By Lee Khang Yi
The Chinese dish that has made the greatest headway in terms of crossing cultural boundaries is probably fried kway teow, a dish of stir-fried flat rice noodles. Travelling from north to south in peninsular Malaysia, you will find slight differences in the style the kway teow is fried by the hawkers.
The “Penang-style” is prevalent in the northern states of Kedah and Penang, where the fried noodles are coloured and seasoned with a mixture of light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and, sometimes, fish sauce. Apart from prawns, cockles and thin slices of Chinese sausage are also added to flavour the noodles. A few famous char kway teow stalls offer the option of adding duck egg for a richer, gamey taste. Lard may be used for a more aromatic dish but generally, most hawkers have switched to using vegetable cooking oil for health and halal reasons.
Cheap and cheerful: Once a breakfast item for the Indian community, roti canai is consumed at any time of the day by all Malaysians.
Other types of seafood are added to “premium” versions of the dish to command a much higher price, and these typically are shelled mantis prawns or crabmeat, or simply prawns of a larger size.
In Penang and Kedah, the dish tends to have a more reddish hue due to the addition of more chilli paste – they like it spicy there!
In Ipoh, a town famous for the quality of its kway teow, fried kway teow plays second fiddle to the more popular Ipoh hor fun, a dish of soupy or dry kway teow (which is more commonly called hor fun among Cantonese speakers).
The further south you go, the darker the kway teow gets. Hawkers in the southern states prefer to fry their kway teow with dark soy sauce, which gives it a darker colour and sweeter taste.
In Malacca, the kway teow is fried with dark soy sauce and served with sweet bean sauce (tim cheong) on the side, and most stalls use only blood cockles to flavour the noodles.
The fried kway teow style in the central region around Kuala Lumpur is a bit of a bridge between the northern and southern styles. Dark and light soy sauce is used, and the stalls selling KL-style fried kway teow generally produce a dish that is darker than the Penang-style version. However, it is not as dark, or sweet, as a dish of fried kway teow further south in Seremban, for instance. In KL, the prawns may be replaced by fish cake slices or char siew slices, and flowering cabbage (choy sum) may be used in place of chives. Some stalls also fry up what is known as “wet fried kway teow”, which is simply a dish with more moisture – the most famous wet fried kway teow is served at the stall in Jalan Doraisamy.
Most hawkers prefer to fry their kway teow plate by plate, for better control of taste and consistency.
The last word on char kway teow must be the wok hei, that slightly charred taste that is infused into fried food from an ultra-hot wok, translated as the “breath of the wok” – the essence of heat from the frying pan. It’s a rather illusive quality that is not easily achieved using a home burner. And there is also the contention that the kway teow fried over a charcoal flame is much more aromatic and delicious. - By Benedict Wu
Grab ‘n Go rice parcels
YOU see them everywhere – hawked at street corners and kerbsides, at Malay stalls and at Mamak stalls that operate round the clock. The small packet of rice fits snugly into the palm, and is gone in a few gulps. One packet does not make a meal but satisfies the South-East Asian ideal of a main meal – there is rice, fish, vegetable and a bit of spice.
Nasi lemak bungkus is beguiling in its simplicity, being nothing more than a few tablespoons of coconut milk-enriched rice topped with a blob of sambal and a few tiny scraps of dried bilis fish, fried peanuts, a slice of cucumber, and sometimes a wedge of hard-boiled egg or omelette.
Social equaliser: Nasi lemak is a staple enjoyed by Malaysians of every class and ethnicity
It’s food for the hungry poor, but the rich are just as likely to reach out for a packet and gobble it down gratefully. It’s a great equaliser, uniting Malaysians beyond economic, social and racial boundaries.
One is never disappointed with nasi lemak bungkus – being one of the cheapest meals around, you don’t place high expectations on it. It is a stomach filler, to help plug those needling hunger pangs before the next meal.
Yet, foodies live for that moment of opening a banana leaf-wrapped packet of still-warm nasi lemak, when they catch the first whiff of the fragrant, pandan leaf-infused coconut rice mingled with the herbaceous scent of the banana leaf. Some would say the appeal of the nasi lemak bungkus is in its sweet, floral perfume.
The perfect nasi lemak bungkus will also have good texture – rice that is not mushy and sticky, but held together in loose grains and still retains some bite. And therein lies the tricky part – the rice must be cooked with the right amount of water, and wrapped at the right temperature. Wrap it while it is steaming hot and the trapped vapour will add too much moisture to the rice, making it lumpy, and the heat may cook the leaf and give it an unappealing colour. Wrap it when the rice has cooled and you lose that precious infusion of green, leafy aroma.
The most common garnish is sambal ikan bilis, but you will find the garnishes vary from one community or kampung to the next.
The nyonya cooks of Penang prefer to garnish their nasi lemak with tamarind-flavoured prawn and fish, and sambal belacan – instead of dried chilli paste. In Malacca, salted fish is added. In Kedah, a simple version has curry sauce poured over the mound of rice topped with a wedge of hard-boiled egg. Others cater for the vegetarian palate, with a topping of curried potatoes.
The incredible rubber dough
ONE of the most enthralling sights in the Malaysian food scene has to be the making of roti canai. When an order is placed, the roti canai maker moves into action. Balls of oily dough are stretched with a few deft kneads with the heel of the palm on a well-oiled stainless steel surface, and dramatically flung skywards with a few quick flicks. The dough sashays into the air in a rhythmic, circular dance; in a matter of seconds, a lump of dough is magically transformed into a large sheet of sheer, membrane-like skin – a bit like blown bubblegum.
Just like watching someone blow a bubble, there is a sense of anticipation – is the bubble going to burst? Will the canai maker throw the dough a little too hard and launch a flying saucer? But no, they are skilled craftsmen and that never happens. The stretched dough is merely folded or coiled, and set aside to rest for a few minutes. The rested dough is flattened with a few urgent pats and slapped on the waiting hot griddle. The canai maker dips his fingers into a bowl of oil and uses sprinkles oil upon the roti, which needs to be well greased as it cooks. When one side has browned and starts to puff, it is flipped over to cook on the other side.
Watching roti canai being prepared is highly entertaining, as you wait to savour the crispy layers of the flatbread.
In the final abuse, the dough is beamed back to the stainless steel table where it is given a smart clap – the crisp layers of the flatbread are crushed and lay crumpled in a heap. That seems destructive, but the punctured bread lets the hot steam escape and keeps the bread crisp and fluffed up.
The original roti canai is made of flour, water, salt and ghee or oil, but sugar, eggs, milk and margarine are now added to make it more tasty. Once a breakfast staple of the Indian community, it is now devoured by all, and has climbed to the top of Malaysia’s favourite food chart. It’s served all day long, and you can even find it on airline menus.
The term roti is derived from Hindi, which means bread. Canai is said to be a reference to Chennai, a region in India where the workers who made this bread came from. Some references link the name canai to channa, the spicy chickpeas served with the bread in India. – By Lee Khang Yi (Story courtesy of Flavours magazine)
Source: http://thestar.com.my
The Chinese dish that has made the greatest headway in terms of crossing cultural boundaries is probably fried kway teow, a dish of stir-fried flat rice noodles. Travelling from north to south in peninsular Malaysia, you will find slight differences in the style the kway teow is fried by the hawkers.
The “Penang-style” is prevalent in the northern states of Kedah and Penang, where the fried noodles are coloured and seasoned with a mixture of light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and, sometimes, fish sauce. Apart from prawns, cockles and thin slices of Chinese sausage are also added to flavour the noodles. A few famous char kway teow stalls offer the option of adding duck egg for a richer, gamey taste. Lard may be used for a more aromatic dish but generally, most hawkers have switched to using vegetable cooking oil for health and halal reasons.
Cheap and cheerful: Once a breakfast item for the Indian community, roti canai is consumed at any time of the day by all Malaysians.
Other types of seafood are added to “premium” versions of the dish to command a much higher price, and these typically are shelled mantis prawns or crabmeat, or simply prawns of a larger size.
In Penang and Kedah, the dish tends to have a more reddish hue due to the addition of more chilli paste – they like it spicy there!
In Ipoh, a town famous for the quality of its kway teow, fried kway teow plays second fiddle to the more popular Ipoh hor fun, a dish of soupy or dry kway teow (which is more commonly called hor fun among Cantonese speakers).
The further south you go, the darker the kway teow gets. Hawkers in the southern states prefer to fry their kway teow with dark soy sauce, which gives it a darker colour and sweeter taste.
In Malacca, the kway teow is fried with dark soy sauce and served with sweet bean sauce (tim cheong) on the side, and most stalls use only blood cockles to flavour the noodles.
The fried kway teow style in the central region around Kuala Lumpur is a bit of a bridge between the northern and southern styles. Dark and light soy sauce is used, and the stalls selling KL-style fried kway teow generally produce a dish that is darker than the Penang-style version. However, it is not as dark, or sweet, as a dish of fried kway teow further south in Seremban, for instance. In KL, the prawns may be replaced by fish cake slices or char siew slices, and flowering cabbage (choy sum) may be used in place of chives. Some stalls also fry up what is known as “wet fried kway teow”, which is simply a dish with more moisture – the most famous wet fried kway teow is served at the stall in Jalan Doraisamy.
Most hawkers prefer to fry their kway teow plate by plate, for better control of taste and consistency.
The last word on char kway teow must be the wok hei, that slightly charred taste that is infused into fried food from an ultra-hot wok, translated as the “breath of the wok” – the essence of heat from the frying pan. It’s a rather illusive quality that is not easily achieved using a home burner. And there is also the contention that the kway teow fried over a charcoal flame is much more aromatic and delicious. - By Benedict Wu
Grab ‘n Go rice parcels
YOU see them everywhere – hawked at street corners and kerbsides, at Malay stalls and at Mamak stalls that operate round the clock. The small packet of rice fits snugly into the palm, and is gone in a few gulps. One packet does not make a meal but satisfies the South-East Asian ideal of a main meal – there is rice, fish, vegetable and a bit of spice.
Nasi lemak bungkus is beguiling in its simplicity, being nothing more than a few tablespoons of coconut milk-enriched rice topped with a blob of sambal and a few tiny scraps of dried bilis fish, fried peanuts, a slice of cucumber, and sometimes a wedge of hard-boiled egg or omelette.
Social equaliser: Nasi lemak is a staple enjoyed by Malaysians of every class and ethnicity
It’s food for the hungry poor, but the rich are just as likely to reach out for a packet and gobble it down gratefully. It’s a great equaliser, uniting Malaysians beyond economic, social and racial boundaries.
One is never disappointed with nasi lemak bungkus – being one of the cheapest meals around, you don’t place high expectations on it. It is a stomach filler, to help plug those needling hunger pangs before the next meal.
Yet, foodies live for that moment of opening a banana leaf-wrapped packet of still-warm nasi lemak, when they catch the first whiff of the fragrant, pandan leaf-infused coconut rice mingled with the herbaceous scent of the banana leaf. Some would say the appeal of the nasi lemak bungkus is in its sweet, floral perfume.
The perfect nasi lemak bungkus will also have good texture – rice that is not mushy and sticky, but held together in loose grains and still retains some bite. And therein lies the tricky part – the rice must be cooked with the right amount of water, and wrapped at the right temperature. Wrap it while it is steaming hot and the trapped vapour will add too much moisture to the rice, making it lumpy, and the heat may cook the leaf and give it an unappealing colour. Wrap it when the rice has cooled and you lose that precious infusion of green, leafy aroma.
The most common garnish is sambal ikan bilis, but you will find the garnishes vary from one community or kampung to the next.
The nyonya cooks of Penang prefer to garnish their nasi lemak with tamarind-flavoured prawn and fish, and sambal belacan – instead of dried chilli paste. In Malacca, salted fish is added. In Kedah, a simple version has curry sauce poured over the mound of rice topped with a wedge of hard-boiled egg. Others cater for the vegetarian palate, with a topping of curried potatoes.
The incredible rubber dough
ONE of the most enthralling sights in the Malaysian food scene has to be the making of roti canai. When an order is placed, the roti canai maker moves into action. Balls of oily dough are stretched with a few deft kneads with the heel of the palm on a well-oiled stainless steel surface, and dramatically flung skywards with a few quick flicks. The dough sashays into the air in a rhythmic, circular dance; in a matter of seconds, a lump of dough is magically transformed into a large sheet of sheer, membrane-like skin – a bit like blown bubblegum.
Just like watching someone blow a bubble, there is a sense of anticipation – is the bubble going to burst? Will the canai maker throw the dough a little too hard and launch a flying saucer? But no, they are skilled craftsmen and that never happens. The stretched dough is merely folded or coiled, and set aside to rest for a few minutes. The rested dough is flattened with a few urgent pats and slapped on the waiting hot griddle. The canai maker dips his fingers into a bowl of oil and uses sprinkles oil upon the roti, which needs to be well greased as it cooks. When one side has browned and starts to puff, it is flipped over to cook on the other side.
Watching roti canai being prepared is highly entertaining, as you wait to savour the crispy layers of the flatbread.
In the final abuse, the dough is beamed back to the stainless steel table where it is given a smart clap – the crisp layers of the flatbread are crushed and lay crumpled in a heap. That seems destructive, but the punctured bread lets the hot steam escape and keeps the bread crisp and fluffed up.
The original roti canai is made of flour, water, salt and ghee or oil, but sugar, eggs, milk and margarine are now added to make it more tasty. Once a breakfast staple of the Indian community, it is now devoured by all, and has climbed to the top of Malaysia’s favourite food chart. It’s served all day long, and you can even find it on airline menus.
The term roti is derived from Hindi, which means bread. Canai is said to be a reference to Chennai, a region in India where the workers who made this bread came from. Some references link the name canai to channa, the spicy chickpeas served with the bread in India. – By Lee Khang Yi (Story courtesy of Flavours magazine)
Source: http://thestar.com.my
