It’s been years; a decade and more, since I’ve returned to Malaysia. The last time I went back, everything looked so much smaller. The front gate of our family home was so fragile and thin looking, even though I’d always thought of it as a metal stronghold to our fortress of a house. The fortress itself, was stunted and stubby, with a modest patch of green for a garden. The driveway which my sister and I used to toboggan down in a rusty folded pram, was so short I wondered how it managed to sustain our downhill excitement at all. During this last trip back, I was constantly encountering mosquitos that prevented me from sleeping at night, and it was so hot and humid that I broke out in a rash and also lost my appetite completely. The good thing was that walking down the street, I actually felt less short, for a change.

I recall, 18 years back, when my parents announced that we were making the move overseas. I was over the moon, having visited Melbourne once before. In my mind, Australia was a land where pinecones and strawberries grew in the backyard, where we could eat apple pie every day for dessert and where seemingly, you could sit in front of the television forever if you wanted to, and always find something to watch (growing up in Malaysia, television only started broadcasting from 4pm onwards).

When we started living in Sydney, I worked hard at trying to fit in. My accent changed (sort of. B still laughs at the way I pronounce certain words). For the first few years, I wanted nothing more than to return to Malaysia on holiday. But gradually, as the letters to and from the Malaysian friends I had been so sorry to leave, decreased from a trickle to nothing, the country itself also became a distant memory and I was soon looking to Europe as my destination of choice.

Looking back now, I realise that I was pretty quick to forget the foods I grew up with. Things I loved then, that I haven’t eaten in a very long while include :

1. Haw flakes
2. Mo Far Kor – also known as tahi hidung, because it looks like nose pickings
3. Durian
4. Kuih Talam
5. Hokkien fried noodles – I think this is what the dish was called. I had it every time my family went for a meal at our local coffee shop. It was nothing more than noodles in a soy sauce, a few green stems and one or two pieces of pork. I think the secret to the dish was the generous use of lard.
6. Lotus seed buns – I prefered these over the red bean paste ones.

Things I embraced in their place :

1. Sara Lee Apple Pie
2. Muesli Bars and Fruit Rollups
3. Lasagne (so exotic, because Garfield loved it)
4. Mudcake
5. Conveyer belt sushi
6. Strawberries dipped in raw sugar

Lately however, I have been thinking about Malaysia and Malaysian food. I’m not sure what spurred it on. Maybe it was Mir’s gift of fried Tempeh all the way from Indonesia, or the Singapore edition of Food Safari, or an aunt’s homemade yam cake at the welcoming party for my sister and her family. It could also have been a very brief conversation that took place at work, when the chef had to organise a themed cocktail party for a Chinese New Year function:

You’re Chinese, aren’t you? He asked.

Yeah, sort of, I replied.

I want you to try my sweet and sour pork later. Let me know what you think.

Ok, but I didn’t really grow up eating stuff like sweet and sour pork.

Really? What did you eat then?

I can’t remember what my reply was, but what I really wanted to say was, it’s funny that people forget how complex the Chinese culture and their food is. When people say do you speak Chinese, they mean Mandarin, and usually when they talk about Chinese food, they mean fried rice, peking duck, salt and pepper squid and sweet and sour pork. Sometimes you forget that one single word encompasses so many other dialects like Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, … and their foods are equally as diverse.

Anyway, the conversation got me thinking about the food I grew up with. Usually if anyone ever asks where I’m from, I always say Malaysia, and second from being Australian, I’m also Malaysian Chinese. Apart from Malay food like satay, nasi lemak, beef rendang, roti jala and ketupat, the food I most loved was Nonya (Peranakan food), originally derived from the intermarriages between Chinese immigrants and Malays. My mom has lent me her copy of a definitive Nonya cookbook which I plan to use as often as I can find the time to.

Meanwhile, here are 6 things I have cooked recently, that remind me so much of the place where I came from :

1. Rojak

2. Bak Kwa

3. Sambal Ikan Bilis

4. Assam Fish

5. Pineapple Tarts

6. Acar Kuning

More details and recipes, another time..

I’ve kind of decided that if I were to wait until I actually had time to write about each individual restaurant I had visited recently, it might never happen at all, just like my Tokyo photos (I’m still working on those!.. sort of..). So this here is just a brief pictorial which summarises those instances when I have been bothered to drag a camera along.

1) Before E abandoned us to go live in China and learn Mandarin, Danks Street Depot was one of our favourite places to go for a bit of lunch or late breakfast. So when he returned for a brief holiday over the CNY period, this was one of the places he wanted to revisit. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to Danks Street, and I’m happy to say, it’s still as good as ever. Every dish I’ve ever had here has always been perfectly balanced and seasoned. I still am unable to lay to rest the memory of the most perfect pasta dish I had here once, even though several years have since passed.

For breakfast, it’s hard to go past the sardines on toast or the creamed eggs, while the sight and smell alone of the toasted Reuben for lunch always brings a smile to my face. While in the neighbourhood, you could also check out Fratelli Fresh (exciting, quality produce, with prices to match. It’s probably not surprising that on the day we visited, the customer carpark was composed mainly of Porches and BMWs) and one of Sonoma’s Bakery Cafes (the soy and linseed loaf is my favourite).

Danks Street Depot
1/2 Danks Street (Cnr Young St)
Waterloo 2017.

2) Longrain controversially lost a hat during the 2007 GFG awards, and has yet to regain it, which was a surprise to me. Sure, the food has always been a little on the sweet side for my tastes, but as a whole I like this restaurant because it serves beautifully presented food using great, very fresh produce in a hip, yet comfortable setting. Even the service, which some have criticised the restaurant for, I’ve never had a problem with.

Longrain
85 Commonwealth Street
Surry Hills 2010.

3) Pier Restaurant remains one of my favourite Sydney restaurants. It’s the one I would take an overseas visitor to, if they liked their food because Pier delivers this in bucketloads (of fresh seafood). Also with it’s light and airy dining room set on that immense of blue water, against blue skies and bright sunlight, it manages to encompass many aspects of Australian life that so many people love; glorious summer weather (although it hasn’t been very glorious of late) and a relaxing setting.

All that light streaming in through the big glass windows also means I usually get a good batch of photos of our visit. Unfortunately, as our evening progressed this time, the photos got worse and worse due to the diminishing light, so the only two acceptable photos are that of the appetiser of a cauliflower mousse with yabby and an entree of a marron salad with foie gras mousse, fig carpaccio and Banyuls reduction. The picture doesn’t show it, but the yabby claw was leaning against the cauliflower mousse in such a way that it looked like it was patting the mousse affectionately. And so it should, tasty as it was.

Pier Restaurant
594 New South Head Rd
Rose Bay 2029.

4) I like the King Street Wharf as a destination, but I’m finding it a bit hard to say much about Kobe Jones. In a city that isn’t exactly starved for middle-of-the-road style of Japanese food, Kobe Jones doesn’t really offer anything new or exciting, even if their decor is a little more modern and of-the-times than most. Given some of their prices, I think I could eat a similar meal for cheaper and not have to face the travesty of one of their signature dishes of soft shell crab cooked in panko breadcrumbs and served with “teriyaki potatoes”. Think ‘crab schnitzel’, which completely ruins the purpose and potential of eating soft shell crab.

Kobe Jones
29 Lime Street
King Street Wharf, Sydney 2000.

Alice Waters, if fascinating trivia is to be believed, “..was the chef who cooked the famed shoe that film director Werner Herzog eats in the film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe“. Apparently it was cooked for five hours in garlic, herbs and stock, and Werner didn’t eat the sole of the shoe because it would have been like eating the bones of a chicken.

On a less interesting note perhaps, Alice Waters once said this, about strawberries :

“A freshly picked ripe strawberry is brilliantly shiny and plump; its calyx is a bright vibrant green and not wilted at all. Berry colour alone is not always an indicator of good flavour, as colour varies between varieties, but the darkest berries of any one variety will be the ripest… Perfectly ripe strawberries are best eaten raw: plain, sliced up into a glass of red wine, served alongside bowls of creme fraiche and sugar for voluntary dipping, or in a classic presentation such as strawberry shortcake.”

Strawberry Shortcake as a dessert option has never quite appealed to me. I remember the last time I ordered it at a Balmoral Beach-front cafe and was disappointed with what I got : tasteless strawberries, sandwiched between what seemed to be nothing more than a glorified scone. So when a client requested shortcake as one of their three sweet canape options, I was dismayed (also because one of their other requests was for Crannachan, involving raspberries and oatmeal, which I thought sounded terrible, but rather surprisingly.. that’s a story for another time. Although can I also take the opportunity to point out that one should never ever stir in the oatmeal too far ahead of time as the oatmeal tends to soak up all the moisture in the mix and render it fit only as a cement replacement when paving your backyard. I always seem to come unstuck when I try to help out too much by doing ahead, certain things that should be left to the last minute).

But back to the shortcake. Like most things, a lot about the shortcake itself seems to boil down to personal preference. There are countless recipes out there to choose from; some using more butter than others, with the type of liquid used to bring the dough together, ranging from skim milk to plain milk, buttermilk, thin cream, thickened cream and finally, double/thick cream. Choices, choices!

After doing a bit of research on the topic, I came up with 5 recipes to test. One, a modernised recipe by Christine Manfield, was discounted immediately because I wanted to stick to as traditional a taste and look as possible. Another was a recipe I’d used before and never quite liked the results of, so that was ditched too. That left three : 1) Thomas Keller’s from his book French Laundry, 2) Lindsey Shere’s (former pastry chef of Chez Panisse) and 3) a generic, authorless baking book.

It was Keller’s recipe that I eagerly tried first, but unfortunately it was the most disappointing. The shortcake kept it’s shape amazingly well – the best of the three, in fact – making it excellent for presentation, but it had a very tight, closed crumb and wasn’t terribly tasty eaten on it’s own (I can imagine it would have tasted much better with the recommended accompaniments of strawberry sorbet and a creme fraiche sauce ). In a blind taste test, it was the least preferred, with the one getting the biggest thumbs up, being Lindsey Shere’s. The generic shortcake was as expected, a bit middle of the road. Nice, but not as nice as the Lindsey Shere one, which was feather light, with a full butter flavour and fabulous short texture.

So it was to her recipe that I turned when it came to the time when I had to bake off the shortcakes. A few pointers I learned in the process: I incorporated the cream into the flour by hand, which helped me get a feel for how wet or dry the dough was, and whether it needed more cream or not. Once it felt right, I tipped the contents of the bowl onto the benchtop and brought the dough together with a gentle folding/kneading action (not quite kneading as in for breadmaking). To cut the shortcakes out, I opted for a round cutter slightly smaller than I wanted the final product to be (the shortcakes expand upwards, but also slightly sideways, in the oven). The cutter was dipped in flour to prevent the dough sticking to it, and when cutting out the shapes, stamp the cutter firmly down in one motion rather than twisting it through the dough. This ensures a more even rise, which is great for presentation.

After baking and splitting the shortcakes, I covered the bottom halves with some chopped strawberries tossed through with a little fraise des bois puree and a dash of Mymouné orange blossom water to further intensify the strawberry flavour, and then topped this with lightly whipped vanilla cream, finally capping them off with the top halves of the shortcakes, dusted with icing sugar. Lots of cream, and lots of strawberries, is the key to making this a worthwhile dessert or mid-afternoon treat.

This “shoe” winner of a strawberry shortcake is my contribution to this week’s WHB, hosted by Erin of The Skinny Gourmet.

Shortcake :
(recipe from Chez Panisse Desserts by Lindsey Remolif Shere; makes 12 individual shortcakes)

2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup (113g) unsalted butter, diced
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons thickened cream

Mix the flour, salt, baking powder and sugar. Rub in the butter until the mixture looks like cornmeal with a few larger pieces of butter in it. Mix in 3/4 cup of the cream, just until most of the dry mixture has been moistened. Turn out on a board and knead a few times until the dough just comes together. Roll 1/2 inch (1.2cm) thick and cut into squares or circles, or whatever shape you like.

Place on an unbuttered baking sheet. Knead together lightly any scraps and roll once more and cut. Brush the tops with the remaining 2 tablespoons cream and bake in a preheated 218’C oven for 10-12 minutes or until the tops are lightly browned and the dough is set. Cool on a rack and serve while warm.