‘A JOURNEY OF TASTE’
Malaysian street food
PENANG’S FAMOUS CHAR KWAY TEOW
Serves: 4
1 lb (454 g) fresh rice noodles
3 tbsp (45 mL) canola or peanut oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 large shallots, sliced
1 fresh red jalapeno chili, sliced 8 oz (225 g) large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 cup (60 mL) soy sauce, or to taste
2 tbsp (30 mL) kicap manis (sweet soy sauce; see note)
1/2 tsp (2.5 mL) pure ground chilies or chili powder
2 large eggs, beaten
1 cup (250 mL) bean sprouts 1/2 cup (125 mL) chopped (1/2-inch/1.3-cm) fresh chives
1. Run the noodles under boiling water to remove the oil coating. Separate the noodles into ribbons, working gently as they are quite sticky and delicate. Set aside.
2. Heat a wok or a large deep skillet over medium heat for about 40 seconds. Add the oil, pouring it around the perimeter of the wok to coat the sides and bottom. When the surface shimmers slightly, add the garlic, shallots and chilies and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 4 minutes. Add the shrimp and cook, stirring, for about 2 minutes more.
3. Add the noodles, soy sauce, kicap manis and chili powder. Raise the heat to medium-high and cook for about 2 minutes, lifting carefully and gently tossing as the noodles will break into pieces with rough handling. Add the eggs and cook, lifting and gently tossing again, until the eggs are fully cooked, about 2 minutes; the noodles should no longer appear wet from the eggs.
4. Add the bean sprouts and chives and cook, stirring until the vegetables are slightly wilted. Taste and add more soy sauce if needed for desired saltiness. Serve immediately.
Note: A good-quality brand is ABC Kecap Manis, which is sold in dark bottles in most Asian grocery stores. If you cannot find kicap manis, adding brown sugar to regular soy sauce will get close to the flavour.
LAURA BREHAUT
“Think of it as happy cooking,” Christina Arokiasamy says. “Malaysian food is a journey of taste. Sweet, sour, salty, spicy and savoury hit your palate at the same time. And that is a glorious palate that is happy and dancing with flavours.”
In her second cookbook, The Malaysian Kitchen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), Arokiasamy offers an introduction to her native cuisine in 150 recipes.
She grew up in Kuala Lumpur and was previously a chef at Four Seasons resorts in Thailand and Bali.
Now based in the Pacific Northwest, Arokiasamy has been teaching culinary classes for more than two decades. In the book, she captures the essence of Malaysian home cooking while utilizing ingredients that are readily available in grocery stores.
“It is the ingredients that make this food,” she says. “The book is based on what we have in North America … (To) bridge the gap between the way my grandmother cooked and the way readers learn to cook.”
There’s a nine-page spice chart in the book, detailing 35 spices and aromatics: their taste and aroma, health benefits, and uses. Spices are the foundation of Malaysian cooking, Arokiasamy explains, providing depth. But herbs and other aromatics (lemon grass, galangal and makrut lime leaves) are equally significant.
“Spices provide a different dimension and complexity. But herbs (and other aromatics) lift them all up … They bring life to chutneys, pickles, vinaigrettes and dressings. They revive a dull-tasting marinade. Adding any of these Asian aromatics just brings an amazing amount of lightness,” she says.
Arokiasamy highlights the multiculturalism of Malaysian cuisine in the book. Culinary traditions from the Malay Peninsula’s predominant cultures — Malay, Chinese, Indian, Baba-Nyonya (a.k.a. Peranakan) and Portuguese — have been borrowed, shared and built upon by cooks.
“It’s an eclectic way of eating. You taste many cultures in a spoonful,” she says.
Street food is abundant in Malaysia, and the island of Penang in particular is renowned for its hawker stalls.
Arokiasamy grew up on this food, and says that the hawkers have inspired her passion for the cuisine as much as her professional chef ’s training.
She devotes a chapter to street food in the book, a selection of popular recipes that represent the cultural diversity of the vendors in Penang — Malaysia’s culinary capital.
“Malaysians who move overseas are always searching for this food: Hainanese chicken rice, nasi lemak (fragrant rice), char kway teow (stir-fried noodles), fivespiced barbecue-roasted pork, curry puffs and Malaysian wantan noodles,” she says.
“When we go back, that’s the food we want to eat because it represents Malaysian food — the many cultures that created that one particular dish. I’ve taken the best of the best and I’ve put it in that chapter. And I think they would find themselves as if they ’ve just taken a journey back home.”