“Murtabak,” He Wrote.

I first heard about murtabak back in December of 2015 (in a discussion about fish finger sandwiches, of all things!) from my friend Grace, who wondered if I’d ever be writing about it on this here website. She and fellow antipodean Marinus, whose name has been sullied on these pages a time or two in the past, debated whether it would be considered a sandwich at all. The discourse continued last year, when I announced that the Sandwich Tribunal had accomplished its task and that we were finally done eating every sandwich on the Wikipedia List of Sandwiches. Of course we started up again immediately (we will never be done. Never!), and Marinus once again nominated murtabak for inclusion. This time I listened.

Alternately described as a kind of wrap, a stuffed pancake, or even an omelet, murtabak exists in various forms throughout the Arabian peninsula and Southeast Asia. Why such a wide range? What is the common factor? Where did murtabak originate?

The answer to the last question remains somewhat murky. The Wikipedia entry on murtabak has a slightly schizophrenic take on the street food’s history.

The word mutabbaq in Arabic means “folded”. This suggests that Murtabak might originate from Yemen, which had a sizeable Indian population; through Indian traders it spread back to their home countries. Murtabak was brought to Southeast Asia by Tamil Muslim traders.

Ah. So it’s from Yemen then, and spread to Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, etc., via Indian traders. That makes sense.

However, the article immediately continues:

The dish referred to as murtabak is a multi-layered pancake that originated in the state of Kerala where the people referred to as “mamaks” (“mama” means “uncle” in Tamil) hail from. The word “mutabar” is the original name for the particular dish referred to in other languages and dialects as “murtabak.” “Mutabar” is an amalgam of two words, “muta” (being the Keralite word for egg, a significant component of the dish) and “bar,” an abbreviated form of the word barota, or “bratha roti” (the bread)… There are similar versions of the bread in places such as Yemen and other regions of the Arabic world and Persia. All of these places in the Middle East were visited by Indian traders centuries ago and it would not be unusual for them to have learned from each other or to have adopted each other’s culinary habits and practices. However, the word “mutabar” is the original name for the egg, chilli, and onion flavoured multi-layered pancake.

Some form of this secondary origin story has existed in the Wikipedia article since 2012. Its original wording was somewhat less delicate though.

The dish referred to as Murtabak is a multi layered pancake that originated in the state of Kerela where the people referred to disparagingly as “mamak’s” (or uncle) hail from. The word mutabar is the correct name for the particular dish referred to incorrectly as murtabaq.

The emphases in the above quote are mine. It sure sounded like somebody had something to prove in that original version, and I do appreciate people standing up for the foods of home. Regardless, I was going to have a lot of ground to cover in learning to appreciate this street food. I would of course have to try the Southeast Asian version, or versions–there’s the murtabak as described to me by Grace and Marinus, possibly the Malaysian version, possibly Indonesian, though that is often called “martabak” instead. There’s even a Thai version called “roti mataba” that I’d like to get to if I have time. I would also have to seek out the Yemeni “mutabbaq” if I could. And of course, how could I not try to track down the Indian “mutabar” as well, if that is in fact the originator of all?

Malaysian Murtabak

Luckily for me, there are a few restaurants in the Chicago area serving their own takes on the Malaysian version of murtabak.

Penang Malaysian Cuisine sits on a busy stretch of Algonquin Road in northwest suburban Arlington Heights. It’s situated in a building that formerly housed some kind of a drive-thru restaurant called Zippy’s, which I assume is not to be confused with the Hawaiian chain of the same name. Their menu contains a number of Malaysian dishes mixed in with Chinese-American, Indian, and Thai dishes–a reflection perhaps of the diversity of the Malay peninsula, or perhaps of more local expectations.

We ordered a few items at Penang, and among the first to arrive at our table was Mindy’s Roti Canai, a flaky paratha-style flatbread served coiled into a loose stack with a dish of a chicken and potato curry on the side for dipping/scooping. The bread was not bad, but it seemed less pliable than I would imagine it to be just coming fresh off a griddle.

The curry, though, was magnificent. I have attempted to recreate it at home, and have made some fine meals from those attempts, but I have not quite hit the mark. It was a thin reddish sauce, almost certainly akin to the Panang curries found in Thai restaurants though I do not recall it having as strong a coconut milk flavor as I generally find in Thai curries. I would sloppily slurp this sauce straight from the bowl and happily wear it in my beard all day. It was a delight. I need to return to Penang if only to try it again and hopefully fine-tune my own less successful attempts to recreate it.

We also ordered mee goreng, a common Malay dish of stir-fried yellow noodles with meat and vegetables in a sauce that is sometimes compared to pad thai. I found it less sweet than pad thai, with chewier noodles, and with a sauce that may have counted ketchup as a main ingredient–not in a bad way necessarily, ketchup can be a quick way to add a little sweetness and umami to a dish.

The main event, the chicken murtabak, was served with the same fantastic curry sauce that the roti had been. It was also wrapped in the same flaky but seemingly less-than-fresh roti that we’d been served as well.

The filling was heavy on onion and turmeric, with a thin layer of ground chicken coated in egg. I enjoyed it though, if only for the opportunity to scoop up more of the chicken curry.

Newly-opened Malaysian restaurant HD Cuisine–“HD” being short for Hawkers Delight, a reference to the robust street food scene in Malaysia–is located in Wheeling, just a short drive north of Penang Malaysian Cuisine. We stopped in on a busy Friday night, when a surprise large party had taken up all the interior seating in the small storefront and ordered a broad cross-section of the restaurant’s Malaysian dishes and taxing the kitchen to its limit, leaving to-go orderers good-naturedly chit-chatting outside a bit longer than they’d expected. Unfortunately due to the depletion of ingredients we were unable to order murtabak that evening.

We did treat ourselves to some fried chicken wings though that were every bit as crispy as the name promised and then some.

We also tried a Chinese pancake stuffed with a ground beef filling that at least superficially resembled their murtabak, as we’d learn later. This though was served with a vinegar-based dip on the side, like what you’d get with an order of potstickers.

Mindy ordered a decent bowl of Filipino-style pancit bihon that I didn’t get a chance to photograph. The absolute star of the evening though was HD Cuisine’s Beef Rendang, a thick, aromatic, complex, delicious curry served with a bowl of rice on the side. Redolent warm spices–cinnamon, coriander, ginger–and a big hit of star anise as well. Thick with coconut milk, absolutely packed with tender, falling-apart beef, it was a treat that I’ll be returning for sooner than later.

And in fact it was less than 24 hours after that initial visit when I returned to order their murtabak. I called ahead to be sure they’d have it available and Lyn, the proprietor, remembered our prior visit and asked specifics about the family and our trip home the previous evening. I ordered ahead so that when we arrived, the murtabak was ready almost immediately.

As I mentioned previously, it bore a physical resemblance to the Chinese pancake we’d tried. The filling though was, like Penang’s, very turmeric-and-onion forward

The bread though was head and shoulders above what we’d had at Penang, and the filling was both more generous and better proportioned. Still plenty of onion, but much more egg and meat to fill it out. This murtabak was served with a lentil curry also boasting a significant amount of turmeric.

I will almost certainly return to HD Cuisine in the near future, despite the long drive, to try the rest of the menu. When I do, I will certainly order both the beef rendang and the murtabak again.

Yemeni Mutabbaq

Nearer home, in and around southwest suburban Bridgeview, there is a cluster of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean restaurants, bakeries, markets, and other businesses. I’ve mentioned my fondness for bakery Alwatan more than once on this site. Just around the corner from Alwatan, on Harlem & 90th Place, there’s a Yemeni restaurant called Shibam with a menu that boasts mutabbaq, or “Mutapq” depending which version of the menu you’re seeing.

Every meal at Shibam, from what I gather, starts with a bowl of lamb soup, a quite salty and rich cumin-heavy broth containing small shreds of vegetables and lamb. Some of the menu at Shibam consists of fairly standard Middle-eastern favorites such as a kefta kabob served over a biryani-style rice with slivers of raw onion, or a “house salad” of cucumber, tomato, and parsley with lemon juice similar to salads I’ve seen under other circumstances that were called Jerusalem or Israeli salads.

Much of the menu though is taken up by dishes native to the Arabian peninsula or to Yemen itself–Yemeni stews and curries such as saltah and fahsa, rice preparations like the biryani-like zurbian, meat entrees such as haneeth or their roasted lamb head. Many of these dishes in themselves suggest the connections between Yemeni and Indian cuisines. Many are also served with a tomato chutney called sahawiq or zhug. Different from the more chili-focused zhugs, this chutney is very much like a salsa but with a mix of spices–coriander, cumin, some cardamom perhaps–that lean more toward Central Asia.

We were there to try the mutabbiq though. They offer two, a lamb version and a chicken version. Both look very much like this.

Inside was not the egg and onion and turmeric curry I’d come to expect though. Instead, these were filled with simple small chunks of spiced meat, seasoned very similar to shawarma.

The lamb mutabbaq contained a small and unidentifiable amount of something like a gravy or sauce, maybe even a thin swipe of mayonnaise or toum–not enough to burst out in gushers when the wrap was punctured, but just enough to help make the lean and slightly chewy lamb easier to swallow. The wrap was good, a very thin dry flatbread, less oily than the Malaysian versions, more like an Indian chapati than a paratha.

As with shawarma, we both very much preferred the chicken version. There was less moisture or gravy present in the wrap but the juiciness of the meat made that irrelevant.

Interlude – Origins

The Yemeni mutabbaq, despite some surface similarities, and despite the clear Indian influence on other aspects of Yemeni cuisine, does not seem to be very much like the southeast Asian murtabak at all. At least the mutabbaqs I tried were not. Even the Thai roti mataba, which I was unable to find served locally but I did find described online, appears to be very much like the martabak as served by Penang–eggy, oniony, and thin, yellow from turmeric and curry powder. Yet I can find no Indian dish called mutabar. Any searches I’ve made for it have sidelined into proper names or back into the Wikipedia discussion on the history of the murtabak. Or a vast, vast trove of stock photos. However, the Wikipedia article also mentions another dish, Mughlai Paratha. This at least shows some promise–a paratha flatbread very much like that used to enclose the Malaysian murtabak, stuffed with a mixture of egg, onion, chilies, and sometimes minced meat. It even looks–well, not just like what we’ve been eating, but close.

The name mutabbaq seems more likely precursor to murtabak then Mughlai paratha, or even mutabar, which has proven difficult to trace in any case. However, as a food item, the Mughlai paratha seems like a much closer fit. I don’t have time to fully chase down Mughlai paratha this month unfortunately, and we’re just past “mug” in the alphabet. But I’ll consider adding it as a subject to tackle down the line, because I hate an unsolved mystery.

You know what the best way to deal with an unanswered question is though, right? Ignore it and eat more sandwiches

Indonesian Martabak Telor

There are two main types of martabak sold by street vendors in Indonesia. The first, very much like the Malaysian murtabak we’ve already tried, is a savory pancake stuffed with a curry-spiced mixture of meat–ground beef, lamb, or chicken, mainly, owing to the largely Muslim population of the Indonesian archipelago. I was unable to find any Indonesian restaurants locally serving it, so I made my own using the recipe and instructions from this site.

This Indonesian version is often served with a kind of quick-pickle, a sweet and spicy relish made from cucumbers, shallots, and chili peppers.

I chose to also have some of my attempted chicken and potato curry a la Penang alongside it for dipping as well.

The pancakes are roughly rectangular, filled with a delightfully aromatic mixture of ground beef and eggs, onions, leeks, and garlic. I used the same Malaysian brand of curry powder for this that I’d used for my Penang curry above, a mix of dried powdered chili, coriander, star anise, black pepper, curry leaves, and turmeric. It’s not the most complex curry powder I’ve ever experienced, but sometimes simplicity has its place–it made both a stunning chicken and potato Penang-style curry (though it could be redder/spicier) and a delicious filling for the martabak.

Yet as much as I liked both of those, the samey-sameyness of serving them together did wear, and the contrast provided by the cucumber relish was a far better condiment than the curry. The customary method of serving these martabaks is to cut them into small rectangles, which not only make them more receptive to the addition of such a relish, but also make them look much more like sandwiches.

Kind of.

Indonesian Martabak Manis

The second type of martabak served by street food vendors in Indonesia is a sweet version called Martabak Manis. This is more of a soft, fluffy leavened pancake, sometimes flavored with pandan juice, topped with ingredients–butter, sugar, chocolate, peanuts, cheese, sweetened condensed milk, peanut butter, bananas, various jams–both sweet and savory. It is not something that you’d mistake for anything but a dessert though.

Yes, I used some of the leftover pandan leaves I had from my recent Kaya Toast writeup to make a pandan extract to use in this pancake. As long as I’m making confessions, I should also relate that the mild light green tint this gave the pancake batter was not nearly enough for me so I added a few drops of green food coloring. Then a few more. Then…

The pancake is cooked in a nonstick pan, with batter swirled up the sides to create kind of a crisp rim all around. Once bubbles appear all over the pancake, it gets sprinkled with sugar and the pan covered to allow the batter to steam all the way through. Once the pancake is relatively dry–that is, once it no longer turns your fingers green when you touch it–it is done and should be buttered quickly so the butter can melt and ooze down into those crevices like a gigantic crumpet.

This is no crumpet though. Before serving, it is cut in half and a selection of the potential toppings mentioned earlier is added. I went with a fairly standard combination of dark chocolate, sharp cheddar, crushed peanuts, and sweetened condensed milk.

Then, the martabak is folded over to make a sandwich.

Yes, this may be a green pancake topped with cheese and chocolate but that is recognizably a sandwich, is it not? The martabak is then cut into rectangles before being served to the customer, or simply consumed, as mine was.

I had zero difficulties getting the family to help me finish this–in fact, I barely touched it beyond the first bite or two–I have been avoiding sweets for the most part. It really is a marvel though. The pancake has a nicely browned, crisp outer layer, and an open, honeycombed texture to the interior–soft, springy, and crisp, a textural trifecta. The vaguely grassy, welcoming aroma of the pandan will be identifiable to most who’ve spent time in that region–the pancake could probably do without the pandan and plenty of recipes don’t use it, but I’ve come to enjoy the flavor and I kind of found the color hilarious. There’s sugar both in the pancake batter and sprinkled on its surface, plus a healthy drizzle of sweetened condensed milk, yet the overall flavor is not overwhelmingly sweet–there are salty and savory flavors from the cheese and peanuts balancing it, and a welcome crunch from the latter adding to the melange of textures. I would be surprised if I went more than a month without making this again.

So I haven’t come to much of a conclusion regarding the origin of the murtabak, but I sure have eaten a lot of good food this month. If anybody out there has any insight into the link between the Yemeni mutabbaq, the Southeast Asian murtabak/martabak/roti mataba, or their link to the subcontinental Mughlai paratha, please do reach out in the comments below. I have just about a week left this month to cover one more sandwich, and it’s time that I move on to it–for now.