I wanted to take part in the Merdeka Open House party organised by babe in the city_kl, but I just couldn’t decide on what dish to post to fit the theme Food From Our Hearts.

It’s kind of a strange predicament because cooking and feeding people well are how my family express our love for one another. We don’t do gifts under the Christmas trees, but we sure know how to load a table with food and eat heartily.

Maybe that was why my grandmother was so insistent on us helping in the kitchen, and learning how to prepare meals. She grumbled about how she wouldn’t be able to bear the shame should my disapproving future mother-in-law were to complain about how coarsely we cut the vegetables or not fluff the rice.

So, we were trained from young to do all the mundane tasks, and do them properly – tailing bean sprouts, deskinning groundnuts, scaling fish, removing the pith of ginkgo nuts, peeling prawns…. One of my chores is pounding sambal and rempah mix in a mortar and pestle.

When I started out, I’d constantly be hounding my grandmother to ask if my mixture was fine enough. I’d even resort to dramatics and wrap my hands in plastic bags because the chillies burn my fingers. But my grandmother was merciless, and she made it my duty to pound the sambal belacan (red chillies and freshly toasted belacan, shrimp paste).

My grandmother taught me how to pound from side to side, and not directly into the middle of the mortar. The old folks could tell from the rhythm of the pounding if we were doing it correctly or not. She even made me stop to listen to our neighbour’s pounding, and focus on the rhythm.

Now that I am mistress of my own kitchen, I sometimes cheat and make my sambal belacan with an electric blender. But when it comes to fresh turmeric, I do the pounding on my pestle and mortar because it’s just too much work scrubbing the vivid yellow off the blades and blender. I also hear that fresh turmeric blunts the blades, so I use my mortar and pestle when it comes to turmeric.

It’s easy work pounding turmeric, compared to chillies or shallots. One of our favourite dishes at home is turmeric fried chicken. It’s a real easy dish because it is just chicken marinated with pounded turmeric and garlic, and seasoned with salt, soya sauce and sugar. You need to marinate it overnight, or for a few hours for the flavours to permeate.

You need to pound the turmeric to extract its flavours. If you use a food processor, it just cuts up the turmeric but it does not crush out the flavours. When I was in secondary school, I started teaching tuittion to earn extra pocket money. I’d cycle to the kid’s house in the evening, and by the time class ended it’d be dark. In those days, we were not so fearful of crimes but my mom would wait for me at a particular spot.

I was only truly frightened when I cycled past my neighbour Intan’s house – see, when their families wouldn’t sanction their realtionship she committed suicide with her boyfriend by lying down on the railway tracks and the train ran over them – they were only 15 or 16. I used to hang out at Intan’s house to read Malay entertainment magazines like URTV, so I cycled really fast every time I passed by her house.

Anyway, there was one year when my cousins started coming to my house for tuittion. That was great because I didn’t have to cycle out. First, there were only the twins and their elder sister. But soon all six siblings came for class. I am pretty sure I earned very little, like RM20/student per month. Soon, those tuittion sessions went from an hour and a half in the evening to a whole day affair on weekends.

The class would only be for an hour or so, and then the entire brood (my siblings and cousins) would troop down to the nearby public swimming pool, and later return to my parents’ home for dinner.

I remember all eleven kids sitting around the dining table, and the top request every week would be for kunyit chicken. My mom made it with pork belly too. But with pork, she stir-fries it rather than deep fries it. We like both versions, and the best part is the fried turmeric bits. When we have turmeric chicken, sometimes I think of how my parents were so welcoming of my cousins, and how the house would be crowded with 11 noisy kids. I think the food bill was much higher than whatever I earned from the tuittion, but my parents didn’t mind.

My mom used to buy an extra loaf of bread because we’d all have a supper of toasted bread with butter and kaya after class on weekdays…. I think we had them with cups of hot milo, and there were bread crumbs all over the table. We don’t see much of those cousins anymore, but I bet they still remember my mom’s kunyit chicken.

RECIPE

Kunyit Chicken (Turmeric Chicken)

200g fresh turmeric

4 cloves garlic

500g chicken, cut into medium pieces

3-4 tablespoons sugar, or according to taste

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground white pepper

2 cups cooking oil

Pound the turmeric and garlic. Marinate the chicken with the turmeric, garlic and the rest of the seasoning overnight, or for at least four hours. Heat the cooking oil in a wok. When the oil is hot, fry the chicken till it’s golden brown. Scoop up the turmeric bits before they burn because these are delicious.