EatingAsia

Commerce and Community

It's Not All Business at Kuala Lumpur's Pasar Bandar Baru Sentul

KLue  January 2008  Issue 111

Text: Robyn Eckhardt     Photos: David Hagerman

Should the Ministry of Tourism want images with which to promote multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-cultural Malaysia, it needn't look farther than Pasar Bandar Baru Sentul ('New' Sentul Market).

Ramshackle appearances aside, the thirty plus-year-old pasar is a Malaysia-Truly-Asia marketer's dream. The cavernous structure, anchored at one end by a Chinese temple,is located a short walk from Amru Ibni mosque and sits just across the street from Kuil Sri Maha Kaliamman (a Hindu temple). Inside, the market is a seamless transition, over the length of a football pitch, from Chinese to Malay and Indian sections, each populated by vendors of fresh ingredients and cooked delights.

A tiny pork stall, partially obscured from view by corrugated metal dividers, sits just behind the Chinese temple's main altar. Beyond, incense curls over the heads of grizzled caffeine jockeys filtering their thick brew, a couple tending to customers at their bounteous kuih cart, and sellers of noodles and yung tauhu. At tables interspersed amidst the food and drink stalls Indian and Chinese sup on curry laksa, char koay teow, and Cantonese fried mee as they're serenaded by the faint strains of Chinese opera.

Plastic net bags of mandarin oranges and bunches of bananas suspended from the rafters of fruit stalls mark the beginning of a vegetable section heavy on Malay and Indian goods. Stacks of burdock root and bundles of choy sum give way to curry leaves and daun kesom (polygonum), pristine pucuk paku (fern tips), and mounds of lengkuas (galangal). Seats and tables sit cheek to jowl with stalls offering me rebus and soto ayam, nasi lemak, freshly griddled chapati, and pillowy appam.

A row of sundries shops operated by Malays, Indians, and Chinese line the market's back wall. Indians heading to the temple pick up jasmine garlands at the flower shop as home cooks with curry on their minds queue for grated coconut and freshly extracted santan (coconut milk).

   

'Hey there, how you doing, Cat Man?' asks a Malay dad, young sons in tow, as he passes an elderly Indian gentleman scratching the heads of one of the market's resident felines. Cat Man beams at the kids, nods to their father. From behind the counter of a vegetable stall two rows over, a vendor in her thirties gently pushes a gratis bundle of chilies into the hands of a protesting granny.

In this cramped center of culinary commerce the residents of Bandar Baru Sentul seem to have found the sort of amiable coexistence that, at times, eludes other parts of the Klang Valley. It's a sociability that hasn't been willed from above, but that has come about as a result of the market's position between several large mixed-race housing flats. Sellers and customers live together, shop together, and eat together. Over more than three decades this commercial space has become not only an extension of the neighborhood but a source of community, and pride, as well.

'Look at this market!' instructs the youngest of a group of Chinese men reading newspapers and sipping teh tarik as, nearby, an elderly Indian woman rolls out dough for chapati.

'We've got everything,' he says. 'What do you want to eat? Malay food, Chinese food, Indian food? It's all right here!'

Four blocks away, opposite the mosque, the finishing touches are being put to a new three-story building. Its completion will herald the end of old Pasar Bandar Baru Sentul, a prospect greeted here with ambivalence. While most agree that the cheerfully painted structure's spanking new cleanness will be welcome, vendors fret over rents that will rise significantly with relocation. Meanwhile, customers worry about convenience; for the market's many elderly shoppers, especially, the extra walk will be a burden.

Then there is the new building's design. The old market vividly illustrates the social function of Kuala Lumpur's (and all of Malaysia's) traditional wet markets - there's more being exchanged here than goods and money. With its open layout, narrow aisles, and tables placed willy nilly, the old market effortlessly integrates business and pleasure. Should friends or acquaintances meet over piles of produce, there's invariably a spot nearby to which they can repair for a cup of coffee, all the while remaining within gossiping distance with the produce vendor.

In the new building fresh and prepared foods are relegated to separate floors. A food court, comprising stalls arranged single file along an exterior wall, facing outward and beyond conversation range of a clutch of permanently fixed tables and chairs, seems unlikely to encourage social exchange either among vendors or between sellers and customers.

'I just don't think I'll go there,' says an old-timer of the new market. If I want to eat, or even if I just want a cup of coffee, I've got to climb the stairs. And if I'm upstairs drinking coffee I'll miss my friends shopping downstairs.'

Only time will tell whether or not the new Pasar Bandar Baru Sentul will earn the affection of its community. The old market is a tough act to follow.

In the words of a banana seller no older than the market itself: 'This place, it's a classic.'

Mee, With Love

KLue  Vol 109  November 2007

Text: Robyn Eckhardt     Photos: David Hagerman

Sometimes life takes the most unexpectedly delicious turns, delivering one not to where he might have expected but to where he was surely meant to be.

Five years ago wonton mee-loving Muar native Goh We Peng was a student at HELP University. There, he made the acquaintance of fellow Johor-ite Tan Chu San. Goh and Tan's relationship blossomed as many in Malaysia do, over bowls of noodles and plates of rice and talk of food.

One day the couple wandered into Section 17's Restoran K Intan, where the specialty was wonton mee, featuring fresh noodles that the old uncle running the shop made himself in a small back room. One mouthful and they were hooked.

'Those noodles were very special,' recalls Tan. 'Not as soft as other mee. Springy like a rubber band, but not stretchy.'

Goh and Tan had found their definitive noodle (the char siew, or barbecued pork, was pretty tasty too). They celebrated their discovery by eating at the shop everyday, becoming close to the older couple as they became better friends themselves. Eventually the old uncle, impressed by Goh's enthusiasm, volunteered to teach him the art of noodle making. The younger man was keen, but he and Tan finished at HELP and left Kuala Lumpur before he could take the uncle up on his offer.

While Tan remained in Johor fresh graduate Goh headed to Singapore to take up an entry-level accounting position. After a year in shirt and tie he decided that eight-hour days and the physical comfort of a desk job in an air-conditioned office weren't for him. Goh left Singapore and returned to Johor, where he and Tan pondered their future. They'd not forgotten the mee master's offer.

'It was fate,' surmises Tan.

They returned to Kuala Lumpur and undertook tutelage in Section 17. As the uncle showed Goh how to spin skeins of springy noodles from flour and eggs and coax sweetness and char from strips of pork belly, his wife taught Tan how to make wonton and keep a food business humming. After three months they were on their own, selling wonton mee and char siew from a coffee shop in Setapak. Business grew as word of Goh's handmade mee spread, and then ground to a halt after just nine months, when the coffee shop's owner inexplicably reclaimed their stall.

Once again fate intervened.

At Restoran K the old uncle's health was failing. He was looking to sell his business. Goh and Tan returned to PJ to work with the uncle and his wife and, a month later, took over lock, stock, and barrel. As their twenty-something peers enjoyed late nights and carefree weekends the couple threw themselves into sixteen-hour days devoted to attracting new customers and winning over long-time regulars wary of their youth and relative inexperience.

In the kitchen, they learned by trial and error, soliciting customer reactions to the incremental changes they made to the shop's menu. As he perfected his char siew Goh attempted to reconcile conflicting diner preferences for fat versus lean and crispy blackened bits versus clean, uncharred met. Tan began serving siu gao (boiled dumplings), tweaking the filling's seasonings by the day. The stout old gua lu ('hanging' roaster) in a corner of the restaurant's half-open kitchen did double duty as Goh undertook to perfect a siew yoke ('three layer' roast pork) recipe given him by a friend of Tan's mother. ('We threw away many pieces of pork at the beginning,' he confides, shaking his head with a smile.) Tan introduced her mother's chicken feet and mushroom stew to almost immediate customer approval.

They hired one worker, and then one more. Goh made mee every morning before service started, and then through the day disappeared into the back to whip up new batches once, twice, three times as demand required. Days remained long (the couple re-opens the shop in the evenings for bak kut teh and more noodles). Relatives and not a few friends questioned the couple's willingness to work so hard for so little obvious reward.

Once in a while, Goh and Tan wonder too. Says Tan, 'Sometimes we ask ourselves, are we crazy?' Then adds, 'But if we do what we really like then we feel happy.'

Their modest goals for the business include hiring another worker and introducing more dishes to the menu. One of these days the couple, who registered their marriage at the end of 2005, would like to have a proper traditional wedding. But there's little time now for the distraction of planning.

'Right now it's Do Do Do. We must pay attention to every detail and can only think about working hard for a good result,' Tan explains.

But there is one major change afoot. Before the end of the year Goh and Tan will hang a new sign christening their restaurant 'Jiu Siang' ('forever fragrant'), a name that symbolizes their dedication to serving mouth-watering mee (and other dishes) for a good, long time.

Restoran K Intan (soon to be Jiu Siang Noodle House), 616 Jalan 17/10, Petaling Jaya. 9a-3p and 6p-9p. Tel. 012-754-1287/012-756-1214.

Sinfully Delicious

But Will Lard's Newfound Dietary Legitimacy Temper Its Allure?

Hakka mee bathed in 'white sauce'

KLue  September 2007  vol 107

Text:  Robyn Eckhardt  Photos: David Hagerman

The other day a friend passed along the coordinates of a hawker stall offering 'heavenly' char koay teow. As I wrote down the address she moved in close, lowered her voice, and added, with the tight little smile of a kid about to raid the cookie jar, 'He uses lard.'

Lard occupies a special place in the the culinary imagination of Malaysians undeterred by religious belief or doctor's orders from partaking of the pig. To true believers, stir-fried Hokkien mee lacking lard and cracklings is like a day without sunshine, rendered pork fat-free char koay teow is merely a pretender, and sweet bean biscuits made without hog fat evince all the flakiness of a piece of cardboard. Hardcore lardies worship at the altar of Hakka mee, assembling in the morning at a little stall in Pudu to gobble noodles dressed in 'white sauce', the vendor's euphemism for pure, unadulterated lard. It doesn't get much more animal fatty than that.

What accounts for lard's irresistible appeal? What explains, for example, the preference for koay teow fried in pig fat over that charred in vegetable oil?

'You can taste the difference straightaway,' claims one lard aficionado. 'A char koay teow made with lard is much more fragrant. And there's that, you know, bacon-y flavor.'

But is it all in the imagination? Inspired by attacks on the health benefit claims made for non-saturated fats such as vegetable oils, American food writer and lard enthusiast Pete Wells conducted taste tests, using liters of the stuff to deep-fry chicken, fish, and hush puppies (the crispy vadai of the American Deep South).

Surprisingly, he found that hog fat contributed absolutely nothing in terms of flavor: 'My friends and I agreed that our food bore no trace of pig.'

Maybe Malaysians are born with extra-sensitive lard receptors. Or perhaps growing up amidst the easy availability of foods lubricated with pig fat has enabled them to develop lard flavor-detecting abilities the likes of which will forever elude Mr. Wells and his cohort, who were raised in an age of dietary fearfulness that not only disapproved the enjoyment of lard, but viewed it as akin to gastronomic depravity.

Or is Malaysian lard ardor rooted, in the end, in the allure of the forbidden?

Last year, a national survey conducted by the Malaysian Shape of the Nation found that 47.1 per cent of the country's males and 60.2 per cent of its females suffer from abdominal obesity. Clearly Malaysians love to live as they know they shouldn't: unhealthily. An insalubrious lifestyle - for those not bound by religion to avoid porky products, that is - no doubt includes the regular intake of larded foods.

'I know it's bad for me, but I just can't help indulging once in a while,' bemoans a regular at a Petaling Jaya Hokkien mee stall praised for its liberal use of lard.

'I really shouldn't. Only for special occasions,' says a woman picking up a few boxes of lard-pastry bean paste buns at a Chow Kit bakery.

It wasn't always this way. Saturated fats - animal fats chief among them - were once considered part of a balanced diet. Once upon a time American home bakers relied on lard for flaky pie crusts and McDonald's fried its potatoes in beef tallow. Malaysian cookbooks from the time of the nation's birth include dozens of recipes calling for loads of the stuff.

Then, in the West, when saturated fats were linked to obesity and stratospheric cholesterol levels, lard ceased to be accepted in the kitchen. The contagion spread to Asia - though it did take a few extra decades for Asian lard admirers to come to grips with the notion that a favorite foodstuff had suddenly become forbidden fruit.

Now the tables have turned, and saturated fats have relinquished their high ranking on the scale of culinary-evils-incarnate to trans fats. The reasons for the flip-flop are the stuff of serious science, something to do with crazy, cell-attacking, dementia-causing free radicals that are created when vegetable oil is hydrogenated to a solid state. The details really aren't important. All a lard lover needs to know is this: Trans fats bad. Saturated fats (including - yes - lard) OK.

This turn of events has led Americans like Mr. Wells to contemplate the joys of living in a Brave New World, one that embraces hog fat. For many Malaysians this dream has long been a reality. The question is, now that one can argue with a straight face that the quest for good health practically demands a heapin' helpin' of crackling-speckled Hokkien mee, will the Malaysian zeal for lard cool?

After all, when have the words 'Go ahead, it's good for you!' ever stoked the appetite?

Time For A Chaat

The Klang Valley's Little Indias Hide Little-Known Sweet and Savory Snacks

KLue  Issue 106  August 2007

Text: Robyn Eckhardt     Photos: David Hagerman

The huge contributions of Malaysian Indians to the country's culinary culture bely the relatively small size of their community. Who among us doesn't experience the occasional belly-grumbling craving for a spicy banana leaf feast? Come late afternoon, is there any corner of the Klang Valley in which one can not find that streetside snack staple, deep-fried pulse fritters?

But man cannot live by turmeric fried fish and crispy vadai alone. The world of Indian Malaysian deliciousness is large and, in some instances, woefully uncharted. Two specialties that fly below the radar are chaat and palagaram.

On a Sunday evening, as the weekend draws to a close, a steady trickle of north Indians and Pakistanis pass through the entryway of Brickfield's Restoran Chat Masala. The humble shop's menu is packed with same-same standards like saag paneer and 'Indian Chinese' dishes but its short list of 'chaat specials' at the bottom right-hand corner is a chowhoundy find. In Hindi 'chaat' means 'to lick', and that's just what you'll want to do to your plate after sampling these small bites with big, exciting flavors that somehow sate and stoke the appetite all at once.

Puri, bite-sized rice flour puffs, arrive four to a plate. When an order is placed Chat Masala's chaat wallah pokes a hole in the top of each puff and fills them with - depending on whether he's making paneer or bhel or masala or panni chola puri - spicy garbanzo beans or tiny cubes of cheese or yogurt or a combination. On top goes tamarind gravy or fiery green chili-mint chutney or nothing at all. The icing on the cake is a shower of crispy orange sev (semolina noodles) and golden yellow fried dhal. The puri are accompanied by a cup of thin sauce made from tamarind, mint, and chilies.

In India chaat are made and eaten on the street. Puri like Restoran Chat Masala's are served one-by-one, and they must be popped into the mouth at lightning speed, before any sauce spooned over the top turns the delicate rice flour shells into a soggy mess. Chat Masala's restaurant setting and sauce-on-the-side set-up may allow for a more leisurely repast, but the snack's scrumptiousness induces gobbling in the end.

The restaurant's other chaat, like its salad of starfruit, orange, and cilantro leaves in a hot-and-minty dressing zippy enough to awaken one from even the most serious case of hot-season torpor, share's its puri's masterful combination of contrasting tastes and textures: sweet and tangy, salty and spicy, wet and dry, smooth-soft and crackly-crunchy. Chaat may be meant to be taken as a quick, light snack, but their addictive flavors never fail to inspire indulgence equivalent to a meal.

Just don't show up at 1 o'clock hoping to embark upon a chaat repast. Says Chat Masala's owner, 'We don't want to eat chaat for lunch, only in the evening and onward. And so I will not serve it before 4.'

As north Indians in the Klang Valley have their chaat, so Tamils have their palagaram (or palaharam). The word once described a class of foods prepared specifically as offerings for particular Hindu deities, but these days palagaram serve purposes both sacred and secular. While offered during prayers inside the temple, they're also taken outside as between-meal snacks, often accompanied by tea.

A post-lunch visit to Restoran Mohana Bistro in Klang's Little India finds customers munching on kolakatta, steamed rice-flour dumplings filled with sweetened lentils, which are a favorite palagaram of Lord Vinayagar, the Elephant God. Hanuman, Hindu monkey deity and symbol of physical strength and devotion, prefers vadai strung into a garland. On Mohana Bistro's menu are thairu vadai, a soft version of Hanuman's gram flour 'donut', soaked in and then doused with yogurt and dusted with crispy aromatics such as deep-fried curry leaves, chili flakes, and popped black mustard seeds.

Across the street at Asoka Curry House, a banana leaf-lined tray of spicy chickpeas delivered fresh from the kitchen to the restaurant's streetside palagaram station is quickly depleted. Meanwhile, orders are filled for more thairu vadai (a version much less 'wet' than Mohana Bistro's) and boli, featherweight gram flour 'crepes' perfumed with cardamom and filled with jaggery-sweetened mashed dhal. Unlike chaat, palagaram are served morning to night, though variety and availability increase exponentially come late afternoon.

Much like their northern Indian chaat cousins, palagaram boast an astounding mix of flavors and textures and an intense spice-forwardness that's bound to tickle even the most jaded palate.

Food of the gods, indeed.

Noodles, With Love

What Does it Take to Build a Thriving Hawker Business? Long Hours, Attention to Detail, and a Profound Respect for the Customer

KLue magazine  June 2007  Issue 104

Text: Robyn Eckhardt     Photos: David Hagerman

'You see? The noodles are late today because of the rain.'

Steven eyes his watch. His demeanor, always genial, becomes decidedly more so as a white van with the words 'Kein Ayam Itik Mee Telur' stenciled on its sides comes into view.

The fresh egg noodles have arrived. Crisis averted.

It's 6:05 on a wet Wednesday morning. Ninety minutes earlier Steven guided his black Harrier to a space in front of Restoran Hong Seng and, with wife Oiling and helper, unloaded its contents: unwieldy stainless steel pots, a family-size Coleman cooler, bulging plastic bags.

The first customers wouldn't arrive for at least an hour, but there was soup to simmer, lettuce and bean sprouts to wash, wonton to stuff, and meat balls to boil. Then there were kalamansi to halve, sambal to spoon into saucers, green onions and long beans to arrange in the display case, tofu puffs to snip, coconut milk to stir into the curry.

Steven's Section 17 stall is known for wonton filled with prawns so fresh they sing of the sea and a curry noodle that, according to one fan, is 'not too spicy, not too rich - just right.' He and Oiling plunged into the world of food hawkerdom eight years ago, selling first from Kedai Kopi Wah Cheong and then, after a break in New Zealand, moving next door to Hong Seng. The coffee shop's vendors are rarely idle, but it Steven and Oiling's stall that consistently sells out and shuts earliest, often before lunch on weekdays and by 10:30 or 11am on weekends.

But lest you envy a schedule that appears to allow plenty of time for repose, know that the couple's day begins while most of us are still tucked into our beds and doesn't end until we're just sitting down to dinner.

This morning, as usual, they rose early enough to arrive at the Old Klang Road market by 4am. There, they purchased santan (coconut milk) and other ingredients, then returned home to prepare everything for transport to the coffee shop.

Wouldn't it be easier to do all that shopping the prior afternoon? Wouldn't it be nice to get an extra hour or two of sleep?

'My customers wouldn't stand for it!' insists Steven. 'The santan must be absolutely fresh, otherwise it doesn't smell nice and won't blend properly with the curry.'

Extreme attention to detail makes for a load of work. Once the stall closes there's washing up to do and pots to load into the Harrier, and then it's back home to prepare the next day's meals. Steven could buy prepared curry paste. Instead he makes it from scratch, softening dried chilies in boiling water, stripping them of their seeds, boiling them again, and then grinding them - along with galangal, lemongrass, turmeric, candle nuts, and curry leaves - to a paste.

In the meantime he's prepared a clear soup from chicken and ikan bilis. Some of the broth takes the paste, and the mixture is left to simmer for ten hours. Now he turns his attention to the prawns he sources from a Sekinchan supplier ('You just can't find tasty prawns at the market.'), which he'll peel and toss with a wee bit of sugar (to preserve their 'bounce') before depositing them in the fridge.

Then there's the loh see fun ('rat tail' noodles). Steven can't abide the commercial versions, laced as they are with preservatives and slick with oil. So he makes his own, everyday, from rice flour and water. If, when the curry pot runs dry, there's noodles left in the display case, they're thrown out. Serve day-old loh see fun? Over his dead body.

Finally, well after six in the evening, Steven and Oiling steal a few hours to relax.

'Oh! The light is on! They're getting ready to open!'

Steven and his fellow vendors have been prepping in the milky glow of Hong Seng's outdoor bulbs. At 6:20am the scrape of plastic chair legs and the grate of metal shutters signals the start of the business day. Hushed toil is replaced by the hum of commerce. Early-bird customers trickle in, place breakfast orders, and retreat to their tables with the paper and a pot of tea. Car doors slam as passengers jump out to ta pao (take-away). A Rapid KL bus rumbles at the stop in front of the shop.

As the scent of curry leaves envelops Steven's stall like a warm hug, business comes in fits and starts. There's take-away for eight, then nothing, then more take-aways and service for a table of five. So it goes until ten-ish when, as Steven says, the 'real rush' begins.

From now until closing it will be a full court press. He and Oiling, outfitted in Nike trainers, jog pants, and polo shirts, are ready for action. As the orders pile up they and their helper perform a well-rehearsed dance, seamlessly negotiating each other on the small patch of tile behind their stall.

Then, the last of the curry is sold. The frenzy ceases and clean-up begins. Oiling smiles. Steven, chatting with a regular, lifts his basebal cap and mops his brow. Eight hours down, seven to go.

He's in his element.

Tastes Like Home

KLue magazine  May 2007  vol 103

Text: Robyn Eckhardt     Photos: David Hagerman

When Malaysians head abroad, one of the things they miss most is the food they grew up with. So it is for the thousands of migrant workers who clean our homes, cook in our restaurants, tap our rubber trees, and labor in our factories.

Migrant workers make up some twenty percent of Malaysia's workforce. These men and women come in search not of citizenship, nor of adventure, but simply to earn a living. Many leave behind husbands, wives, and children and stay for years, even decades.

After the sound of the voice of a loved one, nothing quite relieves the pain of homesickness like flavors that conjure memories of one's birthplace. For migrant laborers, weekends offer the opportunity to buy phone cards, stock up on imported groceries, and lose oneself in the taste of home amid the company of compatriots.

On the first floor of a Jalan Silang shop house, Nepalese men and the odd woman indulge in cheap pitchers of beer, rice plates of sukuti ra bhat (grilled dried buffalo meat curry), and enormous bowls of thukpa (soup noodles). The insistent thump-thump of Bollywood hits from the shop below shakes Restoran Khukri's floor, but no one notices. Engrossed in coversation, customers compare notes on employers, share letters from family, and discuss political developments in Katmandu. The Khukri's owner wishes ever day was Sunday. 'We're struggling the rest of the week, but we can always count on a steady trade this day,' he says.

Just outside Chinatown's Madras Lane food court Yeecho, a hawker recently arrived from southern Burma, serves daily specials like ngar oo hin, fish eggs in dry curry, and khauk swe thohk, sesame and chile-dressed cool noodle 'salad', to a steady stream of countrymen. 'I cook for fellow Burmese. The want food that tastes as it does in Myanmar,' says the former primary school teacher.

As for life in Kuala Lumpur, Yeecho's sentiments reflect those of many foreign laborers: 'Malaysia is a good place, but it's not my home. The economy is so bad in Burma ... I am here because I have to be.'

On Sundays the approach to KL's St. John's cathedral is briefly transformed into Little Manila, as Filipino maids stake out squares of pavement from which to peddle home-cooked goodies. Savories like adobo, long-cooked pork stew, and sweets such as suman, leaf-wrapped logs of coconut-scented glutinous rice, quickly sell out. But comraderie keeps the ladies hanging around long after mass has ended.

Those in search of sit-down fare convene at Kota Raya, where Esther and her colleagues serve Philippine fare (and sell bottles of hard-to-find bagoong, a budu-like essential Philippine condiment) from a shop at the shopping center's top-floor food court. Lydia, a southerner on her fifth year as a maid in KL, says speaking Tagalog with other Filipinos over a plate of langunisa (pork sausages) is a comfort.

'After mass we Filipinos like to have a big meal with friends and family. I'm glad that I can do that here in KL, too.'

Indonesians craving home-style heat head to Restoran TAR near Chow Kit market. Kristina, a native of east Java working in KL for four months, reveals that she never eats Malaysian food. 'It's not nice,' she says, wrinkling her nose. 'We [Indonesians] need more chilies.'

She nods approvingly at a plate of pecel lele (crispy deep-fried catfish on a pool of fiery chile sauce, served with rice and vegetables), served from a stall advertising Solo specialties. 'That sambal will make you cry.'

On the first day of the week Thai expats crowd around a white catering truck parked in front of Pandan Indah's Thai Font Market. The array of home-cooked foodstuffs is enough to make a homesick Thai swoon: somtam (green papaya salad) pounded to order, kanom jeen (thin rice noodles topped with a variety of curries), laab khua (a highly spiced dish of chopped pork and parts), and more.

'I keep the prices lower than one usually finds in KL,'  says Tan, the market's owner, whose wife does most of the cooking, 'for the sake of the average Thai worker.'

The scene - families working their way through dish after dish and single laborers lingering over chitchat, bowls of noodles, and bottles of Singha beer - is reminiscent of any neighborhood eatery tucked away on a Bangkok soi (side street). Here, among folks enjoying authentic flavors on a hard-earned day off, those famous Thai smiles are much in evidence.

Gawn, a northern Thai with a ready handshake and a friendly smile, is a regular. 'I'm here every Sunday. Every Sunday! I never miss it!' And just what is it that draws him to this out-of-the-way corner of the Klang Valley?

'My friends .... and the eats!'

As anyone who has spent extended time overseas knows, the taste of home can be a comfort beyond compare.

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.

Chow Kit Market: There's a rare magic in the air at KL's original hypermarket - but it's struggling to stay alive

KLue, Issue 101, March 2007    

Text: Robyn Eckhardt     Photos: David Hagerman

If the soul of Malaysia resides in the bellies of its citizens, then the heart of KL must be its wet markets. After all, it's these old-style places of culinary commerce that have, over the years, stocked the kitchens and pantries of the city's hawker's and restaurateurs, wives and mothers, grandmas and aunties, dads and grandfathers who've fed us.

Despite its willy-nilly redevelopment KL still boasts a few of these traditional alternatives to the grocery store, from Petaling Street's petite Chinese market to Pudu's open-air sprawl. But one pasar better than any other reflects the diversity, changing fortunes, and essence of the city: Chow Kit.

'Maaaaaaaaaaaaaari mari mari!' ('Come, come, come on!')

In a dim workroom off a narrow alley, a shirtless man lowers a wood-handled wire strainer as big as a motorcycle tire and lifts a batch of taufu pok from a wok of sputtering oil. On a wooden tray beside him battalions of snow-white tofu cubes await their turn in the boiling liquid. Just outside, a gent with a kerchief tied tight over his bald pate grunts with the effort of lifting twenty bags of the finished product into a milk crate fastened to the back of a delivery bike bound for kedai in KL and PJ.

'Ayam! Ayam! Ayaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!' ('Chicken! Chicken! Here's chicken!')

A stone's throw away peanuts roast in a metal drum out the back of a busy shop. Nearby, a stooped granny perched on a low stool peels onions as her daughter combines scoops of ground ginger, turmeric, garlic, and shallots for a bulk order of curry paste. The whir of metal grinders churning out cili mesin drowns out the click-clack of abacus beads drifting from a storeroom around the corner.

Chopped peanuts for legions of popiah, freshly made mee destined for thousands of bowls of curry, chickpea flour ground for an incalculable number of bhaji, coconut milk to enrich countless pots of masak lemak - all are prepared everyday in the bowels of Pasar Chow Kit. Here, a narrow aisle lined on both sides with Malay and Indonesian vendors displaying turmeric leaves, paku, budu, and jering on low wooden tables. There, from a row of shop houses in various states of disrepair, staples of the Indian kitchen are sold in bulk from burlap bags.

Beyond that, past the kambing stalls and behind the live poultry section, hide a row of modish, curve-roofed cement structures housing a Chinese herbal medicine purveyor, a kitchen supplies and ceramic pots dealer, and a few coffee shops. At tables out front customers and employees slurp noodles and rice porridge while chatting in a cacophony of Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, and Mandarin.

Older than Malaysia itself, Chow Kit has, like KL, seen good times and bad. When it was opened in 1955 by the seventh sultan of Selangor, the market anchored one of the city's prime shopping and entertainment districts. Forty years later the area was known more for its illicit activities than for its haberdashers and wet market. In 1997 City Hall announced its intention to raze the market and replace it with an eleven-story multi-purpose building, a plan put on hold indefinitely when the Asian financial crisis hit. Malaysia's economic misfortune saved Chow Kit, but business at the market has never returned to pre-crisis levels.

'Eight or so years ago, if you came to Chow Kit on a Sunday you couldn't even walk, it was so crowded,' recalls Asraf, an Indian shop owner whose family has been in business at the market for sixteen years. He attributes the market's decline to KL-ites' love affair with the hypermarket.

'How can a small shop owner like me compete?' Asraf laments.

While the market's wholesale stalls haven't suffered as much as its small retailers, sellers of super-sized bags of banana chips and Pokemon candies in bulk just don't draw the crowds of yesteryear.

Other sellers say changing lifestyles are the root of Chow Kit's malaise. 'Young people don't like wet, dirty markets,' observes Miss Lin, a Chow Kit resident from birth. Selling lucky bamboo and ceramic pots from a stall in the Chinese section for fifteen years now, she sees sales spike only around Chinese New Year and Hari Raya.

'Besides, who has time to drive to Chow Kit, park their car, and walk around buying vegetables here, meat there, eggs somewhere else?' she asks. Supermarkets offer what KL's wettest wet market cannot - cleanliness and convenience.

'Lima ringgit! Lima ringgit! Lima ringgit! Jambuuuuuuu!' ('Five ringgit, five ringgit! Rose apples!')

Yet, despite its unruliness Chow Kit has its hard-core fans, even among the not-so-old. Thirtyish KL native Angela hits the market's claustrophobic covered walkways first thing every Sunday morning. For her, face-to-face connections - the ability to buy from vendors she knows and trusts - trump hygiene and convenience any day. Ready access to nearly every Malaysian ingredient imaginable sweetens the pot. It's the old market's trump card.

'You can get everything at Chow Kit!'

The Golden Crust

NOTE: Typepad is confounding all my attempts to place spaces between the paragraphs in this post. Until I figure it out, bear with me. And if anyone has tips on pasting text into a post without the spacing being all messed up, drop me a line. Thanks.

KLue, Issue 100, February 2007

Text: Robyn Eckhardt     Photos: David Hagerman

Malaysian shoppers are demanding. Just watch them conduct quality control at Bangsar's pasar malam (night market) - sniffing fish, thumping watermelons, snapping beans, poking bread.

Poking bread?

'Here in Malaysia, it's the 'poke test',' sighs Mustaffa, a bearded, Father Christmas look-alike Brit who, along with his Sumatra-born wife Mardia, crafts European-style breads at their bakery near Sungai Buloh.

While most of the couple's goods reach customers through the organic foods franchise Just Life, Sundays finds them selling their artisinal loaves in front of Country Farm Organics, concurrent with the pasar malam.

Combining top-quality, natural ingredients and Old World techniques (they mill their own wheat and mix most dough by hand), Mustaffa and Mardia bake preservative and additive-free breads that, with their substantial crusts, ample grain, and chewy texture, would be at home in bakeries from Paris to Budapest. Yet in Kuala Lumpur, where 'bread so good it can be eaten on its own' is a sales pitch rather than a give, those crisp-crusted loaves are a hard sell.

Five years ago the couple sold baked goods, along with homemade cheeses, from their own cafe-bakery in Bukit Ramah-Putra. Though locals loved Mardia's sugary sweets (she started out making highly-praised kuih lapis, a multi-layer Indonesian favorite) their nourishing breads went unsold because they didn't squish when squeezed.

'We were literally throwing out loaves everyday,' remembers Mustaffa.

   

                                                                                                                                              

They let the cafe's lease go. Then, after a chance conversation with a Just Life staffer led to a tasting for the store manager, their goods wound up on the franchise's shelves. With a growing base of customers looking to eat their way to health, Just Life has proven the perfect venue not only for Mardia and Mustaffa's grain and seed-packed sprouted breads, but also for their recently developed takes on traditional Malaysian foods, like pandan and spinach mantou (Chinese steamed bread). Still, winning over the general public remains an uphill battle.

Modifying their bread to suit local tastes without compromising on wholesomeness has been as much of a challenge for the two as adapting recipes written for dry northern climates to Malaysia's humid heat. Natural yeast, for instance, trumps commercial bread raisers (which can contain chemicals), but makes bread sour - a quality as shunned in KL as it is beloved in San Francisco. Experimentation proved that raising natural-yeasted bread in the refrigerator slowly, overnight, rather than at room temperature, cut its tartness. And experience has proven that simply dropping the 'sourdough' label from their product descriptions increases sales.

                                  

On a recent Sunday morning Mardia and Mustaffa's bakery - a neat, one-room brick building with sturdy wooden crossbeams and a cement floor - is a Zen-like space of quiet concentration. Hot loaves, lightly seasoned mini pizzas, and hamburger buns cool on a shelf while mounds of rising dough nestle under tea towels. As the sweet scent of freshly milled wheat mingles with the enticing aroma of baking bread, Mardia breaks eggs for orange cakes while Mustaffa prepares a basic dough.

Into a stainless steel mixing bowl go a kilo of Finnish unbleached flour and ten grams each of Himalayan rock salt and fresh yeast. After adding water (exactly how much depends on both flour and the day's humidity) he mixes the ingredients, first with a spatula and then with his hands, to form a sticky lump. Most of Mustaffa's bread dough is minimally kneaded - just ten seconds, three or four times over ninety minutes - but this one, for French baguettes and fougasse, a leaf-shaped loaf, must be brutalized so that it takes on the maximum amount of air.

Mustaffa pulls the dough from the sides of the mixing bowl, lifts it high, and throws it down on the worktable, gently stretching and rolling it before repeating the process. Soon the dough is sticking more to itself than to the bread maker's hands, and then it's floured, formed into a round, and left to rest under a piece of linen. An hour later, smooth as the proverbial baby's bottom and almost doubled in size, it's ready to be shaped into loaves. After about fifteen minutes in the oven baguettes and fougasse emerge crispy and authentically chewy.

Asked to name his favorite bread, Mustaffa demurs. 'I don't really bake for myself much,' he says. 'We eat whatever bread happens to be around.'

Bread gourmands they may not be, but there is no doubting Mardia and Mustaffa's dedication to the art. When not up to their elbows in dough they're testing recipes, developing new techniques, and expanding the range of ingredients grown in their organic garden. In a corner of the bakery sits a half-built wood-fired brick oven. When it's finished, Mustaffa's loaves will emerge from its high, uniform heat with evenly gold, crackly crusts.

They will, no doubt, fail the poke test.

Find Mustaffa and Mardia every Sunday from 4pm in front of Country Farm Organics, Lower Level, Bangsar Village Shopping Center. www.bakerette-cafe.com. Special orders welcome.

                                                                                                                                        

Update 26/02/07: The wood-fired oven is now up and running, but the relocation of the Bangsar night market has resulted in a huge drop in foot traffic past Country Farm Organics. As a result, it's no longer worthwhile for Mardia and Mustaffa to make the drive from Sungai Buloh every Sunday. The upshot? Don't look for them in Bangsar.

                                                                                                                                                  Fortunately, the couple's business with Just Life is booming. In addition to supplying the chain's stores they are now also baking for Just Life's (Ikano Power Center) recently-opened vegan cafe. You may even find them there on occasion giving demonstrations.

                                                                                                                                           Special orders for their European-style artisinal loaves - now even more delicious, thanks to that wood-fired brick oven - are still very welcome. Visit their website, give them a call, place an order, and they'll work with you to figure out a mutually agreeable pick-up/drop-off location.