Nonya Style at Club Foodie

The Canberra Times - April 5, 2000

Timber buildings on stilts nestle against a rainforest backdrop at Club Med Cherating, metres away from waves lapping at a picturesque sandy beach. It was to this glorious setting on the east coast of Malaysia that Sydney chef Carol Selva Rajah took her apron and her utensils to work as guest chef for a week. It was a bit like taking coals to Newcastle, for Selva Rajah grew up in Malaysia and still has a wide circle of family and friends there. But following the success of a series of cooking classes she held at Club Med Lindeman, off the coast of Queensland, she was invited to take her Malaysian delights to her home turf – well, almost home. She actually grew up at Port Klang, south of the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

Selva Rajah is an authority on Nonya cooking, a fusion of Chinese, Indian and indigenous Malay cooking which had its origins in Malacca several hundred years ago. An intriguing and delicious blend, Nonya cooking places great importance on textures, flavours and aromas. A consultant to the hospitality and food-manufacturing industries, Selva Rajah has several cookbooks to her credit, including the colourful Makan-lah! (HarperCollins, 1996) which demonstrates how Malaysian cuisine is influenced by a melting pot of cultures - traditional Malay, northern Malay with its Thai influences, Indian, Chinese, and British, Dutch and Portuguese colonial. Selva Rajah’s life is similarly a fusion of cultures: her mother was of Indian descent but brought up by Hokkiens in Penang, while her father and late husband were ethnically Sri Lankan.

As part of her involvement at Club Med Cherating, Selva Rajah led a daily cooking demonstration for resort guests, as well as working as guest chef in the kitchen. This meant preparing all the dishes for the Malaysian section of the nightly buffet, the latter a highlight of the Club Med experience. Selva Rajah prepared four different dishes, as well as a dessert, each night of her stay, including numerous salads, fish, prawn and squid dishes. Malaysia’s east coast has a rich supply of seafood and much of the population is involved in fishing. “(The) audience reaction was very good as people were surprised to see that Malaysian food was so different to Thai and yet had interesting similarities,” she said. The kitchen staff benefitted from the experience too, with Selva Rajah urging them to close their eyes and smell and taste the dishes to learn how to identify the essential elements.

One of the dishes brought back a flood of memories for one kitchenhand, who hadn’t tasted it in years but remembered his grandmother making it. The dessert, made from split green peas and palm sugar, was described by Selva Rajah as “real comfort food”. Among the dishes she presented to resort guests were the ever-popular laksa and chilli crab, Nonya-style aromatic lime chicken, “blistered” eggs with sambal, a seafood noodle dish (Seafood Lime Koayteow) and stingray fins cooked on a banana leaf over the barbecue. Food is an integral part of a Club Med holiday, its sumptuous buffets legendary. Offered at every meal, they always feature a staggering variety of dishes in eye-catching displays, often with a particular theme.

The French-based Club Med organisation reaches an important milestone this year (2000) as it celebrates its 50th birthday. Begun as a means of rekindling happiness and friendship for war-weary Europeans, it has grown into a global hospitality chain with more than 120 clubs in 36 countries. Its holiday packages are always sold on an all-inclusive basis, with airfares, meals and beverages with meals included. Most of the clubs feature excellent sporting facilities and children’s clubs, and despite common perceptions, guests are not pressured to join in any of the activities. Many of the clubs are introducing culinary workshops, where, depending on the destination, guests can learn the secrets of Creole, Italian or Asian cooking.

Throughout March, Club Med Cherating hosted Japanese, Chinese and Korean guest chefs after Selva Rajah’s visit. The architecture, style and décor of each club is designed to blend in with the local environment, the 325 rooms at Cherating having a stylish, tropical ambience with timber floors and brighly coloured soft furnishings. The main restaurant overlooks the swimming pool and is open to the outdoors, with blinds that can be drawn during sudden tropical downpours. Breakfast comprises a copious selection of fresh fruit and juices – including the watermelon juice which is one of the joys of travelling in Asia – freshly baked bread, croissants, cakes, flans, cereals, yoghurts, dried fruits and hot dishes. Japanese and Malaysian breakfasts are also available, Selva Rajah urging me to try a typical Malaysian breakfast of coconut rice, dried anchovies, peanuts, sambal, cucumber and boiled eggs.

This is usually one meal of the day when Asian food loses its appeal for me, but I had to concede that I felt great afterwards. The club also has an Italian restaurant, open for dinner only, for diners who don’t want the buffet experience every night. It may be a safe option for some and there certainly seemed to be plenty of patronage from the large European clientele, but I didn’t venture into it and I can’t imagine that many Australians would find it an attractive option. More attractive was the club’s Pantai Beach restaurant, located at a lovely beach on the other side of the headland from the main resort complex. Reached by a little shuttle train through the rainforest, it is open for lunch only, serving a buffet of hot and cold dishes in a serene and pretty setting.

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Taste Malaysia ...

A visit to Malaysia’s colourful Kemaman market and a typical East Coast fishing village are among the highlights of a “kampong life” tour which visitors to Club Med Cherating can undertake. As I booked my tour at the excursions office, a monkey scampered around the rafters, momentarily taking my mind off the 110 Ringgit tour price (about $A48), more than some of the locals might earn in a week.

The four-hour tour included the wet market at Kemaman, where a great assortment of vegetables and fruit vies for space with seafood and meat. Known as wet markets because of the water used to hose them down, Malaysian markets have a number of features that one could never find in a western market. Chickens, for example, are slaughtered on the spot and bled in the Muslim tradition, the procedure enthusiastically demonstrated in front of our tour party of squeamish westerners. Coconuts are freshly scraped and pulverised for creamy coconut milk, and spices are ground and blended for the customer. Tamarind, jackfruit and lotus flower are as readily available as a mandarin or pineapple might be here.

The tour also included a visit to a typical fishing village, where houses on stilts jut out over the water and the fish are laid out on bamboo rafters to dry in the sun. The tour finished on an amusing note with a monkey being sent up a tree to fetch coconuts. In local tradition, the coconuts were dislodged by “Sally” and allowed to fall into a net below. As a reward for her efforts, Sally was given a straw to sip the juice from the coconut, which had been sliced in half like a cup. Yes, it was twee, but she did seem to enjoy the drink. The tour provided the opportunity of seeing something of the local countryside, where grand homes sit side by side with ramshackle bungalows, cows and goats wander across the road narrowly missing the latest-model 4WDs, and café tables spill out on to a pavement next to the greasy parts in a motorcycle repair shop. And everywhere there are roadside eateries – mile upon mile of them.

Later the same day, Carol Selva Rajah and I had the opportunity to join two of the Club Med staff, both Malay, who kindly offered to take us for an afternoon drive. On the outskirts of Kemaman, we stopped at a roadside café where otak otak (spicy fish) and satar (minced fish without the chilli) were being cooked over an open fire. The Muslim call to prayer sounded as we sat down to enjoy these local specialities. For the otak otak, the minced fish is mixed with a spicy paste, wrapped in coconut leaves and secured with satay sticks. For the satar, the fish is wrapped in pandan leaves which are folded in a triangular shape and secured on a long iron rod. Variations of the dishes, made with different leaves and spices, can be found elsewhere in Malaysia. An example of one such variation can be found in Rosemary Brissenden’s very authoritative book, South East Asian Food (Penguin, 1996).

FACT FILE

Club Med Cherating is 50km from Kuantan, the latter a one-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur.
Phone 1800 2582633 for more information.

© Christine Salins

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