Learning to Cook Malay Indian

My hostel in KL - the Travel Hub

So I didn’t get into Kuala Lumpur until quite late on Thursday night.  First thing Friday I was picked up for a cooking class I had arranged to do.  And boy am I glad I did that.  It was great.  I really enjoyed it and now know that I am going to do other cooking courses in my travels.  Such fun to learn how to cook other cuisine and see what goes into it.  I did the course with LaZat Malay Cooking which is run by a couple of lovely Malay women.  The menu consisted of potato samosas, dhall, marinated mackeral over a tomato and mint salad, and a fruit and nut pudding.

Mike from Australia and our fine instructor Saahiad demonstrates cooking the fillings for potato samosas.

It was such fun that I was dying to go home and cook but of course I don’t have a home or a kitchen so that won’t be happening.  But I did get a recipe book from the experience and know I can cook this stuff so will be doing it again.  The samosas were good fun and she taught me a bunch of little things about oils, heat levels, spices etc… that I didn’t know.

Sara's Samosas - yay me!

Ana, one of the owners, and myself got into a good discussion about religion versus spirituality and the need for something to believe in to teach one’s kids.  It was interesting hearing their perspective given that they are Muslim.  But they also understood my perspective about the fact that you don’t need religion to guide people, you need values and they can be backed by the more generic spirituality instead of subscribing to a ‘god’ of sorts.  Ana felt that believing in a god bigger than you keeps you humble, whereas I believe that being humble is a value you teach yourself when you put yourself in relation to the rest of the billions of human beings on this planet.

Sara's fine Malay Indian meal prepared all by myself...

… and eaten by me as well!