Rotifest at Chillipadi Mamak Kopitiam

Well before Britain colonized both countries, India and Malaysia had had historical connections throughout the centuries through trade.  Even before the 13th century (!) Indian ruling dynasties had established trading posts and even provinces in modern-day Malaysia.  During colonization, however, the connection became more explicit when the British rulers “imported” thousands of very poor South Indians to became indentured labourers on various projects.  Most were from the state of Tamil Nadu and many stayed, intermingling with the local people and leaving their mark on Malaysian cuisine.

If you have ever wondered why there is ‘roti’ in an Indian restaurant (round, flat wholemeal bread, somewhat like a tortilla) and ‘roti’ in a Malaysian restaurant (flaky, oily, pastry-like squares), this is why.  The Tamil migrant workers set up kopitiams (coffee shops) and hawker stalls, and the food they made was known as ‘mamak’ cuisine.  They took the bread of their homeland and (according to Madhur Jaffrey) competed in the spectacle of tossing the bread like pizza to get it as thin as possible.  Hence ‘roti canai’, the Malaysian word for this puffy, crispy, pastry-like bread, from Chennai, the original name of Madras, the city in South India from where many of these workers came.

I love Malaysian roti – it was a big part of our family BBQs.  My dad would buy the square packets of three or four pieces and grill them on the BBQ or on a flat griddle pan before cutting into squares with scissors.  We ate it with sausages or BBQd chicken – totally untraditional but we thought it was great.  I had been dying to try Chillipadi Kopitiam Mamak, a new restaurant in Flemington which celebrates Mamak or Malaysian/Tamil Muslim-style food, especially after Bryan’s gorgeous ‘happy roti man’ post.  When Penny organized a meetup of some of Melbourne’s food tweeting fraternity for a six-course roti banquet, despite being the crappest tweeter know to humanity, I just had to go.

Chillipadi make all the roti right here.  Oiled pastry knots are rolled and slapped out, twirled until paper thin.  But instead of being folded into little parcels, here they were twirled back into coils before being grilled and presented like roti escargots in little baskets.  The textural variation is just gorgeous.  There’s the soft, feathery interior then the flaky, crunchy exterior, sloughing off dark, crackly flakes.

It is traditional to have roti with a small bowl of curry.  This beef rendang was absolutely off the hook.  The chunks of beef were so tender – you could tear them with your fingers, the meat shredding into strands.  The sauce was just divine, very oily but that is the idea, that you just have a little to pinch between pieces of warm roti bread.  So fantastic!

These chilli prawns were similarly gorgeous.  The sauce is quite sweet and is thickened with strands of beaten egg, like egg drop soup or stracciatella.  The prawns were pretty special, juicy and fat, definitely fresh, not precooked.  According to Bryan the sauce here is very similar to the sauce for chilli crab.  It was only manners that kept me from licking the plate.

Next was roti jala.  A thin batter squiggled onto a griddle to create “nets” of pancake-like bread.

This came with excellent chicken curry with just the right amount of coconut creaminess and lots of lovely warm spices like cardamom.  As is apparently traditional, the use of coconut milk is quite light here compared to how Australians might normally think of Malaysian curries.  The curries here are seriously good.  We ate the roti with the chicken on top like spaghetti.  It was fun, but I wanted more of the original roti canai!

Roti Ruben, Chillipadi’s own creation.  Soft, doughy pieces of square roti filled with chicken, mayonnaise, sweet chilli sauce and an egg omelette.  I actually really liked this but others on my table found it too stodgy.  It was so sweet, it almost could have been a dessert, but it was tasty and well-made.  It you go with a group, get one to split - I think it is a winner!

I was so keen to try this.  Dosa is a famous South Indian delicacy, a huge, thin crepe made with fermented ground rice and lentils.  It is crispy and tangy and is often served stuffed with fillings such as spiced potato, egg, mince or cheese.  This had also come to Malaysia via the Tamil migrants, morphing into "thosai".  Instead of the traditional sambar or very thin, spicy red dal/soup of the Indian version, it came with dalcha, a thick puree of mildly spiced yellow split peas and a small serve of thin, coconut-based curry sauce.  I was so full by this stage I just had a mouthful but it was lovely - looking forward to going back to have another.

Roti bom, the original roti canai squiggled with condensed milk and chocolate topping.  OMG!  Pretty intense but good.

I was absolutely far too stuffed to do anything but jaw-drop at this.  Roti tisu, a Matterhorn of crispy roti bread with slalom trails of condensed milk and chocolate sauce careening down it.

Ice kacang, a traditional dessert of shaved ice and various toppings - there could be condensed milk, palm syrup, corn, candied fruits, jellies etc.  I am not an enormous fan of ice kacang in general but it is certainly fun.  I think this is the dessert about which on Food Safari Maeve O'Meara said, "That's a party in a glass!"

Chillipadi have a really great drinks menu.  This is the longan drink, served in a Fowlers Vacola jar (#20 for preserving nerds out there).  It was really delicious, sweet but not cloying, long and refreshing.  Bryan did laugh at me because I couldn't eat the longans or round, lychee-like fruits at the bottom.  I just cannot get into chunky "things" in drinks.  The fact that the Malay word for longan is "cat's eye" only adds to my distaste.

Bryan had raved about the teh peng here.  The tea or coffee is a big part of the kopitiam or Malaysian coffee shop experience.  So I went from a cat's eye drink to this teh peng, where one sip and my mouth went like the other end of the cat.  It was so astringent and tannic.  If my tea overbrews I will tip it out - I like strong tea but not overbrewed.  Bryan came and tasted it and said that is the taste he craves, that traditional, powerful astrigency, blended with lots of condensed milk.  It's poured multiple times from a great height to create the bubbles on top.  So interesting - the childhood taste he was after was diametrically opposed to how I, with an Anglo-Saxon background, think of tea.  Good to see that Chillipadi have not toned this down for a Western palate!

Now I know everyone loves Laksa King, but go a bit further down the road and try Chillipadi Mamak Kopitiam out - I think they are great.  They have a fabulous-sounding mamak nasi kandar, somewhat like a thali with rice, two curry sauces, two meat and one veg for $10.50.  Also check out Addictive & Consuming and Let's Get Fat Together who between them I think have pretty much eaten the whole menu!

Disclaimer:  All attendees paid for their meal - although there was a set menu, this was a meetup, not a PR-style invite dinner.



Chillipadi Mamak Kopitiam
295 Racecourse Road, Kensington (map)
Phone:  9376 0228
Hours:  7 days 


Wheelchair Access
Level entry

Delicious Vietnam #2 - Blind banh mi battle

"Move back!  I can't see!"

"Get off me!  You're totally in the way!"

"No, you are, you freak... Oh my god, you made me miss Ba Le's power pâté punch!  I'm gonna kill you!"

"Oh yeah?  You just wait, I'm gonna...  Whoa!  The cucumber screwdriver!"

"What?  Move!  I can't see!  

"You move!  What, it's over?  Who won?"

"You totally ruined it!  Take that!"

As the old black and white TV flickers, two brothers and their cousin wrestle on the floor, replaying the epic struggle they have just witnessed.  The battle of the banh mi is being waged again, this time between beefy twins Footscray and Richmond, as their little cousin Preston - small yet feisty - lands a lucky punch or two.  As the coffee table is knocked over and the glasses of soda go flying, the boys are a blur of arms and legs, and it's impossible to tell one from the other.

We are so lucky here in Melbourne, Australia, to have a number of Vietnamese neighbourhoods woven into the fabric of our city.  Melbourne loves her Vietnamese sons.  Which plucky young one will win the blind banh mi battle?

For this month's Delicious Vietnam, the brainchild of Anh of A Food Lover's Journey and Hong & Kim of Ravenous Couple, I want to share with you our latest Melbourne food blogger meetup and homage to one of Melbourne's best-loved Vietnamese imports - the banh mi.  Following the success of #balutfest and the victory of favourite son Springvale in the hot vit lon department, Billy of Half-Eaten had the brilliant idea of arranging a blind banh mi taste test to judge which bakery made the best pork roll.  The blind testing was crucial to eliminate local bias. Not that yours truly would suffer from that AT ALL...  :)

Banh mi fixings.  From left to right: gio lua, char siu, "jellymeat"

Banh mi are a Vietnamese take on a classic French sandwich.  They can have many fillings, like BBQ chicken, meatballs, roast pork, or even tofu, but the classic is banh mi thit nguoi or "mixed ham roll."  This starts with a crunchy bread roll, which is deftly sliced and spread with a chiaroscuro of flavour - a shimmering streak of pale egg mayo (aka "butter") on one side, and rich, dark pâté on the other.  Three kinds of ham are normally added - gio lua, a pale Vietnamese "sausage" of pounded pork, often seen in a banana leaf-wrapped cylinder; char siu or Chinese-style BBQ pork, often with a red edge; and a type of head cheese (affectionately known by us as "jellymeat"), which is various porky odds and ends, pressed together and bound with aspic.  The meaty trio is topped with sweet pickled carrots, often mixed with similarly pickled white radish or onion; cucumber; coriander/cilantro; fresh chilli; and a sprinkle of Maggi sauce.

I arrived at the our "kitchen stadium" (penny aka jeroxie's cosy kitchen) and added my wager of 6 rolls from Footscray's finest bakeries to the growing pile on the table.  We started nervously at the piles of banh mi, dormant in their white paper packages.  Billy had devised an ingenious "blind tasting" system where all tasters would be unaware of the provenance of each roll.  With a nervous gulp of tea, we began our quest, slowly munching our way through 18 carefully segmented sandwiches.  Screwed up noses contrasted with emphatic nodding of heads as carrot and crumbs piled up in our laps like a snowdrift.

What I discovered was the best sandwiches began with good bread.  For me, banh mi cannot be made with regular, Australian-style white bread that is thick, chewy, and with a soft crust.  My favourite rolls had crackly crusts that shattered when you bit in, covering you in a confetti of crumbs and crust.  The interior of the bread should be quite airy and with an open crumb, so the filling takes centre stage.  The meat had to be fresh, tasty, and not too fatty; the pâté rich, non-grainy, and equally distributed; and the salad zingy with sweet vinegar, but not overpowering.

Banh mi sushi!

Sports fans - there was a clear winner.  Both everyone's individual top score and our totalled combined top score pointed to Nhu Lan of Footscray as the far and away victor!  In my own notes, Nhu Lan scored full marks for their excellent crusty bread and fresh, balanced ham combination.  I deducted marks for salad and overall flavour, which I find somewhat bemusing as I often buy a salad-only banh mi from Nhu Lan, so enamored am I of their pickled carrots.  This little shop is the busiest bakery in Footscray by far, and it's also the most expensive, at $3.80 for a banh mi thit nguoi compared to $3.20 - $3.50 elsewhere.  But let's be serious - for such freshness, flavour, and variety, how can you call $3.80 expensive?!

On the scorecard above, the numbers along the top correspond to the following bakeries.  You can see each taster's individual scores, and the numbers in circles down the bottom are the bakeries' overall rankings.

1 - Lee Lee (Victoria St, Richmond)
2 - Huong Huong (Victoria St, Richmond)
3 - Tina (High St, Preston)
4 - Nhu Lan (Hopkins St, Footscray)
5 - To's (Little Saigon Market, Footscray)
6 - Phuoc Thanh (Victoria St, Richmond)
7 - Mai Lan (High St, Preston)
8 - Saigon Bakery (Victoria St, Richmond)
9 - Ba Le (Leeds St, Footscray)

That night, a battle was waged in my belly.  Over twenty-seven different pieces of ham roiled in a sea of egg butter, and a single, crisp green apple was all I could manage for dinner.  This fighter is hanging up her banh mi boots.

What's that?  You're off to Nhu Lan?  Oh, go on.  I'll have a banh mi with BBQ chicken.  Hey, I'm always up for a rematch.

Thank you Billy for organising the battle and to Penny for hosting it.  I look forward to future food forays!

Balut

Places and times of transition are imbued with a sense of trepidation and magic.  In literature, misty marshes and bogs often provide the setting for mysterious events, betwixt as they are between land and water.  The blurry light of dusk and dawn are portentous times where possibilities abound.  Clear-cut notions are safe and reassuring, like primary colours.  Meanwhile, a haze of ambiguity hovers around the margins of times, places, and ideas.  Some find this uncertainty ominous and unsettling, while others find it electrifying.

So much of what we eat is neatly packaged, both literally and metaphorically.  The divorce of plastic-wrapped supermarket food from its natural farmyard or forest state has been oft written about.  Many people also expect, even subconsciously, that food stay within certain parameters.  For example, carrots should be orange; tomatoes, red; and bananas curved, not straight.  Eggs should have brown shells, and any speck of blood within should be fastidiously picked out.

Balut, or fertilised duck eggs, are a "transition" food.  They contain a semi-formed duckling nestled within the yolk.  Neither egg in the Western sense, nor entirely duck.  Billy (cloudcontrol) had enticed me to a recent Melbourne food blogger meetup with the prospect of homemade bo kho and just casually dropped in that we would be having a balut starter.  Also known as hot vit lon in Vietnam, these eggs are enjoyed across Asia, but particularly in the Philippines as a snack after a night of drinking.  A sense of foreboding came over me as I gave in and googled "balut" late one night.  When does an egg become a duck?  At what point does eating an egg become eating meat?  Could I really eat such a thing - feathers, beak, gizzards, and all?

Eggs were purveyed from three corners of Melbourne - Springvale, Footscray, and Richmond.  Buyers were advised to find "middle stage" eggs.  I have seen these large white eggs before in Asian grocers, neatly stacked in trays and stamped with a red Chinese character, but had no idea what was lurking inside, curled and dormant.  Each egg was marked with an S, F, or R to denote its origin, and they were boiled for around 15 minutes.

About fifteen pairs of eyes - some dancing with curiosity, some wide with anticipation, some squeezed half-shut in terror - watched Billy as he brought a silver spoon down on the hollow end of an egg.  A veined membrane was revealed, and he sprinkled it with salt and pepper   Delicately he dipped his spoon in, brought out a creamy, quivering morsel, ate, and declared it good.  The spell was broken.  Round the table, bloggers and their friends tucked in, and the overwhelming mood was one of surprise, that fertilised duck eggs were actually yummy.

Moi?  Well, on preparing for this event, I talked to my dad, who has eaten balut (along with duck tongues, chicken's feet - I could go on).  He advised me it was just like a hard-boiled egg.  Phew, I thought - until I remembered the only three things in the world I cannot abide are offal, blue cheese, and hard-boiled eggs.  Their farty aroma and rubbery texture makes me retch.  I did have to walk away from the balut feast a few times and take a few gulps of fresh air.  But I did try some, and was amazed to find I liked it.  The yolk is extra creamy - perhaps being fertilised, it has kicked into being a placenta-like powerhouse of nutrients.  But the best was the broth that came off the top of the inner membrane.  Like the most piquant, balanced fish sauce, it was a revelation and absolutely divine.  I challenge anyone to try a spoonful and not agree.

Anh of A Food Lover's Journey, who is originally from Vietnam, talked about how, growing up, "egg" meant balut.  There was an awareness of the life cycle of the chicken or duck.  We have lost that in the West, at least among most city-dwellers.  In many situations where roosters and hens are not kept artificially separated, I imagine that it would be accepted that an egg gathered from the garden may be at any stage from unfertilised to ready-to-hatch.  I respect so much those food traditions that embrace the natural life cycle and habits of a bird, and see balut as a delicious bonus to an otherwise everyday food - the egg.

Fabulous things happen when foodies get invited to a pot luck.  Warming bo kho, fabulous fried noodles, crisp Vietnamese coleslaw, tangy Thai salad, and a luscious coconut, banana, and tapioca dessert.  (My canh recipe here.)  It was a perfect autumnal afternoon, and we whiled away the afternoon in Tammi's cosy backyard, in the glow of a warm fire and to the sounds of chickens gently clucking.

As I drank my wine and chatted with friends, both new and old (hi Daniela!), something was simmering within me.  In the balut battle between Footscray, Richmond and Springvale, Footscray got fried!  Our eggs sucked - they were old and had no tasty broth.  Our pride was poached!  Our coddled cred was crushed!  I vow to avenge my fair suburb in the upcoming blind banh mi battle.  Stay tuned!

Read about #balutfest at Celeste's Berry Travels.  I'll add more links if and when people post about the event :)