16 July 08 re: more about laksa

Janice:

I love your new laksa recipe. Just reading it makes my mouth water. Being Malaysian, I grew up with laksa of some kind all my life. Even now, residing in Beijing, I never fail to drag my husband to whatever new joint that pops up serving laksa.

I had always thought that laksa is purely Malaysian cause no matter where I went I could only find it in Malaysian or sometimes in Singaporean places. Since Malaysians make it best, I figured it must be a Malaysian dish.

Therefore I found it so fascinating to read that laksa was introduced to you by the Brits and Australians. I lived in Australia for 11 years and didn't come across a great deal of laksa except in the odd few Malaysian Chinese restaurants, but then again it was a long time back.

m-c:

Oh dear, I see I was too cryptic. Laksa is Southeast Asian, and I learned about it from English and Australian writers bringing news of exotic dishes to their readers.

I first encountered the name in Jacki Passmore's The Noodle Shop Cookbook: 150 Favorite Noodle Dishes from Seven Asian Cuisines (Macmillan, 1994). Passmore is an Australian who writes about the cuisines of Asia.

She gives us two recipes with the word "laksa" in the title, penang laksa (pp. 96-97) and laksa lemak (pp. 97-98). The explanatory notes say nothing about the word "laksa" but instead talk about galangal (which, I've just found out, rhymes with tangle) and makrut lime leaves.

I made both recipes without ever feeling sure what kind of dish would have the word "laksa" in its name. I didn't even know what part of speech it was. A noun? An adjective? Was "penang" in the name of the first recipe Penang the place? (The cookbook prints recipe titles all lower-case, impeding attempts at self-education.)

I believe the next place I ran across the word was in Donna Hay. Hay is a kind of earthier, gutsier Australian Martha Stewart, and I love all her books.

She has a laksa recipe on page 58 of New Food Fast (William Morrow, 2003), another on page 22 of The Instant Cook (4th Estate, 2005), another on page 168 of Flavors (William Morrow, 2000), etc.

And then I picked up the thread in Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver, managing along the way to build up a picture of laksa as originally Southeast Asian, thoroughly integrated into Australian and to some extent British menus, and now making its way to our shores as well. (See, for instance, the recipe on the wonderful SoupSong website but not, alas, in the SoupSong book, Patricia Solley's An Exaltation of Soups, Three Rivers, 2004, or the recipe for chicken curry noodle soup in James Oseland's Cradle of Flavor, W. W. Norton, 2006.)

Janice:

I am sure you already know there are many versions from "lemak," i.e. coconut-based, to tamarind.

m-c:

Aha, so that's what laksa lemak was back in Passmore's book, coconut. Sure enough, that recipe calls for coconut milk and the one before, the penang laksa, does not. And is the "penang" really Penang, the Malaysian island?

Janice:

Yes.

Penang is an island off the Straits of Malaysia (4 hours drive north of Kuala Lumpur). The island is heavily populated by large groups of Malaysian Chinese descendants from the Fujian Province in China. People there still converse in the Fujian dialect.

For some reason, laksa has taken on a new meaning on Penang Island, which the people on the island are very proud of. Unlike laksa in the rest of Malaysia, Penang laksa, also known as asam (tamarind) laksa, doesn’t use coconut milk and is sour instead of creamy. According to Penang-born Chef Loh Hong Chye, their laksa is different from the rest because the locals favor spicy, sour food.

m-c:

Lemak is with coconut and creamy, Penang is with tamarind, clear and sour. I'm happy to have the mystery solved at last. Not that I was losing sleep over it, you understand, but it did stick in my mind.

So is laksa broadly Southeast Asian or narrowly Malaysian? The only Malaysian cookbook I have, At Home with Amy Beh 2 (Star Publications, 2002), given to me by a wise and generous friend, has just one recipe for laksa, and it's a Thai laksa (pp. 63-64).

Janice:

I thought it was Malaysian. Even "laksa" -- just the name itself sounded Malay.

As I gave it more thought, though, I figured no! "Laksa" must be from Indonesia, which is where Malaysian culture and culinary history originated.

So I googled it and check this out:

Laksa in Indonesian means sepuluh ribu or "10 thousand" a reference to the many strands of the fine white vermicelli noodles in the dish. The name is believed to be of Sanskrit origin, with a particular link to Indonesia and possible roots in the ancient Majapahit era. However, others believe it is of Chinese origin, the dish having been brought in by immigrants and adapted to local tastebuds. The ingredients in variant Laksas point to obvious Peranakan influences although the use of mint leaves and the sour flavour of also suggest Thai influences. Taken from the National Library of Singapore website.

m-c:

Cool! And what's "Peranakan"?

Janice:

The term originated in Indonesia for the descendants of immigrant Chinese who had married and integrated with local Indonesians in Malaya (Malaysia in the present day).

m-c:

This seems like a subject of endless fascination. I think I'm going to have to make Amy Beh's recipe for supper tomorrow. Purely for research purposes, of course.

Janice:

Of course.

m-c:

P.S.   It was great. And an interesting example of two versions coming together, since it used both coconut (lemak) and tamarind (Penang).

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