lunch, and climbed aboard.

We sat outside and let the wind slap our faces as we listened to the ka-chug ka-chug of the motor and the hollow punch of waves against the boat's wooden sides. It was a short ride, less than five minutes, and if we'd had the nerve we would have asked the gruff boatman if we might stay on board for a few more back-and-forths.

But we didn't, so we didn't. Instead we alighted in a parking lot with a perfect vantage of Galata tower just as the loudspeaker of a mosque nearby began to crackle.

It started there, and then marched up the hills behind us as muezzin at other mosques joined in. Then morefrom the opposite side of the bridge. We by the shore as the call to prayer bounced and echoed all around us, a cascade of rising and falling male voices.

When the last bit faded away we walked to Eminonu pier and caught a ferry to Kadikoy, just to be on the water.

Fish restaurant at the Karakoy fish market: if you're at the Galata Bridge facing Eminonu the fish market is on your right. Walk through it to the very end, to the tables on the water. The menu is basic: fish and salad. About 20 Turkish lira for two fish plates and a big salad.

 

Seasonal Somtam

Chiang Mai in August is not Chiang Mai in February.

In August the air -- relatively clean, with not a trace of dry-season smoke or dust -- is heavy with moisture. You love those steely gray clouds, you pray for them. Even torrential rain is tolerable, certainly preferable to blue skies. Because when the sun comes out it's so clammy-hot that sweat begins dripping from your earlobes in minutes.

Chiang Mai markets in August are not Chiang Mai markets in February. The result of monsoonal rains is evident in the mushrooms, mushrooms everywhere. Last month we cooked, in our adopted apartment, bushels of petite chanterelles and a few other varieties varieties of mushrooms I can't name, often with tender curlicue-tipped gourd vines displayed in fist-thick bundles by seemingly every other seller at Muang Mai market.

We ate no mangoes, but devoured plenty of school bus-orange sour starfruit picked in someone's home garden and sold from a basket in front of a travel agency on Tha Phae Road. The travel agency owner also offered up bushel baskets of fresh santol -- a tart, somewhat astringent fruit with vanilla to blush pink flesh and velvety peach-fuzzed skin -- and had a refigerator case stocked with homemade santol jam (delicious stirred into fresh yogurt) and santol pickled with chilies. Last month in Chiang Mai the vanilla scented watermelon we purchased every evening outside Don Lam Yai market in April were scarce; our preferred vendor proffered green guava instead. And carts laden with pomelos lined up in the lane behind Warorot market.

Some of the rainy season's bounty finds its way into seasonal somtam. To sample a salad made with santol -- which is gatawn in Thai, ba dtun in northern Thai -- we payed a visit to our regular somtam guy, in the alley next to Bpu Bpia temple (behind Warorot market). Dtam ba dtun is what we ordered ("pounded" santol), and asked him to exclude the salty preserved crab he usually pounds into his version. Into his big mortar went the fruit, meticulously cleavered into thin slices, as well as sugar, a bit of lime, chilies, and several mini ladles of bplaa raa.

What came out of the mortar was a surprisingly rich dish of soft-ish fruit thickly coated with a fishy "dressing" reminiscent of that which cloaks anchovy-heavy Caesar salad. For us fishiness is not a bad thing, and the dressing played nicely off the assertive tartness of the fruit. We picked our way around pieces of pit and ate our dtam ba dtun with morning glory (water spinach) stems and sliced cucumber to tame the heat of the salad's fresh green chilies.

After a week of searching off and on for dtam som-o (pounded pomelo) -- the fruit is a favorite of Dave's, who is especially enamored of tart-sweet Thai pomelos -- we found it on our last morning in town at a row of stalls across the moat from Chiang Mai old town's Somphet market.

This was a fairly straightforward dish: pomelo pounded to near bits with green chilies, fish sauce, a bit of bplaa raa (at our request) and a little lime. Quartered green golfball eggplants added a hint of of bitterness. Overall the dish was bracing, refreshing, just the thing on a soggy-sticky late morning during northern Thailand's wet season.

(Second) Home Again, and Nam Ngiaw

I'll admit it, this space has been quiet the last few months. In over six years (six years! How does that happen?) of blogging we're at our lowest ebb ever. It's not for lack of material, inspiration or interest. It was The Move, I think. It through me for a loop, knocked me off my stride. Moves tend to do that, even more so when they're sandwiched between intense spurts of work -- in Malacca before The Move, Taiwan and Kelantan after, then Hanoi. When it rains it pours, they say. If you're a freelancer you're pretty much guaranteed a monsoon when it's time to move.

After Hanoi there was Chiang Mai, to continue work on the Gat Luang project. We're getting down to the wire now. Lots of photos, lots of interviews, lots of time out and about gathering what we need to make our part of the project a reality. Dave had some test prints done for the Gat Luang gallery show he'll have in Chiang Mai around Chinese New Year, and we saw a mock layout of our part of the book, five beautiful pages (we'll have 75 total). Exciting, exhilerating, and exhausting.

But despite the rushing about being in Chiang Mai was like taking a long, slow deep breath. It's become that way this year. We've been visiting the city on a regular basis for five or six years, but 2011 will be the year that Chiang Mai truly became second nature to us. Being there, even if we're working, is relaxing. It's like being home without all the little hassles of home.

On our last couple visits we've been lucky enough to stay in a friend's apartment, which gives us the option of cooking in. We do, most nights -- as we do here in Penang. The highlight of this last trip was our first dinner at "home", made with ingredients we carried from Hanoi and foraged in Chiang Mai. Quesadillas two ways: chanterelle and manchego with grilled tomato, green chili, and sawtooth herb salsa, and goat cheese and squash vine with sour starfruit, cilantro and fish sauce salsa.

During the day we usually eat out, and by now we have our favorite spots. Though every visit brings new dishes, new vendors, new restaurants, we have an unwritte list of shops and restaurants and stalls that we return to again and again and again -- even several times on the same trip.

That's what being home is like. When you're home you know you'll be back so there's no need to fit every food experience in all at once, no pressure to get out there and eat every meal new. Chiang Mai is in our future on a regular basis. We know there will be time to try something different, and so we're comfortable revisiting what we already know that we enjoy.

Like a little shop around the corner from our rental called Nam Ngiaw Tha Phae. On our last trip, in April, friend and Gat Luang project collaborator Wilaiwan said she wanted to take us to her favorite shop for kanom jeen nam ngiaw. Imagine our surprise when it turned out to be a place we stumbled on 5 years ago, but hadn't returned to since. It's firmly on our own "favorites" list now. It was  first place we ate after arriving in Chiang Mai in late August.

Like many good places to eat in this part of the world, Nam Ngiaw Tha Phae has a history. The original shop was opened in the vicinity of Don Lam Yai and Warorot markets by the parents of current sister co-owners Pisiwan and Saiyut. After mom and dad retired older sister Pisiwan took over. Then, after what's known as The Great Fire closed Warorot in the 1960s, Saiyut took over from Pisiwan and moved the business to its current a few blocks towards Tha Phae Gate.

Saiyut now runs the nam ngiaw show with the help of her daughter, while Pisiwan concentrates on Thai French fries. (More on those shortly.)

Sisters Pisiwan (left) and Saiyut

Pisiwan and Saiyut's grandfather on their mother's side was a Shan from Burma, one of many who settled on Tha Phae Road, outside Chiang Mai's old city. (Many workers for British companies involved in teak logging in Chiang Mai during the 1800s and first half of the 20th century were Shan.) Nam ngiaw is a Shan dish.

If you don't know kanom jeen nam ngiaw -- a surprising number of visitors to Chiang Mai don't, and sadly leave without trying it -- the dish consists of fermented rice vermicelli topped with a thin-sauced meat (sometimes beef, sometimes pork) and tomato stew. (The noodles are called num banh chok in Cambodia. We documented their fascinating production process in a village outside Siem Reap, here and here).

Bits of blood cake figure into the dish as well. Don't let this be a turn-off. You can avoid the blood cakes if you like (when ordering kanom jeen nam ngiaw say "Mai ao lyaat -- My Ow Luh-aht"), but even a blood cake-neutral eater like myself has to love the dull red bits in Saiyut's nam ngiaw. They taste not of blood but of smoke, and are firm and a bit chewy. And they saok up the nam ngiaw soup like nobody's business.

Nam ngiaw -- in flavor if not texture -- is oddly reminiscent of a great Bologna-style ragu, especially when it's made with pork. Though it's soupier and lighter, whenever I dig in to a dish my first thought is always "ragu bolognese", followed by visions of the sauce over spaghetti noodles with a grating of parmesan reggiano. (Further north in Chiang Rai nam ngiaw is an almost entirely different being, in-your-face piscene-pungent with bplaa raa and often blisteringly spicy -- delicious in its own way but not ragu reminiscent.)

The sauce's meatiness is balanced by a bit of sourness from the small cherry tomatoes you see all over northern Thailand, and it gains a great depth from tua nao. Tua nao is fermented soy beans that are sometimes seasoned with chili and either sold as a fresh paste or pressed into rectangular cakes or smashed and flattened into discs and dried in the sun. They are northern Thailand's (and Laos' and Burma's) umami bomb of choice, in the way that shrimp paste and fish sauce are central Thailand's.

(If you find yourself in northern Thailand, buy some tua nao to take home. The sun-dried cakes and discs are grilled/roasted before using, and they're great eaten out of hand with or without a dip, or pounded to an almost-powder and mixed with rice.)

To make her nam ngiaw Saiyut fries a paste of tua nao, garlic, shallots, shrimp paste and dried chilies chilies in oil. She insists that her dried chilies are special, smoked while still fresh before being completely dried. To me they taste a bit like New Mexico dried chilies -- a tiny bit sweet, a little bit bitter, spicy but not overpoweringly so.

To garnish servings of kanom jeen nam ngiaw: cilantro, chili powder, fried shallots, and whole oil-roasted dried chilies (the rubber bands are for tying take-away bags!)

After frying her nam ngiaw paste Saiyut mixes roughly diced pork with turmeric and salt, then cooks it "to get the oil out". She removes the pork from the wok, adds the cooked paste back in and stirs it a bit in the pork fat, then returns the pork to the wok. She adds water, a bit of chopped Chinese pickled mustard -- her secret, she says, "to make the soup sweet" -- and tomatoes, plus a little black soy sauce for color. Then she brings everything to a simmer and cooks the nam ngiaw till the pork is nearly falling apart.

Saiyut buys her kanom jeen from Mae Rim, not far from Chiang Mai. The likes the sourish fermented taste of the noodles made there, she says. I can testify to their lovely elasticity. After dousing the kanom jeen with nam ngiaw Saiyut garnishes the dish with browned shallots, a bit of coriander. They're over the top delicious when eaten with a few strips of deep-fried pig skin crumbled over. I always crush a few small, fiery oil-roasted chilies into my noodles.

About those Thai French fries -- that's what Wilaiwan has dubbed Saiyut's sister's specialty: kabong tawt. Kabong is a green gourd -- a bottle gourd, I think -- and "tawt" means deep-fried. Pisiwan's kabong tawt are for earlybirds only. She starts selling them from a little stall out front of the shop at 6am, with bags of her own nam prik num (a dip made with roasted green chilies and, unusually these days, tomato too).

One Sunday morning before 7am we watched motorcycle after motorcycle toodle down the narrow lane outside the shop and come to a stop in front of Pisiwaan's oil-filled wok. She worked steadily but the wait for fritters stretched to 20 minutes in some instances; customers were walking away with 8 or 10 bags at a time. And we've yet to taste her nam prik -- it sells out within minutes of opening.

But having indulged in Pisiwaan's kabong, which are dipped in a ground chili-enhanced batter and turn out light, hardly oily, fantastically crispy outside and almost custard-like within, I can without hesitation pronounce them:

Well. Worth. Getting. Out of. Bed. Early.  For.

Nam Ngiaw Thapae, Chang Moei Soi 2, 8am-3pm. Closed Sunday, but the kabong tawt are sold everyday from 6-10am. Try also the khao ngiaw, banana leaf-wrapped rice that's been mixed with, yes, blood and steamed (again, there's no blood taste) -- it's served drizzled with a little shallot oil and topped with caramelized shallots. And once you're seated it's quite OK to order pretty good satay from the stall next door to eat there as well.

[NOTE: If you don't follow us on Facebook or Twitter you may not know that we have, here in Penang, started work on a big project. And we've launched a blog to document it. Have a look at Ah Tong Tailor and be sure to subscribe if the topic is of interest. We'll rarely be blogging Ah Tong Tailor material here at EatingAsia. Thanks.]

Kind of Blue

In Kelantan rice is all the time everywhere, in every imaginable form: pressed into squares, formed into logs and stuffed with fish, loose and coconut milk-scented, sweetened with smoky palm or white sugar and folded into banana leaves, steamed in tins, brightened with turmeric or sunset-hued curries, ground and made into thick wide noodles for the local version of laksa.

Our favorite Kelantanese rice dish by far is nasi kerabu, a salad-y concoction of purple-blue rice (tinted with a liquid made with the petals of the pea flower preferably, but often with food coloring) topped with kerisik (grated coconut, dry-fried), sambal (chili sauce), sweetened ground fish, budu (a super-fermented fish condiment that's a kitchen staple of southern Thailand, and is reminiscent of Thai bplaa raa) and a mixture of bean sprouts and fresh herbs sliced thin.

Nasi kerabu topped with kerepok (fish crackers) and accompanied by salted egg and fried fish

Dave and I have been enamored of nasi kerabu since we moved to Kuala Lumpur six years ago, where we made its acquaintance at a grotty street stall in front of the Chow Kit post office. So it was no hardship to find ourselves scouring Kota Bharu last week for superior versions.

We found one on our second-to-last morning in town -- and revisited it the next day -- at the lively wholesale morning market that sprawls over a pot-holed parking lot in the center of town, home also to the city's night market. There, mostly women vendors squat behind mounds of produce displayed in plastic bags or loose on tarps spread on the concrete.

At one edge of the market in front of a row of drinks shops, young studs preen as they work an enormous smoking grill covered with halved chickens; at the opposite side of the parking lot a fresh chicken seller singsongs come-ons into a megaphone. Porters push metal carts laden with tree trunk-sized bunches of petai (stink beans), hedge rows of water spinach (morning glory), and kilos upon kilos of lada hijau, the long pale green chilies that Kelantanese love to stuff with a sweet-savory mixture of ground fish and coconut.

In the midst of all this chaos two lively ladies serve a very fine nasi kerabu (pictured above), and an equally delicious nasi dagang (steamed unpolished rice enriched with coconut milk, eaten with fish or chicken curry), both cooked in their home kitchens while most of the city sleeps.

nasi dagang with hard-boiled egg and mackerel curry

From before dawn until they pack up around 10am the crowd around their stall is steady to bordering on overwhelming. It's a mix of housewives and office laborers, shoppers at the market and those passing through on the way to work. There's a wee bit of jostling -- especially when someone places an order for a dozen packets -- but it's all done in a good-natured Kelantanese sort of way.

We'd love to send you to their stall, and to Kota Baru's wonderfully lively wholesale market. But today was its last day. The market is being moved several kilometers outside of town to an "agro bazaar" on the side of a highway.

The relocation is no doubt a boon for the individuals contracted to construct the building and charged with collecting rent from the vendors. But as is so often the case, it's a hardship for the people for whom this conveniently located market is been central to daily life -- both as a source of income and a place to find good-quality produce at reasonable prices.

Should you be up for a trek outside of town, you can find these ladies' excellent nasi kerabu and nasi dagang at Taman Agro Business Negara, Highway Pasir Mas Salo. We think you'll find it well worth the effort.

Another Thing Mr. Zhang Taught Me

No Garlic. Not as in, "Never ever cook with garlic, ever," but as in "When stir-frying greens skip the stinking rose."

(If you're wondering who Mr. Zhang is and what else he's taught me, go to our first post in this very sporadic series, here. And while we're at it, here's an article on Mr. Zhang's place, and other Chengdu eateries like his, that we did a while back for the South China Morning Post: Page 1 and Page 2)

Common knowledge says when you're stir-frying green leafy veggies in the Chinese manner you want to throw in some chopped garlic. But beginning wok jockeys -- heck, even myself on occasion -- often find that the garlic browns too quickly, or burns as it's being tossed with the greens once they're in the pan. One way to deal with this occasional issue is to fry the garlic, remove it from the wok, fry the greens, and then add the garlic back in.

But like many Sichuanese cooks Mr. Zhang has a better, easier way of adding in flavor to those stir-fried veggies: skip the garlic in favor of suan miao.

Suan miao, or leeks, show up in many Sichuanese dishes. A properly made mapo dofu gets its jade-green accents from the green part of suan miao. They're stir-fried with la rou (Sichuanese bacon), pork slivers and black beans, eggplant, pressed and dried tofu, and all sort of other ingredients. They're heaped in mounds in Chengdu markets, tucked into shopping bags, and bundled home under arms.

And, in Mr. Zhang's kitchen at least, the greenest part of suan miao substitute for chopped garlic when he stir-fries rape, mustard and other green leafy vegetables.

We can't find suan miao here in Kuala Lumpur, so I substitute scallion greens. And since returning from our last trip to Chengdu I have been turning out some pretty fantastic chao qing cai (fried green veggies). These stir-fried greens (choy sum/flowering mustard, usually) find their way to our table two or three times a week. For our Sichuan-leaning palates, they're best with a few Sichuan peppercorns and dried chilies thrown into the mix, a la Chez Zhang.

Thanks Mr. Zhang!

Mr. Zhang's Stir-fried Leafy Greens (A Recipe of Sorts)

I understand there is a raging debate among Asian cookbook authors whether or not one should dry one's greens before stir-frying. If I had a flame like Mr. Zhang's (see above) I never would dry my greens. But all I've got is a regular gas burner with a pretty unimpressive BTU. I find that spinning my greens dry a few times after washing makes for a much more successful stir-fry. Experiment or, to err on the safe side, dry those greens.

Cooking oil (rapeseed oil gives that Sichuan flavor; if that's unavailable, peanut oil is preferred)

OPTIONAL but authentically Sichuanese: a heaping tsp or two of Sichuan peppercorns, whole and unroasted AND a heaping tbsp. or two of dried red chilies, snipped in half crosswise

About 1 lb. / one half kilo sturdy greens (Sichuanese rape, mustard greens/choy sum, gai lan leaves, bok choy, etc) -- sliced into 1-inch/3-cm shredds, washed and if you prefer, spun dry

a good handful of scallion greens, washed and snipped into 2-inch/4-cm lengths

salt

a Tbsp or two of stock or water

1. Set a wok or big frypan over high heat, and add a good glug or two of oil. Swirl the oil over the surface of the wok/pan and heat till not quite smoking.
2. Toss in chilies and Sichuan peppercorns, give a good stir but don't let the chilies blacken.
3. Start adding greens by the handful, stirring and tossing as you go. When the last of the greens are in add a few pinches of salt (less if you're using salted stock). Stir-fry for a minute or two, tossing to expose all green to the heat.
4. Add just a bit of stock or water (you don't want a pool in the bottom of your wok/pan, you just want to moisten the greens a bit to create a little steam) -- this may not be necessary if you haven't dried your veggies, toss, and cover the pan.
5. Check after a minute or two. The veg stems should still be fairly crunchy. Now, throw in your scallion / leek greens, toss for a minute or so, and turn the lot onto a plate.