I asked my friend where I could go in London to try the real thing. I watched Coombes advance through the competition, frustrated that she wasn't one of the competitors the week I was judging. It was, she said, a joy to see the dishes of her homeland taken so seriously. I was directed to C&R – apparently the letters are the initials of the manager's aunt and uncle – by a Malaysian friend who was bubbling with pride at the MasterChef victory of Malaysian-born Ping Coombes. It should be available from the NHS on prescription. There is fire and softness and a big slap of umami. It's a little sweet, but not so that your teeth ache. The one served here, at C&R Café, goes straight to the top of my laksa list. I've eaten appalling versions and good versions, over-sweetened ones and dishes which are nothing of the sort, but which contain some thickened, vaguely spiced coconut-based sauce to excuse the abuse of the name. Laksa is one of the great dishes of the East Asian repertoire: a massive coconut-milk soup, shiny with orange chilli oil, holding ribbons of rice noodles, fat prawns, crinkly-skinned tablets of tofu and those gloriously over-processed fish balls that turn up across the region. There was more than enough for me to drown in here and, frankly, I didn't think it would be that bad a way to go.
I was reminded of this scene while sitting in a Malaysian café, tucked down an alleyway in London's Soho, before a huge bowl of laksa, as my own cold kicked in. Photograph: Katherine Rose for the Observer 'Fire, softness and a big slap of umami': C&R's Singapore Laksa.
0 kommentar(er)
