Your Step-by-Step Guide To Malaysian Cuisine: parts two and three
Saturday, February 16th, 2008After Sugar Cane Special, here were the steps involved in yesterday’s lunchtime outing with Tennis S and Italian-German C, a woman who’s staying in the hotel, too.
First, food in a restaurant in Georgetown’s ‘Little India’, a fascinating area full of ramshackle shops and eateries and bright colours and Indian smells. We went for a famous banana leaf-style lunch (as opposed to a famous curry fish head), which goes something like this:
1. Place banana leaf on table.
2. Add rice:
3. Add dahl:
4. Add condiments and a piece of fried fish or mutton curry, according to degree of carnivoriousness:
5. Eat the following with your fingers (yes, fingers. Brick Lane Curry Nights will never be the same again):
6. Fold banana leaf to show that you’re done:
(Handily doubles up as a clutch bag.)
And for afters? Why, trying drinking a coconut!
Before:
During, part one:
During, part two:
During, part three:
After:
This is hard core coconut drinking, too. The coconut isn’t ripe - hence being green, as opposed to brown and hairy - and so the resulting liquid isn’t milk-like and coconut-tasting, but clear, and well, slightly sweet and nutty tasting. I can’t say I’m a huge fan, but still. At least now I’ve had coconut in more forms than a) a korma and b) a Bounty bar.
Oh, and look: there was a lovely man wearing a traditional Malaysian outfit in the exact same colour as a coconut. And he didn’t seem to be insulted by me making that observation, either:
