More than Congee - Comfort Foods

Congee - the word, all at once,  brings up visions of fast food, socio-economic battlers, quick but piping hot breakfasts and warmth on cool weather nights. It is an efficient creation, for hard-earned rice is boiled until it amplifies to a more voluminous mix that is soft and gentle on the palates of the very young and elderly. Ubiquitous in East Asia, but surprisingly not at all in the Indian sub-continent, the history of the congee speaks of thrift, patience, sparing conservatism and caution. The congee is a dish that also calls up creativity and economy in use of scarce ingredients - be they bits of green shallot rings, ground pepper, slivers of tender chicken or thinly cut ginger. Yet, at the same time, the congee is also food that emphasises on freshness, quality and aroma. These days the congee feels right at home whether being served at yum cha sessions, food courts or in midnight cafes. Above photo shows a set of congee-filled bowls ready for consumption, together with a lemon grass leaf infused herbal drink, light soy sauce and vinegar pickled green chili cuts.

The sar hor fun - or stir fried wide rice noodles bathed in a stock gravy and laden with fresh choy sum vegetables, fish cake squares, calamari, barbecued char siew, deshelled prawns and juicy pork cuts.   Cantonese in origin, the success of delivery and outcome for this dish depends on two critical factors - the heat of the wok used and the oomph of the stock gravy. It can be a messy dish to prepare - and as with most Asian food, require ingredients to be prepared before hand, usually cut into precise bite-sized pieces and with stocks to be made.  The choice of ingredients, like the cut of the meat and where it comes from the butchered animal, is significant. Also available with beef and chicken, but rarely with lamb, this dish evokes in me the memory of the siew yeh, or supper, ala Hong Kong and Guangzhou.  East Asians, together with South-East Asians and Mediterranean peoples, love the practice and concept of snacking before bedtime, and in Western countries, you can also see the hubs of eating, drinking and socialising beyond the midnight hour in many ethnic enclaves.  This dish, in my mind, is fondly associated with my Dad driving my brothers and me out for a treat after normally curfew hours (sleeping time!) to a roadside stall to wait for freshly cooked servings, often packed with newspaper cover and banana leaf wrapping.

Banana cake slices (picture below) in the foreground , with slices of Star apples in the background.  I find that such cakes are made with over ripe and aromatic bananas in Asia, a legacy of colonialism and East-West fusion from the 19th and 20th centuries, whilst in Australia, the bananas used are not so ripe and not so mushy. High tea implies cakes with sugar and spice, but banana cakes are more savoury than sweet. Are they better accompanied by a cup of tea, or by dunking in coffee? The penchant for habitually drinking tea became entrenched in Britain after a Portuguese princess married an English King - and coffee beans were introduced to Europe by the Arabs and Moors.  So how did bananas came to be introduced into Western concepts of flour based cakes?  It was in another continent - the USA, when the economic Depression drove ingenuity to  utilise baking soda, baking powder and bananas to create something which could be sold and for which there was a market, when money was hard to come by.  The banana cake recipe was first published in Pilsbury’s Balanced Recipes of 1933. Banana cakes (or for that matter, banana bread, when cooked in a loaf tin) do exude a warm feeling of welcome and warmth when coming home to.  Banana cakes also remind me of school fetes and sports functions. 

Tonitto's Continental Cakes - Port Kembla, NSW

Tonitto can be a name variation of Antonio.It also refers to an outstanding cake shop and bakery located along the main strip in Port Kembla, NSW. I like the topography and sloping inclinations of this road - Wentworth Street. You may hear the surf from the nearby impressive sandy beach.  It is a Saturday morning, suburban and it feels like any of the coastal towns dotted around the Australian coast - but then I notice the towering chimney from the nearby steel works. Not that this breaks my fascination with the scenery, with shuttered light industrial garages, people scurrying through the wintery windy blast and a day that feels like any other. Tonitto provided me a bright spot that quiet weekend, and I eyed the napoli (left), tartuffi (upper right) and conchilge (lower right) - picture above.  The business is currently managed and operated by Laurence and Loretta Tonitto, carrying on the traditions of Vincent Tonitto, who hailed from Italy and enriched the Illawarra area with his pastry mastery.

Weddings, birthdays, high tea, religious cakes, cupcakes, croquembouche and more - Tonitto's can cater for them.  Many customers that early morning were collecting premade orders in boxes. I reckon it is worthwhile to visit the small but interesting cafe as well, sipping their coffee by the window and watching the world go by. You can  meet Laurence, with a smiling demeanour, surrounded by efficient lady staff who are engaged in what they do at the shop. Tonitto's also has a wide variety of novelty figurines and cake decoration accessories.

You can catch this hint of romance on the footpath as you approach Tonitto's from the west - an etched work of love for a lucky Sonia.  Was this as recently made in 2005?   The suggested romance is then followed up by chocolate, cream and dreams as you enter Tonitto's.

Tortes, mud cakes, biscottis, butter cakes, arancini, horseshoes, croccantini, rumballs, pastine, vienessi, cannoli, zabaglione, sospiri, pies, cheesecakes, bigne, profiteroles, canoncini - the variety available seems endless.  This can be Patisserie Paradiso.  I did not see any gelato though and I hope I am mistaken.  The shop may be relatively small, but it packs more than a punch in quality, design, imagination and love in their creations.  This is a good pit stop before or after you hit the surf nearby.

Tonitto's does make delivery of orders to Fairy Meadow, just a bit north of Wollongong CBD. However I feel it is very worthwhile to bring family and mates on a lazy day to visit the bakery itself - not on Sundays though, when it is a day of rest.

Food Gems - Klang Valley, Malaysia

McCurry Noodles in Shah Alam , the capitalof Selangor State, has the unique proposition of being run by a Scotsman, Colin James Mcculloch, and his Penang Chinese wife.  Their version of this fav street food in the Klang Valley (and also in Australian capital cities) has a spicy kick, a rather wholesome soup and niftly cut chicken pieces served on the bone that somehow draws the flavours better.  (Image above).

I also highly recommend their accompanying teh tarik, lightly tinged with an cinnamon aftertaste. I was taken to try this for breakfast one weekend morning by Yew Ting and his youngest son. The cafe is located at 7, Jalan Juruaudit U1/37 in Section U1 of Shah Alam in Selangor State.

Walking around the Gardens Mall in Kuala Lumpur, I was captivated by two stores, one providing Haagen Dasz ice cream flavours (the Austin Chase above) and the other looking as cottage prettty as it can be (image below, the Delectable Cakes).
Austin Chase originates from Seattle, the home of Starbucks as well, and its main product is of course coffee.   Austin takes pride on the human element it emphasises to produce never bitter and full bodied coffee using all Arabica beans and utilises the Apassionato roasting process.  They also have outlets in Singapore and Penang Island.  The Gardens Mall outlet is one of seven in the Klang Valley of Selangor State.
Delectable Cakes by Su has delightful names for its main product categories  - Fruitcake Parcels, Little Men, Merry Men, Brownie Parcels and Happinuts.  Su studied Construction Management at the UNSW in eastern Sydney but then went to the NotterSchool of Pastry Arts in the USA.

In the proverbial search for the most tasty soy stirred egg noodles in Malaysia, I can now identify with one along  Jalan Juruaudit U1/37 in Section U1 of Shah Alam in Selangor State.  Okay, what a mouthful! Take the easy route, go to the curry laksa mentioned at the beginning of this blog entry and stand in front of this cafe.  Walk across to head around 2pm on an imaginary clock and you shall reach this place that offers charcoal grilled char siew (  Cantonese barbequed pork).  This version here stands above the rest and is better than the ones I find in Sydney and Melbourne.  They make it more juicy because they allow a little bit more fat in the meat chosen, but also the charcoal thing does make a difference.  When accompanied by egg noodles (picture above), the result for the palate is just unsurpassed.
I also recall the lovely roast pork, with crackling skin and moist meat, served at the dinner with university classmates on Sunday, 3rd of June 2012. Yew Ting , Yue Nin, Yit Chan, Susie Cheng, Siew Ngor and Soh Wah had each provided me a lively conversation on various topics for a resident in contempoary Kuala Lumpur. We were seated in an established restaurant, the Oversea at the Armada Hotel in Petaling Jaya - the Oversea Group has a long running reputation serving Cantonese cuisine in both Malaysia and Singapore.  I also noted the quality of the char siew.   This restaurant is also known for its signature claypot dishes with goat meat and braised pork ribs. I also had opportunity to try the steamed fish that evening, unique in its intensity of flavours.  My university mates and I settled somehow settled into a pace as if I had never left for Australia, and that is a treasure I appreciate so much.
One Thursday evening, cousin Lai Han took her Mum and me to a delightful coffee shop outlet, the Sang Choi Kei, along Jalan Kuchai Lama, in the Taman Desa area of Kuala Lumpur.  This gave me a treat of the KL styled Hokkien noodles stir fried with black soy sauce. Rich in taste, slurpy and delicious, my memory of such a dish harks back to university days. This is a specialty of KL, although there are replications of this all the way from New Zealand to the USA.  The same place also served Marmite marinated deep fried chicken, which was a recent discovery of mine in Sydney.

On a Wednesday evening, Kay Bee, Angie and Swee Yuen caught up with me for a late dinner at Pantai Seafood, located in Petaling Jaya in Kampung Sungai Kayu Ara.  I absolutely loved the deep fried pork knuckle, a signature dish that is different from the German version but tasty in its own way!  Another menu item we had was the mantou, the Chinese bread to accompany savoury mains  and this was just perfect to eat with the pork knuckle pieces.

Other dishes of note from Pantai are the otak otak tofu (interesting combination of Chinese and South-east Asian, otak otak being my fav steamed spicy fish fillet mousse wrapped in petite banana leaf packages); the Hakka-styled braised duck; baked pork ribs; stir fried Japanese snails, garnished with dried shrimps and chili padi; steamed clams from Scotland, tempered with minced garlic;  and the baked Alaskan crab with salted egg yolk.  Pantai is operated by the Unique chain of restaurants, which are also in Ipoh, Perak State and other spots in the Klang Valley (Cheras, Subang and Section 13 in Petaling Jaya).

The Art of Making Fruit Cake

Recently, dear Aunty Poh Sim supervised a few of us in making Christmas fruit cake. Her measurements followed the Imperial standards and one needs to convert them to the metric system.

Cherries are to be prepared ahead of the baking session - it is ideal to soak them with 3 to 4 tablespoonfuls of sherry at least over night. Cherries are to be sliced, before mixing with seedless dates, brown raisins, mixed orange peel and almond thins. (images above and below). Use 1.5 pounds of brown raisins, half a pound of seedless dates, a quarter pound of mixed orange peel, another quarter pound of cherries and a half pound of almond thins.

The oven has to be preheated to at least 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Use a nine inch round or square baking container - brush it with butter and then line the surface with two layers of grease proof paper. Also brush the butter between the paper layers and on to its outside surface.

Cream the ten ounces of butter and five ounces of brown sugar together, until they are soft and pale in colour (below). Add in contents of 5 well beaten eggs and ensure consistency and thoroughness of the resulting mixture. Then add in 4 tablespoons of golden syrup.

Stir in first only half the amount of fruit mixtures prepared and sift in likewise half the dry flour ingredients. Then separately add the other half of fruit and dry ingredients. Add another four tabelspoonfuls of sherry to the mixture. The dry flour mixtures consist of seven ounces of plain version and another three ounces of raising flour. (image below)

Two teaspoons of all spice powder and half a teaspoon of nutmeg powder are then added to enhance the flavour of the resulting cake mixture (image above).

Before placing in the oven, ensure smoothening the cake mixture surface to slope towards the centre - this shall better ensure the resulting baked cake is level, once the mixture has risen when baked. First place the cake mixture tin on the lower half of the oven, to help ensure that it is not over browned in the baking process. Bake on this lower section of the oven for 120 to 150 minutes at 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Monitor the emerging fruit cake when in the oven, especially during the second stage baking at the lower temperatures.

Reduce the oven heat to 275 degrees Fahrenheit for the second stage of baking, for another hour. For this second phase, cover the cake with grease proof paper folded over a piece of dampened paper.

Always use a cake skewer to test whether the resulting cake is ready to be taken out of the oven.

After taking the cake out of the oven, do rest the cake for at least five minutes in the oven before placing it on a wire tray. The result is not ready to be consumed at this stage - it should be soaked with two tablespoons of sherry every two or three days for a fortnight, before being served.

From an idea and flour, to the piece that we bite into on Christmas Day, the process requires love, concentration and patience. A wonderful reflection of care we have for family and friends.