Welcome!

Welcome to Asian Cookery’s Blog!

I”m Peng Jones, a Malaysian-born Cantonese and owner/instructor of Asian Cookery since 1989.  I am also member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (I.A.C.P.) and a Certified Culinary Professional (C.C.P.).  Asian Cookery specializes in Asian foods including Chinese, Malaysian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Indian.  You can see more at our website at www.asiancookery.net.

The trick to making bao? Starting with the perfect dough — latimes.com

The trick to making bao? Starting with the perfect dough — latimes.com

Posted using ShareThis

The Breadman

The Breadman is one of my favorite people, he comes to my neighborhood everyday at 4.00 in the afternoon. It is a normal site to have a group of women and children crowding around him as he parks his bicycle and opens up the big cone bread cover of the container strapped to the back of his bicyle. Besides that he has loaves of bread hung around the handles of his bike and every possible space he can find around the big bread container.

I can see the excitement on the faces of children surrounding him. There are sweet buns filled with coconut, cream horns, sweet braided bread and other hugh loaves of uncut bread. Ah! the simple joys of life. I can still smell the aroma of baked goods as I stood there waiting for my turn. What is it going to be today, cream horns or the yummy coconut buns ?

Today feels like a ‘Nasi Lemak Day’

Nasi Lemak is a Malay word that literally means ‘rice in cream’.

I remember many mornings of waiting in line to buy a packet of Nasi Lemak while I was teenage schoolgirl. Most of the time my packed lunch are simple butter and jam sandwiches or leftovers from last night’s dinner but there are days that my mother will give me some money to buy lunch. That is a real treat!

Before I walked to school in the morning I will go across the street to buy some Nasi Lemak. The ownner of this food stall is an elegant Malay lady. She is modestly dressed, always with an apron wrapped around her. Her long black hair is combed into a neat bun, she is soft spoken and pleasant. There was always a long line of people waiting to be served and I hope she will move a little faster so that I would not be late for school.

There are two big stacks of cut newspaper and banana leaves at her litte wooden table and little metal containers/pots of condiments like sliced cucumber,sliced hard boiled eggs,fried anchovies, braised water convulvus,roasted peanuts and sambal anchovies. There was cuttlefish and chicken sambal if you are willing to pay for some special additions. She has a big wooden bucket of cooked steamed rice (rice is steamed in coconut milk and flavored with few pieces of knotted screwpine leaves).

She will scoop a little rice onto a piece of banana leaf lined with newspaper and will add a few slices of cucumbers, small spoonfuls of fried anchovies,roasted peanuts and sambal. Then, she will artfully wrapped it up into a neat little packet.

The sweet aroma of the freshly cooked rice and aromatic spices in the different sambals will always linger in my memory. There are cold winter mornings that I would wake up and feel like this is the perfect day for ‘Nasi Lemak’. After 22 years of marriage my American husband is just now a new Nasi Lemak fan and
now joins me to say ‘Today feels like a Nasi Lemak Day’

Midnight Supper

Popular Supper Dish (midnight snack)

My mouth waters just thinking about the luscious flavorful noodles coated with just the right amount of sauce and combined with a mixture of pork, shrimp and vegetables.

Wonton Noodles with BBQ Pork

Wonton Noodles with barbeque pork

The Essence of Wonton & Noodles

‘I have fond memories of a 60 something silvered hair couple (they are probably the first generation of Chinese migrants to Malaysia).

They run a little food booth in a coffee shop selling noodles with wontons and Chinese barbeque pork across the street from my house.
You can either get the noodles and wonton in soup or have the noodles “dry” mix with some oil, soy sauce, sesame oil. They served this with pickled sliced green chillies in light soy sauce.
The noodles are freshly made wheat ones, each serving is rolled into a ball and lined neatly in the display glass cabinet. I remembered that he was very particular with cooking the noodles in a big pot of boiling water and he has another big stainless steel basin of cold water in which he immersed the cooked noodles to remove any excess starch. He will then immersed it back in the hot water to just warmed it up before tossing it with sauce or serving it with soup. Fresh water is consistently added to the big pot so that the noodles can be cooked in lots of water “the best way to cook any pasta”.

I always stood in line fascinated by their almost ritualistic way of preparing their dish, I found it entertaining and it never gets old. They seem to enjoy doing it, at least they appear to and I can see that they took great pride in what they do. Through the years of patronizing their small noodle store and time spent waiting for my turn – I feel like I have captured the essence of “Wonton & Noodles”.

That was the beginning of my first of many ‘life’ cooking classes as I grew up around the ‘GLUTTON SQUARE’.