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As easy as A-B-C

Monday, February 6th, 2012

 

There was once upon in my life when I had an obsession with cookbooks… I bought cookbook after cookbook because there simply wasn’t a cookbook I didn’t think was uninteresting. I had a list of cookbooks I absolutely must have, and at least a cookbook I was reading cover to cover. There were cookbooks everywhere at home; beside the bed, under the bed, in the living room, in the kitchen, in the spare rooms (I have more than one), and even in my mother’s house in Penang.

And I was of course too busy reading cookbooks to actually cook from them… although there were some recipes I wouldn’t have tried if not for those cookbooks.  I went through a Claudia Roden phase, so I cooked Middle Eastern for awhile, and a  Madhur Jaffrey phase when I tried quite a few lamb recipes. I am now re-discovering Donna Hay, an interest rekindled not by her cookbook but her iPad apps… but that’s another story – suffice to say my favourite dessert recipe is her lemon meringue pie.

But for all my cookbooks and bouts of experimentation, the dish I cook most often is A-B-C soup.  I don’t know why it’s called A-B-C soup – it’s what my mother and aunts call it – but just maybe, it’s because it’s as easy as A-B-C to make. Sometimes it’s the only dish my daughter is fed with, and sometimes she is fed that weekend after weekend – especially when I am too guilt-ridden to feed her fast food and hawker food and too busy (ok, lazy) to cook anything more elaborate. The best thing about A-B-C soup is it’s not too shabby – it is wholesome and nutritious, and tastes good. And if the kid refuses to eat the potatoes and carrot, you can always mash them up, add some minced pork and onions, and make cutlets.

There really isn’t a recipe to this soup; it’s basically boiling together meat, potatoes and carrots. I like to use pork spare ribs or chicken, and I also usually add a big onion, two tomatoes and half a teaspoon of black/white peppercorns. I usually use about 500g pork ribs or half a chicken, with 2-3 potatoes and a big carrot. I then boil everything with about half a pot of water for about an hour or so – bring the water to a boil, and then add the ingredients. Then, turn down the heat and let it simmer slowly till the meat is tender, and the potatoes and carrots soft. Serve hot with rice, and a saucer of light soy sauce and cut chilli padi for the meat.

 

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Easiest Chicken Rice

Sunday, January 15th, 2012

I didn’t think my friend Niki Cheong was all that serious about cooking, but he has been making the one bowl rice I posted eons ago regularly  (someone has been coming to me and repeating the title of my last post… takes nagging to a whole new level… she needs to nag me to loftier goals).

And when Niki told me his “one-bowl rice” is in the microwave cooking even as we were on whatsapp, I promised to post another recipe – out of guilt and being flattered someone tried my recipe…but of course I got distracted by zombies on my roof (seriously googling and planting), cats above my ceiling (seriously freaking me out) and a bitch on my tail (seriously pathetic). I have also been watching Walking Dead, not the best viewing choice with cats scraping and clawing away on the ceiling but wth…

Anyway, I am up-ping the notch and Niki’s Nikella-ness in the kitchen… with a recipe for chicken rice. It’s the easiest chicken rice (and doesn’t taste too bad) ever – just bring a big pot of water to the boil and then drop a whole/half chicken in with a knob of ginger and a stalk of spring onion. Scoop away the grit that floats to the top, and then turn the heat all the way low, cover and leave it be for half an hour or so. The chicken should be cooked by then. Don’t be tempted to turn up the fire because it should be cooked slowly and gently.

Remove the chicken, and drain. Leave aside. When it has cooled down, chop and serve with rice.

Use the remaining stock (in place of water) to cook the rice, to make the accompanying condiment, and boil down further to serve as soup.

So, boiling chicken and cooking rice are easy enough.

What makes this a good meal is the condiment, and it’s not your usual chilli and garlic sauce. I’ll post the recipe for chilli and garlic sauce but I have only ever made it by instincts and lots of tasting and correcting – that’s basically a handful of deseeded red chillies, 5-6 cloves of garlic, sugar (lots), rice vinegar and a pinch of salt.

I like this chicken rice with a condiment of spring onions and ginger, fragranced with sesame oil. I cook chicken this way, or steam it, just so I can have lots of this condiment. It’s pretty common in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but not so much in Malaysia where we prefer chilli sauce.

I make this condiment without a recipe too. But here are the steps, adjust the amount of young ginger and spring onions accordingly.

 

RECIPE

SPRING ONION AND GINGER CONDIMENT

Ingredients

2 big knobs of young ginger, about 1ocm,  - scrape off the skin, and julienne

2-3 stalks of spring onion, sliced

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 tablespoon sesame oil

2-3 tablespoon chicken stock, from boiling the chicken

Mix the ginger, spring onion, sugar and salt. Heat the sesame oil over low heat till aromatic – it burns easily and quickly, so don’t leave it for even a second.

Pour the hot sesame oil over the mixture, and stir.

Check the seasoning, and add the chicken stock.

 

 

 

 

 

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Char Keow Teow

Sunday, July 3rd, 2011

 

THE recent weeks haven’t been so good in the kitchen for me. I haven’t had much success trying out new recipes, especially in baking bread. I wanted to try to cook pad thai, just so I could have a noodle dish that I can add condiments to, the way they do in Thailand. I finally found the dried rice noodles used in pad thai and followed a recipe I found online. It turned out tasty, but I am obviously an amateur at stir-frying noodles cos I ended up massacring the strands. By the time I was done manhandling them, the noodles were in bits…. don’t ask why or how!!!

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I wanted to try making the pad thai again. The dried pad thai rice noodles is actually like keow teow; just not so oily and smooth. Looking at them, I just decided at the spur of the moment that I’d rather eat char keow teow. When I go back to Penang, I hardly eat char keow teow from the hawker stalls because my mother fries good ones for us. She’d fry the char keow teow for us individually, and we will stand next to her and specify how we want ours – mine used to be with lots of chilli, barely cooked cockles, lots of beansprouts and no chives. I like chives these days, so I’d ask for lots of chives too if I were to order char keow teow from my mother. And since she was not around, I had to fry my own.

So, I went and bought the beansprouts, chives and the most important ingredient of all, the cockles. People are wary of eating cockles these days, but we used to have so much of it when were kids. We’d go to the provision shop and buy a bag. Then we’d come home and blanch it quickly in boiling water. We’d all gather around and dig in while they were still hot, deftly cracking open the shells and dipping the bloody cockles in chilli sauce… such simple pleasures.

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Anyway, I cooked my char keow teow the way I remember watching my mother do it thousands of times. I prepared the condiment of dark soy sauce, thin soy sauce, sugar and white pepper. First, I fried the chopped garlic, then I added the prawns and then the blended chilli. When it’s fragrant, I threw in the noodles and stir it around (gently), and added the condiment. Then, I cracked an egg in the middle and stir the noodles around it. Then, I added the beansprout and chives, and finally the cockles.

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It doesn’t taste like my mother’s char keow teow – the noodles is wrong, for one. And it didn’t have the wok hei, don’t think the wok was hot enough. But it didn’t taste too bad, and I think I prefer my version than the ones sold at the hawker stalls manned by foreign workers. Of course, I am totally biased. But I won’t give a recipe because because it’s not exactly what char keow teow should be.

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Taipei Treats

Monday, May 30th, 2011

OUR short holiday in Taipei was kind of impromptu, although my sisters and I have been talking about going on a trip together for ages. We wanted an easy trip, and Taipei turned out to be an incredibly easy and uncomplicated city. It is not a flashy big city, but they’ve got all the important things right – an efficient public transportation system, clean streets and toilets, modern shopping malls and shopping streets, nice restaurants and good street food.

Most importantly, the Taiwanese are so polite and friendly. It’s easy to get help with directions, and service in the airport, bus and MRT station, restaurants and shops are pleasant and efficient. It’s just such a refreshing change to be able to ride in taxis without worrying about exorbitant fares and dishonest drivers.

So, even though it rained the entire three days we were in Taipei, it wasn’t a dampener at all. I wasn’t able to do much photography, but the rain didn’t stop us from shopping, eating, doing some sightseeing, and…. more eating. You must like Chinese food, and be somewhat Chinese-literate – I think – to be able to enjoy Taipei’s street grubs. The cuisine here is closer to Hokkien food than the more well-known and easier to accept Cantonese offerings that Hong Kong is famous for.

We had dinner at Taipei’s world renowned Din Tai Fung on our first night. We had to wait an hour for a table, but it wasn’t too bad because the restaurant was at the basement of the Sogo departmental store. But apart from that, we ate mostly at street stalls and small restaurants. Often, we just walked into restaurants that looked well patronised.

I like the simple lunch we had at this small restaurant on a side street near this building everyone goes to buy fabric for crafts. They serve zha jiang mien – noodles with minced meat and fermented bean paste – with side dishes. We basically looked at the tables around us and pointed at dishes that appealed to use – like the tender braised pork cheeks at the top of the page. That dish whtted our appetite for more, and we ordered liver, intestines, pickled cucumber, lettuce in garlic oil and even braised hard-boiled eggs. Wish we had room for the house specialty of ikan bilis, and pickled eggplants.

In between the meals and snacks, we shopped some, visited the National Palace Museum and joined the cheerful crowd at the weekend flower market. Shopping isn’t all that exciting in Taipei, but I do love the mall that sells fabric for craft and interiors. My sisters read Taiwanese DIY magazines, and it was one of the reasons they wanted to go to Taipei. Prices of the cotton fabric is much cheaper – about RM16/metre compared to RM29/metre that we get here and online. They follow Japanese trends, so the designs are diffrent from American cotton.

And like in most Asian cities, Taipei’s streets stay busy well into the wee hours. We stayed close to Ximending – where Taipei’s young people hang out, and found ourselves there every evening, rain or not. There are loads of shops and restaurants here. We had supper here – mien xian or starchy vermicelli one evening, duck noodles with roast goose another evening and fish ball noodles on the last night.

Most people recommend the night markets for street snack food, but they were not my favourite eating haunts. The only snack food I like is Taiwanese sausage, but I can pass on the rest – even the famous fried boneless chicken at the Shilin night market. The Taiwanese’ definition of night market is different from ours – the Shilin night market for instance turned out to be a huge indoor food court. There is a huge variety of food here, but it is also crowded and the ventilation not that great.

But even when the food stalls are congregated outdoors on the street, we won’t do night markets on our future trips because we simply couldn’t stand the smell of stinky tofu. It seemed like there was a stinky tofu stall every few yards, and my youngest sister and I have an aversion to its nauseating stink.

I like the food court in Taipei’s landmark skyscraper 101. There is a huge selection, and prices are much cheaper than in KL. I doubt the food here is the best in Taipei, but it’s got a nice atmosphere. My favourite here is the bubble milk tea from the Coca stall. I love the bubble milk tea in Taipei – the pearls’ texture is firm and yet chewy, and the milk tea is so fragrant. It’s what I crave for most when I got home, and luckily a friend bought me bubble milk tea from Gongcha – a very fancy one with melon tea and black jelly on top of the pearls.

We were also taken by western food set here – they have all the works; pasta, meat, fries, pie and even a fried egg. We didn’t try the western food at 101, but we ate a steak served with pasta at the Shilin night market. The steak wasn’t too bad, and it was a generous cut for only RM15.

My favourite meal this trip though was trotters stewed till the meat is tender and the fat melts in the mouth. It is very popular; bloggers recommend this restaurant and they actually have containers and boxes for takeaways. If you buy more than a certain amount, they’d even deliver to the hotel. We also tried pig’s brain soup which was way better than the steamed version my grandma used to feed me before exams until I wised up. This was too decadent a meal, and I suspect all that fat is lodged permanently round my thickening waist.

I love my trip to Taipei, and I knew I had eaten well because I didn’t miss Malaysian food at all. And when I was back, I actually craved for zha jiang mien. I first learnt to make zha jiang mien when we did a story on Datuk Seri Ng Yen Yen’s favourite Chinese New Year treat. Her mother is from Beijing, and zha jiang mien is also a staple there as well as in Korea. She specifically told me that the best yellow bean paste to use is the Angel brand. In Datuk Seri Ng’s family, they serve zha jiang mien with the minced meat sauce, julienned cucumber and carrots, blanched bean sprouts, chives and … raw cloves of garlic.

I serve two versions – with and without vegetables. My daughter wouldn’t touch the cucumbers and carrots, and would only have hers with meat sauce. Getting her to eat anything remotely green is a battle I lose, but I figured she gets her vitamins from fruits anyway. The recipe is in our column in today’s StarTwo.

My trip also got me curious to try the recipe for the Taiwanese classic dish three-cup chicken. I cooked it in a claypot because that’s what most people recommend.

RECIPE

Three-cup Chicken

1/2 cup sesame oil
2 inches young ginger, sliced
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
3 chicken thigh and drumsticks, cut into medium pieces
1/2 cup Chinese wine
1/2 cup light soya sauce
a pinch of sugar
5-6 stalks Thai basil

In a claypot, heat up the sesame oil. Fry the ginger and garlic till fragrant.
Then add the chicken, and fry over high heat for about 5 minutes.
Add the Chinese wine soya sauce and sugar.
Leave to simmer gently till the chicken is cooked.
Then add the Thai basil

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Chinese New Year – Day 3 and 4

Saturday, March 5th, 2011

OURS is not a big family… both my parents have two sisters each, and they are our closest relatives. We are a typical Chinese family; no one professes their love for each other, or hug, or kiss. But there is no mistaking the deep affection we have for the family, expressed in genuine big welcoming smiles, attentive ears, easy laughs, and of course incessant offerings of food.

I think that’s why it makes perfect sense for us to go visiting our aunts on the third day of Chinese New Year, a day after they have all gathered at our house. Our first stop is at my first aunt, whom we call tuo ko (the Hokkien term for eldest sister of our father). She makes nyonya kuih for a living, and Chinese New Year is one of the busiest period for her because she also makes nien gao and huat kueh that are highly in demand for prayer offerings.

At her house, all we (or rather I) want is the pulut tai tai – glutinous rice steamed with coconut milk, and compressed till it’s all nice and compact. The best thing about having pulut tai tai at my aunt’s place is that I get to slap on as much kaya (coconut milk and egg jam) as I want. Her pulut tai tai is more or less the only one I have because it spoils me for the indifferently made versions we get in KL that’s hard and tasteless, with kaya that tastes more of caramelised sugar than coconut milk and eggs.

Apart from pulut tai tai, my aunt also fed us yam cake, kuih talam, pulut inti…

Our next stop was at my tua ee’s (my mother’s eldest sister) house at Weld Quay. She lives in the house on stilts at the jetty. It’s a close-knit community where neighbours sit outside on the plank walkways, and they still do not lock their front doors. We have been visiting for years, and we do a lot of nodding, smiling and greeting as we make our way to my aunt’s house.

This aunt is the best cook among my mother’s generation. But she has not been cooking much in recent years as she has not been well. But this Chinese New Year, she was full of energy and raring to cook up a storm for us.

My family has our share of bad times – loss of loved ones (sometimes sudden and unexpected), illnesses, break-ups, debts… It’s reassuring to know that we can count on the family for support, strength, and more importantly kindness. So, I have come to appreciate the ordinary days, and celebrate the good news… like my aunt cooking again.

She made stir-fried oyster noodles – with fresh oysters caught and sold by bent old ladies at the Chowrasta market – with a killer sambal belacan as accompaniment. There was also asam fish because someone gave her a fresh catch from the sea, prawn fritters, and sweet and sour prawns.

By Day Four of Chinese New Year, I was happy to just laze at home. But at noon, my younger sister Irene came bustling in to hurry us to bathe and get dressed and go to her house. In the morning that we whiled away doing nothing, she had cooked asam laksa and Hokkien mi (prawn noodles), and gone to her colleague’s house for Chinese New Year visiting.

This sister is the do-er – she gets us to do things and go places. She piles us all in the car and drive to Taiping Zoo even though the skies are cloudy and we’d rather languish at home. She plans meals in new restaurants, and agrees readily to trips. And when I was surprised that my kid sister can cook asam laksa and Hokkien mi, she just shrugged and said, “It’s only a matter of whether you want to do it or not…”


She also wanted to cook the noodles for my uncle’s family from Johor Bharu. When my uncle walked in, she asked if he wanted asam laksa or Hokkien mi, he said “Both”.

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Chinese New Year – Day 1 & 2

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

I have not been blogging… partly because I have been busy, but that’s not a good excuse because we are busy all the time anyway and we make time for stuff that matters to us. I have just been distracted by other happenings in my life. I have actually not been cooking, and there haven’t been many weekends at home to begin with.

I thought that we’d be more settled after the school holiday trips, and Christmas. But then along came Chinese New Year in literally a blink of the eye as soon as school reopened.

We celebrated Chinese New Year in Penang (of course), and I did more dicing and slicing on my iPad (yes, I am seriously addicted to Veggie Samurai) than I did with a cleaver. Throughout the Chinese New Year break, we were all glued to our iPads – all my siblings except one have iPads, and we have two, so that makes 5 iPads in the house. When my cousins, and nieces and nephews visited, they all played with the iPads. And when the kids were gone, I reclaimed mine and played till the wee hours of the morning. My one non-iPad-converted sister think we are all crazy…

What would she say if I told her I used to spend Saturday mornings a long long time ago in video arcades. In that carefree period, I’d wake up on Saturdays and hop into a pink mini bus and park myself in front of a machine closest to the door in a dimly-lit games arcade in SS2, PJ until lunchtime. Then, I’d go home and wait for my boyfriend who worked half day on Saturdays.

I can’t even remember the names of the games I played, or when and why this ritual ended.

Keeping to the rituals is what I love about Chinese New Year. There is the ancestral prayers on the morning of Chinese New Year eve.�I used to do the prayers indifferently, but ever since I have my daughter, I have been earnestly praying to my late grandmother (the only one on that altar I knew) and telling her that she has to bless her great-granddaughter.

Hopefully, it helps that my mother always cooks up a feast for the ancestral prayer table. There is always a steamed chicken and a slab of roast belly pork. My mother would also cook kiam cai ark, a soup made with duck, pork trotters and salted mustard leaves.

Then, there is lorbak (meat rolls), my absolute favourite – it’s always my duty to do the wrapping.

The most popular dish is always the jiu hu char, stir-fried sengkuang (yam bean), carrots with cuttlefish. Every festive occasion is marked by the slicing of a mountain of sengkuang, and supposedly a food processor cannot do the job well enough. My late grandmother was an exacting task master, and we were all properly trained to slice the sengkuang finely, holding the stacks of sengkuang slices tightly with one hand and deftly julienning them (there is a rhythm that you have to attain, I swear).

We always make a huge huge wok of jiu hu char, and it’d all be gone in a day. Our favourite way of eating jiu hu char is by wrapping it in a lettuce leaf slathered with sambal belacan. Sometimes, that’s all I have the entire meal. My uncle who lives in Johor Bahru would only arrive on the evening of Chinese New Year eve, and he would have a bowl of jui hu char next to him during the steamboat reunion dinner, and devour it like a man deprived (which is the case).

Then, on the morning of Chinese New Year, my mother would cook us vermicelli with chicken and a hard-boiled egg for breakfast – for longevity. This will be followed by ginkgo and longan sweet broth – to start the year on a sweet note so that we’ll have sweetness all year round.

On the second day of Chinese New Year, all our relatives will gather in our house and my mom would make her popular assam fish curry. It’s my favourite day of the celebrations because I’ll get to catch up with my cousins, and spend the day with my aunts, nieces and nephews.

This is the one day of the year when everyone is relaxed, and I love how at home everyone is with each other. The relatives are from both my father and mother’s side, and they know each other from decades of congregating in our house. They’ll come in swarms, and disperse into different rooms of the house – the gambling table where they play Siam ban lap (some form of Baccarat), or the kids will be tinkering with the various computers, notebooks and this year iPads, or in bedrooms where the mothers turn on the air-cond and nurse the babies while surrounded by cousins chatting away. Some would just sit glued to the tv, and doze off.

When it is not so hot, the children will go to the yard where they will play pop pop, that mini cracker that explodes with a bang when you throw it on the ground…. annoying at first, but strangely addictive too.

This year, we got my daughter and two nieces to wear the same dress for Chinese New Year – yeah, it’s so 1976, but what the heck. And we were all enamoured, especially the aunts, by my two-month-old nephew with his beautiful big eyes who was busy coo-ing away and lapping up all the attention.

Like in all our family gatherings, food is central to the celebrations. We gather around the table for lunch, and there is a free flow of ginkgo and longan sweet broth. It’s Chinese New Year, and the children know they can indulge in as much soft drinks or boxed drinks as they like. The gamblers are offered all kinds of snacks, as aunts and cousins insist everyone try their home-made cookies and snacks – my favourite this year is deep-fried shredded crab cakes, and home-style potato chips sprinkled with icing sugar.

This year, we also had spring rolls – sengkuang, prawns, mushroom, shallot crisps wrapped in fresh spring roll wrapper (from Chowrasta Market), with homemade chilli sauce and sweet bean paste.

And this was only the second day of Chinese New Year….. the eating rampage continues in the next post.

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Teochew Porridge

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

I went to bed reading Nigella Lawson’s latest book, Nigella’s Kitchen, and dreaming about her Greek Lamb with Potatoes and Lemon. But we all woke up with scratchy throats, hacking coughs, aching bones, woozy heads. And when my imp is lying limply on the sofa instead of jumping up and down on her new trampoline, there is just no denying that this is a household too sick to bite on lamb. So, plain watery porridge it is for lunch.

The must-have accompaniments are, of course, fried salted fish and salted duck’s eggs. These are the staples.

I usually make chai poh (salted radish) omelette, but decided to make cincaluk omelette instead for a change. Then, we have leftover chicken with soy sauce and ginger from the weekend.

We also have nam yue, fermented bean curd and canned preserved mustard leaves.


Because the little girl couldn’t muster the strength to walk to the table, I brought everything to her. She was however not too drowsy to monitor that there was always a pinch of salted fish and duck’s egg yolk in every spoonful of porridge I fed her. Oh well, everyone needs a little pampering when they are sick.

I am a pro at serving up plain porridge because that’s what we have for Sunday lunch when we were growing up. The cardinal rule was that the porridge must be served in small bowls so that we’ll have them piping hot …the idea being that we’ll finish the porridge before it gets cold. We eat the porridge slowly, picking at the many many condiments with our chopsticks. When we are done with a bowl, we just ladle a second bowl and then a third bowl….I also like my porridge real watery.

And I must have my plain watery white porridge with this condiment. I don’t know what it’s called, or recall when it first appeared on our table. But I think my father came back one day and described it to my mother, and we have had it since. It’s got the building blocks of a kerabu dressing – thinly sliced shallots and bird’s eye chilli and lime juice, mixed with taucheo (yellow bean paste), chopped garlic and lightly ounded dried shrimps. It’s very appetising as it is hot, sour and salty. I haven’t had it anywhere else but at home, but then again I hardly eat Teowchew porridge outside because it’s so ridiculously expensive for a meal so easily put together.

GARLIC TAUCHEO CONDIMENT

2-3 shallots, sliced thinly

5 bird’s eye chilli, sliced

1/4 teaspoon sugar

juice from 1 small lime

2-3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tablespoon dried shrimps, soaked in water, drained and lightly pounded

1/2 tablespoon taucheo, yellow bean paste

Marinate the shallots and bird’s eye chilli with the sugar and lime juice for five minutes. Then add the chopped garlic, dried shrimps and taucheo. Mix well.

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Salted Fish from Beserah, Pahang

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

If you grew up in a typical Chinese family, your grandparents would have probably told you that story of how they or some ancestor or the trishaw peddler used to be so poor they could only afford to eat salted fish. The poorest of the poor wouldn’t even have that luxury. He’d dangle his salted fish so he could smell it while he ate his meal of plain porridge…he couldn’t taste the salted fish, but the aroma would whet his appetite and sustain him. Fortunately, most of us are much less deprived or impoverished now. But I completely get sniffing at salted fish…it’s actually pretty narcotic for the aroma of frying salted fish always makes me greedy and hungry.

We were in Beserah, Pahang recently and saw how salted fish is made. Chit Lip Trading and Salted Fish processing centre is not visible from the road because it is hidden at the end of a row of wooden shophouses. But it’s not hard to find, just let your nose lead the way. The fishy smell can be a tad overwhelming at first, but soon enough you won’t notice it.

The lady boss, Yeoh Watt Kim, told us the best way to choose salted fish is to smell it… and that it must be “fragrant”. Good quality salted fish does not smell fishy, but clean and clear with a depth that perks up your senses. When you smell fragrant salted fish, you can literally taste it.

Salted fish is called ikan masin (salted fish) or ikan kering (dried fish) in Malay, and they describe exactly how salted fish is made. Fishes are gutted and scaled, and then preserved in salt or brine for a few days, and then dried under the sun.

This family in the fishing village of Beserah has been making salted fish for over a hundred years. They get their supply of fishes from the fishermen, and their own fishing boats. But these days, they also get supplies of frozen fish from further afield. Salting fish is still done pretty much how it has always been done, even though they have modern gadgets like freezers to keep the fish from going bad on cloudy days when there is no sun to dry them. The bulk of the work is in gutting and scaling the fishes, but these ladies are such pros.

At Beserah, salted fish are laid out on raised bamboo platforms to dry under the sun. On the east cost, salted fish making comes to a halt during the monsoon season at the end of the year.

In the local film Woo Hoo which tells the story of how the people in Beserah were trying to revive their tiger dance tradition, the apprentices practise their moves on these wobbly salted fish drying platforms.

Salted fish are made from all kinds of fish. The cheaper ones are those made from small fishes like kembung and gelama. The best salted fish, mui heong, is those made from ikan kurau (threadfin)…the flesh is soft, and it is fragrant and gently salted.

Watt Kim told us that mui heong is expensive because it can only be made with the freshest fish – they literally hauled the fish from the fishing trawlers, clean them and salt them immediately before drying them for about two days.

Not all salted fish made from ikan kurau is mui heong; it’s also about how the fish is salted. At Chit Lip, they still make their mui heong using their grandfather’s recipe. There was no mui heong available for sale at Chit Lip while we were there, and we didn’t stop to buy some in Kuantan. But we got some in the Pudu Market in Kuala Lumpur where three slices cost RM25. Salted fish is definitely no longer food for the poor.

I like the simplicity of mui heong, or any other salted fish, simply fried and eaten with plain watery rice congee. A chunk or two of fragrant salted fish, with fermented bean paste, is good enough for me.

I also like salted fish bone and mixed vegetable curry with light coconut milk. Then, there is steamed pork with salted fish, and salted fish in fiery dry sambal. Taugeh or kailan stir-fried with salted fish is also good. And I also like salted fish fried rice with lots of cili padi.

And last night, my aunt cooked this salted fish dish that she said she last ate some 30 years ago. She actually called my mother, and they worked out the recipe between them because my late grandmother used to make it. It’s called masak titik, and it’s salted fish with slices of belly pork, dried red chillies and dried tamarind slices.

The sourness of the tamarind, the saltiness of the salted fish, and the richness of the pork belly was so appetising. The flavours were pretty intense, and I ate way too much rice, as usual.

RECIPE

SALTED FISH AND PORK BELLY MASAK TITIK

Ingredients

2 tablespoon cooking oil

2-3 cloves garlic, smashed

10 dried chillies

500g pork belly, sliced

1 teaspoon dark soya sauce

1/4 cup water

2 dried tamarind slices

1 salted fish fillet, cut into smaller pieces and fried till fragrant

Heat the oil, and saute the garlic and dried chillies till fragrant. Add the pork belly slices, and stir fry over high heat for few minutes. Lower the meat to medium, and add the dark soya sauce, water, tamrind slices and salted fish. Simmer over low heat till the pork is cooked and the liquid has been reduced.

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Fish Fresh From The Fishing Boat- Beserah, Pahang

Friday, September 10th, 2010

I visited Kuantan for the first time last week, and it was miserable the first three days as it was raining and raining. It was cloudy, and the sea was gloomy, but it still didn’t stop us from going to the beach. But on the last day that we were there, the sun came out and the weather was beautiful. So, instead of driving straight home to KL, I detoured to Beserah, a fishing village 20 minutes away from Kuantan, with Leon and Jason Mumbles. The sun was shining brightly, the sky was cloudless and brillantly blue, and the sea was green. Jason Mumbles was so thrilled at how beautiful the beach and the sea and the sky were because he got to take beautiful photographs. Beserah was also where they shot the film Woo Hoo , a local production by MyFM deejays and some Astro artistes to commemorate the year of the tiger. Jason was happily pointing out the locations where some of the scenes in the film was shot. A shed is not just a shed, but where the characters had breakfast every morning, and there was the platform where the tiger dance was performed. That film captured how beautiful Beserah is, and locals are now used to visitors traipsing down the lanes along the Chinese wooden shoplots and Malay kampung houses, and down to the beach. I love Penang, but the beaches there cannot compare to the East Coast beaches. The sea is clean and clear, and the beach stretches on and on, and you could wade far out into the sea before your feet leaves the shore. We usually head to Cherating, but I’ll definitely return to Kuantan because it’s less crowded. We were about to head back when we saw a fishing boat returning to shore. We chatted with the fishermen at the fisherman’s resting platform as we washed our feet at their tap. They were a little amused that we were taking photographs in the scorching sun, but they have also become used to visitors lugging their cameras in their village. “There was a group of photographers here on the beach this morning too… we met them as we were going out to sea. It was still dark. They were waiting for the sunrise. Wouldn’t they rather sleep? ” said the fisherman. I bet he noticed Jason’s eyes lit up at the idea of taking photographs of the sunrise here. (It looks like we are fated to take another trip back here – certainly for the sunrise – because Jason’s gorgeous photographs are all gone. His SD card was corrupted while he was transferring his pictures to his laptop, and I was the only one who got to admire them. I of course also realised that I needed photography lessons after comparing the photographs we took.) I am not such an avid photographer; I was more interested in the fishermen’s catch. They told me to walk down to their boat, and choose whatever I wanted from their box. But there were mostly only ikan kembung (mackerel), they said. I didn’t mind, kembung is my favourite fish and fresh kembung is the best. In the hierachy of fishes, kembung is not exactly the most coveted. It used to be a poor man’s fish, and most probably still is even though kembung is not all that cheap anymore. It used to be so cheap that people bought it to feed their cats. I have always loved kembung, and I have never found it to be strong-smelling and whatnot. But kembung is also considered the most toxic of fishes, and we are strictly prohibited from eating it when we have wounds that are healing or recovering from chicken pox. I am not sure what is the basis for this theory; my mother and grandmother would usually just mutter impatiently about how there is no harm in abiding by the wisdom of the elderly… and besides, it’s not like they had nothing else to feed me., so why can’t I just comply. My mother and aunt would have been so excited at how fresh the catch was. They’d sometimes drive down to a fishing village with their ice boxes just to buy fish and prawns from fishermen as soon as they come to shore. I bought about 20 ikan kembung, and my aunt was so happy with them when she saw how fresh the fishes were – the scales were still slimy and the eyes were clear. She immediately scaled and cleaned them, and the next day we had ikan kembung masak asam pedas. Ikan kembung masak asam pedas is one of my comfort food, and I can wipe off two to three plates of rice just with the hot-sour gravy. I am not posting a recipe for this dish just yet because I still can’t get it right. But as much as I love this dish, my favourite way of cooking kembung when they are this fresh is by simply steaming them. Not many people steam kembung because of their strong smell. But when you get them real fresh, their flesh is so sweet and they are most delicious steamed. I don’t have a recipe for steamed fish, but I do know it’s easy enough to make without one (not like asam pedas). Here are some general instructions: Scale and gut the fish, and rub with some salt. Wash and drain. Place fish in a steaming dish. Julienne a medium knob of ginger and add to the fish. Slice up some red chilli; bird’s eye chilli gives a good kick. But you could also omit chilli if you don’t like your steamed fish hot. Add light soya sauce. I’d say you should add about a tablespoon or two, but all I have ever seen my mother and aunts and grandmother do is to shake the bottle around the steaming dish once or twice, and it’s always right. Add a pinch of sugar, and a dash of grounded white pepper. Do not add water. Slice up some spring onions, and add to the dish. You could also add slivers of tomatoes or salted vegetables. Steam the fish over boiling water in a tightly covered steamer for 15-20 minutes. Serve it piping hot, and eat immediately.

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Pork Trotters in Black Vinegar

Monday, August 9th, 2010

ONE of these days, I am going to cook a big pot of pork trotters in black vinegar, and I won’t share it with anyone. I’ll just slurp on the black vinegar gravy all day long till I am sick of it, and relish every bit of the pork fat melting in my mouth with absolutely no guilt. When all that richness and sourness and unctuosness get too much, I’ll just chew on the stewed young ginger and I’ll be restored.

This will be my go-to reserve therapy for when I am down in the dumps. Anyway, I exaggerate. It’s not like I am all that restrained when it comes to grabbing my share of this stew.

The good thing is that it’s an acquired taste, and not everyone likes it…less man, more share I say. My mother-in-law sometimes made this stew for Christmas lunch, and I’ll be the last to leave the table. While everyone is drinking wine, I’m content to drink more of this sweet vinegar.

For all my obsession with this dish, I didn’t realise this was confinement food until my mother lugged in bottles of black vinegar when she came to take care of me after I gave birth. She has always cooked this for us whenever we wanted to have it, and there was never any talk about childbirth and whatnot.

But it’s easy to see why it’s good for new mothers in confinement after childbirth. There is lots of ginger for dispelling dampness and wind in the body, and the pork trotters will restore the exhausted mother’s energy. It also tastes really good – if you like this dish – and that always cheers up a woman who does not get much sleep, is not allowed to wash her hair or leave the house for an entire month (that’s why it’s called confinement month). I don’t know if Chinese confinement rituals really do wonders for new mothers, but it is a month of rest and pampering.

In that one month, the new mother concentrates wholly on restoring her health, and getting to know her newborn. I love the wholesome food; there are lots of ginger, sesame oil, Chinese wine, the best fish, free range chicken, and red date tea.

Different cooks have different recipes. The difference between the home-cooked ones and those sold in the stall is the former usually has thicker gravy and more richly flavoured by trotters. The brand of black vinegar also makes a difference. The one we use regularly is ready blended for cooking pork trotters, and we do not have to add any more seasoning.

My aunt’s neighbour even goes to the extent of mixing two different blends of black vinegar to attain the depth and sourness her family likes. The good news is that pork trotters in black vinegar is easy to make. You have to blanch the trotters, and fry the ginger and trotters in sesame oil till fragrant. Then you just put everything in a slow cooker, and pour the black vinegar in.  Leave it to cook slowly for a few hours.

RECIPE

1 pork trotters, cleaned and cut in big chunks

300g young ginger, bruised gently

3 tablespoon sesame oil

750 ml black vinegar

1 cup water

4 hard boiled eggs (optional)

Blanch the pork trotters in boiling water for five minutes. Drain.

Heat sesame oil in a wok over medium heat.

Add the ginger, and fry till fragrant.

Then, add the pork trotters, and stir fry for a few minutes.

Put the trotters and ginger in a slow cooker.

Add black vinegar and water.

Add hard-boiled eggs.

Stew over low heat until the pork trotters are tender; it should take about an hour and a half. .

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