Street Food Made Simple, Part II

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

Eating street food in Asia it is easy to wonder how so much good food can be made so quickly. Not all street foods are easy to make at home. Some equipment like super hot gas flames or open charcoal fires would probably not pass indoor fire regulations. However there are several lessons from cooking these fast foods of Asia that can be taken off the streets and into the kitchen for the everyday cook.

Eat with your Hands
Anyone who has enjoyed the pleasures of a hot dog at the ballpark or tacos from a truck on the side of the road knows the joys of eating with two hands. The most important utensils of many street foods are a hand or two to hold the stick of a grilled chicken sate, peel the wrapper off a steamed pork bun, or get a grip around the crispy baguette of a good bahn mi.

For home I love the idea of a an Asian-Muslim twist to classic skewered and grilled meats. Thinly slice chicken, beef, and lamb into long strips. Toss the meats in a combination of ground spices: coriander, cumin, cinnamon, chili powder, pinch of clove, salt and pepper--along with a bit of oil. Thread the meats onto skewers and cook over a very hot flame for just a minute or two per side. Pile all the meats on a platter and let the family go crazy grabbing for their favorites.

Simple is Sublime
Sure there are street foods that are deceptively difficult: long simmered and heavily spiced beef broth that lends the complex flavor to a bowl of rice noodles and rare beef called pho. But many street foods are not much more than they appear to be, simple food prepared to perfection.

A few weeks ago I sat down to a few plates of fried chicken and duck parts on the streets of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. We ordered by the bird part: chicken or duck, breast or leg. The meat was seasoned simply and tossed in a wok of hot oil. The golden bird pieces appeared on our small plastic table a few minutes later with bowls of rice and spicy chili sambal for extra flavor. The duck leg with its silken rich strands of meat was as good as any fancy restaurant duck confit all made in a small fraction of the time.

The Wok Works
If your wok has not emerged from the depths of the cupboard since it came as a wedding present a couple decades ago, now is the time to reacquaint yourself. The wok is the street food vendor’s best friend. A wok fries noodles for pad thai and mie goreng. It stir-fries chicken cut in small pieces and whole fish. It deep-fries battered vegetables and salt and pepper squid. It steams, boils, simmers, and sautés with the versatility of no other single cooking pot. Make friends with the wok.

The key for wok cooking and many other street foods is the prep. In a lot of wok preparations the cooking goes quickly; the work is in the prep. Vendors are not taking the time to chop new garlic and chilies every time a fried rice order comes their way. The vegetables are already cut and laid out so that each can be added at just the right time with the cook never leaving his station tossing at the wok. Almost all wok cooking is done over very high heat so meat pieces and denser vegetables are cut small to cut down on time. At home this might translate into 10 minutes of work to cut chicken into bite-sized pieces, chop some onion, garlic, peppers, and mushrooms. But once the wok fires up it’s action time: meat gets browned, vegetables added in one at a time, a sauce is finally simmered down to a thickened coating, a full fast meal in one versatile pot.

Fast food in the United States might not be as diverse as the Hawker Centers of Singapore or as atmospheric and spicy as the streets of Indonesia but that doesn’t mean we can’t try and create some of those same flavors at home. Working with simple ingredients, telling your kids they can eat with their hands, challenging yourself to stretch the wok to new limits, these are a few steps toward making taking great street food off the streets and into the home, wherever in the world that home might be.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 1 1/2 pound boneless, skinless chicken, white and dark meat
• salt and pepper
• 1 cup soy sauce
• 1 cup sesame oil
• 1 cup rice wine
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 Birds Eye chilies, or to taste (optional)
• 1 piece (1 inch size) ginger
• white rice