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Already many
centuries ago, Malaysia was on the spice route and still, many spices are
part of the daily cooking. In Malaysian
cooking, many different influences can be found, probably as many as
populations that have visited the country for long term trading or
invading.
One of the major likenesses is with the
Indonesian
kitchen; a soup like
soto ayam
may be found in both. A lot of recipes look Indian, others have a
similarity to Chinese. Roti canai is very popular for breakfast and
dinner, Roti canai could be Indian, it looks like a luxury version of
chapati or
the
Bangladeshi paratha. It is eaten with sugar for breakfast or with dahl
curry. For lunch, the meal is often served in a banana leaf, like in
Bali. The Nonya
cuisine (Nonya means woman in the Chinese Hokkien dialect but refers to
Malay women of high social standing, married to strait-Chinese businessmen five
centuries ago) is a combination of Malay and
Chinese cuisine.
Stir frying in the wok is common and many spices are used, and they are
processed using a pestle and mortar. Fish, cuttlefish and shrimps are part
of many dishes. A popular dish is
Laksa, noodles in spicy coconut soup, with prawn paste (belachan),
shrimp, lemon grass and chicken. Even though laksa means thousand(s),
which is supposed to be the number of ingredients of this soup, there is
no need to worry, there are many ingredients to it, but not so many, and
most of them are spices anyway.
After the 16th century, Portuguese, English and Dutch came to the island.
Especially the British in the 19th century encouraged Chinese to work in
the tin mines, leading to the further introduction and stabilization of
availability Chinese dishes in the Malaysian kitchen.
Even inside Malaysia, differences are found. For instance in
Sabah,
Borneo, apart from the mentioned Chinese and Indian inhabitants, there are
more than 30 indigenous ethnic groups, which all have their own
specific dishes. The largest group Kadazan Dusun, lives in mountains and
valley and is busy on rice paddies, and rice is the main staple food. In
other parts of the island, this may be corn or cassava. The Kadazan Dusun
also use many seeds and roots, and river fish, and little oil, as that was
not always available in the hard to reach interior of the island, so many
recipes are cooked or simmered.
The second largest group, the
Bajau, are originally a sea faring crowd and thus will have mostly fish on
the menu. As the island of Borneo is covered with a huge rain forest, the
menu is based on available ingredients, and you will find coconut juice,
lime juice and banana leaves in many of the recipes. The latter two
ingredients also help to increase shelf life of the food, as in the old
days a fridge was not available, and in remote areas still is not.
Therefore, also dried small fish (ikan bilis) and shrimp paste are very
popular ingredients. As not all
ingredients are always readily available everywhere, like for instance
indigenous vegetables like sayur manis, and fruits like jackfruit, I sometimes adapted
the recipes a little. Durians I have left out as well, even though they
are very popular in Sabah, not only for their non availability, but
also because most "Western" people hate the smell of this fruit. |
