Noodles, salads and Burma

 

It's the hip new thing to go to Burma/Myanmar these days. Luckily, I managed to go in November moments before the hordes descended, giving me the right to yawn and say, "Oh, Burma is so over," whenever anyone mentions wanting to visit the country.
In Rangoon/Yangon the big, touristy market is called Scott Market (by the British) and Bogyoke Aung San Market (by the Burmese). There, on the east side of the market near a Molly Fabric sign, was a girl selling noodles and salads.

We immediately noticed her because despite the touristy nature of the market, local women were lining up, chomping at the bit to taste her wares. She had a dozen ingredients, with which she could make seemingly endless variations of noodles and salads.

We started by pointing to what the woman next to us was having, and we gestured that we wanted one too. The perfectly balanced noodle salad, khauk swe thoke, made my knees weak with delight. It's made with wheat noodles, shredded cucumbers and cabbage, cilantro, garlic, chili, peanut oil, fish sauce and lime juice and has just the right combination of hot, sour, salty and sweet. 

By the time we finished hoovering the khauk swe thoke, we realized that the noodle seller, a girl in her early twenties, was not a one-trick pony. We stood there for a few minutes as middle-aged women in longyis crushed us, trying to get their orders in. It was clear from the giant bowl of ingredients the girl carried that once she ran out, she was done for the day.

So as quickly as we could, we ordered two more dishes, pointing wildly at what the women near us had, while they tittered under the breath, presumably at how uncouth we were. We had another noodle dish that I think was similar to nan gyi thoke, but with thinner rice noodles and chickpea flour. Our final meal (by this point the girl thought we were insane) was a cabbage salad served with crumbled, fried chickpea fritters and thinly sliced kaffir lime leaves. 

The girl was clearly a culinary genius, each dish was delicious, hearty enough to be a good afternoon snack, without the heaviness that many associate with Burmese cuisine. I vowed then and there to learn to make all of these dishes myself, and unsurprisingly, I haven't yet.

Back to Penang: Hoikken mee twice for lunch

I was about to write a potentially very boring post about how much I love Hokkien mee in Penang, and then I realized that I already wrote that post last March. I'm here for the holidays and harboring fantasies about moving here and spending the rest of my life doing nothing but eating hawker food. George Town is one of the best food cities I've ever been to. Last time I visited I didn't quite appreciate how easily I can communicate here, but after five months in Cambodia I've come to be very grateful when I meet bilingual locals that I can have actual conversations with. The vibrant (and vaguely hygienic) street food scene is made even better by the fact that every street food stand has a sign stating exactly what they sell.

My local food ambassador, Mr. Oon, loves Hokkien mee. Just out of the hospital he tells me that he nearly died, possibly from not having Hoikkien mee for a month. He said his doctor has just given him a clean bill of health and that he's now allowed to eat as much Hokkien mee as he wants (but he still shouldn't drink the soup, too much cholesterol). Of course he can't help but have a few spoonfuls every time. Too delicious, lah.

Today for our four hour lunch we started with the soupy Hokkien mee (above) and finished with Hokkien char mee from a different place with the same plates (below).



I've nothing to say about Hokkien mee that hasn't been said before, but I love that Mr. Oon loves it and made me eat it twice for lunch today. He's also twisted my arm into going for an even better version tomorrow morning.

My favorite part about Penang is that hawker-stalking is a full time job. I don't need to bother sightseeing--I spent all day trolling the streets George Town looking for hawkers on my list of recommendations, buttonholing locals trying to suss out the best curry mee, and walking past the koay teow th'ing place again, hoping they will finally be open. Who needs beaches when you can do this?

Breakfast in Cambodia: Khmer noodles

One of my favorite traditional breakfasts in Cambodia is nom banh chok, or Khmer noodles. A heaping bowl of noodles, gravy and vegetables served with a few chilis on the side. Like most food in Cambodia, it's served at room temperature, and often in a plastic bag.

There are usually two kinds of gravy, one that is made with fish sauce, lemongrass, garlic, salt, sugar and fish of some sort. My cultural ambassador (read: my co-worker) started to get flustered when I was grilling her around this so what I am telling you may be completely incorrect. The other gravy choice is called green curry, so I'm going to assume it's probably a green curry.

The noodles are made from rice--Eating Asia has a really interesting post on how they make the noodles for nom banh chok. Cambodians are serious about their nom bahn chok noodles. I have been told several times that Khmers invented these noodles and that many other countries have stolen the idea. I've met a few noodle makers and it's not particularly lucrative and very physically demanding. I don't envy them the job, but I'm eternally grateful that they do it.

The dish is served with shredded cucumber, banana flowers, water lily stem, long beans, lime wedges and a pile of vegetable leaves that I cannot identify.

Living in Asia has given me a new freedom with breakfast. Cereal, phhhht. I'd rather eat nom banh chok.

Penang Hokkien Mee

Penang in Malaysia was easily one of the top food cities I've visited on this tour of gluttony I call my life. Halfway through my visit I met a gentleman who had spent most of his 66 years in Penang and had very strong feelings on the local cuisine. He took no time in telling me that I had not been trying hard enough, and clearly needed to try MORE food while I was in town. Obviously always up for a challenge, I agreed. We'll start tomorrow, he said, with Hokkien mee for breakfast.



Hokkien mee is a noodle dish, that although is Chinese in original is found more often in Malaysia. It was brought to Malaysia by Chinese immigrants from Fuijan Province--in fact one of the most used languages in Penang is the Hokkien dialect of Chinese.

I've tried two kinds of Hokkien mee (mee means noodles). The ones I had in Kuala Lumpur were billed as "dry" Hokkien mee, meaning that they aren't in soup.


Dry Hokkien mee at Hong Ngek, 50 Jalan Tun H.S. Lee, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The dry ones are also sometimes called Hokkien char mee, and are very heavy on the dark soya. Delicious, but it's definitely advisable to stay well hydrated in the aftermath.

Hokkien hae mee (Hokkien prawn noodles) is another name for the wet version that Penang specializes in. I love Hokkien mee! And keeping in tradition with all of my other favorite soups, it's got a hard-boiled egg in it. With egg noodles and rice noodles, juicy pork, prawns, and most importantly, a broth that is well-constructed and an integral part of the dish (made from prawn heads and shells), this is the perfect breakfast food. And good luck getting it for lunch, they've usually run out by 11am.



Of course I was too flustered by the deliciousness of the stuff to write down the address of wherever we went. Sorry, hounds. But there are a lot of very interesting looking recipes online. Anyone want to try one out and report back?

Melaka Nyonya Laksa

Laksa is another one of the reasons I went traveling. I had Malaysian laksa for the first time in London, and immediately fell in love. How could I not? It's so grossly decadent. Why settle for coconut milk when you can triple the calories and use coconut cream?

I started cooking it myself, and I'm not going to pretend that it wasn't delicious. But it was definitely a very western version. Not enough shrimp paste, not enough excitement. I knew I needed to try it in its natural environment. The way other people want to see the pyramids, I wanted to see the laksa.

Melaka is a city in Malaysia that has very distinct dishes, often referred to as nyonya cuisine. Nyonya and Baba are wham women and men that are the product of mixed Chinese and Malaysian backgrounds are called. I've also heard nyonya used to describe women of Chinese descent that are culturally Malaysian in language and dress. Melaka had the first permanent Chinese settlement in Malaysia and as such, has the strongest Baba-Nyonya culture. The food combines the best of Chinese and Malaysian food and has resulted in my favorite laksa so far, that the locals call laksa lemak.

It's very similar to curry laksa--or curry mee--but has the addition of lots of cucumber, which has the unfortunate distinction of being my favorite vegetable. (Does this make me a total sap?) Laksa lemak also has fish cake and even more calories, if that's possible, than regular curry laksa.

This bowl, filled with tofu puffs, hard boiled egg, cockles, shrimp, cucumber, bean sprouts, shallots and fresh herbs in a curry gravy was eaten mid-day in 100 degree weather and left me panting and with burning lips. Sweating and exhausted, I was happy.

Laksa lemak, I love you.

More from Hoi An

I'm sort of reaching a stage of blog/journal/writing/keeping track of my budget weariness. I think this may be because I have been staying in dorms with no windows for the last three weeks. Anyway, this means that you, My Big Fat Face readers, have suffered. But now I have my own room and promise you a half dozen posts in the next two days.



Prawn wantons from Khu Am Thoc, the 'Area of Eating and Drinking' near the Hoi An Market. I am not sure if this is a local specialty as well, but I saw it all over town.



This was the most amazing cao lau I tried, and I tried probably half a dozen in Hoi An. This one was from a small stand in the market, and I went there on Eating Asia's recommendation. Robyn has written so much and so well about this cao lau that she has saved me the trouble of bothering to say anything about it. So read about it at Eating Asia.

Hue specialties: Bún bò Hue and Banh Khoai

I spent five sweltering days in Hue last week doing little else other than eating the specialties of Hue, learning to cook the specialties of Hue and whinging about the heat. Eating a hot bowl of soup on a blazing day is sometimes said to cool the body down. I haven't yet experienced that--generally I find myself sitting on some 6 inch high plastic chair sweating my ass off while being looked at pityingly by the locals.

But it's worth it for the bun bo Hue, the special noodle soup of the area. Beef bones are simmered for ages with lemongrass and chili powder, which gives it a special zing.

I took a cooking class where I learned how to make it--here's the recipe I was given:

Hue Beef Noodle Soup - Bún bò Huế

1. Beef bone
2. Beef
3. Fresh onion
4. Chicken powder
5. Chili
6. Fresh rice noodle
7. Water
8. Vegetable
9. Lemongrass

1. Pour water to pot and chicken powder, you wait when water bolting
2. Put all of the beef bone in pot till 50 minutes (longer is better)
3. Chopping some lemongrass in the soup
4. Put some fresh rice noodles and beef in the bowl
5. Take beef soup from pot to pour to bowl
6. Put some fresh onion on top of the bowl

Make of this recipe what you will. I took copious notes but will probably ditch them and work on my own recipe some day, as the restaurant that I got this recipe from wasn't the best bowl (but not the worst) of bun bo Hue that I tried. Incidentally, the picture above is not the one that I made. In the class they certainly left out some key ingredients in the recipe that they included in the actual making, like the side of banana blossoms, bean sprouts and cilantro, or the shrimp paste that no dish would be complete without. I spent the majority of the class asking questions that remained unanswered and wondering when I'd get to eat.



This is the Banh Khoai I made in my class. Robyn at Eating Asia has a wonderful piece about banh khoai with pictures by her equally talented husband David. They show it so well that I don't need to make the effort.

The only thing I had to add was that this, like many foods that I enjoy, is essentially deep fried. (Not entirely, but you do add about a half inch of oil to the pan after you've folded it over into an omelette shape.) I'm finally starting to cop on to why I'm chubbing up. But at least this dish, as with most others in Vietnam, comes with a healthy supply of fresh veg to compliment it.

I am soldiering on with the cooking classes, but wondering if I will remember any of it by the time I have a home again. I take notes, ask questions and once a month send my new recipes to my parents. Yesterday I got an email from my father: "If you come back to California, I think we need to share a T-Fal Activfry." He may just be right.

Quan An Ngon

No trip to Ho Chi Minh City is complete without the obligatory visit to Quan An Ngon. Quan An Ngon serves all of the street food favorites, made by small, individual "vendors" who specialize in one or two dishes. But instead of subjecting you to the indignity of eating on plastic chairs six inches off the ground (and the rats are at least four inches tall) in 95 degree weather, they serve it all up to you in a giant French colonial mansion with shaded porch tables and, if you're lucky, a fan aimed at the back of your head.

The weather in Saigon was so hot that I was unable to muster up more energy than it took to waddle downstairs and and get a bowl of hủ tiếu (which I had thought was pho, but was actually its more subtle cousin). But I had heard from a variety of sources that Quan An Ngon was worth a visit.

And it was, if only to get me off those plastic stools for a few hours. It's a great restaurant for those who don't get a thrill from spending days chasing down obscure dishes from random street vendors with varied approaches to hygiene. If you've ever thought, "I'm not going to eat meat that's been sitting in a plastic case attached to some dude's bike in the sun all day," this is the place for you.

Of course I don't operate that way, the more putrid the pâté the more of it I want on my bánh mì, but I'm living in an alternate reality--traveling for a year is definitely not the real world. I believe that my body needs to man up, and subjecting it to the local water and the rancid meats is the best way to make that happen. But I recognize that others don't feel this way, so Quan An Ngon is a great introduction to Vietnamese street food in a safe and sane environment for people who don't take great pleasure in sitting on the sidewalk.

As with most places in Vietnam, the service is horrendous but the smoothies are lovely.



Bún thịt nướng, one of my favorite and most simple Vietnamese dishes. Cold vermicelli noodles, fresh vegetables topped with hot barbecued pork and served with the ubiquitous nước chấm sauce, made of fish sauce, sugar, chili, daikon radish and carrots. I never get sick of this one.



Snails steamed with lemongrass.



Some sort of prawns served with chili salt. Simon actually ordered something else but ended up with this, so we don't know what it's called. I was also unclear as to whether one is supposed to remove the shells before eating, or whether the roughage makes it all worth it. I left him to deal with it.



Each table is a small kitchen set up to make just a few dishes. There are more than a dozen.



It's not street food for connoisseurs, and it's still worth eating on those tiny plastic chairs on sidewalk, but is worth a visit if you only have a few days in town or if you prefer to eat at table with relatively clean cutlery.

You can find Quan An Ngon at 160 Pasteur St, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Mi Quang noodles mmmmmm

Friends, I don't know what these noodles were called, but I do know this--they cost $1, they tasted awesome and I got them at a place called Mi Qung Hoi An in Nha Trang, Vietnam, which was otherwise a culinary wasteland.



Yeah, that's a quail egg. The noodles were quite thick, almost udon-sized and it came with a rice cracker to crumble in it.

Anyone know what this delicious dish is called? Mi Quang! Vietnamese Turmeric Noodles!

Thank you very much to the Ravenous Couple, who in addition to being very hungry are experts in all forms of Vietnamese noodles. This dish is called mi quang and you can read their post about it here.

Now that I am reading their post I realize that I should have mentioned the turmeric and really there wasn't quite as much soup as I had remembered. This is why I shouldn't wait two days to post things, eh?

Late night snack: Pho

One of the many dreams I stole from my parents is have a career in street food. I think it's okay to copy other people's ambitions, especially when they are your parents and too lazy to ever seriously pursue a career in sidewalk cuisine. Anyway, Vietnam has brought the dream bubbling to the top of my consciousness in the form of the pho guy at the corner of my street in Saigon.



Because of the 34C/93°F heat I am forced to retire to my bed several times a day, giving me ample opportunity to watch the ebb and flow of the pho business in Pham Ngu Lao. I didn't take pictures because I was worried they would think I was a total d-bag, which I now regret.

In the mid-morning the women of the family would start washing all of the vegetables in giant bowls in the alley while the man prepared the meat and stock. Later in the afternoon they would set up the stall, as well as one across the alley that sold mango and pineapple shakes.

Once the sun went down is when business started to get busy and would stay that way until they ran out of soup. I crowded onto one of the tables with a few assorted randomers and wondered, again, why in god's name I had spent so much time in China. Even in the crowded tourist district of Saigon a bowl of noodle soup with pork, shrimp and a quail egg was only $1.35 or $1.08 without the shrimp and quail egg. Best of all, it came with a plate brimming with fresh vegetables (I hardly remember what they are like, at this point) to add to the mix. Heaven.

Chinoy cooking class

When I got back to Manila my first order of business was to find a Filipino cooking class. I saw that Heny Sison, a professional cooking school, was offering a one day mami and siopao course, so I jumped on it.

Mami (noodle soup) and siopao (steamed buns) are both Filipino variations of Chinese dishes, and in fact, our teacher, Katherine Sion, was a genuine Chinoy--she was born in the Philippines to Chinese parents and married a Filipino.

It was interesting taking a class for professionals--much more serious than others I have taken. I went with a friend and we were the only ones there who weren't Filipino and who weren't planning on making siopao for a living (although I'm considering the idea). Siopao are often sold on the street, and one of the career paths I am considering is running a roach coach.


Beef mami before


Beef mami after


Hands-on demonstrations


Katherine making sure that everyone understands how important good stock is


Filling for the special siopao--pork, chicken, salted egg, Chinese sausage


Siopao showing varying degrees of skill on the part of my classmates to wrestle them into shape


Siopao, post-steaming


I snuck into the cake decorating class upstairs

Banana ketchup (and spaghetti)

Many travelers to the Philippines are astounded at how westernized the country is. And although in many ways that is true--everyone here speaks English and smiles a lot--there is a distinct Filipino twist to even the most western of foods. Jollibee's, the Filipino answer to McDonald's, serves fast food suited to the Filipino palate, which prefers as much sugar as one can possibly get in traditionally savory meals. The burgers are sweet here, the spaghetti is sweet here, and both are covered with banana ketchup.

Banana ketchup resembles regular tomato ketchup in color and presentation (it's dyed red) but is made from bananas, sugar, vinegar and spices. When presented with the stuff, it's easy to think you're just eating a sweeter, spicier tomato ketchup, but do not be fooled! There is a distinctly banana flavor to it. Some brands are not dissimilar to Thai sweet chili sauce.



In the supermarket, the ketchup shelf is 90% banana ketchup with a few bottles of Hunt's making a weak showing. And perhaps most shockingly, it's the main ingredient in Filipino spaghetti, which is not something you'd easily associate with the Italian variety you're probably familar with. It's sweet, it's served with a burger on the side and generally a Royal (orange soda) and it's in every fast food joint in town.

Banana ketchup became popular during World War Two when food shortages resulted in a severe lack of tomato ketchup (horror). An abundance of Filipino bananas led to the invention of banana ketchup which is still the favored Filipino condiment today. It's no wonder that McDonald's has such terrible market share--they can't adapt to the banana ketchup scene.

(Watch the history of banana ketchup)

Yunnan bridge noodles

Lijiang's old town is adorable--canals run along the side of tiny alleys, red lanterns hang from all of the ancient buildings and Naxi women chill out in the town square. The adorableness is not lost on the Chinese; Lijiang is a major China tourist attraction. After my disheartening foodie experience (cheap ingredients, high prices) in Pingyao, another town popular with Chinese tourists, I was apprehensive about my first meal in Lijiang.



To be fair, though, I'm apprehensive about most meals in China these days, as I've found that not reading or speaking Chinese can be a major roadblock to getting what I want and at a fair price. Find someone who doesn't know the rules to charades and try acting out the word "broccoli" to get a sense of what I'm talking about.



I was delighted when we wandered into a row of restaurants on the outskirts of the old town that were filled with teenage girls milling about in their blue and white or red and blue tracksuit school uniforms. (They had mostly disappeared by the time I took the picture above.) It was far enough outside of the main town that the tourists were gone, a girl was washing her hair with a coffee cup over the canal, and overall, the scene seemed promising for lunch.



Of course there was no English menu, so we went inside and just pointed at random ingredients that we liked. I have found out the hard way that if you point at a piece of beef you will end up with a plate of beef and nothing else, sometimes even no seasoning. Even worse, sometimes if you point at five ingredients they will think you want five dishes, each one made from just one of the ingredients. So I pointed at the pork and then waved my arms frantically over the entire vegetable section in a way that I hoped conveyed that I wanted a delicious assortment of veggies.



The Yunnan province, of which Lijiang is a part of, is known for a noodle dish (过桥米线) sometimes called across-the-bridge, crossing-the-bridge, cross-bridge or over-the-bridge noodles. You get the idea, it's about getting from one side of a bridge to the other. The story behind it is that a man would go somewhere far from home to study for his exams. Every day his wife would cross a bridge to bring him rice for lunch and every day it would get cold before she got there.



The ingenious woman decided to start bringing a bowl of hot soup with a layer of fat on top of it instead. Once she arrived, she would add fresh ingredients like vegetables and rice noodles to the soup, which was still hot due to the layer of fat on top. The vegetables and noodles would cook in the soup and the scholar would never have to settle for a lukewarm lunch again. Of course he passed his exams and became a rich man, and commemorated his wife's exertions by naming the dish she made after the journey she made over the bridge to deliver them to him every day. She was probably livid that he named them after the bridge and not her--at least I would be.



I had no idea that this meal was a specialty of the region, or even that we had wandered into a place that served it. I just pointed at a few ingredients and hoped for the best. Because of the touristy nature of Lijiang I had expected to get an overpriced, underwhelming meal. So imagine my delighted surprise when we were served two giant bowls of bridge noodles, brimming with fresh vegetables, a plate of ham and green onions and a giant bottle of Dali beer (they didn't have water, so what can you do?) for ¥37, about $5.40. And in keeping with Lijiang's reputation of perpetual springtime and nice weather, the sun was shining and I even managed to get a bit of color over lunch.

Muslim Quarter grub, Xi'an

Xi'an's Muslim Quarter is the place to go if you are interested in purchasing livers the size of small children or just doing some good eating.



Majiang Liang pi (麻酱凉皮) is a cold noodle dish made with black sesame paste. This dish is a speciality of Shaanxi province where Xi'an is located. Sometimes it is topped with cucumbers. Other times it is served in a plastic bag. We drank plum juice to wash it down.



Chinese dates  (also called jujube) on display. These things are all over the place, and they were also selling drinks on the street made from them.



A typical Xi'an Muslim Quarter restaurant. "Doors? We don't need no freaking doors." Uhmm....it's December in China.



The method of displaying meat was ingenious. "Ah, let's just throw it down and go inside and hope someone offers us money for it."



Yangrou Paomo (羊肉泡馍) is another Xi'an specialty. It's mutton soup with torn up flatbread in it. This was a perfect lunch on a freezing December day. It was delicious.



Chinese muslim dude selling eggs.



Look at the size of them livers. Gives new meaning to the term "street meat." This is the sort of thing you see a lot of in China and it is best to just be interested in an academic sort of way and go "hmmm" rather than  be disgusted and remember it when you are sitting down to a meal in a restaurant. I've eaten some pretty dodgy things here and have not gotten (too) sick. This suggests that one does not need to refrigerate meat or even keep it off the floor, that's just Western hysteria at work again.