Malaysian Food and Restaurants

[Stokey Sue Profile]

In Burma you get little dishes of things like dried fish and peanuts (the fish reminiscent of the dried anchovies I used to feed to some garter snakes) served as what MiMi Aye has referred to as the equivalent of Malaysian or Indonesian sambals

A Burmese shared meal will consist of a couple of mains, often what we’d call curries, but can also be something like a grilled whole fish or stir fried prawns, rice or noodles, and smaller dishes often described as salads but not necessarily what we’d think of as such intended to provide contrast of texture as much as flavour, plus very small dishes of relishes that will be very strongly spicy and umami

Which is a ridiculously long-winded way of saying I’m not surprised to see the fish and peanut listed under veg, as it’s probably intended to be one of these secondary contrasting dishes

[Sakkarin Profile]

Here's my Roti dough relaxing. It will have had about 6 hours rest when I get round to trying it, I'm optimistic as it was very squidgy even before it went in the fridge. I used the Dan Lepard method rather than 10 minutes hard kneading. It's 2/3 of the recipe, so 195g strong flour, and 1 tsp each of sugar and salt in 135ml of water. And lots of oil.

All the ingredients assembled for the dall, if it all works out it will give me the inspiration to try my hand at those popiah skins.

[Sakkarin Profile]

Well the dough was incredibly stretchy, but I found that it sprung back to its original shape, so when I'd made a six-inch disc, it'd spring back into a 3 inch lump.

In the end I used a circle of silicon pan liner, which it seemed to adhere to, to form the final roti, then upturned the proper-sized roti into my pan, and squished the silicon to make sure it was even (sorry if that's confusing, should have taken a pic...). Did the clapping thing to make it flaky, but it didn't work, it was far too elastic.

And the dall wasn't as good as my usual tarka dall.

Oh well, it still made a good supper, and the roti tasted just like Indian ones, and had a lovely chewiness to them, and they were better than last time I tried making "flaky roti".

EDIT: Haaa! Just been looking at one of my Malaysian books, and on the Roti Canai page, there's a handwritten note from the previous owner, "A lesson is needed in the folding. Mine neded up being flat as a paratha, but nonetheless were nice.". Echoes mine!

[Renee Profile]

It's a vague memory, but I seem to remember flattening each dough ball and then rolling up like a Swiss roll, cutting pieces off and then flattening them. It seems such a long time ago now, but yours have turned out well. Maybe brush with oil before rolling up, which would create the layers?

I am so hungry now!

[jeral Profile]

I bought a pack of three frozen parathas recently and it looked like they were piped, the way a Mr Whippy soft ice cream sits on a cone. They definitely weren't Swiss roll style as the swizzles were all uneven and on top of each other before being flattened.

Probably no help at all if a dough is not made to a piping consistency; just mentioning it being first time I'd seen such a one.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

A Caribbean roti is often rolled out to a small round, brushed with oil or butter, a single cut made from centre to edge, then rolled back into a ball from the cut edge, squidging it into shape as you go.

You then rest it, and then roll out full size and cook.

There are other methods of getting layers in, but that’s the one I was taught