Brissenden - South East Asian food: classic and modern dishes from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam

SOUTH EAST
ASIAN FOOD

SOUTH EAST
ASIAN FOOD

Rosemary Brissenden

CLASSIC AND MODERN DISHES FROM INDONESIA,
MALAYSIA, SINGAPORE, THAILAND, LAOS, CAMBODIA
AND VIETNAM

Published in 2003
by Hardie Grant Books
12 Claremont Street
South Yarra, Victoria 3141, Australia
www.hardiegrant.com.au

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Copyright text Rosemary Brissenden 2003
Copyright photography Robert Ashton 2003

First published by Penguin Books, London 1969
Revised edition published by Penguin Books Australia 1996

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:

Brissenden, Rosemary.

South East Asian food.
[New ed.].
ISBN 1 74066 013 7.

1. Cookery, Southeast Asian. I. Title.

641.5959.

Photography by Robert Ashton
Cover and text design by Cheryl Collins
Typeset by J & M Typesetting
Printed and bound in Singapore by Imago Productions

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In Memory
R.F.B.

CONTENTS

In addition to those mentioned in the original edition of South EastAsian Food, I wish to thank the following people without whose help, generosity and skill this latest version would never have materialised: Dick Aitken, who could not have been more generous in his willingness to act as sounding-board and appraiser of my prose whenever called upon; Jean Thompson, whose patience and understanding of food made her the perfect typist of my messy drafts; Jean Kennedy, whose scholarship and enthusiasm were pivotal when compiling the multilingual Chart of Ingredients ; my daughter Venetia for putting together the bibliography and for proofreading help; Helen and Nick Hammond for generous help with printing and computer problems during the course of the project; and finally all those good friends who dropped everything to proofread the final manuscript and galleys.

In Indonesia I thank Widarti Goenawan, Editor of Femina magazine, and members of her staff in particular Roos Suyono, Sisca Soewitomo and Odilia Winneke Setiawati who arranged contacts for me and with whom I had useful discussions in Jakarta. I am particularly grateful to Hiang Marahimin, William and Lucy Wongso and their cook Nah, Tjoe Thee, Bridget and Zainal Tayeb, their cook Warmi, Mama Siar and other members of their extended family for their hospitality, for sharing their special knowledge and for their wonderful practical help. My thanks to Janet De Neefe, teacher of Balinese cooking in Ubud, for her ready advice and her permission to include two of her recipes. In Australia Elaine McKay and Tati Achdiat were once again extremely helpful with briefing and orientation; Robyn Coventry and Dick Aitken produced great eye-witness reports from the field.

In Malaysia thanks are due to Mrs Twinkle McCoy, Mrs Rose Gill, Mrs Pooma Tharmalingam and Che Zaniab for their guidance in contemporary Malaysian cooking and that of their respective communities. Thanks, too, to Sandy Collett for her hospitality. In Singapore I am particularly grateful to Ananda Rajah cook, thinker and, together with his wife Elizabeth, most generous host; to Mark and Angela Sng and to Celine de Souza. In Australia I thank Christina Benjamin and Nesa Eliezer for sharing many of their families recipes with me; Professors Virginia and Barry Hooker and Professor Tony Milner for their help with reference material.

My lasting debt in relation to Thai food is to my friend Bunjong (Toi) Miles, in whose company I have learnt much of what I know about the techniques of Thai cooking. Though recipes we have worked on together do not appear in this book, the chapter would be much poorer had we not done so.

In Thailand special thanks to Khun Tuanjit Kannang and Donald Gibson, Khun Sawart Pongsuwan, Khun Pricha and Khun Chantima Watanyoo, Dr Suthiporn Chirapanda, Professor Kamala Nakasriri, Khun Pasu Pettanorm and her family for their hospitality and for sharing their knowledge of the food of particular regions; Associate Professor Sasikasem Tongyonk for easing my way in Bangkok; staff and students in the cookery and hospitality section at Suan Dusit Institute; and Bob Satterly and his wife, Khun Pen, for their generous response to some long-distance queries.

For the Thailand section of the book, I have had great help in Australia with recipes, contacts and advice from Sumana Aitken, Suparb Delaney, Khun Weena Sutcharitkul, Dr Ted Chapman and Adam Aitken. Dr Donn Bayard and Khun Niti Pawakapan spent long hours correcting mistakes and inconsistencies in the transliteration of Thai words. Drs Noel Barnard, Tony Diller and Peter Grave were generous with their expertise in response to some historical queries though they should not be held responsible for any of my wild conjectures. Thank you, too, to Bill Forbes for carrying messages to and from Bangkok.

For cooking and food advice in Vientiane my thanks to Michel Somsanouk Drouot, Khamphanh Phachomphonh and his family and May Vhan and Boonti. Thanks, too, to Claudia and Geoffrey Hyles for their kindness and hospitality in Vientiane. I am extremely grateful for the help I received from Seng Rangsi in Canberra who made herself endlessly available to me, and from Pinkham Simmalavong and Souvenally Vongthevanh in Sydney.

Without the chance to visit Cambodia, it is the cooking of Naysin Hac of Canberra that I have recorded here. I cannot thank her enough for her endless patience with me and for allowing me to share in some of the care she lavishes on her family. I am also grateful to Christine Chan of Canberra and Rami Yit of Sydney with whom I was able to discuss Cambodian food and ingredients.

My thanks to Dorothy Button of Vietnam Ventures Pty Ltd in Melbourne for kindly accommodating my project and my special culinary interest on one of her Reunification Railway tours through Vietnam. Few other experiences could have allowed me so rich an initiation into the food of the Vietnamese in their homeland. I owe deep gratitude to the catering crew assigned to the tour by the Vietnam Railway Catering Service, in particular to the two brilliant cooks Mrs Nga and Miss Hat, and to the many restaurant staff who freely talked to me along the way. I am grateful, too, to Pham Thi Tuyet Trang of the Melbourne office who took me home to watch her mother cook, and to the companys representative in Ho Chi Minh City, Christine Hong, who arranged a private demonstration with her cook. In Hanoi great generosity was extended to me by the Hanoi Womens Association, in particular Vice-President Eng. Duong Thi Vin and cooking teacher Nguyen Thi Bch Lin. I was given much help there, too, by Nguyen The Hng, the manager of a small local restaurant, and spent many happy hours eating and researching local food in the company of Lisa Drummond and Gill Tipping and their Vietnamese friends.

In Canberra I have been the grateful recipient of the cooking, language and friendship skills of Do Van Dung and his wife Thu Oanh and have received special help with recipes from Aisha Minh Thu Ajkic and Mrs A. Nguyen.

Recipes in this book are arranged according to style of cooking rather than by main ingredient.

The format is designed to enable readers to construct reasonably authentic menus for whole meals taken from a specific national or sub-cultural cuisine. For this purpose simply make sure, in the cases of Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam, that each recipe you select comes from a different section within the chapter as well as featuring a different main ingredient. In the case of Malaysia and Singapore, do the same thing within the sections dedicated to Malay, Chinese, Nyonya, Indian and Eurasian cuisines.