Malaysian Food

The diversity of the Malay traditional food is spread all over the coasts: on the west coast, the northern states are well known for their hot, spicy food, the central part by its rich gravy and the southern states by their thick and sour spicy sauces. The east coast states has a traditional food based on sweet dishes, but rich fare with glutinous rice.

It is good to know the Malaysian meals are cooked over ancient-styled oven or stove, stirred with traditional utensils, packed or served in tropical edible leaves, eaten using the hand. The basic ingredients are rice, coconut milk and oil. Other ingredients used are mainly rice, rice flour, glutinous rice and its flour, yam, tapioca, sago, sweet potato,molasses, palm sugar and the ubiquitous coconut, prepared in its many forms. And of course the local herbs and spices! Many, many types of them and they are used in large quantities. Good cooks are never afraid to use large amount of these spices.

Some reknown items are pulut inti (steamed glutinous rice with sweet coconut topping), boiled tapioca served with grated coconut, nasi lemak (rice cooked in coconut milk) and various sweet and savory dainty Malay cakes (kuih-muih), the fish crackers (keropok -- made with sago and fish, prawns or other seafood) are popular snacks. There are several types of keropok, the more common ones are dried before frying but keropok lekor which originates from the East Coast were boiled before frying.

The Malaysian dessers are based on fruits, bananas, coconut; crepe-like delights like "lempeng" are made with bananas, molasses and garnished with coconut shaving. Coconut leaves are weaved to make the case for ketupat (rice cakes). Tapioca are finely grated and used to make delicious sweet cakes which are baked in a tin over and under smoldering coconut husks.

If we refer to Malaysian drinks, tapai is fermented glutinous rice or tapioca, and the old ways of fermenting is used to make tapai and tuak. Tuak is a mild alcoholic drink made by "strengthening" the juice resulted when making the tapai. And do not forget "nira". Nira is made by collecting the nectar of coconut flowers. The nectar drips slowly into short bamboo tumblers tied around the the top of coconut trees. The drink is really, really sweet. By cooking nira slowly, it would turn into thick palm sugar.

And, of course, all the foods are eaten by hands, this is the ritual in Malaysia.