EatingAsia

Oyster Omelette, Redeemed

Oyster omelette, fresh oysters fried with beaten eggs and usually bound with some sort of starch solution, is an Asian street food staple.

I had my first taste in Hong Kong about 15 years ago -- the dish's flavorless bivalves and strangely gummy texture left me underwhelmed. Since then I've sampled -- usually at the goading of well-meaning local gourmands -- various versions, from Shanghai (mushy oysters) to Penang (nice char, but an awful lot of grease), and I remained unimpressed.

Until last June, when we ate our way around Tainan, Taiwan's unofficial xiao chi ('small eats', ie 'snack') capital.

On Guohe Jie, a narrow lane alongside Yun Le Market that's lined on both sides with food stalls, four or five oyster omelette vendors ply their trade side by side. Deciding which stall to order from was easy; the stools in front of this gentleman's counter were consistently occupied when others sat empty.

The quality of eh-ah jian, as oyster omelette is known in Taiwan, rests firmly on the quality of its main ingredient. More than three weeks of grazing along the island's west coast showed us that its seafood is among the best in the region. And Tainan proper sits near the coast, so the freshness of this vendor's oysters was never in question

 

To make his omelette, he heats oil on a well-seasoned griddle and adds about fifteen plump specimens. While the oysters sizzle he breaks a couple eggs (duck eggs are available on request) to their side, piercing the yolks with the corner of his spatula. After sprinkling bean sprouts, shredded lettuce, and bits of pork crackling over eggs and oysters, he drizzles a third of a spatula of starch solution (sweet potato starch mixed with water) over the lot.

A large lid placed over the griddle firms up the eggs and the binder,

 

and then he folds the four sides of the 'pancake',

to make a neat egg and oyster envelope.

The eh ah jian is served alongside a pool of sauces, one a bit sweet and salty like fermented bean paste, the other tasting like a cross between hoisin and oyster sauce.

I could do without the sauces, frankly, and the next time I dine at this stall I'll ask the vendor to leave them off my plate.

Otherwise, his forty years of oyster omelette-making experience manifest themselves in hands down the best oyster omelette we've ever eaten, a lightly charred egg pillow spilling briny, barely cooked oysters and crispy sprouts and lettuce and sporting barely a hint of grease that made me do a one-eighty on this street food specialty that I'd long scorned.

The key here is the omelette maker's light hand with the starch solution: there's enough of it to pull the other ingredients together, but not enough to create that gumminess that I find such a turn-off in other versions.

Oysters at 8am? If they take the form of this gent's oyster omelette, why not?

Oyster omelette, Guohe Jie (second stall from the corner, right next to a popiah vendor), Tainan, Taiwan. Early morning to 3pm-ish.

Oriental Salad and Chop Suey Dessert Sauce

My mother has a rather morbid habit of asking me, whenever I return to the US for a visit, to specify which of her belongings I will want for myself 'when the time comes'. I prefer not to think about it,  but if pressed I'd really only have one request: Mother, please set aside for me your entire Time Life 'Foods of the World' series.

I've spent alot of time on visits home poring over these fascinating recipe books, even more so since I began writing about food. (This time around much of what I'm reading in the American Cooking volumes from the series dovetails with a book that's on my bedside table: The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky, which I highly recommend.)

Every year I find a recipe or ten that resonate(s) -- a relatively little known dish that I discovered in Italy, a favorite childhood dish that I'd completely forgotten about, a recipe for an obscure Asian specialty that's surprising both for the fact that it appears in a cookbook published 38 years ago and for its apparent authenticity.

And then there's the head scratchers -- like Oriental Salad and Chop Suey Dessert Sauce, from the American Cooking: Northwest volume.

There has been for over a century, of course, a large Asian population in the American Northwest. But I wonder about the origin of the 'Oriental' salad, whose only possibly 'Oriental' ingredient is rice. And what of Chop Suey dessert sauce? Here I can only guess that it's so named for its mishmash of ingredients.

At any rate -- here are the recipes. If anyone out there recognizes these dishes or  has some information regarding their origin(s), I'd love to hear from you.

Oriental Salad

From American Cooking: The Northwest, published 1970 by Time Life Inc.

1/2 c long grain rice, boiled, drained, and cooled

A 6-oz can flat anchovy fillets, drained, rinsed under cold water, and coarsely chopped

1/2 cup finely chopped scallions

1/2 cup finely chopped pimiento

1 firm ripe tomato, sliced 1/4 inch thick and cut into 1/4 inch dice

2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp dry mustard

1 tsp salt

Freshly ground black pepper

6 Tbsp olive oil

Chilled crisp lettuce leaves

Place rice, anchoves, scallions, pimiento and tomato in a serving bowl and toss together.

With a wire whisk, beat vinegar, mustard, salt, and a few grindings of pepper in a small bowl until the mustard has dissolved. Add the oil gradually and continue to beat until the dressing is smooth and thick. Taste for seasoning, pour over rice mixture, and stir with a fork till the ingredients are well combined.

For each serving, arrange several lettuce leaves to form a cup on a chilled plate and spoon the salad into the lettuce cup.

Chop Suey Dessert Sauce

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups water

1/4 tsp red food coloring

1/2 cup coarsely chopped pitted dates

1/2 cup coarsely chopped dried figs

1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Combine the sugar and water in a 1 to 2-quart enamel or stainless steel saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Cook briskly, uncovered, until the syrup reaches a temperature of 220 degrees on a candy thermometer. Stir in the food coloring.

Combine the dates, figs, and walnuts in a bowl, pour in the hot syrup, and stir until all the pieces are evenly moistened. Spoon the sauce into a jar equipped with a tight-fitting lid. Cover and store at room temperature. The sauce will keep up to 3 weeks. Serve it with ice cream.

A Walk in Chiang Mai, A Bowl of Assam Laksa

 
In today's Wall Street Journal Asia 'Weekend Journal' we take you for a stroll along the soi (alleys) of Chiang Mai's moat-encircled Old Town and to Penang, in search of the story behind one of the Malaysian state's iconic dishes: assam laksa.

For us, the highlight of the former is lunch at Huen Phen, a restaurant specializing in northern Thai dishes. (Go during the day when lunch is served in the casual front of the restaurant, flavors are authentic, and the place is packed with locals. Come evening meals are served in the restaurant's rear; though the decor is lovely, dishes are decidedly toned down to cater to farang palates.)

 
Needless to say, the best part of the Penang food story was the research: downing bowl after bowl after bowl of what is probably our favorite Malaysian dish.

First, You Kerak an Egg...

It's a beautifully crisp blue-sky morning here in the Berkshires, but I'm about to tell you about a street treat we ate in Jakarta last April. I've no choice; the Photographer hasn't been on food photography duty since we landed in the States a week ago.

No matter -- kerak telur is nothing to turn your nose up at.

 

Kerak telur used to be thick on the ground in Jakarta, or so we've been told. Though we'd previously encountered this egg and rice 'omelet' it in an indoor food court or two this was our first time to find it sold on the street.

Holding court in a corner of Kota Tua's (Jakarta 'Old Town') Fatahillah Square around sunset, as skateboarders practiced their moves nearby, this ambulant vendor was doing a steady busines, turning out the Betawi specialty one at a time.

 

There are a couple things to note about kerak telur. One, it's traditionally (and most deliciously) cooked over charcoal. And two, it involves a pretty cool technique that somewhat mimics that used for an Italian frittata.

It goes like this:

 

The vendor spreads a thinnish layer of cooked rice in the bottom of a small single-handled wok and places it over the coals. He then sprinkles over some browned crisped shallots, breaks a couple of eggs over the top,

 

whisks eggs and yolks with his fork, and smears it all over the rice.

After leaving the eggs to set for a minute,

he flips the pan over to expose the eggs directly to the heat of the coals. Amazingly, though it will later slide (seemingly) effortlessly from the pan, when it's suspended over the coals the omelet clings tenously to the metal.

 

Turned upright again, the kerak telur gets a final browning over the newly stoked and fanned coals,

Crackly brown on the bottom now, the kerak telur is loosened from the pan with that ever-useful fork,

and transferred to a paper-lined plate, where it's topped with heaps more crispy shallots and sprinkled with coconut dry-toasted with - I'm guessing here - turmeric.

Puffed and golden, sweet and savory, substantial but light enough to go down well as a pre-dinner snack -- and quite unlikely to find its way to a corner near you anytime soon.

Kerak telur vendor, Fatahillah Square, Kota Tua, Jakarta. Evenings.

Stateside Time-Out

We're in the States, where we'll be for the next four weeks or so.

We'll be criss-crossing the country (started in San Fran and we're in NYC now -- Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, and a few spots in northern California to come) and, once I get back into the blogging groove, we will no doubt have some tales to share. In the meantime, if you're interested in what we're eating you can follow my (infrequent) updates on Twitter.

Now...on to pizza!

George Town's Great Disappearing (And Reappearing) Chapati

This place we would have posted long ago, had it not pulled a 'now you see it, now you don't'. It's a hoppin' chapati shack just up the street from our favorite lor mee stall in George Town, Penang. We stumbled upon it back in June while doing some street food research for an article (not out yet).

Nasi kandar, rice and dishes served on banana leaf, and tandoor chicken served with naan are easily found just a block away, in the city's Little India. Stalls specializing in hand-patted chapati are not as plentiful. In addition to this place, called Maj, there's one up the street. But it's Maj that consistently packs in the crowds.

 

After that initial visit we returned to Maj a week later, only to find its metal doors rolled down and adjacent corrugated metal roof-protected 'dining area' devoid of tables. This scenario repeated itself on our next eight or so visits. By mid-September - Ramadan already - we'd pretty given up hope.

 

Then yesterday, after two breakfasts (one being hands-down George Town's best nasi kandar - details to come) we rounded the corner and Maj was open and humming, as if it had never ceased operations at all. After rubbing our eyes to make sure it wasn't a mirage, we hurried over and grabbed a table.

The atmosphere in the dining lean-to was festive. Apparently we weren't the only ones who'd been missing those chapati.

 

Like many eateries in George Town Maj has been in the same family for over fifty years. Its thin, supple chapati - patted, rolled out, and griddled at the rate of one every fifty seconds - are huge in wheaty flavor and fragrance. They wear a few black blisters and a heavenly toastiness from just enough time on a hot tava.

We could eat them by the dozen with no accompaniment at all. But it would be a shame to miss out on Maj's chicken curry, which is just spicy enough and the teeniest bit sweet, with heavy cinnamon overtones. The bird is perfectly cooked; even white meat pieces are tender and very moist.

Maj's owner continues to insist, as he did on our first visit three months ago, that the place is open every day except Sunday -- though he does acknowledge that 'sometimes we close'. So I'm afraid you'll have to take your chances. But if you find Maj's open, you've hit the jackpot.

Gerai Makanan dan Minuman Maj, Lebuh Ah Quee at the corner of Lorong Pitt, 7am-6pm. Closed Sunday.

Jealous

A word that succinctly describes what I feel when I look at these photos, taken by Dave in northern India last July.

This afternoon we stopped by Brickfields (a 'Little India' in Kuala Lumpur) to check out the Deepvali market. Aiyo! (That's a Chinese term but I don't know the equivalent in Hindi or Tamil. Readers?) The market is a sad shadow of what it was during first Deepvali season we passed in KL, four years ago.

It's so much smaller. In 2005 the market sprawled over the walkway between KL Sentral Station and the Brickfields Monorail Station; there were sweets sellers and a biryani vendor all the way from India and fresh roti being flipped and chapati being patted and laid atop griddles.

At the other end of the market, further up Jalan Tun Sambanthan in the direction opposite to Chinatown, you could buy five or six different varieties of wonderful handmade pappadum and delicious kulfi in flavors like saffron and pistachio, both shipped in for the occasion from India.

In 2005 the Deepvali Market was packed from afternoon to evening with happy shoppers and eaters. It really felt like a festive season was upon us.

The next year the biryani and other interesting eats vendors behind KL Sentral were gone. The next year, nothing at all food-ish was sold in the KL Sentra-Monorail walkway.

By last year the Tun Sambanthan stretch of the market had lost much of its character. Many small vendors had been replaced by stalls selling same-same cookies and savories packed in big plastic jars ridiculously labelled 'homemade'.  At least we still had our opulent Punjabi sweets, made by a talented cook from Pakistan.

Alas, this year he's gone too. There is one stall run by a couple of youngish guys selling what look to be homemade sweets. A few are excellent, especially the 'milk cake', a moist, crumbly milk sweet that tastes a lot like caramel, and a chocolate-y sweet that, in a weirdly palatable way, tastes alot like Carnation Breakfast Bars.

But all in all the Brickfields Deepvali Market just ain't what it used to be.

We've no idea if this is down to the sluggish economy, or if City Hall's determined to 'clean up' (read: homogenize and dullify) markets in general. But it is sad to see the lead-up to what is such an important holiday for Malaysian Indians become so toned down.

While some concern themselves with staking a claim on nasi lemak and Hainan chicken rice in the name of national pride real, live Malaysian culinary traditions are disappearing right in front of us.

All I can do is look at these photos and envy Dave for his opportunity to enjoy Indian sweets, in India, on a daily basis. And I think it's time to consider an India excursion to coincide with Deepvali 2010.

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Dish

Shoot, maybe we should have ordered that instead! (Click four arrows to enlarge to full screen.)

I suppose we've all, at some point in our respective dining-out histories, suffered from food envy, that nagging feeling that your neighbors ordered more skillfully than you did.

But until Dave showed me this sequence of photos I was under the impression that only we were uncouth enough to crane our necks after a server delivering a particularly tempting plate of food to a nearby table.

The dish in question is this, a beautiful silver pomfret 'Teochew style' -- steamed with tomatoes, black mushrooms, shredded pickled mustard, sour plums, and a few paper-thin slices of three-story pork, and served garnished with cilantro leaves and slivered scallion.

It's a dish we've eaten elsewhere, but never enjoyed as much as we did the full-on tart version lovingly prepared at Teik Seng in George Town, Penang. It epitomizes, we think, the restaurant's approach to every dish it serves: top-notch ingredients, no holds barred when it comes to flavorings.

(That bacon candy was, by the way, siew yoke or roasted pork, not barbecued pork as we'd thought. We continue to wonder how Teik Seng coaxed chewy stickiness from the dish, so different in taste and texture from another version served at a restaurant two blocks over.)

The morning of the day that we ate that fish we found the uncle who busses tables and delivers drinks at Teik Seng seated there behind a pile of French beans, carefully snipping the notched end off of each one. A few hours later we enjoyed those beans (they aren't on the menu; it pays to ask about specials before you order) stir-fried with garlic, minced and chopped pork (just a little bit of each, more for flavor than for protein), tiny dried shrimp, and a few fresh prawns. The crunch of the beans contrasted with the chew of the miniature crustaceans, while the freshness of crisp-tender beans balanced the meat's fat.

On other occasions we've enjoyed Teik Seng's prawns cooked with tamarind, candied and caramelized in spots but still strikingly sour, just the way we like them (I eat them heads, shells, and all);

ethereally light, nearly greaseless deep-fried squid, tender slices wrapped in crackly-crunchy cloaks;

and a mixture of seafood (the generically named 'sea bass', fish maw, crab, prawns, squid) stewed in a claypot, redolent of huatiao jiu (Chinese sweet 'yellow' rice wine) and juices seeped from the seafood.

Teik Seng's preparations -- such as this asam fish ('fish curry' on the menu, but it's your classic Penang-style spicy and tamarind-soured fish stew with tomatoes and okra; we love the gravy that's thick with bits of lemongrass and chili-hot enough to make us break out in a sweat)

and these potato leaves stir-fried with sambal belacan (chili sauce made with belacan, or shrimp paste) and plump, briny prawns

are not always pretty, but they do always leave us almost deliriously happy.

Until, that is, we get a look at what the folks at the next table are eating.

Kedai Makanan Teik Seng, Carnavon Street between Chulia and Campbell, George Town, Penang. 12 noon-2:30p and 5:30-8:30p. Closed on Tuesdays.

Lor Mee, Oh My!

These two men are tucking into what is, if not the finest lor mee in George Town, probably the most appreciated. It's dished up six days a week at a somewhat obscure kopitiam called Lean Thye. Catch it if you can; the stall opens at 7am and is usually sold out by 9:30 or 10.

This was another happy accidental find, spotted one morning as, dog on leash, we rounded the corner onto Lebuh Ah Quee from Beach Street. Seven thirty and every table spilling out the front of the shop and onto the sidewalk next door was filled, the young dudes working the stall moving fast as lightening to fill orders (the above photo was taken just as they sold out, around 9:45a).

Dave and I nodded to each other, each thinking the same thing: 'We've got to check this place out before we leave town.'

Return we did, yesterday morning after feeding the dog and tending to the puppies (still homeless, by the way). We shared a table with two gentlemen who've been eating the dish for eons and from this particular stall for 'forty-five years or more', they said. How nice to learn from them that although the original seller recently retired, his sons have stepped in to carry on the business.

Lor mee is most simply described as yellow noodles in corn starch-thickened dark gravy, but of course there's more to the dish than that.

The gravy poured over this bowl of pasta is so thick it might almost be described as 'gloppy' -- but when it hits the noodles it thins to a perfect consistency, not too heavy but thick enough to really coat and cling to the pasta. Some lor mee gravies have a slight but appealing fishiness about them, but not this one, which is robustly meaty with an intriguing hint of star anise and cinammon. The barest flecks of egg are visible on its shiny surface.

Consider noodles (these guys mix mostly yellow mee with a few strands of rice vermicelli) and gravy the taste and texture 'base' of the dish.There's the dusting of crispy browned shallots that goes on top, then optional additions, which are listed on the white board above the prep station: sliced pork, soy-cooked duck eggs, and three-layer pork (lean meat, fat, and crispy skin).

Diners add further flavor table side in the form of fresh garlic paste and ground chili sauce. In KL and environs black vinegar often also graces the table, while at this stall tartness and heat come in one package -- the chili sauce has a sour vinegared edge.

We love that this stall offers a choice of not only 'small' and 'large' portions, but 'double XL' as well. With the specialties of other stalls to sample before we headed back to KL, we opted to share a small. It went down fast and easy, and saw us fighting for the last bits from the bottom of the bowl This is comfort food of the highest order: full-bodied in flavor, texturally easy to love (and a bit indulgent if you opt for duck egg and three-layer pork, as we did). A 'real shoveler', as Dave would say.

No wonder this lor mee stall is still going strong after almost half a century. May its new operators enjoy as much success as their father did. Long live lor mee at Lean Thye!

Lor mee stall, Lean Thye, Lebuh Ah Quee about half a block from Beach Street, Georgetown, Penang. 7am till it's sold out, usually by 9:30 or 10am. Closed Sundays and the occasional odd day (noted on the white board above the prep station). RM 2.50 small / 3.00 large / 4.00 double XL. Pork and duck egg RM 1.00 each.

 

Bacon Candy

This may not be the prettiest pork dish you've ever seen, but I'll wager it's among the most delicious.

Teik Seng is a little outdoor spot about half a block from George Town's Campbell Street Market. It's open for lunch and dinner, just 5 1/2 hours a day, and is always absolutely packed. We walked by maybe two dozen times before finally making it here for a meal.

In the last five days we've eaten at Teik Seng three times. It's a family-run joint, and the food is simply superb, every dish made with care and not a small amount of pride. Unless you come right at opening, expect to wait for a table. Once you've ordered, expect to wait for your food. But the wait is worth it, and the food is always served with a smile.

There's lots to write about Teik Seng, and I'll do so in in good time. But this, perhaps the restaurant's 'star' dish, deserves a post all it's own.

On the menu it's 'double-cooked' pork. On the plate, it's char siew, or Chinese barbecued pork belly, sliced into matchsticks and stir-fried. A well-made Malayisan-style char siew is, in its own right, something special: smoky and fatty, laquered with a sweet (but not too sweet) sticky glaze.

Take that already smoky char siew and expose it to a seasoned hot wok and you add another layer of smoke, in the form of wok hei. The glaze caramelizes even more, sticky bits turn crunchy, and some layers of fat begin to render while others crisp. Opt for an addition of chopped cili padi (fiery small fresh green chilies) and you get spare little pinpricks of heat as counterpoint to opulent meaty sweetness.

Teik Seng's double-cooked pork is the best char siew done one better. It's bacon turned confection - Bacon Candy, essentially.

Like any sweet, it's not something to be eaten every day. No matter how much we'd like to.

Kedai Makanan Teik Seng, Carnavon Street between Chulia and Campbell, George Town, Penang. 12 noon-2:30p and 5:30-8:30p. Closed on Tuesdays.