EatingAsia

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.

Live in the Klang Valley? Love Innards?

Wanna talk (or email) about it? I'm working on a story on innard amour and would like to hear from Malaysian (or Malaysia-resident) innard fans. Schedules permitting, we might even be able to discuss your love of offal over a bowl or plate of your favorite.

Drop me an email or leave a comment below. Thanks.

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. 

Kuala Lumpur Finally Gets Its Due...

... in the May issue of Bon Appetit, in which writer Brett Martin pays tribute to our fine city's fantabulous street food and describes me as an 'enthusiastic eater'.

Here's to truth in journalism.

Tap Lessons

Sago isn't the only palm that's mined for food in the Philippines. Nipa (Nypa fruticans) - and other palm varieties, including coconut and aren - are tapped to produce suka (vinegar), a Filipino kitchen staple, mildly alcoholic tuba, and more alcoholic laksoy. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia this same sap is boiled to make sugar. Such may also have been the case in the Philippines before the Spanish introduced cane sugar cultivation.

You'll often hear it said that coconut, aren, and nipa vinegar (and gula Melaka) are made from the sap of palm trees. That isn't quite the case - what's tapped are not the trunks of these trees but the stalks of the trees' flowers. Among the three varieties the nipa palm is unusual in that its stalk is cut and the sap harvested only after the flower has bloomed.

Nipa palms grow in muddy areas near brackish water. Unlike coconut palms, they're low-to-the-ground; their trunks actually grow horizontally beneath the surface of the earth, with branches jutting up in clumps. This makes harvesting the tuba (sap) relatively easy as the tapper doesn't have to scale a ladder to ready the flower stalk and collect sap.

Above, a resident of Barangay Banza in Mindanao's Butuan City prepares a flower stalk for tapping, by bending it down and away from the trunk of the palm, rubbing it with mud, and massaging it. The idea is to loosen the fibers inside the stalk enough to get the sap flowing without pulverizing them; this he'll do a couple times a day for a couple of weeks.

To determine whether or not the stalk is ready to be cut, he hacks away a bit of the flower to get at one of the white crispy nuggets hiding inside each 'petal'. These 'nuts', by the way, are also harvested and eaten as is or candied to make a nata de coco-like treat sometimes called 'palm seeds' and sold in jars of sugar syrup. They show up in halo-halo, and, in Vietnam, in a similar ice treat called che.

The stalk is ready for cutting when the flower's nuts are sweet (they also taste a little coconuty). The flower is taken off about six inches from where it attaches to the stalk and, once again, mud is rubbed along its length to draw the sap out (this is the last time the stalk will be mud-rubbed).

If the tapper has accurately gauged the readiness of the stalk then sap should start flowing right away.

It's captured in a bamboo tube that's attached to the end of the stalk.

The tuba is collected twice a day. Its sweet stickiness gums up the end of the stalk, so after each collection the tapper slices off about a half centimter or so to keep the sap flowing.

One stalk will produce tuba for about thirty days, by which time it will have been sliced, bit by bit, almost to the trunk.

Tuba begins to ferment almost as soon as it drops into the bamboo tube (sugar makers employ a variety of means to hinder fermentation). After it's collected it's added to a big wooden barrel. If left for three days it becomes bahal, the lightly sour, ever-so-slightly alcoholic beyond-tuba-but-not-quite-vinegar that Butuan City Market's kinilaw master Leo uses to dress his fresh fish.

After thirty days the tuba becomes suka. Our host in Butuan City adds extra flavor to his suka in the form of fresh chilies, onion, garlic, ginger, and lots of black pepper. This elixir we greedily spooned over everything from rice to grilled fish to fresh seaweed.

Or, fermented tuba can be made into laksoy, a clear alcoholic beverage. This still, set by the river and shaded by nipa thatch (yet another use for the palm - roofing and walling), is fueled by wood and turns twenty gallons of tuba into about one gallon of laksoy. The stills here in Banza are made of lawaan wood or stainless steel. Wood makes for a much more fragrant laksoy, we're told.

Inside the still, the tuba is heated to boiling. The steam that rises condenses on the still's concave metal cap and then drips through a tube, out and into a waiting jug.

The first round results in a lightly cloudy beverage. Laksoy isn't crystal clear - and doesn't earn the designation 'first-class' - until it's been distilled a second time. We found first-class laksoy to be more palatable than expected, with a wee bit of a floral scent - definately not rot-gut 'white lightning'. Some locals let raisins and/or ripe jackfruit macerate in the laksoy before cracking the bottle. If we had a jug of laksoy we'd treat it as we sometimes do rum: add mango, pineapple, lime rind, and a bit of vanilla bean and stow it away to flavor for thirty days.

In the barangay stills are a communal asset, supporting on average twenty families each. One lapad (flat, 'pocket-sized' 375 ml bottle) of laksoy fetches 10 pesos (about 25 US cents).

It may not be the tree of life, but the nipa palm is integral to the livelihood of this barangay, at least. The captain tells us that seventy percent of Banza's population is involved in the production of tuba, suka, and/or laksoy, as well as the harvesting of nipa 'nuts'.

The Ephemeral Puff

He arrived in a cloud of (exhaust) smoke, four yellow plastic trays of curry puffs strapped to the back of his motorcycle.

'Puffs?' he asked, but we brushed him off. Yeah, yeah, curry puffs - a dime a dozen in this country. Besides, we were too focused on our clay pot of spicy gut soup to be distracted by mere pastry.

Then he laid a tray on the table and lifted its clear plastic tarp to reveal the biggest, fattest, most beautiful puffs we'd ever seen. We reconsidered. We bought two.

After finishing our soup and mopping our brows we pondered the puffs - exquisite works of pastry art they were, disks of layer upon layer of brittle golden dough folded over and sealed with neat pleats, their backsides a whorl of concentric circles.

With the merest of pressure shards of light, croissant-like layers fell away to reveal more filling than one usually finds in three puffs put together. Every inch of the dough pocket was packed with spicy curried potatoes so savory I'd swear they were mixed with meat (but he said they were not).

We wanted more. We stood up and looked around. But he was gone.

The beauty and the agony of the itinerant vendor, bearing untold treasures but perhaps - probably - never to be seen again.

For the Klang Valley's finest potato curry puff, try your luck in the vicinity of this restaurant in Seri Kembangan sometime between, say, 1 and 4pm (we didn't check our watches). One and a half ringgit per puff. Yes, relatively expensive for this common treat, but well worth it given the size, heft, and overall quality of this extraordinary puff.