I don’t know how to say this, but I have been unfaithful. Mere days ago I professed my love for roti canai, but even as I made that declaration I was aware of the existence of other types of roti and what is worse, I have eaten some of them!
Not all on this trip though. This time I only cheated the once, and that was with the explosive-sounding roti bom (pronounced and also alternatively-spelled “boom”).
In all conversations about what we should eat when in Malaysia, the top of our must-haves list was roti canai (pronounced “rote-ee chan-i”).
I touched on this delectable bread a while ago in a post on the rotee stalls that lurk seductively around Thailand’s streets. Roti canai can be found on similar stalls, but is exceedingly common in the many Indian restaurants that inhabit the Malaysian food scene.
H spent some of his formative years in Malaysia, and fondly remembers breakfast roti with fish curry as a Sunday treat. Served with a frothy mug of teh tarik (tea sweetened with condensed milk and poured at a distance from cup to cup to aerate it), he reckons it is one of the finest ways to start the day.
Roti is something that may be familiar to you from the breads section of a UK “Indian” restaurant menu. It is a round, flat, slightly layered bread, which is good for soaking up curries.
It clearly shares roots with Roti Canai, something ambrosial I first encountered in Malaysia. This is a puffy, crispy flat bread which is heavenly dipped in dahl, fish curry or topped with condensed milk.
So when we passed a Rotee stall near the lower end of Phra Pok Klao Road, Chiang Mai, by a Siam Bank, I was irresistibly drawn to it. The options were fairly limited, standard (which comes topped with condensed milk), egg (where an egg is broken into it and cooked), banana (filled with sliced banana) and a few other choices which I think were mainly combinations of the above.
