The Curry Issue...
I was down at the Chinese last night, hoping to catch Match Of The Day there. I've got to say sometimes living in Scotland can be such a pain in the arse, especially if you're a fan of English football. Instead of showing Gary Lineker's presentation of all the day's action that involved some of the best teams in the world (read : Man. U and Arsenal in this case), they had to air the coverage of their rubbish Scottish Cup with all their rubbish teams. As if the SPL itself wasn't crap enough. I even dislike the presenter's (I don't know his name, not that I care) Scottish accent. Maybe I'm just spoilt by Lineker's London tongue, but...whatever.
So instead of watching that crap on BBC1 Scotland I decided to concentrate on my dinner. Nelson had told me that the "Lou Pan" of the take away had sought the help of a Malaysian chef a few days ago to assist him in improving his (Lou Pan) curry. So there he was, offering me a whole bowl of his "new and improved" curry to go with my meal and asking me to try it and tell him what I think of it. It was delicious, no doubt, but then again, it wasn't like it wasn't delicious before this. Lou Pan's issue wasn't whether I find it tasty or not. He probably knew his curry was fine all along. He wanted comments on whether his curry is similar to those we have back home (Malaysia is a great country! At least for food!).
So I tasted it. To be honest, I don't find much difference between his new curry and his old one. Nelson was going on and on about how the new one tastes so much better and all, but I've got to be true to myself...and my tongue. Now I'm no curry expert, but he wanted and asked for my opinion. The problem is how am I going to get my point across without hurting the old guy's feelings. I mean he is a cook after all. Then I finally realised the important difference between how we Malaysians eat our curry and how the people here eat theirs. We don't cook curry just for its gravy and then put it onto the rice. We always cook curry with meat or vegetables. It could be chicken curry, beef curry, mutton, fish, pork, or just the egg-plant and lady's fingers curry that you commonly find in vegetarian shops. Lou Pan was doing the former, cooking curry just for the sake of putting it onto the rice, much like we going to McDonald's and asking for some BBQ or curry sauce from the counter to have it with the fries. And that was the difference! We cook our curry, for example chicken curry, as a dish by itself. You can have it even if there is no rice. It's not a gravy. The curry from the dish is then what we put on the rice.
The other thing is, they seem to think that there is only one type of curry. There is not, is there? You can call beef curry "curry", but you can also call curry "laksa" (gosh I'm making myself hungry here!) "curry"! And these two curries are not the same! You can't possibly have noodles and beehoon with the gravy from your beef curry can you? How my heart aches for my foreign mates to come to KL one day, and then I can promise them they'll know the meaning of good food. I've even told my housemates about "nasi lemak", because I'm very sure they, especially Nelson, will like it. Yeah, we do have the best food here in Malaysia, I'll stand by that till the day I die!
So instead of watching that crap on BBC1 Scotland I decided to concentrate on my dinner. Nelson had told me that the "Lou Pan" of the take away had sought the help of a Malaysian chef a few days ago to assist him in improving his (Lou Pan) curry. So there he was, offering me a whole bowl of his "new and improved" curry to go with my meal and asking me to try it and tell him what I think of it. It was delicious, no doubt, but then again, it wasn't like it wasn't delicious before this. Lou Pan's issue wasn't whether I find it tasty or not. He probably knew his curry was fine all along. He wanted comments on whether his curry is similar to those we have back home (Malaysia is a great country! At least for food!).
So I tasted it. To be honest, I don't find much difference between his new curry and his old one. Nelson was going on and on about how the new one tastes so much better and all, but I've got to be true to myself...and my tongue. Now I'm no curry expert, but he wanted and asked for my opinion. The problem is how am I going to get my point across without hurting the old guy's feelings. I mean he is a cook after all. Then I finally realised the important difference between how we Malaysians eat our curry and how the people here eat theirs. We don't cook curry just for its gravy and then put it onto the rice. We always cook curry with meat or vegetables. It could be chicken curry, beef curry, mutton, fish, pork, or just the egg-plant and lady's fingers curry that you commonly find in vegetarian shops. Lou Pan was doing the former, cooking curry just for the sake of putting it onto the rice, much like we going to McDonald's and asking for some BBQ or curry sauce from the counter to have it with the fries. And that was the difference! We cook our curry, for example chicken curry, as a dish by itself. You can have it even if there is no rice. It's not a gravy. The curry from the dish is then what we put on the rice.
The other thing is, they seem to think that there is only one type of curry. There is not, is there? You can call beef curry "curry", but you can also call curry "laksa" (gosh I'm making myself hungry here!) "curry"! And these two curries are not the same! You can't possibly have noodles and beehoon with the gravy from your beef curry can you? How my heart aches for my foreign mates to come to KL one day, and then I can promise them they'll know the meaning of good food. I've even told my housemates about "nasi lemak", because I'm very sure they, especially Nelson, will like it. Yeah, we do have the best food here in Malaysia, I'll stand by that till the day I die!
posted by Keith at 5:49 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home