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Bami, Hongkongoise
Cut into half-inch-square pieces half pound lean raw rump of beef, half pound lean fresh pork cut same way, and keep separately. Hash very finely six medium-sized sound shallots, one clove garlic; mix shallots and garlic with a heaping tablespoon finely fresh-chopped parsley and keep on a plate. Plunge into boiling water with a teaspoon salt in a saucepan and boil for fifteen minutes half pound noodles and quarter pound best macaroni, but in separate water; drain thoroughly and keep separate. Melt one tablespoon butter in a saucepan, add two light tablespoons flour; stir well, add two small finely chopped onions, two finely chopped shallots, one clove crushed chopped garlic, one clove, one sprig bay leaf and one sprig thyme. Stir all well together with a wooden spoon, while browning for four minutes. Moisten with half pint hot broth or hot water, mix well with a whisk; then add two good-sized, ripe, chopped tomatoes. Season with half tablespoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper, one salt-spoon grated nutmeg, half saltspoon cayenne pepper, adding one good teaspoon good curry powder. Stir all well together and let gently simmer for twenty-five minutes. Strain the sauce and keep it warm. Lightly butter the bottom of a pie dish, then evenly arrange the macaroni at the bottom of the dish; spread a very little of the sauce over the macaroni. Spread over evenly one-third of the mixed shallots, garlic and parsley; arrange the beef nicely divided over the macaroni, etc., then another third of the shallot mixture. Season with a saltspoon salt and a light snuff of white pepper. Now spread half the remaining sauce over. Neatly lay half the noodles evenly over; arrange the pork as a layer over the noodles; sprinkle the remaining shallot mixture over the pork. Season with a saltspoon salt and half saltspoon white pepper. Evenly spread the balance of the noodles; sprinkle one tablespoon very finely minced cooked lean ham. Pour and neatly spread the remaining sauce over. Sprinkle half teaspoon grated Parmesan or Swiss cheese over all. Have one teaspoon butter divided into small bits and placed on the surface. Place it in a moderate oven to bake for fifty-five minutes, or until it has obtained a good golden colour. Remove it from the oven, place the dish into another cold one and send to the table.
A layered baked noodle dish built like a lasagne, with the raw meat cooking in the dish. Two things need attention: the pasta is boiled far too long for something that then bakes for nearly an hour, and the meat has to be cut small enough to cook through.
- Cut the meat small and evenlyHalf-inch dice is the whole point — the beef and pork cook only from the surrounding sauce and oven heat. Anything larger, or unevenly cut, leaves raw pork in the middle of the dish. Check the centre with a thermometer and take it to at least 160F/71C, the figure for a mixed dish of diced meat rather than the 145F allowed for a whole cut.
- Moderate oven350F/175C. Fifty-five minutes at that temperature is right for a filled dish of this depth; if the top colours before the middle is hot, tent it loosely with foil.
- Do not boil the pasta fifteen minutesFifteen minutes was calculated for the dried noodles and macaroni of the period. Modern dried pasta wants about half that, and since it bakes for another hour here, boil it until barely pliable — 5 to 6 minutes — and drain it well. Keeping the two shapes in separate water still matters, since they cook at different rates.
- Saltspoon and "light" spoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. A "light" or "scant" tablespoon means slightly under level; a "heaping" one means piled. Half a pint of broth is one cup.
- The sauceThis is a curried, tomato-enriched brown roux, and it is strained before use, so the onion, shallot, clove, bay and thyme are there only for flavour — chop roughly and do not fuss over them. Strain firmly to get the tomato pulp through; the sauce should nap a spoon, not run.
- Sprigs and cloves"One sprig bay leaf" is a single bay leaf, and "one clove" in the aromatics is one whole clove, not garlic — the garlic is listed separately. Remove nothing before straining; the sieve handles it.
- The cheese is under-measuredHalf a teaspoon of grated Parmesan over the whole surface will not brown or register. Use a tablespoon or two if you want the golden top the recipe asks for.
- Dish and yieldA deep 3-quart pie or gratin dish is a safer fit; 2 quarts will be tight. It serves four to six. The final instruction — setting the hot dish inside a second cold one — appears to be a way of carrying a bubbling dish to the table; a trivet does the same work.
Bami is the Dutch-colonial spelling of bakmi, the wheat-noodle dish carried to the Indonesian archipelago by Hokkien-speaking Chinese migrants; the name is generally traced to Hokkien bah-mī, "meat noodles." What appears here, though, has passed through a European hotel kitchen rather than a Javanese one: the noodles are layered with Italian macaroni, bound with a French brown roux, seasoned with commercial curry powder, and dotted with bits of raw butter, while the label Hongkongoise does the work of signalling "the Far East" to a diner who was unlikely to have tasted the original. That was standard practice in the grand-restaurant repertoire of the early 1900s, when foreign dishes were routinely rebuilt on French technique and given a French adjective. The shallot-garlic-parsley mixture strewn between the layers is straight persillade, and the assembly is a lasagne in all but name — a useful record of how a Chinese-Indonesian noodle dish looked once it reached a European hotel cook's mise en place.