Cooking The Books

Pork, Sour Bamboo and Tofu Soup

Bamboo shoot is one of my favourite oriental vegetables, not those uniform 1.5cm by 4cm stringy strips you get in takeaways but the real thing, preferably fresh and whole, sliced during the meal's preparation.  One of my most amazing food memories is walking through the jungle in Laos, traipsing through a vast bamboo jungle when our guide saw a 2 foot high bamboo shoot sticking out from the ground.  A swift kick snapped it at the base and that evening the Lanten tribeswoman peeled and simmered the beast in preparation for a breakfast dish of simple fried bamboo shoot with garlic and chili.  Compared to this the tinned version really does not compare. 

You can get the whole shoots in brine, true, but whilst they may be infinitely better than the tins they still suffer from not being fresh and so I have resigned myself to this being a holiday food.  There is hope though as another preparation is the sour bamboo shoot where the pickling and brining plays an integral part in developing the flavour and, as it tranports fine, you can happily have the same dishes in England as you would in Asia.  

The inspiration for this recipe came from a pork and sour bamboo stir fry I ate in Vietnam and Chinese pork and preserved vegetable soup.  The sour bamboo shares the same salty sourness of the Chinese preserved vegetables and I imagined a similar effect could be obtained with it.  The result is a lovely light soup, a perfect start to a summer meal.  The saltiness of the sour bamboo adds to the stock's flavour and the bamboo itself provides a pleasant crunch, contrasting well with the meaty chew of the pork and melt-in-the-mouth tofu.  You can - and I frequently do - use an Oriental chicken stock powder for these kind of soups but for one as delicate as this a homemade stocks works really well, so how convenient that I just posted a recipe.

Pork, Sour Bamboo and Tofu Soup

4 small or two large bowls (you could bulk these large bowls out with noodles to make a meal of it)

Ingredients

800ml-1000ml pork and chicken stock (see here), or use Chinese chicken powder

120 gr Minced pork, season with salt and white pepper.

120 gr Sour bamboo

200 gr Tofu, cubed and steeped in boiling water for a few minutes

2 Spring onion, sliced

Handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped

1 Red chili, sliced

Method

This is simple as simple gets. 

Boil the stock and add the bamboo and tofu, simmer for a couple of minutes. 

Add the mince pork, squeezing it into pieces between your thumbs as you go.  Leave it to simmer for a minute before giving it a stir otherwise I find breaks down too much.  Simmer for a minute or so more till just cooked through.

Add the spring onion and coriander, stir to spread, check the salt then serve immediately.

Chuck some sliced chillies on top for those that want it.  As with most Oriental soups it will inevitably get a spoonful of chili oil prior to eating too.

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.

Jungle Eating in Luangnamtha, Laos

Every once in a while something comes along and just blows your mind.  These last two days, both food and otherwise, are one such thing.

We'd trekked in Thailand before, hiking our way through jungle till we got to a beautiful bamboo village where we enjoyed the evening eating Thai curry and listening to locals play the guitar.  It was a great evening but the satellite dishes and cars we spied when we left the next day suggested it wasn't that remote or traditional a village, no matter what we were told.

Here in the North of Laos though you're meant to be able to find some pretty unspoilt villages so we set off from Luangnamtha on a two day trek with the promise of local tribes.  Even the first village we visited, which was only a couple of hundred metres from the road, threw up some interesting sites.  First off the entire village came out and stood watching us for a good 20 minutes and then on the way out we spotted this young girl smoking.  According to the guide this isn't usual and it was propbably just some rolled up paper.  She had the toking action nailed though, chugging away, inhaling and breathing out through nose and mouth.

We statrted trekking and I was wondering what we'd get fed once we got to the village but I didn't have to wait that long.  3 hours into the trek lunch was called and it was none of the fried rice in polystyrene containers you usually get on tourist operations in South East Asia.  Wild banana leaves were cut down to make an eating surface and some real local food was laid out.  We picked the leeches from our ankles, tried in vain to keep flies and ants off the food and cracked on.

The white coleslaw like stuff is rattan, which it seems has uses beyond furniture.  The meat was water buffalo larb, slightly chewy but full of flavour.  The greens contained manioc, sweet potato leaves, some fern and some other jungle plants the guide didn't know the English name for: some bitter, some sweet, some tender, some stringy - all interesting.  The white leek like things were one of the most interesting for me, young galangal.  I've used the rhizome in tom yam and curry pastes, where it's distinctive flavour has no subsistute, but here the shoots were a much more delicate affair, obviously the same plant but the strong spice was now just a hint of flavour.  Tidying up was easy with the leaf and remains just being dumped into the river for the wildlife to feast on.

Lunch over we set off trekking again, on what turned out to be one of the hardest days trekking of my life.  After our guide getting us lost we hired a local rice farmer to take us on for a couple of hours until our original guide recogised the jungle again.  Along the way our guide picked lemongrass, ginger and loads of wild mushrooms ready for the evening meal.  To add to these he found the biggest bamboo shoot I've ever seen, it was quite literally as big as my arm, and so far removed from the uniform rectangular strips bought in tins.  I'd wanted to take a photo but it ended up getting prepared before I could.

Finally we arrived in the village which was just a few bamboo huts running wild with chickens, piglets, cows and local children.  We were showed to our hut (home to 7 already) and it was something straight from a museum with hard mud floor, sparse bamboo funriture and an open fire.  We were told they'd only let their first tourists in 4 months back and we were the 18th group to visit.  We certainly seemed to interest them as within half an hour most of the women and children were sat watching us eat, the men all seconded to other local villages to help with the rice planting.  Dinner was fried water buffalo and some greens along with a soup made from the mushrooms our guide had picked as we went along.  All was flavoured with the spices he'd gathered on the trek.  All was prepared under candlelight and cooked over an open flame, there was no electiricity or gas here.

We went to bed on our bamboo bed and had a pretty bad night's sleep.  It was hot and clammy and there was noise a plenty from both the family two foot away and all the animals outside.  I wouldn't have  changed it for the world though.  Whilst being woken up at 5.30am after hardly sleeping would normally piss me off opening my eyes to a local lady weaving cloth on her loom made up for it all.

Breakfast ended up being bamboo shoot fried with garlic and ginger served with fried rice.  The type of bamboo we'd picked needed 4 hours simmering (which had happened overnight) and then a simple fry, other bamboo (I learnt) can be fried straight off after peeling and slicing.  Even in daylight the huts still tended towards the dark side.

BBQ Belly and Sweetcorn

Whilst a lot of food in Thailand and Laos is heavily spiced there are some simple things too.  In Laos one of these simple dishes is barbecued meat.  Every town we visited was littered with stalls selling barbecued chicken and pork sandwiched between bamboo skewers or barbecued sausages.  Vang Vieng took it further though with a trio of stalls barbecueing big cuts of belly pork and pork ribs.  Simple or not the pork belly blew my mind, jumping straight into the top 5 foods of the travels so far.  There was crisp crackling, tender lean and juicy fat, seasoned to perfection and full of smoke flavour.  Served in a plastic bag with another little plastic bag of chili sauce who could ask for more?

Another more frugal affair was boiled corn.  Whether it's electronics on Tottenham Court Road or books on Charring Cross Road sellers like to stick together and in Luang Prabang it was no different with one street full of ladies under umbrellas selling sweetcorn.

For 1,000 kip, which is about 7p, you got a bundle of 3 pint sized sweetcorn, still in their husks and even though they're removed from a big plastic bag still piping hot.  Judging on how they tasted I'm guessing they've not been harvested long either.

Laos Omelette

Loas is an amazing country, probably my favourite so far, but it is very, very poor. This can be seen in the street food stalls. Whilst a hawker in Malaysia or Thailand has a nice stainless steel unit on wheels, complete with a gas burner or two, here in Laos the street stalls tend to cook over an open fire. They're just a table, a hearth, some burning wood and a wok.

One such stall in Luang Prabang was turning out omelettes so I thought I'd give it a go. Even with such simple equipment the meal was superb. The egg was swirled to coat the wok and then covered with some morning glory and bean sprouts, the whole shebang given a moment under a lid so the heat would wilt these. Once sufficiently tender the omelette was folded into a veg filled parcel. A big bowl of fish sauce and lime juice to dip added salt and sharpness, dried chili gave the heat prerequisite in these parts.