Maritime Southeast Asia · Volume 44, The Long Reduction, the Merantau Road and the Veranda of Mecca

Mie Aceh

Name: Mie Aceh
Total time: 25 min
Yield: Serves 2
Cuisine: Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and the Melaka Strait
Ingredients: 300 g thick fresh yellow noodles (mie kuning basah); 150 g protein: beef, chicken, prawn or squid; 4 shallots, sliced; 3 garlic cloves, sliced; 2 tomatoes, chilli to taste bird's eye chilli, tomato; 1 tsp each ground cumin, curry powder; to taste sweet and salty soy sauce, to taste

Aceh, Banda Aceh's civic street food

Mie Aceh, thick yellow noodles in a spiced curry sauce: a tangle of thick yellow noodles glossed dark red brown with curry spice, prawns and sliced beef worked through, a scattering of crisp fried shallot and a wedge of lime resting to one side.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time: 25 minutes

Researched: 11 sources cited
Reviewed: Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked: Not yet cooked and reported

A three-way fusion made explicit: Chinese noodles, Indian curry-masala spicing, worked into a dish as identified with the city as nasi Padang is with the Minangkabau highlands.

by Aceh, Banda Aceh's civic street food

The better-evidenced culinary vector is Gujarati and Tamil Indian trade, not Arabia directly. Gujarati merchant networks dominated the Cambay-to-Melaka run through the sixteenth century, trading cotton textiles for pepper and spices, with documented commercial links to Acehnese ports including Pidie and Pasai, and those traders are credited in the historical record with carrying Islamic teaching alongside their goods. Acehnese society today still recognises a resident community of Indian descent, mainly Tamil and Gujarati. This is the actual mechanism behind curry leaf in kuah beulangong, the curry-masala spice grammar in mie Aceh and kari, roti canai's presence in Acehnese street food, and even a piece of Acehnese vocabulary: martabak Aceh's name is credibly derived from the Indian maharaj-ba, "the king's cake." The chapter's honest correction to its own spine claim: "heavier, more Middle Eastern spicing" is the popular shorthand, but "heavier, India-inflected curry spicing, on routes that also carried Arab and Persian traders and, later, Ottoman diplomatic and military contact" is the more accurate one.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Serves 2. 25 minutes.

Ingredients

300 g thick fresh yellow noodles (mie kuning basah)
150 g protein: beef, chicken, prawn or squid
4 shallots, sliced
3 garlic cloves, sliced
2 tomatoes, chilli to taste bird's eye chilli, tomato
1 tsp each ground cumin, curry powder
to taste sweet and salty soy sauce, to taste

Method

Blend the spice paste, cumin and curry powder among it, with a little oil rather than water, so the spices fry rather than steam.
Fry the shallot, garlic, chilli and tomato, roughly three minutes.
Add the protein and cook through, roughly five minutes.
Add the spice paste and fry out until fragrant, five to seven minutes, then continue cooking a further six minutes.
Add the noodles with the soy sauces to taste, and toss through to combine.

What a modern chef changes

The curry-masala grammar, sharpened.

Rung 2

Method

Toast the whole dried spices, cardamom, cumin, star anise, fennel, cinnamon, before grinding, deepening the aroma the way Aceh's own fuller kari recipes already do, then blend to a paste with oil in the high-power blender exactly as tradition specifies.
Finish the noodles on a Big Green Egg wok setup at very high heat, for genuine wok hei alongside the curry-masala base.
Dehydrate crisp fried shallot as a garnish, a real textural addition consistent with the dish's own character.

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