Archive for the 'Food and Drink' Category

When I was growing up in Malaysia, we always had tasty, spicy, aromatic food. Day in, day out. Garlic. Chilli. Turmeric. And for fruit we always had delicious, flavour-ful mangoes, papayas, rambutans, starfruits. Dripping and juicy with taste. So far so ho-hum.

What we craved was really exotic and exciting foreign food, dishes that were really difficult to achieve in the humid tropical heat. Tastes that involved dairy and foodstuffs that would go off in the rank mugginess. Fruits that were from a cooler climate.

Like lemon meringue pie. Specifically, the home-made lemon meringue pie made by Koo-cheh, my little aunt. She was my father’s youngest aunt and came to live with us with my grandmother when my grandfather died. Kooch was only ten years older than me and she was my favourite aunt. The family called her Mary Poppins as she could always be relied on to keep an eye on us kids.

Making lemon meringue pie in a hot sticky kitchen in the tropics is no joke. It was hugely labour intensive because you had to make each of the three components from scratch. Once a year, for a special occasion, Kooch would spend a whole day in the furnace to make this exquisite dessert. She would make the shortcrust pastry base and bake it blind, with a layer of grease-proffo paper and dried beans to weight down the rising crust. Then she would make the lemon filling, grating the rind of two lemons and boiling it up in their juices, adding sugar and egg yolks and cornflour. She would fill the cooked pastry base with the gluey liquid and let it set.

Finally, she would beat the egg whites with sugar to form a thick, mountainous white fluff that she spooned over the whole lot and the pie would go into the oven to brown the meringue. Later, it would cool on the counter, protected from flies by a half-domed basket and then go into the fridge.

That evening, we would all be abuzz, my parents, grandmother and us kids, saving space for dessert. She would finally bring out the pie and and slice into the soft cloud of meringue, cut down into the rich yellow of the lemon and at last, into the crumbly crustiness of the base. No shop bought lemon meringue pie has ever compared to this home-made tangy, fresh taste blended with the bubbly yet crunchy yet chewy foam of meringue and the bland buttery taste of the baste, all cool and fresh on our palates.

We would regularly beg Kooch to make the pie but she would refuse. When I thnk back on it, she would have been around 17 or 18 and with better things to do than spend hot days cooking for her greedy family. We were lucky she made it for us once a year! But, this reluctance made her a legend in the family at that young age, like a five-star Michelin chef who would only occasionally deign to make her signature dish - and then only when the whim struck her.

Kooch now lives in Canada with her own kids who are around 17 or 18. I have the old Penguin Cookbook of hers, the pages brown and fragile and falling apart. I’ve made lemon meringue pice form there and it always, consistently tastes just as good as if we were tasting it for the first time. This is partly because I’ve only ever made it once every 8 years or more - it is that labour intensive. Or perhaps I’m that lazy…

Still, no matter if I make it or anyone else does, to my family and me, it will always be known as Kooch’s lemon meringue pie.

This Guest Blog is part of the series of Fusion Stories. For more about the Fusion Stories series, go to the Category called Fusion Stories in the sidebar on the far right.

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Photo: Azman (left) and Ian (right).

Ian writes:

What would a British born Chinese know about Malaysian food? Very little it would seem, and that was certainly the case before I met my wife, who’s Malaysian Chinese. I’ve always been passionate about food (a little too passionate, my GP tells me) but Malaysians are even more so and it’s not surprising since their cuisine is simply sublime, with a wide range of tastes that reflects the melting pot of cultures in Malaysia.

On our trip to Kuala Lumpur last December, which is always a culinary delight, I tried some buns made by my wife’s aunts (4 sweet little old ladies who are fiendish in the kitchen). The buns had a savoury chicken filling, while the bread was of the softest, fluffiest texture. I asked the aunts to teach me their secret recipe for the buns, which they did, and so, armed with the recipe, we went back to London and tried it for ourselves.

Our bun making was quite a success, but we found that each time we made them, we couldn’t finish eating all the buns (12 in a batch) ourselves, so I thought, why not sell them? I used to frequent a Malaysian stall at Leadenhall Market run by a Malaysian couple, Azman and Naza. They do the most delicious nasi lemak and curry puffs. I had become familiar with Azman and thought that I would ask if he would let me sell the buns at his stall. I was really pleasantly surprised when he said yes.

I started off with a few chicken buns and gradually experimented with other fillings. I’ve now ended up with four different fillings, including sambal ikan bilis, which is typically Malaysian.

Market days are Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. The buns are prepared beforehand (it takes about 3 hours to make a batch) and are baked in the morning. This is sometimes a frenzied affair if the buns don’t turn out for one reason or another and I have to keep baking until I have the requisite number of pretty looking marketable buns. I suppose I’m a bit of a perfectionist in that way! We typically set up the stall at about 11am when Azman trundles up in his 4×4 laden with food and apparatus. Azman’s offerings include rendang wraps, murtabak, bagedils, spring rolls, kuih bakar, cucur udang, nasi lemak, curry puffs and mee goreng. Everything is home cooked by Azman and Naza and is made from family recipes.

It doesn’t get busy at the stall until about 12pm, so we pass our time chatting with the other stall holders. There’s Annie and her aunt who sell cool ethnic jewellery, Borza who sells delectable olives, and Stuart who sells home made fudge, to name a few. The atmosphere at the market is great– all the stall holders are friendly and we help one another out, covering each other’s stalls when needed. Azman and I sometimes find ourselves waffling about the finer points of olives or the current jewellery trend!

Things start to pick up at the stall at about 12pm and continue up to about 2pm. Traffic at the stall is dependant on the weather (a big factor), what day it is (Fridays are good) and also the time of month (end of the month is best). We have our regulars, who come nearly every day. It’s a great feeling to know that people really enjoy our food! Although we have quite a number of Malaysian and Singaporean customers, they don’t make up the majority, which shows how cosmopolitan London is. Some of our customers also ask us to source items of Asian/Oriental food for them, which we are happy to do.

On a good day, we sell out everything at the stall and on a bad day, we have leftover food for dinner (great for my wife)! Our day at the stall typically ends with one of the stall holders buying a round of coffee while we compare notes on how well we did.

Work doesn’t end there though, as Azman and I dash back to our respective homes to prepare food for the next day if it’s a market day. For me, that involves preparing and making the buns from the time I get home up to about dinner time. On non-market days, I cook the fillings for the buns, which is a time consuming affair. Our kitchen now looks permanently like a war zone, with ingredients and kitchen implements taking up most of the room, much to my wife’s chagrin. We also try and experiment with new recipes, and one that we’ve just introduced is a chicken sambal puff. We try to keep things interesting for our customers!

We sometimes set up stalls at various festivals in London. You may see us at the South Bank festival later this year. We are also in the process of applying to set up stalls at various other markets in London, including Borough Market, so that we can share a taste of Malaysian food with more Londoners.

It’s hard work and tiring, but really satisfying to see people buying our home made food and giving us encouraging feedback. It’s also a nice change not to be at a desk job with a lunatic boss. One of the perks of the job, of course, is the constant supply of Malaysian food! Now, who can say no to that?

Written by Fusion View Guest Blogger: Ian Lee

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To find out how you can contribute your cross-cultural story to the Fusion Stories Series, go to my post “Tell Us Your Fusion Story” in the Announcements section of the middle sidebar on the Fusion View homepage.

I’ve been working on a memoir tentatively called Bound Feet Blues for a while now. There is a lot of material and it’s a fairly major task, which I was finding quite daunting. I took a break to experiment with blogging and over the last few months, Fusion View has evolved into this multi-media site that has got me writing and podcasting regularly in between my day job and other commitments. My friends have asked me if the blog is really a distraction technique to give me an excuse not to be getting on with writing the next book. To some extent, i think they may be right! But something exciting has come out of it for the memoir.

I had been struggling for some time now to find my personal narrative voice. The Flame Tree and Mindgame were both thrillers and I wrote those in the particular narrative voice that seems to be required of thrillers. That voice has a terseness and urgency about it. It’s all about verbs and action. Short staccato sentences. Direct, punchy descriptions. I remember being asked by my editor to take out huge chunks of philosophical discussion about the nature of personal freedom and individual choice in Mindgame and essentially, to “cut to the chase”. There are lots of breathless chases in that novel and I had hoped to squeeze in more on the deeper issues that underpin the storyline - but, nope, they had to go, sacrificed to the gods of plot and pace!

So over the past few years, it’s been an interesting struggle, learning to allow myself to take more time over the contemplative passages in my writing. I’ve worked on a couple of novels in the last few years since Mindgame that have been more personal but I’ve not been able to move beyond the first few chapters. The narrative voice is flat and the pacing is uneven. Or, it can’t decide whether it’s inside a thriller or a Henry James novel. I’ve also had difficulty with plotting - in the thrillers, something dramatic happens every few pages and you are pulled along, gasping for breath. I was not used to writing pages and pages where nothing externally dramatic happens (no car chases, no men with guns leaping through the window). It felt scary, taking my time in exploring and inhabiting the emotions and psychological drama within my characters.

What writing this blog has done for my writing style is to enable my own personal voice to come through. In writing these short posts about my family or recipes or what’s been happening in my week, I am learning to speak as me. This is not the voice of the omnipresent, omniscient narrator of the thrillers, nor is it the measured, self-conscious voice of a literary auteur. It’s just me, telling a story, plain and simple. And by speaking like this in my posts every day for the last few months, it’s become natural and comfortable - and not at all scary.

I’ve split the memoir into two books, Bound Feet Blues being the second volume. I am now working on the first part, which I’ve called Iced Tea and Laksa. This weekend, I’ve just finished Chapter One, which weighs in at just over 5600 words. It’ll need some work and editing but that will come later when I have more of the finished book so I can see how it all hangs together. Laksa, for those of you who have not yet discovered this dish, is a Malaysian speciality of noodles in a red curry and coconut soup, served with chicken, bean sprouts and fried tofu. You slurp it with chopsticks and a Chinese L-shaped soup spoon, preferably at a roadside or market stall in the sweltering tropical heat. Do not wear a white shirt!

 In Japan, the traditional geisha haunts where men go to be pampered and served by gentle, docile women gave way in the 21st century to "maid cafes" where waitresses dressed as Western-style maids served the men. Now, the women have turned the tables. Earlier this year, the Swallowtail Cafe opened in Tokyo, designed to look like an English country house and catering exclusively to women customers. The waiters are dressed as butlers and after a month long training programme, provide a subservient service to the 20- to 30-somethings who make up the majority of the female customers. The place is fully booked for months in advance.

Emiko Sakamaki is the 25 year old management consultant who created the concept for the coffeehouse. She represents the new generation of female geeks or "otaku" who love comics, video games and animation. She is quoted in The Japan Times (24 April 2006) as saying, "Women have no one to serve them. In a virtual reality environment (at the butler cafe), I think many women want to spend some time when they can feel relaxed, drinking tea elegantly, and want to have a sense of superiority."

You can find the full Japan Times article here
but you will have to register with them first (free but a hassle).

Alternatively, you can read another report at http://www.wordpress.tokyotimes.org/?p=821

Personally, I feel uncomfortable with playing out roles of subservience and dominance, even in a playful way like the Swallowtail cafe. In a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, beautiful girls in cheong sam - the traditional figure-hugging Chinese dress with a high slit down the side - serve cocktails to the guests and to place the drinks on the low table in an elegant manner, they have to kneel before you. I found that disturbing and rather took the taste of my cocktail away. I am not sure that reversing the roles to be served by subservient men actually sets the balance straight for me. Perhaps simplistically, I prefer a world based on mutual and equal respect.

Have you been to Tokyo and been to the Swallowtail Cafe or any other cafes like it? Why not drop us a line about your experience?

What do you think of this concept? Could we do with a cafe like this in London? Or in the city where you live? Add a comment and tell us what you think.

When I was a child in Malaysia, my father would sometimes take us to the Club for Sunday lunch. The Club was an old, low slung wooden building in central Kuala Lumpur, with a long verandah and cane easy chairs. It used to belong to the British, a cross between a gentlemen’s club and a cricket pavilion. You could sit on the verandah with your gin sling and watch the chaps on the padang (the green) in their cricket whites bowling and making runs. The Moorish-style court and government buildings stretched across the green, a backdrop to the game. To the left was the small white Anglican chapel, in the shade of the raintrees. For the British, it must have been home away from home, laid out like any Engligh village - the town hall, church and pub around a village green.

My father would take us to the dining room, where the doors opened out onto the verandah. I remember white table cloths and side plates and knives and forks. There would be curled pats of cold butter in a small plate, gathering dew in the heat. We got soft, white rolls to start. It was all very Western and strange. My mother showed us how to tear the rolls and smear on a dab of butter, keeping the side plate on the side at all times.

I always had Chicken a la King - dainty pieces of skinless chicken breast in a white sauce with red peppers, served with buttered rice. The waiter would come round with a two trayed dish, the rice in one hollow and the chicken in the other. He would painstakingly dish the rice onto my plate with a spoon and fork held in one hand and then painstakingly dish the creamy meat onto the rice. It seemed to me a very inefficent way to serve the meal - why didn’t they just put it all onto my plate in the kitchen and bring it out to me? Or, as the Chinese would do, plonk a bowl of rice and a bowl of chicken on the table and I could help myself?

They served Chicken a la King in two other ex-colonial places, the Golf Club and the Coq D’Or. My father didn’t play golf but we kids loved the huge swimming pools at the Golf Club. The Coq D’Or was in an old Chinese-style mansion and seemed to my childish eyes the height of smart back then in the ’sixties. These were the sorts of places where the waiters wore white jackets and people drank aperitifs and wine. So, Chicken a la King seemed to me the epitome of Englishness.

When I came to England later, no restaurants served Chicken a la King. No English person I met had ever heard of it. How could this be? I was mystified and felt cheated. How could England be England without Chicken a la King?

And then I met my partner. I was in my thirties by now. We were coming up to the end of the millenium and soon, London would be gearing up for its grand New Year celebrations. Angie is from South Africa and when I told her about our Sunday lunches at the old colonial club where Chicken a la King was my favourite meal, she cried, "My father used to take us to the club on Sundays as well. And they had Chicken a la King there!"

In damp, drizzly London we compared notes from our childhoods. There I was in the heavy, close heat of the tropics and there she was in the dry, dusty African heat, both sitting at linen-clad tables with doors that opened out onto the verandah. A Chinese or Malay waiter with caramel skin spooned my meal while a dark Indian spooned hers. Both wore white jackets. Out in the sun, thousands of miles a part, men in white played cricket. Her father had been a young Englishman from Blackpool who had gone out to Africa to find a new life in the colonies. There in Durban, he could belong to a club, own a big house, be someone. My father was just starting out as a lawyer in newly Independent Malaya. With the British gone, he now could belong to the club that had once excluded him, own a big house, be someone.

Angie is also the only other person I know in England who likes evaporated milk in her tea and coffee - and who has ever had canned peaches in evaporated milk. Tins of Carnation milk. They must have been stock supplies for the British out in their far flung colonies. In countries where dairy products are rare because of the heat, Carnation milk must have been for the British the taste of home. And our creamy favourite Chicken a la King was probably originally made with evaporated milk. It strikes me that my generation is probably the last that will remember the quirks of the Empire.

So, for future generations, here is the recipe for Chicken a la King (adapted for cooking in the UK):

1. Boil skinless chicken breasts until cooked. One breast per person.
2. Remove cooked breasts from water. Do not throw away the water - we will use it to cook the rice. Cut the breasts into small pieces eg one inch cubes.
3. Cook white rice as you would normally, using the stock from the boiled chicken instead of water. (If there’s not enough stock, top it up with water).
4. Fry chopped garlic and chopped red peppers in butter until soft. Remove from frying pan.
5. Pour a large pot of double cream into the frying pan and heat slowly. When it starts to bubble, simmer until the quantity has been reduced to about half the original volume.
6. Put the fried garlic, red peppers and cooked chicken pieces into the reduced cream. Add salt and pepper and a dash of sherry. Cook for a few minutes to let the flavours settle into each other.
7. When the rice is cooked, stir into it a knob of butter.
8. Serve the rice with the chicken. Singing "Rule Britannia" before tucking in is not obligatory.

pic from flickr by Kenneth Kiffer; non-commercial use only.

[View of the administrative building across the padang from the Club]

An English textbook is outselling The Da Vinci Code, according to the Times, London (15 May 2006). New Standard English has taken schools in China by storm, teaching English language and cultural habits, such as using a knife and fork instead of chopsticks. To the Chinese children, eating such implements is fascinating and exotic, as is pouring milk into tea.

It reminded me of how foreign and exotic England used to be to me. As a child in tropical Malaysia, I would listen to my parents’ stories of their university days in Cambridge and London. I watched The Avengers and The Saint avidly on TV. England, and London in the swinging sixties especially, seemed so glamourous and strange - and desirable.

My mother made it a point to make European meals every so often and show us how to eat them European style. We would go to European restaurants and learn how things were done. She would show us how to lay the table like they did in the West.

I’ve made a list of the habits she taught us in the heat of the tropics, preparing us for our exotic futures in cooler climates.

• When eating with a knife and fork, do not hold the knife like a pencil. The prongs of the fork should always face the plate except when you are finished. (I’ve still to work out how ou eat rice and peas that way. I see British people cheat and use the fork like a spoon so I do too!)
• Eat spaghettie with a fork and spoon, twirling the spaghetti onto the fork in your left hand. (What?! Surely, chopsticks make the most sense - especially as the Italians got spaghetti from Chinese noodles in the first place!)
• Eat cake with a fork but eat croissant by tearing it with your hands and buttering it with your knife. (I thought the English never picked up food with their hands at table. When I first arrived in England, I even saw someone frightfully smart eating a banana with a knife and fork! But then I guess croissants are French…)
• Use a spoon for soup, spooning outwards. Do not pick up the bowl and slurp the soup from the rim (which is perfectly acceptable by Chinese custom)
• Soup is a strange gluey thick gunge, not the thin consomme we know at home where we can pick out chunks of meat and vegetables.
• Your meal is served onto your plate and you each eat what’s on your own plate. Different meats are eaten linearly, not all at the same time laid out in communal bowls for you each to pick from.
• After dinner, you have cheese. (Oh my god, what is that hideous stench from that fungus-infested putrefying slab of… oh, it’s called stilton, is it?)

So, when I first came to school in England, I was not laughed at or humiliated when I sat down at a meal. I fitted in and that is everything when you are twelve…

pic from flickr by shanghai sky; non-commercial use only, no derivations

Not many people know this but I was born again once. It was during a difficult and troubled period in my 20s when I hoped that God might save me from myself. I fell in with some American evangelists based in West London - wholesome, clean cut and corn fed young men and women from the mid-West who all looked like they had stepped out of a Doris Day movie and might break into song and dance at any moment. They were great ads for cheerful, healthy living - and perhaps that was what drew me to them. They attributed it to the blessings of the Lord but it might just as easily have been a healthy diet, the love of their close-knit families and lots of fresh air and exercise.

So I hung out and enjoyed their community activities - or fellowship, to use the correct terminology - but, after awhile, I died again. However, a delight that still remains in my life from that period is Sunshine Tea. Anna (not her real name) was one of the lay leaders. Her role was to evangelise and mentor the young women who came to the church. She was wholesome and charming in that open prairie and "Oh, what a beautiful morning" way that only Americans can be. She talked to me about many spiritual things but the only thing I can remember is her recipe for Sunshine Tea.

In the summer, her Mom would put a jug of fresh water with two teabags out in the morning sun (and here, I’m picturing one of those white wooden houses with a porch and a swing). The sunlight would filter through the tea and after a couple of hours, Mom would put it in the fridge (presumably one of those giant ones with the ice machine in the front). And when the family came in throughout the day (okay, now it’s the Waltons running through the house in dungarees), there’d be iced tea without the scum on top if you had used hot water.

At that time, I lived in a flat in Central London and if I had put a jug out on the balcony, I would have got Carbon Monoxide Tea. So I skipped the sunshine part and put it straight in the fridge - and that works fine. I’ve also adapted it, using herbal teas instead of regular tea - strawberry or blackcurrant and vanilla work very well.

I still make Sunshine Tea now in the summer and it’s great after a long day out in the prairie working in the garden. Since I died again, I don’t go to church or sing happy clappy songs and I don’t call it praying but when I’m in my garden or walking in nature, I feel the tranquility of it all and that’s God enough for me.

Chef Melissa de Leon’s blog at http://www.panamagourmet.blogs.com/ - From Panama: Delicious Original Tropical Creations and Cooking Adventures by International Chef Melissa De Leon. She posts recipes and blogs about everything to do with food. A wonderful, mouth-watering experience!

(Melissa noticed my humble recipe for Grandma’s Soy Sauce chicken and blogged about it in a round up for Global Voices Onling at http://www.globalvoicesonline.org. Now the whole world knows about Grandma’s recipe!)

You come into the kitchen and find your boyfriend with a hairdryer blowing hot air up a dead duck.

Do you:

a) Back slowly out of the room and leave him to it - who are you to judge?

b) Grab your coat and leave, never to return

or

c) Pull out your box of sex toys from under the bed, gleefully crying, "Let’s play!"

I did none of the above but grabbed my camera instead. You never know when these pictures might come in useful…

It was my second year at Uni and Josh (not his real name) and I had been going out for almost a year. I was living in a shared house with 9 other girls from my college and back in those days, we liked to play at being grown up. A number of us and our men were throwing a dinner party and each couple had the responsibility for one of the courses. Josh and I had taken on the big job of the main course.

Josh and I had been great friends but this girlfriend-boyfriend thing did not really play to our strengths. The one strong bond we did have, though, was our love of food. I had brought a wok over from Malaysia and most weeks, I cooked curries and other Malaysian dishes involving lots of garlic and ginger. We had tropical dinner parties in the winter when I turned up the heating and made all my friends wear Hawaiian shirts or sarongs. We would eat nasi lemak on the floor, scooping the chillied prawns and coconut rice with our hands. In the days before many English people had heard of Thai green curry and chicken tikka massala, my Malaysian food was highly exotic.

And so it seemed was I. Josh took me home to meet his parents and family for his 21st birthday. At the party, his uncle made a speech about Josh’s love of travel and adventure and referred to me as "a dusky maiden" he had brought back - sort of like Christian Fletcher with a Tahitian girl over his shoulder.

So, the day of the big dinner party, it felt very exotic to me to have a man cook for me. Not just any man, but my man. It was the ’80s and the New Man was just emerging - I guess, from our generation, with guys like Josh. He was going to make Duck in Blackcurrant Sauce, which he had learnt from his mother. The key to making it crispy, he said, was to make sure that the skin was very dry - hence the hairdryer.

As it was the ’80s, we all changed for dinner, the men wearing formal black tie and dinner jackets and us girls in our loveliest cocktail dresses. It took me ages to clean the grease off the hairdryer and make sure none of it got in my hair or on my clothes! After all that effort, I am pleased to report that the duck was delicious and the dinner party as a huge success.

It didn’t work out between Josh and me and we lost touch for almost twenty years. Then one day, I was checking up on The Flame Tree listing on Amazon and he had posted a review on there. I emailed him: "Josh, is that you?" It turned out he is now a respectable banker in the City, about two buildings away from my office. We go out for lunch every so often and it feels right that we have become friends again.

I asked him about this recipe the other day and he said that he had not made it since that day. I had been making it ever since and every time I’ve made it I’ve thought of him.

So here is the recipe for Hairdryer Duck with Blackcurrant Sauce, adapted over time to my Eastern taste:
THE DUCK
1. Take one duck. Remove giblets from inside, cut off neck and parsons nose and any excess hanging bits of skin - save for making the sauce.
2. Place duck breast down on a baking tray in shallow water. Season with a dash of soy sauce (also adds a nice browning colour), pepper and mixed herbs.
3. Roast in oven at 180 degrees for 1 hour, then turn it and season breast side as above. Roast for another 1 hour.

THE SAUCE
4. Meanwhile, in a mug mix the following: a sachet of miso soup powder (much better than other powder stock); 3-4 generous teaspoonfuls of blackcurrant jam (raspberry or blackberry will do too); lots of soy sauce (I just shake it in until it looks right but let’s say, 5 or more tablespoons). I also add a teaspoon of Chinese chilli oil - it’s a shrimp based chilli oil that gives a good kick but if you don’t want it spicy you can leave it out. Now, mix up the whole lot in the mug with hot water to make a mugful of "soup".
5. Chop garlic (4 cloves) and in a medium pot fry the garlic for a minute or so in a mixture of butter (one generous knob) and olive oil (enough to coat the bottom of the pot).
6. Throw in the giblets and other bits and brown - about 30 seconds to a minute - stirring to get an even tan.
7. Pour in the mugful of "soup". Pour in a generous dose of red wine - quarter of a bottle should do it. Pour in a generous portion of port - up to you how much.
8. Bring to boil and then cover and let it simmer at a low heat. Simmer for 45 mins and then turn it off.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
9. When the duck is done, take it out of the oven and off the tray. Cut into portions as required.
10. Heat up the sauce. Take out the giblets and bits.
11. Serve with potatoes or rice. I find rice soaks up the sauce much better than potatoes.
12. I leave you to choose the greens to go with it but I like pak choi fried in garlic and a dash of soy sauce.
posted by: Yang-May Ooi

• The Evening Standard, a daily paper in London, reported on a list, just published, of the world’s best restaurants. The top 50 show a strong European and American bias, with a couple of entries from antipodean Australia and South Africa. There was only one entry each for Asia (India) and South America (Brazil). Among them are the fanciest restaurants that you see talked about in the society pages of the style and fashion magazines like Vogue etc.

• What? No mention of Malaysia where food is a passion for all of us? I have to ask, what do these fancy restaurant critics know!

• Now, let me tell you about the best restaurants on my list - where you get great food, never mind whether the surroundings are fancy or not or whether you get the top vintage of wine served with your meal. I’m talking about real food for real people who love real food.

• There are great places to eat in London but the ones I pine for, needless to say, are all in KL, Malaysia - except one.

• First of all, there used to be Imperial Room on the edge of Chinatown down a dark, narrow alleyway. They served the best dish in the whole world - eels stewed in thick dark soy sauce and garlic. My grandparents used to take us to its previous incarnation at a fancier location in the 1960s where Ah Lan was the head waitress. Then she took it over and ran it with her husband in its last location. Everyone in my extended family loved the food here and even though many of us now live in England, America, Australia and Canada, every time we went home to KL, we had to go to Ah Lan to eat eels. Tragically, Imperial Room isn’t there any more and I have been depressed ever since.

• Then, there’s Hakka Restaurant near my old school, Bukit Bintang Girls School, which does the best stewed belly pork with salted greens. You can sit outside in the open air and if it rains, they roll out the sliding roof. Again, plain surroundings with the emphasis on the food and being with your family.

• And Sakura on Imbi Road, which does a great laksa - whether lemak or Penang. Their chicken rice is also pretty good. Now, Sakura is a bit fancy because it has aircon and smoked glass in the front. But a little luxury now and then doesn’t necessarily spell disaster for the quality of the food!

• Near Sakura there’s a coffee shop that does amazing fried kway teow. I have no idea what the name is - but it’s on a corner and I know it when I see it. They only do kway teow at lunch time, it’s always crowded and the parking is hideous but we will always set off mid-morning and do whatever it takes to make sure we get there and get a table!

• As for places to eat in Taiping, my family’s home town, well, I could go on forever. But I will only mention one place today - my second cousin Meng-Huat and his wife Wee-Lee took us there one evening. It’s a small hut, really, under a big tree somewhere outside town near Air Kuning. It does the most delicious fresh seafood I have ever tasted. The fish and shellfish splash around in big tubs of water and you choose the one you want. Within minutes, it’s on your plate fried in ginger and spring onion and chilli.

• If you have an off-beat restaurant on your list that you’d like to tell me - and the other readers - about, why not add a comment to this post? It can be anywhere in the world - the only criteria is that it must not be the kind of place that turns up in guidebooks or official lists and it has absolutely got to serve great food!