Food and foliage: Few cafes feel as near to nature as Brew N Bloom, tucked beside the teeming flowers and plants of the Bukit Jalil Nursery. This alfresco cafe is shaded from the heat, so feel free to order a steaming-hot, soothingly light bowl of prawn mee (RM10.90), paired with coffee - cold brews for the modern customer, kopi ais for the old-school purists.
Brew N Bloom
Mukim Petaling, Lot 37889, Puchong, Sungai Besi Link Highway, Bukit Jalil, 57000 Kuala Lumpur. Open Friday-Wednesday, 9am-5pm.
So often, we search for insights into the future of food by turning to dining trends elsewhere. But sometimes, looking to the centuries-old traditions of our homeland's own communities can yield even more meaningful observations.
In 2019, Rachel Thomas, a Sunway University lecturer and food technology specialist, spoke at the Food and Society Conference in Paris about 'Cooking Methods of Ethnic Food Among Aborigine Social Groups in Malaysia,' opening the eyes of academics to the advantages of eating like the Orang Asli. EDKL contributor BB talks to her about what we can learn from the culinary habits of Orang Asli families who live in the deep of Cameron Highlands.
1. Cultivate the land instead of grocery shopping
EDKL: How do the Orang Asli view growing your own food as opposed to buying groceries? Tell us about the farming habits that support their lifestyles.
Rachel: The Orang Asli are aware that putting chemicals into their food isn’t natural. As such, they try their best to not consume crops grown that way. They farm with the limited land they have. They either use it to grow wild edibles or domesticated crops. For the latter, they do use chemicals, as it is not meant for personal consumption.
2. Switch up our cooking techniques
EDKL: Would our diets be healthier if we started using the same cooking techniques as the Orang Asli? For example, eschewing deep-frying in favour of boiling, steaming and grilling.
Rachel: Definitely. As many of their wild edible plants are rich in micronutrients, deep-frying or excessive boiling would reduce their benefits. Light boiling is done to remove toxic substances found in the leaves before they lightly stir-fry their ingredients.
3. Use eco-friendly cookware
EDKL: Can you expand on the Orang Asli’s techniques of cooking food in bamboo for smoky accents and a softer texture? What do they use for food packaging?
Rachel: The Orang Asli attribute cooking in bamboo to reduced numbers in NCD (non-communicable diseases), especially among the older generation. This is because the technique requires no oil, just aromatic leaves for wrapping and spices for seasoning. The food is then allowed to roast over an open fire. They also believe that it adds extra flavour and improves the texture of their food. The type of firewood used depends on what’s available, but many villagers agree that the best comes from the rambutan tree; not only does the fire burn consistently, it also imparts a delicious flavour. Cooking in bamboo mimics using a pressure cooker, which has a short cooking time while preserving heat-sensitive nutrients.
4. Sharing surplus food with the community
EDKL: You've said that any extra food is shared among households, so there is rarely wastage. This puts our current way of eating (and tossing out food) to shame.
Rachel: The sharing of food depends on the location of the village. In remote villages, for example, hunted meat is shared among the Orang Asli. Otherwise, there is not much of a need to store food, as children are usually given the extra portions. In this sense, the Orang Asli have not really embraced the food storage concept, even if they have settled closer to urban areas. Their preference for fresh over refrigerated food represents their connection to the past and is something they still hold on to steadfastly despite the changing times.
5. Eating earlier dinners
EDKL: Do the Orang Asli practise the same eating hours as city folk?
Rachel: Their dinner times depend on the type of work that they do and where they are based. For Orang Asli living in remote villages, dinner is usually served earlier, because they are mostly engaged in subsistence activities - whatever is hunted or harvested that day is immediately cooked.
6. Employing gender-equal kitchens
EDKL: Could you also expand on comments that women enjoy the same social status as men in Orang Asli circles, in the kitchen and on hunting grounds?
Rachel: This point, too, depends on the village. In the past, both men and women were regarded as equals. Women stayed busy gathering food, and division of labour was unheard of as women worked together with men. Men could easily take care of children and cook food for them if need be. But things have changed, especially for villages closer to the city. The husband and wife still act as a unit to feed their children and there is some sort of flexibility as both are equipped with the knowledge for hunting and gathering, but most of the time it is the man who will do both the hunting and gathering.
From soul-searching in Manila to returning to KL this year to launch his own restaurant, chef William Loo has been through a long, sometimes lonely journey this past decade. After Loo Loo Casual Dining officially opened last month, William spoke to us about the chefs who've inspired him and how they shaped his personal perspective on cooking.
"I try not to be the centre of attention, but I guess it's impossible to introduce a chef-driven restaurant without talking about the chef.
"In the last 10 years, I've worked at restaurants in Singapore, Bali and Manila. In terms of learning from chefs, there are a few individuals who've made me who I am and granted me the knowledge and ability to cook and care for others.
"One was a French chef, Stephane, who has worked in Daniel in New York and Comme Chez Soi in Brussels. Chef Stephane is a typical French chef. Before I met him, I had been working with very precise recipes and SOPs. When Stephane headed the kitchen, it was tough because he never gave any recipes to any of the cooks - he’d make something once and expect you to make the same thing by remembering how things were cut, when things were added to the pot, and in which order, how they tasted and smelled. It was very difficult to wrap my head around that idea at that time. But by the time he moved on, I learned to use my senses in ways I'd never imagined, among other things."
"Another was chef Giuliano, an Italian who has spent a long time in Asia. He is one of the most down-to-earth chefs I’ve ever met. He was different - he never yelled a single time, he was always smiling. When your prep tastes or looks or smells different than his, he’d point out what went wrong, and say things like, 'this could work too, we just have to make this and change that.'
"I was lucky to have had the opportunity to learn to make pasta from an Italian chef without being in Italy; to understand whether the dough is perfect or what it needs by touching and feeling; to understand that pasta sauce should not be dry or soupy and is never a thing on its own but complements fresh or dried pasta. When they hit the plate, the pasta and sauce should become one.
"Still, the true lesson I learned from working for chef Giuliano is how to be a decent human being. The amount of respect, patience and care he has for everyone and everything around him changed me - from being an all-macho, relentless stereotypical ‘professional cook,' back to being an actual human being again."
"At the start of my career, I spent five years with chef Kevin, a Canadian who has also worked at Daniel, as well as El Bulli, Arzak and La Broche in Spain. Chef Kevin turns everything into systems, black-and-white standard operating procedures. Recipes are with grammage measuring up to two decimals. One of the very first mise-en-place I did when I started working in the kitchen was cutting squash with rulers - if he found out one of those squashes wasn't a perfect square or had a chipped corner, it’d go straight to the bin and I’d have to start all over.
"He teaches the cooks in various ways - if you make the same mistake twice or if it’s simply your unlucky day, you’d get a little physical abuse. Verbal treatment is the norm, but on rare occasions, maybe when he sees real confusion in your eyes, or maybe you did something great and he wants to make you remember, he’d quote his idols. One that strikes me pretty hard is Marco Pierre White’s ‘perfection is a lot of little things done right.' I also remember him saying, ‘every time you do the same job like filleting the same fish or cooking the same dish, you get 1% better.’ After years of such strict disciplined conditioning, you begin to know exactly how long 15 seconds feels, how salty a 10% brine tastes - essentially all those things become part of your muscle memory.
"The reason I got into cooking was, I wasn’t particularly good at anything - sitting in a classroom was so boring and I never cared for homework or to study for tests. Even after getting that first job with Kevin and taking an overnight bus to Singapore alone, ‘the moment’ for me was the first time he shook my hand as he was leaving for the night after dinner service - it’s sort of a token of ‘up to par performance,' but more accurately, it felt like God’s grace. Not everybody gets that, not everyday. it was then I got really hooked and tried hard everyday to work faster, better, more precisely, to be a well-oiled computerised machine, with no thinking, only reactions, like a well-trained boxer dodging all kinds of punches the opponent throws his way with my sixth sense. That kind of extreme pressure in a confining steel cage becomes the primary source of serotonin for us cooks - it’s addictive.
"I started reading a lot - at first, looking for answers from Google searches, because I couldn’t understand why my seared Hokkaido scallops wouldn’t be well-browned and crusty at times or the middle went beyond medium-rare when they did. That led to the term ‘Maillard reaction,' which led me to ‘modernist cuisine' and a six-volume contemporary cookbook consisting of over 2,400 pages of scientific explanations on all the hows and whys you can possibly imagine in a kitchen. I couldn’t afford it then after finding out it costs more than a full month’s salary, so i looked the other way on the internet, got a ‘copy’ on the phone and plowed through volume after volume.
"At Loo Loo Casual Dining, we wish to do honest work, make real food and price them accordingly. If the menu says oven-dried tomato sauce, we literally dry the tomatoes in the oven to make the sauce. We know this is a minuscule effort to try to change the reality of the F&B industry, but we try."
Loo Loo Casual Dining is at B2-7, Block B, Plaza Damas 3, Jalan Sri Hartamas 1, Sri Hartamas, Kuala Lumpur. Open Wednesday-Monday, 12pm-10pm. Tel: 011-2729-7311
Click here to read our full review of Loo Loo Casual Dining. This post first appeared on eatdrinkkl.com
Dresses, desserts and drinks: Ones. Store doubles as both a boutique and a cafe, bringing fun and friendliness to fashion. Check out the clothes, then chill out over an artistically assembled raspberry ice cream cone platter (RM23), paired with a cooler like the Olenz (RM15; orange ice cube with pomelo and a splash of soda).
Ones. Store Pantry
72, Jalan SS 2/75, SS2, 47300 Petaling Jaya, Selangor. Open Tuesday-Sunday, 12pm-730pm.
With an estimated 2,000 books of nearly every genre for sale on its shelves, promising a lifetime of reading for children and adults alike, Pages Book Cafe is a cosy hideout for sipping a piccolo latte, snacking on homemade butter cake and lime pie, and picking up paperbacks to bring home (books are bargain here, with many worthwhile novels, guidebooks and more in the RM10-RM15 range). Friendly barista Osla knows the catalogue and is prepared to patiently help you navigate the selection.
Pages Book Cafe
F-G-43, Taipan Damansara 2, Jalan PJU 1a/3, Ara Damansara, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
Open Monday-Saturday, 930am-6pm. Tel: 03-7832-6118
Three months ago, we visited YEES Yogurt Malaysia for the first time, checking out its then-latest branch in United Point Kepong. The Australian-born yogurt beverage brand is now fast spreading across the Klang Valley and expanding its offerings to include new temptations.
This time, we headed to Sri Petaling for YEES Yogurt's latest KL outpost, seeking a taste of this venue's exclusive yogurt ice cream series and the brand's recently launched matcha beverages.
The Sri Petaling branch offers outdoor dining after 6:30pm every evening. Enjoy the wide-open views of the night sky in a calm, breezy green space flanked by lantana flowering plants to complement your indulgence of yogurt desserts and drinks. Thanks to YEES Yogurt Sri Petaling for these images of its nighttime setting.
YEES Yogurt in Sri Petaling introduces an exclusive ice cream series to its extensive menu of premium Bright Cow milk-based yogurt beverages. The ice cream is fun for fans of frozen yogurt, created from the same yogurt as YEES' beverages.
Customers have a choice of original yogurt ice cream, or strawberry yogurt ice cream (flavoured with real, ripe strawberries), or both!
These ice creams are creamy and dense, lightly tangy and not too sweet, topped with combinations of freshly cut fruit and crowd-favourite ingredients. They're alluringly available in four tropical-treat flavours at YEES Yogurt in Sri Petaling: Happy Summer (yellow peach, honeydew, Australian strawberries, New Zealand kiwi, Oreo and jelly), Summer Love (dragonfruit, honeydew, Australian strawberries, New Zealand kiwi, crushed Oreos and jelly) Mummum Melon (honeydew, Australian strawberries, and wafer roll) and Romantic Bite (purple rice with crushed Oreos). If you love pairing yogurt or ice cream with fruits, this will be a delicious dessert or refreshment at any time of the day.
Also new, but available at all YEES Yogurt branches, is a double dose of matcha yogurt drinks, unfused with imported Japanese green tea. The Matcha Date Yogurt beverage features fresh, fruity undercurrents to buoy the mild bitterness of green tea (RM15.90), while the Matcha Red Bean Yogurt provides the pleasurable chew of red beans to perfectly pair with the matcha yogurt drink for a classic combination (RM15.90).
The new items complement YEES Yogurt's wide lineup of products, spanning the popular purple rice yogurt drink to its bird's nest yogurt beverage series and an array of fruit yogurt thirst-quenchers.
If you're a regular at YEES Yogurt, check out the free membership programme, where you're eligible for free drinks after securing at least 150 points. The brand also offers small cakes and a free drink for folks celebrating their birthday at YEES Yogurt (call in advance to book).
Many thanks to YEES Yogurt Malaysia for having us back.
YEES Yogurt
Lot 15 & 16, The Store Jalan Radin Tengah, Sri Petaling, 57000 Kuala Lumpur. Daily, 11am-12am.
Check out yeesyogurt.com.my and facebook.com/yeesyogurtmalaysia for the full list of branches.
