EatingAsia

Field Chicken and Big Fish in Slim River

What fun is getting from point A to location B if it's done on an empty stomach?

No fun at all, say Malaysians, who view a road trip as an opportunity, or an excuse, or both, to engage in four-wheeled sport eating. According to Malaysian logic driving two hours from Kuala Lumpur to Ipoh just to eat lunch might make sense ... but it makes more sense to add an extra hour to the journey, divert off the north-south expressway onto the old two-lane trunk road, and stop along the way for a meal-sized snack.

We're not quite that hard-core - yet - but we are willing to drive for a meal, which puts the old trunk road's treasures within our occasional reach. On a Sunday back in January we head up Highway 1 aiming not for Ipoh but for a favorite pit stop for Ipoh and Penang-bound car travelers: Restoran Fook Seng, in the small town of Slim River.

Lured by tales of 'field chicken' and unsurpassed river fish preparations, and armed with a carefully hand-drawn yet utterly indecipherable map, we cast about up and down the old two-laned road for a good 45 minutes before figuring out that the nondescript corner shop we've already blown by five or six times is our destination.

We enter to find most tables occupied by groups of beer and tea-drinking male regulars. Sure enough, every group is noshing on at least one fish dish. At the back of the restaurant, utterly oblivious to the racket of cleavers-to-chopping-blocks and rattling pans coming from the kitchen, a small child sleeps comfortably.

Fook Seng's owner, Madame Yong Mee Lan, greets us as if we're regulars too (always a good sign) and recommends the very dishes we've come to try: claypot river fsh, caught near town, and 'field chicken'.

'You must try the paku (wild fern tips),' she says. Madame Yong buys the foraged greens from orang asli who live in the green velvet-carpeted hills visible from Fook Seng's door.

The fish arrives at the table spitting and sizzling. Cooked flesh side down on the scorching clay, it's charred and smoky underneath, moist and flaky up top. Green onions, red chilies, and stalk of kangkong (water spinach) share space in the pot with an exquisite sauce made with Chinese sweet rice wine and dried orange peels. Detecting none of the the muddy flavor often associated with river fish, we declare this specimen a fine one indeed.

'Field chicken' turns out to be bullfrog ('doh', as Homer Simpson would say), livened with peppery young ginger and so tender it slides right off the bone. Frog is a protein we usually avoid (all those tiny bones - too much work for not enough reward) but the apparent heft of the creature that gave his life for this dish renders it worth the effort.

After stir-frying, the paku retain their perkiness, and are combined with just enough belacan to complement, rather than overwhelm, their agreeable earthiness.

After dinner we wander back to the kitchen.

The quality of Fook Seng's ingredients is not to be questioned - we're pointed to a bin of hopping live bullfrogs the size of puppies (at this moment I regret our order of field chicken) and instructed by Madame Yong to give the the ikan bawang (our claypot speciment - not a catfish, she says, but the whiskers suggest it's a member of the catfish family) laying in a tray in the refrigerator a poke. They pass the fresh test.

Then our hostess hauls out one of the biggest freshwater fish I've ever seen (opening photo), a 2.5-kilo monster of an ikan tapah. She tells us she would have recommended it but it seemed too big for just two to tackle. On this point we are in complete agreement.

As I'm paying the bill Madame Yong apologizes for her thirty-year-old restaurant's peeling paint. She'd like to fix the place up, she says, but she can't get the landlord (her mother) to sell so she hesitates to make the investment. I assure her that we didn't come for the decor, and a bit of peeling paint sure as heck won't keep us from returning.

Restoran Fook Seng, 17 Jalan Mahsuri, Taman Aman, Slim River, Perak State (about one hour north of KL on the old trunk road). Tel. 05-452-8698.

 

Road Food

One measure of a country is how well one can eat on its roads. Italy, with its autostrada pit stops serving toasted panini and espresso (and selling hunks of aged parmesan Reggiano and every sort of salumi under the sun), scores pretty high. So does Thailand. On our last tour up north we rarely drove more than half an hour without encountering a tempting edible, everything from barbecued chicken to ice-cold corn juice (incredibly refreshing).

Our beloved Malaysia disappoints in this department. The main north-south highway is dotted with official rest stops that dish up nothing of worth. Finding eats in the kampung (villages) lining smaller roads is more often a miss than a hit. Most boast a tom yam or ikan bakar shack or two that appear to be after dark-only operations. The daytime driver can travel quite a while without running into a snack. So this laksa lean-to, on highway 58 north to Setiawan, was a pleasant surprise.

The menu here is short - laksa, fried bananas, and kueh (sweets). To drink, air nira nipa and coconut juice. From the table inside, we enjoy a calming view of endless emerald rice paddies and shudder at the sound of unnervingly close high-speed traffic.

The elderly couple running the place is friendly and he, despite protestations to the contrary, speaks excellent English. They've been in business for over a decade and enjoy a steady parade of customers (on a Sunday, at least).

She describes her laksa as Penang-style. It's extremely spicy and very sour a la the northern island, but the broth is uncharacteristically clear. What this bowlful has going for it is big chunks of fish, a pronounced tang that I suspect is derived more from tamarind than from the sour slices known as asam keping, and loads of sliced fresh chilies that tingle our tongues and burn our lips.

Just the thing to recharge the batteries of a tiring driver facing another couple hours behind the wheel.

Laksa shack, highway 58, about 45 minutes from Setiawan. (There are others in the general vicinity.)

'Tis the Season ...

...in Singapore and Malaysia, at least, for yu sheng (yee sang, in Cantonese), a dish of raw fish tossed - for luck - with sweet, sour, fresh, fried, and crispy ingredients. Both Singaporeans and Malaysians lay claim to this Chinese New Year banquet fixture, but it probably originated in China's Guangdong province. Read more in the Wall Street Journal, here.

Shave Before Serving

A trip to the wet market never fails to turn up something new. This morning's visit to Temerloh's always enjoyable Pekan Sehari ('one-day' market - Sunday mornings only) was no different.

Today every other vegetable vendor, it seemed, was displaying small piles of hairy eggplant. We'd seen 'bald' versions of these bristle-haired vegetables in Thailand, where they're called ma-euk; in Nan we learned to squeeze their innards into nam prik kapi (shrimp paste 'dip'). But we'd never encountered them with their fur (we didn't know they have fur), so we didn't know what we were seeing.

Malays call this member of the Solanum genus buah terung asam, or sour eggplant 'fruit'. The vendor who sold us our tumpuk (pile) told us the hair could be easily removed with the blade of a knife (she was right - a matter of a few gentle scrapes), and a fellow customer shared a recipe for a hairy eggplant condiment to eat with rice.

Once we got home I gave the lot a good shave and wash and then ate several uncooked, out of hand. Raw, this variety of eggplant that Malays call a fruit tastes nothing at all like a vegetable. It's thin-skinned and juicy, pleasantly sweet-sour, and has a somewhat floral essence reminiscent of passion fruit.

The rest I put in a pan with water to cover and added asam keping (the dried slices of a green fruit called buah asam that give Malaysia asam laksa its hallmark sourness), a few chilies, and a hefty pinch of salt. After the liquid came to a boil I allowed the eggplant to simmer for just a few minutes, removed the pan from the heat, and let the vegetables cool in their water bath. Cooking brought out the eggplant's vegetal flavor, but they still retained quite a bit of sourness. This will indeed be a delicious piquant accompaniment to a plate of rice and a rich, coconut milk-based Malay curry.

You might find shaved hairy eggplant at Thai supermarkets, fresh or frozen. Definately worth a try, raw or prepared as below.

Hairy Eggplant Condiment

hairy eggplants

a few slices of asam keping or other souring agent, such as several lime leaves or a teeny knob of tamarind

chilies, as many as you dare - sliced down the middle for more heat

a generous pinch (or more, depending on how many eggplant you have) of salt

1. Place eggplant, asam keping (or other souring agent), chilies, and salt in a small pan. Add water to cover.

2. Bring the water to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer a few minutes. The eggplants are done when they give to pressure. Remove from heat and let them cool in the liquid. Store in the refrigerator but serve at room temperature, on their own or with rice.

A Nice Place to Be

Sunday in Penang, and we're out the door at first light. An old market on Carnavon Street - and, most alluringly, the non-permanent stalls that line the lane just outside its main entrance -  beckons, but the murky clouds overhead aren't cooperating. Moments after we arrive - plop! plop! plop! Big, fat drops that portend a long, soaking shower. And, as usual, we're umbrella-less.

Luckily, Georgetown's streets hold no shortage of spots to ride out a storm. We look right: one coffee shop on the corner, another halfway down the block. And then left: two coffeeshops within a stone's throw of each other. I like the look of the big bamboo steamers flying out of the kitchen at Aik Hoe (just across the street from Lucy Perm Parlour); Dave admires the shop's chairs, well-worn backs embossed with the restaurant's name in Chinese characters.

Envisioning a breakfast of assam laksa and naively hopeful that the rain slicking the pavement just beyond our front-of-the-shop table will let up, we limit ourselves to cups of thick kopi. Then the steamer trays, holding all manner of dim sum delights, start making their rounds. We shake our heads once, twice ... and then surrender at the third pass.

We're suckers for dim sum - especially dim sum served this way, the old-fashioned way: from carts rolled or trays carried table to table. The glorious bounty of these steamer trays delights and confounds; choosing is exquisite torture, albeit one that we willingly invite pass after pass. After one trip around the shop trays return to the kitchen, contents depleted. A good sign.

This isn't delicate, high-end artistry dim sum, but traditional Chinese coffeeshop-style dim sum: inexpensive, hearty, and filling. It's the sort of dim sum served in a place like Aik Hoe, with its ceiling fans up top and tiles under foot, an ancestor shrine in the back, three generations running the floor, and a cast of crusty regulars anchoring the tables. It's not dim sum to dress up for or to be ooohed and aaahhhed over, but dim sum to be eaten in shorts and flip-flops, savored quietly with a pot of tea (or a cup of coffee) and the morning paper, or shared amidst the chatter of friends or family.

This is dim sum to wake up with. Dim sum for a lazy morning.

We settle on rice rolls filled with a gingery mince of fresh fish, and flat, thick-wrappered rice flour dumplings filled with Chinese chives and pork. The dumplings, righteously light on meat and heavy on garlicky greens, promise bad breath for at least the next 4 hours.

Aik Hoe's congee is popular and, once we've seen how it's served - from a tray holding ceramic pots of shredded ginger, fried garlic in oil, chopped scallion greens, and a shaker of ground white pepper, all to add according to preference - there's no question but that we'll place an order.

Thirty minutes pass, then thirty minutes more, and the pile of empty saucers on our table grows. It's approaching mid-morning on our last day in Penang, and we've yet to get our market fix. But for now, as we contemplate a second cup of coffee and keep eyes peeled for the next bamboo tray, Aik Hoe seems like a pretty nice place to be.

Aik Hoe Restaurant, Carnavon Street (first block off Chulia Street), Georgetown, Penang.

Blue Moon Over Bidor

In Bidor for a spot of duck noodle soup, we decide to investigate the town's market.

It's not large and, by 10am on a Sunday, it's half-deserted. But we find spanking fresh fish, tiny clams of the sort that seem never to show up in Kuala Lumpur's markets, mounds of thick-stemmed paku (ferns) sporting tightly coiled fiddleheads, and lots of petai, or stink beans. Bidor is almost synonomous with this aptly named (but delicious) vegetable - bunches of whole pods are everywhere. (This photo was actually taken on the pavement in front of Pun Chun.)

Small though it is, this market's a good one, because in its aisles can be found new-to-us ingredients. Like this wild vegetable sold by each of two elderly Chinese ladies who've staked out squares of market floor directly across from each other. They call it - as near as we can understand - kong ji xin, and tell us it's added to curries.

The stiff green leaves remind us of lemongrass, as do the concentric layers of woody flesh revealed when one of the scarlet bulbs is sliced open crosswise. On the tongue, there's astringency reminiscent of torch ginger flower plus a bitter punch that brings to mind arugala gone to seed. It seems more a Malay than a Chinese ingredient, but none of the market's Malay vendors know its name.

This morning the market holds other treasures too.

We stop at a stall to inspect a particularly enticing bundle of paku and end up chatting with a motorcycle-helmeted customer. Where're you from? he asks, and we go through the usual sequence of answers and follow-up questions: we're from America (say 'US' and most people don't know what you're talking about - in Asia, the United States is 'America') but we live in Kuala Lumpur we've been here a little over two years how do we like Malaysia? well we love it.

I like American music, he says. I play trombone. My brother-in-law, he's from the Philippines but he's dead now, he played saxaphone. We had a band, played in Kuala Lumpur. Long, long time ago.

Do you know 'Blue Moon'?

He brings one hand - the hand not burdened by a bulging bag of vegetables - up in front of his face, cradling a trombone only he can see. And begins to play, moving his fingers up and down, manipulating the keys.

Dah.... dah dah dah dah dah.... dah dah dah...

Softly half-huming, half-dah dah dahing 'Blue Moon', he hits every note pitch perfect. He's on stage with his Filipino brother-in-law, in a smoky club in mid-twentieth century Kuala Lumpur.

He draws out the end of the song long and sweet.

Wonderful!! we say. And mean it.

He's a little bit nutty, the vendor seems to want to tell us. We're not so sure.

OK, gotta go! he says. Nice to meet you. And walks, purposefully, out to his motorbike.

We'll be looking for him, next time we're in Bidor.

Where There's Smoke...

Juggling orders of bak moi (pork porridge) outside Yi Garden Kafe, Jalan McCallister

...there's good eating - especially in Penang, where the art of cooking (not just grilling) over charcoal is alive and well.

Cooking over charcoal requires dodging leaping flames and live sparks

Our article on charcoal cooking in Penang appeared in yesterday's (November 22) South China Morning Post. If you're a subscriber you can check it out online.  If you're not, enjoy these photos that didn't make the final cut.

Ban chan koay (crispy rice flour and coconut milk 'pancakes' filled with peanuts and gula Melaka)

An old-fashioned charcoal-fired steamboat at Goh Huat Seng, Jalan Kimberley

Mee goreng, Jalan Market Cross (across from General Hospital)

Freeway Refresher

Heading northeast on highway 58, in the Malaysian state of Perak, we encounter a stretch of roadside stands hawking air nira nipah - nipa palm sap.

We know that palm nectar is drunk in southeast Asia, fermented and mildly alcoholic (sometimes called 'toddy'), and in a version distilled and much stronger. But fresh sap sold as a beverage is something new to us. The vendors along this stretch of highway are clearly Malay, so we know that what they're peddling will have about as much kick as a glass of water.

This cluster of air nira nipah stalls is explained by Sungai Dedap, the river we've just driven over. Brackish water-loving nipa palms grow on riverbanks and in mangroves. As we backtrack over the river later in the day we keep an eye out and, sure enough, both banks of the river are crowded with squat, multi-trunked nipas.

Nira - which refers to the sap of any palm, not just the nipa variety - is collected from the tree's immature flower buds. It begins to ferment as soon as it leaves the bud for the collection vessel. Some collectors who plan to make sugar from the sap drop a tiny piece of kulit gelam (bark of the cengal tree) into the container to inhibit fermentation (other methods are used as well).

This vendor (like others, we assume) collects his sap at dawn and slows fermentation by getting it on ice straightaway. The cold nira is tasty and refreshing. We detect hints of coconut, perhaps a whiff of something vanilla-ish. It's sweet but not cloyingly so (sugarcane juice and fresh coconut juice are much sweeter), and much less sweet than the aren palm sap we tasted on Sumatra. (Sugar made from nipa sap is, likewise, the least sweet of all the palm sugars we've sampled.)

Ever on the palm sugar trail, we ask if any nipa sugar is being made in the area. The vendor looks at us like we're crazy. Sugar from air nipa nipah, he asks? Yes, we tell him - in Sarawak (on Malaysian Borneo) locals use the liquid to make semi-liquid gula apong. We'll have to deliver a sample to him next time we're up highway 58.

What, we wonder, does he do with his leftover nira? He points to the bottles of milky liquid in front of him (above and opening photo): cuka, or vinegar. Palm vinegar (made from both coconut and nira palms) is a Philippine kitchen staple but less commonly seen in Malaysia. Its smell is off-putting - strong enough to stink up the car, slightly alcoholic - but the taste is mild and intriguingly complex, like no Western vinegar we've ever tasted. He recommends sprinkling it over barbequed fish. Another nira and cuka vendor we speak with later in the day describes mixing the vinegar with chopped chilies, garlic, and shallots and sprinkling it over fish that's headed for the steamer. Her husband takes a spoonful a day, straight - good for high blood pressure, he says.

Air nira nipah, highway 58 just north of the Sungai Dedap, Perak, Malaysia.

Market Stall Nyonya

It is said that the best Nyonya food in Penang is found behind closed doors, made in private kitchens and served in private homes, ever out of the reach of tourists. This may well be true, but that doesn't mean that all of what's sold to the general public is mere second-rate slop.

This vendor has been pedddling her Nyonya dishes at Pulau Tikus market for some thirty-plus years. Her days are long (or her nights are short, depending on your perspective); she begins preparing the day's dishes at 1am. It's an amazing - and, for anyone not in possession of four stomachs - extremely frustrating assortment. How to choose between acar hu, chicken curry kapitan, nasi ulam, kerabu beehoon, otak-otak (steamed fish 'custard', similar to Thai haw mawk), tau eu bak (pork stewed in soy sauce), or any of the other other stews and braises on offer .... let alone the endless array of pickles and preserves and sambals precariously balanced on the cart's front edge?

Takeaway-in-a-plastic-bag is the standard modus operandi here, but she'd already teased us to near desperation with a sample spoonful of this and another of that. We wanted to eat now. Noting our fervent nods and happy grunts, she smilingly pulled a couple of styrofoam containers out from under her cart, borrowed a table from the vendor behind her, and, pointing at a couple of stools, told us to sit.

We proceeded to fight first over her nasi ulam - an exquisite mixture of dry rice, toasted coconut, salted fish, and slivered fragrant greens including lime leaves, daun kaduk (wild 'pepper' leaves), and daun ciku, the leaves of the sopadilla tree - and then, her acar, a spritely mixed 'pickle' made with pineapple, cucumbers, and peanuts. The kerabu beehoon fell a bit flat for us if only because we'd eaten what may be Penang's ultimate kerabu beehoon earlier that morning.  Less lime juice, chili heat, and fish flavor from belacan made this version a bit one-dimensional, we think, though it might appeal to those not quite as fond of spicy fishiness as we are.

Top to bottom: acar, kerabu beehoon, nasi ulam

Fish 'preserved' in vinegar is a dish found around the world - think sarde in soar (Venice), West Lake fish (Hangzhou), fish paksiw (Philippines). Acar hu, Penang's Nyonya version, comprises deep-fried whole fish (or fillets) doused with a turmeric-tinted sweet and sour dressing, and also includes onions and fiery whole chilies. A good acar hu derives not just coloring from turmeric, but a good bit of earthy flavor from it as well. We chose a fillet for ease of eating and loved the moist flesh enclosed in a still slightly crispy crust (opening photo), though given a choice we might have gone with a bit more vinegar.

The most surprising taste at this stall was the pickled lime that offered to us as an afterthought (bag on the right, above). The vendor dries regular limes in the sun until they turn white, steams the dried, shriveled fruits, and then puts them in a pickling solution. The result is as delightful as it is difficult to describe - sour, certainly, but not overpoweringly so; fruity, in a back-note, understated sort of way; pleasingly astringent. In short, the perfect to a Nyonya stewed meat or fish dish.

 

This stall is a Pulau Tikus treasure. The next time we're in Penang we'll head back on empty stomachs, armed with plates and proper, sturdy silverware, and dive into some in-depth grazing.

Nyonya stall, outside Pulau Tikus market building, 7am-12pm daily.

Eating 'Light' In Penang

A word of advice: If you're in Penang, and you're watching your weight, do not hook up with this woman. Don't let her petite frame fool you; she'll run you ragged and shoot your diet to hell (albeit deliciously so) all in the short space of one afternoon.

We met up with Bee after a full morning of research (read: eating) for an article on a local food tradition. We'd started the day with kerabu beehoon and moved on to all manner of snacks and small bites, starting slowly and picking up speed (and bulk) as noon approached. After a two-hour break we felt almost ourselves again. Then the whirlwind and font of local knowledge that is Bee arrived at our hotel. The next few hours would seriously challenge our commitment to culinary exploration.

After stopping at one of Bee's favorite shops for a snack that, at her behest, suddenly turned into a full, dinner-sized meal (and a fine one at that), we moved on in search of mee goreng (fried noodles). Mission accomplished, our bellies begged us to call it a day. Bee would hear none of it.

'You've got to try pasembur. I've been eating it everyday since I got home.'

Bee favors three spots for Chinese-style pasembur, a melange of fresh and cooked ingredients doused in a sweetish sauce that is rarely found outside of Penang. The first was closed. Respite! The second, too - shut tight. Our stomachs breathed a sigh of relief. The third, a stall at the hawker center opposite the Batu Lanchang wet market, was open. Groan.

Thankfully, the dish is, as Bee described, a relatively light one. The vendor - who was recently visited by a crew from Malaysia's 'Ho Chiak' food show - starts by piling on a plate strips of cucumber and jicama, chopped firm tofu, bean sprouts, crispy shrimp crackers, and squares of chewy fried fritters. On top go a couple of generous spoonfuls of a 'gravy' made from sweet potatoes and (we suspect) plum sauce, mixed with chili sauce, sesame seeds, and chopped peanuts. The lot is crowned with a few ruffled pieces of jellyfish.

The result is a winner, crispy and crunchy and fresh-tasting, with a just a little bit of dietary evil (in the form of those deep-fried prawn crackers) thrown in. We'd probably opt for more chili next time, to better balance the sweetness of the sauce. If you're going to go overboard - and really, in the gastronomic paradise that is Penang, is there any other way to eat? - this snack-sized dish heavy on the good-for-you ingredients is the one to do it with.

Pasembur stall, Batu Lanchang food court (opposite the afternoon wet market), Penang. Afternoons.