This hospitable country in Southeast Asia is open to tourists all year round thanks to its tropical climate. Here you can see everything: the ancient British settlements in Georgetown and the colonial Dutch architecture in Malacca, the metropolis of Kuala Lumpur with the world's tallest towers and mountain resorts. In a state where Hindus and Chinese have lived alongside the Malays for centuries, racial and religious prejudices are completely absent.
Lovers of trekking and mountaineering, lovers of wildlife and exoticism, divers come to Malaysia. Here you can relax on clean beaches and swim in the clear sea. In the country, you can buy amazing batik products, pewter and wood items of high quality and low prices. And also get acquainted with the interesting cuisine of this country, which has absorbed the traditions of all the peoples inhabiting it. What can you try in Malaysia?
Food in Malaysia
Malaysia's gastronomic diversity is due to its history and geography. All kinds of herbs and spices are used in Indian dishes. Chinese cuisine is more neutral, but the dishes are more difficult to prepare. Port cities received ships from India, China, and the Middle East. Traders brought not only goods, but also recipes from overseas chefs. The colonialists also contributed to the local cuisine, as did the neighboring countries - Thailand, Indonesia. All culinary borrowings influenced traditional recipes and at the same time they themselves changed, acquired an independent life. This multinational recipe fusion is called Malaysian cuisine.
A common product that unites all trends and directions of Malay cuisine is rice, in Malay, nasi. It is steamed, fried with vegetables and spices, boiled in coconut milk, and even used in fruit desserts. The name of almost every dish contains the word "naxi", emphasizing the importance of rice for the people of the country. Rice is followed by Chinese noodles, Indian curries and seafood.
Top 10 Malay dishes
Krupuk and other street food
Krupuk
A popular snack made from regular flour and dried seafood flour. This makes chips that can be eaten with other dishes as bread or as an appetizer with different sauces. Often used as street food. In Southeast Asia, food stalls are part of the landscape. Most often, food is prepared here and immediately sold. In these bakeries, you can also try baked or fried puff pastry pies. The fillings are different: beef, chicken, vegetables, the common main ingredient is curry.
Pisang goreng is another food that can be found in street stalls and is worth trying. These are bananas, deep-fried, sometimes in batter.
Rojak
An eclectic dish. In Penang, this salad combines cucumbers, pineapple, turnips, guava, mango and apples. The whole thing is topped with a sauce that consists of lime juice, shrimp paste and crushed peanuts. Shrimp fritters are often served with it. In the rest of Malaysia, rojak consists of boiled potatoes and eggs, fried shrimp or other seafood. Fried tofu, turnips and soy sprouts are added to it. Somewhere they call him mamak rojak, somewhere passembur.
Other salads include gado gado, a vegetable salad with bamboo shoots and soy sprouts. It is seasoned with a mixture of peanut sauce, coconut milk and hot pepper.
Lax
Laksa
Soup, a representative of Peranakan cooking. In many variants of this dish, noodles remain an unchanged component - thick wheat, rice, egg, and even a semblance of spaghetti. Everyone has an unusual taste, so choosing what to try is difficult. For a reference point:
Asam laksa is made from fish with pineapple and other local fruits, grated cucumber and a paste made from tamarind, a tropical bean fruit. And with the obligatory noodles.
Curry laksa also consists of noodles, fish, shrimp, tofu, soy sprouts, curry and coconut milk. In some regions of Malaysia, chicken and eggs are added to this soup instead of shrimp.
Nasi Dagang
Traditional delicacy of Malaysian lunch, although served for breakfast on the east coast. Rice is steamed in coconut milk, fish curry, pickled cucumbers, peeled fried coconut, boiled eggs are added to it. The combination is unusual, but the food is appetizing and light and worth a try. Gourmets believe that Nasi Dagang should be eaten where it was invented - in the state of Kuala Terengganu. They say that the taste of the dish there is fantastic.
It is interesting to taste Nasi Lemak. In this dish, rice steamed in coconut milk is combined with anchovies and fried peanuts. Boiled eggs and cucumbers are also added to it.
Nasi Goreng
Nasi Goreng
This dish is also based on rice, this time fried, which follows from the name - goreng. There are as many varieties as the imagination of Malaysian chefs. The dish is borrowed from neighboring Indonesia, where it is considered a culinary symbol. In addition to the obligatory set of spices, meat is added there, in pieces or in the form of meatballs, shrimp and other seafood, fish, sometimes salted. There are also many options for adding eggs to Nasi goreng: chopped hard-boiled eggs, in the form of an omelet, cut into pieces, often just scrambled eggs are mixed in the cooking process. The classic version of the dish is prepared with chicken.
Nasi Kandar
Originally from the island of Penang, where it began to be cooked in the Tamil community. A hundred years ago, it was considered street food. Traders carried two wicker baskets on a kind of yoke. One had steamed rice, the other had curry. Because Tamil people are Muslim, curries were not made with pork. And without that, the choice is sufficient: fish, chicken, lamb, beef. The kind of rocker used by food sellers is called kandar. The dish has long moved to restaurants, at least to food courts. And its name remained: Nasi-kandar.
A similar dish, biryani, came from India to Malaysian cuisine. Looks like pilaf. Rice and meat - lamb, chicken, fish, are cooked separately. Everything is flavored with spices.
But rice with chicken according to Chinese recipes takes a long time to cook, like all dishes of this cuisine. Whole chicken is cooked in pork broth and rice in chicken, everything is done over low heat. In finished form, it is just rice with chicken pieces, but everything is so aromatic that you need to taste it. The dish is called chicken rice.
Chilli crab
In restaurants in Singapore and Malaysia, it is almost the most popular dish. Large mango crabs are fried in a sweet and savory chili tomato sauce. A real treat worth trying.
Fish head in curry is also interesting from sea delicacies. Can be enjoyed at Peranakan and Chinese restaurants. According to the history of the food, it was invented by an Indian chef for the Chinese. Red sea bass head is stewed in coconut milk with curry, eggplant and tamarind sauce.
The topic of fish cannot be avoided without Ikan Bakar, translated as “burnt fish”. The fish marinated in a mixture of soy sauce, coconut oil and spices is fried over charcoal. Sometimes in banana leaves, sometimes open. The counterpart, Icahn Goreng, is deep-fried. The result is a delicious crispy crust.
Hokkien Mee
Hokkien Mee
These yellow egg noodles, along with many ways to prepare them, were brought by settlers from the Chinese province of Fujian. In metropolitan restaurants, it is fried with black soy sauce, to which pork and crunchy cracklings are added. And in Penang, noodles are cooked like soup, with shrimp, boiled egg and soy sprouts.
Fried noodles with garlic, onions, Chinese cabbage and tomatoes are called Mi goreng. A choice of shrimp, chicken, pork or beef is added to it. The Indian version is called maggi goreng: almost the same composition, vegetables are excluded and tofu is added.
Rendang
It is imperative to try. Several years ago, opinion poll and blog site cnngo.com voted for the most delicious dish in the world. Rendang became the first, bypassing all the recognized world delicacies. This dish also got into Malay cuisine from Indonesia, where it was also among the best dishes of the nation.
Beef, sometimes lamb, in pieces, languishes in coconut milk with spices for a very long time until the liquid evaporates. The taste is unique. Such an exquisite dish requires an equal side dish. Classic - lemang. Also long-term food: rice with coconut milk is baked inside bamboo sticks for at least 4-5 hours.
Roti Chanai
Roti Chanai
Malay pancakes are also called roti jala. They are used instead of bread, then the pancake looks like a simple flatbread, often with sauce. As a dessert, crepes are made with a filling. And here is a real gastronomic variety: roti chanai yam - with chicken, roti chanai banana - with banana, roti chanai cheese - with cheese. And also with vegetables and fruits, the name changes accordingly.
Separately, it should be said about murtabak pancakes, a variety of roti chanay and yam. They are layered, with a very juicy chicken and vegetable filling.
