(11 Aug 98) A Malaysian Journal: Our Daily Bread and Vinegar-La [ (C) Copyright 1998, D. Crocker, Brandenburg Consulting ] [ This is a continuing series of notes about our experiences living and ] [ working in Malaysia, during Jackie's 10-month Fullbright Fellowship to ] [ the Universiti Putra Malaysia, just outside Kuala Lumpur. ] [ Copies may be freely distributed, but must retain this preamble. ] [ Anyone wishing to be added to the distribution list, or removed from ] [ it, should send me a note. /Dave ] Doing the living has been getting in the way of doing the writing. On the other hand I always find it irritating to have people incessantly taking pictures and videos, rather than enjoying an event or the view. So perhaps you'll forgive the hiatus since the last note. Some of the living has been pretty distracting. We have finally resolved our transportation difficulties, by returning the very broken car we bought and renting a car for the duration. This is not the best solution in terms of money, but the hassles finally wore us out. There is a rumor that Malaysia is having economic problems. You could not prove it from our experiences. The shopping areas are still extremely busy, although we do see occasional store fronts that are empty. People selling cars seem unwilling to haggle very much. Even though their car is now worth far less than it was six months ago, they will not take a price that represents current value. Since we had brought into the country enough money to buy a car, we now have oodles of extra Ringgit. Based on a brief review of furniture stores, in Singapore, and reports of even better deals in Malaca, I suspect it will turn out to be just enough to cover such purchases for our California home. We shall see. But the real subject of this note is food. Much more fun to discuss. Being without transportation restricted our choices to campus food at the Universiti, most days. UPM cafeteria food is no better or worse than most I've eaten in the U.S. Right now, the situation is a bit worse than usual, however, because of a student "strike" against the cafeteria. That reduces the choices further. Still, it's not bad... and not inspiring. For lunch and dinner they always have rice, of course, with some sauteed green vegetables, fried fish, fried (or whatever) beef and chicken, usually with a curry. A curried potato dish is not uncommon and there is almost always boiled or hard-fried eggs. Stir-fried noodles (mee) are also on the menu most days. The green vegetable is often a naturally spicy item that we have taken to calling "green mustard". We saw this word reversal on a menu one day and decided we liked that name better than mustard greens. Even before I first arrived in Malaysia, Jackie had informed me that everyone there did, in fact, arrive at work bright an early, at 8 AM, but they then promptly go get breakfast. Mee is a common choice, as are some deep fried buns with assorted flavoured soy and sweet, chopped coconut fillings. My item favorite is a cold rice "jello" that is one layer of white and a second layer that is either bright green or brown. I'm sure the difference in color means something different in the ingredients, but they taste pretty much the same to me. That taste is mostly sweetness and rice. Almost as good as sweetness and light, I suppose. Just off campus is a shopping area in the common, local style: several rows of ground-floor store fronts, with two or three stories of apartments on top. The architecture around KL is often great fun. I don't know anything about architecture, but many of these buildings mix a tone of modernity with echoes of Asia or Arabia. One of the new hotels is filled with towers that look like minarets. Other buildings are based on very simple design, but with just enough of a twist to be interesting. We even enjoy a not-very-interesting building that had a heck of a strange paint job, and was appropriately named the Mint Hotel. We were both upset that it was recently painted over to a more bland peach color. There's still a small patch of green, probably to justify retaining the name. My guess is that they decided to make the place more respectable, for the Commonwealth Games in September. In contrast are these mind-numbingly boring shopping area buildings. I've seen some new ones that try to be visually interesting, and a few succeed, but the usual style is a concrete row structure with no design creativity, by the builders or the shop-keepers. It doesn't help that the area is usually pretty dirty and that drainage is with open trenches along the front of the building. You step over it to get onto the walk way in front of the stores. Stores are set in from the upper floors, so the walkway has a wide overhang. The trenches are a standard in Malaysia and I suspect they are to handle excess load during torrential rains. Still, I don't like how they look, never mind the danger of falling in. The group of buildings next to campus have, perhaps, 25-40 stores. It seems as if most of them do photocopying. It's really quite strange. Some of the storefronts are essentially empty, with bare walls and bare, concrete floors, but they have one copying machine in the center. And they seem to do pretty good business. There are some store-front, open air restaurants in the complex, as well as some free-standing "hawker" carts nearby. My first trip to the area was limited to hawker food that we watched get fried, so we knew it would be safe, if not heart-healthy. I was not at all comfortable with the open-air restaurants. They are buffet style and all the food is laid out and not piping hot. That, plus the less-than diligent sense of hygiene were more than my sheltered training could deal with. Over time I've gotten more comfortable choosing from such a buffet, though I suspect it's still risky. I guess familiarity does not always breed contempt, when one is seeking culinary variety. Ironically, I had to go back to Geneva to get an intestinal bug. Must have been the Swiss water... Much of Malay cuisine is similar to Indian food, with light or heavy curry sauces and simple baked or griddle-fried breads. The only "light" dish I've seen is vegetables, noodles and meat or seafood, cooked in one broth, to infuse extra flavor, and then placed in a bowl with other broth. Even this can be pretty hot, since they add chilis. But then, saying that is entirely redundant. The Malays add chili to everything. I'm quite fond of the local chili sauce -- and I saw a jar of it in Geneva labeled "Singpapore" hot sauce. It mixes hot, sweet and sour flavors and usually looks quite pretty, due to the bright red flecks of chili, set against a neutral, milky background. We are slowly developing a set of favorite, daily restaurants. After some hundreds of years of removing copper, tin, or whatever, Malaysia has places with square miles deeply gouged from the landscape. Near U.P.M. they have converted one to a shopping and resort area. With no apparent intent at irony, they call it The Mines. It includes a fascinating, large, enclosed shopping center, with four levels and a large canal running through it, including regular tour boats. The top floor has an ice skating rink(!), bowling alleys, and other assortments of entertainment. With the economic downturn, the center is not finished, but is still pretty impressive. As do most shopping centers, these days, there is a large "food court" area, as well as some restaurants. In order to counteract the Muslim concern about taboo (non-halal) food, one of the restaurants is called No-Pork Chinese Food. The food court is more interesting than those in the U.S. The Mines has a couple of U.S. fast food chains, but not in the main food court. You go through a turnstile to the left or right and are faced with a set of small counter areas, each offering a Malay or Chinese food specialty. Some are regional, such as from Penang, at the north end of Malaysia, on the west coast, and known for semiconductor manufacturing and tourism. Perhaps some of the "stalls" are Indian rather than Malay, but I doubt I could tell the difference. The area is quite clean and modern. Since Malays and Indians often eat with their hands, there are some hand-washing sinks out in the open, near the exit. At one of the neighborhood row shopping areas, on the other side of the large, beautiful campus mosque but too far to walk to, there is an absolutely wonderful open-air store-front restaurant with a tandoori oven. It's a 4-foot tall clay pumpkin out front and we watch them cook our bread. It is served with a lentil dipping sauce (dal) that is not as thick as we get in the States and has some different flavorings that I haven't figured out yet, but I like it more than the U.S. version, which ain't bad either. They also give you a creamy, red hot sauce. The people who work there seem amused by our presence. We usually also get the tandoori chicken, there. I love tandoori chicken, of course, since it is a barbecue. The Malaysian version was a surprise, since it is spicy hot. In the U.S. is most definitely is not. The Malays claim that it has been adjusted to local preferences, but an Indian recently told me that authentic Indian tandoori is supposed to be that way. At any rate, being a Muslim area, the requisite beer isn't available, so we get canned fruit drinks, like mango/orange. One of our hosts showed us a Chinese restaurant, in an area of shopping row-buildings across from the Mines and it has become a regular destination. The speciality is a paper-wrapped chicken in soy sauce that is messy but spectacular. The versions I've had in the U.S. were never worth the trouble. This one is. We usually also get some steamed greens with garlic. We keep trying to get it without the common Malaysian addition of tiny, dried shrimp, because the flavor is definitely in the realm of "acquired taste". I like it when it is used in moderation, but Jackie is seriously not fond of it. We've eaten once at a store-front restaurant called Mr. Mee. It is Thai and we had a popular, somewhat "grainy" soup, called Tom Yam, that was too spicy to eat. We cut it in half with a milder chicken broth and it was fabulous. The logo for the restaurant has the two M's in the name done exactly like golden arches from McDonalds. Trademark controls in Malaysia seem to be less forceful than in the States. The other popular bread, roti canai, is very oily and cooked on a flat griddle. Before they start to cook it, they do a version of the pizza spin, in the air. While cooking it tends to puff up in places and just before it is taken off the griddle, the chef hits it with his hand to remove the air pockets. Very dramatic. It's served with the usual dal and hot sauces. Scrumptous. Whilst most of the food, even in the cafeteria, is pretty darn flavorful, we've noticed that the Malay restaurants -- as opposed to the Chinese ones -- tend to overcook the meat seriously, especially beef and fish. I've pretty much given up on beef dishes, although Jackie continues to like the curried Beef Rendang for breakfast, when she can get it. Chicken seems to hold up a bit better. Since the cuisine is otherwise wonderful, this puzzled us. Recently we were told that Muslims are not allowed to eat blood. So they cook the meet until the blood is gone. Our informant explained that it was like the prohibition against drinking wine, yet Muslims are allowed to use vinegar, which is wine at a later stage. The idea of meat going through "stages" has struck us as great fun, so we now refer to seriously over-cooked animal items as beef vinegar, fish vinegar, etc. Oh, and the little suffix at the end of the title line, above, is used freely in common Malay speech. It is not simply a placeholder, the way we use "uhhh" or "you know". There was an entire chapter about it in the book Malaysian Flavours. Unfortunately the author mostly said that it was used a lot and was distinctly Malaysian, but you could not just throw it into your speech randomly and she could not explain what the rules were. In fact, I think it is a result of the Chinese influence, since they seem to have a similar "construct". I guessed that it was used to increase emphasis. We've discussed it with some locals and the best explanation seems to be just the opposite, that it is used to lighten things a bit, to reduce the possible impact of a statement. I've noticed that it is used in my presence only when folks get more casual and comfortable. Their speech also a little sing-songy, a bit like the patois of latins in the States, but not as exaggerated as shown on TV or in films. Still, I can't tell exactly why it's used. Sometimes it seems to highlight a statement more and other times I can believe it reduces the tone. Then again, the highlighting seems to be when there is joking going on. Back on the food front, Jackie assumed pretty reasonably that our time in Malaysia would not be marked with interesting experiences eating European/American breads or pastry. In Viet Nam, the French background might have set a different expectation, but Malaysia had British culinary influence. I don't care how much some of our friends claim that Brits make good food, the history of their efforts has been nothing to write home about or make a conquered country proud. So we have been delighted to come across tasty breads and desserts pretty frequently. At a moderately fancy hotel buffet dinner, out in an area southwest of KL called Shah Alam, the array of little dessert items was actually interesting. First time a buffet like, anywhere, seemed worth the effort to me. Even Jackie's more discriminating palate enjoyed a number of the items. Coffee, on the other hand, is a disaster. In spite of the proximity to Java, Malaysians mostly drinks disgusting, instant Nescafe, even in good restaurants. We finally located some decent ground coffee -- there is, of course, a Starbucks in KL, but we get acceptable grounds closer to home -- but drinking when we are out is almost always disappointing, so tea is more often the choice. Sometimes the horrid coffee is offset by the Malaysian favorite addition of condensed milk. In Kota Kinabalu, on Borneo Malayisa, I came across some signs touting local "Tenom" coffee. Tenom is inland in the state and has a small coffee-growing industry. The pre-ground version is loaded with a sweetener, called gula, and believe it or not, with margarine. Alas, this is a Malaysian norm. I had some unadulterated Tenom coffee while I was there and it was pretty good, but the care-package I was given to take home was of the mixture. They also have some local tea that was quite tasty; good flavor and no bitterness. Prices for food are embarrassing. A typical meal at the school cafeteria, hawker stand or low-end restaurants is about US$ 1.00 per person. The nan-and-tandoori-chicken place goes up to $2.00. A nicer place kicks it to $4.00. A fancy place, with an all-you-can-eat buffet is around $8. A few weeks ago, the vice chancellor of UPM spontaneously invited us to a Friday night dinner at the Lake Club. The Club was started by the British about 150 years ago and is quite fancy. The dinner included the High Commissioner (ambassador) from India, and a physicist who heads a number of U.N. committees. There were fourteen of us at the meal and the staff kept bringing one incredible Chinese dish after another. It was a truly stellar meal. We ate until we had trouble walking. The bill was about US$ 125. In spite of having been "in-country" for only a short time, I've found that Malaysia already embedded some strong expectations. Our neighbor told us of Country Heights, a yuppie-ish Chinese/Malay restaurant not very far from campus. It is located within a walled, very upscale community, far the best housing we've seen in the area. The restaurant is attached to a small, but interesting grocery and sundries store. Videos, electrical adapters, European and American foods, along with Malay. The restaurant food is quite good. So is the service. We like going there. The problem is with the decor. It has some. Worse, the place is fully enclosed, air conditioned, quite clean and has coverings for the tables. In other words, when I eat there I don't feel like I'm in Malaysia. d/ _________________________________________________________________________ Dave CROCKER Tel: +1 408 246 8253 BRANDENBURG CONSULTING Tel: +60 19 3299 445 675 Spruce Drive P. O. Box 296, UPM Sunnyvale, CA 94086 www.brandenburg.com Serdang, Selangor 43400 United States Fax: +1 408 273 6464 Malaysia