Malaysian cuisine with Anis Nabilah

and her recipe for masak lemak daging salai

What food did you grow up eating?
“We have northern Indian/Pakistani influences in our family so I grew up with many curries, to such an extent that I didn’t want to eat a single curry again when I went to culinary school. You explore all these new ingredients, flavours and cuisines in culinary school, so my focus really shifted for a while, but I’ve turned back around; I really appreciate the curries again now.

“The curries I grew up with were not Indian or Pakistani style but a Malaysian adaptation. Every family has their own curry paste or spice blend and my family does too. Apart from common ingredients like garlic, ginger and onion, we use candlenuts [a waxy nut] and this thing that’s banned in certain countries called kas-kas [polished poppy seeds, banned in some countries as they’re derived from the opium plant].

“My late grandmother made the curry paste using a batu giling, which means something like ‘rolling stone’ in Malay. It’s a curved slab and rolling pin made of stone. You put all the ingredients on the slab and crush it with the pin. Not many people use it today, and when I tried the shallots flew everywhere. Using a mortar and pestle or mixer doesn’t give the same texture. I’m sad I cannot reproduce it!”

What made you want to become a chef?
“In the beginning I didn’t want to, because it wasn’t something people thought highly of. If you fail at everything else, you can always become a tugang masak [a cook]. I wanted to study law instead, but my mother said: why don’t you do something you love – cooking, for example? But I thought I didn’t want to grow old in the kitchen. Cooking was therapeutic for me and I didn’t want it to be my job instead. My mum said: do you know how many people hate their job? You’d be lucky to have your hobby as your job! I went to culinary school and fell in love with it already in the first week. I started cooking when I was nine, but actually learning about it is so different. You learn all the French terms, all the techniques, and I realised I could fuse my new knowledge with the culinary heritage of my family.”

Good choice! What inspires you?
“I think that my travels contributed to my creative side, but I also feel blessed living in Malaysia where I can be inspired by so many different cultures and ethnicities. We are no longer segregated; everything is a mix. There’s not just the Chinese cuisine, Malay cuisine, Indian cuisine – everything is connected now, and everyone eats everything. You can still find the authentic foods but the things people make, buy or enjoy are a lot more diverse. That plays a part when I create recipes too.

“A recent dish that I was really happy with was a (I hate the word) fusion dish. I call it murtabak lasagne. Murtabak is a street food here in Malaysia, made using roti canai [a flaky flatbread]. The dough is stuffed with beaten eggs, spiced minced meat, chilli and onions. I created my own version of that dish using lasagne skins instead of the roti, and added cream and cheese to make it lasagne-like. It’s so good!”

What about non-fusion dishes, could you highlight a dish you love?
“Rendang! [Meat, usually beef, stewed in coconut milk.] Some might argue it’s an Indonesian dish, and we’ll probably never truly know, but we’ve got many variations of rendang in Malaysia as well. It takes ages to make and has a hundred ingredients, but it’s super delicious. Some versions are really dry, others are saucier; some are spicier. But the one my mum makes is my favourite.

“She uses a lot of fresh ingredients. Onions, shallots, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, galangal. She then simmers the beef and flavourings together with the coconut milk, palm sugar, dried chilli paste and fresh chillies for 24 hours until it’s super tender. You can just cut the meat with a fork and it melts in your mouth.”

That sounds delicious! Which Malaysian ingredients do you hold dearest?
“There are so many, but I think I’d pick chillies if I had to choose. We’re not known for our chillies – the spiciest one we have here comes from Thailand, but we do use chillies in almost all of our dishes. For most dishes, we use dried chillies. They’re actually rather tricky to use.

“There’s a specific way to cook the dried chillies: you rehydrate them with a bit of water, then sauté in oil until all the water has evaporated. If you don’t do that, your chilli paste gets bitter. The sautéing is done when you see the oil separate from the chilli paste, and this takes different amounts of time for different chillies. In Malaysia, we always say: when you cook your curry or spice mix, make sure to sauté it properly to ensure it has the best taste. You see on western channels that they throw everything in a crock-pot and make a curry. I’m not sure that actually is curry unless it’s sauteed properly.”

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Are there many Malaysian ingredients that are difficult to get outside of Malaysia?
“Belacan is an example, it’s our shrimp paste. They’ve got shrimp paste in Thailand, but it’s very different to ours. The one in Thailand is white, whereas ours is a super dark block of smelliness. Cincalok is another example, it’s a condiment made of fermented krill [small shrimps]. You don’t actually eat it like that, you mix it with lime juice, chopped chillies and shallots that you have with your rice."

You talked about the different types of cuisines in Malaysia, but are there many regional differences too?
“Yes. Malaysia is divided in states and every state has a different traditional cuisine. If you go to Kelantan or Terengganu, close to Thailand, you’ll see many Thai influences such as the use of coconut, lemongrass and many aromatics that you’ll usually find in Thai cuisine.

“Penang in the northwest, on the other hand, was an important spice trading post where many Indians settled. The dishes there are heavily influenced by Indian cuisine, but even by Dutch and Portuguese cuisine because of the colonial history. Many states also have unique dishes, of which masak lemak daging salai from Negeri Sebilan is a great example.”