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Fabulous Flavors from Bangkok to Bali

Southeast Asia is my adopted home. I came intending to stay two or three years. More than forty years later, I’m still here. How could I possibly tear myself away from such a fascinating region which also—or could this be the real reason?—offers some of the world’s most sublime food.

When I first arrived in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, towards the end of 1967, I was overwhelmed by the astonishing variety of food created by the three major ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese and Indian. It was a revelation to someone who previously had only ever eaten Chinese food, considerably adapted to what were perceived to be Western tastes; several rather indifferent Indian curries and just one Southeast Asia dish, Nasi Goreng or Indonesian-style fried rice prepared by a Dutchman who’d left Indonesia and migrated to Australia after Independence.

I felt almost inebriated by the sheer exuberance of Malaysia’s lush tropical surroundings, the almost bewildering range of faces, styles of dress, incomprehensible languages and above all, food. I went on a non-stop voyage of discovery, eating in coffee shops, roadside stalls, restaurants and in the homes of friends, all the time trying to find out how to reproduce some of these amazing dishes myself.

Today, with cookbooks and TV shows telling you how to make just about anything from just about anywhere, it’s strange to recall that back in the late 1960s, there were virtually no English-language cookbooks on Malaysian or Singaporean food. I eventually found my first cookbook, which I still have today and which is probably now a collector’s piece: the 9th edition, published in 1962, of The YWCA of Malaya’s Cookery Book: A Book of Culinary Information and Recipes Compiled in Malaya.

Armed with a list of ingredients and their local names, I was able to start buying what I needed to try to some of the recipes in this treasure of a cookbook. Thanks to Aminah, our amah who didn’t speak a word of English, I had a crash course in Malay and was soon able to ask for ingredients by their local name in the markets. I must confess, though, that when I read of curry leaves, a popular southern India herb, I thought it must have been a joke (the Indian counterpart to the “spaghetti tree”). But once I learned that the curry leaf was daun kari in Malay (easier to pronounce than the Tamil karuvapilai), I was able to ask for it without feeling I’d provoke a burst of laughter.

This was the beginning of a process which continues even today, asking how unfamiliar ingredients are used, begging to be allowed to watch how the food is prepared in kitchens around Asia, asking friends or their cooks for their recipes and comparing these with recipes in cookbooks I was able to find. Whenever I traveI, I look for locally written cookbooks and have a wonderful collection including gems such as The East Indian Women’s Association Cookbook; a book on Indonesian regional cooking, Resep Masakan Daerah and Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way.

Following recipes as I’ve scribbled them down while watching a cook, or starting with recipes from a local cookbook, I then tweak or modify the recipe until it produce the flavors that I remember and may even adjust them to suit my palate. It may sound presumptuous to change recipes from someone who belongs to the particular culture that produced the cuisine, but I soon learned that is just what cooks do around Asia. Written recipes are rarely used. Most dishes made from memory, the cook tasting and adding a pinch of this or that, a splash more coconut milk, a spoonful of Chinese rice wine or a small amount of sugar to bring together all the flavors of a dish.

When I lived in Singapore, our home-base for forays into the rest of Asia for many years, I was delighted that a similar ethnic mix there meant that much of the food was similar to what I’d fallen in love with in Malaysia. As time went on, however, I discovered a number of uniquely Singaporean and Malaysian dishes that you won’t find anywhere else, such as Indian Fried Noodles, Fish-head Curry (neither of which you’ll find in India), Famous Singapore Chili Crab and Roti John (perhaps best thought of as a Malay-style hamburger).

In addition to these local specialties, both Singapore and Malaysia have a distinct cuisine which has evolved over the years: Eurasian food, an original East-West blend created by cooks with both Asian and European ancestry. Eurasian cooks are notorious for not sharing their recipes, or if they do tell you their secrets, you can be almost certain they’ve left out a vital ingredient or a special twist that makes their recipe unique. Nonetheless, thanks to the generosity of Eurasian friends (including being lent a handwritten recipe book dating back at least 50 years), I was able to build up a collection of Eurasian recipes.

Even more to my taste—because of its liberal use of fresh herbs and clever blending of Chinese and Malay ingredients and cooking methods—Nonya cuisine was once found only in private homes in Singapore and Malaysia (particularly in Malacca and Penang). Over the past two to three decades, this exquisite cuisine is now found in a number of restaurants, receiving the recognition it deserves.

A year spent in Java in the early 1970s was my introduction to the variety and complexity of the Indonesian archipelago. We lived below an active volcano in the royal city of Jogjakarta, where the Sultan still occupied his palace and where I went either by bicycle or pony cart to the central market to shop. At this time, Indonesia was still very poor and undeveloped, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t exciting food around. Once I learned to speak Indonesian (luckily very similar to Malay), I could use Indonesian-language cookbooks and try to cook a dazzling number of regional favorites.

Like most Southeast Asians, Indonesians are warm and generous and usually amused to meet a Western woman who is so curious about their food. Lots of time in kitchens taught mea great deal more than the cookbooks I used, which assumed you were already familiar with the food. For example, one of my Indonesian-language cookbooks gives a recipe for a sauce, listing ginger, chilies, green onions, vinegar and so on. The amounts for each ingredient? Secukupnya, was all that was written, which simply means “enough” or “to taste”. Not very helpful for someone relatively new to the cuisine.

Over the years, my collection of recipes grew and when I leaf through them, many bring back memories of the person who gave them to me. There was the lovely Malay pancake, roti jala, which my Malay amah in Singapore taught me to make, using it to mop up the delicious sauce of her curries. I used a metal cup with four spouts in the bottom to get the conventional lacey effect as the batter hit the skillet. Fatimah laughed at such modern affectations, telling me that back in the kampung, the village women put their hand in the batter and let it trickle down their fingers into the skillet.

In the late 1970s, my two young children and I spent 6 months back-packing right across Indonesia, from Irian Jaya (the Indonesian portion of New Guinea, now known as Papua) through countless incredibly beautiful islands all the way to Sumatra in the west. We were very fortunate to be passed from one family to the next as we traveled, staying in local homes all the way. While my children played with the inevitable horde of children in the village or fed the ducks as they learned impolite words in the local dialect, I was busy going to markets and helping out in the kitchen. Many of the Indonesian recipes I still use today—such as Extraordinary Beef Satay (page 34), Madurese Chicken Noodle Soup (page 64) and Menado-style Indonesian Grilled Chicken (page 104)—date from this period.

Thailand is almost next door if you’re living in Singapore and it was easy to make fairly frequent trips there, both with and without my children. Luckily, both my children are discerning eaters and were happy when I set them tasks such as deciding which was the best grilled chicken in Thailand, or the yummiest dessert-like cakes sold by mobile vendors or in the markets. Wherever we went, scribbled recipes went into my notebook. Trekking in northern Thailand with a Thai guide gave me a crash course in edible wayside plants; staying the night in a tribal village gave me a look at the way fresh soybean milk was made; buying snacks for breakfast with Thai friends in Nahkorn Si Thammarat helped me discover yet more new foods.

My trips to dynamic Vietnam, to lovely Laos and to Cambodia have been less frequent than those to other parts of Asia and travel restrictions in Burma curtailed the length of time I’ve been able to stay there. But I learned that one of the best ways to discover interesting recipes anywhere in Asia—especially if you don’t speak much of the language—is to travel with a local.

Many years ago, during a visit to Burma, my young son and I decided to put ourselves in the hands of an English-speaking Burmese with the improbable name of Sweet. He came into our carriage as the train arrived from Rangoon, begging to be our guide. It seemed like a good idea so off we went in Sweet’s trishaw. He not only found us an inexpensive hotel (where supposedly rich foreigners weren’t supposed to stay) but for the next few days, pedaled us all around Mandalay.

One evening, he kindly invited us to a sort of “pot luck” dinner given in his district. Guests went from house to house, each family offering a different dish, such as fermented tea leaf salad at one home, an amazing soup with shredded banana stem and unidentifiable herbs in another. After my son gorged himself on sweetmeats at the last house, we were taken to see a special show held to raise funds for the local temple. Once again, thanks to the generosity of people I’d never met before, I managed to get recipe tips along with a large dose of Burmese culture.

In Siam Reap, Cambodia, I hired a young man with a motorcycle to be my transport and guide for the few days I stayed there. We met early each morning. The first task of the day for my guide is to pick me up early in the morning to take me a local market where I was introduced to the sort of breakfast he would normally ate. Then it was off to the temples of Angkor and surrounding villages, lunch in a local restaurant, followed by early afternoon nap to avoid the hottest part of the day, then in the evening, off to explore more Cambodian cuisine. Now that’s my idea of a blissful holiday.

I am still overwhelmed by the generosity of cooks, both in private homes and restaurants. I cannot recall ever having been refused to watch cooks as they prepared their food, jotting down notes so I could try to reproduce these dishes when I was back home.

After many years of eating my way around Asia, I admit that much and all as I love Chinese, Malay and Indian food, my palate responds even more to the incredible fragrance of much of the food found in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and, to a lesser extent in Bali. Unlike some of the excellent spicy food of Sumatra in Indonesia and the more subtle seasonings of Javanese cuisine, the food created in what was once called Indochina is drenched in herbal flavors that never fail to delight me. All kinds of herbs (leaves, roots and even flower buds), the tang of fresh lime juice, the bite of chili and above all, a fishy aroma combine to make the sort of food I love best.

This fishy aroma comes in the form of a dried shrimp paste in much of Southeast Asia, from the coastal regions of Burma all the way to Bali. Thai and Vietnamese food cuisines are unthinkable with the more delicate salty fish sauce. An even more pungent fishy seasoning found in parts of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, fermented fish in a thick grayish sauce (padek or prahok). When I realized it was an essential ingredient for a number of Cambodian dishes, I hunted for it in the markets of Phnom Penh, only to be told everyone makes their own or has a regular supplier.

The English friends with whom I was staying suggested I try to buy it from one of the Vietnamese families living aboard their boats in the large Tonle Sap, the lake near Siem Reap which is the jumping off point for the magnificent ruins of the 12th-century kingdom of Angkor. So off I went with a swanky empty jar (coincidentally from the swanky British emporium, Fortnum and Mason). The Vietnamese woman whom I eventually approached to ask for some of the fermented fish from the large glazed jar on the back deck of the boat seem absolutely astonished, but filled my jar and took a few riels in exchange.

Perhaps you are fortunate enough to already have food memories from various parts of Southeast Asia. If not, I hope that cooking some of these recipes will start you on your own voyage of discovery and remembrance.

Wendy Hutton