Rustle

Photos: Passport & Plate - Store-cupboard Babi Guling

madevi — Fri, 6 Mar 2015 04:40:00 GMT

Ingredients You’ll need: 1 small boneless pork shoulder (about 1.5 to 2kg) 5 kaffir lime leaves, shredded Salt to season 1 tbsp turmeric powder For the spice paste: 2 tbsp coriander seeds 1 tbsp black peppercorns 3 cm piece ginger, peeled and chopped 3 cm piece galangal, peeled and chopped 1 large red chilli, chopped, with seeds 6 large gloves garlic, crushed and chopped 3 lemongrass stalks, white part only, coarsely chopped 6 spring onions, white part only, chopped 1 tsp salt 1 tsp shrimp paste 1 tsp turmeric powder 1 tbsp brown sugar 2 tbsp vegetable oil How to prepare this recipe 1. In a small pan, roast the coriander seeds until they turn golden and fragrant. Grind them to a powder with the peppercorns and set aside. 2. Blitz the ginger, galangal, chilli, garlic, lemongrass, spring onions and salt together in a food processor until they form a fine paste, or, if you’re feeling determined, pound them in a mortar and pestle. 3. Add the ground spices, shrimp paste, turmeric, brown sugar and vegetable oil to form a thick spice paste. 4. Preheat your oven to 150C. Open the pork shoulder up, season it well and place it skin-side down on a work surface. Rub the spice mix all over the meat. Roll the roast back up and tie it with butcher's string. 5. Mix the turmeric powder with enough water to form a thin glaze. Brush this all over the pork, especially the skin. 6. Place the pork shoulder onto a roasting tray and into the oven for 3 to 4 hours, basting it occasionally with the pan juices, until the meat pulls away easily with a fork. 7. Increase the oven temperature to 230C for 10 minutes to crisp the skin. Rest it for 10 minutes, then dish out a portion of meat and crackling over a plate of steamed white rice and greens. The story behind this recipe When the pig comes, it is perched precariously in a metal tray on a young man’s head. He weaves in and out of the rows of motorcycles parked in front of the roadside warung: picture a low stone wall, a red-tiled awning, a scattering of tables and parasols on a scrubbed concrete floor. The pig’s skin is crisp and deep amber, a glorious vision of tasty porky goodness silhouetted against the bright blue skies of Ubud. This is Ibu Oka’s warung and the pig, of course, is babi guling, the dish in every guide book and the first pit stop on any traveller’s list. Expectant excitement is in the air. Confused punters hesitate by the entrance. Japanese grannies in huge sunglasses jostle for a seat. Shoulders, kissed with freckles and the gentle blush of the sun, hunch reverently over polished-wood tables. Behind the counter, clad in crisp green aprons, a squad of stern matrons dishes out paper-lined baskets efficiently: a ladleful of rice, fresh greens, a generous portion of tender flesh and perfect crackling, a splash of spicy sambal. This is what I crave, here at home in Scotland, when the skies are grey and the wind turns the tip of my ears to ice. I crave the sun and warmth of Bali, the way the light makes eyes narrow and blink. I crave the chaos of busy city roads, that mad jostle of tooting horns and swerving bikes and darting monkeys, and then the still, silent expanse of the paddy fields. Everything I need is in the store cupboard. There’s galangal and lemongrass in the freezer, a box of kaffir lime leaves too – essentials for emergency curries. I’ve run out of shallots but these spring onions will do. Shrimp paste never goes off. The stray chilli I find at the bottom of the crisper box. The pork, from the local butcher, has been free to roam this rain-soaked land. Gently spiced and wonderfully aromatic, this is a Sunday roast with a twist: a warming, generous feast for friends gathered around a Iaden table. I doubt it’s Ibu Oka’s recipe, but I bet she’d approve.

Photos: Profile picture

madevi — Fri, 6 Mar 2015 00:26:00 GMT

Passport & Plate - Caramelised fish with bobor

madevi — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 09:11:00 GMT

Ingredients
One sun-dried freshwater fish.
Marinated in a flavoured brine before being left to dry out in the sun, you’ll find this fish at most Cambodian markets. Choose a stall whose owner takes care to bat the flies away; if you travel overland between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, you’ll find particularly tasty specimens at dusty, ramshackle Kompong Thom market. Buy them small: the fish will have been caught wild in the river, and have far more flavour than its fatter farmed cousin. You’ll probably struggle to find the dried fish in Europe. Try smoked haddock or kippers; the taste will be very different, but you’ll hit the same salty, sweet and smoky notes.

8 cloves of garlic, finely chopped.
One tablespoon of white sugar.
One teaspoon of water.
Groundnut oil.

For the rice porridge:
1 cup of jasmine rice.
9 cups of water.
1 large pinch of salt.

How to prepare this recipe
For the bobor (rice porridge):
Wash the rice thoroughly until the water runs clear.
Place it into a heavy pan with the salt and water; bring to a boil. Let the bobor simmer on a very gentle heat for at least an hour, loosely covered with a lid, until the rice starts to break down and the porridge is thick and creamy.

For the caramelised fish:
Wash the fish and chop it into thumb-sized pieces.
Heat a generous amount of oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet and fry the fish on both sides. When it’s crispy and golden brown, remove the excess oil from the pan and add the chopped garlic, mixing it in well. It will start to colour and smell heavenly; sprinkle the sugar and water in, and stir well until the fish has caramelised.

Serve with a bowl of steaming hot borbor and some beet or radish pickles.

The story behind this recipe
When we were little, my mother treated all illnesses with the same remedy. No hot water bottles or strawberry-scented calpol for us, oh no. We could have had anything, really: a fever, an upset tummy, the bubonic plague. She’d just scrape some Tiger Balm out of a small glass jar and rub it briskly onto our backs and sternums. The scent – menthol, camphor, something oily and lingering – was sinus-clearing, and when we felt well enough to sit up she’d bring us a bowl of hot rice porridge.

Congee, okayu or juk – Asia has many names for it, but for my sister and me it was Cambodian bobor, a soothingly bland, faintly salty liquid. Silken-soft rice in a clear medicinal broth: that’s all we’d be allowed, at least until we got better; a little bowl of comfort and warmth. Then tasty toppings would appear: thin strips of beef flash fried with onions and soy sauce, slow-simmered chicken, some fresh bean sprouts or golden shallots. The caramelised fish in the recipe, flaky and crispy and intensely smoky, is a more recent treat.

I’d been working in Singapore, on a long, harrowing project that had taken its toll. When my contract finished I took refuge at my mother’s house on the outskirts of Siem Reap. I slept and I read, a little lost at sea, letting the slow rhythm of the Khmer countryside lull me back to health. There was the barking of dogs at dawn and, somewhere beyond the paddy fields, the distant chanting of monks. My mother said little, but when I came down for breakfast every morning the bobor would be bubbling away on the stove. “Chop the garlic”, she’d say, and when the fish had turned that deep amber brown we’d take our bowls out onto the terrace, beneath the swaying palm-trees, and eat together, quietly.

My Scholarship entry - Giving back on the road

madevi — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 23:52:21 GMT

There it is again. A rustle in the dark.

My eyes spring open onto blackness. It isn’t the sound of rats - the scurrying of little feet on the aged floorboards - nor the careful steps of the gecko moving along the roof beams. This is a heavy sound, something sliding slowly and purposefully across the room. It is the small hours of the morning and I hold my breath, straining to hear, hoping I’ve imagined it. It is so dark I’m blinded. I can feel, rather than see, the mosquito net that envelops us, the warm sleeping weight of my coworker next to me. She’s sharing my bed because her mattress is riddled with mice; she snores gently. My bladder is painfully full but I don’t want to risk the trip to the side room with its makeshift plastic bucket of piss, not now, not in the dark, not with this… this thing making its way across the room.

I turn to my side and breathe deeply. The bare bamboo slats of the bed dig painfully into my ribs. I can feel the bruises on my bottom from bumpy rides on dirt track roads, the ache in my shoulders from the heavy equipment I carry every morning and every night. I close my eyes and try to sleep.

Tomorrow I will pad out to the deck before anyone wakes, to watch the sun rise quietly over the ashen river. I’ll see the green of the paddy fields and the thin, slow moving cows being led out to pasture. At the orphanage children will rush up to say
hello, hurried "chum reap sour", hands pressed hastily in front of
beaming grins. We will work in the shadow of a house on stilts, little faces bent seriously over texts and drawings, telling their stories of loss and pain and hope. There will be the sound of music and laughter rising from the dormitories, thick fragrant curries over wood fires, cold bucket showers beneath banana trees, the monsoon falling thick and fast and children running for joy in the rain.

Tomorrow.

But now, right here, on this hard wooden bed in this strange, sweaty, crowded room - there it is again. A rustle in the dark.