Book Review: Oriental Street Food
At Happyhappyjoyjoy’s two Amsterdam locations, you can eat street food from all across Asia. At Julius Jaspers’ restaurant, you can order Indonesian gado gado as well as Chinese dim sum, they’ve got it all. For everyone who wants to make these snacks at home, Jaspers has published a cookbook.
Oriental Streetfood contains recipes for almost all the Asian street food classics. The first chapter features recipes for bao in all shapes and sizes—one of the most popular snacks of the moment. The steamed buns come with just about every filling imaginable: pork belly with kimchi and chili mayonnaise, as well as a vegetarian option with miso eggplant.
In his foreword, Jaspers says that a recipe is merely a guideline and urges you to adapt it to your own taste. With a few recipes, he takes that very literally. “Cook the duck in its own fat, supplemented with a little goose fat if necessary, until the meat falls off the bone.” For anyone who has never confited duck legs themselves, this description may seem somewhat puzzling. Do you use a pan or an oven? At what temperature and for approximately how long? A kind of Russian roulette when it comes to confit de canard.
So some recipes require a substantial amount of basic knowledge, while others are very easy to make. The Chinese scallion pancakes are not difficult and are absolutely delicious. The Vietnamese salad with crab and the Korean-style eggplant also do not involve any particularly complicated techniques.
Back to Asia
If you have ever been to Asia, this book is guaranteed to bring back your favorite street food. From Thai pad thai to Chinese rice porridge congee, as well as Vietnamese bun cha, laap (a fantastic minced-meat dish) from Laos and Indonesian saté kambing—yes, with goat. I predict many vacation reunions accompanied by a cold supply of Bintang or Chang.
As an Asian food lover, I do find it a little disappointing that he does not use Sichuan chili paste in the Sichuan dan dan noodles. Or that Jaspers claims Peking duck has nothing to do with Peking. I also find it a very unusual instruction—especially from a chef—to use only the white part and five centimeters of green from each bunch of spring onions. Jaspers clearly has not read my plea to use the entire spring onion.
Get started with Asian street food
If the food at Happyhappyjoyjoy—or at one of the other restaurants in the ever-growing category of Asian shared dining—is your favorite and you are not yet very familiar with the respective cuisines, this is the book for you. Want to make bao buns, Vietnamese spring rolls and the most delicious satay yourself? With this book, you can make it all.
