Malaysia is a crossroads of cultures.
It‘s influenced by China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, even Japan - and you‘ll find each represented at the table.
I was introduced to Malaysian food two years ago at Peninsula Malaysian Cuisine in Minneapolis. The restaurant was packed with students and professionals. Chinese noodles were served alongside curries and Indian bread. The scene was lively, brimming with people from all parts of the world, not just Asian transplants.
It seemed chef Robert Dahni, a restaurant consultant whose clients include P.F. Chang‘s, was right when he said the next ethnic cuisine to go mainstream would be Malaysian.
I had met Dahni a few months before at a culinary event in Houston, where he lectured on the foods of Southeast Asia. Dahni‘s job was to help restaurants tweak ethnic dishes to make them look and taste appealing to Americans. He was also responsible for gauging what diners wanted; there were four basic flavors, he said: hot, sour, sweet and spicy.
These were the elements that framed Southeast Asian cooking - contrasting, bold flavors that meld to create memorable and dramatic dishes.
Yet Malaysian restaurants have come and gone in this town. Few have lasted very long. If one opened, it seemed another closed. The cuisine struggled to find a following in Houston, where Asian cooking usually means Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese.
Then the tide turned. With two recent openings, the city now boasts four Malaysian restaurants. Judging from their packed dining rooms, they might hang around long enough for us to sample Malaysia‘s diverse pantry.
Sam Siew, who ran the now-closed Canton Seafood, grew up in Malaysia‘s largest city, Kuala Lumpur. Malays, Chinese and Indians call this oil-and-gas center home.
They‘re the major ethnic groups of Malaysia. They‘re equal in numbers and strength. So at family dinners, dishes from all three might be represented at the table," said the 30-something Siew, sitting in the 2-month-old Nyonya House in Sugar Land.
At Nyonya House, I felt as if I were hopscotching from one country to the next, sampling the multifaceted dishes.
Touches from neighboring countries were thrown in, such as Thailand‘s sweet-and-sour tom yum-inspired asam laksa noodle soup and Indonesia‘s grilled beef satay with peanut sauce.
The flavors were familiar, yet the exchange among cultures resulted in dishes uniquely Malaysian.
Take Nyonya House‘s steamed spring roll, poh piah. Using thin Chinese-style wrappers, the chef stuffs poh piah with white turnips, minced shrimp, fried onions and a potent, garlicky fermented soybean paste.
Almost all Malaysian menus offer Indian mee goreng, using Chinese egg noodles stir-fried with an Indian gravy of tomatoes, boiled potatoes and chiles.
Some food cultures have evolved over thousands of years, while others show more recent effects of colonization, such as Malaysia during the British occupation of the 1700s.
Indentured servants from China and southern India were brought over to Malaysia to work the spice, tea and rubber plantations.
In one sitting, Siew and I ate our way across the continent.
We started with roti canai, a flaky Indian-style bread dipped into a chicken-based curry, a favorite Malaysian street food. The bread is outwardly simple, yet multiple kneadings create a delicate, multilayered texture.
Siew said his great-great-grandfather left Canton, China, for Malaysia in search of better opportunities. He became a spice and coffee trader.
Like the Indians, the Chinese assimilated by marrying the locals from this tropical peninsula in the South China Sea.
"Nyonya means Malaysian-born Chinese," Siew says. "I‘m Nyonya."
On the menu, Nyonya indicates a dish of Chinese origin, such as Nyonya‘s seafood rice noodles, a stir-fry with spicy soy sauce, shrimp, squid and scallops.
A favorite Nyonya dish is prawn mee, a frilly seafood soup with egg noodles in a chile-infused broth, simmered overnight for maximum shrimp flavor.
"Malaysian cooking is all about sauces and broths," Siew says. "It‘s also about balance. No one flavor or spice should dominate."
Nyonya House‘s asam laksa is laced with spicy chiles and sweet-and-sour tamarind. Rich with sardines, the noodle soup contains a dash of fresh mint to lighten the brininess. While forgoing traditional mackerel, owner William Khor adeptly balances spicy with salty and sweet with sour.
That wasn‘t the case at Cafe Malay, however, where some dishes underwhelmed with their lack of seasoning — or, in the case of the asam laksa, too much tamarind. This national soup was dragged down by sourness.
The heart and soul of many stir-fry dishes is the reddish-brown, fermented dried shrimp paste called belacan. Each family has its recipe.
The version at Kuala Lumpur Malaysian Restaurant is vividly flavorful, sautéed with crunchy kangkung, or water spinach.
"It‘s a customer favorite, said owner Foo Cheong‘s daughter, Yoke Cheong.
Opened for a month, Malay Bistro already has a large fan base, which comes for the nearly faultless grilled satays, beef rendang and puffy roti canai. The fan club mostly consists of "soupies."
Co-owner Peggy Tan steeps a soothing soup, called bah kut teh, using pork bones and Chinese herbs. It‘s an acquired taste — earthy and medicinal — that lingers memorably.
After a couple of sips, the medicinal element fades into the background, leaving a rich, mildly sweet broth with a long finish. Its name translates as "pork bone tea."
Some restaurants in Malaysia specialize in this herbal soup.
Tan‘s husband, Michael, opened the first Malaysian restaurant in Houston, the late Malaysian Restaurant on Harwin. He followed it up with Cafe Malay, then sold before opening Malay Bistro, a worthy showcase for Malaysian food.
The beautiful, understated décor of Malay Bistro shimmers with sheer bronze curtains, separating three private rooms from the spacious dining room.
Filled with families, tables are weighed down with juicy Hainan steamed chicken, seafood clay pot, beef rendang and grilled flounder in banana leaf.
"The food here is pretty authentic," says regular Cressida Goh. "But for some reason, Malaysian restaurants always close down. I hope this one will stick around; there are so many dishes to explore."
Source: www.chron.com (25 Agustus 2007)