Sometimes the simplest dish is the hardest one to get right…or at least to get really good. In Singapore and Malaysia, one such dish is bak kut teh, or “pork bone tea”.  BKT, as I will call it for the purposes of brevity, is  a  Chinese dish (but very popular in Malaysia and Singapore) of boiled pork ribs in a broth with Chinese herbs and seasonings, usually served in a clay pot with fried Chinese donuts  (you tiao), rice, and a dipping sauce made from soy sauce and chilies on the side. It is  made most often by Chinese hawkers in Kopitiam (a kind of Malaysian coffee shop with several vendors inside), hawker centers and stand alone restaurants that specialize in BKT, and is most popular  as a morning meal.

There are as many different variations as there are vendors of the ubiquitous menu item, some putting dried and fresh mushrooms in the broth, others add tofu skins or Chinese celery or green onions for instance.

The broth is the most important aspect of BKT and everyone has their secrets as to what goes into it. Some versions are almost clear soups, others approach the color of weak coffee; some are cloudy and fatty, most are lean and peppery from the copious amounts of white pepper added. The combination of herbs used tends to be the secret, but some things seem to be  constant: star anise, cinnamon, cloves, and garlic. Other aromatics used might be boxthorn berries, solomon’s seal rhizome, dried orange peel, etc.  Soy sauce (both light and dark) and the aforementioned white pepper are used pretty much uniformly to season the broth.

Pork ribs are always present, but one can also find pork offal, pork hock, and other porky bits in the mix.

I have just spent about a week in Malaysia and Singapore and one of my main objectives was to revisit bak kut teh and sample as many versions as possible as older memories of flavors can become muddied and confused, and we sell the dish at Ping so want to have as good a version as possible. I am pleased to say we have been coming pretty close, but our version has been a little too sweet, the culprit being a bit too much rock sugar added to the broth. Adjustments have been made.

My favorite of the trip was in Melaka, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca_Town) which is a small city on the west coast of peninsular Malaysia, about 3 hours south of Kuala Lumpur. Bak Kut Teh Teo Chew is on a side street near the center of Melaka, and I found it wandering around one morning looking for breakfast. They only serve BKT, with the addition of a braised pork  hock in a very dark soy gravy as a side dish. The broth was subtly herbaceous, slightly sweet, porky and peppery with a little fat on top, and the ribs were tender, meaty and perfectly cooked.  The dipping sauce was light soy with separate dishes of chiles (2 kinds) and garlic for you to mix to your own taste. There was dark soy available and more powdered white pepper to add as needed. I knocked it all back accompanied by some weak Chinese tea.

The owner is a second generation BKT specialist, and his father opened the shop he now runs about 30 years ago. He was surprised to see a honky tourist sitting down at 7:30am in his joint, and was curious how I found the place as his customers are almost all regulars who have been coming there for years. My answer was “I followed my nose”: the smell of his aromatic soup was evident from a block away. Only after I finished eating and was taking leave did I spot the name of the restaurant painted in big block letters on the side of the building.

In Singapore , where I spent the next few days, I failed to find a version that stood up to Teo Chew’s, though I did have a great version of  Yong Tau Foo…which is a whole ‘nuther story. ]]> http://www.pingpdx.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=21 http://www.pingpdx.com/blog/?p=20 http://www.pingpdx.com/blog/?p=20#comments Thu, 14 May 2009 02:29:38 +0000 admin http://www.pingpdx.com/blog/?p=20 One of my favorite things to eat in Thailand is a dish called khao kha muu, which translates as “rice with pork leg”. Sounds pretty good already, right? As with many dishes, the name belies a much more complex underlying narrative involving cooking method, tradition, history and flavor. A short description of khao kha muu is this: pork knuckle stewed in soy, spices, herbs and a little bit of sugar, served on jasmine rice with a boiled egg, stewed pickled mustard greens or Chinese broccoli with some of the cooking liquid poured over it and a sour yellow chili dipping sauce on the side. Typically served in street side carts, called rot ken, for lunch and dinner it is a deeply satisfying one-plate meal.
Now for the nuances. This is a Chinese dish in origin, as are many other typical Thai dishes, and there are as many variations and recipes as there are carts and shops that sell the stuff. In the Chinese cooking tradition there is something called “master sauce”, a sauce or stock that is used over and over again to cook the same dish. For khao kha muu, the pork knuckles are cooked fresh every day, but the cooking liquid is preserved, strained, and used to cook the next day’s batch, refortifying it with seasonings as needed. Some places claim to having the same master sauce for several generations of the family of the vendor, who typically hands of the business to a younger member of the family when they retire. This leads to a depth of flavor, or umami, that is impossible to achieve in a single cooking session. From there, everybody has a slightly different recipe that usually remains a family secret. I know of at least one cart in Chiang Mai (at Chang Pheuak night market, look for the lady vendor with a cowboy hat) that claims Milo as one of their ingredients. Don’t ask how I know, it’s a secret!
The pork itself is absurdly tasty when done right, stewed for hours until the skin & fat turns soft and gelatinous and the meat is moist and rich with the sauce and highly flavorful. Often the vendor will see a westerner and automatically leave off the fat and skin…don’t let this happen, you will be missing the best part.
Next come the eggs, or to me the second most important factor. The best ones are boiled either in the master sauce, or separately and then peeled and soaked in the sauce, others are just plain but cooked perfectly with a molten/set yolk. Some use duck eggs, some chicken, sometimes you get the whole egg without asking, sometimes it is an add-on. Don’t take the chance: make sure you order the dish “sai khai” or with egg.
I like the version that comes with the pickled mustard greens that have been stewed in the master sauce, but the Chinese broccoli shoots are delicious too.
The dipping sauce varies from vendor to vendor almost as much as the stewed pork does, and some places are known primarily for their naam jiim, or dipping sauce. I much prefer the sour yellow chili ground with vinegar but you are just as likely to get a sweet red chili and garlic version. Luckily whatever the sauce, it is usually good, and better yet it doesn’t have to be that great if the pork is good.
In my experience the rice is nothing special, but when you get a nice soft new jasmine rice it just makes the dish that much better.
And finally, the little bunch of chopped or torn cilantro on top? It’s not a garnish; it adds a nice sharp counter to the richness of the pork and adds the “hom” (smells good) element, helping to mitigate what is a strong porky bouquet.
We will be serving khao kha muu for lunch at Ping very soon. It’s going to take a while for the sauce to mature, but it still tastes pretty darn good out of the gate. Also, look for a whole stewed pork knuckle that is then deep fried, in the style of the German beer hall classic, Hocken. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

On the 14th, “prep day” according to my friend Sunny, we prepare khanom, or Thai sweets, to bring to the temple the next day. One of my favorites is khanom jok, which is rice flour mixed with naam oi (raw sugar made from sugarcane, dark brown in color and very flavorful), and coconut milk. This dough is wrapped around steamed, ground mung beans with salt and sugar and fried shallots added in, made into balls and then the whole thing is wrapped in banana leaves in small pyramid shaped packets and steamed for about 45 minutes. In Northern Thailand, you find this khanom at almost every house, sometimes with a palm sugar and grated coconut filling instead of the mung beans. We also made steamed melon khanom and steamed pumpkin khanom. Then we made dinner, plaa thawt yam samun phrai:  fried fish with a salad made from lemongrass, garlic, thai chilies, shallots, pineapple, cashews, lime, lime leaf, cilantro, green onions, ginger and carrot all chopped up and mixed in a sweet palm sugar/lime/fish sauce dressing and dumped on top of the fish. That and yam phak buung krob: deep fried water spinach with an equally complex dressing/salad to eat with it. Sunny and I were practicing our yam (salad) dressings.

The morning of the 15th you visit the wat (temple) where various offerings are made and blessings given. Then I went to see my friend Tri and his family in Saluang Nai, a small rice farming village about a half an hour from Chiang Mai. There we were offered khanom, and I caused a bit of a commotion by offering them the khanom we had made the night before…very novel the idea of a farang making khanom! After lunch we set off to dam hua, or pay respects to the elders of the village. Dam hua is an important part of the Songkran celebration and consists of visiting the elders, often surrounded by their family, giving them gifts, like soap, milk, toilet paper, flowers, eggs, and a bunch of misc. other stuff. The visitors sometimes symbolically wash the hand of the elders with water scented by flowers, and the elders then  rub a little water onto their head and give a blessing to the gathered visitors sometimes wrapping a white cotton twine around their wrist as they do so. Da Chom, Tri’s father and the patriarch of the family, taught me how to make laap about 13 years ago so I made a point of paying my repects to him, even though I am not really versed in protocol and procedure.
When that was done, I headed out on the motorbike to meet Sunny for dinner at his sister’s house and then back home for some kip.

Being in Chiang Mai is always a treat, but being here during Songkran is really joyful, and I feel quite lucky to get a small glimpse of what is happening at home rather than just the giant water fight that most tourists witness and participate in, fun as that is. And it carries on today: we are making yam wun sen for 50 “housewives” of the village of Doi Saket tonight when they come to give our friend Leung Louis a blessing on his household. And the villagers are still drinking….