EatingAsia

Not Your Usual Grilled Chicken

Way back in July we spent some time in Kota Bharu, the capital city of Kelantan state, in the northeast of the peninsula, working on a feature story for Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia's September 2011 Food Issue.

Khota Baru or KB, as Malaysians call it, held many surprises for us. In what is often described as the country's most conservative Islamic state, we found its friendliest people -- warm and incredibly welcoming to outsiders. And there, in a city that most tourists breeze through on their way to the Perhentian islands, we ate as well as -- maybe even better than -- than we do in Penang. The food in Khota Baru and around is mind-bogglingly good.

We ate the best of many great meals in Wakaf Baru, a scruffy town about 20 minutes from downtown Kota Bharu by car. I opened my article with a paen to that dinner, which we'd never have had the pleasure of eating if not for the guidance of Kota Bharan hotel manager by day and food writer by night Addie Chang:

Waiting on dinner in Wakaf Baru, I sipped grassy sugar cane juice and watched bullets of rain bounce off a Singapore-bound train. When the last car had passed families popped out of vehicles parked on the other side of the tracks and made their way across to Restoran Kampung Kulim. The restaurant's dining area, a corrugated metal-shaded patch of concrete furnished with plastic tables and chairs, comes with a view of a Thai Buddhist wat, one of hundreds in this northeastern Malaysian state where 95% of the population is Malay and Muslim.

The family that owns and runs Kampung Kulim are Hokkien Siam, a term for descendents of marriages between immigrants from China’s Fujian province and Thailand. They speak a mixture of  Malay, Fujianese and Thai, a linguistic fusion that plays out on the plate in dishes incorporating coconut milk and chilies, bitter melon and taucu (fermented bean paste), curry paste and budu, a wincingly odiferous fermented fish condiment beloved in southern Thailand and along the northeastern Malaysian coast.

We ate a few dishes that night: hong bak, an intriguingly salty-sweet stew of pork belly made with star anise and copious shavings brown palm sugar, mustard leaves simply fried with sliced pork and dang hoon heh, a sparingly seasoned red coconut curry with whole prawns and vermicelli.

But the dish that stays with me 9 months later is siew gai or grilled chicken. I have eaten much grilled chicken in my time in southeast Asia. Restoran Kampung Kulim's is sublime, as in beyond-description sublime. I could have written 1,000 words about that siew gai alone. But then half my article would have been about chicken.

It's all in the technique, as Dave and I found when we walked out back of the restaurant to its open kitchen. There we found a lean, mean septuagenarian grilling machine laboring over a coconut husk-filled trench, using upturned, jerry-rigged cracker tins to infuse their birds with extra char.

After dropping a whole chicken -- unmarinated, lightly salted -- onto an upright "spit" set in the middle of the coconut husk embers (think beer can chicken with a rod replacing the can), the master griller drops a square cracker tin on top. As the fire rages around the can, creating enough heat to brown and crisp the chicken's skin, the coals beneath the chicken burn slow enough to cook its flesh without drying it out. Exces oil drips out of the chicken carcass during the cooking process. After just 20 minutes the bird is finished.

When the chickens are done the grill master passes them on to his colleague, who commands the chopping block. Before they're served he arranges the cleavered birds on a banana leaf round -- a nice touch that lends a bit of extra fragrance to the dish. 

These two gentleman have been working together at the restaurant for decades, they told us. (They're both also farmers.) Surprised at first to find themselves being photographed, they quickly relaxed and got into it.

Presumably everyone who eats at Restoran Kampung Kulim knows the story behind its spectacular grilled chicken, but I'm not sure how many diners make their way behind the scenes to thank these men for their brilliant work. After all they're just doing what they've been doing, day after day, for years.

For more from our time in Kota Bharu, visit Dave's photographic tour here.

In Hanoi, Old and New Ways With Coffee

One of the best things Vietnam has going for it is coffee.

I'm certain that the easy availability of a cup or iced glass of rich chocolate-y coffee almost any time of the day or night, for the equivalent of an American dollar or less has helped make Vietnam such a popular tourist destination. The language is difficult to master, travel can be a hassle and the locals can be at times, um, crusty. But no matter where in Vietnam you find yourself good coffee is likely to be within reach.

While in Hanoi last August Dave and I must have each downed eight or more glasses a day. It's easy to roll out of bed at the crack of dawn when you know a nice coffee is steps from your hotel. It's easy to keep moving in the wilting heat when there's always a glass of the iced stuff nearby to restart your motor. At home we're generally a.m. coffee drinkers only but when we're in Vietnam coffee is an integral part of our entire day.

In Hanoi we found two more reasons to love Vietnamese coffee: ca phe trung (egg coffee) and ca phe sua chua (yogurt coffee).

Both were introduced to us by Hanoi Cooking Centre chef and proprietor (and co-author of a beautiful new book on Vietnamese street food) Tracey Lister. We'd gone to Hanoi to do a story on HCC and its Vietnamese staff, and the evening we arrived we met up with Tracey to lay plans for the week. She suggested we meet at Cafe Pho Co on Hang Gai street. The entry is a souvenir shop but behind is a lovely bordering-on-crumbling building whose breezy rooftop offers one of the best views in Hanoi. 

The hour dictated beer but as we drank Tracey told us about the house specialty, a concoction of raw egg whipped with coffee that she described as something akin to warm coffee custard. Ca phe trung has been a Hanoi drink for generations and Cafe Pho Co has been serving it for decades. It's a morning libation, though the cafe serves it throughout the day. As difficult as Ca Phe Pho Co can be to locate, their ca phe trung justifies the effort.

I'd equate the beverage to my mother's warm eggnog, sans the booze and nutmeg and shot through with notes of caramel and chocolate. It's part dessert (though it's not cloyingly sweet), part restorative caffeinated beverage. It's also reminiscent of wonderful egg-enriched tea we once drank at a food market in western Sumatra (read about the tea and see how to make it here).

There's no reason not to adore a hot ca phe trung (we also tried it iced but found that the drink doesn't benefit from dilution), although the caloric content probably dictates restricted consumption. I can't imagine a more delicious way with eggs and coffee.

A few days later, after a gut-busting lunch at HCC, Tracey took us to Cafe My to try ca phe sua chua. Coffee with yogurt is a more recent invention than egg coffee, it seems, and you'll see signs for it all over town. But Cafe My is an old, not at all trendy shop known for the high quality of its beans (it also inspired a Cafe My chain).

Its lightly sweetened yogurt is especially rich, which makes it the best place to down this treat. It's an inspired and fantastically refreshing combo (opening photo), the light bitterness of the coffee bouncing off the creamy sweetness of the yogurt. We returned to Cafe My specifically for this specialty, which we sometimes preceded with glasses of iced coffee, several times before we left Hanoi.

On one visit a downpour commenced just as we were finishing our coffee yogurts. We'd not brought umbrellas so had no choice but to mine the rest of the yogurt section of Cafe My's menu.

The slightly alcoholic fermented red rice with yogurt (above) received thumbs up from Dave, but while I loved the rice's chewy texture I was ambivalent about its flavor. I'm generally a fermented foods gal, but I wasn't entirely won over by this one.

Creamy ripe avocado mashed with creamy fresh yogurt -- what's not to love about Cafe My's avocado yogurt? Nothing really, except a disappointing mildness flavor that's especially pronounced after you've tried a coffee yogurt.

On the Mekong, Lime-Free Laab and Cool "Noodle" Soup

Two weeks ago we found ourselves working on a story at a posh resort in northern Thailand. It was the type of gig that strangers, when I tell them I write about food and travel, envision as they reply dreamily, "Wow, that must be amazing."

Don't get me wrong. It is amazing, to be able to do what we love to do -- eat well and travel and meet intersting people -- and call it a job. But a job is a job and traveling for work is nothing like traveling for pleasure. And jobs with the sort of perqs we enjoyed two weeks ago come along... well, near to never.

We worked our butts off for four days because that's how away-frome-home work is. Nothing like the fear that you won't get everything you need while you're on locationto inspire pre-dawn risings and pre-bedtime hours at the computer. But it was all good: the bed didn't give us backaches and the spray in the shower was as hot as we wanted it to be, and generous too. Our room came with a deck and views, of a grazing ground for elephants and egrets and beyond, Burma -- the Ruak River and a patchwork of farms trailing to pine green hills. The staff were wonderful people who worked hard to help us do our jobs. After every photogenic and much-photographed sunset there were lovely cocktails and good food and excellent wine.

And yet, and yet. By the evening of day two I was missing the flavors of the street, craving the tastes and textures of down and dirty northern Thai cuisine. I wanted the snap of roasted chiles and the tingle of prickly ash, the richness of fatty barbecued meat and the bite of sticky rice. I was chafing to imbibe something of Chiang Saen, the nearest town, and its surrounds. There were local specialties there, I knew, and I wanted to try some.

So, as I sat at the bar sampling a tom kha cocktail (addictive) the night before an early morning photography foray to Chiang Saen market, I sought advice from the mixmaster. In Chiang Saen, try the fish grilled in a bamboo tube with herbs, he advised. A nighttime specialty, served by the river, but we'd be in the vicinity early morning. What else is there to eat? I asked. Oh, khao ram feun in Baan Sop Ruak! It's on your way into town! He described a dish of jelly-ish gram flour squares in a cool tomato-based broth that sounded like a memorable treat we enjoyed a couple years ago on the street in Luang Namtha, in northern Laos.

So the next morning, well before we alighted at the dock in Baan Sop Ruak, I told our our guide that we'd need to stop on the way to Chiang Saen in Baan Sop Ruak for a bite or two. I've dealt with guides associated with high-end resorts and hotels, and usually they are resistant to any requests off the beaten path. I hate being handled and I'd steeled myself for protests: Oh no, that food is too dirty. Oh no, that food will make you sick. Do you dare to eat something spicy? I think it's not a good idea, you're not used to the food.

Surprisingly, and delightfully, Khun R's response was nothing of the sort. "Alright," he said, with a smile. After alighting from our boat near a big golden Buddha statue across the Mekong from an atrocious Chinese-owned resort complex in Laos we made our way to a stall set back from the street where a middle-aged woman was setting up for business. She was happy to serve us khao ram fuen, she said, but we'd have to wait a half an hour.

We decided to wait it out with an "appetizer" of laab khua, beef laab prepared in the nothern way, with odd bits and meat and lots of fresh herbs and chilies and dried spices. At the table next to us sat a group of Thais just off the night shift at the casino. As we waited for our order we watched, mouths watering, as dish after dish arrived at their table: gaeng om, a heady beef stew enhanced with a mixture of dried spices, thick slices of barbecued pig's neck with tamarind-soured dipping sauce, two kinds of laab, fried chicken, somtam local style, with bplaa raa instead of fish sauce. All accompanied by Saeng Som and soda and bottles of energy drink. 

Finally our laab arrived,and it was perfect. There is something so unidentifiably deep and rich and almost mysteriously fabulous about northern-style laab -- the absence of a light note like lime juice, perhaps, or the combination of dry and fresh spices or the meatiness of the meat in Thailand. We dabbed it up with fingertipfuls of sticky rice and agreed that it was among the best we'd ever eaten, better perhaps even than our favorite laab in Chiang Mai.

By the time the last nib of water buffalo meat had disappeared into our mouths the khao ram fuen lady was ready for us. She offered two types of "jelly" -- one made with sticky rice flour and one made with a combination of sticky rice and yellow pea flour. We ordered one of each. For both orders she sliced the jelly-paste into rough cubes, added a few yellow noodles, and then sluiced on a ladleful of thin liquid by boiling tomatoes in water and then passing the mixture through a sieve.

Condiments came next: a dab of fresh red chili sauce, a splash of Mae Sai-style semi-liquid tua nao (fermented and sun-dried soy beans) mixed with chopped cilantro, spoonfuls of ginger-garlic water, Shan (and Sichuan)-style sandy chili oil, salt and ground peanuts.

On top of it all, fresh cabbage shredded and tossed with pea sprouts, and a mixture of blanched snake beans and bean sprouts.

After she'd served us Paa Laa (Aunty Laa), as the vendor is known, encouraged us to personalize our bowls with the addition of anything we wanted more of. That meant more chili sauce and cabbage for me, more tua nao and chili sauce for Dave.

What we ended up with was certainly one of the most delicious concoctions we've come across in our by now fairly extensive northern Thai travels, a dish that pushed all our buttons with its fresh vegetables and copious amounts of chili. The snap of the cabbage contrasted nicely with the yielding jelly-paste cubes, the nuts and fermented soy beans added heft and umami. By the time we got to the bottom of our bowls the dish's range of flavors had melded in the remaining tomato-y soup.

Resisting the urge to order a repeat, we departed with a bag of lovely crisp-fried banana slices (by Paa Laa's daughter, who works next to her), toddling off to the Chiang Saen market where more deliciousness, in the form of pounded pomelo salad with black crab paste, awaited.

Khao ram feun and laab khua, Baan Sop Ruak. On the river near the golden Buddha statue, about 100 meters towards Chiang Saen. The khao ram feun is sold on the river side of the road and the laab khua shop, with its two tables, is directly across the street. Look for Aunty Laa, but if you don't find her ask around for khao ram feun -- there are plenty of other sellers after about 930/10am. This is a morning/early afternoon dish. Aunty Laa says she usually sells out by 1230/1pm.

 

 

 

Well Hello, Hamsi!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suitable for Framing (First in a Series)

Noodle vendor, Hanoi, August 2011

Scene from a wet market, Hanoi, August 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Istanbul, A Perfect Lunch and the Call to Prayer

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

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

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

The food is basic, and good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

KL Quickie

Not Malaysian: Jimmy Saw's khauk swe thohk

We recently spent a little under 24 hours in our old home of Kuala Lumpur. Under the auspices of the KL office of the UN High Commission for Refugees Dave has been teaching photography classes for mostly Burmese refugees since July.He usually busses down to KL, teaches a couple classes, stays a night, and heads right back to Penang with little time for food or friends. Last weekend we decided to drive down together and make a mini weekend of it.

KL, KL. What is there to say? In the less than four months we've been away so much new construction has been started, so many trees have been shorn from hillsides (and hillsides themselves shorn). Brickfields is a shadow of its former self. The area around the old Pudu prison looks like a war zone. Streets are being dug up for the train extension (and a good stretch of Chinatown is set to give way too).

KL will be a brand new city in ten years, of that I'm sure. Whether it will be one in which I'll want to spend any time is very much up in the air.

But the food is still great. And more and more, it seems, the city's dining scene is benefiting from an influx of foreign blood. On Saturday night we joined two friends for dinner at Xin Dong Tong, a Hunanese restaurant behind Berjaya Times Square. We were "off duty" and took neither notes nor photographs, walking out with only delicious memories:a salty, spicy pickled vegetable dish called jiachang xia fan cai, the nicely pungent kimchee-like pao cai (pickle), silky shreds of "sea bas" garnished with deep-fried chilies and Sichuan peppercorns, slices of smoky la rou fried with dried radish, stir-fried pig stomach that even an innards non-lover like me could love, and a vibrant green, fabulous dish of finely minced choy sum (salted and squeezed, we speculated) fried with chilies and pork.

Before banging out of town on Sunday we stopped in Bangsar to stock up on canned tomatillos and followed with a late lunch at a Burmese-run hawker stall. I wrote glowingly of Jimmy Saw and his "Myanmar laksa" a couple of years ago when I was Food Editor at Time Out Kuala Lumpur (read the review here). Jimmy, who's been cooking in KL for 16 years, is still doing a fantastic job. These days his mohingya includes slices of banana stem (when we first met Jimmy he bemoaned of finding a steady supply) and tastes as rich and fishy and indefinably Burmese as ever.

Jimmy has added to his menu what he calls "dry Myanmar noodle" (khauk swe thohk -- top photo). It's a  tangle of freshly boiled yellow noodles tossed in cool ingredients that include a toasty chili oil, fish sauce, and shallot oil. Hidden amongst the noodles are bits of crunchy yellow lentil fritter. Fried shallots, garlic slices, hard-boiled egg, fish paste and Chinese celery leaves are the garnish. It's a wonderful dish.

I've eaten some disappointinly inauthentic (yes, there -- I've used the reviled word) non-Malaysian southesat Asian food in KL, and so it's refreshing to see a foreigner feeling uncompelled to modify his food to suit local palates. Jimmy doesn't need to; he sells out most days and, he says, the majority of his customers are Malaysian.

Jimmy Saw's sizzling yee mee

If you must go local, Jimmy also serves Penang-style  Hokkien mee(prawn noodle soup) -- which we haven't tried -- and sizzling yee mee. We wouldn't turn our nose up at a serving of the latter. If you do stop in, tell him Robyn and Dave said "hi".

Myanmar Laksa, Nam Chun Coffeeshop, 2-4 Lorong Ara Kiri, Lucky Garden, Bangsar. Closed alternate Wednesdays. Opens at 11am.

Seasonal Somtam

Chiang Mai in August is not Chiang Mai in February.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bone Soup and Kelantan Cuisine for T+L SEA

 

As some of you may already know, in early July we spent some time working in Kota Bharu, the capital of Malaysia's Kelantan state. Situated in the northeastern corner of peninsular Malaysia, Kelantan abuts southern Thailand. Its fusioninst cuisine shows Thai, Chinese (Hokkien/Fujianese, especially), and Indian influences. Most travelers breeze right through Kota Bharu on their way to and from the Perhentian Islands, completely unaware that they are missing out on one of the most interesting gastronomic scenes in Malaysia.

The fruits of our labor are now on the newstand, in the form of a feature article on Kelantan's wonderful (often overlooked by those heading to or coming from the Perhentians) cuisine for the September issue of Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia. (It's the annual Food Issue, and you can buy a digital copy here.View Dave's out-takes from 5 days of shooting on his photo blog Sky Blue Sky, here.)

After 5 days and nights of pretty solid eating we came away with so much more material than I could ever pack into 2,000 words. Deciding which dishes, eateries and experiences to include in the article, and what to leave out, was a laborious and somewhat painful process. On the bright side, we have this little space in which to share what didn't make it onto T+L's pages.

On our last full morning in Kota Bharu, on full stomachs but with our time in what had turned out to be a very delicious town coming to an end, we ate sup tulang (bone soup, literally) and grilled beef beneath a big plastic canopy near the river at a place called Lido Corner.

Sup tulang is one of those humble Malay dishes that visitors tend to overlook. It's not as visually seductive as a lovely hibiscus-colored curry or as intriquing as blue rice tossed with dry-fried coconut, chili, and a riot of herbs. Meat soup is what sup tulang is, basically. It has no noodles and boasts no textural bits, such as bean sprouts or cubes of deep-fried tofu. But this everyday dish can be a real stunner, a comforting yet exciting combination of warm spices and the depth of flavor that can be coaxed from tough Malaysian beef.

Lido Corner does sup tulang right. The broth is golden from turmeric and thin but every so slightly viscous from all those long-stewed bones. It hints at nutmeg, star anise, cloves, cardamom and no doubt several other spices that I wasn't able to pinpoint. Each bowl contains a hunk of chewy beef on the bone and a more tender boneless piece that, if you're lucky, will be attached to a silky length of tendon. Chinese celery floating on the surface of the soup lightens it up with a shot of freshness.

At Lido Corner we also made acquaintance with something new to us: daging bakar or Malay-style grilled beef. I'm not great at identifying cuts but this reminded me of flank steak -- distinctly striated to the point of being almost ropy, cut relatively thin. Tough Malaysian beef again, but tough beef that goes astonishingly tender over the coals. Charred and smoky, sliced into thin strips and eaten with a sweet-spicy chili sauce with enough fire to really balance its sugar, this daging bakar was an unexpectedly delicious find. It's something I'd return to Lido Corner for even if the sup tulang wasn't on offer.

As with most every place we ate at in Kelantan Lido Corner is an extremely friendly spot. Walk in, line up and place your order (there's ayam bakar, or grilled chicken, too), and carry your own plates to one of the egg yolk yellow tables. The drink of choice is sugar cane juice. Bean sprouts, served on the side of your plate of rice, are the only vegetable on offer. Think of it as a meal devoted to protein.

Lido Corner, a stone's throw from the Grand Riverview Hotel right on the river, downtown Kelantan. Open 12-6 every day. The grills are going non-stop -- follow your nose.

 

 

Beyond Pho in Hanoi

Banh da, delicious chewy rice noodles made with green tea

A good pho is a great thing, but the iconic Vietnamese noodle soup is far from our favorite thing to eat when we're traveling in the country. Even up north in Hanoi, the home of pho, we can always find something else to distract our palates. On our trip to Hanoi last month, in fact, we didn't eat a single pho.

But we did eat a load of other tasty noodle specialties. Read all about them, and view Dave's mouthwatering slideshow, in our most recent article for Zester Daily, here. And if you're heading over to Vietnam or anywhere else in southeast Asia and are new to this site since April, you may want to have a look at our article on eating street food safely in the region while you're at it.