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EatingTurkey

Try as we might we almost never manage to blog when we're on the road. When we're traveling -- and especially when we're traveling for work, as we are now -- it's hard to make the time. 

Then we return home to Malaysia, get caught up in the day-to-day .... and 85% of what we've eaten, experienced and photographed never sees the light of day. This is especially true for material from Turkey, where we've spent a lot of time in the last two and a half years. 

So we've started a tumblr called EatingTurkey. The idea is: a quick, manageable post -- one food-related photo and a short caption -- every day that we're on the road in Turkey. When we're not in-country, occasional posts from past trips.

Nothing changes here on EatingAsia. It's still our place for multi-photo, longer posts from Malaysia, the rest of Asia, Turkey and wherever else we happen to find ourselves.

We don't plan to announce EatingTurkey posts here. So if you'd like updates, please subscribe to ET's RSS feed. (We'll also throw up EatingTurkey posts on Twitter and on the EatingAsia Facebook page.)

We're almost a week into this trip, we have two more to go, and we'll be returning to Turkey a few more times in 2013. We'd love to take you along for the ride.

 

In Kota Bharu, A Friendly Hello and a Killer Soup

It rained buckets our first evening in Kota Bharu. We sat in our room sipping vodka we'd brought from Penang, watching the sky turn from mud to black and waiting for the rain to stop. It didn't. So around half past seven we grabbed umbrellas and went in search of dinner.

Big mistake.

Kota Bharu goes to bed at sunset. The streets were empty, the sidewalks rolled up. We splashed our way past Pasar Siti Kadijah to the night market and found it a shadow of its 2005 self. There were no crowds, no buzz. Nor was there anything tempting on offer at the few stalls weathering the storm.

So we headed back to the hotel, passing fast food joints belching out that nasty elixir of too-sweet baked goods, preservatives and grease that hangs over airport food courts. No thanks. We'd rather go hungry, and were reconciled to doing so until we turned onto Jalan Tok Hakim and saw, three blocks up, a promising glow.

'Hello my friend!" shouted the white taqiyah-capped proprietor as we stepped over the threshold of Kedai Kopi Din Tokyo.

Pak Din grinned at us as if we were long-lost friends, then pointed  to a place at his counter. "Come in, come in! What will you eat? What will you drink?"

Kedai Kopi Pak Din Tokyo is an indoor kuda, the Kelantanese term for old-fashioned coffee stalls with U-shaped counters and long wooden benches that must be mounted like a steed (kuda is Malay for horse). Inside the interior of the U sits a big boiler on legs where Pak Din makes good, strong Chinese kopitiam-style coffee and tea by pouring water through grounds-filled cotton socks suspended from metal rings. At the U's base is a long stainless steel trough over which he "pulls" tea by pouring it glass to glass, stirs quail eggs into hot ginger infusion and steeps eggs in boiling water before serving them in classic kopitiam green-and-white saucers.

Short and sturdily built, Pak Din is a blur taking orders, serving drinks and food, selling cigarettes, making change and shaking hands, all the while spewing friendly banter and communicating, via the occasional shout, with the kitchen at the back of his shop. If there's a break in the action he makes good use of it, wiping down counters, replenishing the water boiler from a red plastic bucket and keeping glasses -- always at the ready, stacked in a drainer over the trough -- warm with splashes of water from the boiler.

What would we eat? On a night like this, our backs wet and our pants soaked to our knees, something hot and comforting sounded about right. So thought Pak Din's patrons, most of whom were leaning over bowls of the house specialty: sup ekor (oxtail soup).

We ordered two bowls of soup and spooned it up slowly, marvelling at this concoction of meat, bones, tendons, cinnamon, star anise and nutmeg that tasted too good to be medicine yet instantly rendered us healthy, happy and certain that the world is a beautiful place. The hyper-distilled broth was deep, real deep, a gut-punch of meat essence. When we got to the bottom of our bowls it came as no surprise to find them stained sup ekor brown.

By now the rain had stopped but we lingered, reluctant to leave the comradely warmth of Pak Din's U. We ordered a hot milky teh tarik just for the enjoyment of watching his exuberant way with the pull, and then another because the first was so darned tasty, the tea strong and bitter enough to not be overwhelmed by sweetened condensed milk. We sauntered back to our room wired and satisfied.

We returned to Kedai Kopi Pak Din the next day and the next and the next, always around 7am for our caffeine fix and then once or twice again, for tea and a banana leaf-wrapped nasi lemak or a few Kelantanese kuih plucked from the trays and plates lined up along the inside edges of the counters. During the day Pak Din's staff set tables out front of the shop, and if there were no places at the U two were always found for us there.

On our last day in Kota Bharu, after a morning of too much food and before the long drive back to Penang, we stopped in to bid Pak Din farewell. Dave couldn't resist ordering a couple of soft-boiled eggs. When they arrived he followed the lead of other diners and blanketed them with black pepper from a shaker on the counter. (That black pepper is a Kelantanese touch, courtesy of the state's long-porous border with southern Thailand. In other parts of Malaysia it would be white).

We agreed that if we lived in Kota Bharu -- which would never, ever in a million years happen -- Kedai Kopi Pak Din would be a daily stop, if not for the sup ekor, the coffee, or the soft-boiled eggs then simply for the pure pleasure of Pak Din's hello.

Kedai Kopi Din Tokyo, 3945 Jalan Tok Hakim, downtown Kota Bharu, Kelantan; 012/959-0153.

Not Your Usual Grilled Chicken

Way back in July we spent some time in Kota Bharu, the capital city of Kelantan state, in the northeast of the peninsula, working on a feature story for Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia's September 2011 Food Issue.

Khota Baru or KB, as Malaysians call it, held many surprises for us. In what is often described as the country's most conservative Islamic state, we found its friendliest people -- warm and incredibly welcoming to outsiders. And there, in a city that most tourists breeze through on their way to the Perhentian islands, we ate as well as -- maybe even better than -- than we do in Penang. The food in Khota Baru and around is mind-bogglingly good.

We ate the best of many great meals in Wakaf Baru, a scruffy town about 20 minutes from downtown Kota Bharu by car. I opened my article with a paen to that dinner, which we'd never have had the pleasure of eating if not for the guidance of Kota Bharan hotel manager by day and food writer by night Addie Chang:

Waiting on dinner in Wakaf Baru, I sipped grassy sugar cane juice and watched bullets of rain bounce off a Singapore-bound train. When the last car had passed families popped out of vehicles parked on the other side of the tracks and made their way across to Restoran Kampung Kulim. The restaurant's dining area, a corrugated metal-shaded patch of concrete furnished with plastic tables and chairs, comes with a view of a Thai Buddhist wat, one of hundreds in this northeastern Malaysian state where 95% of the population is Malay and Muslim.

The family that owns and runs Kampung Kulim are Hokkien Siam, a term for descendents of marriages between immigrants from China’s Fujian province and Thailand. They speak a mixture of  Malay, Fujianese and Thai, a linguistic fusion that plays out on the plate in dishes incorporating coconut milk and chilies, bitter melon and taucu (fermented bean paste), curry paste and budu, a wincingly odiferous fermented fish condiment beloved in southern Thailand and along the northeastern Malaysian coast.

We ate a few dishes that night: hong bak, an intriguingly salty-sweet stew of pork belly made with star anise and copious shavings brown palm sugar, mustard leaves simply fried with sliced pork and dang hoon heh, a sparingly seasoned red coconut curry with whole prawns and vermicelli.

But the dish that stays with me 9 months later is siew gai or grilled chicken. I have eaten much grilled chicken in my time in southeast Asia. Restoran Kampung Kulim's is sublime, as in beyond-description sublime. I could have written 1,000 words about that siew gai alone. But then half my article would have been about chicken.

It's all in the technique, as Dave and I found when we walked out back of the restaurant to its open kitchen. There we found a lean, mean septuagenarian grilling machine laboring over a coconut husk-filled trench, using upturned, jerry-rigged cracker tins to infuse their birds with extra char.

After dropping a whole chicken -- unmarinated, lightly salted -- onto an upright "spit" set in the middle of the coconut husk embers (think beer can chicken with a rod replacing the can), the master griller drops a square cracker tin on top. As the fire rages around the can, creating enough heat to brown and crisp the chicken's skin, the coals beneath the chicken burn slow enough to cook its flesh without drying it out. Exces oil drips out of the chicken carcass during the cooking process. After just 20 minutes the bird is finished.

When the chickens are done the grill master passes them on to his colleague, who commands the chopping block. Before they're served he arranges the cleavered birds on a banana leaf round -- a nice touch that lends a bit of extra fragrance to the dish. 

These two gentleman have been working together at the restaurant for decades, they told us. (They're both also farmers.) Surprised at first to find themselves being photographed, they quickly relaxed and got into it.

Presumably everyone who eats at Restoran Kampung Kulim knows the story behind its spectacular grilled chicken, but I'm not sure how many diners make their way behind the scenes to thank these men for their brilliant work. After all they're just doing what they've been doing, day after day, for years.

For more from our time in Kota Bharu, visit Dave's photographic tour here.

Bone Soup and Kelantan Cuisine for T+L SEA

 

As some of you may already know, in early July we spent some time working in Kota Bharu, the capital of Malaysia's Kelantan state. Situated in the northeastern corner of peninsular Malaysia, Kelantan abuts southern Thailand. Its fusioninst cuisine shows Thai, Chinese (Hokkien/Fujianese, especially), and Indian influences. Most travelers breeze right through Kota Bharu on their way to and from the Perhentian Islands, completely unaware that they are missing out on one of the most interesting gastronomic scenes in Malaysia.

The fruits of our labor are now on the newstand, in the form of a feature article on Kelantan's wonderful (often overlooked by those heading to or coming from the Perhentians) cuisine for the September issue of Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia. (It's the annual Food Issue, and you can buy a digital copy here.View Dave's out-takes from 5 days of shooting on his photo blog Sky Blue Sky, here.)

After 5 days and nights of pretty solid eating we came away with so much more material than I could ever pack into 2,000 words. Deciding which dishes, eateries and experiences to include in the article, and what to leave out, was a laborious and somewhat painful process. On the bright side, we have this little space in which to share what didn't make it onto T+L's pages.

On our last full morning in Kota Bharu, on full stomachs but with our time in what had turned out to be a very delicious town coming to an end, we ate sup tulang (bone soup, literally) and grilled beef beneath a big plastic canopy near the river at a place called Lido Corner.

Sup tulang is one of those humble Malay dishes that visitors tend to overlook. It's not as visually seductive as a lovely hibiscus-colored curry or as intriquing as blue rice tossed with dry-fried coconut, chili, and a riot of herbs. Meat soup is what sup tulang is, basically. It has no noodles and boasts no textural bits, such as bean sprouts or cubes of deep-fried tofu. But this everyday dish can be a real stunner, a comforting yet exciting combination of warm spices and the depth of flavor that can be coaxed from tough Malaysian beef.

Lido Corner does sup tulang right. The broth is golden from turmeric and thin but every so slightly viscous from all those long-stewed bones. It hints at nutmeg, star anise, cloves, cardamom and no doubt several other spices that I wasn't able to pinpoint. Each bowl contains a hunk of chewy beef on the bone and a more tender boneless piece that, if you're lucky, will be attached to a silky length of tendon. Chinese celery floating on the surface of the soup lightens it up with a shot of freshness.

At Lido Corner we also made acquaintance with something new to us: daging bakar or Malay-style grilled beef. I'm not great at identifying cuts but this reminded me of flank steak -- distinctly striated to the point of being almost ropy, cut relatively thin. Tough Malaysian beef again, but tough beef that goes astonishingly tender over the coals. Charred and smoky, sliced into thin strips and eaten with a sweet-spicy chili sauce with enough fire to really balance its sugar, this daging bakar was an unexpectedly delicious find. It's something I'd return to Lido Corner for even if the sup tulang wasn't on offer.

As with most every place we ate at in Kelantan Lido Corner is an extremely friendly spot. Walk in, line up and place your order (there's ayam bakar, or grilled chicken, too), and carry your own plates to one of the egg yolk yellow tables. The drink of choice is sugar cane juice. Bean sprouts, served on the side of your plate of rice, are the only vegetable on offer. Think of it as a meal devoted to protein.

Lido Corner, a stone's throw from the Grand Riverview Hotel right on the river, downtown Kelantan. Open 12-6 every day. The grills are going non-stop -- follow your nose.

 

 

Kind of Blue

In Kelantan rice is all the time everywhere, in every imaginable form: pressed into squares, formed into logs and stuffed with fish, loose and coconut milk-scented, sweetened with smoky palm or white sugar and folded into banana leaves, steamed in tins, brightened with turmeric or sunset-hued curries, ground and made into thick wide noodles for the local version of laksa.

Our favorite Kelantanese rice dish by far is nasi kerabu, a salad-y concoction of purple-blue rice (tinted with a liquid made with the petals of the pea flower preferably, but often with food coloring) topped with kerisik (grated coconut, dry-fried), sambal (chili sauce), sweetened ground fish, budu (a super-fermented fish condiment that's a kitchen staple of southern Thailand, and is reminiscent of Thai bplaa raa) and a mixture of bean sprouts and fresh herbs sliced thin.

Nasi kerabu topped with kerepok (fish crackers) and accompanied by salted egg and fried fish

Dave and I have been enamored of nasi kerabu since we moved to Kuala Lumpur six years ago, where we made its acquaintance at a grotty street stall in front of the Chow Kit post office. So it was no hardship to find ourselves scouring Kota Bharu last week for superior versions.

We found one on our second-to-last morning in town -- and revisited it the next day -- at the lively wholesale morning market that sprawls over a pot-holed parking lot in the center of town, home also to the city's night market. There, mostly women vendors squat behind mounds of produce displayed in plastic bags or loose on tarps spread on the concrete.

At one edge of the market in front of a row of drinks shops, young studs preen as they work an enormous smoking grill covered with halved chickens; at the opposite side of the parking lot a fresh chicken seller singsongs come-ons into a megaphone. Porters push metal carts laden with tree trunk-sized bunches of petai (stink beans), hedge rows of water spinach (morning glory), and kilos upon kilos of lada hijau, the long pale green chilies that Kelantanese love to stuff with a sweet-savory mixture of ground fish and coconut.

In the midst of all this chaos two lively ladies serve a very fine nasi kerabu (pictured above), and an equally delicious nasi dagang (steamed unpolished rice enriched with coconut milk, eaten with fish or chicken curry), both cooked in their home kitchens while most of the city sleeps.

nasi dagang with hard-boiled egg and mackerel curry

From before dawn until they pack up around 10am the crowd around their stall is steady to bordering on overwhelming. It's a mix of housewives and office laborers, shoppers at the market and those passing through on the way to work. There's a wee bit of jostling -- especially when someone places an order for a dozen packets -- but it's all done in a good-natured Kelantanese sort of way.

We'd love to send you to their stall, and to Kota Baru's wonderfully lively wholesale market. But today was its last day. The market is being moved several kilometers outside of town to an "agro bazaar" on the side of a highway.

The relocation is no doubt a boon for the individuals contracted to construct the building and charged with collecting rent from the vendors. But as is so often the case, it's a hardship for the people for whom this conveniently located market is been central to daily life -- both as a source of income and a place to find good-quality produce at reasonable prices.

Should you be up for a trek outside of town, you can find these ladies' excellent nasi kerabu and nasi dagang at Taman Agro Business Negara, Highway Pasir Mas Salo. We think you'll find it well worth the effort.