The Food Canon

You like Buah Keluak. And you like Tau Yew Bak. If so, combining them together makes sense.

I led a cooking demo recently on how to appreciate and enjoy our local herbs, and I showcased Nasi Ulam. I worked on a minimalist version which is still delicious, proving that "less can be more." Here are my lesson notes. 

Nasi Ulam (light version)

Ulam means herbs in Malay. Traditionally, it was a kampung dish using fresh herbs of nearby plants. If salted fish, meat/fish and sambal belachan were added, it made for a cheap and delicious one plate meal. 

Growing up, we use to have a pair of pet rabbits. I can still remember the smell as the rabbits gnawed away the lettuce. Sometimes, these lettuce became rotted in parts. I grew up with some aversion to the smell of lettuce.

That unchanged very quickly when I realised how delicious ji hu char is when wrapped in iceberg lettuce. It is a match made in heaven, especially when a bit of sambal belachan is added to it. 

Jiu Hu Char always make an appearance during our reunion dinner. I use to wonder why my Mum only cooked it as a festive dish. After all, turnip (or "bangkwang") was very cheap and still is. When I start cooking it, I realise that it needs work in the cutting and the frying. It is truly one of those recipes where cheap and ordinary ingredients are elevated into a gourmet dish through careful preparations and good cooking techniques. 

I have here below a scribbling of my Mum's recipe which my cousin passed to me. Her "secrets", if you can call it as such is to add the fried shallots and a combination of stir-frying and braising the turnip. If you are experience with this dish, you can figure out what she is saying. In any case, I will give my experimented recipe below. I have simplified some steps.

By the way, the same method can be used for Popiah or Kueh Pie Tee filling, minus the jiu hu (cuttlefish).

Some scribbles of my Mum's recipe. I usually skip the step where the minced meat is seasoned as I reckon that it will be well seasoned when cooked with the rest of ingredients in the wok.

Ingredients

2 medium size or 1 large turnip
20 shallots or equivalent amount of store bought fried shallots
dried cuttlefish strips (from two pieces of cuttlefish if you are cutting it yourself)
1 carrot
6 dried Chinese mushrooms or fresh shiitake mushrooms
1/2 tsp dark black sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp of soy sauce
200g minced pork
1 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp of white pepper
300 ml water or more

Serve with:
Coriander leaves
Fresh iceberg lettuce

1. Slice the shallots thinly and deep fry till crispy. You can also buy ready-made fried shallots. Choose those which looks crippled and fresh.
2. Rehydrate the dried mushrooms. Cut into thin strips.
3. Cut the turnip and carrot into thin strips. If you have a good mandolin, use it. See photos. Slice into thin slices (about 2 mm thick) and then use a good knife to cut the strips.   
4. Heat up a wok with the oil. Add the minced pork meat, mushroom strips, cuttlefish strips, soy sauce, oyster sauce, dark sauce and pepper. Stir fry for about 2 minutes. 
5. Then add the turnip and carrot strips. Add half of the fried shallots. Increase the fire and stir fry till the turnips caramelise (turnip has a lot of sugar) and the wok feels sticky. This will take at least 20 minutes or more. 
6. Then add the water in batches, stir-frying all the time. Lower the flame and simmer for another 20 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. The turnip should be soft and moist. 
7. Serve it warm. Garnish with the rest of the fried shallots and coriander leaves. 

Using mandolin to slice the turnip evenly and thinly

Then use knife to slice into strips

Patiently stir-fry the turnip before adding water and leaving it to braise in a simmer

A wonderful batch of Jiu Hu Char

It goes without saying that we are in season where home-cooking has become a necessity. 

I have been wanting to work on the Curry Mee recipe and am glad that I finally got down to it.

So, what is the difference between Curry Mee and Laksa?  In my opinion, both terms describe the same thing: noodles in curry. We know that laksa is not laksa if it is not noodles and if the broth has no curry in it.

Just that this version which we normally call "Curry Mee" in Malaysia  has a lighter broth. In my version, I omitted coconut milk.

In a nutshell, Curry Mee broth is a combination of meat broth (or stock) and sambal. In this version, I used some prawns and added the shells go into the broth. I also added some tamarind slices for the sour flavour. I also used oil from chicken fats and skins to make the sambal.

There are actually many times of Curry Mee. You can also use pork bones for the stock. Add some coconut milk if you like. Omit using daun keeping if you prefer a sweeter broth. Just get the general idea of how to make curry mee or laksa and you can improvise as you please.

This is not something you will want to make for your daily dinner. But if you are expecting many relatives or friends in a gathering, this great for such occasions.

Making the Broth

Ingredients:
2 kg of chicken bones and parts
1 tsp of salt
1 kg of medium size prawns

Peel the prawns. Reserve the meat for garnishing. Fry the shells and heads till they are golden. Heat up about 6 laters of water and simmer the chicken bones and prawn heads/shells for 2 hours. If you are using pressure cooker, an hour will do.

Making the Sambal

Making the Sambal

Ingredients
To blend
10 pieces of garlic
20 pieces of shallots
10 buah keras (candlenut)
1 inch of turmeric or 2 tsp of turmeric powder
1 inch of blue ginger
2 tbsp of belachan

2 tsp table salt
3 tsp sugar
4 tbsp of chilli paste
2 tbsp of light or chicken curry powder
4 stalks of lemon grass (smashed)
2  tamarind slices (daun keping)
1 bowl of chicken or vegetable oil

Blend the ingredients. In a wok, heat up the oil and add the paste. Add salt, sugar, chilli paste, curry powder and the lemon grass. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Boiling the prawn shells and chicken bones

Preparing the Bowl of Curry Mee

Ingredients
Yellow Mee
Rice vermicelli (bi hun)
Bean sprouts

For garnishing
Mint leaves
Strips of Chicken meat
Tau pok (fried bean curd puffs)
Lime (kalamansi)

Strain the broth. Add the sambal paste and stir the broth. Leave some of the sambal paste for dipping. The broth is done. Add the fried bean curd.

In the boiling broth, blanch the chicken meat til it is cooked. When cooled, tear into strips.  Likewise, blanch the prawn meat.

Next, soak the rice vermicelli (bi hun)  in warm water for 15 minutes. Blanch the mee, bi hun and bean sprouts. Add the curry soup. Garnish with chicken strips, prawn, tau pok and mint leaves. Serve with some sambal and lime on the side. If you like, add some slices roast pork as a garnish. It goes very well with the sambal.

The finished broth

As I have mentioned before, there is no reason why Buah Keluak (BK) cannot be a regular feature in your daily dinners.

Buying ready-made paste is easy from the dry good stalls at Tekka or Geylang markets. You can add the flavours of this nutty flavoured paste to many of your existing recipes.

You would have come across my Toyu Bak recipe, here and here.

We made a buah keluak flavoured Toyu Bak recent for our Alpha dinner, serving more than a hundred diners. It was a side dish to Nasi Ulam and we kept the BK flavour light so as not to overwhelm the nasi. I will scale down the recipe here for the home dinner.

A good toyu bak needs lots of garlic and good soy sauces, both light and thick versions. The BK paste replaces the thick soy sauce. And add lots of black pepper. I happen to have the Kampot variety (Cambodian) which are simply the best.

A batach we made recently for an Alpha dinner

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For 2 kg of pork belly, here is the recipe:

300 gm of buah keluak paste
100 ml of soy sauce
2 tbsp of sugar or gula Melaka
2 tbsp of assam paste
400 gm of garlic cloves
20 gm of black peppercorns
1 tbsp of oil
50 gm of blue ginger (optional)

The pork belly should be in a good size chunks of about 2 cm in length and thickness. The meat will shrink as you braise. And skin on, of course.

Mash the buah keluak (bk) into a paste. Just add some water to the BK pieces in a bowl and press with your hands. It mashes very easily.

Add 1 tbsp of oil to a heated pot. A good braising pot should have a thick bottom so that your meat will not burn easily.

Bruise the garlic cloves, lightly and add into the pot. Add the sugar or gula melaka and stir fry for about 5 minutes. Add the pork belly cubes. Then add the soy sauce and BK paste.

Simmer in low heat for about 45 minutes. I have shared many times on the need for  the "slow and low" technique to make good TYB. Stir once in a while and add some more water only if you think the dish is drying out and to prevent bottom burning. Adjust the sweetness and saltiness along the way, especially towards the end.

Towards the end, add the lightly crushed black peppercorns. You can use a leasing (mortar) or use a cleaver to knock on the peppercorns in a plastic.

Garnish with coriander leaves. It goes very well with white steamed rice. Some Sambal Belachan on the side will be great.

This recipes is just a guide. If you like stronger taste of BK, just add more.

Photos: Joyce Ho

Nasi Ulam (photo: Joyce Ho)

We love making Nasi Ulam for gatherings.

It is a favourite at the Alpha Courses held at St Andrew's Cathedral.

It always put a smile on people's faces. The explosion of indescribable flavours fills one's senses with every spoonful. It is decidedly local and yes, very cheap to make.

The meal do not sit heavily in your stomach. It is light and refreshing. These herbs have their health value, rich anti-oxidants and all. Not that anyone cared too much for that.

If you are a vegetarian, you will be very happy to have this on the dining party table.

Ulam means herbs in Malay. I have already blogged the "recipe" here. I am not sure recipe is the word I should use as each lot of this has turned out slightly different.

I have come to use these herbs more often than others:

Basil (sweetish)
Daun Keduk (Pepper leaves)
Mint Leaves (slightly bitters)
Turmeric Leaves (gingerly)
Laksa Leaves (Daun Kesum, strong flavour - us win moderation)
Torch Ginger Bud (Bunga Kantan)
Kaffir Lime leaves (leaves are hard, strong flavour, use in moderation)

You can get these herbs easily in many wet markets. Tekka Market is my favourite source.

Some of the herbs I normally use, left to right, : Turmeric leaves, lemon grass, torch bud, Daun Keduk (bottom), Mint leaves (top), Basil Leaves (right), Kaffir lime Leaves(top right) (photo: Goh Eck Kheng)

Salt, toasted and crumbly salted fish and sugar are also added to the rice. And for the refreshing crunch, garnish with thin slices of shallots, carrot strips and tiny cucumber cubes.

After you wash the leaves, it is important to ensure it is dry before you cut it. A sharp knife is needed so that the herbs are diced finely and neatly. If you use a blunt knife, you are crushing the leaves and the diced herbs will be wettish.

The rice must be cooked perfectly as mushy rice is a disaster for Nasi Ulam. We normally use the 1:1 water-rice ratio. Basmati is our favourite as it is light. After the rice has been cooked and cooled down, we mix in the herbs. If you add the herbs into steaming hot rice, the herbs will be cooked and lose it's freshness.

The beautifully pink Torch Bud Ginger (photo: Joyce Ho)

For the Nonya or Malay pairing dishes, a sambal dish goes well with it. Sambal Prawns is our usual favourite or simply, a plain Sambal Belachan. As for meat, a mildly flavoured meat dish will go well, such as Ayam Sioh or Inche Kabin (nonya friend chicken). We sometimes offer Buah Keluak flavoured meat but we will dial down the intensity of the bush Keluak paste so that its do not compete with the herbs. The rice should not be drenched in gravy either and so, soupy dishes are out.

Explosion of flavours in every spoonful

I will share our notes on dishes which we cooked to pair with Nasi Ulam: Buah Keluak flavoured "Tau You Bak" (pork belly) and sambal prawns with the crunchy four corner beans (kacang botox) in the next few posts.

Meanwhile, I hope this post will inspire you to try making this. Unless your guests are on an Atkins diet, expect them to return for multiple helpings.

Garnished with cucumber and carrot strips

I always think that a blog is a better medium for a cook to share his story.

A cookbook is too final. Not only is the recipe already cast in ink. Somehow, it communicates the idea that this is the only way to cook this dish, that this recipe is "best" for this particular dish.

A blog allows a cook to just tell you what he just did, which is somewhat different from what he did the last time he cooked the same dish.  It is not even a "work in progress," for that carries the idea that there is a finishing point.

There isn't one, for cooking is not about arrival, but a journey. You just keep cooking, move ingredients around, pay attention to some good techniques and you end with yet another good dish.

Blogging allows the cook to share many points of this journey, while a cookbook focuses only on some high points.

I cooked a Nonya-based meal recently and had the opportunity to combined Sambal Prawns and Brinjal. I love both ingredients and when cooked this way, there is contrast in texture, one bring crunchy and the other luscious. I have already blogged these recipes here and here. I did not refer to my previous recipes and so, it was very much just cooking from experience. I will note down what I did and trust it will be helpful for you.

It make sense to combine prawns and brinjal as the techniques use are the same: deep-frying and then mix. And as with many sambal dishes, the sambal pastes are very similar and there is no reason why you cannot try different combinations.

Recipe for Sambal Prawns and Brinjal

1 kg of medium size prawns
3 pieces of long brinjal

For the Sambal Paste
20 shallots
4 stalks of lemon grass
2 tsp of salt
2 tsp of sugar
200 gm of red chilli paste
1 tsp of belachan
1 tsp of assam paste (tamarind)
200 ml oil
200 ml water

For garnishing
4 pieces of Kaffir Lime leaves (daun limau perut), diced
1 fresh cucumber and some mint leaves
Pieces of lime

As for the preparation and methods, I will note down more details.  But I trust that will not make this dish sound more complicated than it actually is.

Preparing the Sambal

1. Grind the shallots and lemon grass finely. 
2. Toast the belachan in a dry wok. 
3. Then add oil and when heated, add in the onion-lemon grass paste and chilli paste.
4. Simmer for 20 minutes, adding the salt, sugar and tasting along the way.  
5. Add some water to ensure a smooth consistency. 

Cooking the prawns and brinjal

1. Shell the prawns. Marinate with a spoonful of sugar, half a tsp of salt and a tablespoon of corn flour. This will help remove fishy odours and ensure the prawn stay crunchy when cooked. Keep in the fridge till you are ready to cook it. Before you do, rinse the prawns with water in a colander to remove the marinade. If you add the prawns coated with the marinate, it will burn in the wok. 
2. Add oil to a deep wok and set flame to high (but not smoking) for deep frying. 
3. Add the prawns and and cook for a minute. It is important to cook the prawns quickly so that the flesh is firm and not mushy. Don't overcrowd you wok. After all the prawns are cooked, set aside.
4. Next, slice the brinjal into pieces. Shape and size is up to you but keep the skin on please.
5. Deep fry the brinjal immediately for about 2 minutes on high heat. I normally slice the brinjal just before I deep fry it so that the brinjal pieces won't develop black spots (due to oxidation). Deep fry till the pieces are browned. Drained and set aside.

Deep-frying the Brinjal pieces

Assembling the dish 
In the heated sambal in a wok, add the cooked prawns and brinjal. Stir fry for about 2 minutes. Towards the end, sprinkle onto it the diced kaffir lime leaves.

This dish is best served warm and goes well with steamed rice or Nasi Ulam.

Assembling and finishing off in the wok.

Ikan Sumbat using Selar Fish - This recipe was shared at the O.P.E.N. kitchens event. Click here for some videos of the event where you can see the fish stuffing and frying in action.

Ikan Sumbat using Cencaru

 

This dish is almost unique to our local cuisine (Malay and Nonya).

Ayam Sioh is a simple Nonya staple.

As you should know by now, Nonya or Peranakan is a cuisine which evolved from the coming together of Chinese (mostly Hokkien) and Malay cuisine cultures. Sometimes, it reflects foreign cultural influences like Portuguese, Dutch and English as well, those being the colonial masters of earlier years. It is also called "Straits Cuisine" as most of the areas where Nonya culture evolved from were port cities like Melaka, Penang and Singapore.

In this recipe, using the tau-chu or soy bean paste is obviously from Chinese cuisine. But what other ingredient marks it out as Nonya? Tamarind paste and ketumbar.

Ketumbar is basically a Malay term for Coriander powder. Technically one should call it serbuk ketumbar, but typically the term alone speaks for itself.  Tau chu+ ketumbar + tamarind, and the coming together of this Chinese and Malay  paste and spice in this recipe reflects it's inter-cultural roots.

I have already blogged the Sambal Udang recipe.  

Many of you will know that belimbing goes very well with it. Belimbing is a sourish fruit that grows well here. Being a pastor, I have no shortage of belimbing as there will be a some members out there who have one of these trees in his/her garden.

Knowing that their pastor like to cook, I get plastic bags of them regularly. After all, belimbing goes to waste pretty quickly after they are plucked or when they ripen. And gifts from your garden to the pastor makes a lot of sense, though I have yet to declare such gifts on my annual tax returns.

Belimbing cooks very quickly and I normally add them within the last few minutes of the dish. I cook the sambal first, and then the prawns and the last thing that goes in are the slices of belimbing.

As for preparation, salt the belimbing in a colander beforehand to draw out the liquid.

This dish is appetising. Eat it with mint leaves, cucumber and steaming hot white rice.

And somehow, it always tastes nice eaten with hands.

Lemon grass and belimbing (right)

Bringing our overseas guests for Fish Head Curry can be an amusing experience.

Few of them expect just a single head and pair of eyes staring at them from the dish.

As there as as many type of curries as there are Indian, Malay home and Nonya homes, you can imagine the countless ways you can cook this dish.

It is as the name says: just fish head in curry. Cook your curry paste or sauce and add the fish head in. As fish cooks quickly, it is a dish that can be assembled just before serving.

I will share here what I usually do, including some alternative ways of cooking it.  I find this dish easy to cook but tedious to explain, as is often the case for curry dishes. I seldom use a fix recipe for this and it does not bother me if the dish turns out differently each time as long as it is delicious and the basic rules are observed:

• a well-balanced aromatic curry
• fresh fish which is not overcooked 
• veg that is not mushy. 

I want to give some attention to this rather understated ingredient which is not widely used outside of Malay and Nonya cuisine.

Not to be confused with starfruit, which also shares the same Malay name, this is a small sour fruit which adds a wonderful sour note to dishes with a crunchy juicy texture. It cooks very fast and this needs to be taken into consideration as you add it to your curries.  

I like to add it to my mum's Sambal Prawns recipe, something we did at our recent Alpha Course evening. While Assam (tamarind) or Lime juice can be used to introduce a fruity sourness to the dish, belimbing is unique in the way it "encapsulates" the taste as an eating experience. In other words, instead of experiencing the tinge of sourness throughout the dish, biting a  piece of belimbing gives a soury surprise, adding some variety to the experience of eating a good plate of Sambal prawns.