EatingAsia

A Fine Fritter

'Robyn!' Amy puts her hands on her hips and fake-frowns at me. 'Why'd you come so late!?'

Amy works for Pak Din, who mans the grill at his stall in the Lake Gardens. When it comes to ikan bakar (barbecued fish) Pak Din has few peers. Arrive after lunch and you'll find slim fish pickings; his stall's daily array of delicious curries, sambals, and vegetables is also likely to be depleted. Which explains Amy's consternation when we stroll in at 2:45p.

But this day we've come not for ikan bakar, but for another, less widely known Pak Din specialty: corn fritters. They're available weekday afternoons only, for just one hour. I've had the pleasure, but Dave - a bit of a corn obsessive - has not.

'Ah, fritters!' Amy brightens, then disappears out back of the stall and returns with three plates, which she lays on our table. 'Which do you like for pictures?' she asks. She knows us well by now.

After an unusually long wait (someone had called ahead to place an order for one hundred fritters) Amy emerges bearing a a mound of what appear to be jade and gold-flecked clouds. One bite confirms that these fritters are possibly the most artfully crafted deep-fried item on earth: barely a hint of grease, impossibly light, chewy and crispy at the same time. Studded with corn kernels (that's Asian corn, which is older, starchier, and less sweet than - but every bit as flavorful as - the varieties of corn eaten off the cob in the States), and bits of Chinese celery and red onion, and encased in a lacy armor of browned shallot shreds, they're impossible to resist. Even for a deep-fry-phobe like me.

The fritters are served with a sweet-hot dipping sauce, which Dave and I go hot and cold on. It's likeably spicy, but the main event is so scrumptious in and of itself that a dab of sauce seems gilding the lily. In the end we eat most naked (the fritters, not us).

We're not the only ones enjoying a mid-afternoon snack - several folks at tables around us are tackling plates heaped as high as ours, all by themselves. Pak Din's fritters are worth a drive across town. They merit putting cholesterol and calorie concerns out of mind for at least half an hour. And they definately justify playing hooky.

Ikan Bakar Pak Din, Tanglin Food Court, Jalan Cenderasari, Lake Gardens, Kuala Lumpur. Fritters are sold 230-330p, Mon-Fri (closed public holidays). Four fritters for one ringgit.

Last Malaysian Tastes ... For a While

I'm heading back to the States later this week.

While it will be great to see family and friends, smell that sharp San Francisco air (I'm hoping for fog), return to Manhattan (which Dave and I left 18 years ago - haven't been back since!), and eat fresh flour tortillas wrapped around New Mexican goat cheese and roasted green chilies while taking in the view from my parents' porch, there are a few things about this trip that I'm really dreading. Intra-US air travel, for one, driving on the wrong side of the road for the other, and - most of all - being without Malaysian food for 21 days. I've thought about trying to sneak in some sambal belacan to see me through, but I know I'd be sniffed out by an SFO security beagle in seconds.

So, I'm bulking up on Malaysian flavors before I leave. Saturday afternoon it was assam laksa which, for me, is more quintessentially Malaysian even than char koay teow and nasi lemak. There's something about assam laksa's sourness tempered by characteristically Malaysian sweetness, and the combination of intensely fish-flavored broth with the freshness of mint leaves, pineapple, and cucumber, that tell me I'm not in Thailand or Indonesia or Vietnam or the Philippines, but firmly on terra firma Malaysia. Assam laksa is also truly pedas (chili hot). I know the scuttlebutt is that Malaysian food is sooooo spicy, but I really don't find it so. Assam laksa is more the delicious exception to the rule than an accurate indicator of the overall spiciness of this country's cuisine.

This bowlful was had for lunch from a stall on Madras Lane, inside the Chinatown (Petaling Street) wet market. It's a good version, though I generally prefer my assam laksa soup to be thicker with fish flakes. The addition of chunks of canned sardine (yes, canned) is a nice touch and the sambal (you'll need to ask for it if you don't look like a Malaysian) is truly fiery. In two weeks I will so be pining for this lunch.

Assam laksa stall, Madras Lane, KL Chinatown. 830a-3pm, closed Monday. Note: it's the last stall in the row, directly across from the barley teh stall. Note also that vendors in this market are proprietary about seats - be sure to sit in the section of the vendor from whom you've ordered.

What a Useless Tool(s)!

I'm jumping on Tomato's bandwagon. Herewith, my most useless kitchen tool: turkey turners.

In 1998, when we moved from Shanghai backback to San Francisco (a stateside interlude that ended with our relocation to Bangkok a little over three years later) I went a bit kitchen acquisition crazy. I'd bought virtually nothing for the kitchen since we left the States in 1994 and reacted by going overboard. These turkey turners are the most useless of my useless tool acquisitions during that heady period.

They're useless not only because turkey is never on the menu here at Chez Eckhardt-Hagerman in Kuala Lumpur, but also because piercing a turkey's skin is exactly what you don't want to do when you turn it. You want to keep that skin intact, holding all the lovely juices in. And, as I learned the first (and last) time I used these things, they're damn unwieldy when you're trying to maneuver a sixteen-pound carcass. Two wads of paper towel accomplish the job much more efficiently.

I guess the only question is, since I haven't used these things since November 1998, why do they still occupy space in my kitchen drawer? More to the point, why have I moved them from San Fran to Bangkok, from Bangkok to Saigon, and from Saigon to KL?

Into the bin with them.

Update: Apparently us useless kitchen tool owners are asked to also name our most useful kitchen tools. That's easy: an excellent knife, a knife sharpener, a good cutting board, a mortar and pestle or other grinding mechanism, and a silicone spatula (doubles as spoony thing and spatula to cook with).

Disappearing Foods

What's a deadline without procrastination? This is very cool - seems a writer has identified almost 100 foods that are disappearing from the American culinary landscape. What a worthwhile project!

Can you think of foods from your own country (or city, or state, or whatever) that are becoming harder and harder to find, or have already disappeared? If so, leave a comment (and name the location you're referencing, please) or drop us an email.

Overwhelmed...

...with deadlines and other demands. Normally my blogging mojo carries me through times like this but I seem to have misplaced it about ten days ago. Hope to be back in the swing by Monday.

In the meantime, we wrote about and photographed our favorite restaurant in KL for the May issue of Time Out Kuala Lumpur. (It's not on the site - trumped by an interview with Bobby Chinn.) The kitchen is pictured above. Any KL-ites know the place (not fair if you've seen the article)?

I also reviewed a darned good fish head beehoon in TTDI.

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). 

The Forest and the Trees

Markets are wonderful places. Markets with second-floor perches especially so.

This market in Sererit, a town on Bali's northern coast, was already buzzing when we arrived before dawn. It consists of a hulking square building bordered by alleys of varying width. In the early morning alleys to the sides and front of the markets are crowded with vendors who sell fruits, vegetables, and materials for religious offerings from plastic tarps laid on the pavement.

At sunrise these vendors are packing up, and by 7am they're gone, leaving in their wake the detritus of wet market commerce: pineapple tops, stray scallion leaves, snakefruit skins, the odd clove of garlic or finger of fresh turmeric crushed under foot. 

Meanwhile, the 'back alley' - the lane tracing the length of the market building's rear wall - has come alive. This is where the fish vendors head. From 8 o'clock on this space becomes increasingly claustrophobic. It's exhilerating, alternately standing amidst the whirl of activity and gamely dodging rapidly moving loads of rambutan and sloshing buckets of seafood. We like the confusion - where did that guy with the load of turmeric-marinated tuna go? Did you see that elderly woman's spectacular sarong? She's over there, bargaining for flowers - whoops, no, she's gone.

And then, sometimes, it's just exhausting. Sometimes we see only the forest, when we want to see the trees. Which is why a market with a second, open story that overlooks a particularly frenetic selling area is a fantastic thing.

From up here we see that several vendors, whom I've passed at street level a few time already, are selling krill. I know how Filipinos eat krill, but I wonder what Balinese do with it? And we notice that though these ladies are trading in seafood, they're also hawking the makings for the offerings that Balinese make to ancestors and spirits several times everyday: flowers and green bananas, betel nuts and dried leaf garlands to be hung on altars, even altars themselves.

From up here what seemed, down there, to be utter chaos assumes a certain order. Deliveries are made. Sales are negotiated. Greetings are exchanged. The pace seems -almost - leisurely.

And from up here we have space from which to pick out details: the offerings made by every vendor before the business day starts;

the ingenious way bean sprout sellers 'air' their wares to keep the sprouts on the bottom of the tray free of damaging moisture;

the beauty of something as everyday as a coconut grater.

It's up here, too, that we can explore local a.m. treats, like sirat, the thinnest, flattest possible rice flour 'pancakes', sprinkled with coconut and liberally lashed with liquid gula aren, dark and smoky sugar made from aren palm sap.

A cup of sweetened Balinese coffee on the side, and we're good to go back down below, into the crush.

Nasi Ka-Pow!

Nasi Padang? Feh. So been-there-done-that. The problem with many of the nasi Padang places in and around Kuala Lumpur - the chain imports from Indonesia, especially - is that they seem to tone down the heat to suit milder Malaysian palates. So, when it's a burn we're hankering for nasi Kapau's a much better bet.

Warung Nasi Kapau, a small, squeaky-clean place on Jalan Raja Alang just up the street from Chow Kit Market, has been around for about twenty years. The owner and mistress of the kitchen migrated from Kapau (a small village about 10 kilometers from the western Sumatran hill town of Bukit Tingi) in the eighties; her sons work the front of the restaurant.

Places specializing in nasi Kapau display their tempting wares as those offering nasi Padang do, in pots and platters lined up in glass display cases.

Customers grab a serving of rice and then work the line, adding this and that to their plate. Or, they grapple with what's on offer as we prefer to, via a series of small plates. (Caution: the small plate approach is often the path to obscene overindulgence.)

A few things distinguish Kapau specialties from those of Padang: a preponderance  of green chilies (as the three dishes in the middle, above, illustrate), an occasional hint of tartness, lots of vegetable dishes, and HEAT. When it comes to chilies Kapau cooks don't pull any punches (ka-pow!).

Warung Nasi Kapau serves four types of sambal (chili sauce), including two types of sambal hijau (literally, 'green' sambal), made with the aforementioned chilies. These chilies, especially when combined with a bit of lime juice or lime rind, lend a very un-nasi Padang-like lightness to many dishes.

Particularly nice are the small fish, butterflied and deep-fried so crisp they can be eaten bones and all, topped with chilies and caramelized onions (second photo). Small eggplant roasted whole and swaddled in a tart chili blanket boast a superb creamy texture that's complemented by the slippery, silky sauteed peppers.

The restaurant's beef rendang is deep, smoky, and very tender, and its square tempeh 'cutlets' stewed in a mild turmeric-heavy gulai (coconut milk-based curry sauce) are wonderfully soybean-nutty.

Not every item at Warung Nasi Kapau is deadly spicy, but those that are, really are. Everthing we tried was hands-down delicious, but we left many a nasi Kapau stone unturned here. This place is the next best thing to the nasi Kapau stalls at Bukit Tingi's market. We'll be back.

Warung Nasi Kapau, Jalan Raja Alang, noon-12pm daily.

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.

Get Juiced at the BTS

On our last night in Bangkok back in February we rushed from an excellent dinner at an unlikely spot in the Nang Leong neighborhood (more on that later) to the Chitlom BTS (sky train) station so that we could get to iberry before it closed. Alas, we arrived to find that that particular iberry shop (on Thanon Sukhumvit next to the Sogo/Grand Hyatt) is no more. Talk about disappointment! We were leaving Bangkok early the next morning, so there would be no Horlick's or Thai iced tea ice cream for us that trip.

We did, however, fit in plenty of another particular-to-Bangkok taste sensation while we were in town: Soontra fruit juices, sold from kiosks at quite a few (all?) BTS stations. We're suckers for fresh fruit juices anyway, but Soontra's are really something special - the flavors are punchy and sunny, and even though the juices are packaged they taste fresh-squeezed/pressed.   

Every Soontra is brilliant, but our absolute favorite is the one pictured up top, passion fruit and beet root juice. An unlikely combination, but it really works; passion fruit's tart tropical fruitiness is strangely and wonderfully uber-ized by beet's sweet earthiness.

When we lived in Bangkok a bottle of Soontra cost about 50 cents, an amazing deal. Now it's closer to 70 cents, but that's still a tasty bargain considering that a bottle of fruit juice as fine as this would probably go for something like three bucks in the States.

On this trip we downed a bottle of Soontra (passion fruit and beet or carrot and passion fruit - hey, what can I say, we love passion fruit) at every single opportunity, ie. everytime we entered and exited a BTS station (and sometimes two or three at one go). But on our last afternoon, heading back to our hotel after wrapping up an interview, I flew down the stairs at the Asok BTS station to find the Soontra stall I'd been patronizing every single morning already closed for the day.

Drat! Disappointed again. Next trip to Bangkok we shall have to place Soontra - and iberry - at the top of our agenda.