G’day. I’ve been itching to update you on our recent holiday with a ‘Malaysia: Best Eats’ special and a report on Melaka’s legendary Jonker Street. Unfortunately, I (and the rest of the family) have been hijacked by a killer virus that has knocked the stuffing out of us. So I’ll be offline for a few days more, and will return asap with more food news and recipes. In the meantime, I’ll be drinking lots of honey & lemon tea.
All posts by Christina Soong
Honey and Lemon Tea
Postcard from Malaysia
8 days in Malaysia = 40 meals = me coming home with an extra 3 kgs around my waist.
Was it worth it? Oh, yeah. Because Malaysia is a foodie’s paradise. There’s just so much good stuff to eat there.
Malaysia boasts a wonderful mix of Malaysian, Indian and Chinese food, along with the intriguing Nonya style of cooking, which blends Chinese ingredients and cooking techniques with Malaysian spices. The result of intermarriage between early Chinese migrants and local Malays, Nonya cooking features heavy use of coconut milk, candlenut, galangal, belachan, sambal, tamarind, asam flower (torch ginger), lemongrass, and pandan leaves.
Food in Malaysia is cheap and readily available at all times of the day and night. Whenever I had a craving for fried noodles at 10pm at night I could always find a hawker stall within a 5 minutes walk of wherever I was. Love that convenience.
So what were our favourite dishes? Well, we ate a LOT of good food there but these dishes below were the stand outs. If you’re visiting Malaysia, or eating at a Malaysian/Asian restaurant you must try some of these. Luckily, we have some fantastic Malaysian restaurants in Australia so I don’t have to wait another year until my next fix.
I don’t have photos of everything we ate unfortunately – travelling with two small children meant that the best laid plans often went out the window. But that’s life with small children for you.
PS Watch out for an upcoming post about the Soong family in Malaysia and my grandmother’s asam laksa recipe.
HITS
1) My top Malaysian dish is Penang’s signature noodle soup, the Asam Laksa. Both my husband and I are completely addicted to this chill-hot, tamarind-sour, asam (ginger) flower-tinged fish noodle soup. I can honestly say I never get enough of this dish. It’s the most marvellous combination of flavours – the fresh pineapple, onion and mint cut through the strong fishy flavour making it all at once savoury, sour, sweet, hot and salty. I find it endlessly satisfying.
2) Hot on the heels of the Asam Laksa is the Char Kway Teow (Fried Noodles). Simple to prepare (watch out for an upcoming recipe), these noodles are pretty much universally beloved. Prawns, sliced fish cake and cockles are fried with garlic and sambal chilli before being mixed with fresh flat rice noodles, spring onions and fresh bean sprouts. Soya sauce is added for flavour and then an egg is cracked into the wok, allowed to partly set and then mixed through the noodles. This was my preferred choice for supper every night.
3) Chicken Rice or Pork Rice are also firm favourites of ours. Chicken Rice is either roasted or poached chicken served with chicken flavoured rice (rice cooked in chicken stock). Hainese Chicken Rice is of course the ultimate chicken rice – tender poached chicken is served with chicken rice and a bowl of clear soup, and accompanied by a fresh gremolta-esque sauce made with ginger and spring onions and a fresh garlic chilli sauce. My children love chicken rice – when we were in Malaysia they had it at least once a day.
Pork Rice is roasted pork (either Char Siew style or roasted style as per below) served with plain rice. The belly pork is tender and juicy while the skin is crunchy and salty. Not surprisingly, my kids loved this, too.
4) The better known laksa, Laska Lemak or Curry Laksa, is also a favourite of mine. A coconut curry soup is poured over hokkein or rice noodles (or a mixture of both), fried tofu puffs, chicken, prawns and fishcake, and garnished with fresh beansprouts, sambal and often, half a boiled egg. It’s a deeply satisfying and filling dish, and hugely popular in Australia.
5) I never miss eating Satays when I’m visiting Malaysia. I love everything about them – the lemongrass and onion marinade, the tender chicken or beef skewers, the thick, roasted peanut chilli sauce, the cubes of starchy cooked rice and the roughly chopped cucumber and raw Spanish (red) onion that accompanies them.
6) We had the most marvellous Sui Gao (water dumplings in Cantonese) at my grandma’s house bought from the local hawker place. The pastry was beautifully light, and the filling was a wonderful combination of pork, carrot, Chinese mushroom, crispy water chestnut, vermicelli, and spring onions. It was so good I am determined to make them at home – watch out for an upcoming recipe.
7) Congee or Chinese porridge (we call it by its Cantonese name, Jook Jook) is readily available throughout Malaysia. Rice is cooked in lots of water with ginger until it breaks down, becoming like thick soup. Then shredded meat (chicken, pork or beef), seafood (dried scallops and prawns) or century year old eggs are added before the congee is flavoured with spring onions, white pepper, soy sauce and sesame oil. Dried anchovies and roasted peanuts are also sometimes added. It’s very much Chinese comfort food – people eat it for breakfast, when they’re sick or when they’re feeling fragile.
8. Dim Sum – Dim Sum is not actually Malaysian but Chinese. My kids loved the siu mai (steamed pork dumpling) and char siu bao (roast pork steamed bun).
9) Curry Fishballs. I’ve eaten these wandering around night markets in Hong Kong many times but I never expected to see them in Malaysia. But the dim sum seller on Jonker Street in Melaka was selling them as ‘Melaka satay fish balls’ and they were fantastic. In Hong Kong you eat them on a stick but in Melaka you buy them by the cup.
10) Mee Goreng is a popular dish in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. I quite enjoyed this dish but my two kids refused to eat it. Not sure why but that meant more for me then!
11) I’ve had Pineapple Tarts many times before but this was the first time I’ve really appreciated them properly. Pineapple tarts are simply a small pastry filled with pineapple jam. But this is so much better than the sum of its parts. For starters, the pastry is gorgeously light and flaky (thanks to the use of lard, not butter) and the homemade jam is fibrous, dense and not overly sweet. It’s a fantastic combination and perfect after a chilli hot meal. Just make sure you eat them outside as they crumble all over your clothes.
12) Fruit in Malaysia is so good. It’s so flavoursome and sweet because the fruit has been allowed to ripen properly. In Malaysia, fresh juices abound (we love drinking watermelon, sugarcane, carrot, star fruit and coconut juice) while fresh fruit, conveniently peeled, cut up into small pieces and bagged, is available everywhere – a much healthier version of ‘fast food.’ Below are duku langsat and mangosteen from the local market.
13) Fatty Crab is the name of a well known restaurant that specialises in, you guessed it, crabs. One night my Auntie brought some Fatty Crab chilli crab home. Cooked Singapore style in a thick, sweet chilli gravy, the crabs were absolutely sensational. In the restaurant you can order toast to mop up the gravy – a seemingly unorthodox combination that is just so right.
14) Peanut Pancake is a sweet, crepe-like snack available at morning markets and at street stalls. A thin batter is poured into a metal mould to make a round crepe shape, and dusted with roasted peanuts, brown sugar, and sweet corn before being folded in half and popped into a paper bag. It’s absolutely delicious and very, very moreish.
MISSES
1) I know people who love Popiah. My dad, for instance, always orders this soft spring roll filled with stir-fried and raw vegetables covered with a hoisin-y, peanut-y sauce. But I just don’t get popiah. I eat it and I’m nonplussed. For me, it’s a non-event. And it’s not because I’m not into spring rolls; I adore fresh Vietnamese spring rolls and I’ll eat my mother’s deep-fried Cantonese spring rolls by the plateful. But I just don’t get popiah. So I don’t.
2) I also don’t understand the fuss about Asam Pedas, which we ate in Melaka. Everyone told us we had to eat this dish in Melaka; my cousins, my aunt, our taxi driver – they were all enthusiastically singing the praises of Asam Pedas. Basically, it’s a piece of fish cooked in an Asam sour thick gravy/soup, served with a plate of plain rice, fried cabbage (very nice, actually), half a boiled egg and raw cucumber slices. The idea is that you mix the gray and fish over the rice as you eat. As I love Asam laksa I was expecting great things from this dish but both my husband and I were distinctly underwhelmed. Put it this way: I’d eat it if there was nothing else available.
3) Wonton Mein (Wonton Noodles) is available throughout Malaysia but it’s just not very good. I guess I’m a traditionalist when it comes to wonton mein – I expect it to look and taste as it does in Hong Kong, where it originates. The Malaysian versions often introduce rogue ingredients and flavours that I think detract from the simplicity of the dish. You can order wonton mein either wet (in soup) or dry (on a plate with a small bowl of wonton in soup separately). But I would rather order something else in Malaysia.
4) One of Melaka’s signature dishes, Chicken Rice Balls, also left me unimpressed. Basically, it’s your normal Chicken Rice but the rice is shaped into small balls. The idea is that you can dip these in the sauces and pop them straight into your mouth. But I like dribbling the chicken soup, chilli and spring onion/ginger sauces over my rice and eating it quite wet. So the ball concept just doesn’t appeal to me. My kids, however, loved it.
5) Now I usually love Roti Canai, an Indian-esque flatbread made freshly before my eyes. And I love dipping it into an curry sauce before stuffing it greedily in my mouth. But my experience one night when we were staying at the Sheraton in Kuala Lumpur has put me off it, at least for now. At 10pm, I’d had a craving for food so ventured out to see what I could find. I ordered some char kway teow from a hawker stall and then a roti canai from an Indian restaurant and it all looked great. But when I got back to the hotel and decanted the curry sauce from it’s plastic bag into a bowl, a big black beetle emerged. Eeeeeewwwww!!! Thankfully, the beetle was dead but it was still disgusting. As the sauce sits in an open warming dish, the beetle must have fallen in sometime during the day. This brings me to my number one tip when eating street food: eat fresh!
Adelaide’s best Vietnamese pork roll?
I love Vietnamese pork rolls. No, let me say that again: I LOVE pork rolls. So when my husband came home raving about a pork roll he’d had for lunch I was naturally intrigued and made him promise to buy me one ASAP.
I was introduced to my very first pork roll by my good friend, Vi Tran, in the 90s when were both studying Chinese at university. One day she took me to a nondescript bakery on Hanson Road and ordered me a pork roll. Ka-bam!! I was immediately hooked. It was love at first bite.
Mushroom Chicken For Fussy Eaters
Yesterday my daughter told me that she wanted to go to her Grandma’s house for a snack because “she cooks so much better than you.” When asked to explain, she said, “I only like Popo’s cooking. I don’t like anything that you cook, ever.”
Now that’s kids for you. There’s no harsher food critic than a precocious, headstrong four year old. Unless, of course, it’s an extremely particular 18 month old toddler who only eats more than a few bites if you distract him with toys. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve prepared a lovely meal only to have Ms Fussy and Mr Not Interested in Food turn up their noses and refuse to eat a bite. So I beg and plead and eventually give them wheatbix for dinner.
Beef and Carrot Noodle Soup
Brrrrr! I find this cold weather very tiresome.
Winter in Adelaide is nothing extreme but I’m a summer girl and I don’t cope well with it. All I want to do is huddle close to a heater, wrapped in layers, with a bowl of something warm in my hands.
Thankfully, this easy recipe of my dad’s is perfect for this. Hearty and warming, Beef & Carrot Noodle Soup is divine with a dash of sweet chilli sauce and garnished with crispy, fried onions (shallots). We are lucky enough to have a stash of fried onions made by my Popo (grandma) in our fridge but you can easily find them at Asian grocers.
INGREDIENTS
600 grams gravy beef, cut into cubes
1 large onion, roughly sliced
4 carrots, peeled and thickly sliced. You could also substitute Chinese white radish.
3 star anise
1 packet of rice vermicelli
Salt & pepper to taste
1 bag of bean sprouts, washed and drained
Fried shallots (onions)
3-4 spring onions
METHOD
Put star anise, gravy beef, onions and salt & pepper in a large pot with cold water to cover and bring to the boil. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.
Simmer until meat is tender (approximately 30 minutes but it could take longer), then add carrots and cook until carrots are sort (another 10 minutes).
Meanwhile, boil vermicelli in plenty of water for couple of minutes or until your preferred consistency. Add a couple of handful of beansprouts for the last minute. Drain and rinse in cold water.
To serve, place drained vermicelli in large soup bowl and ladle soup, meat and carrots on top. Arrange bean sprouts over the top. Add a bit of pepper to taste and garnish with fried shallots and/or spring onions.
Serves 4.
Fried Rice – Chinese Comfort Food
Good food doesn’t have to be complicated. This recipe is a case in point. Fried rice couldn’t be easier or quicker to make yet it tastes simply wonderful. And it makes you feel warm and loved in the way that only the best comfort food does.
I like serving fried rice with roasted soy sauce chicken and a plate of steamed Chinese greens but I’ve also cooked it solo for a quick after work supper. And it still hits the spot, especially as I serve it with Indian brinjal (eggplant chutney) on the side. This may sound odd but once you’ve tried it, you’ll never look back; my German husband is now addicted to the combination.
This recipe is my version of my mother’s dish. I cooked this once when my friend Adrian came over for dinner. He took one bite and said, “this is your mum’s fried rice.” He would have last eaten her rice at least 15 years so it must have made quite an impression on him. That’s how powerful a legacy the food we cook is.
INGREDIENTS
½ kg rice, cooked earlier and cooled. You can cook the rice the day before and leave it in the fridge overnight to make things simple.
1 large onion, diced
1/2 bunch spring onions, washed and diced
3 eggs, beaten, mixed with a dash of milk
6 rashers bacon, diced
½ large bag mixed diced vegetables (peas, carrots, corn) from the freezer
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
Dark soy sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil
White pepper
METHOD
Heat a large fry pan or work and add oil. Slide in the beaten egg mixture and cook for a minute or two until partly set. Turn over carefully and cook the other side. Once it’s cooked through, remove from pan, slice into small squares and set aside.
Add a dash more vegetable oil in wok and fry onion over low heat until soft. Add bacon and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring. Once bacon is browning, turn heat up to high and add frozen vegetables. Cook, stirring occasionally for 3-4 minutes.
Add cooked rice, breaking it up with wooden spoon as you go. Continue stirring for a few minutes until the rice starts to form a brown crust in places. Season with light soy sauce and a dash of dark soy sauce. Add a little soy sauce to start with and taste before you add more. Sprinkle with white pepper to taste. Mix thoroughly so rice is evenly coated and coloured.
Add reserved omelette pieces and chopped spring onion. Stir through and let warm through for one minute. Turn off heat then add a few shakes of sesame oil. Stir to combine.
Serve in deep, generous bowls.
Seductive Caviar
When my husband and I first started dating, he made this for me one night.
It worked.
Enough said.
INGREDIENTS
1 jar of caviar, chilled
1 whole lemon, sliced into eights
Half a red onion, diced or 3-4 brown shallots, diced
1/2 – 1 tub sour cream or creme fraiche
2 boiled eggs, peeled, cooled and diced
The best baguette you can find, sliced into thin rounds
Champagne or sparkling wine, the best you can afford.
METHOD
I like to serve this in a crystal bowl filled with ice and a gorgeous Alessi serving plate we have that has four glass compartments. Serve it with your finest tableware, crystal and flatware. These little touches makes all the difference.
Fill the crystal bowl with ice and place the jar of caviar on top. Place the onions, lemon, egg and sour cream in each of the serving plate compartments. Arrange serving spoons around. Place the sliced baguette in a beautiful bowl.
To eat, take a slice of baguette and smear thickly with creme fraiche. Place a spoonful of caviar on top and then add onions, egg and a squeeze of lemon as desired.
Chew. Sigh. Try a sip of Champagne to see if it makes it even better. It does.
Repeat until finished. The end will come too soon. Vow to do it again soon.
Sexy Food
You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?
Some food is just plain, well, sexy.
I’m talking about food that gets your blood pumping. That makes you sigh with pleasure.
So what is sexy food? In my (black) book, it’s food that is confident,sensual, special, tantalising, incredibly fresh, and seductive. But it can also be food that is charming, witty or clever – I’m thinking of some of our leadings chefs who devise meals to appeal to our senses of whimsy and humour as well as our tastebuds.
Jiaozi (Dumplings)
Adapted from a Gourmet Traveller recipe, these dumplings are perfect as a quick after work supper or as the first course for a dinner party. Moreover, if you’re feeling stressed out, making the dumplings is distinctly relaxing in its repetitiveness.
Better yet, any leftovers are wonderful pan-fried the next day for breakfast.
JIAOZI INGREDIENTS
1 pack dumplings wrappers
300 grams minced pork
1/2 cup finely chopped spring onions
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
1 teaspoon minced ginger
White pepper to taste
DIPPING SAUCE INGREDIENTS
Light soy sauce
Chiangking vinegar
Chilli oil or fresh birdseye chilli, chopped
Minced garlic
Minced ginger
Mix all dumpling ingredients together (bar the wrappers, natch).
Use a teaspoon to place a small amount of meat filling inside a wrapper.
Use water to help stick the edges together and seal tightly between your fingers, ensuring no air bubbles remain (this helps avoid the disintegrating jiaozi scenario).
Put a large pot of water on to boil. Meanwhile, add equal parts soy sauce and vinegar into a small dipping bowl. Add 1/2 teaspoon each of ginger and garlic, then chilli oil or pieces to taste. Set aside.
Once water is boiling add dumplings in batches to cook being careful not to overcrowd the pot. Once water returns to the boil cook for around 8 minutes on medium heat or until all of the dumplings bob on the surface.
Drain, and serve with dipping sauce.
8 Dishes to Try in Shanghai
From 2003-2006, my husband and I lived in Shanghai, China. We moved there on his job with a Danish engineering firm, but I also found a great job there and we enjoyed three exciting years. Here’s a photo of me on the Bund when we had just arrived.
Besides friends, one of the things I miss most about China is the food. The variety of food there was simply phenomenal – all kinds of regional Chinese cuisines and an ever growing number of foreign foods were at our doorstep; we ate from dodgy looking, hole in the wall type neighbourhood joints to the newest 5 star restaurants on the Bund. My German husband developed an obsession with thousand year old eggs and fearlessly tried everything his customers ordered for him at their company dinners. And when we were pulling yet another late night at work, we’d regroup by ordering food delivered from one of our favourite restaurants. It was an amazing life.
I’m due for another trip to Shanghai soon. Next time I go, this is the food that I will be sure to eat:
- Xinjiang Lamb Skewers – cumin-fragranced juicy meat skewers seasoned with chilli and Szechuan peppercorns that numb the lips and mouth. Completely addictive.
- Xiao Long Bao @ Din Tai Fung. Din Tai Fung is a very successful Taiwanese franchise that produces to-die-for dumplings. They also make a wonderful tofu and seaweed salad that goes superbly with their Xiao Long Bao (Shanghai dumplings filled with minced pork and a gelatinous ‘soup’ that explodes into your mouth).
- Chilli Dumplings @ Crystal Jade, Xintiandi. Crystal Jade is an excellent Cantonese restaurant in the very foreign eating/shopping Xintiandi district. They do wonderful yum cha but it’s always crowded and wait times can be lengthy. Their chilli dumplings are fantastic.
- Pork & Preserved Cabbage Noodle Soup. Best eaten at a local Shanghainese restaurant. I make this at home by stir frying garlic and minced pork, tipping in a can of preserved cabbage, and adding lots of water to make a soup. Serve over rice vermicelli with light soy sauce.
- Drunken Chicken @ Ye Shanghai. Ye Shanghai is an upmarket Shanghainese restaurant with rather fabulous decor. When I was heavily pregnant with our daughter it was during a hot summer and I developed a fixation for drunken chicken – so cooling, delicately flavoured and protein rich.
- Roasted sweet potatoes. In the freezing winters, peddlers roast sweet potatoes on metal drums on the street corners. They’re probably carcinogenic (they are usually burnt quite black on the outside) but they smell just wonderful and I love tearing them open to get at the golden flesh inside.
- Garlicky string beans and mashed broad beans @ 1221. 1221 is a favourite expat Shanghainese restaurant (Bill Clinton once ate there). It was one of our standard restaurants to take visiting friends and family and we always ordered the same dishes. Their garlicky beans and cold mashed broad beans are insanely good.
- Pavlova at M on the Bund. I know, I know. Pavlova is hardly traditional Chinese fare. But M on the Bund is such a classy restaurant. Created by an Australian chef, Michelle Garnaut (also of M on the Fringe in Hong Kong), M on the Bund is one of those establishment restaurants you just have to visit. The view is to die for and the food is pretty darn good, too. They also run an amazing literary festival that attracts the creme de la creme of the literary world.
Chicken and Sweetcorn Soup
I cooked this a couple of years ago for my cousin May when she visited us in Melbourne. She took one mouthful and said, “this is your mum’s soup”, even though she hadn’t tasted it in 20 years. What a wonderful compliment!
My version of mum’s soup is not an exact replica but that hardly matters; I only hope that there will come a time when my children cook for their extended family and they experience the same nostalgic thrill of recognition that May did.
Gluten-Free Two Minute Noodles (Fangbian Mian)
I love the convenience of two minute noodles, literally ‘convenient noodles’ in Chinese. With some veggies and a beaten egg thrown in, a snack is never more than a couple of minutes away. However, the MSG and salt laden flavour sachets they come with leave me itchy and thirsty and wheat doesn’t always agree with me.
So this is my version of two minute noodles – perfect for a quick, gluten-free snack any time of the day or night. I make this when I’m starving and craving a salt fix.
Hawker Food Hit List
My father was born in Penang, Malaysia, and his family later moved to Kuala Lumpur. Until I moved overseas, I used to visit Malaysia once a year with my family and food was always a major feature of these trips.
My Grandmother, my Popo, is an amazing cook. Her version of Asam Laksa (the sour, fish-based noodle soup) is famous amongst our friends, while her fried chicken and congee (thick with shredded chicken, fried onions and anchovies, roasted peanuts and white pepper) take ostensibly simple dishes and turn them into works of art.
When we’re not eating at Popo’s house, we’re out and about trying hawker stores for the best of Malaysian street food. It’s cheap, plentiful and incredibly tasty. We have our favourite eating places, and visit them each time, smiling when we see the same old familiar hawkers we saw the year before. Many of them specialise in only one dish and that is all they make, day after day and year after year. They’re the ultimate food specialists. You have to admire that dedication to quality and consistency.
Since we’ve had kids I’ve only been to Malaysia once, when my daughter had just started eating solids. We’re going again in a few weeks and I can’t wait to introduce my kids to Malaysia food. My daughter is now almost 5 years old, old enough to remember this trip, and my 18 month old son, robust enough for a week of eating all types of strange and wonderful food.
Fish and Eggplant Curry
Fish and eggplant may sound like a bizarre combination, but trust me, it really works.
I love this curry of my mother’s. She made a big pot of it for me when my daughter was a newborn. I was constantly ravenous as I was breastfeeding around the clock then and I remember eating large bowls of this curry throughout the day and night.
Serve it with plain rice for a rich, hearty and sustaining meal.
Creamy Mushroom Pasta
When my husband took me to Germany for the first time, mushrooms were in season. For lunch one day his mother cooked us pancakes with a creamy mushroom sauce using fresh pfifferlinge and dried steinpilze (porcini).
Inspired by this lovely meal, we took dried steinpilze back to Shanghai and created this dish.
Smoked Oyster and Corn Relish Dips
As a working mother our mum was always time-poor. So when I was a young girl learning ballet she used to attach the silver sequins to my tutu by stapling them on. Those of you nifty with a needle may squeal in horror but as a time-saving alternative to the more usual and laborious sewing it was genius.
These dips are the culinary equivalent.
Perfect for drinks parties and BBQs, these dips are beyond easy to prepare and can be made well in advance.
Minimum effort for maximum reward. If only all of life could be this simple.
Chinese Sausage Omelette
The food we cook is often a way of connecting with those we love.
In this case, the following recipe always reminds me of my Dad because he would make us this for us s a special weekend treat. So eating this always brings a smile to my face.
This is a Chinese style omelette – it’s not folded neatly in half and stuffed with filling as the French ones. This one is meant to be gloriously haphazard and messy.
