Your Step-by-Step Guide To Malaysian Cuisine: parts two and three
After 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:
February 16th, 2008 at 7.29pm
Had that meaql in SIngapore - and it was delicious. And the coconut drink is very refreshing - it was a staple in Ghana. These trips do chnage your life, thoug perhaps not quite so much when you are staying in an International Hotel and experiencing Executive Life!
Seriously, I am glad you are getting more out of this now; these are chances one doesn’t get very often and they need to be seized with both hands and feet and every opportunity savoured. There will be stuff here to tell your children and grandchildren in the years ahead!
February 17th, 2008 at 12.58am
The addition of a little rum to the coconut milk before sucking up through the straw was a good tip I learnt in Colombia (where the blooming things were dropping from the trees on to our tent!).
Here are Hugh and Don (all the Canadians I know are called Don, or MacDonald) in action: http://www.flickr.com/photos/86338173@N00/316657873/in/set-72157594410111409/
February 17th, 2008 at 4.03pm
Andrew - yes indeed, this trip is proving to be quite life-changing - certainly life-enhancing - even while conducted in an Executive Hotel.
Rachel - how do you get the rum through the teeny tiny hole?
February 17th, 2008 at 5.16pm
Erm.
1. Obtain machete (Luckily H was walking around with one)
2. Obtain Hugh
3. Unite products of 1 and 2
4. Stab at coconut
5. Obtain corkscrew
6. Regain coconut
7. Twizzle around
8.
February 17th, 2008 at 5.19pm
sorry pressed wrong key!
Step 8 : Swear
9. Obtain Don the Canadian Chief of a Hospital and specialist ER physician and leave him to work it out beause he has a degree in Neuroscience and is also used to working under pressure.
Result - one enlarged teeny hole.