A Chinese gentleman pointed at my plate and uttered something in Bahasa Malay while I meddled with my fish. I was eating at a hawker’s market in the Puchong area in downtown Kuala Lumpur and the man assumed that I was skeptically examining whether the fish was raw or cooked. I was not. I am just a messy eater and the fish made me happy. I had just ordered ‘Asam fish Kembong’, a mackerel like whole fish in a sour chilly sauce, and ‘Prawn Mee’, prawn in a noodle broth with chicken. The broth in the latter dish was made with deshelled prawns and it tasted very fishy. There was also a side dish of a Malaysian petai beans with minced meat, dried shrimp, chilli, onions, belachan (fermented shrimp paste) and soy sauce.
Pardon the cliché, but Malaysia is indeed a hawker’s haven. If there is culinary indulgence to be found in street food stalls, it is to be found in Malaysia. KL’s Bukit Bintang, Damansara, China Town, Little India are all popular hawker havens but even if you stumble upon a food court in a mall by accident, you will find it full as people hunched over their plates slurping their broths and twisting their noodles with chopsticks.
So one day, I stumbled into Sungai Wang Plaza, one of the oldest malls in the KL city and the hawker’s food court located on the top floor. There I got the first taste of how varied Chinese vegetarian pay-as-you-eat-buffet can be. There were sautéed pumpkin, greens with tofu, whole aubergines slit and sautéed, okra sliced and stir fried. I piled my plate with food and washed it all down with cold Chinese tea.
In between my meals, I gorged on snacks comprising different forms of fish crackers called Lekor. I also went overboard on Pisang Goreng, fried banana, Kuih Bakul fried with tapioca and sweet potato stuck in the middle of the sticky Kuih Bakul and Kuih Bijan (deep fried sesame ball with a stuffing of peanuts and sugar).
The cultures and subcultures that exist in Malaysia have ensured a mindboggling variety of dishes. “Masakan Kampung—village cooking—has a lot of variety and each Malaysian state has its own traditional way of cooking,” says Yogendiran, a foodie and local who owns a catering startup called Makan Table. We visited the night market Pasar Malam where Malay dishes are sold. Rows and rows of food stalls sell Nasi Lemak, Nasi Kerabu, Nasi Dagang and varieties of sweet dishes somewhat inspired from Indian cooking—Puttu Piring, Puttu Mayam and Appam.
I tasted Nasi Lemak in the Petaling Jaya area at a corner shop, which serves great food according to urban legends. The slightly sweetish coconut milk rice was complemented by the Sambal Belachan spiked with spicy chilly. One rainy evening, I also saunterd into a famous epicurian place in Damansara Utama to eat the famous skewered meat along with the sidedish of peanut sauce and dried red chilly oil.
“In Malaysia, nobody goes hungry,” says Sapur Khan, a Penang local and cooking teacher. She is true. Penang’s hawker fare is so phenomenal that even Malaysians from various parts of the country flock to the island for their share of the gastronomic indulgence, which is also economical. Penang has its multi-ethnic community to thank for its food diversity. The influences of Chinese, Indian, Malay and the multi-racial communities, including Malay-Indians and Nyonya sect of Chinese in the cuisines, have created infusions of flavours that defy logical definitions of variety.
During my trip that lasted two weeks, I did not once repeat a dish. By the end of it, I was introduced to flavours that I did not know existed, combinations I could not assume was possible (like sweetened red beans, or Rajma if you will and parts of animals I did not think could be consumed).