The Malaysian Insider :: Food
The Malaysian Insider :: Food |
| A Cham-ing bagel shop in Subang Jaya Posted: 20 Nov 2012 05:07 PM PST  Sulayman Cham has 20 years' experience making bagels... the American way. — Pictures by Choo Choy May I gave the owner Sulayman Cham an amused look and watched as he continued speaking to the woman, a polite smile on his face. She had walked in trying to sell something to Sulayman. When she left the bakery, I started laughing because her asking him if the bagels were African had been so absurd. "Why didn't you tell her what a bagel is?" I asked the 44-year-old Sulayman who started the New York-style bagel bakery here in May last year. "That's one of the biggest challenges I face actually, having to introduce what a bagel is to Malaysians. Usually, it is Malaysians who have lived or travelled abroad who are exposed to bagels," he said. What differentiates a bagel from a doughnut even though both have holes in them is that a doughnut is fried whereas a bagel is boiled then baked so they are dense and chewy in texture as opposed to light and "fluffy" like a bun.. or well, a doughnut. In Sulayman Cham's recipe, he does not use any oil or butter so it's a healthier option compared to doughnuts. Most of the time the bagels we get here are frozen ones imported from the United States. There are some cafes or restaurants that make their own bagels but it's hard to get the taste and texture right.  Cham Bagel Bakery offers a variety of bagels in different flavours like strawberry, oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip... have it with cream cheese or try one of their bagel dogs. Many of Sulayman Cham's customers have said that the bagels at his shop are as good as the ones abroad. Personally, I've not been to the States so I do not know what American bagels taste like but the first time I tasted Cham Bagel Bakery's bagels, I have to say that they are good. "When you do something for more than 20 years, it becomes part of you," said Sulayman who started baking bagels back in 1989 when he went to study in the States. Originally from Gambia, Africa, Sulayman studied business, accounting and economics at Strayer College, Washington DC. He was looking for a part-time job and he came across a popular bagel shop. Initially, the owner of the shop said that he was not hiring. Sulayman then decided to work at Jerry's Subs and Pizza. Lady Luck came knocking on his door while he was there because a manager from the bagel shop took notice of him. The manager told the bagel shop owner that Sulayman was a hardworking man and that he should hire him. Long story short, the bagel shop hired Sulayman and pretty soon he was one of their best bagel bakers. "I only wanted to work there for two weeks but my boss liked me. He said I was fast and I was very good at baking bagels. Having long arms helped, I guess. Back then, I could bake 10,000 bagels per day. You can ask my partner if you don't believe me," said Sulayman.  Slices of roast beef and plenty of fresh veggies make for a very yummy bagel sandwich. In 2008, Charlie Daily of Wholly Bagels offered Sulayman a job opportunity in New Zealand... to start the bagel company there. Daily learned his bagel baking skills from Sulayman and it was perfect timing because Sulayman wanted to work somewhere new. To get to New Zealand, Sulayman had to go through Malaysia. Unfortunately for him, there were some issues with his visa and Sulayman had to spend four and a half months in Malaysia to get it sorted out. Eventually, the New Zealand deal didn't work out so he went back to Gambia. However, while he was in Malaysia, he noticed that there were no bagel shops here. Sulayman then seized on the opportunity to open Cham Bagel Bakery and the rest is history. Most of his clientele are Malaysians who know about bagels and expatriates or college students who are curious to know what bagels are about. There are 18 different flavours to choose from currrently but Sulayman has more recipes up his sleeves. "Even now with 18 flavours, my customers have problems deciding which flavours to go for. It's like what they say, you don't throw all your punches at once. You save them for later," he said. For Sulayman, he truly believes in the quality of his bagels and that is why he decided to do the production himself although he could have trained and hired other people to do it. "A good product will sell by itself. Yes, advertising, marketing and promoting is important but at the end of the day, it is the quality of the product. That's my philosophy," said Sulayman who personally hand rolls and bakes each bagel and bagel roll at Cham Bagel Bakery. Cham Bagel Bakery offers options of sweet or savoury bagels with flavours like strawberry, honey oat, banana nut, onion, cheese and more. You can add a choice of fillings such as roast beef, egg salad, cream cheese, tuna salad and so on. Cham Bagel Bakery 41, Jalan SS 15/8A, 47500 Subang Jaya Selangor, Malaysia |
| Chocolate desserts are no longer limited to the sweet and gooey Posted: 20 Nov 2012 07:23 AM PST  Tablets of Belgian chocolate are seen in a shop in central Brussels November 19, 2012. — Reuters pic From the white chocolate and goat cheese at the wd-50 restaurant in New York City, to the baked pizza dough dessert at the Queen Margherita Trattoria in Nutley, New Jersey, chocolate is getting a makeover. "Oh wow, awesome!" said Kelly Horn, 24, of Darien, Connecticut, as she dug into a mound of baked pasta and Baci, the Italian candy whose name means "kiss," at a chocolate cooking class at Eataly, a Manhattan food bazaar. "I was intrigued. I've never really seen chocolate used that way," said her boyfriend, Neal Siegrist, 24, a food fanatic and financial trader who enrolled the couple in the class, run by the Italian chocolate maker Perugina's La Scuola del Cioccolato, which is based in Perugia, Italy. With an eggplant in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other, food historian Francine Segan told the class that since chocolate is derived from the seed-like cocoa bean, its flavour can be pulled in different directions. "Chocolate is not sweet until you add sugar," Segan told her 30 students. "If you have 100 percent chocolate, it can go either way, to the sweet or the savoury." The unusual dessert creations have centuries-old roots that date to when Christopher Columbus brought home chocolate to the Old World and cooks tried to stretch the precious import with less expensive local ingredients, like the chick peas that grow abundantly in Italy. "Chick peas have that wonderful creaminess that doesn't take away from the chocolate," Segan said as she prepared a chocolate chick pea dessert ravioli. Less sweet than many desserts, the odd-couple pairings largely keep chocolate flavors in check, which was just fine for Cate Liguori, 27, and her mother Stephanie Sands, 59, who lives near the American chocolate capital, Hershey, Pennsylvania. "I liked them more than I expected because they weren't super chocolaty," said Liguori, a fashion buyer Sands, an accountant, said, "It was something so unexpected, something you had to alter your taste buds for." Adventurous stay-at-home cooks who forage for ideas online can find recipes for chocolate dessert lasagna, chocolate-beet cake and a chocolate zucchini roll on such sites as FoodNetwork.com and Epicurious.com. Segan keeps chocolate in her kitchen spice cabinet to wield in unexpected ways while cooking dessert. "Chocolate has that earthiness that goes wonderfully with the eggplant's neutral canvas," Segan explained to the sold-out class. "Is it sweet enough?" she asked as Grace Palumbo, 59, a media consultant from Toronto visiting New York with friends, took an exploratory bite. "It's perfect," Palumbo said. — Reuters |
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