Malaysian Fresh Spring Rolls (Popiah)

Things always cluster in threes, they say, so I feel compelled to complete what appears to be a series about my favorite childhood Nonya foods with the third entry: Fresh Spring Rolls, or "popiah". We frequently had popiah as an appetizer to be followed by either Sarawak Laksa or Hainanese Chicken Rice. At a kopi tiam (casual food court), the popiahs would arrive assembled and ready to eat. My third aunt often had popiah parties, where one would assemble one's own popiah out of prepared ingredients; this is how I serve popiah at home. So, without further ado, this is how we eat popiah at Chez Huxley Wuxley.

First, you need to get together these ingredients:

Wrapper skins, preferably Menlo wrappers (these are made in Menlo Park, CA and are available in most Asian groceries/supermarkets; in Kuching, you would just buy a bunch of freshly-made skins from your favorite popiah lady):



Condiments, including Hoisin sauce & Sriracha hot sauce, lettuce leaves, and freshly ground roasted peanuts:



Thinly-sliced, steamed chinese sausage:



Blanched bean sprouts, thinly-sliced plain omelette, and thinly-sliced fried tofu cubes (the last is optional because I decided I don't really like them):



And, most important of all, popiah fillling, consisting primarily of jicama (recipe follows):



To make popiah filling, saute 4 finely chopped peeled garlic cloves and 3 tablespoons finely chopped dried shrimp (previously softened in hot water) in 2 tablespoons oil until fragrant. Mix in 2 medium peeled and julienned jicamas and about 6 finely julienned black dried chinese mushrooms (previously soaked in hot water to soften), turn heat to low and cover and cook gently for about 10 minutes. The jicama will release moisture and steam in its own juices. When it is cooked to your liking, make a sauce with 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 teaspoons oyster sauce, 1 tablespoon sesame oil and 1 tablespoon cornstarch. Make a well in the vegetables, pour in the sauce and let cook a little before stirring to mix. Cook over low heat and reduce until mixture is somewhat dry. Add about a cup of peeled, coarsely chopped fresh shrimp and mix until shrimp is cooked through. Turn off the heat and mix in some chopped scallions.

OK, now you are ready to assemble your popiah. First layer your plate with a Menlo wrapper, place a lettuce leaf on it and drizzle hoisin sauce and sriracha hot sauce over the leaf.



Then place a little of the popiah filling, the blanched bean sprouts, the sliced omelette and fried tofu on top of the lettuce leaf. Sprinkle with the sliced cooked chinese sausage and ground roasted peanuts.



Then roll everything up like a burrito. This is what Dave's looks like:



You are ready to take a bite!



Yum! There is the crunch of the lettuce leaf, the crisp-cooked jicama and the bean sprouts; the savory-sweet-spicy flavor of the condiments, the chinese sausage and the cooked sauce; the umami-ness of the fresh & dried shrimps and the mushrooms; and the nuttiness of the ground roasted peanuts. Somehow everything comes together magically to make - you've guessed it - the most delicious spring roll ever!

Hainanese chicken rice

In my last post, I said that Sarawak laksa is the best dish ever, but another dish that comes a close second when it comes to childhood comfort food that I crave, is Hainanese Chicken Rice. Luckily, this dish is easy to put together with widely available ingredients and requires no covert smuggling of secret spice mixes from halfway around the world. In fact, I made it once for a dinner party many years ago at my friend Amanda's and it was the hit of the party. Amanda kept asking me for the recipe but I never got it to her, in large part because my version of Hainanese Chicken Rice is an amalgam of two different recipes, from these two cookbooks:




so it wasn't an easy matter of just sending her photocopies of the recipes; I'd have to stipulate which parts I used from which recipe and when. In a way this post is for Amanda: after more than 5 years (!), here is the Hainanese Chicken Rice recipe you asked for. Sorry for the delay, but better late than never, right?

First, what is Hainanese Chicken Rice? Again, it is one of those wonderful Sarawak Nonya dishes that is somehow more than the sum of its parts. There is rice cooked with shallots and garlic and rendered chicken fat in a good chicken broth, served with poached chicken marinated with a dark sauce and a dipping sauce of fresh red chillies, ginger, garlic, chicken broth and lime to pull it all together. But what a dish! I cannot really describe the unctuous mouth-feel of the rice, the delicious tang, heat and gingeriness of the dipping sauce, and the silkiest, tenderest chicken you have ever tasted.

Here is a picture of my most recent attempt:



The cucumber salad on the side is not authentic, but I think it goes beautifully with the traditional chicken, rice and dipping sauce. The recipe for the cucumber salad is from the New York Times, originally intended to accompany bluefish and rice. I have also served it with Vietnamese grilled meat patties; in fact, it pairs wonderfully with any South East Asian rice-and-meat dish, and especially Hainanese Chicken Rice, which is traditionally served with cucumber slices.

Alright, this is how I make Hainanese Chicken Rice:

Take a small chicken (about 3 pounds), trim it of excess fat and rub all over with salt. Reserve the trimmed fat - you will use it for the rice later on. In a large pot big enough to hold the chicken, boil 8 cups water with 8 cloves garlic (in their skins, smashed) and 5 slices fresh ginger (smashed). Lower the chicken into the pot, immersing it in the boiling water, weighing it down if necessary. Cover and boil for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the chicken sit in the hot water without removing the lid, for 2 hours. At the end of the 2 hours, remove the chicken and plunge into ice-cold water for 10 minutes.

In the meantime, prepare the rice. Render the chicken fat (there should be about 1/3 cup), throw out the unrendered brown bits and then sautee 3 chopped shallots and 3 chopped garlic cloves until light brown. Add two cups jasmine rice (or a long-grained rice) and sautee briefly to coat the grains. Add 4 cups chicken broth (it can be from the water used to boil the chicken, which is now a stock) and salt to taste, bring to a boil, give everything a good stir and then lower the heat to low and cover tightly. The rice is done when the liquid has been absorbed and there are steam holes on the surface of the rice, about 20 minutes.

When the chicken is done, tear the meat from the carcass. Make a marinade by mixing 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup chicken broth, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, 1 tablespoon oyster sauce, and 1/2 teaspoon sugar. Mix the chicken meat in this marinade.

Make the dipping sauce. Now, this is the most important part of the dish. It is absolutely essential and brings everything together. Do not even think of attempting this dish without the dipping sauce! Mix together: 5 fresh red chilies (stemmed, seeded and chopped) or 1 1/2 tablespoons or more (or less) of sambal oelek if you are too lazy to stem and chop fresh chillies (which is what I do), 4 cloves chopped garlic, 1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger, 1 teaspoons sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, the juice from one lime and 1/4 cup chicken broth. I usually taste and may add more ginger, lime juice, salt or sambal oelek. It should be tangy and gingery, with a nice fresh red chilli flavor. The chilli has to be red chilli, no green chilli substitutions!

To serve, place a portion of rice with some chicken and dribble dipping sauce over all. (I like to dribble a lot of dipping sauce; in fact, back home we use it like a dressing). Place a portion of the non-authentic cucumber salad on the side. This may not be traditional, but I promise you, it makes the dish even better! Sit back and enjoy!

Amanda, I hope you like the post and will let me know how the dish turns out when you get David to make it!

Borneo cuisine: Sarawak laksa

This morning, during breakfast with the Sunday New York Times, I was thrilled to see that they had written a very nice travel article about Kuching, a town on the island of Borneo that I had grown up in. The writer highlighted various things that immediately brought back fond memories, including a mention of my favorite dish in the whole world: Sarawak laksa, which he describes as a fiery noodle soup. It is hard to describe what laksa tastes like to the uninitiated; somehow the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so simply to say that it consists of rice noodles bathed in a spicy, shrimpy, coconut broth and garnished with shrimp, shredded chicken, beansprouts and strips of omelette is not really doing it justice. Sarawak laksa is like the best thing you have ever tasted multiplied by ten. Here is a picture of it in the New York Times print article (the on-line article is missing this picture for some reason)



So, the way you might enjoy laksa without having to travel halfway around the world to Kuching is to acquire the laksa secret spice paste mix, perhaps from a friend or relative visiting you from Kuching who has smuggled this precious substance in a suitcase that has miraculously escaped detection by the Beagle Brigade at San Francisco airport. The precious bricks of laksa paste are kept in a safe place in your refrigerator and only very rarely broken out for very special meals. As you use up more and more of your stash, you start to hoard what you have left very jealously. Home-made laksa might be had no more than once a year, unless you can locate someone who can smuggle this stuff for you more frequently than once every few years.

I decided that the nostalgia induced by the article was a good enough reason to break out the second-to-last brick of laksa paste I still have in my refrigerator. It looks like this:



and is actually quite simple to use. First, you make a good stock (preferably from shrimp heads, or chicken or pork bones if you can't locate shrimp heads) and then you add the laksa secret spice mix and boil it in the stock for about an hour. You then strain the result and add coconut milk. Separately, you cook peeled shrimp and chicken in the stock and shred the chicken. You make an omelette and cut it into strips. You boil some rice noodles and drain them. Then you assemble the famous laksa dish. In a bowl, you add a nest of rice noodles, top it with some crunchy bean sprouts, the shredded chicken, the shrimp and the omelette strips. Then you ladle the laksa broth over all, sprinkle with cilantro leaves, a squeeze of lime, and serve. Voila!



The most delicious dish in the world. Ever.

In Kuching, laksa is a morning breakfast dish. If you venture out looking for a bowl any later than 11 am, you are bound to be disappointed. We had this for dinner tonight, but I am really looking forward to my breakfast tomorrow morning.

Huxley Beagle was very excited about laksa. He sniffed the air very intensely and was more doggedly hanging by the stove waiting for me to drop food than usual. I think he senses that the humans are eating the best thing ever, too! He would like Kuching. All the outdoor hawker centers where people eat and drop food he can scavenge, the giant rafflesia flower that smells like rotting meat - it would be paradise for a beagle!