Cook Malaysian !

Cook Malaysian !

Lee sook Ching

One of my oldest  again books on Malaysian  cooking  bought in mid 90s  which is one of the most vcomplete  reference books . This was one of my first  ever  books in Malaysian cooking and this has a format  close to A4 paper and is hardbound


This is a classical  recipe cookbook with standard hierarchy . It first starts with  terms of cooking together with a shot of most ingredients and some drawings and hints for cooking

Then the series  gies this way together with some random recipes :
Rice : nasi lemak , nasi beriani , kunyit
Meat: satay ,spring rolls ,rendang
Poultry : almond chicken ayam , golek
Seafood : otakotak , pie apple curry
Egs and soy : sambal telur , eggs with crabmeat
Veggies: gado gado , fried eggplant
Soups : streamed melon soup , chicken and corn , beef soup
Noodles: laksa lemak
Desserts (20):  pineapple tarts , vadai
Misc : soybean milk

Glossary of all ingredients translated in Malay and Chinese and in Chinese characters with short explanation and description . It is by far the  most comprehensive list in more tna 15 pages
A short description of spices
Also : if a term is in Malay or Chinese  is shown in italics. (in order to look in glossary )

This is a clearly textbook. However there are about 30-40 pages in between  this text showing the most interesting recipes . But the recipes  are shown in far pages . AS for example the satay  photo shown on pg 123 the recipe is referred on page 31
The last  color sheet shows a photo with all ingredients. And other page shows 71 of the most used veggies
If the recipes  are easy? Well most of them are very complex in terms of ingredients  and  very few are  simple . and ver many ingredients  were not available
If I did any recipes? Yes but I did only one (nasi  beriani ) with nearly the half of ingredients > he most peculiar was the  poppy seeds

This is the reason I kept this book on the shelf

PS: from this book I have learned about the fish called pomphret.  a wide fish . till previously I thought it had  relation  to ……….wafer! (called gofret in Greek , this fish is not included in any English dictionary) (until I saw a picture of it in the internet )