Episode 4 Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey

I started my journey in Cambodia, a country bought to its knees by the Khmer Rouge in the '70s,

but like the whole of South-East Asia, it ain't down for long,

and I felt a sense of resurgence in the air.

But I was here for the food that I found very simple

and amazingly fresh tasting, and not nearly as hot as I'd expected.

And there were masses of freshwater fish and prawns

from the great lake and provider, the Tonle Sap.

I went by barge down the Mekong River to Vietnam

and here I found the food to be chock-full of fresh herbs,

mainly water plants and thin light stocks -

in fact, the sort of food where if I'd stayed a long time,

I could have lost stacks of weight.

That's everything I expect of Vietnam,

I mean everything there had to be growing this morning.

It's just a delight to the eye,

or a delight to a cook's eye, I have to say.

Then onto Thailand and I was knocked out by the night markets of Bangkok,

especially making the famous pad Thai,

and watching the local ladies make the fiery tom yung goong.

The thing that really is impressing me

is how much of everything is in there - 25 chillies for a start,

probably a kilo of prawns, masses of mushrooms, loads of tomatoes, five limes.

And this is just bang, bang, bang. And that's why when you taste it,

it's got such a great, deep flavour.

But now I'm in Malaysia,

a place that conjures up images of sailing ships

queuing to take on cargo of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves,

and of British fading imperialism.

This is the island of Penang in the north-west of the country,

once a British stronghold called Prince of Wales Island.

Those were the days when fortunes where made

out of spice-trading and mining.

It's a good place to explore

the multi-faceted cuisine of the country.

Good morning, sir, welcome to the Eastern and Oriental Hotel.

'The Eastern and Oriental Hotel

'is one of the most famous in the Far East, and a forerunner of Raffles in Singapore.'

I love these old hotels where they say they're proud to have welcomed

various people - Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles,

Noel Coward, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conran and Charlie Chaplin,

who, incidentally, entered a Charlie Chaplin look-alike competition

in Illinois, and came in third.

It was Somerset Maugham who said

to eat well in England, you should have breakfast three times a day.

But I think he stayed here a lot and I think he would have

probably felt that breakfast in Malaysia is a pretty good thing too,

simply because, like everything in Malaysia,

it's a sort of mixture of so many different cultures.

Here we've got Chinese vegetables in a sort of soup,

but perhaps the most famous dish of all in Malaysia is nasi lemak,

which is rice, but it's cooked with coconut milk and screwpine leaf,

which gives it a wonderful aromatic flavour.

And with a nasi lemak, you have a curry, maybe a prawn curry

or if you prefer it, a chicken curry.

And then the thing that I really like

are all the little bits you put on top of that,

particularly some salted anchovies, some boiled eggs

and a shrimp and anchovy sauce.

And over there you've got all the European stuff, and Indian.

So you can sort of have anything you like, from the four corners of the world almost.

'Well, that's if you're not in a film crew

'who sadly make a beeline for the baked beans and hash browns.'

But the Straits of Malacca

was once the busiest shipping channel in the world,

and a magnet for pirates,

raiding ships that came from far-flung places laden with tea, spices, silk and porcelain.

I found Penang to be a really interesting place to sample the food of Malaysia.

It developed here years ago when trade was at its peak -

a mixture of indigenous Malay, Chinese and southern India,

and maybe the odd cucumber sandwich.

For breakfast number two this morning, I'm having a roti canai -

this is an Indian dish, or Indian Malay dish,

but another example

of the enormous difference of food that you can get in Penang -

it's lovely, it's really spicy.

It's actually just a hot curry with dhal in it, lots of lentils in it,

very hot, and a roti which is,

that wonderful thin bread, that you've probably seen,

they just do like that, straight on.

Just watching them preparing my roti canai just now,

and they're so quick. It's like...

and it's done.

And this, well, this is hot, sweet tea, sweetened with condensed milk.

Brought here by the British.

'Breakfast number two over, now let me introduce you to Laurence -

'he was my guide here who turned up with a minibus.

'I later found out he was the boss of one of the biggest travel companies in the area.

'He brought me here to China Street,

'one of the oldest parts of Georgetown.'

And look at this, this is not a spill over,

this is actually something very superstitious for the Indian people -

it's yellow turmeric, and this is,

you know, done every morning after prayers.

-Wow.

-To bring the shop good luck, good business.

-Great!

Years ago I remember Keith Floyd saying, "If only TV cameras could capture smell."

Well, this would be the ultimate intense aromatic experience.

They're grinding chilli on these really old machines

left over from the days when the British ruled here.

I could have walked in here 60 years ago and heard the same sound,

with my throat tingling with the amount of chilli powder in the air.

I can't stop coughing.

The powder is very...strong.

Oh, sorry!

I'm allergic to it as well.

Mutton curry powder.

Mutton curry powder, fantastic, yeah.

Oh, that is so nice, lots of fennel in that.

Yeah. For each curry, meat, fish, we have to use different spices,

different powder.

Oh, this is turmeric.

Not turmeric, yellow ginger.

Yeah, yellow...

-We have turmeric here.

-Such good quality.

-Very good quality.

-Really, really special.

-And this has actually good cancer-curing ingredients.

-Really?

Yep, so we find the latest science discovery.

The people taking turmeric, ladies, they get lesser chance of having breast cancer.

-Good Lord!

-Yeah, it prevents the cancer from spreading to the lungs -

that is turmeric, yellow ginger.

'I think with my two curries that morning,

'I'd had my daily dose of turmeric,

'a spice that scientists are really taking seriously.

'This was the Indian part of Georgetown,

'full of hi-fi systems, jewellery and sari shops.

'And all the time I was there, even though I'd had two breakfasts,

'the smell in the air from the many spice shops made me ravenous.'

Oh, these are all spice shops.

All spice shops, import and export of spices.

-Can we go in?

-Yeah, yeah.

-Oh, I just love the smell that's coming up, it's just like being in India!

-Oh, yes, yes.

-Yes. Everything here is fresh.

-What's those tiny little seeds there, then?

Oh, this, yeah, this is called cas cas. Or the English name is poppy seed.

Oh, white poppy seeds.

-So this is actually something that is most important when you want to make curry.

-Really.

It makes the curry very addictive.

-Addictive?

-Yes, after you eat with this then you come back again for it.

It really whets your appetite.

You need this as well, yeah?

-Fennel seeds.

-Yeah, fennel.

Fennel, very popular in...

Yeah, and this is...

-Cloves.

-Cloves, yeah. And the British actually brought them here

-from the Moluccas Islands.

-Good Lord.

-They brought these right under the nose of the Dutch.

-Well, I'm blowed!

Is there anywhere we can go and have some Indian food for lunch? I know we've just had breakfast...

Oh, yes, I know of a very nice, authentic, Indian Muslim restaurant.

-Really.

-In Chinatown, it's called Hameediyah.

-Great.

Wow, it's hot. We are here now in Campbell Street, yeah?

-Campbell Street.

-This road, in the early days

the Chinese actually call it First Prostitution Street.

First Prostitution Street?

Yes, because those days, you find the Chinese coolies, immigrants,

they came here to work, so later they have to bring in the girls.

-So there's a second...

-Second-class, the older ones they moved to the second class.

-Cheaper.

-Cheaper. And in the middle, there's Sintra Street, that is a Japanese prostitution street.

-That's very convenient.

-So we now are here actually, you can smell the food at Hameediyah.

It's one of the pioneer Indian Muslim restaurants,

specialise in nasi kandar, something that is original from Penang.

-Get some lunch.

-Yes!

'This is the ultimate curry experience.

'I don't know how many they're expecting for lunch, but there's enough here to feed hundreds.

'This is the famous beef rendang,

'and the whole spectrum of curries from all over India is reflected here.

'All have to pass the taste test.

'When you're with Indians over here you're never far from the ingenious

'mechanical device to make life a little easier.

'My mouth was watering at the thought of lunch. And here it comes.'

-And this plate, this is mutabah.

-Mutabah.

'We were having a regular favourite, curried pigeon,

'the famous chicken kapitan, cooked in coconut milk,

'spicy vegetables, and of course, rice.'

How do we eat? We haven't got our own plates, have we?

Yes, normally we eat this with our fingers. Just get a dish, you know.

-Put on the rice, mix it with the curry, and then you pick it up and eat it.

-Yeah...

You eating more like local now.

Just like they say, when you're in Rome, you eat like the Romans do.

-Very much so.

-Yeah.

So what does nasi kandar mean then, does it mean the whole thing?

Actually, nasi means rice, and kandar actually means the stick.

-Stick.

-You know it's a stick about seven feet long.

-Yeah.

Where the, you know, rice pedlar, put on the shoulder,

-and they got two bamboo, rattan bamboo to hold two pots.

-Oh, I've seen pictures.

One hand is rice, one hand is curry.

So this is originally started as a workers' lunch, that is people selling nasi kandar,

they carry it on the stick and they go to the port,

-to the harbour area and...

-I see.

..sell it to the workers. And in those days, for just five cents,

you can have rice with chicken, or...

-Yeah.

-..meat with the curry. So it's a poor man's lunch.

-Fabulous.

-Yeah.

'I asked many Malaysians to tell me their favourite dish,

'and all of them said beef rendang.'

I'm never quite sure where beef rendang comes from.

We saw it in the Hameediyah restaurant, a great vat of it,

but it's interesting, rendang, because it's part a sort of curry,

but part almost a pickle,

because I read somewhere the point of it is that

you slaughter a whole beast in a hot country without any refrigeration,

what do you do with it all?

You can't refrigerate it, so you cook it with lots of spice,

lots of paste which acts as a preservative

as well as producing a thoroughly delicious dish.

So now for the paste.

This is central to any South-East Asian dish,

whether it's Indian, Thai or Malay.

Well, it's not just any old paste, it's pretty special.

I mean, this is what the whole dish is about, rendang.

I just thought I'd show you what goes into the paste.

I mean, one of the worries I have with all these dishes

is these pastes, because they're so essential to the dish,

and there's a lot of ingredients that go into it.

But if you just buy the stuff in supermarkets, you never get that

wonderfully fragrant flavour

that you'll get from things like using fresh turmeric, and galangal,

which you can get all over the place,

particularly in Chinese supermarkets now, fresh chilli of course,

and fresh coconut - not your tinned stuff -

you've gotta grate that, and use the coconut.

Shallots, good garlic, plenty of chillies

and some coriander and cumin,

obviously you've got to grind that first and then pound them,

if you've got a big enough mortar,

but a food processor does the job perfectly well.

There's a lot of work,

but it's absolutely essential

if you really want to taste that sort of mind-blowing flavour,

that aromatic quality of something like a good beef rendang.

Now to assemble the curry.

First of all I'm using a couple of tins of coconut milk and plenty of lemon grass.

Give them a good old thump to make sure their flavour infuses into the rendang. And, of course, cinnamon.

I always think of cigars when I look at them.

Next, tear up as much as eight kaffir lime leaves for fragrance,

complimented by a generous portion of tamarind juice

which has been previously strained to remove the stones.

Finally some salt, and then let the rendang simmer for about 2½ hours,

until the beef has become tender.

Before serving, remove the stalks of lemon grass.

A spoon of palm sugar rounds off the flavours nicely.

This cucumber and coconut salad works well alongside the rendang.

I've added freshly grated coconut to the de-seeded cucumbers

and some thinly sliced shallots,

and then some red chillies, with the seeds taken out.

Then I made a dressing of coconut milk, lime juice and sugar.

I didn't add any more salt because I'd used that

to crisp up the cucumbers when I de-seeded and sliced them.

These Eastern salads, so unlike ours in the West,

are the making of something like a rendang,

and if I was doing a series entitled "The Best Curries In The World",

the noble beef rendang would definitely be a star attraction.

What I like about Georgetown is that your mind could easily

slip back into the days of pith helmets, tiffin and gin slings.

But next minute, you're in a bustling market.

I really think that Penang is the food capital of Malaysia.

Eating out is so cheap, and the variety's so immense.

I just find things like this totally fascinating, I mean,

who would have ever dreamt up this way of cooking rice noodle pancakes?

What he does is just ladle some rice batter onto a cloth

which is on a hot, steamy surface

and then he's sprinkling some sweet pork and prawns on it.

It's really interesting

the way he turns it out onto this oiled surface.

He just peels it away, do you see that?

Just peels it away from the cloth,

producing this really, really light, lovely breakfast dish.

This is a Cantonese dish, chee cheong fun,

named, rather prosaically I think,

after its strong resemblance to the small intestine of a pig.

'This chap learnt his trade working in a dim sum restaurant,

'and having perfected the art,

'he did what any self-respecting Cantonese would do -

'set up his own stall.

'The dish is finished off

'with a stock flavoured with sweet soy sauce.'

Because a lot of the breakfast that you have in these hawker stalls

is either deep-fried or shallow-fried, it's quite fatty.

So this is particularly in favour

with those people who want to lose a bit of weight.

Like me.

I remember that programme called The Generation Game where things look

so very easy until you try 'em. This is a case in point.

Mr Lim has been making these spring-roll skins for over 50 years,

and I bet people would say,

"Don't you get bored, doing the same thing day after day?"

I can assure you, he wouldn't be bored, you can see how much he's enjoying it.

There's so much skill involved -

I have never seen spring-roll wrappers as thin as that.

Nowadays, of course, they're made by machine

and Mr Lim is the last person making them by hand in the whole of Penang.

He's a true food hero, in my view,

and I bet when he goes, everybody will be sad.

'I get the same feeling walking through the market streets

'as I did when I was a kid going to the very first funfair.

'All sorts of wonderful things being made,

'and enticing smells from the various stalls.

'I feel the same sense of excitement 50 years later.

'I don't have a clue

'as to what's in half of the delicacies on offer here.'

Thank you.

Mm.

Gelatinous, soft to the palate.

With lots of tiny little bones.

< I think they call it chicken's feet.

< Chicken's feet, yes.

Oh, chicken's feet! Chicken feet?

One's enough. Thank you.

'Yes, one chicken's foot is enough for a lifetime.

'Early the next morning

'I met up with a Malaysian food writer, Fay Khoo,

'whose passion in life is the street food of Penang.'

-Hi, Rick.

-How do you do, very nice to meet you.

-And you.

-It's a bit early in the morning!

-Um, is this where we're going, then?

Yeah, we're gonna have breakfast at one of my favourite hawker stalls.

Um, if you don't get here by, you know, 7.15, 7.30, it's all over.

-I see.

-We're gonna have something called Hokkien mee.

-Hokkien mee?

You're gonna have to scoot around, scoot around the curtain.

-Is that keeping the sun off?

-Yeah.

SHE SPEAKS MALAY

What have you ordered?

We're gonna have two bowls of the soup, noodle soup, with egg noodles and the rice and all the vegetables,

bean sprouts. Very lightly cooked.

So what you have in the left pot is hot water,

where they cook the noodles, and the right pot is the soup.

I see. Oh, that's good.

Grab a chopstick full of noodles.

Put it against the spoon, drag it up, make sure you don't splash me.

-Oh, I see!

-You see how easy it is?

-Just drop it in.

-Gently drop it in and sort of like, woo...

Like helicopter landing.

You'll have to blow on that before you put it in your mouth

cos it's gonna burn you!

So, um, you're a bit of a regular at this, um,

joint, then, are you, Fay?

-Mm!

-Nice? It's good, works?

-Yeah!

Tell me, this place is really busy, does one person own the whole thing?

-No, no, no. no. This is the breakfast operators.

-Right.

-They pack up, they run off to the Stock Exchange or wherever it is.

-Stock Exchange?

-Yeah, you know, they earn their money and they go and speculate.

-What, these guys, really...?

-What, cash...?

-Yeah.

Cash is king! So they leave and then the next chef comes in

-and they set up for lunch and then they serve lunch.

-Different people.

Three chefs a day, my friend. That...is a good business to get.

-That to me, that to me is Asia, that is Asia in a...

-Resourceful.

-Resourceful, and always thinking.

-Yeah, yeah.

'Fay is just the sort of person to explore food with.

'Her enthusiasm knows no bounds.

'She's knowledgeable and has, I found out later,

'a prodigious appetite, so we made a beeline for a market.'

-Let's make some fish-head curry.

-Would they mind if I gave them a sniff?

You should, the smell test is very important.

-No, they're good.

-They're good? Ready to go?

-Yeah.

Do we get one or two? Let's get...

-Let's just get two.

-Just in case I....

You get hungry.

Just in case I get hungry!

'These heads from grouper are highly prized here.

'In Britain, I don't think we have ever taken to the notion

'that fish heads are a great delicacy,

'and I don't think we ever will.'

I feel also that I'll ask him if he'd like a job back in Padstow.

Yeah, exactly.

-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

So we're out of fish.

-Well, we're now in the vegetables and fruit.

-Veg.

Yeah, we'll just help ourselves, fantastic.

-What do we need?

-Ladies' fingers?

-Definitely.

-How much shall we put?

-A kilo, something like that.

-Enough?

-Fine, yeah.

-I reckon that's enough.

-That's good.

-Some chilli?

-Chilli, yeah.

-I reckon some chilli.

How hot are they?

They're bird chilli.

-OK.

-They're pretty hot!

-They will be very hot.

-Do you think this is a good representative dish of Penang, the fish-head curry?

-Oh, yeah,

in Penang you've got all the major races here, Chinese, Indo Malaysians, the Indians.

Everybody makes a version of fish curry, but the one we're making now

is made popularly by all the Malaysian Indians and Chinese.

-Fantastic.

-All using pretty much the same recipe, so we'll get

a very good representation of pretty much all the Penangers, really.

I'm looking forward to that. Local cucumbers... They've got a slightly more bitter...

-Japanese cucumbers.

-What are those?

Oh, that's lemon grass.

-Lemon grass, it isn't!

-Isn't it?

-No!

-It's a flower.

-What is it?

-I thought it was lemon grass.

-Ginger flower!

-I was just testing you!

-Oh, I see, I see!

I wanted to make sure YOU knew!

'Fay was extremely keen for me to know about her Chinese origins

'and wanted to show me the family clan house in the heart of Georgetown.'

-Are you ready?

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-OK!

-Wow!

-This is it, do you like it?

-Blimey!

And it's been recently restored, I mean, it's just amazing!

-Look at all the stuff on the roof!

-Yeah.

So this is a clan house?

It's a clan house, for the Khoos.

My name is Khoo, and ostensibly this is my clan house, although because I'm a female...

-You're not short of a bob or two!

-Well, there are a lot of Khoos around,

-Khoos are sort of as common as Smith in UK, I suppose.

-So are all your ancestors there?

Well, technically it's very patriarchal, so it's sexist, you know.

My father's in there my brother's in there,

all their names are on the board, but I am a girl so I am not in there.

-Get away!

-I know, it's shocking, but there you go.

-Well, I'm blowed.

She took me to a friend's house to cook the fish-head curry.

She said her kitchen was far too modern, so she thought I'd prefer a more traditional setting.

You know, despite my mother's best efforts, I graduated from the school

-of peasant cooking techniques.

-Well, same here, Fay, so I'm quite happy with that.

'She insisted on using a ready-made curry powder.

'You sprinkle that onto fried onions and add other spices.'

I can smell... I think it's fennel seed.

Yeah, there's definitely fennel, there's cumin, there's turmeric, there's a bit of galangal...

Oh, right, coriander seeds?

Coriander seed, yeah.

All that sort of stuff, all the good things that go into local curries.

'And this was followed by tamarind juice, shallots and okra -

'or ladies' fingers, as we know them - and chopped tomatoes.'

And when we're ready for it...

-And the fish!

-Oh, yeah, I've got to season the fish!

Do you want me to do it?

-Are you saying I'm too delicate?

-No, no, I just love fish.

-You can do it.

I don't mind, I just think you would be moaning about the smell of fish.

I don't moan about fishy smelling hands!

OK, fair enough, fair enough!

Ow! I just caught me fingers on some teeth!

Who's moaning now? OK, Rick keep going, you know, let me stand back.

What are you worried about? I just throw the whole lot in.

-OK.

-Worried about it getting splashed on your blouse and everything, aren't you?

OK, I'm just gonna throw in the bird chilli.

Which, as you know, is pretty lethal, especially the seeds.

'And that's exactly how I like them.

'We're making a curry, what's the point of compromising?

'It's gotta be the whole chilli. I've added some curry leaves, a little extra water

'and then some fresh coconut milk, this was made in the market this morning.

'Talk about East is East and West is West -

'mention fish-head curry to a Westerner

'and they look at you most strangely, but here it's king.'

-Is it good?

-It's very good!

-You're just saying that!

-No, I'm not, taste it!

It's miraculous, I mean there is so much flavour in there already,

-by the time...

-Oh, my God, yeah.

One thing that occurs to me, this is probably the place to go

-in the world for fusion cooking, isn't it, because you've got...

-It is, yeah.

..complete fusion between Chinese, Indian, Malay...

Well, Nonya's great proof of fusion cooking before fusion cooking was invented in the West, you know.

When the Malay and the Chinese, started getting a little bit frisky and they got together,

they created their own culinary subculture

and that was fusion already because Malay cooking and Chinese cooking were fused together

to create a cooking that has its own distinct identity and that's Nonya, or Peranakan cuisine.

-So, yeah, fusion definitely, we have a lot of examples of fusion cooking here.

-Fusion city.

'Being a connoisseur of fish, I was, of course, very keen to try the eyeballs.'

It kind of crumbles off the bone.

Here goes with the eyeball.

Mm!

It is, as I thought, like eating a jellied eel back home in London.

-A jellied eel.

-Yeah, and the thing that I understand about it, is it's very fatty.

It's got a lovely...

sort of a viscous taste to it.

-And the actual ball right in the middle, you can't eat, it's just like a piece of...

-Solid.

-Solid.

-But I am a fan.

-A bit partial to it?

-Yeah, I am.

Fantastic, there's three more in there for you!

'Being an admirer of Joseph Conrad, I can't help but think what he must

'have seen here 100 years ago when Penang was enjoying a trade boom

'in tin, cloves, nutmeg and pepper.

'And of course it was linked by ships sailing to Rangoon, Madras

'and Singapore, so there would be miles of these little piers and warehouses busy loading cargo.

'Crews would inevitably go ashore looking for a good time.

'It still has faint echoes of that life but, for Conrad,

'this place would have been manna from heaven for his novels.

'There's not a great deal of love, generally speaking, for old buildings in the Far East.

'I know the Chinese, for instance, would rather have brand new ones.'

My great grandfather was a Methodist missionary in Guang Jow in China.

I went out there recently to do a TV programme about him.

And his mission is now a Starbucks.

Penang didn't disappoint and I'd go back like a shot,

purely because of the food.

I'm off to Langkawi Island to the north of Penang.

This is a place I know well.

I've been on holidays here, staying in traditional houses like this.

I really like it, although these places are not mosquito-proof.

But you do feel you're actually in a strange and romantic place,

and not in some air-conditioned high-rise hotel with muzak.

All the time I've been making seafood programmes, I've always wanted to go out squid fishing.

Well, I have been out on one or two occasions, but we didn't catch anything.

But tonight it's gonna happen.

It's a very calm sea, the tide's right, there's loads of squid

at the moment and it's overcast - yes, it's gonna happen!

Well, all I do know is that they've put these lights on, they're waiting for the squid,

for it to get dark, and then they'll turn these lights on

and just as it's getting dark, apparently that's the best time, the squid all come to the surface.

So we're all waiting with bated breath.

I love this, I always think that fishing's a bit like gambling - you don't really know the outcome.

You could have a brilliant night but then again it could be

what the fishermen in Cornwall call a "black net" - nothing.

I don't know how this rain affects the squid except it makes everything turn quite surreal,

almost dreamlike, and although I'm soaked through with warm rain,

I wouldn't have missed this for the world.

The lights that attract the squid work best when the moon is hidden

by cloud or indeed when it's a sliver, a new moon,

so the squid won't be distracted by it.

Now for the moment of truth.

Like moths to a flame, I can only imagine the squid swimming towards the light and their eventual doom.

Throughout my travels in South-East Asia and the Mediterranean as well,

this has been a common sight.

Hundreds of twinkling lights a mile or so from the shore,

tempting squid to the surface.

Well, that's it, the mystery's been revealed.

I didn't quite know how it was done, now I do, but I've never seen

anything like that netting before and the way he changed the lights.

He used the white lights to bring the squid up from deep down

and the red lights to bring them right up to the surface.

So he just zaps the red light on when he's just about to throw

the net and then throws the net. And I mean, he's catching so much!

I've just found out he can catch as much as 80 kilos a night, so it's really good fishing at the moment.

'I was told by the fishermen that the coming of the rain was a god-send because it broke up

'the surface of the water so the net would be harder to spot.'

I cooked squid back at home in Padstow.

I got some seriously fresh ones from Cornwall, cleaned them and put them on skewers on the barbie.

That night on those squid boats was just wonderful

and just the whole vision of those lit-up boats everywhere and it was so warm and peaceful and balmy.

It did rain a bit but it's warm rain.

Well, the next night we went to a night market in a village somewhere on Langkawi

and I saw them making satays - chicken and beef and these squid ones.

They were marinating the squid in something but I wasn't quite sure what it was, so I made this up.

I've just taken some fish sauce and lime juice

and some sugar and just roasted some spices -

cumin, coriander and a bit of chilli - mixed it all up,

and it's pretty good, and it's very nice squid too.

To set the squid off to perfection, make a dipping sauce.

To start with, fry off the usual suspects, all finely chopped.

They are shallots, garlic, ginger

and a red chilli or two in a light vegetable oil.

You just want to soften them and start to flavour the oil.

Try not to let them take on any colour, and then get them smartly off the heat.

When it's cooled down a little, put it into a small bowl and add

some light soy sauce and the juice from a couple of limes.

Then some sugar, preferably palm sugar but brown sugar is OK if that's all you have.

Now some chopped peanuts, a little more oil

and the remains of the marinade that the squid has been soaking in.

Lastly stir in some coarsely chopped coriander, then all you have to do

is sear the squid satays over your charcoal barbecue

until you see the edges begin to caramelise.

No need to take them further than that.

I really like collecting dishes like this on my travels.

They say travel broadens the mind.

Well, it certainly extends one's cooking repertoire.

Set them onto a warm plate and call your guests.

Now it's just a question of dip and tuck in.

Well, I must say, just looking at that, it's bound to be nice,

but I do think it is very bad manners for us television cooks

to try our own food and say how delicious it is...

..but it IS. Very.

Like many places I've been to on my travels, Langkawi's surrounded by mangroves,

that curious tree with the labyrinth of roots and a plant that thrives in a place that's neither land nor sea.

70% of Malaysia's fish stocks are there because the mangroves are a wonderful nursery for fish.

Irshad, my guide, is the mangroves' number one fan.

At high tide like we are going through right now, Mr and Mrs Fish, Mr and Mrs Prawns,

they swim all the way up, they get into these little areas, they spawn, their little eggs will hatch.

Baby fish, baby prawns use this as a wonderful nursery to live in.

I also read that areas where there were mangrove swamps during the tsunami

were better protected than other areas. Why was that?

A 200-metre wide belt of mangroves

will dissipate the energy of the tsunami by at least more than 75%.

So do you think that the governments have realised the importance of them?

Yes, yes, definitely.

Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a heart attack for us to change our ways.

I mean, this is lovely here.

It's so calm and so...

You work and you live here. What does it mean to you, sort of, well, spiritually I suppose?

I love the way you say spiritually because this is an aspect... I think it's our moral duty

to protect the very thing we love.

It's not only our...moral duty but I like your word, you say, it's also our spiritual duty.

Because this is a temple.

And look at the beautiful hills here, you can see.

I couldn't agree more. This is just like... It's wonderful.

Irshad recommended we have lunch at this place.

In fact, it's a fish farm as well as a restaurant.

We had a spicy green mango salad.

Will I ever get tired of them?

And an assortment of really hot spicy dipping sauces.

I had to have the mud crab.

Where there are mangroves, there are always mud crabs. And deep-fried prawns.

These are lovely prawns.

-They get it out in the open sea.

-Yeah.

Just out of the river mouth.

But they would have started their life here.

Exactly, the whole cycle is now complete.

Out from the mangroves, into the open sea and then back onto our plates.

-And these are mud crabs again.

-Yeah.

This would have been got just out in the mangroves we were, er, enjoying just now.

It's delicious mud crab, isn't it?

Fantastic flavour.

-And that's the mango salad.

-Yes.

I see you can take spicy stuff, huh?

Mmm! I think after about a week,

you sort of settle down and...

Now, to be honest,

if I have a hamburger, as I did the other night, some Western food, it just seems really heavy, you know.

I just love this, rice, fish...

And the flavour of the spices.

Absolutely. And the hotter the better.

How you gonna go back now?

I don't know!

'A fish restaurant on a fish farm, it's giving me ideas!'

This, they would get their stock from the wild.

-Uh-huh.

-And they would raise it up here for a few more years.

-What are those?

-These are trevallies.

They're lovely fish, they're enormous.

'These are splendid fish and good fighters if you're lucky enough to get one on the line.

'They taste wonderful, as any Aussie fish and chip shop owner will tell you.

'But now Irshad suggested a little feeding session of our own.'

-Go on, then.

-It's like this.

Now it's coming to you...

'I got bitten once feeding a horse sugar lumps

'so I'm a little bit nervous about my fingers

'because, curiously, I've never fed

'a blinking great skate like this before!

'Pathetic, I know.'

Try to get under its...

-There you go, very nice.

-Good Lord.

What will you feel like cooking skate now? >

I'll feel a bit sorry, actually...erm...

They got such gentle eyes.

They've got gentle eyes, exactly!

It's like when you look at an eel's eye, they're very intelligent.

You think, "I'm never gonna eat another eel". Same with these.

Hello.

THUNDER RUMBLES

I'm utterly astonished by the force of this tropical storm

but, like most tropical storms, it ends quickly and I wouldn't

be surprised if we're not gonna have blue skies in about half and hour.

It's that quick.

But, my gosh, when it happens, it's quite something.

I'm having a lovely comforting bowl of bihun soup, which is

rice noodles, but they're actually coloured with turmeric, the noodles,

because the idea of yellow noodles implies wealth

and therefore it gives it a bit of up-marketness,

having these yellow noodles as opposed to the white ones.

And it's just simply these very thin noodles with a stock, made with beef

and sliced onions and star anise and cinnamon and some galangal.

Also in the stock were fennel seeds, cardamom, poppy seeds,

black pepper, cloves and pandan leaves.

And it's simmered for hours and hours until you get this fantastic flavour

and then the soup's just made up with the noodles, but very important other ingredients.

First of all and most importantly is a type of pickled radish that they use,

spring onions and fried shallots, deep-fried so they're crisp,

and also some celery herb, which is not quite like celery tops.

It's a bit more pungent. It's a member of the parsley family.

And finally they serve up some sambal,

which is just a paste made with grilled chillies.

You can put as much as that in as you like.

I just think...

it's a perfect thing for a rainy afternoon.

From Langkawi I thought I'd skip the rain and head back south to Melaka.

Before Penang became famous as a place to trade,

Melaka had already become a melting pot of cultures,

all centred around spice.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to bring spices to the Western world from here.

And then the Dutch, seeing all this money being made,

decided to get a bit of the action. And then around a couple of hundred years ago, the British took control.

I learnt all this from a brief visit to the museum.

Food has a history all of its own.

They've even got a replica Portuguese trading ship

down at the old docks to amuse the tourists

and more importantly to remind them of Melaka's significance in the world.

'I think you really have to come to somewhere like Melaka

'to really feel the importance of spice historically to our own country.

'And it's only when you sort of smell the smells and feel the heat,'

that you realise that spice here virtually grows wild and it's cheap.

It would've been so cheap. But take those spices, which would be so distant to life

in the 13th, 14th, 15th century in Britain, and bring them there.

No wonder they fetched such enormous money.

Apart from anything, half the stuff I imagine that they ate there

was verging on the rotting, so it had an enormous import in making food palatable and pleasant.

But just think of the sort of, the smell of something like nutmeg

or cinnamon or cloves or even pepper to somebody in 14th-century England, how exotic it would be.

It would be like... It would be more wonderful than gold.

'When I was here last week, I met up with a curious man,

'a television chef who's amazingly popular.

'He's Jamie and Delia rolled into one and he virtually gets mobbed wherever he goes.

'He's Chef Wan and he certainly knows his stuff.

'Well, he should do - he's Malaysian.'

Exactly, the trade helped to connect every part of the world.

So our cuisine is a border cuisine from what is existing Malay, Malaysian and then today we have

a bit of Pakistani, a bit of India, a bit of Africa, Sri Lanka, we have everything.

As we say "Malaysia, truly Asia". We are beautiful people, darling. You're looking at Chef Wan!

How long you been doing this for then, Chef Wan?

I ain't no spring chicken no more.

21 years old, 21. That long!

I think I've got a bit to learn from you, to be honest.

It's all about passion, I mean you're fantastic too. I love this guy!

I've seen all his shows and watch his programme and I buy all his books.

Really, I do, when I get here, I say, "Ah! Rick Stein!"

I can't take this flattery any longer.

One of the food stars from Malaysia that I haven't seen much of so far is Nonya.

That's a mixture of Malay and Chinese

and here, I've been told by Chef Wan, is the place to try it,

run by two cousins, Amy and Florence.

Florence is the chatty one.

This is my lovely cousin, we grew up together.

-Very nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you.

-What are you cooking today?

Today we are cooking a special dish.

It is called spicy chicken.

Our food has got influences of Malay and Chinese, that is we use Chinese..

ingredients, for example we have black mushrooms, we have light soya sauce, dark soya sauce

and then we have the Malay herbs and the Malay spices.

These two combinations are, er...

This, I tell you, Rick Stein, when you eat them, all your senses will fly up to the sky!

This paste is made from red chillies, both fresh and dry,

then shrimp paste, galangal, lemon grass,

shallots, garlic and candlenuts, and it's all put into a blender.

This is very important. The secret in producing a good curry

is to cook until it is fragrant

and that is when the oil surfaces to the top.

Our Nonya technique of cooking, the fire must never be high.

It should be just moderate.

Go on small fire then the fragrant is better.

Patience, patience, baby!

Just while the curry's cooking gently, tell me, is Nonya food as popular as ever?

Is it increasing in popularity?

Unfortunately, it is a slowly dying art

because people nowadays, they don't take the time to do the food properly and also our parents at that time,

when they cook, they'll just say, "Oh, this is about ten chillies and this onions," like that.

So the children, therefore, because their parents are excellent chefs,

so they don't learn, but we, Amy and myself, you know, at this age,

we feel that we want, we want the future generations to know about their food that has lasted 600 years.

-That's lovely.

-As you see, the oil has surfaces to the top. And then...

Mm! ..it produces a wonderful aroma.

We are going to put in our chicken.

There you are and we gonna stir fry it. Once the chicken is cooked

about five minutes, I'm going to put in lemon grass.

Lemon grass, so that's more lemon grass. And some in the paste.

Yes. Only two in the paste and then this, if you have.

If you don't have, it doesn't matter.

-OK.

-I'm going to bruise it to extract more flavour.

-OK.

-Here we go!

-Wow!

So you must have this big cleaver.

Florence, I can't help noticing as soon as you started cooking, you come to life.

I mean, cooking must mean an awful lot to you.

Yes. I love cooking and I love eating because I feel that

when you know how to cook, you can eat your food anytime you want. But if you depend on others

to cook, then you have to wait for them until they're ready.

You say, "Can I have this?" "I've no time now. Later."

What I'm sort of thinking now is you're very petite, and Amy,

you're very neat and wonderfully nicely dressed.

The idea of somebody like you or your mother or grandmother banging and banging and bang, bang, bang!

But I watched you whacking that lemon grass, you've got...

-Absolutely.

-This is going to the gym!

And she also, we do line dance, you know.

-Do you now?

-Ah, yes! To be healthy we have to eat

a balanced diet, we have to exercise well and we have to sleep well.

And on top of that, we must be very kind, we must share our knowledge, whatever you have, no secrets.

As I say, you share everything in the world except husband.

Sorry, sorry!

That's all right, that's fine.

OK, that's it!

OK, now...

Ah, OK, now Rick...

-Can I taste?

-Yes.

That's got so much flavour.

Rick, we are in business.

'They were great girls but what crossed my mind was what happens

'when Florence and Amy and people like them give up cooking and passing on this knowledge.'

I personally think the Western world would be so much the poorer

if it hadn't been for the trade that came from Melaka in those heady days of exploration and commerce.

Well, we wouldn't even have mince pies if all this hadn't gone before.

Next, I'm going to another famous place on the spice route,

the tear-drop island of Sri Lanka.

'I have to say that I've never been happier anywhere on my travels than when I was here,

'but I was very conscious of the terrible fighting that was still going on in the north of the island.

'Here in the south, just outside the capital, Colombo, it would be easy to forget the strife elsewhere.

'Everywhere I went, I was greeted with smiles and enthusiasm.

'Maybe it's because tourists have been put off coming here

'and the locals are very keen to show that life still goes on.'

I had been told that some of the fishing scenes in Sri Lanka would be

some of the most visual I was likely to see anywhere

but I must say it's exceeded all my expectations.

I mean, it's like central casting fishing-wise.

When I first saw it, I just first thought of Newlyn, of those Newlyn school of painters,

people like Stanhope Forbes, from the last century, from Victorian times,

because all those boats are still powered only by sail.

These ones here which are motorised just bring the fish into the shore from the bigger boats.

But to me it's just like I can hardly believe I'm here.

I met up with Dharshan, a famous chef here, half Sri Lankan and half Japanese.

Dharshan, I've just arrived here.

I am totally knocked out by what I'm seeing. These, lovely...

Plenty of fish, lovely-looking fishing boats, what are they fishing for?

These wind-powered boats are catching shrimp and prawns.

They bring it out here and then take it back to the market.

Most of the time all these prawns are alive

and it's a wonderful thing to have so close to the capital city of Colombo.

Being half Japanese, half Sri Lankan, it must mean everything to you.

It's inspiring.

I think food, any kind of food, starts with ingredients,

not with the other sauces or spices you add,

and as long as you have good ingredients you can do any kind of food,

it'll turn out better and that's very true for Japanese food and much stronger.

That's interesting because I think people now think of sushi and sashimi as probably salmon,

-tuna, maybe a bit of white fish, a bit of omelette, end of story but it's not, is it?

-No, not at all.

Sushi starts with the ocean and what you get from the ocean is what should be a daily menu.

One thing great about Sri Lanka is nothing is farmed.

It's all wild catch, even the tuna.

-No farmed fish?

-The tuna is also wild and they taste different.

The textures are totally different from farmed fish that you'd find in

many restaurants in South-East Asia and even in Japan, some of the fish

or most of the small fish are farmed.

And one thing that's good about Sri Lanka is they are relatively clean,

and it's a beautiful sea, the Indian Ocean, it's huge.

There are a lot of fish, we don't have to farm them.

Naturally, where fishing boats land fish there's a market.

I only wish I'd bought my old copy of The Observer Book of Tropical Fish.

But that's all part of it, I'd never turn down a trip to a fish market.

I just like to see how different it all is.

From where you come, what's the fish market like out there?

It's nothing like here, the fish market at home, but I mean this is as fresh as you could ever see fish.

One of the things we have at home of course is refrigeration, as you do in Tokyo,

and that is a good thing and a bad thing because once you've got fish refrigerated, it keeps longer.

But all the time it's getting....not so good.

Out here the market closes around one.

Refrigeration, yes, it would be nice to have it,

but right now if it gets sold by 1pm, we don't need to have it.

What is really impressing me is there's no smell of fish here.

It all smells of the sea.

Everyone thinks seafood smells, it doesn't. It smells only when it rots.

Absolutely, so I'm very impressed.

I'm enjoying it immensely, Dharshan.

I noticed they were drying fish nearby.

They'd caught lots of mackerel, which meant the price plummeted.

So the answer is to dry them in the sun - they clean the fish, wash them in the sea and salt them overnight.

Now, my new Sri Lankan friend, Jocking, explains the rest.

-Then we bring here and we sit down like this way.

-Yeah.

And we keep one by one, in order.

After two days it becomes real dry fish.

Just two days?

Yes, only for this fish.

After we make dry fish, we can keep long time, just three, four months we can keep.

But in my city, we have fresh fish.

We like dry fish but we don't eat because we have fresh fish.

Mainly the dry fish go to the village, the tea plantation, because there is no sea.

That people, they cannot get the fresh fish.

Mainly they eat the dry fish.

I was asked if I fancied a trip with a bunch of fisherman further south

of the island near the town of Galle.

There's not many harbours here so everything is launched, with quite a bit of effort, off the beach.

The boat is called an Oru and one of this size could certainly cope with ocean storms,

but many of them are much smaller than this.

I was told that up to 80% of the local fleet was lost in the tsunami.

Anyway this turned out to be a sort of seine net fishing,

with the boat laying out the net in a great big circle.

And then they all started to jump ship.

This is the strangest way to catch fish I've ever seen.

So the reason they keep jumping into the sea is to scare the fish into the back of the net.

This is the open end of the net, so they're making as much splash and as much movement with their hands,

so the fish will all swim down that end.

Must be a great job, that. I feel like jumping in myself actually.

Go on then.

HE SCREAMS

Well, I am a water baby and it was very hot and it did feel really good to join in.

I don't know how effective I was, but I loved to get involved.

Mind you, getting out again is a whole different ball game.

I know a thing or two about fishing and I'm not expecting a huge catch,

but the general air of expectation sort of burst into

frantic excitement, as it became more certain that there were indeed fish in the net and lots of them.

I have to say this is a great moment for me because

the number of times we go out fishing and never catch any fish.

I think it's testimony to how much, how rich, the fishing grounds

are around Sri Lanka that there's so much good quality fish landed there.

And those ones are called...

-Parava.

-Parava are really good money so they've done very, very well and I'm very happy.

I really enjoyed that.

Like fisherman all over the world, they really bond together.

It's one big family here, they look after each other.

Sabuta's just told me they're feared, cos they're really tough, they're quite chunky.

I wouldn't like to cross 'em. The people inland really fear 'em.

He just said, "They're the best and the worst".

In other words, if you're on their side, they're looking after you,

they're fabulous but you cross 'em, forget it.

He was also saying that these really dangerous buses here, around this area. They call them "killer buses"

because the drivers are just reckless. I mean, it scares me.

He said if there's any accidents around this fishing village, they just burn the bus.

'Ah, I'm not quite finished yet.

'I still have to help get the Oru back in again.'

THEY CHANT

This is the hardest part I'm told.

And what they're chanting is, "We want to, Go to the land!

"We want to, Go to the land!"

"We want to, Go to the land!"

So like all fisherman, after a day or so ashore, they'll be saying,

"We want to, Go to the sea!

"We want to, Go to the sea!"

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd