EatingAsia

Alert: Sporadic Blogging Ahead

It's already a month since we made the jump, and our posting continues to be off-and-on. We're sorry about that, and we do appreciate you sticking with us while we continue to dig out from under what's turned out to be a bigger (but still good) transition than we envisioned.

Today we head up to Chiang Mai and around to report on what should be an extremely interesting cooking class and the two extremely talented individuals behind it, and to work on a couple of other projects. Our first ten days away are booked pretty solid (but it's gonna be fun work, of that we're sure), and then we're faced with the task of deciding what to do with seven additional days, before an assignment for Dave pulls us back to KL. We haven't wandered without a schedule since I can't remember when, and we're really looking forward to it.

In the meantime, posts may be sporadic. We've still got lots to share from Yogya, Penang, Vietnam, and KL. All in good time. We promise.

In Yogya, Apam for Breakfast

Should you wake up one morning in Yogyakarta afflicted with a fierce hunger, find your way to the Pasar Burung (bird market) in the Kraton, the walled city within a city that's home to the Sultan's palace. You're not there for the bird market, but the wet market next door, a small covered maze of stalls selling everything from melinjo flowers, leaves, and nuts to prepared dishes.

Wander the aisles until you find, at one far corner, this vendor, who's been making and selling her baked apam (rice flour cakes) here for over 35 years. These aren't just any apam, but lovely spongy, light-as-air apam made with coconut milk and lots of fresh grated coconut.

If you're a coconut lover you'll want to order four, five, or more. They're only lightly sweetened, so the flavor of the coconut meat sits right at the fore. The vendor sells so many that there are always hot ones to hand. Ask for yours to be wrapped in banana leaf rather than paper; the heat of your rice cake will draw out the leaf's fragrance.

 

It's quite an ingenious set-up she's got here. A specially indented cast-iron apam tray is suspended over a metal box filled with hot charcoal. She spoons in the apam batter, and then places a metal lid over the tray. The apam bake just as if they were in a conventional oven. 

 

Every once in a while she lift the oven lid to turn the apam, making sure that both sides crisp up and color golden brown. While the inside of the apam stays tender and fluffy the outside develops a very thin, lightly crunchy and chewy crust.

 

Did I mention that she makes two versions? One with egg, and one without. You'll want to try both, of course, for purposes of comparison. But the egg version possesses a certain extra something that pretty much makes it the coconut pancake of my dreams.

Rice flour cakes - are made all over Southeast and South Asia. Some are steamed, some are baked. Some are soft, some are crumbly, some are gummy. Some are eaten plain, others embellished with palm sugar. Some are plain, some flavored with pandan or coconut, or colored with ubi.

These Jogja baked apam are - so far - our favorite.

Apam vendor, wet market next to Pasar Burung, Kraton, Yogyakarta. 630am-noonish.

An Edible Yogyakarta Tradition

We will return to Penang, but for now we've got something to share from Yogyakarta, where we spent much of last week.

Jogja, as Indonesians call the city, is known for a few dishes, but its most famous is probably gudeg,  young jackfruit stewed with palm sugar. Gudeg is eaten with (clockwise from 9 o'clock, above) rice, opor ayam (a sort of chicken curry), a hard-boiled egg, spicy buffalo skin, and tofu (in the photo the gudeg is nestled between the eggs and the orange-ish buffalo skin). Gudeg may not be the prettiest dish around, but it's awfully tasty. It's also quite sweet - we found that a nip of fresh chili taken with each spoonful lends a nice savory-spicy balance.

One afternoon in Jogja we went on a food crawl with Adzan Tri Budiman, a chef and Sumatra native who's been living and cooking in the city for the last decade. After guiding us through three eye-opening versions of soto (there's soto, and then there's good soto - more on that later) he led us to gudeg institution Gudeg Yogya Yu Djum where, after a few bites of the specialty, we cried 'uncle'. The original plan was to visit a couple more gudeg outlets for comparison purposes, but our bellies said 'no way'. So instead we did something even better - we headed across town to Ibu Yu Djum's main kitchen to find out what makes her gudeg so delicious.

Seventy-four-year-old Ibu Yu Djum (Ibu is an Indonesian honorific, similar to 'Mrs.') started her gudeg business when she was just 15, in the same tiny Jalan Wijilan shop where we tasted her specialty. While she no longer oversees the day-to-day, she still pops into the kitchen now and again. Her business has been handed over to family members like daughter Hariady Tri Widodo (above, with her own daughter) who, we're glad to report, intend to keep the Yud Djum gudeg tradition alive. 

Yu Djum's gudeg and its accompaniments are prepared behind the eatery's second shop in kitchens that wouldn't have changed much since Ibu started her business decades ago. Everything is cooked over wood.

The staggering volume of ingredients that passes through these kitchens on a daily basis give a sense of Yu Djum's popularity: 200 kilos each of young jackfruit and female ayam kampung ('village' chicken, allowed to range freely) a day, minimum, and 2,000 duck eggs (10,000 on weekends and public holidays).

 

It's a time-intensive process, preparing gudeg. In the 'chicken kitchen' candlenut, garlic, shallots, salt, and coconut palm sugar are ground together to make a bumbu, or spice paste, which is added to coconut milk and cooked long and slow until it reduces to a thick brown sludge.

 

Meanwhile, whole chickens are boiled for an hour

 

and then the coconut-y bumbu is spooned on top. The chicken and bumbu are left to simmer until most of the liquid has evaporated and all that's left are tender bone-in birds thickly coated in a rich, sweet coconut sauce.

Next door, in the 'gudeg kitchen' (above), shredded young jackfruit is placed in a huge pot with more coconut palm sugar and salt - nothing else -

and left to cook over low heat for a full day. It's drained in a rattan basket for a few hours (on the shelf, to the right in the kitchen photo), and then stir-fried for about thirty minutes. The end result is caramelized young jackfruit that's infused with a double smokiness, from the palm sugar and the wood fire.

 

The duck eggs are cooked in a similar fashion - boiled, then peeled and placed in a pot with palm sugar and salt and simmered for a day. To make the buffalo skin salt, black pepper, palm sugar (are you detecting a pattern here?), and fresh chilies are ground together to make a paste, which is stir-fried. After the paste is cooked dried buffalo skin is added and left to soften and soak up the flavor of the spices. 

'There's no secret to gudeg. The ingredients are simple and everyone knows them,' Ibu's daughter told us as she showed us Yudjum's kitchens. 'The flavor comes from the hands of the cook.' The hands in Yu Djum's kitchens are very talented indeed.

Gudeg Yu Djum, No. 31 Jalan Wijilan (walking distance to the Keraton), Yogyakarta. Lesehan seating (at low tables, seated on the floor) - choose your gudeg accompaniments from the display at the front of the restaurant.

Mee First

 

We didn't include this photo in our portrait round-up of Penang, but it seems appropriate to begin at the beginning.

Just the thought of Penang makes our stomachs rumble, so even before we boarded our plane in KL Dave and I were weighing first-bite options. By the time our (late) flight arrived we had missed lunch, but we were too early for dinner. A plate of mee goreng split between the two seemed like just the thing to tide us over. 

I don't suppose I'm qualified to pronounce Hameed's mee goreng the Best In Penang, but it is pretty darned fabulous, certainly one of the best versions we've ever had in Malaysia.

 

Hameed is a serious dude - by which I mean he's totally focused on his fry pan. No time for chit-chat or posed photos here. He has to maintain his concentration because the orders come in thick and fast at his stall in Kota Selera, the food court next to Georgetown's Fort Cornwallis. Hameed is in perpetual motion, flying from stove to plating counter and back again a half dozen times a minute.

In addition to mee goreng (your choice of fried beehoon, thick yellow mee, or wide rice koayteow), he also serves mee rebus.

He starts with a perfectly cooked bed of noodles - tomatoey with a not-too-harsh but quite robust creeping chili burn, slight sweetness balanced by a bit of bitter char flavor, well-coated with sauce but not gloppy - and tops them with crispy caramelized shallot and chopped scallion greens. 

   

Then he adds his piece de resistance: a blood red tangle of squid stewed in a thick sauce made from ground dried chilies that he roasts himself. The flavor of the sauced squid echoes that of the noodles but is deeper, richer. The two together are a match made in heaven. Or hell, I suppose, if chili's not your thing (Even if it isn't, don't be deterred - this mee goren'gs slow burn is nothing like the sharp bite of a super-spicy Thai dish).

 

We must have watched at least twenty-five plates of mee goreng fly by our table before we were served our own, a torture justifed when we finally dug in.

 

Hameed Mee Sotong, Kota Selera next to Fort Cornwallis, 12-8pm (closed Sunday). Be sure to specify mee sotong (indicate which noodle you'd like) or mee rebus sotong to get your pile of squid.

Portraits of Penang

                 Father and son koay chiap makers, Lebuh Kimberley

With each visit to Penang we like it more.

There's the food, of course - undoubtedly Malaysia's best. And the stunning prewar architectural gems of Georgetown. But there's more to it than that. Penang's got soul. It's got a living, breathing street culture. It's laid-back. It's friendly. Unlike another UNESCO World Heritage location we recently visited, it's not just a collection of historical sites and buildings that for all intents and purposes have pretty much been stripped of local life and now exist primarily for the enjoyment of tourists. In fact, its amazing how well Penang - and Georgetown - have maintained their identity in the face of rising tourist numbers over the years. We hope they continue to do so.

               Waiter, Kedai Makanan Veloo Vilas, Lebuh Penang

This week we're moving house, and Dave put together this collection of images to help me maintain my Penang state of mind long enough to finish an article about what makes the place so special. There's a story to go with most of the photos. We promise to share once the dust settles.

                               Fish seller, Pulau Tikus market

                          Tan Choon Teong, laksa maker, Balik Pulau

Lau Joo Choon, heh chee and lor bak maker, Kheng Pin Coffeeshop, Jalan Penang

                             Fruit selling sisters, Lebuh Cintra

                                   Tosai master, Veloo Vilas

                        Soy sauce makers, Pulau Tikus market

             Hokkien opera performer, Yap Kongsi, Lebuh Armenian

                               Stir-fry master, Lebuh Carnavon

                              Pigeon feeders, Lebuh Queen

                  Ikan bakar king, Song River Restaurant, Gurney Road

                           Hainan chicken vendors, Kheng Pin

                 Roast meats seller, Sky Restaurant, Chulia Street

                                  Silversmith, Balik Pulau

                               Artist Simon Tan on Penang Hill

                           Fish seller, Campbell Street Market

A Great Start to 2009

On the morning of January 2nd, a Friday, we celebrated our new status as people-who-set-their-own-schedules by taking breakfast at a place that we intend to visit more regularly in 2009: Yut Kee.

I don't have much to add to a post I wrote almost three years ago about this Kuala Lumpur kopitiam institution, other than that I can't think of a better way to kick off Dave's first day at his new 'job' than by enjoying excellent fish congee, coffee, and kaya toast in the company of friends. It's establishments like Yut Kee, and people like its proprietors Jack Lee and his son Mervyn, that remind us why we've come to love KL so much.

This afternoon we're off to another Malaysian place we love - Penang. Four days of investigative eating ahead. Stay tuned. 

Happy New Year

                                           Raise a glass to 2009

Yesterday was Dave's last day at work. Not this work, or that work, but the other work, the office work, the work he's been slogging away at for a couple of decades. From today he'll no longer be managing a staff, just himself and a couple of cameras.

Scary, but exciting. A big change, but change is good.

What does this mean for EatingAsia? Not much, initially. We're in the throes of annoyingly time-consuming transition-related tasks. But once we've settled into a new routine we may tinker. I'd like to write more ingredient-focused posts. The photographer will be lurking in the kitchen more often, so you might see a few more recipes here too. And more Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia-focused posts, now that we'll again have time to explore our own backyard. Then there's that site redesign we mentioned last September.

We'll be traveling more (in the very near term, Penang and Jogjakarta) but, free now of time limits imposed by the fact that one of us has a full-time other job, we'll be traveling differently. Some of the best stories come when you've got time to just hang out, observe, become part of the wallpaper - something we haven't been able to do in so long. Now we will, at least sometimes.

We're looking to get started on some larger projects too, some related to food, others not. We'll keep you updated. The latter you'll be able to follow on Dave's photography blog, which should be up and running in a few weeks.

It seems right, today, to thank you, for visiting EatingAsia once and then coming back. We've so appreciated your support and your comments. What a difference three and a half years makes!

New year, new life. Best wishes for 2009 - we hope it's a great year for you.