Cooking The Books

Bak Kwa/Rou Gan - The Other Chinese Barbecued Pork

I've not been blogging too much recently, trying to save my posts for recipes that are really worthy of publishing.  I finally found one in this wonderful dish and then, literally as it was in the fridge marinating, fellow blogger and recent acquaintance From Chopstix to Steaknives goes and blogs the exact same recipe.  It seems I'm not the only one with obscure little Malaysian cookbooks to pilfer recipes from and post on the web.

After cooking and eating and the girlfriend describing it as 'the best thing you've cooked since I've known you' (which spans 8 years) I have to go through with the post though.  Also the cookbook calls for the meat to be dried in the sun till at 70% weight before being barbecued and as both us bloggers are currently London based, and January London based at that, we've had to figure out our own ways to cook it, which differ.  It's up to you to see which one you prefer.

I first encountered this pork in Singapore where the street vendors quickly cook the thin sheets over charcoal.  The sugar caramelises, combining with the smoke and fat into a most enticing aroma that lingers in the air.  The same pork is all over Kuala Lumpur too, where a yellow and red fronted chain sells it both fresh and in packs, even down to little individually wrapped bite-size pieces. I discovered very quickly that this sweet, salty and chewy pork is very much like crack in its addictiveness, big bags disappeared as if there was a whole in the bottom.  Searching the floor it was clear the only place it had fallen was down my throat though. 

For some reason I'd never thought about making it until last week when I looked through said cookbook and the recipe sat before me.  Whilst I couldn't dry it in the sun I thought a low oven may help and so cracked on.  I'm glad I did as it somehow hardly suffers from the lack of cooking over charcoal, first bite and I was instantly back in KL, even down to the lovely cool air-conditioning - although that may well just have been London in January.

Bak Kwa - Chinese Barbecued Pork - Recipe

Makes 8 pieces, so you probably want to double or triple the recipe

300gr pork mince

90gr caster sugar

1/2 TB fish sauce

Scant 1/2 TB oyster sauce

Pinch of bicarb of soda

1/2 ts light soy

1 TB rice wine

Method

Mix all the ingredients and leave in the fridge overnight.

Cut a sheet of greaseproof paper to fit in a standard (35cm-ish wide) baking tray then place the pork on top, patting out well with your hands.  Lay a sheet of clingfilm on top then roll the pork out with a rolling pin until it is maybe 5mm thick, at which point it should pretty much cover the paper.

Slide the paper onto the baking tray and dry the pork in an 80C fan-oven for 45 minutes.

Remove, cut the pork into 8 and then place on the rack of a grill pan, so air can circulate around it for the final cooking.

Turn the oven up to 200C and cook the pork for 10 - 12 minutes, turning once, until is reddish-brown and starting to char around the edges.

Leave to cool for a few minutes then demolish in its entirety in 5 minutes flat.

Malaysia Kitchen and an evening at Kiasu

Malaysia holds a place dear in my heart, I lived there for three months and half the girlfriend's family is from there and both these things played a large part in my culinary education.  It's a country steeped in culture, a melting pot of different races that comes through in their heritage and their food.  I've blogged loads about Malaysian cuisine with good reason - Malay, Chinese and Indian have come together to make one of the most diverse cuisines around: flaky roti canai stalls lie next to Chinese restaurants dishing out very Chinese steamed buns and very Chinese-Malaysian pan mee; Indian curries are churned out along with the Indian spiced fried noodles, mee goreng; and this is before you've moved onto the Malay dishes, rich and fragrant beef rendang, pungent sambal with nasi lemak (coconut rice) or the crunch of cucur udang (prawn fritters) to name a few.  This is a cuisine that really deserves to be eaten and maybe Malaysia Kitchen's dining card will help spread the word. 

Malaysian Kitchen is a Malaysian government initiative that hopes to increase exposure to Malaysian food and I was lucky enough to be invited to a dinner in Queensway's Kiasu restaurant promoting its dining card.  The full details of the card (along with how to get one - it's free) can be seen here but in short it entitles you to at least 20% off at any of the participating restaurants.  Based on my experiences at Kiasu then I think it's worth making there one of them.

For me Malaysian cuisine is unique in the coming together of Malay, Chinese and Indian dishes (and Kiasu had them all on the menu) but our meal was firmly rooted in the Chinese and Nyonya elements of the cuisine.  If you don't know, Nyonya cuisine is a marriage of Chinese and Malay cuisine that came about due to the marriage of Chinese and Malay people.  Malaysia has a history as a home of trading ports in the region and one of the first was Malaka, which before Singapore rose in prominence was the main port in the region.  Here Chinese settlers took local brides and swayed towards local life, from this the cuisines of China and the Malay combined and the entirely separate Nyonya cuisine was born, using methods and ingredients from both races and giving us delights such as kang kong belacan and laksa, the noodle soup that is so rightly famous.

Back to Kiasu and our meal began with 5 starters - there was so much food that one dining companion didn't believe me when I said that these were only the starters.  The chicken and beef satay tasted authentic (if not a tad overcooked), spice heavy and not the cloying peanut butter renditions that have made it on to too many menus, the supplied rice cake cubes being the perfect means to get more sauce into your mouth.  Chye tow kway - steamed rice flour and daikon cake stir fried with eggs and beansprouts - and the ngoh hiang - deep fried pork mince in beancurd skin - took me back to meals in Kuala Lumpur's SS2, a trip down memory lane I was more than happy to make.  Crispy squid had the all important crunch from the cornflour based batter, a dish that reminds me more of China than Malaysia but very tasty nonetheless.  The final dish was probably the highlight for me though and it was entirely new to me - kueh pai tee.  These crisp baskets (made with three types of flour and fried on a mould) were filled with shredded turnip and topped with coriander and prawn.  The basket was gorgeous, crunching under the bite and delightfully grease free. 

Whilst we were eating the owner (I assume) waxed lyrical about all the dishes and the preparation of everything from scratch (including all the chili sauces), she was obviously very proud of the cuisine in general and their kitchens, a sentiment that's a pleasure to hear.

I'll admit that by this point I was feeling full but I had to pull myself together for the main courses.  Honey glazed ribs were tasty enough if not reminiscent of a standard Chinese, a low point of the mains.  The Singaporean influenced trio of chili crab, char kway teow and Hainanese chicken rice soon put all thoughts of being sated aside though.  The crab was the usual mission to eat, messy enough when plain boiled but this is taken to another dimension when coated in a sticky chili sauce, as always it was worth the mess and the effort to get to the sweet flesh inside.  The side of deep-fried mantou reminded me of donuts without the sugar, I still can't decide if I was a fan or not.  Hainanese chicken rice, simply boiled and  served  on chicken stock boiled rice, is made by the sauces and the raw ginger and garlic (maybe not one for a first date) and fragrant chili didn't disappoint. 

Char kway teow (fried wide rice noodles) makes it on to many a Chinatown menu but near always ends up being a Singapore rice noodle copy, differing only in the type of noodle.  Here the generic curry powder version seen too frequently over here was replaced with the dark soy sauce of its homeland.  This dish should be cooked in lard and whilst I don't know if Kiasu managed that I was delighted to see the cubes of crisp pork fat scattered on top, the first time I'd seen them on these shores.  By this point we were nearly there, with just a small (luckily) bowl of laksa to contend with.  There are many types of laksa with the common theme being thick, circular rice (laksa) noodles and the laksa leaf gracing a fragrant stock, most (but not all) are coconut milk based and this was of that variety.  A mouthful later I was instantly transported back to Malaysia with the familiar herbal overtones, slippery noodles and grated cucumber.

To finish off we first had chendol - crushed ice with palm sugar and coconut milk alongside some blands beans - the kind of thing you see lots of in south east Asia.  They're not my favourite type of dessert but I polished this off anyway, it seemed rude not too.  Next up was durian ice cream, made from the infamous fruit which I happen to adore.  The ice cream was rich and heady, capturing the flavour (and aroma) of the fruit perfectly, too much for some at the table but a welcome end for me.

The best things in life are free, especially when they give you money off, so I intend to use my Malaysia Kitchen card and take the opportunity of some reduced dining out on one of my favourite cuisines.  Whilst looking through the Malaysia Kitchen website I noticed The Malaysian Restuarant in Stony Stratford, Milton Keynes is also on the list.  I went there at the end of last year for my birthday and whilst I didn't get around to blogging it I had a lovely meal, this time with more of a leaning towards Malay cuisine.  Again the owners spent time talking to us (telling them I lived in Malaysia for a while piqued their interest) about the food and seemed genuinely proud too, which they had a right to be as the food was again authentic and tasty.  Another establishment, alongside Kiasu , which I think is well worth a visit.

Thanks to Kiasu, Malaysia Kitchen and Sauce for the evening and thanks to Luiz (The London Foodie) for kindly providing me with the photos I should have taken a pause from eating to take myself.

Hakka Pork Belly with Yam

Pork belly is now a very popular meat.  Well I guess it's always been very popular in streaky bacon form but over the last few years vast numbers of people - myself included - have started to appreciate big lumps of it.  The crisp crackling (what other cut offers such a high crackling to meat ratio?) and meat kept moist through the rendering of the layers of fat are worthy of any table. Add to that a reasonably budget price tag and it's a wonder it's not a staple.  Well it's not really that much of a wonder with those huge layers of fat but for a once in a while budget treat it's hard to beat.

Whilst I love a bit of roast pork belly I think there's so many more ways to enjoy this cut and if you really want to reach true pork belly enlightenment (there is such a state) you need to move out of these crispy, comfortable surroundings and start looking at softer preparations.  Whilst the crisped skin is a delight there's also much to be said of the gelatinous skin properties of a long steamed or braised preparation, two methods that help rid the fat of its greasiness leaving delectable softness in its place.  We can go a stage further still on our quest to truly know this cut - and we shall - but it's probably best not to go too quickly.

Moving away from pork belly for a minute the Hakka are one of the many minorities within China and are concentrated in the regions of Guangdong, Jianxi and Fujian in the south.  I've never made it to these regions but due to some displacement in China and their fame for being hard workers they have spread far and wide over the years.  A need for tin miners in days gone by means Malaysia has a large population of Hakka people - the state of Sabah (in Malaysia Borneo) being one of the few regions in the world where the predominant Chinese people are the Hakka - and it was there that I had my first, and subsequent, encounters with this dish.  It seemed to be popular in the economy/buffet rice restaurants and I even had a fake meat version in a vegetarian restaurant in Kota Kinabalu.

The multiple cooking stages (boil, fry, steam) provide enjoyment to the committed cook, a bit of excitement for adrenalin junkies (have you ever tried to deep fry previously boiled pork?) and - most important of all - a skin of the most delightful texture, first puffed up through frying then relaxed through steaming, sat a top soft flesh and fat.  The alternate layers of yam provide both an interesting look and a bland, starchy foil to the rich belly.

Hakka Pork Belly with Yam

serves 2-4 depending on other dishes

Ingredients

500gr pork belly

500gr yam/taro/eddoes (4 big ones for me)

2 TB rice wine

400ml water

1.5 TB cornflour

4 star anise

2 TB salted bean paste (dou jiang)

3 TB chopped garlic

1/2 shallot, chopped

1 TB oyster sauce

1 ts 5-spice powder

1.5 ts light soy sauce

 

Method

The first stage is to boil the belly, just 20 minutes will suffice.  Enough to rid it of any impurities (think the scum when you make stock) and pull its shape together.  After this time remove and allow to cool fully.

 

Next off prick the skin repeatedly with a fork then rub the skin with 1 ts of light soy sauce and allow to dry.  Heat some oil in a saucepan and then deep fry the pork (skin side down) until golden.  Be very careful, mine damn near exploded and it did blow the lid off the saucepan (I don't have a deep fat fryer) and send hot oil flying out and over the walls.  It seemed to calm down after the first couple of minutes and two to three more and it looked ready to eat. 

No crispy pork belly today though so dump it in a bowl of cold water and leave to soak for an hour.  By the end of it the skin should have softened and look like yours does when you fall asleep in the bath.

Whilst the belly is soaking prepare your yams, which aren't yams in either England or the US (sweet potatoes to us) but what we'd probably call taro, although eddoes seems a popular name too.  I was looking for slices maybe 4cm x 5cm (to match the size of the belly slices) and from four largish taro I cut 3 slices from each.  This left me 12 pretty similar slices and lots of leftovers which I made a soup with.  Rub the slices with a paste made from 1/2 ts of light soy and 1/2 ts five spice then deep fry till golden, you're not fussed about cooking the inside as the steaming will do that.  This was far more pleasant than deep frying belly.

Remove the belly and slice into 1.5cm thick slices.  My piece was maybe 10cm x 10cm after frying so I sliced it lengthways into two 5cm x 10cm pieces then sliced each crosswise into 7 slices.  This meant I could layer my 12 slices of yam between them with pork belly at each end.

To make the sauce first fry the garlic and shallot in a little oil before adding the salted bean paste (dou jiang), 400ml of water, the star anise and the oyster sauce.  Bring to the boil then add 1.5TB of cornflour (mixed with a little water) and boil till thick.

Carefully layer your pork belly with the yam then place into a bowl skin side down, making sure the bowl is small enough to hold the belly and yam together but not too small that the sauce can't get between them (I made this mistake).  Pour on the sauce, making sure it gets between the belly and yam, splash on the rice wine then cover with foil and place the bowl into a steamer, steaming it for 1.5 hours.

Once done drain the sauce into a bowl, turn the belly out onto a serving plate and pour the sauce over it.  You could always put the belly and yam into the bowl skin side up and serve it directly from the bowl it was steamed in too.

Pan Mee Recipe

Alongside roti canai, which I've not got around to yet, pan mee was a near daily staple of mine when I was living in Kuala Lumpur and one of the things I wanted to recreate when returning home.  I was lucky to live opposite a stall that specialised in it and from the first try I was hooked on the mix of handmade noodles, minced pork and crunchy anchovies all held together with a fiery, umami laden chili sauce.  Whilst my local stall didn't serve it this way if ever I got the chance to have a just poached egg with it, transforming it with carbonara like richness, I didn't refuse.  You can make it into a soup too, just filling with chicken or anchovy stock before serving.
The blog's been a little quiet for a couple of months now, the main reason being I was without flat (reduced to sofa surfing) and then moving flat.  Add to that work and study and I've just had no time.  I've now moved in though and have recently added a large wooden kitchen block to the new kitchen so I, for probably the first time in my life, have somewhere I can clamp my pasta machine and work with the dough unimpeded.  Currently the two portions of pasta I've made with it share the £25 cost of the machine between them so anything that can reduce their cost below £12.50 a portion is good with me.  Add to this wanting to utilise my new kitchen block and the obvious candidate for the new flat's first blog post was pan mee.

This recipe requires a couple of slightly tricky to get ingredients, but not tricky enough that your local Chinese supermarket won't have them.  These are belachan (shrimp paste, Thai shrimp paste will do otherwise), dried shrimp and ikan bilis, the small salted and dried anchovies beloved in SE asia.  All three of these are pungent little things which smell pretty rough but taste divine, packing umami by the bucketload.  For the chili sauce especially you really want to get the windows open if you can.  Whilst my kitchen has a lovely kitchen block it is without windows to the outside world and I think I could still smell the fermented shrimp products this morning.  The frying anchovies add another distinct aroma too, luckily not as strong but almost as lingering.

If this hasn't put you off (the flavour is worth the smell) then read on.

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.