asian food

Ikan Bakar (Malaysian Grilled Fish)

Ikan Bakar is a popular grilled fish dish (say that 3x fast) in Indonesia and Malaysia, usually sold by street vendors. The fish is marinated in sambal – a Southeast Asian chili-based condiment – and grilled over banana leaves. Popular fishes used for the dish include tilapia, skate, snapper, sea bass, or stingray.

While this is a very exotic-sounding dish, it’s surprising that all of the ingredients can be easily found during a trip to your local Asian market. Banana leaves are commonly sold frozen in large sheets for very cheap – usually a dollar will get you as many as 20 leaves. Bear in mind that frozen banana leaves are more brittle than fresh, and don’t hold up to heat as well – so you’ll want to get plenty of them, at least five leaves per fish.

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Beef Rendang

NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.

Rendang is a dry curry originating among the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra, and later spreading throughout Indonesia and Malaysia. It’s one of the most recognizable Southeast Asian dishes, with its distinct…well, ugliness and signature intensity. This “dry” method consists of simmering down coconut milk for several hours to intensify the flavors (and also preserve the meat, which was probably how the dish was started). The end result is a taste so significant that it can be downright overwhelming.

Rendang is usually made with beef, but it can sometimes be found using mutton or water buffalo. For this dish, I used a combination of TX Bar Organics’ delicious and lean stew meat, and a pound of fattier chuck roast. This allowed me to use the chuck roast’s rendered fat to brown the beef during the last stage of cooking.

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Chicken Long Rice / Japchae

Today’s recipe is unique in that it’s basically a combination of two traditional dishes: Chicken Long Rice (Hawaiian) and Japchae (잡채, Korean). They’re both very similar, and in making either dish Paleo-friendly, they both just kinda mixed into this one dish you see above. Although it doesn’t have an official name, don’t worry: it tastes great!

Chicken Long Rice is a Hawaiian luau food that consists of chicken broth, mung bean starch noodles, chicken, and green onions. It was brought to the islands by Chinese immigrant workers in the 19th century, and is now integrated into Hawaiian cuisine.

Japchae is a Korean dish that is traced back to the 17th century, which traditionally was made with vegetables and mushrooms (Japchae literally means “a mixture of vegetables”), and sometimes with beef. Since the 20th century, sweet potato noodles (dangmyeon, 당면) have been a major part of the dish.

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Homemade Phở

NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.

Pho, often considered the national dish of Vietnam, is a rice noodle dish that uses a beef bone broth. It’s hard to describe the basic, yet complex taste that comes from this unique mix of broth, beef, spices and herbs – I recommend just going to your local pho joint and trying it for yourself. You’ll be hooked. I had my first bowl right after moving to Hawaii in 2001, and ever since then I’ve been slightly obsessed with figuring it how to make it at home. After several dozen ho-hum attempts I finally settled on this, which I consider my definitive, recipe.

This dish emerged from Hanoi in the early 20th century, and was brought to the US in the 1970s by refugees after the fall of Saigon. The inclusion of beef in the dish is reflective of its French influence; prior to French colonialism, cows in Vietnam were mainly used for labor and not as a food source. I’ve read a few different histories of the word “phở” itself, and my favorite is that it came from the French word “feu” (fire), and that pho itself is Vietnam’s take on the popular French beef stew, pot au feu.

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Kalbi, Illustrated by Alex Boake

Yesterday I posted my own recipe for one of Alex Boake’s awesome illustrations. I was really happy with the results.

Additionally, I’ve got a little secret: in writing up one of her creations, I secretly coerced her into making an illustration of one of my recipes. She decided to take on my kalbi recipe, and her piece is probably the coolest thing on the entire internet right now. Head over to her blog to check out her post about my recipe.