I grew up eating the most popular Malaysian dishes. So I was so excited to go to Malaysia (Kota Kinabalu, Kuala Lumpur, and Sandakan) for my cousin’s wedding. The food was truly amazing! One of the simplest dishes to make is the rice dish, nasi lemak. It comes with some side dishes with the signature hot sauce, sambal with anchovies.
Kueh is one of my favourite Malaysian desserts. It is steamed, mildly flavoured, soft, chewy, and slightly sticky. Here is a recipe for a 7, 8, or 9 layer (your choice), 2 colour kueh. The main flavours to this kueh are coconut and pandan.
When I traveled to Malaysia in May 2013, I tried many new foods in Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan, and Kuala Lumpur. One of my top three favourite things was sabah vegetable. The stems of this leafy green vegetable have, in my opinion, the perfect crispy and crunchy texture. To my knowledge, Sabah, Malaysia does not export this local vegetable, so be sure to look for it in restaurants the next time you’re in Sabah, Malaysia. I tried it stir fried with sambal belacan.
Note that the noodles should be a bit darker in colour. I didn’t have dark soy sauce at the time.
Char kway teow is a stir fried, flat rice noodle dish. I’ve now had delicious char kway teow in Brunei and Malaysia. My favourite is Penang style. This recipe is a recreation of my preferred version of Penang style char kway teow.
I am in love with Hong Kong style milk tea (see recipe here), and on a trip to Malaysia, I discovered that I love Malaysian pulled tea, teh tarik, just as much. The delicious teh tarik, which means “pull” tea, is made using sweetened creamer. Some people add evaporated milk as well. What sets teh tarik apart from other teas is the process of pouring the prepared tea back and forth between two containers until the tea tastes and feels smooth, silky, and light in weight. Apparently, you’re also supposed to develop a good froth. The further the distance between your two containers while you’re pouring the tea back and forth, the better your tea will be. Be careful not to get splattered by the hot tea, and wear clothes that you don’t care about, because the tea stains are hard to wash out.
Outside of Malaysia, it can be difficult to find the best tea leaves for making teh tarik. But luckily, I have been surprised by how good some of the instant teh tarik powders are. The brand Boh is very popular in Malaysia and is quite good. My favourite is Aroma Ipoh’s instant ginger milk tea. I found it in a Chinese grocery store in Toronto, ON.
I traveled to Malaysia for the first time in May 2013. It was an amazing food experience and I am excited to share what I learned about Malaysian cuisine with you. The best part of the trip was watching my dad enjoy nostalgic food from his childhood. While souvenir shopping in a Malaysian grocery store, my dad spotted a bottle of cincalok and told me that when he was a child, his family’s servants would toss nets into the ocean during shrimp season to catch tiny shrimp for his mom to make cincalok from scratch. After hearing that story, I had to bring some home.
Malaysian cincalok
Cooking with Alison 