Mouth-watering Malay meals

Apologies for there being no post last Monday - Hubby and I were off to Kota Kinabalu for my university alumni reunion - some photos are on my photo-blog. There were lots of catching up along with lots of eating.

On the subject of eating, I love food even though I may not be a whizz in the kitchen. Besides eating, I also love cookbooks, especially when produced by people I know. The most recent addition to my cookbook collection is Nostalgia Medan Selera, the re-publication of Medan Selera that was first published in 1958 in Jawi. The Rumi version came out in 1971. The book is a  compilation of the recipes of the late Haji Ahmad Yaakub Al-Johori, who used to cook for the Johor royal house. This latest edition is an updated version put together by several of his great-grandchildren. Incidentally, he was the grandfather of my uncle-in-law, Abdul Manaf Mohd Noh, who inherited the cooking gene.

The front cover.

A little 'history' of the book over the decades.

Recipes from the book. Not all recipes come with pictures.

From the northern state of Perak comes A Taste of Batu Gajah, a collection of recipes by Datin Norsiah Bakhari that were produced into a book by her daughter-in-law, Datin Seri Raihan Abdul Rahman. I have a close association with Datin Norsiah, whose late husband, Dato' Zabidi Shamsuddin, had served as the Malaysian Education Officer in Wellington, New Zealand, when I studied there. Dato' Zabidi and Datin Norsiah loved to invite students to their house, an invitation no-one in her right mind would refuse. Other than their warm hospitality, a visit to their house meant being treated to delicious Malay food.

The front cover.

Each recipe comes with a mouth-watering photo.

The recipes are divided into sections.

Malay language translations of the recipes are found in the back pages.

The cuisine of the east coast state of Kelantan is represented, for me, in Nik's Kitchen, a book of recipes by Puan Sri Nik Esah Nik Ahmed Kamil. I was privileged to have edited The Benchmark, a compilation of newspaper articles written by her late husband, Tan Sri Harun Mahmud Hashim. There is also another link. Both of these books were produced by Yasmin Gan Abdullah, with whom I wrote Hajj - the Humbling Journey.

The front cover. 

Some background on Kelantan.

A Kelantanese classic.

Kelantan is well-known for its very sweet desserts.

These cookbooks are not just a compilation of recipes. There are stories that go with the dishes. Food is not just a putting together of this or that ingredient; there are memories associated with the many kinds of food placed on the table. And then there are the feelings of comfort and good cheer. Oscar Wilde couldn't have said it better when he declared, "After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one's own relatives."

Showpiece shelves

The bookshelves in our house look like... well... bookshelves. But they don't really have to be. Bookshelves can be conversation pieces, if you can get your hands on any one of these.

I didn't choose to highlight the bookshelf below because of David Beckham's book, but because it's a bookshelf that isn't one. Sticklebook is an invisible shelving system of aluminium brackets, combed strips and screws. I wouldn't really consider it a serious bookshelf; I would put it up as a display unit to showcase a few of my books.

The Rolling Shelf is also not a 'serious' bookshelf. But it does provide interesting options for arranging your books, vases and other decorative items. 

Now, this is one serious bookshelf. It stores a lot of books and yet serves as an interesting and attractive feature wall. There would be a problem putting up and taking off books from the top shelves, however.

Back to something frivolous - inclined storage from Germany that gives the impression of suspended shelving.

Let's end this post with the Bookwave - a storage unit that's can be a curtain, a room divider, even a sculptural hanging.

From scholar to novelist

Umberto Eco's books, translated from Italian, are not an easy read. His plots are complicated and his characters are multi-dimensional, so you will need to concentrate from the first page. But I like his style and the twists and turns in his stories. There is a sophistication to his writing that is incomparable.

A regular follower of this blog would know by now that when I like a writer, I would read a number of his books. And Eco is no exception - I have three of his on my bookshelf. One, purchased in 2009 at a Big Bad Wolf sale for just RM8.00, is The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. First published in 2004, it is a rather playful story about a rare-book dealer who, although he has lost his memory about his own life, can remember every book he has ever read. To retrieve his past, he withdraws to his family home in the country and attempts to relive his life through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums and diaries kept in the attic. His search is made all the more realistic within the pages of Eco's novel with reproductions of actual items.

The above book is a walk in the park to read when compared to Eco's earlier novel, Foucault's Pendulum, which first came out in 1988. It is a thriller of interconnected mysteries running into more than 600 pages that, along the way, takes a dig at "exploitative publishers and pompous intellectuals" (Jonathan Coe, in The Guardian, 12 Octobeer 1989).

I came to appreciate Eco when I bought his first novel, The Name of the Rose, which was originally published in 1980 and went on to become an international bestseller. The book, later made into a movie starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater, is set in medieval times. It is in fact a detective story in which the protagonist, a learned Franciscan, is called upon to solve a mystery involving monks who were murdered in bizarre ways. 

In 2011, in an interview for The Guardian, Eco says, "People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged." Thus, his books have been about conspiracies and the paranoia created because of them. Almost 80 years old at the time of the interview, Eco has had a distinguished academic career, publishing scholarly works, before he ventured into fiction-writing. The Name of the Rose established his reputation as a novelist and there was no looking back after that.