WHEN dinner arrived tonight the magnificence of what appeared almost helped to lessen the sadness I felt earlier after the image of the shirtless man in the mirror with a spare tyre now circumnavigating his guts so viciously imbedded itself in my mind. I can’t care that I am getting fatter by the second, I shouldn’t, the food we are eating is too good, and to pass an opportunity up like this when a simple diet will return me to my handsome self again would be stupid. We are eating food that would make royalty jealous. The culture here in Malaysia is one that ingrains in its people from a very young age an appreciation of eating that is not known in Australia. As one journalist said to us, she lives to eat rather than eats to live - a mentality so obviously shared by the entire population.
The traditional Malay food or Iban (a tribal Malay group) food we have sought is a sensory array of colour, smell and flavour. The dishes are a rich combination of sweet and salty. Dishes that have brilliant elegant simplicity like ox-tail, ginger and tomato soup are eaten alongside rich creamy lingering coconut-based curries or salty dried fish, wok-braised in tomato and ginger. One dish prepared for us was chicken in bamboo. Old boiler hen is chopped into pieces, marinated in ginger then packed into a large piece of bamboo. The ends are sealed with tapioca leaves (also eaten) then a small amount of salted water is poured in. The bamboo is roasted over a fire for several hours. The results is a pinkish brined and braised chicken wet with an overwhelming sweet chicken broth. We ate this with local watercress cooked in belachan (shrimp paste) and chicken livers cooked in tapioca leaves and coconut milk.
Modern Malay (to the good people of Brunei and Borneo I ask forgiveness for referring to your culture as Malay, it is just the similarity tends to make this lazy Aussie categorise it all as Malay) is similar to several other of the surrounding SE Asia countries in that there is also an abundance of Chinese, Indonesian and Islamic food. The Chinese impact on cuisine in Malaysia is almost as significant as the indigenous food itself, in fact, one dish ‘Hainan Chicken Rice’ was created in Malaysia several hundred years ago and it wasn’t until its popularity became so intense that the region in China to which it refers began to produce the dish. Talking about this tonight, our hosts suggested it has been more than a thousand years that Chinese food has been part of Malay life.
If you had to choose the signature dishes of Malaysia there are two that really shine, Char Kway Teow and Roti Canai. Char Kway Teow or Kway Teow Goreng (char being Chinese for fried and goreng being Malay for fried) is a noodle dish with a salty, fishy, dried shrimp sauce and a smoky, dark soy wok-charred flavour. We have yet to visit Penang - the home of this dish - so you will hear us talk about it again, but these noodles are more addictive than anything ever in my life. It is great for breakfast, morning tea, lunch, dinner or supper. The rice noodles become wonderfully silky when the perfect amount of oil is used to lubricate the dry fishy sauce, sweetened with bean shoots and local clams. Char Kway Teow is true flavour harmony. It is also a good dish to test the size of your balls with the local, ridiculously hot, green chillies. These are chillies that two chefs in the kitchen where we have been visiting had a competition to see how many they could eat raw, both quitting at 32 then not being able to smoke a cigarette for the rest of the day due to the intense pain.
Roti canai (cha – nai) is a grilled flat bread, a hybrid of a crepe, strudel dough and a croissant. It is fried in ghee (clarified butter) until crunchy then smashed between your hands to create a flaky texture. It is served in the Halal Islamic restaurants with either a stew-like Malaysia-style sweet curry with cloves, cardamom and small curry leaves or just enough sauce from the same curry to dip your roti into. It is amazing. I swear a lot and it is only me being polite that I don’t describe them now as flipping brilliant. And they cost about 35 cents Australian each. The char kway teow is a little more luxurious coming in at about $1.20.
Indulge us, as we need to brag a little more as we sit here, belt undone, reminiscing on the amazing Chinese meal we ate tonight. Wok-fried whole sea bass with mango sauce, Chinese BBQ prawns (fresh), broccoli with shitake mushrooms, fried garlic and oyster sauce and a chicken with dried chilli and cashew nuts. Chef Matthew from the Millennium restaurant produced this dinner which in all honesty surpassed any food we have eaten at Melbourne’s most famous and highly over-acclaimed Chinese restaurant. And should we have had to pay it would be about 10% of the cost.
The markets all over Malaysia and Brunei are colourful arrays of overflowing stands selling everything from chillies, limes, chickens, and fish. Every animal under the sun is available after it has been salted and dried - not to forget Rolllexs and Oackleys! I think the markets primarily supply the restaurants and street hawkers though as the people don’t appear to cook at home. Watching the street hawkers, the majority of their trade is locals getting a quick bite at lunch or take home packs just before dinner time. Late night trade is more the younger generation socialising and eating together. Each town has a specialty dish and at the market and in Kota Kinabalu Sabah it is spicy BBQ chicken wings. Grilled on metal racks, with a dozen wings stretched in perfect unison, they’re chopped with scissors then served in plastic bags floating in a spicy sauce. It is quite easy to nail a dozen on your own.
And further to the mention of KK's famed seafood markets - we gave the stonefish a go and they were beautiful. Because the lazy ugly bastards sit all day on the bottom fattening and protecting their sweet white milky flesh with barbarous spikes, the result is a sublime texture. I did also order a massive sashimi oyster but I just couldn’t come at eating a raw filter feeder from the South China Sea. The Mantis shrimp was a sweeter and softer lobster, deep fried with onions and shallots. Razor clams were served with dried chillis and mushrooms.
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