Smoking Allowed

It would be a stretch to call Tanjung Ipoh a town. This sleepy speck of a place in Negeri Sembilan state, 1 1/2 to 2 hours south of Kuala Lumpur (assuming no traffic), is barely a village, just a few old wooden buildings straddling a two-lane highway.

Around the 15th century Minangkabau from West Sumatra began settling in Negeri Sembilan. These days the state's population, like any other Malaysian state's, is mostly a mix of Chinese, Indians, and Malays. Yet vestiges of West Sumatran culture survive in the form of the fine collection of traditional stilted wooden houses adorned with characteristic Minang bowed roofs that dot Tanjung Ipoh and the villages around it.

We're here on this Sunday morning for the once-a-week market. It turns out to be quite small by Temerloh standards, just twenty or so food stalls (and others offering assorted sundries like textiles and sunglasses) set up in a parking lot a 5-minute walk from the highway. The mostly Malay vendors peddle products we know from Temerloh, like cendawan kukur, feathery fungi scraped from tree trunks (opening photo), and fresh honey.

As at any Malay market there's a wide selection of kuih (sweets), like these springy banana cakes made with glutinous rice flour.

But soon enough we come across foods unfamiliar. These buah asam gelugor are usually sold sliced and dried as asam keping ('sour slices'), an ingredient essential to a good laksa Penang (laksa assam).

Segments of the hard fruit and their leaves, daun asam gelugor, slivered,

are used to add tartness, especially to lemak (coconuty rich) dishes.

A vendor selling both leaves and the fruit also offers ikan sembilang salai (smoked catfish, known also as ikan keli; salai='smoked').

These frankly ugly specimens are which, the vendor tells us, are smoked for about an hour, turn out to be deliciously moist and fragrant, as fine as any imported mackerel. He recommends cooking them with cili padi (small, fiery chilies like the ones pictured below), turmeric, and coconut milk - no garlic, no onion, no shallots. Just before serving, he advises, taste the dish for salt and tart it up with either buah asam fruit or leaves.

His pitch is convincing, and we buy up the last of his ikan, as well as some chilies and fruit and leaves, splitting the haul with a friend.

Back home, ingredients sit in the fridge for a couple of days till a craving for Malay food strikes. The fish requires some deboning but other than that the dish comes together quickly, a wonderful mix of smoke and sourness and coconuty sweetness.

Ikan Salai Lemak

Substitute any smoked fish but salmon (mackerel, trout) for the ikan salai, and asam keping, which should be available anywhere SE Asian ingredients are sold (lime juice is a last-ditch but probably workable substitute) for buah asam gelugor or daun asam gelugor. Since moving to Malaysia I've become a coconut milk snob - without a doubt, freshly pressed is best, and it's easily and quickly achieved with either unsweetened dessicated coconut or fresh or frozen grated coconut. But canned coconut milk will suffice.

Ingredient amounts are very fluid. Taste as you go. The end result should be neither overpoweringly spicy not overpoweringly sour, and the flavor or turmeric should be detectable. Expect the fish to fall apart -- the end result is a not-too-thick but quite rich shredded fish coconut 'stew', nice eaten with rice and balanced by a stir-fried green vegetable (belacan optional!).

350-450 grams (little less than a pound) ikan sembilang salai, or other smoked fish (not salmon)

5-cm piece of fresh turmeric, roughly chopped OR 1 tsp ground turmeric

a handful of fresh red chilies - hot or not, depending on your tolerance

about 2 cups coconut milk**

salt

a handful of daun asam gelugor OR a few segments of fresh buah gelugor OR a couple of asam keping slices OR lime juice to taste

1. Pull any bones from the fish. Leave skin on or remove it, as you like. Skin will make for a fattier and smokier dish.

2. In a mortar, pound the chilies and turmeric to a rough paste. OR, combine the chilies, turmeric, and about 1/4 cup coconut milk in a blender and roughly puree. Taste for hotness and add chilies, if desired.

3. Heat the coconut milk in a saucepan. Stir in the chile-turmeric mixture, bring the liquid to a boil, and immediately turn down to a low simmer. Let the mixture simmer to thicken a bit, about 5-10 mins.

4. Add the fish and allow the mixture to continue to simmer slowly while the fish breaks up, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes more.

5. Taste and adjust for salt. Add souring agent, half at a time, tasting as you go. (If using leaves, you'll need to let them just soften. If using lime juice, remove the mixture from the heat first.) When the dish has achieved a nice balance of rich coconuty sweetness and tartness, transfer to a bowl. Serve hot or at room temperature.

**To make abt 1 1/2 cups coconut milk from fresh coconut, place 2 cups fresh or frozen grated coconut into a blender with 1 1/4 cups very hot water. Blend for a couple of seconds, then empty into a cheesecloth-lined strainer placed over a bowl. Allow to cool for a few minutes before gathering the corners of the cloth and squeezing to extract as much liquid as possible milk.  (This is 'thick' coconut milk. 'Thin' coconut milk can be extracted by repeating the process with the squeezed coconut.)

For 1 1/2 cups coconut milk from dessicated coconut, place 2 cups coconut into a pan, add 2 1/2 cups water, and bring to a simmer. Pour the contents of the pan into a blender and follow instructions as above.

Comments

[Austin]

Dried asam keping are used in southern Thai cooking, and are known as som khaek. I believe they're related to mangosteen. I've never seen the fresh fruit though!

[RST]

I am pretty sure that cendawan kukur = Schizophyllum sp. (probably Schizophyllum commune). Here's something from Tom Volk about it:

http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/feb2000.html

I have sent a link to the above post to our friend Leon Shernoff of the journal "Mushroom" and have asked him to confirm this.

I was very surprised to see Schizophyllum commune in the great mushroom markets of Yunnan when I travelled through that province last month: this fungus is not considered of much gastronomic interest in my part of the world. But then dozens of the mushrooms prized by the Yunnanese are considered barely edible in the US/Europe. This is true for instance of the astonishing Sarcodon, which commands a price equal to that of the highest-grade matsutakes.

Would love it if you could dig up a recipe for cendawan kukur, perhaps for publication in Leon's magazine:

http://www.mushroomthejournal.com/index.html

Richard
[email protected]

[RST]

Austin,
Asam gelugor is indeed related to mangosteen, another Garcinia. It is also related to kokum, which is one of the distinctive souring agents in Malayalee (i.e. "Keralan") cooking (for more on kokum, see my old (circa 2002) posts on Chowhound and egullet). It is possible that som khaek comes from a diff variety of Garcinia than the "buah" pictured above, but I will investigate. Wild species of Garcinia are also used in Filipino country cooking, but these fruits are obscure, little-known and can be found only rarely in provincial markets.

Re: ikan salai

Related to your ikan keli are the enormous smoked tunas (called "bakas") which are specialties of the markets of Marawi City (Mindanao). A picture of these skewered "bakas" are in the Marawi City section of the Centro Escolar University "Philippine Markets" book.

Richard
[email protected]

[RST]

Love to see a mackerel can used as the standard of measurement in the first picture (of cendawan kukur). Likewise, in Mexican markets (such as those of Guerrero or Morelos state), a sardine can might be used to measure out "una sardina" of beans or squash seeds. In the Philippines, it might be "isang salmon" or "isang litse" (litse = leche, i.e. evaporated milk)...

Richard
[email protected]

[Jem]

By the way, the ikan sembilang is "keli bunga" and not ikan "keli Afrika" that you'll get in Minangkabau restaurants in KL. If you "salai" the ikan keli found in those restaurants, the meat wouldn't get to be firm as the ones you bought in Tanjong Ipoh.

And a suggestion; to make the coconut milk more "even" in the "gulai", break the milking process into two parts. The first round of milk squeezed is called the "kepala". This you should add to the "gulai" a few minutes before finishing. The second round of milk squeezed is the one that should be put in the initial cooking of the "gulai".

[Pepy]

Ikan sembilang salai is called ikan sale in Medan. I miss gulai ikan sale with daun ubi tumbuk.

I want that asam gelugur :D

[tanya]

i love your posts! you've made me seriously hungry. I'm filipino so living here in Seattle makes me crave for filipino food that I don't get to eat often. And seeing dishes from other asian countries makes me want to try them out all the more.

[RST]

Here's some information on one species of Garcinia used as souring agent in the cooking of Negros Occidental (and some parts of Panay):

http://www.seasite.niu.edu/TAGALog/Tagalog_Default_files/Philippine_Culture/Pagkaing%20Pilipino/philippine_fruits.htm

It's called batwan here, although Doreen Fernandez spells it batuan (ba-tu-an) which makes the etymology much more apparent (batu being the stone inside the fruit).

The picture of this Philippine Garcinia species reminded me of the lightly sourish Thai mayom fruit (sometimes called gooseberry) but it turned out that mayom is Phyllanthus, something completely different. Pickled mayom in jars are widely available in US Thai groceries. The Philippine name for ma yom is bangkiling or sometimes iba (and there's a picture of bangkiling in the Margarita Fores recipes section of the Philippine Markets book). Dried chum ruot (the Vietnamese name) is made into a lovely sweet drink called mut chum (widely available here in Chicago Vietnamese groceries).

Other fruits used by Southeast Asian for souring or simply enjoyed for their sourness include makok farang (Spondias, a hogplum, called trai coc in Vietnam), gratorn (santol), tamarind of course, the balimbing, kamias, mamuang dib of course (unripe mangoes) etc

Richard

[RST]

BTW the last Philippine fruit in the list I linked to above (the tiessa) is almost certainly related (if not identical) to the "dien taw" you posted about not too long
ago.

According to "Philippine Markets", bakas is a Maranao delicacy that is cooked with coconut milk, chayote leaves and spices (the text does not specify which spices). It is also flaked, mixed with eggs and palapa (ginger and chili) and formed into patties for deep-frying (the indigenization perhaps of Iberian codfish cakes?)

[Robyn]

Thanks all. Jem, I'm going to make a note in the post for pple to have a look at yr comment so they can prepare a more refined gulai than I gave directions for (I suppose my version is the lazy one). ;-)

Pepy - we're firming up dates for Medan ... and now I have another dish to look for, thanks to you.

RST - SE Asian souring agents. Worth pursuing as a topic on its own (I understand latest Saveur has sth on 'sour' in Asian food including sinigang - but lime is used). We came across the gooseberries in Thailand. Also makhaw -- yellowish small mango-shaped fruit used in N for souring.

Sulawesi is also known for smoked tuna. Reason enough to plan a trip, I think. ;-)

[RST]

Hey Robyn and Dave,

You think that we could get the international (read: "New York") food press buzzing over "souring agent" in 2007? I got the latest issue of the Batterberry's Food Arts a few days ago and was looking through (and rolling my eyes at) the year-end list of buzzwords and trends for 2006. I thought to myself: "sour power" should be in there! ;0)

Richard

[Marghi]

What a surprise to find my name on your blog....bangkiling is something I have only come across used in the cooking from my province of Negros Occidental...an aunt of mine who hails from Colombia, was thrilled to find them growing here in Manila whe she married my Filipino uncle in the 60's...I dont remeber what she called them but she says they eat it with salt in Colombia....iba on the other hand, is the Ilonggo name for kamias, and is an oval shaped souring fruit....batwan is also widely used in Negros four souring our sinigangs....what an informative blog this is

[Robyn]

Marghi - thanks for your informative comments! Welcome and please keep those comments coming, in other posts....

[RST]

Chef,

Thanks for your comments on bangkiling. The dish with the bangkiling in your section of the Philippines Markets book looks very beautiful. Is Pinamalhan nga isda kag bangkiling the only Illonggo dish that uses bangkiling, or are there other famous dishes? In fact, the whole spread on that page is very beautiful; the use of the nautilus-like cross-section of banana pith as garnish, as well as the curlicues of rolled lumpia skin surrounding the "naked" (hubad) lumpia of heart of palm being specially striking. I approve of the layer of oil floating on top of the various stews in the picture, and am glad that the food stylist did not think of skimming that off before photographing it!!!

Incidentally, cendawan kukur is almost certainly the same fungus as the prized kurakding AKA kurakdeng of the Bicol region (Philippines). (There is an account of photographer Neil Oshima searching for kurakding in the Dorotan/Besa book). At the time this was first posted, there was a flurry of backdoor emails discussing the exact nature of cendawan kukur, but somehow those notes were never transferred to this forum. Leon Shernoff noted in private email that Schizophyllum (the so-called split gill fungus) is also a prized mushroom among headhunters in Borneo (see the article "Mushroom-hunting with headhunters" by Lawrence Millman, Mushroom, Spring 2006). Apparently, Schizophyllum was served to the author of that article as a garnish for roasted python!!!!

Richard
Chicago

[Ari]

Negeri Sembilan is where most Minangkabau from West Sumatra settled in Malaysia, right? I wonder if they kept their Matrilineal system (because not like in Indonesia, under Malaysian law, they are simply "Malays").

[haba]

Hello there... nice picture taken at pasar sentul..
it brings old memories to me...
Im was born and grow up in Sentul.
Its exciting to know that people love sentul as much as I do.

[Blog Keren]

Salam kenal...i have write about my wife's cooking. please enjoy...

[Ekhwan]

Hi. I'm Ekhwan and I came across your blog as I was searching about my hometown, Tanjung Ipoh (Negeri Sembilan).

May I know your source for the picture of the Minang-inspired house? It is my grandma's and I'm happy to know that it is featured somewhere in the cyberspace.

Next time you're around, gimme a shout, ya? :)

[Robyn]

Hello Ekhwan -- it's a small world, thanks to the internet! The photo was taken by the photographer half of EatingAsia, David Hagerman. We live in Penang now, but at the time of our visit we lived in Kuala Lumpur. Have not been back to Ngeri Sembilan since, unfortunately.
If you're on Instagram you can follow David at @davehagerman. A mix of photos from Turkey, Malaysia and elsewhere in Asia.
Thanks for reading!
Best,
Robyn