EatingAsia

Penang in Print (and other news)

A divine Malay lunch at International Hotel, Transfer Road

As we were wrapping up a little over three weeks in Turkey a piece we worked on last Oct/Nov ran in NY Times Travel. If you missed it, the link to my (Robyn's) 36 Hours: Penang is here. While you're there be sure to click on Dave's accompanying slideshow, a whopping 32+ photographs taken around the island.

For more Penang in photos sans words, Dave has posted out-takes from this shoot on his photo blog Sky Blue Sky, here.

And for yet more Penang, a couple blasts from the past: our late 2010 piece on post-Unesco world heritage designation changes in George Town for the same publication, here; some street photography and portraiture in Penang, here and here; and a sweetly nostalgic multimedia of Penang black and whites set to old-timey music, here.

(Now seems as good a time as any to mention once again that when he is in Penang Dave offers one-one-one photography walks/workshops. Info here.)

The week before our Penang piece ran my tiny write-up on Bangkok wine bars hit print; see it here. Yes, yes -- I've heard the grumbling from various quarters to the effect that none of these places are, in fact, wine bars. Beyond my puzzlement as to how exactly one should define "wine bar" these days (Must there in fact be a "bar"? Should there be potted ferns? Are DJs just not done? Is the bar not also allowed to offer beers on tap and mixed drinks?), I can say firsthand that they are all great places to enjoy a glass or a bottle, and they all boast a good -- and in some cases unique -- selection of vintages. Let me put it this way: no freebies were enjoyed in the course of this reportage.

And, before we asphyxiate ourselves with all the hot air blowing about this post, last week American photo agency A Wonderful Machine ran on its blog an interview with Dave about his current obsession with Turkey. You can read that, and view some photos, here.

And there you have it, our self-promotion quota for the month. Back to regular programming tomorrow. 

Seeing as I've ended on a Turkey note and that having been back in Penang for less then 48 hour, we're still in a Turkey frame of mind, a couple photos Dave shot last week. Snow is a unique and wonderful thing for us. On this night in Istanbul it was especially beautiful.

If You're Planning to Be in Penang....

For quite a while I've been meaning to start posting jpegs of our published work, even that which is not focused on food. But then the publication comes out, I get busy and .....

But judging from the hordes of tourists I saw in George Town this morning, this is timely -- a round-up of recent boutique hotel openings within the Unesco world heritage site that appeared in last month's issue of Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia.The 2011 George Town Festival is going on from now until the end of July, which makes it the perfect time to book a stay.

We've got more Malaysia coverage and a bit of Taiwan coming up in near-term issues, so stay tuned.

A Taste of Penang

We are settled in, kind of. I've unpacked the kitchen, and the rest of the house too -- sort of. My office is nearly together, and we now have internet at home, which means I can get back to spending time in this little space.

But it's late Friday afternoon and unlike in Kuala Lumpur, where we regularly worked until 8 or so, in Penang we make a point of enjoying our evenings. So I plan to close this computer while there is still light in the sky, take the dogs for a walk, and then kick back and contemplate dinner.

But first, one of the many reasons Penang agrees with us: ingredients. From fresh fruit to fish, they're on the whole spectacular here. We bought these fish 5 minutes by car from our house, at a roadside stall just 2 blocks from the little fishing boats that brought them in. Every day at 2pm the stall sets up, with some of the most beautiful, freshest seafood we've ever seen.

Did I mention that six of these beauties set us back the equivalent of only three-and-a-half US dollars?

We haven't bought charcoal for the grill yet, so after Dave cleaned the fish -- which taste something like mackerel, strong and oily and able to take assertive flavors, our favorite kind of fish -- I rubbed them, inside and out, with a fiery sambal made by a favorite Nyonya market vendor. I layed the chili-fied fish on a bed of cilantro leaves and stems and shredded green scallions spread over a lightly oiled piece of foil, squeezed over lime juice, and then tucked the spent lime quarters between them.

I placed a piece of foil over the top and secured the sides, leaving enough air for it to puff. And I cooked the fish for about 15 minutes. (This has become my fish preparation technique of choice lately, when I'm too lazy to get the bamboo steamer out of the cupboard.)

They turned out brilliantly, the sambal perfuming the fish's flesh and a nice little pool of fishy sambal juices under the wilted cilantro and scallions. And they're easy, something that would work well with shell-on prawns or squid or tuna or even salmon.

Making your own sambal is as simple as pounding (in a mortar) or blender-izing or food processor-izing: a handful of fresh small chilies, a bit of toasted (in the oven or on the stove-top, in a piece of foil) belacan or shrimp paste, garlic, salt and a bit of lime juice. It'll keep in the fridge for a couple weeks and is lovely stirred into wok-fried greens or just a mound of steaming plain rice.

Make your sambal strong and hot, because it will lose potency as it cooks into and over the fish.

Happy weekend!

 

Movin' On Up. North.

No shirt, no problem. Dave is looking forward to never wearing a shirt again once we're settled on Penang.

We've called Kuala Lumpur home for over 5 years and 8 months. That's the longest continuous stretch of time that Dave and I have lived anywhere, inside or outside of the USA. It's been a great run. But it's time to move on. Time for a change.

We're not going very far. Last weekend we signed a lease in Penang.

This isn't just about moving house. We've got a couple of fun projects in the works up north, one of which will birth a new blog in 6-8 weeks. EatingAsia will continue as it always has -- well, maybe (hopefully) with a makeover. We'll keep you apprised here, and there.

In the meantime we're off to Chiang Mai tomorrow to continue with our Gat Luang project. When we return there's work to do in Melaka and Kelantan, and on Taiwan. We have the frightening material results (detritus?) of almost 25 years of marriage to sift through. (PURGE is the operative word.) We have much too much packing and organizing to do. In addition to ourselves and Wan, we have 3 dogs and 3 cats to resettle.

Bottom line -- the next two months are going to be hell. But we know we're fortunate to be in a position to make this kind of decision. After nine major moves for grad school or work this one is just for us. We're doing it solely because we want to.

And if all goes to plan (fingers crossed), by June we we'll be in a very good place indeed.

In George Town's Little India, Rice Powder + Jaggery + Steam = Heaven

When up in Penang we tend to spend a lot of time in Little India. That's partly a function of proximity -- we stay just a few blocks away, on Armenian Street, and morning and evening strolls invariably carry us through the area.

Then there's the eats. Honestly, Indian food in Kuala Lumpur just can't compare to what's on offer up north. So we store up our cravings, and then kind of go nuts when we hit George Town.

Last year Kuala Lumpur's municipal authorities 'upgraded' the Little India behind Sentral Station. When we arrived in KL we loved walking the tip of Jalan Tun Sambanthan, with its messy shops blaring music, always-packed sidewalks, and general atmosphere of controlled chaos. In the lead-up to Deepvali there was no better place in the city to be.

That part of town is now very purple, somewhat Disneyland-like ... and rather soulless.

Happily -- thanks perhaps to its UNESCO World Heritage status -- George Town has no similar plans to bland-ize its own Little India. So if you find yourself in the vicinity, devote some time -- preferably early in the morning or after the sun starts to weaken -- to a wander around the patch of city roughly bordered by Chulia, Beach, Pitt (aka Masjid Kapitan Keling) and Bishop streets. They're loud, colorful, and permeated with the scent of steam rising from big pots of curry, incense rising from everywhere, and tasty things cooking on the street and in doorways, on grills and deep-fryers and griddles.

In the evenings, there's puthu. Puthu bambu, to be specific, but for these puthu stainless steel tubes substitute for bamboo.

Rice flour, jaggery, a bit of steam and some fresh grated coconut. Doesn't sound like much, does it? But this sweet snack is what I'd call a sleeper -- divine, in other words.

To make the puthu ground rice and jaggery are pressed into the metal tubes, which are then placed over a steamer. After 5 or so minutes the rice cakes are unmolded and garnished with a bit more jaggery and fresh coconut.

What's special about these puthu is the ratio of jaggery to ground rice, and the quality of the jaggery itself. It's caramel-ish, almost butterscotch-y. The steam softens the sugar to the point that it's almost oozing from the rice cake, which is soft, almost cloud-like, and fragrant.

The vendor always has a few newspaper-wrapped packets ready to go, but the puthu wilt in their enclosure -- best avoided. Instead, ask for (insist on -- gently -- if you have to) and wait for the vendor to pull a fresh batch from the steamer. Ask that your rice cakes be unmolded onto a piece of banana leaf and a plate, if one's available.

Then, dive in directly (with your right hand, please) right there on the street, standing in front of the stall. (Bring some tissues.)

Also worth trying: kolkatai, sweet steamed dumplings made of white rice flour, black rice flour, or gram flour - and coconut. The texture is chewy, a bit gummy, but pleasing. The white rice flour kolkatai are reminiscent of an austere macaroon. Wonderful in their own right but if I'm to be honest, merely a consolation prize if the puthu aren't available.

Puthu stall, corner of China and Penang streets, George Town, Penang. From about 4 or 5pm, most days.

 

A Wonton Mee Taste-Off

Early last Friday our friend H, a seriously food-obsessed Penang native, squired Dave and I to Jelutong, a suburb about 15 to 20 minutes -- in rush-hour traffic -- from George Town. At the entrance to the morning market H turned down a narrow lane and into a makeshift parking area, squeezing his dimunitive box of a car between two others.

We had wonton mee to sample -- two versions. A taste-off was at hand.

A few words about wonton mee in Penang: there it is less likely to be served with the sticky sweet char siew (barbecued pork) or multi-layered crispy/fatty Malaysian-style char yoke (roast pork) that adorns versions further south in Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur. Pink-edged, relatively lean Hong Kong-style barbequed pork is the norm.

Second, wonton mee eaters in Penang may choose to accompany their noodles with either steamed/boiled or deep-fried dumplings. Or both.

Finally, sambal belacan (chili sauce made with shrimp paste) is as likely a noodle go-with as are the pickled green chilies ubiquitous to wonton mee elsewhere on the peninsula.

We started at Kedai Kopi Lum Wah, a typical tile-floored corner coffee shop at the intersection of Jalan Jelutong and Jalan Penaga. H has been eating the wonton mee served here by a husband-wife team since he was a child.

The couples' noodles (H isn't convinced that they make the pasta themselves) are exquisite -- slightly transluscent and somewhat flattish, with a nice chew and even a bit of snap. "Q" (springy, chewy, elastic) to the max, in other words. There is certainly lard oil in the dark soy sauce mixture that dresses a "dry" order -- a positive characteristic, in our book. And the shavings of roast pork that sit atop each nest of noodles are moister and generally have more flavor that that which we've tried elsewhere on the island.

But the gold star of this wonton mee goes to the wonton. H ordered extra for he and Dave and I to share, and that was a Good Thing. With skins thin but not so delicate as to wimp out after 5 minutes spent in hot broth, the dumplings are dainty in proportion but packed with meat. And their incredibly flavorful pork filling isn't overly dense; like a meatball formed with the lightest of touches, it falls apart with the nudge of your tongue.

Next, we dove into the market, maneuvering our way past plastic bag-lugging shoppers to a cart fronting a vanilla bungalow with a dozen or so tables set on its concrete lawn.

The attraction here, H told us, is the sauce that dresses an order of dry wonton mee. Made with copious amounts of viscous black soy sauce, it's much thicker than usual, sticky and sugary. On its own, not so exciting, H points out. But when mixed with a spoonful of sambal this black goo is transformed into an roller coaster ride of sweetness, fishiness, and fire. Probably anything cloaked in it would be irresistible. The noodles certainly are.

Although this version's noodles aren't as notable as those at Lum Wah, they're better than average. The vendor's method -- boil, soak in cool water, and then reheat with a quick re-dip into boiling water -- insures a springy texture and a decent chew.

Also notewothy: plentiful nubs of crackling to mix through the pasta, and deep-fried wonton boasting sturdy but thoroughly crispy skins that somehow reminded me of thick potato chips. Be sure to ask for extra green onion when you order here, advises H.

This was meant to be a taste-off, but in reality we're talking apples and oranges here. On some days you're going to wish for meaty boiled dumplings and enticingly Q-Q noodles; on others, only over-the-top sweet, spicy stickiness and a crackly wing of wonton skin will do.

Either craving can be satisfied in Jelutong.

Wonton mee at Kedai Kopi Lum Wah, Jalan Jelutong just across from the entrance to the market. Mornings, off Sundays and public holidays.

Wonton mee inside Jelutong Market: enter the market across from Lum Wah and proceed straight up Jalan Penaga. Turn left just after the market building housing the fish section (it will be on your left). The stall is a few dozen paces ahead, on your right, in front of a cream house with green shutter. This stall is open Saturdays, Sundays, and when they feel like it.

 

 

 

Rejuvenating George Town, Penang

Old and older in George Town's Little India

Changes are afoot in George Town, Penang. We reported on the ongoing transformation of this once down-and-out (but always lovely) city, precipitated in large part by its designation as a UNESCO world heritage site in July 2008, for the New York Times.

Amelie Cafe, on Armenian Street, is just one of a number of locally-owned new businesses

Long story short: so far, so good. Yes, boutique hotels and, to a lesser extent, shops and restaurants are sprouting in George Town like mushrooms in a forest after a long rain, but the inner city still boasts a true and truly unique living culture. We hope that, despite all the changes that lie ahead, George Town never loses this part of itself.

Read the article here, and view Dave's accompanying slideshow here. More outtakes from the story on Dave's photo blog, here.

A George Town resident at Nagore Shrine. We hope the city never loses the likes of him.

A Sweet Soup Find in Penang

Whenever we're up to Penang, which is more and more often these days, we lodge at a friend's house in George Town. And because part of the pleasure, for us, of being in Penang is ditching the car for a few days we tend to eat, shop, and hang out within a fairly circumscribed radius -- anywhere walkable within, say, 30 minutes.

Given the amount of time we've spent here over the last 2.5 years you'd think that would mean we've pretty much exhausted grazing possibilities. But no. Every stay, it seems, brings a new discovery.

Like this sweet soup, which its Chinese vendor calls simply "sago".

Sweet soups abound in Malaysia. There are Chinese-style sweet soups called tong sui, made with ingredients like peanuts, white fungus, lychees, and glutinous rice balls, and more Malay-ish sweet soups rich with coconut milk and palm sugar, such as bubur pulut hitam and bubur kacang hijau.

This sweet soup is an intriguing marriage of the two: sago pearls and chunks of softened sweet potato in a broth sweetened with brown sugar and strongly flavored with Chinese medicinal herbs, drizzled with coconut milk (squirted from a plastic squeeze bottle) just before serving. Half health tonic and half dessert, this soup bore an unmistakeable salty edge that made it strangely refreshing in the afternoon heat. A bit strange at first taste, but the sort of flavor combination that grows on you with every bite.

This discovery was serendipitous. There's no signage advertising the stall's presence, just a few tables set up underneath a plastic tarp and a couple of umbrellas in the yard of a tumbledown wooden house on Beach Street. The soup is served only on Tuesday afternoons. When we've journeyed up to Penang we've usually left on Sunday or Monday, and even when we're in town we're not often cruising treeless Beach Street at two in the afternoon, when the sun is high in the sky.

But fate or fortune brought Dave past this house one afternoon while he was shooting George Town for an upcoming article. He noticed the stall and we made a point of returning. It just happened to be Tuesday.

There are two other items on offer here -- a clear soup with beehoon (rice vermicelli) and choy sum (mustard) leaves, and a warm sweet ginger soup with taro and sweet potato that is so forcefully flavored with the rhizome that it almost burns the throat going down. (This is the soup I would want if I were suffering from a cold.)

This stall was started by the current vendor's father over 50 years ago. "You're so lucky to be here on a Tuesday!" a regular patron told us. We'd have to agree. After two bowls of sago (and a taste of the ginger soup) it was all we could do not to order a third.

Sweet soups and beehoon soup stall, Lebuh Pantai / Beach Street. Mon-Fri only from 2pm until the soups are gone. Herbal coconut sago soup Tuesdays only.

 

 

Nutmeg Juice: Only on Penang?

Nutmeg at a Penang market: seeds with mace still attached, left, and whole fruit

Our last post on breakfasting (several times over) in the western Penang village of Balik Pulau elicited a few emails, all asking for more information about nutmeg juice.

As frequent visitors to Penang we have come to take nutmeg juice for granted. And given that nutmeg is grown elsewhere in the region, as well as in the Caribbean, it never occurred to us that its juice might be not also be consumed elsewhere. But cursory research suggests that just maybe Penang-ites are the only folks juicing the fruit.

Nutmeg is native to the Moluccas in Indonesia (also known as the 'spice islands'). The pale yellow-green, egg-shaped fruit encloses a brown seed -- this, after drying, is the spice we know as nutmeg' -- encased in an orange 'web' which, dried, is mace.

We might assume that the nutmeg tree (Myristica fragrans) made its way from the Spice Islands to Penang, where it's grown in the west and northwest, on ships that plied southeast Asia's spice trade route (George Town was a major port on the route). But supposedly nutmeg and cloves were prised from the grip of the Dutch, who made Indonesia a colony and maintained a monopoly on these two precious spices, by a Frenchman named Pierre Poivre (yes, that's Peter Pepper). Poivre is said, after two failed attempts, to have gotten his hands on over a thousand rooted nutmeg and clove trees in 1770. He planted them on his estate on Mauritius and from there they spread. (This tale is from the excellent cookbook Where Flavor Was Born.)

Nutmeg was introduced to Penang by the British, who established George Town in 1786.

These days northern Sulawesi, Indonesia is the world's largest nutmeg exporter, supplying almost 75% of our nutmeg needs. But it seems there's no juicing happening on that Indonesian island. Instead, Sulawesians are converting the 'waste' fruit leftover from nutmeg and mace production into another export product: charcoal.

According to Culinaria's authoritive Southeast Asian Specialties nutmeg fruit "is either candied or made into preserves in its native land." In Cradle of Flavor James Oseland writes that during nutmeg's twice-a-year harvest cooks on Indonesia's Banda Islands make use of its fruit by adding it "to stews and curries for its acidity" and, finely slivered, to "the chile-hot sambal buah pala. It's also candied and used to make a jam called seleh pala". There's no mention at all of useage of the fruit in the Nutmeg entry in The Oxford Companion to Food (presumably this oversight will be remedied in the forthcoming Oxford Companion to Southeast Asian Food, co-edited by Indonesian cookbook author Sri Owen), nor in Ian Hemphill's Spice Notes and Recipes.

Fresh "white" nutmeg juice, with a Chinese sour plum

On Penang fresh nutmeg fruits can be found in most wet markets. The fleshy fruit is sliced and made into a pickle (also available at most wet markets) but, most memorably, squeezed for juice. "White" nutmeg juice is light green-yellowish, tangy and almost grassy in taste, and it's often flavored with a Chinese sour plums. The juice is also boiled to a syrup and used in a much sweeter, brownish iced drink.

For a Westerner like myself who grew up associating the flavor of nutmeg with pumpkin pie and eggnog, tasting the dried seed's warm, mellow spiciness in a fresh, tart juice was, well, startling. But the weirdness dissipated quickly. It's a strange but really delightful beverage, one that I certainly would (and have) drive around an island for.

Given that nutmeg juice seems limited to Penang (chime in readers, I'm happy to be corrected here -- where else have you seen/drunk fresh nutmeg juice?), it seems almost criminal to visit the island and leave without trying the fresh stuff. Find it in coffee shops, more easily in the west of the island than in George Town.

Update Nov 8 2010: one of our Twitter followers reports that nutmeg juice is popular in the home of nutmeg, the Indonesian Molucca islands.

The Other Side of the Island

We spent last weekend in Penang. On  Sunday, determined to get out of our George Town rut (if one can ever call something as pleasurable as staying and eating in George Town a 'rut'), we drove over to the west side of the island.

Our destination was Balik Pulau, a small village that's known for its Sunday market -- which truth to tell wasn't all that interesting. It must have been so when all the buying and selling happened in the great old, now-empty market building on Balik Pulau's main street. The new structure, built by the bus terminus, is just fine -- big and airy and cleaner, I'm sure, than the old. The fish looked good, and there were the usual vegetables and fruits and dried goods. (One less-than-usual site: a vendor selling what appeared to be freshly dead geckos. A medicinal thing, I think.) There's a food court in the new building, and we'll probably explore it at some point. Stalls were set up across the road, but about half appeared to be selling clothing and such.

Nothing to capture our fancy, really. So we headed back into 'town' to hunt up some breakfast.

We just love Balik Pulau's main street, with its remaining wooden structures, a few grand George Town-style shop houses, the aforementioned old-style market building, and all sorts of places to eat. It's got such a great, almost festive atmosphere on Sunday mornings (we arrived around 9am), busy as all get out with folks in town to catch up with friends, do a spot of shopping and, of course (this is Malaysia after all!) get a good meal -- and maybe a snack too -- in before heading home.

Balik Pulau boasts what might just be the island's best siam laksa (a clearly Thai-influenced, coconut milk-based gravy heavy on the lemongrass with chewy round laksa noodles) -- something we know from our last visit. But this time around we thought we'd explore other options.

We made a circumference around the old market building and knew fairly quickly that this is where our grazing would focus, starting with a stall at the back of a coffee shop that fronts the main street. It was a simple set-up: fish and one pot on a single burner. As soon as the female half of this husband-and-wife vendor team lifted the lid from that pot, letting loose a curry-scented cloud, our initial tasting was decided.

The husband has been making and selling fish curry and rice -- nothing else -- for over 10 years. All morning the curry bubbles away in the pot, getting stronger in taste as more and more fish is added to cook. Dave opted for a whole small pomfret while I went for a 'sea bass' steak.

Absolutely fantastic they both were, bathed in a spicy curry neither lemak (made with coconut milk) nor necessarily assam (sour), but almost briney in its fishiness, much like a bouillabaise. The gravy was thick with lemongrass and shallots. We might have added seasoning with soy sauce from the table, but it seemed unnecessary. The next time we're in Penang we plan to pick up a bag of curry, fishless, and pack it home to use in our own kitchen.

The lane deadends at a welding yard. It's there that we ordered our next meal, at a busy stall catering to probably 10 or 15 tables, all of them packed. Seafood is the theme here and there's much to choose from: porridge, several kinds of noodles including some in soup and some cooked in claypots. We watched a number of dishes come off the burner and decided on seafood cooked in a gravy with yellow noodles.

After five minutes it became apparent that the wait would be long, so I wandered out to the lane to a char koay kak (fried 'carrot' cake) stall. This may have been the best version of this hawker food that we've ever eaten, even better than one that we quite like in George Town's Chow Rasta market.

There's no theatrics here. The vendor doesn't clank and clang his spatula against his griddle while tossing cubes of carrot cake into the air, he doesn't fling bean sprouts into the mix or break eggs with a flourish. Instead, he works quietly, slowly, and intently, barely lifting his spatula from the grill.

Our char koay kak included bean sprouts, egg, chinese chives, and finely chopped salted vegetable, the latter a nice addition that's new to us. The carrot cake here is cut into smaller-than-usual cubes, which makes for an excellent smoky-charred-surface to untouched-by-direct-heat-interior ratio. What's more, the cubes are so thoroughly heated through that they become creamy.

It's hard not to like char koay kak -- it's fried and greasy and tasty in that "I only allow myself this sort of thing once in a while" sort of way. But this is a char koay kak that we would go out of our way to eat again and again. Not everyday, perhaps, on order of our doctor.

Coming on the heels of that char koay kak our seafood noodles really needed to deliver. And they did, with wonderfully fresh -- and perfectly cooked -- prawns, squid and chunks of firm white fish and a light gravy more fish stock than soy sauce that echoed the taste of the seafood. We'd like to return to this place to sample the seafood porridge and claypot noodles. Everything arriving to other tables looked scrumptious.

At this point we were stuffed, but we hadn't yet had any fresh nutmeg juice -- reason in itself to head to Balik Pulau -- so we stopped in at the coffee shop famous for its mee siam.

Nutmeg juice, for which the 'peels' or skins of the fruit are squeezed, is something any visitor to Penang simply should not miss. At first sip the brain says "eggnog", so strong is the nutmeg flavor. Then it processes the fruity, slightly sour (from a Chinese salted plum that's added) quality of the drink. Nutmeg juice sounds unlikely but is entirely refreshing, and delicious.

As might be predicted, while sipping our juices we caved to the scent of mee siam wafting around the joint, and order a bowl to share. Waddling back to our car, we didn't regret a thing.

Stand facing the old market building on Balik Pulau's main street. The fish curry stall is in the lane on the left side of the market. Continue straight down the lane. The char koay kak vendor is on your left; opposite him is the seafood noodles/porridge stall. Continue around the circumferance of the market and you end up at the coffee shop serving nutmeg juice and mee siam (among other things). Across the street is a very decent asam laksa. For more on Balik Pulau go here and here.