The Cocoanut

Sambal terung (eggplant) has got to be one of my favorite Malaysian dishes, the savory smoky sambal piggybacking on the velvety creamy flesh of the eggplant. However, eggplants are notorious for their sponge-like ability to suck in oil. Sambal eggplant done the traditional way starts off with deep frying the eggplants, where more than half of the oil inevitably gets absorbed into the flesh. To this is added the sambal, fried in even more oil, and you end up with a vegetarian dish that gives more grease than fish ‘n chips.

The carefree use of oil, along with the labor intensive and time consuming process of deep frying the eggplants are inefficient remnants of cooking methods that belong to a bygone era, when food was solely prepared by stay-at-home mothers and obesity unheard of. To time-poor sedentary workers who are constantly anxious about putting on weight, sambal terung has become the culinary equivalent of asbestos.

We could either abolish this dish from our diet (which for eggplant lovers like myself is akin to gastronomic fundamentalism), or we could apply simple engineering solutions to minimize the financial, time and health costs associated with this much-maligned dish. The goal is to create a healthy and easy sambal terung dish without compromising its distinctively savory appeal.

My definition of an “easy” dish is something that doesn’t demand more than 5 ingredients, and my sambal terung consists of

2 large eggplants
2 shallots
2 cloves garlic
2 heaped tablespoon blended red chilies (which may be equivalent to as much as 4 tablespoons, but whatever)

and basic stuff like vegetable oil and salt.

Engineers like to work with arbitrary numbers that, based on experience, seem to work. In the same spirit, “2” was chosen to quantify the ingredients because, from experience, that amount seems to work and it makes for easy memorizing. Who has the time to look up recipe books when we don’t even have time to say Hi to our loved ones?

Begin by slicing the eggplants into rather large cubes of around 2-cm in thickness (again, based on experience and for ease of memory). Instead of deep frying the hell out of them, I simply place them in a shallow rack and roast in an oven preheated to 220ºC (can you see the numerical pattern here?) for 30 minutes.

Roasting the eggplant in the oven not only minimizes oil and effort, it also frees up time to chop the shallots and garlic and blend the chilies. The Italian way of roasting eggplant involves brushing the surface with olive oil. I found this to be redundant – at least in the case of sambal terung – because the flavor comes from the sambal oil which is added later.

After the eggplants have been roasted, fry the aromatics in about 100 ml of oil. Bear in mind that no oil has been added prior to this process, so 100 ml (approx. 6 tablespoons) is not at all unreasonable. When the air is dancing with the unmistakable fragrance of the sautéed aromatics, add in the freshly blended red chilies and continue frying. I stir only occasionally, because I want some of the chilies to be left idle on the base of the wok until it chars a little to give it a smoky flavor, and also because I’m lazy.

After the chili is thoroughly cooked, add the still-hot roasted eggplant, season with salt and stir gently to exfoliate the eggplant with the sambal mix. You will end up with a dish perfect for the terung lover – smoky eggplant covered with savory aromatic sambal, with just a pleasantly meager trickling of oil.

A mainstay in any Malay feast, the chicken rendang manages to assume both a regal distinction and a common presence in the culinary landscape of Malaysia. It is as pedestrian as nasi lemak, readily sold in makeshift stalls along the roadside, yet it also occupies the ornate pages of celebrated cookbooks, passed down as family heirlooms to be shared with the masses.

Unfortunately, as can be seen in the photo, the rendang, together with deep fried fish braised in soy sauce with fried chilli and toasted coconut, share a most unfortunate feature of Malay food, the ‘brown gravy syndrome’, where virtually all dishes end up as a pile of indistinguishable meat pieces bathed in a puddle of brownish gravy. But what they lack in aesthetic appeal they more than make up in the indulgently heady, rich spicy taste and lingering aroma that fills the room.

Stir fry veggies, deviating from the pure ideals of vegetarianism through the addition of ikan bilis (dried anchovies) and tiger prawns, provided a safe, classic option for everyone. I personally would have preferred kangkung belacan or steamed eggplant sambal, but then I have very little say among the elders.

Vegetables are an integral part of Southeast Asian cooking, featuring heavily in rice, noodles and even meat-based dishes. This is probably why the concept of vegetarianism in Asia is not treated like a kind of subversive, almost heretical movement in some of the meat-obsessed European cultures, where pompous chefs take pride in treating vegetarians even worse than the animals they butcher.

Although this vegetable is very popular among Southeast Asians and the Chinese, I have difficulty buying it in Melbourne, and so far I’ve only been able to locate one stall in the whole of Queen Victoria Market that supplies it. It is sold in bunches, and preferably we buy those which are abundant in leaves rather than stems, because it is in the leaves that the luscious flavour is most concentrated, whereas the hollow stems I find are only good for supplying fibre.

Like most vegetable dishes, the tastiest ones are the easiest to prepare. For a plateful of classic kangkung belacan, all you need are a bunch or two of kangkung, shallots, garlic, ginger, red chillies, and the magic ingredient, belacan. Like many Malaysian dishes, the ingredients can be adjusted to taste, so a recipe really merely acts as a guide. Trust your instincts, and adjust according to your preferences.

Kangkung belacan (serves 2-3)

2 bunches kangkung, hard stems removed, washed and squeezed of excess water.
1 shallot, chopped (Most recipes either make do without or use a mere teaspoon, but I love shallots so I use the whole thing)
1 clove of garlic, chopped
an inch of ginger, chopped
2 red chillies, cut at a slant
belacan, about the size of a 2 cm square (dry-fried and pounded)

Saute the shallot, garlic and ginger in a wok until slightly golden.
Add the chillies and ground belacan, and smother the belacan over the aromatics until well-mixed.

Add the kangkung over high heat and mix thoroughly. Initially the wok will seem overwhelmed by the volume of kangkung, but like spinach, it will shrink dramatically once cooked. To speed up the cooking process, you can cover the wok for a few minutes until the kangkung has shrunk in size.

Season with salt to taste, and dish out onto a plate.

Note: If the kangkung is not squeezed of excess water, it will result in a blackish puddle in the cooked dish due to the belacan mixing with water. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this, but I prefer not to have my favourite vegetable meal drowning in black puddle , so I squeeze it thoroughly, just as you would with spinach.

We often assign gender to food as well; the petite cupcake- beautiful and dainty - is ascribed feminine virtues, while the massive, oily burger, perhaps reminiscent of a greasy, hairy man, is somehow appointed the male species rep.

The classification of gender to things which are otherwise asexual can, and do cause dilemma to the innocent bystander. Many times I have felt self-conscious when ordering salad, at the risk of being given dirty looks by female friends, as if there’s something unmanly about eating a bowl of raw vegetables. Do all men have to go through life chomping down on lasagna or a quarter pounder just to prove our masculinity?

The qualities we assign to food are not restricted to gender. Deep fried junk food, such as cheese sticks, Mars bars, and more recently deep-fried coke, are seen as trashy, while plain, simple dishes such as chicken soup are ascribed virtues of wholesomeness and purity.

In these times of disorder and chaos, it is useful to seek out the food that fuels rebellion. One worthy contender is the humble nasi goreng (fried rice), which was born, like many a rebel, out of accident rather than a carefully planned conception. This dish started out as an economical and ingenious way of making good use of leftover rice and its side dishes of meat and vegetables.

The other day we were left with a huge pile of rice, rendang (Malay dry chicken curry) and leftover stir-fried veggies. The situation presented a timely opportunity to indulge in a simple, yet festive feast of fried rice for the whole family. And so into a hot wok wafting with the irresistible aroma of sautéed shallots, ginger and garlic, we dump in the pile of rice, throw in the veggies and chicken, with the curry paste forming the base seasoning of the fried rice.

This no-rules, free-form and unstructured way of cooking appeals most to people who otherwise despise cooking, and those needing a break from the measure-or-perish school of cookery that is essential to cake-making and haute cuisine.

Like the equally unruly and chaotic omelette, it is quite difficult to screw up fried rice. Follow no rules, break with convention, and your efforts will reward you. Anarchy never tasted so delicious.

One of the most excellent treatments that could be accorded to fish is to submerge it completely into a vat of hot, golden oil, a process which miraculously elevates the fins and bones from being an unavoidable and messy nuisance to a crisp, crunchy component of the sweet flesh.

However, Malay cuisine suffers from an over-reliance on the deep frying method, and there is a real danger that in the years to come this overdependence will manifest into a major health battle which has now become a daily reality in countries such as the United States and Australia.

My current favourite dish is sweet and sour fish, which I know is perfect when deep-fried. We wanted to test whether a similar result could be obtained by grilling it in the oven. This would not only be a much healthier alternative, it would also provide a welcome respite from the splashes of hot fat bursting angrily from the wok.

We found that it was quite difficult to turn the fish over halfway through grilling without tearing the skin and breaking the flesh apart, because while the top part of the fish is firm and charred from the overhead grill, the bottom side is soft due to the natural fat of the fish dropping off from it. Therefore, we placed the fish onto the platter as it was from the oven; the charred part would remain as the top side. Onto this is poured the sweet and sour sauce; a blend of Thai sweet chilli sauce, vinegar, sugar, salt and lots of aromatics like shallots and garlic, lightly sautéed in oil to release the unmistakable fragrance that never fails to whet my appetite.

Despite my enthusiasm in attending these joyous occasions, we as a family have never actually held an open house ourselves. This could be partly attributed to our clan’s long-held tradition of keeping Hari Raya a strictly family-only affair. Of course, Hari Raya has always been a time for families to get together, but ours seem to take it a notch further, to the point where it almost appears that we are excluding others from participating in the festivities.

It could either be a lack of creativity or simply a strong sense of maintaining tradition, but our clan’s Raya schedule has, for the most part, remained constant over the years. On Raya eve family after family would converge at the headquarters of the clan aka my grandmother’s house in Seremban, where we would all break fast for the last time. At night the children will be decked out in our traditional Malay clothes, baju melayu cekak musang for the boys (or the teluk belanga version for the more casual among us), and either the feminine baju kurung or the elegant baju kebaya for the girls, depending on which of the two is in fashion at the time.

We would then perform the customary minta maaf zahir dan batin (ask for forgiveness) from our parents and grandmother before being handed what I felt was the climax of Raya, our equivalent of a Christmas gift, a green envelope packet containing cash. The whole night would then be spent with us children playing with sparklers and fire crackers, amid laughter, food and counting money in between.

On Raya Pertama, the first day of Raya, we would start the day with the obligatory ketupat, rice filled into a woven palm leaf pouch and boiled so that the rice compresses and takes on the form and texture associated with dumplings. The ketupat is eaten with a choice of beef or chicken rendang and satay sauce. Admittedly, this is quite a hefty breakfast, but then again we did just complete a month of fasting.

Lunch would be what we had for breakfast, complemented by lemang, glutinous rice filled into bamboo sticks and cooked in open fire, fish sambal, our grandmother’s beautiful nasi minyak (ghee rice), and jar upon jar of traditional and modern Malay cookies. A jar of semperit (a type of shortbread), bahulu (a kind of dry and crunchy sponge cake) and biskut Marie (another type of cookie) can make or break our Raya celebration. There is nothing worse than eating a dry, tasteless semperit, prepared by someone who obviously thinks butter is too good for us.

For something decidedly less rich, it’s hard to beat a cube of lengkung (or lengkong, depending on how broad you pronounce your ‘o’). This is a kind of red jelly that’s been flavoured with rose syrup (I think) and is not too sweet or rich. It is undemanding of the tastebuds but the cooling sensation is pure treat in a climate as hot and humid as Malaysia’s.

*The photographs were adapted from my cousin’s collection of the recent Raya family gathering, which I, being in Melbourne, unfortunately missed out on.