Curry Mee

I miss Malaysia. My trip there last April affected me greatly; it was one of the most hardcore eating trips I've done. After day 3 I forgot how it felt to be hungry and instead felt only 'full', 'really very full' and 'ohmygod-I'm-going-to-barf'. The ease of getting a quick bowl of noodles for next to nothing made me giddy. I hit the noodle soups hard and one of my favourites was curry mee.

Thick, spicy and coconutty soup contained chunks of congealed pigs blood and little cockles as well as tofu puffs and prawns. Alas, it's not as easy to get hold of pigs blood and cockles so my replica version leaves these out, you may well be relieved to hear.

Instead, spongy tofu soaks up the soup so that they're nice and juicy when you bite into them. There are slices of fish cake lurking in there too, underneath the mound of yellow egg noodles. For a bit of texture variation, I also added a little rice vermicelli, a tip I picked up in Penang. A few green beans in there added some crunch, and once all the sambal olek (chilli sauce) was mixed into the broth, a squeeze of lime made the dish complete. Most noodle soups in Malaysia that we tried were served with a hard boiled egg; I prefer mine a bit softer so a barely poached egg was dropped in.

The key to this lies in the paste, where most of the flavours are. You can get most of the ingredients in an Asian supermarket; in London, I use New Loon Moon on Gerrard Street.

Curry Mee

Serves 4

For the paste:

15 small purple shallots
7 cloves of garlic
3" of ginger
4 sticks of lemongrass, soft innards only
6 dried red chillis soaked in boiling water till soft
1 tsp shrimp paste (belachan)
2 tsp ground coriander
Roots or stems of a bunch of coriander
1 tsp sugar

Chop all of the above roughly and blend into a fine paste, adding some oil as you go. Any leftover paste should be kept in the fridge with a film of oil on top.

300gr yellow eggs noodles, fresh
100gr rice vermicelli, cooked and cooled
1 branch of curry leaves, fresh
4 lime leaves, fresh
A handful of green beans
100gr Chinese fish cake, sliced thinly
20 tofu puffs, halved
A handful of beansprouts
1 tin of coconut milk
250mls chicken stock
1 limes, quartered
A handful of coriander to serve
4 eggs
Sambal Olek to serve

In a large pan, fry 2 tbsp curry paste per person, so 8 tbsp in this instance. Fry slowly for 15 minutes. Add the coconut milk, the chicken stock, the lime leaves and the curry leaves. Leave the curry leaves on the branch when you add them in as this makes it easier to remove them. Simmer gently for 35 minutes. Add the tofu puffs in the last 15 minutes, the fishcake slices in the last 5 and take off the heat. Remove the curry leaf branch.

Add the eggs to boiling water and leave for 6 minutes - take off the heat and run under cold water. Peel carefully.

In another pan, blanch the beansprouts and simmer the green beans for 3 minutes. Cook the egg noodles as per cooking instructions (mine required just plunging into boiling water for a couple of minutes) and drain.

To serve, divide the egg noodles and vermicelli noodles among 4 deep bowls equally. Top with beansprouts and green beans. Heat the soup base up till simmering, then distribute soup base equally. Halve each egg over the bowl and place in carefully, then add the coriander sprinkled on top with a quarter of lime per bowl. Serve with the sambal olek.

East Street, Rathbone Place

The very idea of 'Pan Asian' makes me sigh wearily and roll my eyes and I know full well that this is the snob in me. The countries are so different in their flavours and techniques I can't understand how a chef can be skilled enough to do all of them fantastically; yet I don't even raise an eyebrow when I see a 'Modern European' restaurant. I suppose perhaps having grown up in the Far East makes me fiercely protective, and no amounts of people telling me they like to have the option of sushi with their Thai green curries will fix that. Not to mention the sheer bloody wrongness of mixing those cuisines with such fervour - it's just not for me. I was almost apoplectic with indignation upon catching sight of Dim Sum Diner's menu.

So you might wonder why I accepted an invite to go to East Street, newly opened on the site of the former Eagle Bar & Diner. I'll be honest. I was seduced by the website. It's all pretty and colourful! And not a California roll of sushi in sight. I had high hopes.

I took a friend I knew would know his Asian and between us we picked dishes that spanned across the continent. Edamame was served freshly steamed and warm while we waited for our first dishes to appear. Bulgogi was thinly sliced grilled beef served with lettuce leaves and kimchi. The beef was grilled nicely to pink and it went well with the spicy kimchi. Wrapped up in a leafy parcel it was pleasant enough.

Tempura prawns were nicely battered crisp, served with the standard tempura dip. Though well priced at £5.75 for the dish, I think you should either pad it out (surely some tempura vegetables can't break the bank?) or use a smaller plate. It seemed sparse.

When our waitress explained the menu to us - and when I say explained, I mean read out the titles - the salads were described as suitable as a main course. Uhm. No. But when shared alongside, it was very nice. The chicken was nicely grilled and the vegetables crunchy, but we both agreed it needed more sourness, a bit more pep. The advertised coriander was barely there.

Special dish of the day was Mee Goreng, from Malaysia. This is a dish of fried yellow noodles with meat, sometimes pickles and egg, often cooked in lard for extra deliciousness. The dish presented to us was nothing of the sort. It was gloopy and lacked any of what we call in Cantonese 'wok hei', breath of the wok. That's the smoky, charcoal smell you get from frying things in a wok at a high heat - that's the kind of smell you encounter all over South East Asia.

My own dish, Khao Soi noodles was billed as chicken and yellow noodles in red curry sauce. A whole two chillis sit next to this menu listing so I was expecting something nose clearing, or at least sweat inducing. Disappointingly, it didn't even induce a sniffle. Again, it was gloopy and rich without enough lime or fresh red onion to cut through that heavy coconut. Deceptively deep, the bowl turned out to be quite small for the £8.95 they were charging though given that I lost interest half way through all the better for the small serving. Why bother with this? What is even the point in saying it's hot on the menu when you won't make it so? This sort of thing really pisses me off; if you're too lame to serve dishes authentically spiced, then don't serve it at all. Open a pie and mash shop or something.

That famous mango with sticky rice dessert seen all over Bangkok was a total disaster. The claggy clump of sticky rice was barely sweet and physically taxing to get through, the coconut cream served either side of it rendered completely useless. The mango was only just ripe, perhaps a touch under given it had still a powdery texture. Miles away from the real thing.

The Malaysian bubor pulot hittam was a black glutinous rice dessert with coconut cream and palm sugar. This was luxurious and tasty, the rice nicely cooked.

All in all, it was as expected. Jack of all trades and master of none. I know people will love this; the bright colours, Cath Kidston-esque decorated stools and the manga cartoons projected onto a huge back wall will be an instant hit, but then again people love that hell hole that is Cha Cha Moon, and for God's sake people still flock to Wagamamas. But me and Pan Asian, we are over. It was a brief flirtation and it just didn't work out.

East Street

3 - 5 Rathbone Place
London W1T 1HJ

Tel: 020 7323 0860



I didn't pay as I was invited to review but this would have been £20 / head.

Crab, Prawn & Samphire Sambal

I've made prawn sambal before; it was so long ago that I got a desperate craving for it again this weekend. Leftover white and brown crabmeat as well as samphire sat in the fridge, glaring at me unused so in a fit of experimentation it all got lobbed in and I was richly rewarded. Spicy, coconutty with deep undertones of the sea, eaten with plenty of rice it brought a sheen of sweat to the brow. Though samphire isn't a typical Asian ingredient, its' salty crunch worked beautifully, complementing the velvet strands of the white crab meat.


Open all your windows when frying your spice paste, unless you like the feeling of your lungs burning with every breath.

Crab, Prawn & Samphire Sambal

Serves 2

10 raw prawns
A small handful of samphire
1 small onion sliced into half moons
2 tbsp brown crabmeat
1 heaped tbsp white crabmeat
1 spring onion
2 tomatoes
10 tbsp coconut milk

For the spice paste:

1 small onion
2 stalks of lemongrass
2 cloves of garlic
2 red chillis
4 dried red chillis
1 inch piece of galangal
1 tbsp tamarind paste
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp shrimp paste

Wash thoroughly and steam the samphire for a couple of minutes. In a small blender add the onion, garlic, galangal, the inner part of the lemongrass roughly chopped with the tamarind and shrimp paste. Soak the chillis in hot water, then add these. Deseed them if you're not a hardcore chilli head. Add 2 tbsp cooking oil and blend into a paste.

In a wok, heat a little oil and add the curry leaves taken off the branch till they sizzle. Add the spice paste and the brown crabmeat, add the half moon onions, then stir-fry until fragrant. Add the coconut milk and the sugar and simmer for a couple of minutes. Add the tomatoes sliced into quarters, the samphire and the prawns, stirring until they turn pink. Take off the heat and garnish with the spring onion, sliced on the diagonal. Serve with rice, topping with the white crabmeat.

Other Malaysian Eats

Let's start with breakfast. We were totally addicted to roti canai, a flaky bread served with a curry dip, varying in spiciness. We craved this daily, and washed down with a frothy teh tarik (tea made with sweet condensed milk) it was an ideal start to the day.

Banana leaf curries were common. Walking along a busy main road, we ducked inside a grimy-looking cafe, only to be served one of the best curries of the trip. Sweet sticky chicken drumsticks, dolloped with a ladle of spicy curried green beans, lightly spiced cabbage and rice served from long silver containers. I was less impressed with the lizard that ran up my leg, causing me to scream like a total girl.

Murtabak, eaten here at the night market in Kota Bharu, were egg-laden treats. We watched mesmerised as the maker flipped out the roti dough nice and thinly, and on it went to the hot plate to be spread with whipped eggs and a curry mixture, folded, folded and folded again until hot and crisp.

It sounds like a rude word, but in fact Popiah are like a cross between spring rolls and the Vietnamese summer rolls. Amongst the best street food we sampled, I watched as the lady warmed up a wafer-thin crepe wrapper, spread it with a hoi-sin like sweet sauce, before piling on shreds of daikon and some scrambled tofu.

Chilli sauce seasoned each mouthful, and it was a delight to chow down on a mixture of soft wrapper, crunchy vegetable and piquant and sweet sauces. To my distress, they seem almost impossible to replicate at home unless you're a master of dough. I am not.

Desserts came in the form of small bowls, often flavoured with coconut and riddled with beans or jelly-like textures. The most famous, Cendol, was made with shaved ice, coconut cream, caramel, threads of flour-based noodle flavoured with pandan and sweet kidney beans. It was icy and surprisingly refreshing.

Weirdest dish of the trip was perhaps 'Tandoori Kashmir Chicken'. A naan bread, topped with tandoori chicken and watermelon, banana, apple, and cashew nuts. Like a big chickeny fruit salad.

Noodles in Penang, Malaysia

Penang was, at times, a struggle. There were so many dishes to try and almost not enough meal times to fit them in. Relatives of the friend I was travelling with were perfect hosts; they stuffed us full of delicious dishes at any opportunity and in two afternoons, we slipped off to have second, third and fourth lunches before coming home, greeted by a table groaning with curries and rice.

After a quick curry, we headed straight for Gurney Drive Hawker Centre. Dozens of food stalls all in one place were perfect for our snacking need. Chee cheung fun, above, were slippery buggers.

Prawn mee were 'so prawny it's almost as if it's not real'. I liked the mixture of egg noodles and thin vermicelli rice noodles. Three or four other dishes later, I faded into a sweaty mess and retreated to a nearby McDonald's for air conditioning and to groan in a lady-like fashion.

Elsewhere, on Jalan MacAllister we encountered another cluster of food stalls. A char kway kak dish, made with thicker chunks of rice cake was full of the smoky flavour the Chinese so praise, 'wok hei' - the breath of the wok. Crisp pieces of pork fat were interspersed in the bean sprouts.

Roast pork and wonton noodles were ordered with the broth separate; my friend prefers his noodle dishes dry - imagine! Pickled chillis added piquancy, the noodles were springy.

My friend pointed at a little white pot and asked what it was, when the lady added it to our Hokkien mee (above). "Pork fat. Lard." No wonder they were so moreish.

Curry mee were mild in curry flavour, but underneath the innocent surface lurked wibbly, wobbly chunks of pig's blood, tofu-like in texture. Tiny little cockles swam about in the broth, while spongy tofu puffs soaked up goodness. This was one of the more challenging dishes (apparently - I have no problems with blood) and also a favourite.

We ate in classier joints too (i.e. ones with a roof). This place did only char kway teow and Asam laksa, a sour and spicy noodle soup made with fish and a speciality of Penang.

Nothing was over £1 per dish. Everything was utterly delicious. I doubt we even touched upon the surface of noodlism in our 3 days in Penang.

Beef Rendang

Beef rendang has been on my to-make list for ages. I was tempted and teased by these blog posts, and last Sunday I finally got my arse into gear and was well rewarded for my efforts. Rich, thick, unctuous and intensely beefy, the meat is cooked in various spices and coconut milk, with the liquid finally reducing so that it then fries in all the leftover oils.

It's not for the faint-hearted - literally, the amount of fat in there almost makes my heart stop - but, you know, you could eat salad for a week after or something. Scooped up with a hot flaky roti, pepped up with the sweetness and crunch of an onion salad, it's no wonder this dish is so popular.

I left mine overnight for the flavours to properly intensify; it was addictive in all its spicy, tender glory. I gorged on it so much I felt a bit sick afterwards. Don't eat two portions in one go.

Beef Rendang

Serves 4

1kg beef shin
5 shallots
1 inch of galangal
5 cloves of garlic
2 inches of ginger
10 dried red chillis (or 5, if you're a wimp)
3 green cardamom pods
2 dried bay leaves
2 star anise
3 cloves
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cinnamon
4 stalks of lemon grass
6 kaffir lime leaves
1 coconut
1 tin of coconut milk
1 tbsp palm sugar or dark brown sugar
5 tbsp cooking oil
1 tsp salt

Chop the meat up into chunks. Soak the chillis in hot water. Meanwhile, chop the shallots, the whites of the lemongrass, ginger, galangal and garlic and pound to a paste. Chop the softened chillis finely and add to the paste.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and fry the shallot paste until fragrant, on a low heat. Throw in the cloves, star anise, cardamom pods (you may want a muslin bag for this - I don't mind pulling spices out of mouthfuls), ground coriander and cinnamon and stir well. Add the meat and the coconut milk, and then a tinful of water. Set to simmer.

While this is simmering, open your coconut by smacking it hard with the blunt end of a knife across its equator between the three eyes and the other side. It will take about 5 minutes of headache-inducing bashing. It should split neatly open. Catch the coconut water in a bowl, drink it, chuck it away, whatever. Extract the flesh, grate it and then toast it on a very low heated dry frying pan. This is a right pain in the arse, so if you can find unsweetened dessicated coconut, toast that instead - about 6 tbsp.

Add the sugar, coconut, bay and the lime leaves, sliced thinly. Simmer for an hour and a half, and then turn the heat up to a vigorous simmer for at least half an hour, stirring it frequently. The liquid should have almost evaporated off. When it has done so and the oil has separated, fry the beef in this oil, stirring so that it doesn't stick. It should be thick and very dark brown.

Serve with this onion and pomegranate salad and some fresh, fluffy roti. Eat with your hands. If, like me, you leave it overnight then when you come to reheat it, add a splash or 5 of water to loosen it up a bit, simmering it until it's all gone.

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Hainanese chicken rice has long been a favourite of mine. I still remember the best I've had; at the Shangri-La in Singapore when I was about 9. It was the rice in particular, silky grains laced with fat, tasting intensely of chicken, I haven't had the same anywhere since. In fact, Hainanese chicken rice seems to be a rare dish to be found in London.

However, I heard that there was one place that was worth trying - Uncle Lim's Kitchen, in East Croydon of all places. Situated in a shopping centre, at first glace it looks like a place I'd never stop at. A glass counter with bubbling trays of sweet and sour chicken, if you look a bit closer you'll also see Malaysian beef curry, and a sign advertising Hainanese chicken rice served from Fridays to Mondays. I was here for one thing and one thing only.

Served cold and off the bone, the chicken was dressed in soy sauce and was tender and juicy. The skin was springy and globules of jelly clung to the meat. The rice was tinged with garlic and a chilli sauce spiked with pounded ginger added a welcome kick. I was a bit sad that this wasn't served with the usual bowl of broth to accompany it though. Priced at £5.80, it was a bargain.

So happily I have a fine rendition of the dish a mere 20 minutes from home. It wasn't as good as the best I've had, but it would take a lot to top that.

Uncle Lim's Kitchen

Upper North Arcade
Whitgift Centre
Croydon CRO 1UZ

Tel: 020 8688 8378

Sambal Prawns

I spotted some curry leaves at Lewisham market and immediately purchased a bag of them. I kept seeing them in recipes, but couldn't find them for sale anywhere. But of course, once I bought them, I was stuck for ideas and couldn't find said recipes again. Typical.

Asking around, I was told that they're a good addition to any curry, and especially in tarka for dhal. However, Sambal Prawns was suggested to me by Sunflower and it instantly appealed, especially since I hadn't made anything Malaysian before.

I've used a lot of Sunflower's recipes, long before I started this blog and they've never let me down. They're always easy to follow, and extremely tasty. I urge you to give them a go. I made a couple of changes to the recipe to suit what I had in the fridge.

Sambal Prawns

Serves two

10 raw prawns (I use frozen ones, defrosted)

2 tomatoes, cut into wedges

1 small onion, sliced

1 sprig of curry leaves, leaves taken off the stalk

3 tbsp tamarind paste, the thick kind from a jar

8 tbsp coconut milk

1 tbsp sugar

Cooking oil

Rempah (spice paste)

3 Asian shallots (the purple kind), chopped finely

2 sticks of lemongrass, tender part only, chopped finely

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1" piece of galangal - this freezes well, so if you see any for sale buy a lot and slice it to freeze

2 red chillies, deseeded and sliced

4 dried chillis, soaked in boiling water

2 tsp shrimp paste

Using a mini chopper or a pestle and mortar, grind the rempah ingredients into a paste. Heat about 3tbsp of oil up in the wok. Fry the curry leaves until they sizzle, and then (after opening all your windows) add the rempah. Fry for 5 minutes, and then add the onion slices. Fry until softened, and add the tamarind paste, sugar and coconut milk. Add the tomatoes and once they're heated through, add the prawns and turn the heat up to high. Stir fry until the prawns have just turned pink, and take off the heat.

Cucumber slices are suggested as garnish but I didn't have any so I used raw red pepper. I imagine the cucumber would work better as the freshness and crunch would cut through the richness of the sambal.

For my first home-cooked attempt, it was astounding. I couldn't stop eating it; it was fragrant, spicy and rich, accompanied perfectly with just plain white rice. I ate the whole two portions and then had to lie down. This happens with alarming regularity.

I must try more Malaysian food at home; do you have a favourite recipe?