EatingAsia

A Holiday Find

We've been living in Malaysia approaching four and a half years now and, while we certainly haven't gobbled up everything the country has to offer, we are pretty familiar with its culinary landscape. It's not often that we come across an unfamiliar edible. When we do, it's always cause for celebration, but especially so in this case.

Most of our sojourns in George Town (there have been quite a few of them these last six months) involve at least one trip to Chow Rasta Market -- usually on our last day, to buy a bulging bag of purslane to take back to our kitchen in Kuala Lumpur (why is this lovely green vegetable not sold in KL? or perhaps it is, and we just don't know where).

By now we know Chow Rasta's lanes and shops and hawkers well. But about ten days ago we came across something new: an elderly vendor making an unusual type of kuih ketayap, on the spot.

 

How could we have missed her before? It turns out she's only there on Saturdays, public holidays, and school holidays -- when her daughter-in-law is free to help with the rolling, wrapping, and selling.

This lady's ketayap differ from the standard version -- the type that's sold all over Malaysia -- in several ways.

There's no pandan juice in the batter, so the kuih's wrapper is white instead of green. And it's made only of rice flour and water (so we're told, anyway), so the wrapper's texture is sticky-chewy rather the usual flapjackish chewy-spongy.

The filling is made not of shredded coconut cooked with gula Melaka (coconut palm sugar) and a pandan leaf, but of shredded coconut and a sprinkle of chopped peanuts mixed with white cane sugar.

 

There is something quite special about a kuih ketayap hot off the griddle. This vendor's always are; she can only cook two wrappers at one time and customers tend to purchase in bulk. 

So you place your order. The daughter-in-law jots it down on a plastic bag with a magic marker and tells you to go and find something else to do for thirty minutes. You return and claim your bag of too-hot-to-hold ketyap, blow on them furiously to cool them down, and take a bite.

The lightly oily wrapper is pleasantly soft and gummy, and its warmth heightens the aroma of the roasted peanuts and the flavor of the fresh coconut, and melts some of the sugar. This ketayap's not too sweet, so two -- three, even -- aren't at all out of the question. 

Daughter-in-law tells us that mom-in-law learned to make ketayap this way from her husband, and that he began selling at Chow Rasta Market over 40 years ago. She thinks she's the only Penang vendor of this sort of kuih ketayap still at it. Whether or not she's right about that I don't know. But I do know this all-business ketayap vendor is a treasure.

Here's to serendipitous finds. I think you can guess where we'll be this Saturday morning.

Chinese kuih ketayap, Chow Rasta Market, George Town, Penang. Saturdays, public holidays, school holidays from 7:30 am until sold out (usually by 10:30am or 11am). 60 sen each.

(The pandan version are sold freshly made at night, from a stall at George Town's McAllister Road night market, in front of the Sunway Hotel.)

I'm Dreaming of ....

If that title led you to expect a sticky-sweet reminiscence of snowy Stateside holiday seasons past, a bit of wistful Christmas nostalgia from an American passing Christmas in a decidedly un-Christmasy land, well -- I'm sorry, but you've come to the wrong place. Living where we do for as long as we have has pretty much cured us of any thought of conjuring a holiday equivalent to what we'd be observing if we were in the States.

We last attempted to 'do' Christmas in Asia in 1996, when we lived in Shanghai. We erected a fake tree in a corner of our living room and paid an ungodly sum for a turkey. The weather, at least, should have cooperated, but the day dawned hazy (not unusual -- the Shanghai skyline never once enjoyed the backdrop of a clear blue sky when we lived there) and dishearteningly warm.

Dave had taken the day off work but the rest of the city was its usual weekday busy-bee self; it wasn't Christmas carols but the sounds of honking and horking that drifted up to our apartment from the street below. It didn't feel like any sort of holiday, let alone the second-biggest holiday of the year (for me, anyway ... Thanksgiving has always felt more important than Christmas).

After rising late and exchanging gifts we wandered the Bund for a while before ending up at one of the city's two new malls, where we celebrated the holiday with the purchase of an air purifier for our bedroom -- not to cleanse the air, but to drown out the 24-hours-a-day racket from the construction site behind our building.

That evening I made my mother's turkey dressing (which is absolutely the world's best, I'm sure -- and why shouldn't it be, when the ingredient list includes two whole sticks of butter?), jammed some in the bird and put the rest in a covered casserole, fired up the oven, and set the timer. But our cooker -- which we hadn't used much up to that point -- hadn't been properly vented when it was installed, and we discovered that the only way to keep the gas flame going was to prop the door open with the handle of a wooden spoon.

Not the most efficient way to bake a 12-pound piece of protein, as I discovered six hours later when I pulled the turkey -- golden in some spots, pale in others, dry at the breast but disturbingly pink at the bone -- out. Mom's stuffing was barely tepid (thank goodness for the casserole -- we reheated it for lunch the next day).

And so we gave up -- on the bird and on pretending to have a real Christmas in places that just aren't real Christmas-y.

 

But that doesn't mean we close our eyes to the season altogether.

For us the whole gift-ing aspect of Christmas lost its glow years ago. Dave and I both detest shopping, you see, even if (especially if?) it's for each other. And one of us really, really detests wrapping gifts. So we put the money we'd spend on stuff that neither of us needs into two things we enjoy together: travel and/or food.

This year, but for a brief sojourn in George Town, we'll be at home, so over the next week and a half I'll be cooking a few extravagant meals as a nod to the Season and its Excesses. Our 'extravagant' meals will incorporate ingredients more dear than is the norm -- no caviar in this house folks, but perhaps some fresh mussels or a nice cut of American beef -- and rather more rich and bad-for-you than is our habit.

Kicking off this year's Ten (on-and-off) Days of Gluttony: Philippine ulang sa gata, huge prawns cooked in coconut milk.

Two years ago we spent Christmas in Pampanga province, the Philippines, in the old family home of a Filipino friend. By my request, this is what we ate for lunch on Christmas Eve day. It's a dish that for me epitomizes an oft-overlooked characteristic of many Philippine dishes: beautiful ingredients, with minimal embellishments, that star in simple preparations.

For her ulang sa gata Lucia, our host's uber-talented cook, stews freshwater prawns averaging about 6 inches (15 centimeters) in length in lightly seasoned coconut milk until the liquid is reduced to almost nothing but a shallow pool of coconut-scented oil ruddy from the fat in the heads of the shellfish. 

As the prawns cook the coconut milk seeps underneath their shells, flavoring the meat. The real reward comes when you separate the prawn's head from its body: out spill delicate coconut milk-and-prawn-fat curds.

And if that's not unctuous enough to qualify as 'of the Season' I don't know what is.

 

Ulang sa Gata (Philippine Prawns Cooked in Coconut Milk)

This dish is dead simple, requiring not that many ingredients and little technique. But what you must have to make it work is fresh coconut milk (easily made with fresh OR FROZEN grated coconut, the latter available in many Thai groceries) -- or at least a very high-quality coconut cream, such as the one Andrea Nguyen writes about here -- and big, fatty shell-on prawns. Because the shellfish are cooked well past the 'barely-there' point frozen prawns would work; many Asian markets carry prawns like those in the photo above in the freezer case. Female crabs would substitute well or -- if you really want to take this dish over the top -- use a lobster or two instead of prawns (not that you may need more coconut milk).

White rice -- to sop up those prawny coconut curds -- is really all the accompaniment you need, but if you'd like to add a vegetable and want to keep with the Philippine theme try pinakbet, stewed mixed vegetables with bagoong or shrimp paste (substitute Thai shrimp paste if you can't obtain bagoong). Or perhaps follow with an orange, red onion, and butter lettuce salad -- something light and citrusy to chase the richness of the dish.

Note: do NOT stir the dish after the prawns are added, so that the red oil from the fat in the shellfish can rise to the surface of the liquid; this tells you the prawns are done. Chilies are left whole so that they don't add heat to the dish as they cook -- diners seeking spiciness can cut the chilies on their plate and eat with the prawn and rice.

How many this dish serves really depends on the size of the generosity of the host and the size of the prawns. Prepare to get dirty -- for these prawns hands are the utensil of choice.

About 2.6 lbs (approx 1.2 kilos) large shell-on prawns -- say 6 or 7 big ones

10 cloves garlic

1 red shallot, thinly sliced

1 small red onion, thinly sliced

5-6 mild long green chilies (cayenne), washed but stems -- or at least caps -- left on

1 3/4 cup thick coconut milk or coconut milk mixed with coconut cream

freshly ground black pepper

scant 1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 Tbsp patis (Philippine fish sauce - substitute Thai or Vietnamese - a lighter sauce is preferred), or more to taste

1/2 Tbsp white sugar

1 Tbsp white vinegar

1. Pound the garlic cloves to rough shreds in a mortar, or very roughly slice.
2. Heat oil in medium-sized heavy pot (eg. Le Creuset) over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and stir constantly until it starts to brown and crisp, about 2-3 mins.
3. Add onions and shallot, stir once or twice, then add coconut milk.
4. Add fish sauce, two very generous pinches of black pepper, sugar, and vinegar. DO NOT STIR.
5. Bring the coconut milk to a boil. Taste for seasoning and add a splash more fish sauce if necessary.
6. When the entire surface of the coconut milk is covered with bubbles lay the prawns into the pot side-by-side, and then in a second layer if necessary. Lay the chilies on top. Don't worry if the prawns are not completely submerged in coconut milk, as long as the milk is touching the top layer of prawns. DO NOT STIR THE PRAWNS under.
7. Bring the liquid to a brisk simmer and cover the pan. After about 8 minutes remove the cover and baste the shrimp with the coconut milk, but do not stir.
8. Continue to simmer the shrimp with the cover off, basting occasionally as the liquid reduces. When a reddish oil appears on the surface of the coconut milk the prawns are done. There should be a little thickened liquid in the bottom of the pot.
9. Serve the prawns -- and chilies, if desired -- with rice.

Piong Ayam

 

In August Dave and I did something we do all too rarely -- we boarded a plane without an assignment, traveled not for work but because there was a place that we'd wanted to travel to for long time.

The thing about freelancing -- well, there are many things about freelancing and most of them are good, very good. But one of the less good things about it -- especially in these times -- is that the need to feed the bank account often overshadows other needs that, while not particularly lucrative, are nonetheless important. For us: to travel, engage, and process without a particular goal and with no deadline.

We're highly pragmatic folks at heart, and in all likelihood we would have put Toraja off for another year -- again. But a passing mention to a friend in Jakarta of our long-time desire to see this region in the middle of Sulawesi led to his friend, who opened her home to us. How could we say 'no'? We couldn't.

We went, and I'm so glad we had that extra push to do so.

When we returned to Kuala Lumpur we were immediately sucked back into the swirl of work and deadlines, as well as preparations for an extended visit to the States. I never really had a chance to digest Toraja properly. Now I find it hard to believe it's been only 4 months since we were there. It seems years ago.

This morning I found some of Dave's images on a stick drive. I got out my notebook and paged through it, astonished to realize that there are so many details from that trip that I've already forgotten. Like this dish, this lovely, ambrosial piong ayam that we ate for dinner with new friends, at a long wooden table in a beautiful treehouse of a home perched in the hills of Batutumonga. 

Piong ayam is a Torajaan specialty. Piong describes the genre -- meat cooked inside a length of bamboo over an open fire -- and ayam means 'chicken'. It's a special-occasion dish (piong babi, made with pork, is a staple at Torajaan funeral ceremonies). And it's a specialty of Ibu, mother-in-law of the lady of the house in which we stayed.

Ibu is a force to be reckoned with. That's not an eye-witness statement, but more of a deduction based on observation. She's quiet and friendly yet gives off an unmistakeable aura of strength. When I think of her the word 'tall' comes to mind, yet she's at least a head shorter than I. But her presence is big. Ibu is neither loud nor showy, but when she's in a room she is unmistakeably 'there'.

We struggled to communicate, me with my limited Indonesian and Ibu with her limited English. But we share a love of food and cooking, and that always smooths the way.

 

Piong is like Vietnamese bo kho, Italian ragu, American southwestern chili con carne -- there's no one recipe. Every cook has his or her own way with the dish, his or her own 'secret' to making the best version in the world. I asked Ibu for hers. She declined to be specific -- "Just the right combination of ingredients and eat it hot." But she did let us watch.

First the chicken (three, in this case) is very lightly cooked over an open flame to remove those last pesky pin feathers and lend a bit of flavor. This was done in the kitchen of a small house above the main house. As the chicken browned it gave off a scent that drew certain members of the household to a spot just outside the door.

Ibu adds banana stem to her piong ayam-- a combination that recalls binanihan, a chicken-and-banana stem stew we learned how to make last year on Mindanao, in the southern Philippines (which is not all that far from Sulawesi, in fact).

The freshly harvested stem is sliced

and squeezed to break it down. (Unlike the banana stem on Mindanao this one seemed not to need 'de-fibering' before it could be cooked.)

The other ingredients for Ibu's piong ayam include:

 

pounded lemongrass stalks, sliced red shallots, sliced ginger, sliced garlic, chopped Chinese celery leaves and stem, whole red chilies, and salt. 

After the chicken is chopped (bones in) and mixed thoroughly with the banana stem -- only the hands will do for this amount of food -- the rest of the ingredients are added one by one.

 

Like most Asian cooks Ibu doesn't consult a recipe or use any sort of measuring device. She looks and she tastes.

 

Yes, Ibu tasted the mix 5 or 6 times before she was satisfied with the amount of salt and seasonings -- something you certainly wouldn't see done in a Western kitchen when raw chicken is part of the dish.

She grabbed the teeniest bit of the mixture between her thumb and forefinger, placed it on her tongue, rolled it around, and spit it out.

 

After the flavor of the mixture was to her liking Ibu and our host's helper got down to the business of stuffing the lengths of bamboo in which it would be cooked.

Some Torajaans wrap their piong in banana leaf before stuffing it into the bamboo. I asked about this technique, which it seemed would make it easier to remove the chicken from the bamboo after it was cooked. Ibu wrinkled her nose. I'm not entirely certain, but she may also have uttered the word "lazy".

Stuffing the bamboo by hand is the only way to go here.

The open end of the bamboo is secured with the folded tough outer 'rings' of the banana trunk that encircled the edible inner stem.

 

While the chicken and other ingredients were prepped and mixed a fire was prepared. Once filled the bamboo tubes were placed over the fire at an angle, and turned often to ensure even cooking. 

An advantage of the non-airtight banana stem 'stopper' is that it lets the dish tell you when it's done: meat juices bubbling out the top of the tube signal that the chicken is thoroughly cooked. That takes about an hour over the fire.

Probably the most difficult part of making piong ayam is getting the chicken out of the bamboo when it's done.

 

 

Over the fire the bamboo dries out and becomes hard as, well, wood. First it has to be stripped of its charred outer layers. Then it must be hacked open with a cleaver -- or a saw.

 

The end justifies the effort, a hundredfold.

The chicken was incredibly moist and juicy, infused with the subtle fragrance of lemongrass and the sharp bite of the celery leaves. Shallot and garlic, softened and lightly browned where they'd touched the  bamboo, gave a bit of sweetness, and every third or second mouthful held a shot of heat from a softened chili. Amazingly, the banana stem retained some crunch.

All of the ingredients came together in the bamboo's embrace of smoky, vegetal 'woodiness'.

 

This wasn't the only bit of genius to come from the kitchen of Ibu those days in Batutumonga, but it was the star of our stay there. We ate piong ayam that night, the next morning, and again before we left the following day. Our regret is having to leave more leftovers behind when we departed.

Misty Water-Colored Memories: A Pork Sandwich Like No Other

Full frontal: the RoliRoti porchetta sandwich

It's painful to write this knowing that it will probably be a year until I'm again face-to-face with this sandwich. 

This stack of slow-cooked love is, as any pork-loving, Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market-going San Franciscan knows, Thomas Odermatt's epic porchetta sandwich, served at farmer's markets in various locations around the Bay Area from a mini fleet of awesome rotisserie-equipped trucks.

Rotisserie master Thomas Odermatt serves up the goods

We first posted on Thomas' porchetta two and a half years ago. His business has grown since then, but we're so happy to report that quality has most certainly not suffered as a result. Eating something you love just once a year can be risky; so often reality doesn't live up to memory. Not so in this case.

It's all about attention to detail. When Thomas builds sandwiches he makes sure that every single one gets a share of the burnished crackling that encases each pork roast.

He slices the seasoned, opulently marbled meat thickly -- just fine, because it's so tender you could cut it with a spoon. Then, wasting not an ounce of porky essence, he sops up the meat juices that have bled onto his wooden cutting board with the soft inside of the bun. (It's an excellent mini white loaf, by the way: lots of wheaty flavor, a crackly crust, and sturdy enough to stand up to a hefty pile of protein.)

He smears a generous blob of the housemade condiment on hand -- fennel jam this day, I think -- onto the meat, and then adds a handful of shrubbery, which also varies by the day.

I once relished a RoliRoti porchetta sandwich garnished with delicate chervil; on this occasion it was arugula, a perfect peppery counterpoint to the almost obscenely -- but never, ever regretfully -- fatty meat and sweetish jam.

Do I even need to add that this is one insanely delicious mouthful?

 

We visited Thomas' truck, appropriately, on the way to Napa to attend CIA's Street Food Conference and arrived -- foolishly -- close to lunch hour. The queue was much too long, and we had to hit the road in order to make it up there in time for the conference's opening.

We reconciled ourselves to forgoing the sandwich, but not a 'hello' to Thomas -- who wouldn't hear of us leaving empty-handed. We stood to the side of the truck as he prepared a sandwich for us then and there.

I'm sure a few folks in line were casting the evil eye our way, and if you were one of them and are reading this I do apologize (and I empathize; I hate line jumpers). But to be honest my guilt pangs disappeared at first bite.

Another satisfied RoliRoti customer

After finishing we stopped back at the truck to say 'good-bye'. In lieu of a handshake Thomas offered a piece of crackling. But only one.

I don't hold that against Thomas. Because I'm pretty sure that piece of crackling was meant to be shared, Dave.

(Thanks Thomas -- we'd love to take you up on your invitation next time we're in town! Many thanks also to Jen Maiser for helping us to coordinate this rendezvous.)

RoliRoti also serves rotisserie chicken and potatoes basted in the chicken's dripping fat, as well as -- be still my beating heart - lamb. But we haven't tried either. That darned porchetta won't let us. All week, all over the Bay Area -- contact them to find out what's on the menu when and where.

It's All About the (Goat) Girls

If you ever find yourself feeling ignored, unwanted, unloved, under-appreciated ... quick, get thee to a goat farm. I swear, no adulation or adoration in the world can match the intensity of that radiating from a gaggle of girl goats.

We got a dose of it a little over a year ago when we visited New Mexico's South Mountain Dairy. We met owners Donna Lockridge and Marge Peterson at the Saturday Santa Fe Farmer's Market, where they sell goat cheese made from milk sourced from their own goats. We asked if we could visit and watch the process.

What we didn't bargain for was falling in love with the 'girls'.

Unfortunately our timing was off; by the time we arrived much of the cheesemaking was finished. (The drive to Edgewood however, made up for that -- you never tire of looking at those vast expanses of turquoise New Mexico sky and a horizon of nothingness when you live in an Asian metropolis).

When we arrived Donna was cutting curds for chevre, which she would ladle into sieves and leave to drain for twenty-four hours (The whey collected in the process is given to feed a neighbor's pigs; in return, each year Donna and Marge get a whole butchered hog.)

We followed her around as she inspected her 'blooming rind' cheeses -- a brie and Mallapie Mist (above, similar to Humboldt Fog), and painted wax onto a cheese unique to South Mountain Dairy, a Dutch havarti-style semi-soft round called Chevarti (the wax inhibits mold and keeps the cheese moist).

We sampled cabre al vino, a semi-hard cheese soaked in red wine for 48 hours (below, and delicious), sqeaky-fresh goat cheese curds ("an accident," according to Donna, and a tasty one at that), and South Mountain's creamy, mild, and not-too-salty feta, which is handrubbed with salt instead of brined in salt solution.

Somewhere along the line Donna confessed to an aversion to strong-flavored cheeses -- no brie or Mallapie Mist for her.

It's obvious that Donna truly enjoys the cheesemaking, and the being-an-artisan parts of the business, like knowing by touch, rather than measuring PH level, that the Chevarti is dry enough to take the wax without absorbing it.

But she also made it clear where this business' priorities lay: "'We're doing the dairy just so we can keep the animals."

The title of this post, in fact, is also South Mountain Dairy's motto: "It's all about the girls."

The dairy, when we visited, had fifty 'girls' producing about 60 gallons of milk a day. South Mountain started in 2005 with 13, and Donna figured they'd be up to 64 by this year ("That's capacity -- determined by how much our equipment can handle," she told us.)

Like those cheese curds, the dairy was a bit of an accident.

Ten or so years ago Donna and Marge bought a couple of male goats as weed-eaters; later, they decided to raise pack goats.

They bought a couple does to build a herd, bred them, and bottle-fed the kids (they'd learned early in that the best pack goats are fed by bottle).

One problem -- the does produced too much milk for the babies to consume. What to do with the rest? Well -- make cheese, of course. But the milk made more cheese than Donna and Marge could eat, or give away to friends. So... years later, here they are.

After our tour of the product, we went out to meet the milk producers.

"Happy goats make happy cheese," says Donna. If judged by sheer conviviality South Mountain's goats must surely be among the happiest in the world.

As soon as we walked through the gate we were surrounded by curious beady-eyed beings. They teemed, their desire to be near us palpable, but not threatening. Exuding a sort of calm urgency, the girls got as close as they could, touching our hands and legs and arms, nudging but not butting, positioning their heads under our palms so we'd have no choice but to touch them.

 

"They're very sociable," Donna had told us. If anything that was an understatement. The girls didn't want anything from us but to be near us. I've never felt so popular in my life. When it was time to leave we had to tear ourselves away.

It was a pretty wondrous encounter, and we understood completely how owning two lawn-mowing goats could lead to a goat farm.

Not even Donna's sweet hound Butter could match the girls for loveableness.

South Mountain Dairy, 48 Katzima Road, Edgewood NM. 505/280-5210. Donna and Marge sell their cheeses at various farmer's markets around the state. NOTE: In the spring, when farm's bursting with cute little babies, they open up for tours. One dollar buys you a bottle and a chance to feed a baby goat.

An Indonesian Coconut Refresher

A squeeze of lime to balance the sweetness of young coconut juice and palm sugar syrup

Kelapa muda (young coconut) juice is a common beverage in Southeast Asia. It usually comes in the form of a whole coconut with its crown whacked off and straw stuck in.

After a several-hour crawl through the Sunday market in Rantepao, in Sulawesi's Toraja region, we were thrilled to come across this mobile cart serving up an Indonesian variation of the popular refresher. Even better - it incorporates our all-time favorite Southeast Asian sweetener, palm sugar.

 

The technique's pretty simple: drain the juice of a young coconut into a glass (this bore a cigarette logo) and scrape the fruit's flesh in after it.

Follow with a bit of smoky palm sugar syrup made from the sap of immature buds of the aren palm, and then balance the sweetness with a generous squeeze of lime juice.

Stir and enjoy.

 

(We weren't the only happy customers.)

This treat's two in one, both beverage and snack -- fruit juice and soft, sweet flesh.

To start your weekend with an appetite-rousing slide show of more street food from around the region hop over here.

Oh - and have a good one!

Not A Substitute

In the United States soy milk is more often than not viewed as a substitute for 'real' milk, much in the same way that tofu, or bean curd, is subjected to all manner of indignities in the name of rendering it as desirable as a piece of meat. 

This can be attributed to one fact, I think: most Americans have never tasted quality soy milk, or eaten carefully prepared (ie. small-batch or homemade) bean curd -- that is, soy milk and tofu the way they make them  in Taiwan.

Japan's been praised for its way with the little white bean, and rightly so. But Taiwan does pretty well in that department too -- call it just one of many dots on the island's culinary landscape that's long been overlooked by Asian food fans.

One of the joys of time spent in Taiwan is partaking of the morning doujiang (soy milk) ritual. From the wee hours you can hardly walk a block in Taipei without stumbling upon a mobile doujiang vendor or a hole-in-the-wall with a few tables where you can sip in relative comfort.

Truly fresh, well-made soy milk is the perfect am beverage, rich enough to satisfy an empty belly, light enough not to weigh you down, refreshing if taken over ice, supremely comforting if drunk warm. It's not something to serve as a substitute for the 'real thing' in your latte but something to be savored in its own right ... accompanied, perhaps, by a you tiao, or deep-fried cruller, to dip (or not).

 

We drank liters of doujiang in Taipei last May and June, but in deference to our ballooning waistlines generally left the doughy accompaniments alone. Until our last morning.

We'd paid a visit to Fong Da -- the old coffee shop featured in our Taiwan coffee article -- to thank and bid farewell to its elderly owner and his wife and son, and were strolling somewhat aimlessly (and sadly -- it was our last morning, after all) in its surrounding district of Ximending.

Having foregone our usual doujiang in favor of a last siphon brew at Fong Da we kept our eyes out for possibilities, but without much hope. It was already around 9; most doujiang and youtiao sellers begin gearing down around then, as their last customers head off to work.

 

 

Then we caught a faint whiff of frying dough. And lo and behold there, kitty corner from where we stood, was a doujiang bolthole fronted by a cruller maker still assembling and frying his product.

As luck would have it, it was by far the best doujiang of the trip. Served in old-fashioned heavy ceramic bowls, the soy milk was only lightly sweetened, allowing its pleasantly mellow beaniness to come through.

The crullers were simply fantastic -- they couldn't have been any fresher, really, and their dough contained a hint of salt that accentuated its hearty wheatiness. Almost as good were the scallion rolls, chewy sesame-topped baked buns with a swirl of softened, slightly caramelized scallions inside.

 

We drank and ate at one of the shop's two tables, set up in front right by the curb. We watched as a big black Mercedes pulled up; its tank top-wearing, tough-guy driver popped out carrying a white poodle, then got back behind the steering wheel with a bag bulging crullers.

We didn't wish for a donut instead of our you tiao, or glasses of moo instead of bowls of doujiang. What we did wish -- mightily -- was that we didn't have to catch a plane back home in five hours.

Note: For more Taipei street food favorites pick up a copy of this month's Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, which includes our article on five Taipei must-eat street treats.

Doujiang shop, no. 74 Neijiang Street, Ximending District (almost at the corner of Kunming Street). A bowl of doujiang and a you tiao will set you back all of 28 NTD (about 70 US cents).

Now About Those Noodles ...

Fresh noodles for khao soi at Suthasinee

I'd wager that ninety-eight percent of the travelers to Chiang Mai who try khao soi fall hard, very hard for the dish.

What's not to love? You've got chewy noodles, curry, coconut milk. Comforting soup with a crispy deep-fried noodle garnish. Crunchy pickles to add or not. A choice of chicken, beef, or pork. All of the flavors that define Thai food for so many -- coconuty sweetness, salty pickle, spicy nam prik paow, tartness from a squeeze of lime juice -- in one bowl. 

The thing is, within the pantheon of northern Thai dishes khao soi is an anomoly. The region's cooler climate and relatively high elevations aren't particularly coconut palm-friendly. Yes, at Chiang Mai's Muang Mai market you can watch hatchet-wielding women hack away at coconut tree trunks till they're reduced to nothing but tender half meter-long hearts that will find their way into local kitchens. But those trunks are trucked up from Sukhothai.

I wondered how it is that a dish with such a lengthy history (khao soi's been around for at least sixty years) could depend on an ingredient -- coconut milk -- that can't have been in bountiful supply when the dish first appeared on the scene. And I wondered if I could uncover new information about khao soi's origins.

Khao soi is generally attributed to the Cin Haw, Chinese Muslim traders from Yunnan who plied a trade route through what is now northern Burma, Thailand, and Laos in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Some settled outside of Yunnan along the way -- a fair number chose in Chiang Mai, where they established a village (Baan Haw - baan means 'village' in Thai) and built a mosque near the Ping River. (If you're in Chiang Mai on a Friday head to the morning market across the street from the mosque for a selection of excellent street foods.)

It's been speculated that Cin Haw brought with them from Burma ohn-no-kyaukswe, a coconut milk-based noodle soup, and adapted it to the local taste for heat by adding copious amounts of chili.

Yet etymology suggests Shan origins -- there is an identically-named (khao soi simply means 'rice, cut') dish in the Shan repertoire that incorporates rice instead of egg noodles and is coconut milk free.

I'd heard somewhere that Chiang Mai khao soi was originally made with rice rather than egg noodles.

Might Cin Haw have brought the Shan dish with them to Chiang Mai, where some enterprising cook (Cin Haw or northern Thai) substituted egg for rice noodles and added coconut milk, chilies, and a heap of dried spices to the mix?

In Chiang Mai we hooked up with our friend Wilaiwan; a Chiang Mai native, she's a medical researcher by day and oral historian and avid culinary explorer in her off hours. She took to our quest like a fish to water, leading us first to venerated Khao Soi Lamduan, where we downed several bowls of khao soi (I am partial to the shop's non-halal version, topped with fabulously tender deep-fried cubes of pork) and sat down for a chat with Naree Mahadilok. Khun Naree learned to make the dish from her mother-in-law, who's own mother founded Lamduan as an outdoor stall in a longan garden across the Ping River from its current location.

As Khun Naree understands it, her grandmother-in-law learned to make khao soi when she was about 14 years old by observing a Cin Haw khao soi vendor. (This would have been during World War II, Khun Naree says.)

The Cin Haw vendor used rice noodles that he tinted yellow with turmeric, but she substituted egg noodles. Lamduan's khao soi is made with 'Indian' curry powder that was once blended and ground in-house but is now purchased outside.

Unfortunately Khun Naree couldn't tell us is whether or not the original Lamduan recipe included coconut milk and chilies and spices or not.

Two generations of noodle makers at Khao Soi Islam

We moved on to Khao Soi Islam, a halal khao soi institution located near the Baan Haw mosque founded all those years ago by Cin Haw traders. There we spoke with Wanida Lertpunwilaikhun (right, above), whose mother and father opened the shop 'forty or fifty' years ago

Khun Wanida's father, who would be 101 years old if he were alive today, was a Cin Haw from Kunming. She'd never really thought much about the dish's origins, she admits, and supposes it might have been brought from Burma ... or not.

The family has always made their own noodles for their khao soi, and they've used egg noodles from the start.

"I think my father and mother learned how to make the dish from another seller ... maybe my aunt, who sold khao soi before they did."

Khao Soi Islam's khao soi, topped with a spoonful of Chinese-style chili oil

(An aside: the chili sauce that accompanies Khao Soi Islam's version is not the sweet-hot nam prik paow served by most other khao soi purveyors, but Chinese-style la jiao, sandy-textured dried chili flakes in oil.)

At Khun Wanida's suggestion we moved on -- after another bowl of khao soi -- to an older Muslim khao soi restaurant called Suthasinee. And here the story got a bit more interesting.

Suthasinee's husband-and-wife owners

Sawat Phettongkam and his wife (above) inherited Suthasinee from her father, who in turn took over the  business from his own father. Khun Sawat's grandfather-in-law was a Yunnanese Muslim who, as a young man, lived for a while in Burma (in the vicinity of Mae Sae, thinks Khun Sawat), and then migrated to Thailand, staying a while in Chiang Rai before finally settling in Chiang Mai.

"When he was alive I asked him all about his life," Khun Sawat told us. "I was interested, I wanted to know everything."

This is what Khun Sawat's grandfather-in-law told him:

His migration from Burma to Thailand was on foot, and he carried with him a food he'd learned to make in Burma: bpa-bpa soi: rice that was ground, cooked, pressed into a cake, and dried. From the cake he could cut strips or 'noodles' to add to soup that he made from foraged plants and wild game.

After he arrived in Chiang Mai he began selling clear soup with bpa-bpa soi from a shoulder pole. His son (Khun Sawat's father-in-law) set up a shop to sell the specialty. After the son married a local girl they experimented with chilies and spice, at some point added coconut milk to the soup, and switched from rice noodles to egg noodles, which they made themselves. (Suthasinee's khao soi still features housemade noodles.)

"I'm not claiming Suthasinee was the first" to add coconut milk and spices to khao soi, says Khun Sawat. He has no idea which shop or seller was the first. He's also not sure who was the first to substitute egg noodles for rice.

 

Suthasinee's beef khao soi

Coincidentally, later that week we found ourselves at Chiang Mai's Wat Pa Pao, a Shan Burmese temple opposite the north side of the Old City's wall.

 

It was a festival day and several stalls were dishing up Shan specialties, including kao soi -- which consists of a delicious coconut-free tomato and pork-based sauce dished over pea shoots and rice noodles

 

 

that are shaved, or cut, from a big block of ground, cooked, and pressed rice (they're fantastic by the way, very chewy and bursting with rice flavor).

 

Is this what Khun Phettongkam's grandfather-in-law might have carried with him from Burma? Might Lamduan's original owner have learned to make khao soi from him? Or from his son?

When I returned home I contacted the Shan Cultural Association in London, hoping to ring a bell with bpa-bpa soi. How nicely things would have fallen into place if a Shan, any Shan, were familiar with the term.

No luck (in fact no one I talked to anywhere in northern Thailand following our investigations in Chiang Mai had heard of bpa-bpa soi), though a representative of the SCA did describe a noodle-making process identical to that which Khun Pettongkam described, the process that results in the pressed rice block pictured above.

Some sources suggest that coconut milk was an ingredient in khao soi before chilies and other dried spices were. Wilaiwan led us to a 70-year-old Chiang Mai resident called Hia Jiw (hia being a Chinese word for 'brother') who said that he used to eat a version of khao soi sold at Lam Yai market when he was 15 years old; it consisted of egg noodles in a thin, ginger-and-coconut milk broth with just a little chili oil, but no dried spices.

So maybe the coconut milk came first. Nai Haang Jan Baan, an eighty-year-old Indian-Thai spice merchant in Chiang Mai, relayed that as far as he knows none of his customers were purchasing dried spices for khao soi until 30 or so years ago. (There are, of course, other sources for dried spices in Chiang Mai.)

Some credit a certain Lung Pan (lung means 'uncle') with being the first to add coconut milk to the dish. He who took over a Chiang Mai khao soi business from a Cin Haw during World War II and set up a shop called Kao Soi Wat Chang Kong, which is unfortunately no more. This suggests that at least one early Cin Haw version was coconut milk-free.

The original owner of Lamduan claims to have added coconut milk to please the palates of the Bangkok-native government officials stationed in Chiang Mai, also suggesting that her original version was coconut milk-free. But we'll probably never know if she was the first.

The bottom line?

After several days on the ground connecting with a lot of folks with stories to tell, we're still not sure how Chiang Ma'si khao soi got to be Chiang Mai-style khao soi. But it was a fun, if frustrating, pursuit.