I guess the Malaysian Chinese celebrate the lunar new year, but how about the Malays and Indians? What are the new year food? @klyeoh and everybody that has the knowledge, can you throw some light on this? Thanks in advance.
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I think because Malaysia is such a mixed pot of cultures, the Malays and Indians also celebrate Chinese New Year to an extent. Everyone gets days off from work, so it becomes a time for everyone to spend with their family and friends.
My grandmother always used to make pineapple tarts for 2 holidays – Chinese New Year and Deepavali/Diwali. She said pineapple was supposed to bring good fortune and luck.
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How do they look like? Did an online search, but they are in all different forms.
They would be similar to these. My mom made them a couple times using my grandmother’s recipe and they were good, but just not the same! I think I’ll bring her tart press over and give it a try…
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Cross posted on the WFD thread…
Last night’s dinner was Malaysian style Indian. 
Yellow dal with green chillies, onion, and curry leaves, luncheon meat stirfried with curry leaves, green chillies, turmeric, and dark soy sauce, fried bitter melon salad with lemon and onion, and papad. All served with white rice.
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Tried making some char kuey teow using this recipe, minus the bloody cockles. Came out ok but I think I need to work on my stir frying skills.
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Looks good! I also skip the cockles – I’m not a fan. I always ask for them to omit them when I’m ordering CKT at a stall/shop. Sometimes they ask me 2-3 times if I’m sure I don’t want them!
I’ve been wanting to make CKT for a few days now but haven’t had time. Maybe this week if I get a chance!
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UI think that is chaw fen ( not sure of the spelling as different dialects pronounce it differently) It is a difficult dish to master. It looks good.
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Upcoming - gado-gado, followed by beef rendang & rice.
Both recipes from Ping Coombes book “Malaysia - recipes from a family kitchen”. Although not slavishly followed - e.g. I bought a peanut sauce from the supermarket for the starter, rather than making from scratch
Dessert, FWIW, are from the French patisserie a few minutes drive away (and which recently won the “best producer” award in my Sunday newspaper’s competition. Absolutely nothing Malaysian about them, although there is a use of lychee as a flavouring in the entremet.
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I made curry me, a few days ago. I had to compromise on some of the ingredients but have since been to the Chinese supermarket so will remake and post a recipe.
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One of my favourite dishes in my time in Malaysia was wantan mee. Usually all the ingredients are are in the one bowl in the soup. I preferred it dry, that this the wantans and soup on the side and the noodles and pork separate. Also often the char siu is quite thin, except in Kuala Lumpur where it was always quite chunky. So I made my version of a dry KL wantan mee.
For the soup I sweated off one bashed roughly chopped stalk of lemon grass and ginger. Added a star anise and some pre soaked wood ear mushrooms. I added 2 litres of chicken stock and through in an inch square piece of belly pork and some cabbage leaves .I simmered for 1 hour ( I took the star anise out after half an our as it was becoming over powering. I seasoned with fish sauce. I strained the soup. Before serving I reheated the soup adding shredded cabbage and frozen pork wantans. The result was tasty but too dark and heavily flavoured. For wantan mee something lighter and more delicate was needed. It tasted more like bak kut teh, I still have some in the freezer so it will come in handy for that,
The pork and noodles were more successful and tasted fairly close to those I’ve had. I diced some belly pork and fried until the fat had rendered and crisped up. I then coated in a mix of honey and dark soy sauced and put in the oven at 180c for 25 mins. I took care to keep the rendered pork fat and keep it warm. Once the pork was done I served it over cooked fresh wantan noodles ( 1-2 mins boiling) ,having dressed the noodles with the pork fat , oyster sauce and dark soy sauce. I also added ppickled green chillis.
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Been busy the last couple days, but wanted to share our dinner from Saturday night. My mom was over and decided to cook Malaysian food for us. 
Dinner was coconut/pandan/ginger rice (aka nasi lemak rice), shrimp sambal, egg sambal (less spicy than the shrimp for my young nephews) and sodhi (indian style coconut gravy/soup) with cabbage and carrot. I made the sodhi and mom made the rice, eggs and shrimp. So good that we all took second helpings! Do you like my banana leaf plates? 
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Gorgeous meal and tableware!
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I’ve cooked a lot of Malaysian this week .
Monday was nasi lemak with lamb curry. I forgot the cucumber though.
Tuesday was pan mee.
Last night was nasi kukus ayam berempah. Very popular in Pahang on the East Coast of Malaysia. I ate it quite a lot as you can tell from this post. I used chicken wings rather than chicken feet to make the gravy, the missus drew the line after the chicken feet dim sum incident in Ipoh last year.
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OK. I gotta ask?
Delicious your meals! I would like to do some dishes, but had some psychological blockage in approaching MY cuisine. The difference between the MY version and the Chinese, Indian, Indonesian sometimes were very subtle and the lines were not very clear for me.
Do you have recommendations for books, sites / recipes for cooking?
TIA
It won’t be the same, the gelatine presents in the feet is not there in the wings.
We went to a dim sum place in Ipoh where you had to go up to a central station to pick your dim sum. The siu mai and har gow were easy to spot. I took a punt on some battered/breaded items. They looked similar to some mini pork ribs I’d had in Singapore. Turned out they were chicken feet. This followed hot on the heels of having such noodle soup in Penang with @klyeoh which had a surprising amount of pig offal in it.
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TBH I don’t use cookbooks all that much. I’ve been to a Malaysian cooking class where I learnt the curry and nasi lemak dish.
For the pan mee I checked a few internet recipes and the one that seemed right and closely matched the ingredients I had was the one I used.
Obviously I’ve eaten a lot of nasi kukus ayam berempah so I made an educated guess. I know Malaysian fried chicken is heavy on the turmeric so I used quite a lot in the paste and the version I liked most definitely had lemongrass in it so I put that plus fennel seeds in the paste. For the gravy I treated it as a curry/ gravy hybrid. I used Malaysian curry powder and also added star anise and a cinnamon stick. I will post a full recipe if you want.
It won’t be the same, the gelatine presents in the feet is not there in the wings.
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I thought about that but when I left the left overs gravy to cool it set like a jelly.
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*such noodle soup.
That should read duck noodle soup. Damn auto correct.
3 posts were merged into an existing topic: “Crispy” Chicken Rendang? Master Chef UK hosts got roasted.
