Malaysian Winter Market

March 7th, 2013 § 2 comments § permalink

Filipinos and Malaysians stem from common ancestry, and though both have evolved to form distinct cultures, we share many similarities in food:  the love for noodles, rice, meat braised in rich sauces, condiments of the spicy, sour and salty, so I was excited to check out the Malaysian Winter Market Festival at Bryant Park last February.

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Mee Goreng from Bentara restaurant ( New Haven, Connecticut)

The festival, sponsored by the Malaysian government through their Malaysian Kitchen of the World Project, focuses on promoting Malaysia through a persuasive ambassador food. At the two-day festival, Malaysian restaurants from New York and the Tri-state area set up booths and offer one or two dishes from their menus.

I had a sampling of Mee Goreng, stir-fried Chinese egg noodles in a sweet spicy sauce with mustard greens, bean sprouts,Chinese cabbage, garlic and shrimp. It was not as flavorful as I hoped it would be, Mee Goreng’s sauce features pungent belacan (shrimp paste), kecap manis (dark sweet soy sauce) and spicy chilies- flavors that were subtle in my Mee Goreng. Perhaps the flavor was lost from it being held on a chaffing dish too long, a limitation restaurants had to cope with at the fair.  It was unfortunate, as Mee Goreng is best hot, straight out from the wok.

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The fresh roti demonstrated by Chef Jeff of Bentara restaurant was not a disappointment. He twirled and stretched the unleavened dough into a transparent sheet, folded and brushed it with ghee (clarified butter), cooked it on a griddle till it puffed . It was light, crispy on the outside and doughy in the middle , an important feature to sop curry with. 

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Chef Jeff demonstrated the different ways roti is prepared, from plain to roti murtabak - stuffed roti with minced meat (traditionally mutton),onions and curry sauce. It was delicious, the last time I had good roti murtabak was in a hawker stall in Penang.

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Roti Murtabak

At the festival was representation from the Malaysian Tourism office, where I met Susheela Raghavan author of Flavors of Malaysia: A Journey Through Time, Tastes and Traditions.  The book is a thorough and well-written exposition on Malaysian cuisine , it delves into Malaysia’s rich history and food culture skillfully, no small feat with a country whose cultural heritage is a mix of Malay, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Portuguese, Thai, Dutch and British influences.

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The book covers dishes from the diverse ethnic groups and subcultures of Malaysia, from the Baba Nonyas (Chinese Malay) Cristaos (Portuguese Malay) or the Mamaks ( Indian Muslim Malay). Recipes are not “inspired” versions of traditional dishes, a composition I see often in some Asian cookbooks wooing an American audience. Recipes from these kind of books are so altered they bear not even a shadow of its original state. In Flavors of Malaysia, the food is presented in their authentic garb of pungency, flavor and spice.  When there are options of modification, it is to temper heat, saltines or fat content, but the authenticity of the dish is there.

 It was great to meet Susheela, the author of a book I refer to in my research for my Southeast Asian Street Food class at ICE.   The recipes in her book are not only educational, they reflect her personal journey from her childhood, recipes from her mother and grandmother, and from the people she has met along the way.

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Roasted belacan , roasted dried shrimp paste, block.

In her final chapter, Fusion Malaysian, she muses on how the food of her home country has fused with the traditions of her life here in the United States. Her recipes in this final chapter incorporate the traditional Malaysian spices and sauces to the everyday American table. As an immigrant myself, I understand how this is, ingredients of our home cuisine is always present in our kitchens, it reminds us of who we are, living in a country so different from our own. Like marriage, we are our own but embrace the other obligingly.

I think of how the countries who came to our shores altered us, transformed our way of life, our beliefs and our food. Now in their shores, we bring ours and they too are transformed ….and hopefully, richer by it.

Ginger Juice

December 27th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

Cold weather is drifting in and it is the season for colds and sniffles. Back home the remedy for most ailments had food or drinks involved, particularly those that had ginger. We made arroz caldo, porridge made of rice, cooked in chicken broth with discs of fresh ginger -it is said to strengthen weak constitutions (the topping of fried garlic I believe was to drive any and all spirits).

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For sore throats we made salabat, or ginger tea.  A knob of ginger was peeled, sliced into discs and then steeped in boiling water; we added honey or sugar to temper the biting ginger.  The aroma of tea had a calming effect on one’s nerves and that zing of ginger grated soothingly the back of an itchy throat.

Ginger (Zingiber officinale) often referred to as ginger root is not botanically speaking the root of the plant but a rhizome, an underground stem that grows horizontally beneath the ground.

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Next to Japan, the United States is one of the largest importers of ginger in the world, with China supplying 78% of the demand. There are a great variety of ginger worldwide, each differ in size, pungency, aroma, color and fiber content. On a commercial scale ginger is identified by the place of origin: India, Jamaica, Brazil or Hawaii. Ginger I see labeled from Brazil are huge- with clusters resembling deer antlers (truer to the Sanskrit name of ginger- shringavera, or “shaped like deer’s antlers”).

I can only surmise that most of the unlabeled fresh ginger we find in the supermarkets here in the US are from China , these variety of ginger have fairly smooth and pale skins, with fat knobs that form a cluster of branches. When cut they reveal a light-yellow flesh and are not very pungent.

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The ginger found in the Philippines,or at least the one I was familiar with growing up, is similar to Indian ginger, with hints of lemon, a dark yellow flesh with a greyish tinge. Generally the ginger used was a mature ginger which was fibrous, had a headier aroma and was more biting.  When I cook recipes (specially Asian recipes) that require ginger, I often double the amount indicated.

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For the recipes I feature in my Southeast Asian Street Food class, ginger is an ubiquitous ingredient. We use it to stuff the cavity of the chicken for the Hainanese Chicken Rice, it infuses both the chicken and rice, it is  also used in the dipping sauces. Ginger adds spice to the Indonesian Beef Rendang  and boosts the heat to the Sambal Chili Prawns. The different flavor characteristics of ginger lends complexities to the dish that few herbs can.

Fresh ginger is prepared in different ways: minced, cut into discs or cut into small matchsticks. I love the flavor of ginger but do not like the jolt on my tongue when I bite into it -and ginger is hard to spot when they are finely minced and melded into sauces. To get around this problem, I make ginger juice and teach the students to do the same.

To make ginger juice: Peel a 2-inch knob of ginger and grate this on a fine grater (or a Microplane). Set the grater over a dish as the ginger pulp immediately exudes juice – specially if it is young ginger.  Grate till you have an ample amount of pulp. Squeeze juice into plate and discard the pulp.  As the ginger juice sits, you will notice starch settling on the bottom of the container , stir the juice just before using it (the powder contains the bite).

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A note on substitutions for fresh ginger. A student asks,  “Can we substitute fresh ginger with ginger powder?”  No, ginger powder imparts a different flavor than fresh, it lacks the distinctive ginger aroma and is less biting. Ginger powder or dried ginger is used for curry blends or spice blends (like quatre epices) it is commonly used in cookies or breads. Ginger powder has more floral notes;  though not distinctly “ginger-like” it imparts a flavor of spice and warmth.

Choosing and storing ginger: Choose ginger that is  not shriveled and  feels heavy for its size. Avoid ginger that has greenish sprouts growing, a sign that they have been sitting there too long and growing restless.

Fresh ginger keeps well frozen. Store unpeeled in a ziplock bag in the freezer for a maximum of 2 months.Thaw before using.

Speaking of Mangoes

June 30th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

Early this spring, my husband and I went to our hometown of Cebu.  Aside from the beautiful beaches the island is known for (and the lechon), Cebu is also renowned for their mangoes.

Cebu mangoes are very sweet and less fibrous than mangoes from the North. Their skin soft and unmarred owing to a farming practice particular to Cebu of wrapping each fruit with a paper sack while the mangoes still hang from the tree. This is to keep the insects out and protects the delicate skin of the mangoes. ( I remember as a child,  a mango farmer would come by to collect my father’s old issues of Time and Newsweek magazines- as the pages made for a sturdy mango sack.)

Fresh cut Cebu mangoes and budbud.

The mango fruit is a favorite all over the Philippines; when they are ripe it is pureed and folded into cream to  make a delicious filling for mango ice box cake. Blended with ice and milk it makes for a refreshing shake. Those that are underipe are boiled with sugar to make preserves to fill little boat-shaped tartlets.  They are also cooked and dried to make into candy strips called dried mango (very much like dried apricots). In the summer, when mangoes are at its sweetest, my father -in-law likes to have it served for breakfast, simply cut -and sometimes with budbud.( more on budbud on my post Cebu)

In the cooking classes I teach where mangoes are an ingredient, I show the students this neat trick of peeling mangoes.

You want to have much of the flesh of both sides of the mango cheeks. Use the stem as a guide and slice through either side of the stem, keeping your knife’s blade as close as possible to the seed.

Take each cheek and using a fairly sturdy drinking glass, use it to scoop the flesh off the skin. (For safety reasons do not use a very thin and fragile glass. )

Continue to press the glass against the mango’s skin and against your palm. Gently but firmly push the glass forward ( always take extra care in doing this)

And voila! whole peeled mango.

With temperatures here in the upper 90′s,  I could do very well with a cool mango shake now, but alas importation of our mangoes to the United States is restricted.  Maybe that is a good thing, it leaves more to pass around back home.

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