Indonesia Street Eats: Soto Ayam Tidar (Surabaya)

There are few better ways to spend your time in Surabaya than eating your heart out at a street side dive late at night. When my cousins were visiting from Singapore, we did just that. A bowl of Soto Ayam (chicken turmeric soup) on the side of the road, wooden benches, old style glass soda bottles. Tropical heat with a side of night breeze mixed in with street fumes. This is Soto Ayam & STMJ Tidar, a street stall on a street called Tidar.

(STMJ refers to "susu telur madu jahe", which translate to "milk egg honey ginger". It's a traditional health drink).

Soto ayam is a chicken soup made with turmeric, ginger, curcuma, galangal, and more. At Soto Ayam Tidar, the soup is filled with chicken (ayam kampung, aka "village chicken" which is much more flavorful than the farmed kind) and you can choose between meat, skin, or offals, rice noodles, and egg. The best one to get at this place is the soft boiled egg but they were out that night. It's also served with rice either in the soup or on the side.

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Happy Holidays!

Since I'm on vacation in Indonesia this holiday season, I didn't have time to compile any Christmas/New Year's listings. Sorry about that, guys! But I'm sure other blogs had done a good job on that for you.

The Pig's on vacay!

Hope everyone is having a great holiday. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Trotter's Protege Meets Chinese Bao at The Chairman Truck

Fine dining chefs jumping ship to sell casual, comfort food is not just a trend that started in the past year. Chef Hiro Nagahara, formerly chef de cuisine at Bar Charlie (Charlie Trotter) in Las Vegas worked with Mobi Munch to start The Chairman Truck in 2009, selling chinese steamed buns with unique, high end fillings like spiced duck confit in San Francisco.

(The Chairman was originally named The Chairman Bao, but then they got sued by Baohaus in NY since "chairman bao" was apparently the first item on their menu. Gotta admit, it's such a catchy name.)

Mobi Munch is actually an LA-based company, and when they outfitted The Chairman's second truck, they decided to hold a tasting for friends and media before sending it off to SF. The tasting was held at Mobi Munch headquarters in downtown LA, where I tried five of their offerings. The buns are usually $3.25 each for steamed bao ($6.75 for baked - not sure how big these are), $3.75 for duck confit and pork belly.

1st bao: Tender Pork Belly with Pickled Daikon

First, let's talk about the bao itself. The bao is made using a 40 year old yeast brought from China 20 years ago by  the SF truck operator, Curtis Lam's uncle who was the executive chef of Yank Sing. The warm bao was great, neither too thick nor too doughy.

The pork belly was tender, not overly fatty, and the crunchy, tart, pickled daikon was the perfect accompaniment to cut the richness. The daikon is, of course, pickled in-house ("in-truck"?)

The 2nd bao is a spinoff of korean spicy chicken: Spicy Red Sesame Chicken with pickled cucumber and carrots

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