Makanan~Food
Malaysians are very proud of their food. One of the first things they will ask a visitor is:" What do you think about Malaysian food?” Malaysian cuisine pulls in many flavors from China, India, and the Malaysian archipelago. Where I live, in Terengganu, much of the cuisine is straight-up Malay.
Unlike neighboring Thailand and Vietnam, Malaysian cuisine is very heavy. Most dishes are either fried, contain coconut, or both: certainly not heart-friendly. The good thing is- I'm building up a tolerance for very spicy foods.
A real Southeast Asian food experience does not involve western-style sit-down 'restaurants.’ The best food in Malaysia is street food. You usually have no idea what you are eating, but it is all delicious. One of the best places to sample Malaysian cuisine is at the outdoor market. Every town has its own Pasar Malam (or night market) where rows of hawker stalls line up selling their freshly-made wares. Sometimes towns also have a Pasar Pagi (or morning market) which specializes in produce, cakes, and breakfast treats. Food at the market is cheap (a good meal never costing much more than a dollar) making it an even better place to try new things that you might be wary of dropping money on. The custom of open-air night markets is one Malaysian practice that I wish would take hold back in America. Maybe it can replace cupcake cafes or bacon-flavored chocolate as the next new food trend.
The Main Ingredients
Rice (nasi) is the basis of any Malay meal (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), though the preparation can be as varied as the sauces that accompany them. Rice can be thickened or lemak, with coconut milk; or flavored with aromatics like star anise in nasi beriani; or fried in nasi goreng. Glutinous (sticky) rice- pulut- is also a common ingredient in desserts, and cakes (kuih) are made with rice flour- tepung beras.
Noodles also play a large part on the Malaysian stage. Meehoon (or bee hoon) is like rice vermicelli. Round yellow egg noodles are simply referred to as mee. There is also white rice noodles commonly referred to as laksa (and often served in a spicy, coconut soup). Other dishes feature ramen-like instant noodles called maggi.
Protein: Fish (ikan), chicken (ayam), prawns/shrimp (udang), and squid (sotong) are the primary elements of daily eating. (Any beef (daging) you will find is usually slow cooked in stews, though it is often too chewy to consume easily.)
Chilies- in dried or fresh form are used in sauces and pastes such as sambal (chilies and shrimp paste)
Coconut- Coconut milk (santan) is used in many sauces and in cakes. Its dried flesh is used in many sweets, donuts, etc. You can always find the fresh water of young coconut (kelapa muda) with bits of the mild, soft-textured flesh at roadside beverage stalls. Coconut is also the main ingredient for one of Malaysia’s most popular condiments- Kaya (literally translated as ‘rich’): a thick coconut and egg jam (did I mention my fear of acquiring heart disease here?).
Fishy flavors: Malaysians love their seafood, as is evident by entire of sections of markets devoted to dried fish. If you detest fish you are mostly out of luck- as fish sauce, dried fish, fish paste, fish crackers, or whole fish make their way into almost every Malaysian dish.
belacan- dried shrimp paste (used in one of my favorite dishes, laksa Terengganu)
Ikan bilis- tiny, crispy anchovies dried whole. They are sprinkled atop noodle and rice dishes.
Gula Melaka: a dark brown sugar made by boiling the sap collected from the cut flower stalks of the coconut palm. This delicious smoky syrup is used in many sweets and ice desserts.
Sweetened Condensed Milk: we have bread and butter in the west. The Malays have their sweetened condensed milk. Used in practically every beverage, dessert, and baked item, SCM is as it sounds: sickeningly sweet; thick, goopy and condensed; one wonders if milk is actually an ingredient.
Malay Dishes
Nasi Lemak
Every morning (and usually evening too) most Malaysians eat Nasi Lemak, the unofficial ‘national dish’ of Malaysia. Rice is steamed with coconut water, and topped with ikan bilis, peanuts, sliced cucumber, sweet-hot sambal, and half of a hard-boiled egg.
(Another breakfast option, which I personally shy away from, is watery rice porridge (congee or bubur) served with various savory condiments.)
Rojak Ayam
My favorite Malay dish so far has been Rojak Ayam: a noodle dish with a concoction of chicken, potatoes, cucumber, lettuce, chunks of delicious deep-fried batter, and smothered in a somewhat spicy, dark red peanut sauce (rojak sauce). It’s a little difficult to find, but usually is featured at a good Pasar Malam (night market). This stuff is soooo good.
(Just FYI: You will more commonly find Rojak [without the 'ayam'] as a fruit salad topped with the peanut sauce and sometimes pickled.)
Kerepok Lekor
Kerepok is a popular fried snack in Terengganu. It is made of fish meat, ground to a paste, and mixed with sago. Kerepok is prepared using two different methods: 1) long chewy (sausage-looking) ones are called kerepok lekor 2) the thin, crispy (chip-like) ones are called kerepok keping. Kerepok lekor is best eaten hot with its special sweet chili dip. A trip to Malaysia’s east coast will inevitably involve many offerings of this local specialty.
Roti Canai
A popular snack is Roti Canai- an amazing Indian-derived buttery flat bread served with a curry dipping sauce. Wheat flour is kneaded into a dough, which is then twirled and flung in the air (รก la pizza tossing) or simply stretched in order to thin it out. Ghee is constantly added to the process to prevent the dough from breaking as it gets thinner. The dough is then folded into a circular shape and is slightly charred on an iron pan. Roti Cani is served with dhall (lentil curry) or just a red curry sauce. Though its origins are obviously Indian, Malaysians have absorbed roti canai into their national cuisine. This treat can set you back a whopping RM 1.00. You may order your roti, with egg inside (roti telur) or with sardines (roti sardin). You might opt for the more filling and, what I find to be divine, murtabak- a slightly thicker version, stuffed with a mixture of egg, beef, and onions. Or you may have a sweet tooth and order up some a roti tissue- but this time your roti will come extra thin and crispy in a cone shape, smothered in either sweetened condensed milk, or butter and sugar, or honey.
Satay at a night market
You can find satay (Malaysian-style kebab) at any street market. The skewers of chicken (though you can also find fish) are grilled over a charcoal fire and are flavored simply and subtly with turmeric (which gives the dish its characteristic yellow color). The satay is served up with a delicious peanut sauce (which, despite my distaste for peanut butter, I absolutely adore). This is probably the most famous Malay dish outside of Malaysia.
Satar
Satar is a blend of boneless fish marinated in spices, with a little coconut, wrapped in banana leaves and grilled over a charcoal fire. It is both sweet and savory and light tasting.
Otak-Otak
Otak-Otak- literally ‘brains’- is fish mashed with coconut and chilli and steamed in a banana leaf. It is more savory than sweet satar.
My favorite Malay squid dish- very traditional and a little hard to come by
I live right by the sea and squid is big in Terengganu. It seems like a novelty in the U.S. to serve fresh squid (apart from the often poorly-done, yet ever-popular fried calamari.) Squid is in everything here- even making it into picnic baskets. My favorite squid dish is Sotong Pulut Santan: whole squid stuffed with sticky rice and topped with coconut-milk gravy.
A pile of fried bananas- pisang goreng
Fresh vegetables are lacking as part of a daily Malaysian diet. Okra is a popular vegetable. They call it lady fingers (must be a British thing). Eggplants are also commonly used in curry sauces. Sweet potato (ubi) is fried and topped with sweet crumbs of fried dough, and served with a sweet- spicy sauce. Bananas (pisang) are abundant. They are also often in fried form as the always popular snack pisang goreng. They also fry fermented tapioca root (which tastes similar to a cooked pear). These fried treats can be found at nearly any beach side food stall.
Sweets
Air Kelapa Muda
Unfortunately, there isn’t a big dessert culture in Malaysia. Bakeries usually have more savory options than sweet, such as shredded chicken rolls. More often than not, the only dessert offered will be a plate of fresh watermelon, honeydew, pineapple, and papaya. These fruits grow year round and are abundant. Mini bananas also grow year round and are packed with flavor. They have a ton of fresh fruit juice. Sugar cane juice, fresh soy milk, lychee drink, corn juice, rose syrup drink, and guava juice grace hawker stalls all over Malaysia. My personal favorite is air kelapa: fresh coconut water is mixed with shavings of soft, mild young coconut flesh, sweetened lightly with clear sugar syrup, and served on ice. Put me on a beach with one of these and I'm in heaven.
This image is taken from ilovedurian.com- one of the fruit's many fan sites
Durian...Durian is often referred to as the 'king of fruits', the most beloved of all among Malaysians and southeast Asians for that matter. Hotel signboards prohibit the fruit on the premises. Why? The smell is atrocious- something like bad body odor... and the taste isn't much better. There is an essence of rubbish and you might think the fruit has already gone rotten. But, alas, this is durian. You either hate it- which most westerners do- or love it. Durian is often described as a 'hot' food, meaning quite literally that it heats the body when eaten. Durian on its own is straight up offensive, but if it is used more subtly, as an actor in a dessert dish, such as pulut durian (a sweet glutinous and durian soup), it verges on enjoyable and I dare say, closely approaches appetizing. I will never have the extreme love that Malaysians have for this king of fruits, but I think the king and I are working on a better relationship.
Traditional Malaysian Kuih- desserts
Lots of rice, pandan (a green leaf, sometimes referred to as ‘Southeast Asian vanilla’ for the light, slightly sweet essence it lends to sweets), coconut, and cane sugar are used in desserts. Corn and green bean (not our green beans, aka mung bean, which is more akin to Asian red bean) are used in a lot of sweet dishes as well.
Chinatown had a plethora of sweet treats for Chinese New Year- my favorite being a flaky, buttery pastry filled with cooked pineapple.
Ais kacang or cendol is probably my favorite Malaysian dish here- a dessert (of course) of shaved ice topped with all sorts of syrups, red bean, corn, fruit, jellies, sweetened condensed milk, etc. Yum! And with the combination of a spicy dinner and the hot weather- it is the perfect ending.
Bubur Cha Cha is a dessert soup: sweetened coconut milk with pieces of sweet potato, yam, and tapioca balls. This is a more baba-nyona or Chinese-Malay dish, so it’s rarer to find in my neck of the woods.
Etiquette Miscellany
Pig-eating is prohibited in the Islamic faith so all pork options are thrown out the window, and sometimes replaced with wannabe alternatives like beef ‘bacon’ and chicken sausage. Not to fear, you can get your pork fix in any good Chinatown, away from the Malay establishments. They have stores completely devoted to bacon- in flat squares, round tubes, or sliced chunks. Not to mention the delicious Chinese steamed buns filled with barbecued pork (which you can find all over KL).
Malaysians eat with their hands, except of course, when eating soup or sometimes when eating noodles. They only eat with their right hand (“because the left hand is used for the toilet”). It is difficult for me to sop up sauce and rice in one hand gracefully so I ask for a fork (garfu) whenever I can. This invites strange looks, as even when they use silverware, Malaysians would use a spoon (sudu), not a fork, for rice. Knives are non-existent at the dining table. It is proper to take a drinking glass with your left (clean) hand, while eating.
Mealtimes are the following: anytime in the am for breakfast; late afternoon (around 2) for lunch (there is no noon rush at restaurants); early evening for tea-time; 6 or 7 for dinner; and 9 -11 for super.
The classic way to sample multiple Malay curries is to eat nasi campur, a buffet of various meat, fish, and vegetable sauces to top your helping of white rice.
There is no tipping at restaurants. Any fine-dining establishment will include a service charge in the bill.
Let’s just say: ‘thank god I’m not a vegetarian.’ You will not only get many confused looks, but Malaysians tend to resent vegetarians.
