Malaysian cuisine and Nyonya cuisine

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Malaysian cuisine and Nyonya cuisine

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Malaysian and Nyonya cuisine A kiosk offering traditional dishes from Nyonya cuisine, the result of a blend of Chinese and Malaysian flavours. © Lim Beng Chee / age fotostock

See more pictures: Malaysian cuisine and Nyonya cuisine

The Malaysians have developed a cooking model that blends Chinese, Indian, and Middle East flavours. Malaysian cuisine uses many spices like pepper, ginger, Indian saffron, cumin, sweet pepper and curry. A typical Malaysian dish is often made of rice. It is cooked different ways: steamed, fried, boiled simply or seasoned with coconut milk, spices and herbs. It is often served in the form of a rice cake or lemang, viscous rice cooked with charcoal in a hollow bamboo tube, garnished with young banana leaves. The rice is taken with vegetables, meat or fish.
The Nyonya cuisine derives from a mixture between the first Chinese immigrants and the local Malaysians in the states of Malacca and Penang. It combines traditional Chinese ingredients with Malaysian spices: pepper, belacan (fermented prawn paste), sweet calamus and Indian saffron. The typical dishes are the assam curry fish and otak-otak (fish steamed with coconut milk and pepper paste wrapped in banana leaves).
Each region boasts its own specialties blending pepper, citronella, screw pine, tamarind, ginger, turmeric, etc...