EatingAsia

Fruit or Veg?

Officially fruit, but in practical terms this sukun (a.k.a. breadfruit) possesses the qualities of both fruit and vegetable, depending on when it's eaten.

We were gifted this specimen by a favorite vegetable seller at Kuala Lumpur's TTDI Sunday night market. She had just a few, all from her own tree. I didn't recognize it as a breadfruit because the specimens I'm used to seeing are oblong-ish and much, much larger, like a jackfruit. This baby wasn't even 6 inches in diameter.

In Malaysia breadfruit is usually eaten young (unripe), coated with flour and deep-fried. You'll often find crispy breadfruit slices sold alongside sweet potato and banana fritters. It tastes like, well, bread - all well and good I suppose, but not particularly interesting.

We took our baby breadfruit home and left it on the counter. When we got to it a couple days later - surprise surprise - it was soft. Cutting it open without squishing it and peeling its skin without also pulling off a good bit of flesh was a challenge. I tasted it raw and loved its texture - smooth, soft, and buttery, like an overripe avocado or the finest Malaysian durian - and wonderful banana-pineapple-with-a hint-of-citric-tartness flavor.

I dipped a couple slices in flour and fried them as our veg vendor had advised. The texture was pleasing enough, like a deep-fried plantain, but the breadfruit's specialness - that lovely tropical essence - had disappeared.

The next day I tried again with the leftovers. I figured if I undercooked the fruit I might be able to preserve its custard-like texture and subtle flavor. The fact that it was chilled through was a good start. I dropped a knob of butter into a saute pan and let it sizzle, then added a hefty shaving of gula Melaka and swirled it around in the pan to melt a bit (but not completely). I then slid in a few thick slices of  breadfruit, and left them in the bubbling butter just long enough to barely brown all sides.

Eureka! What I ended up with were slices of breadfruit bathed in golden butter and stuck here and there with smoky, caramel-like bits of gula Melaka. They were barely firm on the outside, warm but still pudding-like within, and tasted very much like, well, a deliciously fragrant tropical fruit rather than a piece of bread. A scoop of vanilla ice cream would have worked here. Think banana and pineapple flambe without the booze.

This experiment got me wondering why, in this land of durian made into ice cream and pastries, the same isn't done with breadfruit (or is it? Breadfruit is incorporated into sweets in Thailand, by the way.). Malaysians seem to love their breadfruit as a vegetable, but is anyone here eating it as a fruit?

Buttery Ripe Breadfruit with Palm Sugar

Thoroughly chilled soft, very ripe breadfruit

a big knob of butter (not margarine!), about 3-4 Tbsp.

about 1/2 Tbsp gula Melaka

1. Cut the breadfruit into slices about 1 inch/2cm thick.
2. Heat the butter in a (preferably non-stick) over medium-high heat till sizzling. Add the gula Melaka and stir or swirl the pan to melt it a bit.
3. Slide in the breadfruit and cook VERY briefly on each side. The fruit should remain soft.
4. Remove the breadfruit to a plate and pour butter and gula over it. Serve immediately.

Got Your Goat

This dish has absolutely nothing to do with Asia, other than the fact that I cooked it in my Malaysian kitchen, but sometimes a good recipe should be shared whether or not it fits the theme of the food blog.
And a dish this rich and meaty is probably not going to appeal right now to most of our in-the-grip-of-summer North American readers, but I know that somewhere in the world it's daube weather.

I cooked goat for the first time just a few months ago, in a spicy coconut milk-based goat curry. The dish was delicious and got me wondering what else I could do with the other red meat.

It was Dave who suggested goat daube (a daube is wine-based stew). He'd been thinking about the string of Decembers we spent in a rented farmhouse in Piemonte. Not surprisingly (it's Italy after all, and this was before the precipitous drop of the US dollar) those weeks were all about eating and drinking and cooking and the sporadic sightseeing that occurred on the way to and from open markets and shops and osterie and trattorie and restaurants. One of our most memorable Christmas Eve meals was a Provencal daube made with bue grasso beef that we purchased from the local butcher. The daube recipe was one I'd followed a bunch of times at home, but made with Piemonte's exceptional beef it was an altogether different - and tastier - animal. Bue grasso tastes stronger, more minerally, and, for lack of a better word, beefier than American beef.  That Christmas Eve daube was so good, in fact, that I never made  the dish again, unless we were in Piemonte.

Until a month or so ago, when Dave suggested I substitute goat for the bue grasso. It's not a true substitution, of course - goat is a bit gamey and awfully tough. But, we thought, tamed by the overnight soak in red wine that this recipe calls for and stewed slowly for a good, long time, it might give the daube the sort of extra 'edge' that it gained from the Piemonte beef. Long story short - we were very happy with the rich, uber-meaty daube, in which goat and dry red wine played off each other beautifully. We ate half the day I made it and stuck the rest in the freezer. Leftovers, eaten for dinner Sunday night, were even tastier than the first round.

Most every KL wet market has a mutton and goat vendor (or five), and that's where I purchased the goat meat. I told the butcher I was making curry and asked him to leave the bones in when he chopped up the meat. Ten years ago I might have found eating a dish made with bone-in meat a pain in the rear, but living in Asia has inured me to the hassle of negotiating my way around bone bits; I've also come to realize that the extra flavor bones lend to slow-simmered dishes are more than worth the effort of dealing with them at the table. If I really don't want bones in a stew or soup I remove the meat from the finished dish, let it cool, and then add it back in after I've deboned it. But for cooking, bones stay in.

This goat daube must be started 24 hours ahead, so the meat can soak overnight in (a whole bottle of) red wine. Also in the drink are carrots and onions, freshly ground pepper and salt, fresh thyme and rosemary branches, bay leaves, garlic, and a couple strips of fresh orange peel.

When it's time to cook the daube, remove the meat from the marindate and pat it dry, so that it will brown well. First, chopped onions and minced garlic are sauteed in vegetable oil or, if you wish, pork fat. After they're removed the goat is added and browned off, then removed from the pot and set aside.

Flour is added to the fat left in the pot and cooked and stirred until it browns,

and then in goes the marinade.

Once the pan's been deglazed - bits clinging to the bottom scraped up and incorporated into the liquid as it's brought to a boil - in go the other marinade ingredients, to which are added the sauteed onions,

the browned meat,

some water and, finally, a few dried mushrooms (porcini or cepes).

The stew is simmered, covered, on the stove (it could also be placed in a hot oven) until the goat is tender - which took about 3.5 hours this time around. From pulling the marinated goat from the refrigerator to putting the cover on the pot to simmer took maybe 45 minutes max. Once it's cooking away you're pretty much golden ... not much to do except check the stew every half hour or so to see that it's at a gentle simmer and that sufficient liquid remains to keep things from sticking.

Daube with a (goaty) difference - we like it served with a grind of pepper and a mash of potatoes and winter squash.

Goat Daube with Dried Mushrooms (adapted from The Food and Flavors of Haute Provence by Georganne Brennan)

2.5 pounds bone-in goat meat (or about 2 pounds off the bone), cut into 2 to 2.5-inch pieces
2 yellow onions
3 carrots
8 or so thyme branches
2 rosemary branches, about 6 inches long
2 dried bay leaves
salt
freshly ground black pepper
5 cloves garlic
2 strips orange zest
1 bottle (750 ml) dry red wine
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup water
2 ounces dried mushrooms (cepes or porcini), some broken up and some left whole
1 cup water
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley (optional)

1. Trim and discard any large pieces of fat from goat. Place it in a non-reactive bowl, add 1 onion (quartered), carrots (peeled and cut into 2-inch pieces), 2 cloves of garlic, herbs, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 tablespoon pepper, and orange zest. Pour the wine over all and turn to mix and immerse the ingredients. Cover and marinate overnight in the fridge, stirring occasionally to make all ingredients get a good soak.
2. To cook the daube heat 2 tablespoons oil (or pork fat) in a large heavy casserole or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the remaining onion (diced) and garlic cloves (minced) and saute till their translucent, then remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
3. Drain the meat and reserve the marinade. Pat the meat as dry as possible and then add to the pot a few pieces at a time to brown (don't overcrowd the pot or the meat will steam). Saute for about 5 minutes, turning to brown all sides, then remove with a slotted spoon and continue till all meat is cooked.
4. Add the flour to the pan and cook until it browns, stirring often. Raise the heat to high and slowly pour in the marinade liquid, deglazing the pan by stiring up any bits clinging to the bottom. Add the rest of the marinade ingredients, then the onion, goat, 1 teaspoon salt, and more ground pepper to taste. Throw in the dried mushrooms, pour in the water, and bring the mixture to the boil. Reduce the heat to very low, cover with a lid, and simmer until the goat can be cut through with a spoon, 3-4 hours.
5. Once the daube is cooked skim off some of the fat and serve sprinkled with parsley (optional), with pasta or a mash of potatoes and sweet winter squash.

You Start With a Few Gorgeous Crabs...

In  between watching the trunk of a sago palm be transformed into flour, sampling kinilaw (Philippine 'ceviche') at the fish market, and learning how sap of the nipa palm's flower stalk becomes vinegar (and liquor), we looked on as a Butuan native made a few of her favorite dishes. Our favorite of her favorites would have to be Buntaa Binuntaan, crabs stuffed with fresh coconut and their own fat and cooked in coconut milk.

Despite the fact that coconut oil is now deemed healthy, this dish is clearly over the top - lusher than lush and not something you'd eat every day. It's also the sort of dish that I can't imagine anyone, other than those with a serious aversion to coconut milk, not loving. And it's surprisingly easy to make, assuming you have access to a key ingredient: buko or young coconut, still soft enough to be scraped from it's shell in silky strands (which you probably do; I saw them for sale at a Whole Foods grocery store in Santa Fe, New Mexico and they can be found at many stores specializing in Southeast Asian ingredients).

Our hostess, the same lovely woman who hooked us up with the sago makers, learned this recipe from her mother and great grandmother. She started with about two and three quarter kilos of fresh crabs. Female crabs are what you want for this dish, because their roe is a key component (how do you tell a female from a male crab? Flip them over and compare the size of the 'flap' that covers the bottom half of their bodies; the female's 'flap' is wider). She put the crabs in the freezer for a few hours, until they were 'asleep' and immobile, and then pulled off their top shells.

After removing the crab's gills and cleaning the nasty bits from the top half of the shell

she carefully removed fat and roe and from both halves and set it aside.

It would be mixed with the shredded buko.

To this mixture she added a generous amount of garlic - pounded in a mortar, not chopped - chopped ginger, thinly sliced scallions (both white and green parts), chopped red onion, and salt.

She carefully cleaned the empty crab shell tops and stuffed them with the mixture.

More stuffing went into the cavities of the crab bodies created when their gills and fat and roe were removed.

After stuffing the crabs she reassembled them

and tied the halves together with kitchen string.

The liquid that remained on the platter after the crabs were stuffed was set aside for later.

                                 stuffed and ready for the pot

The crabs went into a deep casserole, along with a good amount of crushed fresh ginger. Probably the most laborious part of this recipe is squeezing the coconut milk (assuming it doesn't come out of a can).

My favored method for extracting coconut milk involves hot water, an electric blender, and cheesecloth, but in this Butuan household it's all done with manpower - two 'pressings', the first for coconut cream and the second for the thinner coconut milk.

After placing the crabs in the pot our host added thin coconut milk to cover them by about two thirds. There was some coconut-crab mixture leftover after the crabs were filled; this she wrapped in tin foil (you could use a banana leaf) and placed in the pot as well. After bringing the coconut milk to a boil she covered the pot and left it to simmer steadily for about twenty minutes.

As soon as the shells of the crabs turned red red she added the coconut cream and the coconut-crab fat juices that had drained from the filling mixture and muddled the liquid in the pot a bit to mix.

Once the liquid came to a boil again the dish was finished.

The kitchen had filled with the heady aroma of good, spanking fresh seafood, peppery ginger, and  coconut oil. The crabs came out of the casserole with bits of congealed coconut cream clinging to their shells, and there was plenty of coconut milk sauce to spoon over rice. I know that a number of other dishes were placed on the table that evening, but for the life of me I can't remember a single one. I passed the evening in a delirium, a crab and coconut milk-induced fog.

Buntaa Binuntaan (Butuan City Coconut-Stuffed Crabs in Coconut Milk)

I'm not including amounts because (1) I didn't do any measuring while our hostess prepared this dish and (2) this is very much a to-your-taste sort of food - if you hate ginger, omit it. If you love garlic, add lots. If you don't have red onions on hand, add more scallions. Just be sure you've got female crabs, that they're big enough to make prying apart, cleaning, and stuffing worth your effort, and that you've enough coconut milk and cream (if you're using canned consider thinning some with water to substitute for the second pressing coconut milk) on hand (a good way to guesstimate is to determine the capacity of the pot you'll use and then figure on at least half that amount in coconut milk).

female crabs, the bigger the better
a young coconut or two, meat scraped out and sliced into matchsticks or shredded
green onions, thinly sliced (white and green parts)
garlic, pounded to a mash or finely chopped
a small red onion, finely choped
salt
ginger - some finely chopped, some thickly sliced and pounded in a mortar, with the side of a cleaver, or with the handle of a heavy knife
coconut milk and coconut cream

special equipment: kitchen string

1. Put the crabs in the freezer for an hour or two, until they completely stop moving.
2. Working quickly, pull the top shells off of the crabs, discard the inedible gook clinging to the inside of the shelll, and carefully scrape into a bowl all crab row and fat. Clean the crabs and their now-empty top shells under running water and set aside.
3. Using your hands or a fork. mix the shredded coconut with the crab roe and fat, the green onions, garlic, red onion, salt to taste, and the chopped ginger.
4. Fill each crab shell and body with the coconut-crab roe mixture, then reassemble the crabs and tie them together with kitchen string. Wrap any leftover filling in tin foil or a banana leaf to make a flattish packet. Set any liquid aside.
5. Lay the crabs on top of each other in a deep casserole (use an appropriately-sized casserole; the crabs should be in at least two layers) and add thin coconut milk to cover them by about two thirds. Scatter crushed/pounded garlic on top of the crabs.
6. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to a  brisk simmer and cover the casserole. Check the crab's progress occasionally.
7. As soon as the crabs turn pink pour in coconut cream and leftover filling 'juice'. Stir quickly just to mix, bring the liquid to a boil again, and then remove the casserole from the heat.
8. Serve hot or warm, with lots of rice.

The Daily Grind

Other than a knife and chopping block, this basalt stone mortar and pestle is the single most important tool of the Indonesian kitchen. The mortar, called cobek in Indonesian and penyan tokan in Balinese, is wide, shallow, and heavy, with a rough surface that makes quick work of reducing ingredients to a paste. Balinese call the pestle anak, which also means 'child'. The anak is short and right-angled with a flattish round base of sizeable diameter.

Most other mortar and pestle dictate a lot of pounding. Think of the hollow 'tok-tok' sound that rises from the mortar of a Thai somtam vendor. A penyan tokan, by contrast, is all about grinding: placing your feet flat on the floor, standing a bit back from the counter, weight on the right (or left, if you're a lefty) arm, and gently rocking back and forth as you move the anak away from your body to the front of the mortar, bring it around the rim to gather ingredients to its center, and then push it forward again. Though I favor mortar and pestle for many preparations I generally don't enjoy it. Pounding is hard and tedious, and it shakes the kitchen counters. The noise sends my cats up the wall and drives the dogs to distraction.

Scraping an anak across the surface of a penyan tokan, on the other hand, is richly satisfying. Garlic cloves, shallots, fingers of turmeric, chilies, lemongrass stalks, and even whole nutmeg give way effortlessly under the pressure of an anak. Back and forth and around, back and forth and around - it's almost hypnotizing.

Penyan tokan and anak are not confined to the home kitchen. They're useful tools at market and street stalls as well. In Sumatran markets whole sections are populated by (usually female) chili grinders, and they're not using machines, just heavy-duty mortar and pestle like this one (or larger, rectangular models) to reduce chilies to mush. At Bali's Sererit Market I watched my sirat (rice pancake) vendor prepare serving after serving of pecelan (vegetable salad with a dressing that might, according to the customer's taste, include peanuts, chilies, and shallots) using a penyan tokan. Putting anak to the mortar's stone surface, she pulled an order together in a minute and half flat.

From behind a table in the open alley downstairs this vendor made pecelan dressed with a more complex sauce, consisting of pre-made bumbu (spice paste - look for the half-covered white pot in the second photo) ground with chopped peanuts, chilies, kecap manis, and kalamansi juice.

The salad included pressed rice cakes, cucumber, bean sprouts, and blanched snake beans. After mixing the pecelan she scooped it onto nature's disposable dinnerware (a banana leaf) and sprinkled it with crunchy deep-fried peanuts and soy beans.

The result was an intense, lively collage of the flavors I've come to associate with Balinese cooking, especially turmeric, nutmeg, and galangal - and, as per our request, plenty of chili heat. It left our lips tingling and our bellies wishing for more.

When we returned from Bali last month I decided to reintroduce to my kitchen the penyan tokan and its 'child' that I bought in Bali about five years ago. Watching those market ladies whip up fantastic dishes in a matter of minutes inspired me to make use of these tools I'd shamefully left to languish in the cupboard. I seasoned the stone by grinding wet rice, garlic, turmeric, and chilies, letting the paste almost dry on the mortar and pestle, and then washing (with water only) and repeating. After just a few days the stone surface was sealed and ready for a test drive.

Last night I made a brilliant pecelan with the simplest dressing of peanuts, kecap manis, chilies, shallots, and kalamansi juice, thinned with a little water. This light salad is about as far from the thick, gloppy, overly sweet gado-gado served in many a Stateside Indonesian restaurant as you can get. Best of all, with a mortar and pestle like this (or a mini-chopper) the dressing literally takes 3 minutes to make. The only other labor involved is chopping and blanching the vegetables and steaming some rice to serve alongside.

Next week: a more complex pecelan with a dressing that incorporates some of that bumbu (spice paste).

Pecelan (Balinese Vegetable Salad With Peanut and Chili Dressing)

Use a stone mortar and pestle to make the dressing (Indonesian or Malaysian, or a Mexican molcajete), or chop the ingredients finely and finish in a Thai ceramic mortar, or do it all in blender (though you may have to add water to get the ingredients to blend).

I've deliberately left amounts (other than peanuts) out, because this dressing is all about personal taste. I think, in fact, that it's impossible to screw this dressing up, because you can always counter an off taste with more of the other ingredients. Want more salt? Up the kecap manis. Like a lot of sour (though this should not be Thai sweet-sour)? More lime juice. If you don't have kecap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce) use regular soy and pound in some palm sugar or brown sugar or maple sugar. You could also add a garlic clove and/or some lemongrass, or leave out the chilies altogether if you don't like hot. You could also thin with coconut milk instead of water, for a richer dressing.

You can use as few as one vegetable here or as many as you have time to chop and blanch. Replace the tofu with tempeh or pressed rice cakes. Or leave the protein out altogether.

This sauce made with a handful of peanuts should dress enough salad for two big eaters. Great eaten with steamed rice or barbecued fish. 

Dressing

A big handful of roasted, unsalted peanuts (I used peanuts roasted in the shell and left the skins on - not a problem)

Fiery small chilies (optional)

Kecap manis (or soy sauce + dark brown sugar or palm sugar or maple sugar)

A couple shallots

Kalamansi or limes

If you're using a stone mortar then everything can be left whole. Start by grinding the peanuts, then add shallots and chilies. Dribble in some kecap manis and just a squeeze of kalamansi or lime juice. Taste for seasoning and adjust to your liking BEFORE adding enough water to thin the dressing somewhat. Remember that some of your salad ingredients will probably have water on them from blanching/washing, so don't thin the dressing too much.

If you're using a blender first chop the ingredients as finely as possible, then blend using a dribble of kecap manis, some lime juice, and water. Taste for salt, sour, heat, and add ingredients accordlingly.

Salad

Amounts are malleable but - as a general guide, if you're including all the vegetables, you might start with 2 handfuls of soy beans, 4 snake beans, half a small cabbage, and a small bunch of sturdy greens.

1 block firm tofu, cut in half horizontally, wrapped in a kitchen towel, and placed under a cookie sheet or other pan weighted with cans, and left for about an hour

snake beans or green beans

green round cabbage

bean sprouts

A sturdy green, such as daun ubi (cassava leaves), the leaves of large bok choy, chard, kale, etc. You could also use spinach

a long (English) cucumber or several pickling cucumbers

a handful of raw peanuts and/or soy beans

vegetable oil

For serving (optional): kalamansi halves or lime wedges and cilantro leaves

1. Cut the tofu into small squares. Slice the snake beans into small pieces. Shred the cabbage (not too thinly).
2. Blanch the bean sprouts (quickly - they should still be crunchy), greens, snake beans, and cabbage and drain. When the greens are cool squeeze them dry and chop, then shake the leaves to separate them. When all the vegetables are well-drained (squeeze lightly between kitchen or paper towels if necessary) place them in a mixing bowl.
3. Split the cucumber(s) lengthwise and remove the seeds with a spoon. Cut them into small wedges and add to the bowl.
4. Heat about a quarter inch of oil in a small pan over medium high heat. Add the peanuts and/or soy beans and fry until browned and crunchy. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towel.
5. Add the dressing to the salad and mix carefully - try not to break up the tofu squares. Spoon onto a plate and top with the peanuts/soy beans and cilantro leaves, if using. Serve with lime wedges or kalamansi halves (if using). 

DIY Coconut Oil

Coconut oil is made from ...

... coconuts.

Not exactly breaking news, I know, but we don't often think about where the most basic of our kitchen staples come from. By now olives harvested from trees and pressed into oil is a well-trod story. But what is vegetable oil made from, exactly? How do you get oil from corn? And what is canola, anyway?

All worthy musings, but today it's the humble coconut to which we turn our attention. On Bali we spent a couple days watching, cooking with, and photographing two local cooks. Ibu Nengah and her husband are renowned for their kitchen prowess; they're hired by folks in the area to prepare feasts for weddings, birthdays, and other festive occasions. One morning they showed us how to make coconut oil. Ibu Nengah says that, time allowing, they prefer to make their own oil because what they can purchase at the store just can't match the homemade version for flavor and fragrance.

The coconut oil-making process is relatively simple, if time-consuming. It starts, unsurprisingly, with coconut meat, here grated by hand with a nifty tool that consists of a board sprouting rows of nails. Actually this homemade grater reduces fresh coconut into fine shreds much more quickly and efficiently than a Western-style metal grater.

Hot water is added to the grated coconut, and the mixture is stirred until it cools, at which point the coconut is squeezed - hard! - to get it to release as much 'milk' as possible.

This is the first pressing; more hot water is added to the squeezed coconut meat and the process is repeated. Three coconuts produce about 1.5 liters of coconut milk.

The coconut milk is put over a good-sized fire and is left to boil briskly. Two coins of turmeric are added (and removed about an hour later). The turmeric colors the oil, and Ibu Nengah says it keeps it 'fresh'. It probably adds a bit of flavoring as well, which doesn't much matter because just about every Balinese dish that coconut oil might be used in includes turmeric as an ingredient.

After about an hour foam forms on the liquid's surface yellowish fat starts appearing around its edges of its surface. Ibu Nengah's husband sprinkles water on the coconut milk's surface - to further draw out the oil, he says.

By the time the coconut milk is pulled from the heat (about one and a half hours) it's been reduced in volume by about one half, the foam has dissipated, and its surface is covered with a thin cap of golden oil.

The milk-oil is poured through a mesh strainer to capture foam and any bits of stray coconut meat,

and then returned to the pan and left aside to allow the coconut milk solids to settle. (If you've ever clarified butter these steps will sound familiar.) After about five minutes Ibu Nengha and her husband use small bowls to skim the oil from the surface of the pan.

and transfer it to a smaller, heavier cast-iron wok (above left). What's leftover in the big pan after skimming is set aside.

The smaller pan is placed on the fire for about fifteen minutes. It's removed from the heat spitting and gurgling,

but after just a few minutes the bubbles fade away to reveal nearly clear oil.

Now Ibu Nengha places a plastic mesh cloth over a woven basket, sprinkles it with a bit of grated coconut meat (to create a finer sieve), and scrapes in the mush left in the black pan after the oil's been poured off (above). To this she adds any further oil that's surfaced after the first boiling (below), transferring it to the sieve with a small bowl.

Then she scrapes and presses the mixture with a spoon to retrieve every last drop of oil.

What's left in the basket/mesh sieve is a wickedly unctuous coconut-flavored, slightly nutty sludge. It will be eaten as a sweet snack, just a spoonful  at a time (it's delicious but so rich that more than a spoonful is out of the question), or stirred into rice to eat with other dishes.

All that effort and time, and 1.5 liters of coconut milk, yields one small bottle of oil.

But it's by far the best coconut oil we've ever sampled, and the scent that fills the kitchen when I heat it in a pan makes us think of Ibu Nengah and her husband, their tranquil outdoor kitchen, and the clove and coffee tree-swathed hills of northern Bali.

Lao-ish Dilled Fish Soup

Dill and tua nao (fermented soy beans). Northern Thais stir-fry the two together with garlic and chilies and eat the dish with sticky rice

I'm the sort of cook that lights upon an ingredient, falls in love (or falls in love again, if I'm reliving an old infatuation), does it to death, and then moves on. The affair is usually intense, torrid ... then one day my eye and taste buds alight on something else, and it's over.

I've had a thing going with dill since I wrote this post on bitter flavors in Lao cuisine. This fling of ours, dill and I, has shown surprising staying power; it's been almost four months and to date shows no sign of fading.

My time in the kitchen is not devoted solely to Asian food, and part of dill's appeal is that, to my mind, it's neither a solely 'Western' nor an entirely 'Eastern' herb. In fact my strongest dill-related food memories are from my childhood in Michigan and our time in Lao. As a kid I loved pungently dill-y tartar sauce (the mayonnaise might have had something to do with it as well), and the dish that made the biggest impression during a few sojourns in Luang Prabang is a chicken stew that paired the herb with coconut milk.

The other afternoon I got a craving for the latter, but I abhor supermarket chicken and hadn't had time to hit the morning market. So I used fish instead, lightened the dish up a bit with fish stock, and produced a delicious fascimile. If you doubt the appropriateness of pairing dill with coconut milk think of creamy dill dishes you might have had in the past - dilled potatoes, for instance. It's not such a big leap to just think of coconut milk as substitute for cream.

Lao-ish Dilled Fish Soup

Serves 2 enthusiastic eaters or 4-6 regular eaters

If you love dill you'll like this dish (it's also really easy and pretty quick). In Lao, Isaan, and northern Thailand dill is used like a vegetable; instead of removing the frilly fronds and throwing away the stalk cooks chuck the lot into the pot. Mushrooms are optional. If you want to take this from a soup to a stew cut the fish stock to 1 1/4 cups and increase the amount of coconut milk. Serve with rice (or stir in some pieces of cooked potato) and a simple dish of greens stir-fried with a splash of fish sauce, a pinch of sugar, and perhaps a few chopped chilies.

If you're not a fish fan you could substitute chicken stock and chicken for the fish stock and fish. I'd add the chicken in step 1 and tack on enough extra cooking time for it to reach tenderness.

2 3/4 cup fish stock

2 leeks, white part only, sliced down the middle lengthwise and then cut into 2-inch/5 cm strips

5 or so black peppercorns

3 thick slices of galangal (kha)

a big bunch of dill, stems and all, washed - 5 stems roughly chopped and set aside and the rest cut in half (across the stalks)

Optional: about 8 ounces oyster mushrooms, stems removed if you like and cut or torn in half (other mildish mushrooms such as enoki or straw mushrooms could be substitute)

about 1 lb. firm, white-fleshed fish, such as snapper, sea bass, etc. (a river fish would work well here too - salmon is another option), cut into chunks

1/4 - 1/2 cup coconut milk

1/2 tsp. fish sauce

small bunch of chives, roughly chopped

3 lime leaves, layed on top of each other, rolled tightly into a cigar shape, and cut into the finest slivers

1. Put the fish stock into large saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the leeks, peppercorns, galangal, the half-stalks of dill ,and the mushrooms, if using. Bring the liquid to a boil, then lower the heat, cover the pot, and let simmer until the leeks (and mushrooms, if using) are tender, about 10 minutes.
2. Remove the lid, add the fish, and cook through, just a few minutes. Add the coconut milk (less for a lighter soup) and heat through but don't bring the soup to a boil.
3. Add the fish sauce, taste for salt, and add more if necessary, by the quarter teaspoon.
4. Stir in the chives, the reserved roughly chopped dill, and the lime leaves.
5. Remove from the heat and serve. 

Philippine Food Reads: Of Bananas and Drinking Food

The Philippines is blessed with a substantial body of good food writing, both serious literature and research by the likes of Edilberto Alegre and the late Doreen Fernandez, and less 'learned' but nonetheless enjoyable books by professional and amateur food lovers. An hour spent browsing the shelves in the food writing/cookbook section of a Manila bookstore never fails to deliver something surprising and delightful.

In December I found a couple of gems: a thirty-year-old publication by the Philippine Banana Export Industry Association called 100+1 Banana Recipes, and a slim paperback called Pulutan: From the Soldiers' Kitchen. The first is what its title suggests, a straightforward collection of recipes (written in both Tagalog and English) featuring banana as the main ingredient. Included are fairly mundane dishes such as banana muffins and banana pudding, as well as recipes for more curious (to the non-Filipino, at least) concoctions such as banana omelet, banana-stuffed bangus (milkfish), banacorn soup (made with corn grits, unripe banana, and green onion), and banana chicken with ubod (palm heart). It's a quirkily enjoyable illustration of the centrality of the banana in Philippine cuisine - for less than U$5.

Pulutan: From the Soldiers' Kitchen is, perhaps, an 'only-in-the-Philippines' sort of creation: a book of anecdotes and recipes written by two junior military officers serving time for their alleged involvement in what is referred to in the Philippines as the 'Oakwood Mutiny', an event in which some 300 soldiers took over the Oakwood Hotel in Makati (Manila) and declared their withdrawal of support from the government of current Philippine president Gloria Arroyo. The recipes in the book are all for pulutan, a category of food perhaps best explained by the authors:

'Pulutan conveys many things Filipino. That is probably why there is no English word that truly captures the concept of pulutan.

Finger food is not quite accurate because many pulutan are eaten with a fork or with a spoon. Neither is appetizer quite right because pulutan is a meal by itself. In fact, when the plate stops being replenished, that means it's time to go home.

Pulutan conjures comraderie. A drinking session is the Filipino concept of breaking bread. Pulutn is the bread.

The word pulutan has also evolved to mean being a main topic of conversation. If one is absent in a drinking session, he gets talked about and becomes the pulutan. (p. xv)

Each chapter ('All Time Favorites', Goat Meat, Lasang Exotic, 'Not the Usual Parts', etc.) opens with a discussion that mixes memories and anecdotes ('For my twenty-sixth birthday in 2005, I wanted something different to celebrate it with classmates who were also fellow detainees. I didn't want the usual spaghetti and fried chicken.'); Philippine food-related factoids (humba, a pork and vinegar dish, is often served at festive occasions in the Visayas, and a Philippine drinkers' tale says that fathers cook better than mothers because while the latter only learn to cook when they marry, the former learn to cook as soon as they start drinking alcohol); and kitchen tips (when preparing Bloody Belly Grill, an Ilocano dish, 'the swine's blood must be fresh and pure. Do not add water to increase the volume').

Many of the recipes are for dishes that might be 'challenging' to the Western palate. I doubt that I'll ever cook Vampires' Delight, a pork loin preparation that also includes intestines, liver, and fresh blood, or Sinigang na Adidas, sour soup of chicken feet (nails removed). But Ginataang Kuhol (snails cooked with coconut milk, squash blossoms, ginger, and chilies - mussels or other shellfish might be substituted for the snails) sounds delicious, and how can you go wrong with Steamed Stingray?

I love books of this sort for the highly focused and sometimes offbeat slices of culinary culture that they offer the reader.

Ginataang Kuhol (From Pulutan: From the Soldiers' Kitchen, Ellen T. Tordesillas and Yvonne T. Chua, eds.)

30-50 pieces edible snail

2 Tbsp. chopped garlic

4 medium onions chopped

2 Tbsp. grated ginger

1 cup gata (coconut milk)

4 pieces siling haba (finger chile)

1 cup water

1 cup squash shoots and/or flowers

1. Wash the snails in boiling water and set aside.

2. Heat oil in a pan then saute garlic, onions, and ginger.

3. Add snails. Cover pan and cook for 10 minutes.

4. Add coconut milk, siling haba, and water. Cover pan and bring to the boil.

5. When the sauce is thick, add squash shoots. Season to taste.

6. Turn off heat but leave the pan covered for 5 minutes before serving.

From Boat to Market

Before it's kinilaw, tuna is just one of many catches of the day, here arriving at one of Surigao City's fish landings.

This landing is a small stretch of beach wedged between a wholesale seafood market and a disintegrating pier extending out into the water from a collection of stilt houses varying in condition from basic to decrepit. Not very far offshore are several islands - alluring masses of verdant green, some ringed by pearlescent sand.

 

While Dave is wandering around with his camera I speak with a man named Eric Estaban, owner of some of the boats unloading in front of us. He tells me there are several kinds. Banca are the largest, so large in fact that they have to weigh anchor offshore and pass their catch to smaller boats for transport to shore. (In more general terms boats of almost any size can be a banca, including passenger boats.) They're deep-sea boats with crews of about 30 men that spend 2 weeks at a time in the Pacific, returning with up to 7,000 kilos of seafood.

The medium-sized boats pictured above are called lawa-lawa. Many lawa-lawa carry spear-caught coral reef fish (some of them endangered, unfortunately). Spear fishing is done by 2 or 3 men at a time, at night with the aid of a torch.

Kaka are the smallest boats here. Some, outfitted with lights, are squid boats (lights attract squid to the surface of the water), and some are 'service boats' whose sole purpose is to accompany fishing boats and carry the catch. Squidding can be lucrative, Eric tells me. His boat, which cost 60,000 pesos (about U$ 1,500), usually brings in 8,000 pesos (U$ 200) worth of squid a day. From that amount, of course, he has to pay the middleman and his crew, buy fuel, keep the boat in good repair, and support his family. Still, at age 32, he's managed to make enough from the fishing business that he inherited from his father to grow it to 4 squid boats, 4 service boats, and 6 lawa-lawa.

When we arrive at dawn much of the landing's activity is already over, but every ten minutes or so a couple of boats pull to shore and are quickly unloaded.

Large catches are carried straight into the wholesale market, where they're watched over by the guys who hauled them in until someone makes a bid.

Bids are spoken here, not whispered as they are at some other Philippines seafood markets.

Once a bid is accepted (it's up to the fisherman) it's recorded by the market's managers, who act as middleman (and woman). They record each transaction in a couple of notebooks (no computers here!) and collect the money from the buyer, which is in turn passed on to whomever is representing the boat that brought the fish in, minus ten percent.

The product is then dispatched, via various modes of transport.

We found this tuna being packed into styrofoam coolers in preparation for its journey to a destination four to five hours inland.

While all this is going on a parallel process takes place out on the beach, where small-time vendors not registered with the market wholesale small catches from their portable tables.

What's on offer here can vary in size from a just three or four 6-inch squid to a good-sized single fish. As inside at the market, fishermen hang around their middleman waiting for an offer.

It can be a good place to pick up a recipe or two.

The seller of these slender squid advises turning them into kinilaw:

'Mix coconut vinegar with lots of chopped ginger, sliced red onion, chili chopped fine, and green onion leaves. Clean the squid and slice it, then add it to the vinegar mixture. Eat it with tomato. And eat it right away. If you leave the squid in the vinegar more than one or two minutes it will shrink and get hard. Then it's not tasty anymore.'

Eric tells me that most of the fisherman on these boats are from Hikdop, the largest island opposite this boat landing. By now it's 8am, the end of their day nine hours until they return to their boats and prepare to head out after another catch.

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.

Vietnam's Other Black Gold

A few days before we left for Saigon, I poured the last of the 5 pounds of Vietnamese black pepper that had moved with us to Malaysia in 2005 into our pepper grinder.

This was not a coincidence.

Did we return to Saigon just to restore our stock of Vietnamese pepper? I wouldn't say that, exactly. We knew we'd go before the end of the year. As October passed and our stash shrank, well ... it just seemed like a good time to make plane reservations.

Vietnam isn't the country that comes to mind when gourmets start talking black pepper. It's all Tellicherry this and Sarawak that; if a pepper-loving foodie really wants to impress her cohort she might proclaim an allegiance to Ecuadorian prganic Ecuadorian black pepper.

That's black pepper they're walking on

Vietnam is the world's largest black pepper producer, and the spice is a key component of the cuisine. While Vietnamese food isn't as overtly chile-hot as Thai food, many dishes have a nice kick thanks to this Vietnamese black gold. A quick Google search turned up no mail-order sources for this peppercorn that, in my opinion, is the equivalent of any other 'gourmet' varieties. If you happen to be in Vietnam you can buy it by the kilo for a steal.

What follows is an extremely quick, tasty recipe that highlights black pepper's uniquely complex heat. If Vietnamese isn't within your reach, use whatever is. Just make sure that it's very fresh (ie. still fragrant; a good whiff should make you want to sneeze), and freshly ground.

Light and Bright Vietnamese Herby Omelet with Black Pepper-Salt-Kalamansi (or Lime) Dipping Sauce

We ate this street snack on a grey, misty winter morning in Hanoi. At 630am on a Sunday the city's streets were strangely quiet. About 4 blocks from the lake we came across a granny tucked under the overhang of an office building. Seated on a tiny stool, she was making omelets, emerald green with chopped herbs, in a small pan over a single burner. We ordered one and marveled at its simplicity and brightness. The dipping sauce - a combination of salt, lots of fragrant black pepper, and kalamansi juice - added zip and beautifully complemented the fresh taste of the herbs.

Any combination of Asian-ish herbs works here, the more the merrier - just be sure not to go too heavy on the strongest-flavored herbs. This morning my omelet included Thai basil, mint, Vietnamese coriander (polygonum/laksa leaf), perilla, cilantro, and sorrel (caution: too much sorrel and your omelet will be more gray than green). You might also use wild pepper leaves, or a bit of dill. Arugala would be a nice, albeit inauthentic, addition. A few chives or one scallion chopped with the greens are possibilities, but don't use enough to overpower the herbs. Don't be alarmed at the amount of minced herbs in this dish - the egg really shouldn't be much more than a binder. 

sea salt or Kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

kalamansi or lime halves, for squeezing

4 eggs

1 1/4 cup of a combination of fresh herbs chopped together to a fine mince

vegetable oil

1. In a small saucer mix (for each person) a pinch of salt, a few generous grinds of pepper, and kalamansi juice (2-3 halves, depending on the size of the fruit) or lime juice (1/2 a juicy lime). Mix lightly - it's not necessary to dissolve the salt.

2. Beat the eggs to thoroughly combine. Stir in the herbs.

3. Place a (preferably non-stick) skillet over medium heat. Add a dribble of oil and then wipe it around with a paper towel to remove the excess.

4. Add the eggs and cook slowly, covered, to allow them to set. Once the top no longer jiggles slide the omelet onto a plate and then turn the plate over into the skillet, to cook the other side. Avoid browning the omelet, if you can.

5. Once the omelet is cooked, slide it onto a plate and eat by dipping pieces into the sauce. (Lovely eaten room temperature, too.)

Tons of pepper for export