Different noodles, different dish

"What matters is balance" - Nigel Slater

I began with a dish - Curry mee from Madhur Jaffrey's Far Eastern Cookery - quickly became confused as to the name and what it actually is - dipped into a bit of Malaysian history and then started thinking - again -about the mixing of cultures which has been going on on Planet Earth since the Neanderthals encountered Homo Sapiens. Not the clash of cultures - the mixing and merging of cultures. David will enthusiastically tell you that we all have a little bit of Neanderthal within - except for the Africans - descendants of Homo Sapiens who stayed in Africa and therefore did not encounter the Neanderthals. Well I think it's somewhat more complicated than that. They make new discoveries every day it seems. But yes, we're not just pure Homo Sapiens. And now none of us are pure anything, the Malaysians particularly so, as Madhur Jaffrey says in her Introduction.

"As peoples of all three major races - the Malays, Chinese and Indians - commingled and merged, so did their cuisines. Malaysia is one of the world's few true melting pots. The sharp edges of racialism have been softened by the constant rubbing of multi-coloured shoulders, and the sharp differences in the cuisines have been blurred by the constant exchange of techniques and ingredients. Today one finds that, while some foods have kept their original form, most have been modified subtly or drastically, making it hard to fit many dishes into a clear niche or to pinpoint their exact origin." Madhur Jaffrey

The history behind this particular dish - laksa - and its origins - is deftly and lucidly explained in an article on the Jun and Tonic website called The Malaysian guide to laksa in which the author says:

"Although the exact origin of laksa is unclear, most agree that it was a dish born out of the booming Southeast Asian spice trade in the 16th century, when Chinese traders assimilated into the local communities along the Malay archipelago (what is now modern day Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia). The descendants of these Chinese immigrants were known as Peranakan, and along with a ton of wealth and trade knowhow, they brought along their rich food culture, which when married with native Southeast Asian ingredients (think chillies, tamarind and coconut milk), birthed the beautiful lovechild that is laksa." Jun and Tonic

The Peranakan are also known as the Nonya - particularly in Singapore and the Straits Chinese.

As soon as I started looking up Curry mee I quickly found that it was often - indeed mostly - called Curry laksa, and then I discovered that Laksa itself is something a bit different again, and to tell you the truth I'm still not completely clear. Is curry laksa different from laksa? Not sure. However, I think I now have in my head that there are two fundamentally different dishes - one made with coconut milk, and the other with a tamarind broth - the latter being called Asam laksa. Maybe laksa is not as liquid as curry laksa?

Other regional differences are down to different ingredients - the most revolting of which was the Penang curry mee which traditionally has congealed pig's blood floating on top. In Penang's Georgetown two old ladies (just a tiny bit older than me - ouch! - do I look that old?) the sisters LIm have been making Curry mee six days a week since 1946 when they helped their mother. They are famous - with many making the journey to their tiny stall near the Georgetown market.

The other local differences that you will find are the types of noodles - the Johur laksa even uses spaghetti, so a touch of Italian too - and the different spices in the spice mix that flavours the broth. The 'extras' the things piled on at the end also vary enormously - prawns, chicken, bean sprouts, tofu crisps - fundamentally it seems to me, whatever you feel like and have got to hand.

Jun of Jun and Tonic, in the process of trying to sort it all out, which took him a week, made this mind map - you can click on it to make it larger I think.

And of course in today's global world laksa, like pizza and hamburgers can be found everywhere - Taste has 137 different listings under laksa although the last few are more general things than actual recipes.

But let me return to my starting point - Curry mee - Rice noodles in a coconut curry soup (Curry mee) from Madhur Jaffrey's book Far Eastern Cookery - a lucky dip. Her recipe comes from the Ming Court Hotel in Kuala Lumpur and is shown at the top of the page. She also must have been confused because just about everyone seems to think that Curry mee is the name given to the dish in the north in Penang. In the south - which includes Kuala Lumpur it is called Curry laksa. 'Mee' means noodles by the way and 'laksa' means one hundred thousand in Sanskrit and ten thousand in Malay - well that's what a brief look came up with. It seems they can't even agree on a number. The number refers to the strands of vermicelli. I won't even go into what kind of noodles have to be used. I suspect it's a bit like pasta. Theoretically if you want to be 'authentic' each regional variant will decree a particular kind of noodle but in practice anything goes - just whatever you like.

"if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that without the messy intermingling of cultures that make up our beautiful country, there can be no laksas, no mamak, no kuihs, no teh tarik, and no truly Malaysian food (cry)." Jun and Tonic

Madhur's recipe is not online and it's pretty long, - a long ingredients list - well many Eastern dishes have one of those, and really it just means there are a lot of spices which take just a moment to combine. There's a whole page of instructions as well so it does look daunting for such a simple looking dish, although Madhur swears that:

"Even though there are many parts to this dish it is easy to make." and that: "I think it is the finest curry soup I have ever eaten."

I have to say that it does indeed look pretty simple really. And most of the other recipes that I saw - which I'm coming to - were also. So it was a bit surprising to see this from Mandy Lin in The Guardian in the preface to her Chicken laksa:

"We tend to save cooking laksa for special occasions due to its time-consuming method and lengthy ingredient list, especially if cooking the chicken stock from scratch."

I can see that if you make the stock yourself it might take time - well unless you have a stash in the freezer, but it doesn't take long to mix all those spices together, or to cook the chicken or prawns or whatever it is you are putting on top.

so what did I find. And besides it seems to be an everyday dish that any South-East Asian can knock up in minutes.

Well let's start with those made by actual Malaysians, or at least Chinese: Easy curry mee - Marion's Kitchen - I watched her video for this and I have to say it looked pretty good and easy. Now admittedly she used a Thai red curry paste and readymade stock, but then she is calling it 'Easy'. The Chinese/Americans of The Woks of Life have a recipe for actual Curry mee which is very similar to Marion's and there's another Chinese one from Woon Heng who also uses a curry laksa paste for her recipe which has a bet both ways with the name - Curry laksa/Curry Mee. Adam Liaw - one of Australia's favourite Malaysians has a Classic curry laksa which is published in The Sydney Morning Herald; and the people at Serious Eats have a go at Curry Laksa (Malacca Nyonya Laksa)

You would have to say that the three in the top row at least, do indeed look very similar. Incidentally I did also look at Recipe Tin Eats, but decided to ignore as Nagi also used readymade everything. Now I'm sure it means very good results and you can buy frozen, chilled and packets in your local supermarket too.

Then I turned to The Guardian and my two favourites, Nigel Slater and Yotam Ottolenghi who seem to have a go at everything. In this instance I don't think they were radically different in their approaches - Ottolenghi with his Curry laksa - although it was a very different colour; as was Nigel Slater's first one - Quick chicken laksa. His second - A new pumpkin laksa for a cold night published on The Boatshed Chronicles website, he describes as:  "Rich, sweet-sour, mouth-tinglingly hot and yet curiously soothing, it had everything you need in a soup for a frosty night."

It's actually an update of an earlier recipe because:

"There is much pleasure to be had in the constant tweaking of a recipe to change not its essential character but its details. ... The laksa appears complicated at first but in practice it is far from it. Once you understand the basics, the recipe falls into place and becomes something you can fiddle with to suit your own taste. ... Soups such as this are traditionally ingredient rich but should never taste confused. By the same token, to simplify it too much would be to lose the soup's generosity and complexity and therefore its point." Nigel Slater

Which brings me to the final two from a TV series in which our two favourite Malaysian chefs - Adam Liaw and Poh Ling Yeow toured Australia looking for a 'national' dish. Along the way they did the cultural mix - both of them but in different ways: Top End laksa from Poh Ling Yeow who used various native Australian spices and Prawn and crocodile laksa from Adam Liaw

Probably won't be making that last one.

I have been putting off writing this post. Laksa seemed such a vast topic - and it sort of is. And I still don't think I have really sorted out the name thing - so here are a couple of quotes on which to end:

"Maybe Wikipedia is right, maybe to save us all from bickering over definitions, all laksas should just be referred to as 'popular spicy noodle soup(s) in the Peranakan cuisine'…" Jun and Tonic

"I’ve spent the week calling it laska – it’s laksa. Still tastes brilliant." 30 and Beyond: Life, loving and being a grown-up

I just love that last one - and the title of her website too. If only we had the same attitude to getting along with everyone.

POSTSCRIPT

August 27

2023 - Dribs and drabs

2022 - A fish recipe I might try and skordalia

2021 - What's for dinner?

2020 - Home-made tourism

2019 - A 'real' chef

2018 - Nothing

2017 - Lunch in the Yarra Valley with old friends

2016 - Liquorice Allsorts and liquorice coincidentally watched Nigella make a Liquorice and blackcurrant chocolate cake on the television last night. From her Nigella Express series.

Alas blackcurrants are unavailable here.