Cooking The Books

Asia - The Best of the Best

Well that's it for my travels.  It's been an amazing experience and I'm far from happy to be back in England.  Most of the trip's food was great, and low points were still pretty damn good, but there were definitely some winners and losers so I'd thought I'd put them down for posterity.  I've decided to rate the countries as far as their food goes and then give my favourite dishes too.  I was thinking of ranking the latter too but after weeks of thinking about it I still can't really decide an order.  As such whilst the countries are from best to worst the dishes are just my ten favourites in no particular order.

Country Competition

1) China

There's no doubt in my mind on this one, whilst some lower places were a bit harder to decide.  It's a tad unfair too as China's bigger than the rest of the countries put together.  Unfair or not though it wins, there's just so much variety, from the familiar to the unexpected, hardly a day went by without something amazing being eaten.  Even after two months there I feel I need another six months to finish exploring.

2) Vietnam

Whilst it may not have the breadth of China's food Vietnam excelled in freshness of flavour and throwing up lots of surprises.  The combination of salty fish sauce and sour lime juice is perfect for my palate and it's in everything.  The popularity of Vietnamese food in the UK deserves to be as popular as it is in my little bit of East London.

3) Malaysia

Where Malaysia excels is with its meeting of cultures.  The three big ethnic groups - Malay, Chinese and Indian - all contribute to a breadth of cuisine way beyond what should be expected from a country that size.

4) Thailand

My first couple of weeks in Thailand were a big let down when it came to food.  I was expecting big things from it but the country is so developed from a tourist point of view that I think if you stick to the usual destinations - Chiang Mai and southern islands - you're rewarded with pretty generic, low grade food that's made not to offend Westerners over anything else.

I finished the trip with a few days in Bangkok though, where I made a big effort to eat on the street and away from tourist locations, and I was rewarded with the interesting food I'd been searching for - fiery, sour soups and curries, fermented crab salads and bags of fried pork and sticky rice. Whilst not doing enough to lift Thailand from fourth place it definitely saved my opinion of it.

5) Indonesia

Like Thailand, Indonesia suffered by my staying on a pretty touristy beach were the restaurants consisted of the places that happened to be on the beach when it started getting popular, rather than people who could actually cook.

A couple of days on mopeds and another in Banda Aceh threw up some decent dishes though that left me hungry to learn more.  Luckily I bought a cook book there, I just need to learn Indonesian/Malay now so I can read it.

6) Cambodia

Cambodia - particularly Phnom Penh and Siem Reap - is currently suffering from too many expats and tourists which have led to too many expensive and Westerner friendly restaurants. 

Kep and Battambang did throw up some nice street food but not enough to save it from the wooden spoon.

Dishes

1) Pan Mee (Malaysia)

Whilst this list is in no particular order if I had to give a first place it would be this.  Freshly made noodles, minced pork and crispy fried anchovies form the base this amazing dish with some chili sauce and - if you're lucky - a softly poached egg finishing the dry version and some stock completing the soup.

Hopefully a trip around the oriental supermarkets of London will throw up the required ikan bilis (dried anchovies) so I can attempt to mimic this at home.

2) Pork Mee (Malaysia)

Such a simple combination of ingredients - noodles, pig, stock and maybe an egg - yet so good.  Obviously the stock needs to be a flavoursome one and your pork can't be that insipid, overly lean stuff you buy in the supermarket over here but as long as your ingredients are good quality this dish is a winner.

3) Thai Sausages (Thailand)

Thailand may have managed a measly 4th place in the country competition but these were a winner.  Strong flavours and interesting additions like rice & rice noodles caused a soured flavour to develop.

4) Tian Shui Mian (China)

Thick, chewy wheat noodles bathed in sweet, sticky, salty, spicy, numbing sauce all served at room temperature.  Strange but beyond good.

5) Chinese Hamburger

Braised pork belly chopped and in a pitta-like bread.  Nothing more needs to be said.

6) Sichuan Crescent Dumplings (China)

These had always grabbed my attention in Fuchsia Dunlop's books and the real thing didn't disappoint.  The meat filling may be a plain one but when you start pairing them with red oil or seaweed and mushroom they're transformed.

7) Baozi (everywhere)

I'm sure most people have had Char Sui Bao - soft white steamed buns filled with barbecued pork - but the bun/bao doesn't need to stop here.  Laos, Thailand and Cambodia did a filling revolving around minced pork, shredded wood ear mushroom and a hardboiled egg, frequently a quail's egg, that was very good.  As was frequently the case China excelled though - minced pork with salty dried shrimp; pork and spring onion; shredded mushroom; spiced  potato; pork, shrimp and quail's egg to name a few.  So good that even though I ate them more than any other food I never had them long enough to photo and blog.

8) Mi Fen (China)

The simple things are often the best.  Rice noodles with crunchy preserved vegetables, a variety of chili and as much stock as you want.  Truly a delight.

9) Banh Mi Op La (Vietnam)

Fried egg, luncheon meat and beef, a bathing of stock mingling with the runny egg yolk and soaking in to a crisp baguette.  Shouldn't be too hard to mimic at home.

10) Com Tam (Vietnam)

With barbecued pork chop, pork terrine, pork skin and rice all pepped up with the salty, chili-laden nuoc cham this was always going to be a winner and that's before you've added a bowl of soup and a 30p price tag.

Eating in Cambodia's Rice Basket

There's nothing like a bit of genocide to work up an appetite (or it could just be that we'd not eaten for about 8 hours) so after visiting the killing cave just south of Battambang we went for a wander in search of something to nibble on while we waited for 5pm and the arrival of the bats.  Even though it's a mini tourist destination the area was fantastically rural, surrounded by palm tree studded rice paddies (Battambang is known as the rice basket of Cambodia) and the roads only managing potholed mud status.  In such surroundings I wasn't expecting much but we ended up with three delicacies, two I'd seen before but not got around to eating and one entirely new one. 


The first we sampled was fermented pork.  I'm not sure how they ferment it but however they do it leaves you with a pink paste, wrapped in banana leaf, that doesn't need to be fridged.  We'd had it before in Vietnam where it's a common snack with beer, we'd never had it with these accompaniments though.  Here the modus operandi was to take a crisp white cabbage leaf then add some herbs (holy basil amongst others), some cold rice vermicelli and a piece of the pork, this is then rolled up and dipped in fish sauce and chili.  It's a heavy hitter in both taste and texture.  Crisp lettuce gives way to soft vermicelli and the slightly rubbery pork.  The strong raw cabbage taste competes with the herbs and sour pork, not to mention fish sauce and chili.  It's by no means delicate but it works really well.


The second was barbecued eggs.  I'd seen these all over Thailand and Cambodia and had assumed they hardboiled eggs and then skewered them, giving some barbecue time to add smokiness.  They turned out to be far more complex.  The eggs have a small hole in them and are then shaken out and the egg beaten with salt, sugar, black pepper and MSG (we had a chat with our guide about them) before being poured back into the shell and steamed till set.  These are then threaded onto skewers and given the aforementioned barbecuing.  What you're left with is a slightly smokey egg custards that you scoop out and dip into chili.

The final part of the trilogy was a new one to us and even as we saw it sat there we weren't sure what we were getting.  It was something battered - obviously, but what was in the batter?  Much to our surprise the batter contained slices of baguette, the batter itself being spiced in nature.  The meal was completed with sweet, sticky chili sauce.  It was as good as fried things in batter dipped in chili sauce usually are.

Hunger sated we returned to our mopeds and guides just in time to get a beer in before the bats arrived, not that we needed to hurry because after 20 minutes the bats were still leaving as thick and fast as they had done at the start and we'd told they'd carry on for another 40 minutes at the same rate.

The Street Food of Cambodia - Barbecued Frog

Name: Barbecued Frog

Time of Day: Late afternoon through evening

Location: All over Cambodia, these were in Battambang

Cost: 2000 riel (about 35p)

The Rest: Frogs are popular all over Asia and none more so though in Cambodia, where much to my delight they skin them (I'm still haunted by a Chinese dish that was just lumps of frog - body, hands and all - still covered with the amphibian skin).  The markets of Cambodia are full of freshly killed and skinned frogs whose bodies seem completely oblivious to those two facts and carry on hopping around in a pointless bid for freedom.  On the streets you see them deep fried in an orange batter, which never appealed too much, and in this form, splayed and stuffed.  I'd saw these last time I was in Cambodia but failed to eat them and wasn't going to make that mistake again. 

If I had to guess what the stuffing was I'd have said it would be minced pork but the first bite revealed I was mistaken as it was of an entirely plant based nature, consisting of crushed peanuts and lots of lemongrass.  The frog itself was juicy and slightly sweet from the red coating and wonderfully smokey.  I'm not sure if I was starving when I ate it but I found the whole thing utterly moreish and scraped every bone till it was clean.

A highly recommended snack.

The Street Food of Cambodia - Boiled Crab

Name:  Boiled Crab

Time of Day:  Lunch and dinner, I guess

Location: Kep, in southern Cambodia

Cost: $5 for 9 crabs (1kg)

The Rest: We'd been told about the crabs here but when we turned up all the stalls only had BBQ squid and fish for sale.  Luckily some of our compatriots spoke a bit of Khmer and asking around led to a lady wading out into the sea, dragging a bamboo cage back with her and proceeding to grab a load of blue swimmer crabs from it.  Some bartering ensued (thanks to the Khmer speakers again) and before you knew it a well used saucepan was placed on to burning logs and the crabs were getting a bit restless on the quickly warming floor.  

There was no complex preparation - just crabs, saucepan and a bucketful of sea water - and a few minutes later we were presented with the crabs who had given up on the blue look and were now sporting a nice rosey complexion.  This was street food at its most basic, so much so that the lady didn't even have any tables.  Luckily for us a friendly food stall next door let us sit on theirs and provided us with some nuoc cham (fish sauce, lime, chili, sugar) to dip, a favour that worked out well for them as we only managed 5 crabs between us so they were given 4 when we left.

The crab itself was a delight - sweet and tender - and the sauce worked well.  Crab has an affinity with chili and here was no different, the sauce cut through the richness of the meat too and the salty fish sauce seasoned and added umami.  With seafood fresh is best and you don't get much fresher than this.  They were a pain to crack open with nothing but our teeth and hands but the effort was worth the reward and with the sea a few metres away the hands didn't stay dirty too long.

Fish Amok - The Recipe

A while ago I wrote of the fabulous fish amok I learnt to cook at Frizz's Restaurant cooking school in Phnom Penh.  Back when I wrote the post I'd lost the recipe book they gave me but a friend of mine popped in and grabbed me another which she's just delivered to me in the UK.  So, as promised back then, here's the recipe.  This is such a great dish, the depth of flavour you get with the coconut based curries from that part of the world delicately set with the addition on an egg and the steaming to cook.  Now the recipe's here I'm going to be recreating the dish and I recommend you do the same.

Fish Amok, for 2

Kroeung (curry paste)

2 dried chillies, soaked
3 cloves garlic
1 shallot
3 stalks of lemongrass, trimmed to the tender middle bit
1cm slice of galangal
1 lime leaf
1 ts salt

Amok

400gr of meaty white fish, chopped into bite size bits
1 TB of fish sauce
2 birds eye chilies, finely sliced
500ml coconut milk
1 ts shrimp paste
1 egg

Coconut cream and 4 shredded kaffir lime leaves to serve.

4 banana leaves to make cups, or a couple of bowls I guess

Method

Make the paste either in a pestle and mortar or a processor.

Beat the egg and the shrimp paste together then mix with the curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce and fish.

If using, soften the banana leaves by dipping briefly in boiling water or running through a gas flame then cut into circles by cutting around a 25cm-ish plate.  Place two together and then fold the sides up into a cup, securing each corner fold with a cocktail stick.  The first thread - here - shows what you're aiming for. Repeat for the second cup.

Split the curry between the two cups then steam for 20 minutes.  A couple of minutes before the end you can pour a little coconut cream on to each curry and sprinkle with some shredded lime leaves.  Serve with boiled rice and enjoy.