Monday, November 9, 2009

Tourism Day


7-8 November 09 were designated as Tourism Day by Tourism Malaysia. On these two days, the event was held at New World Park.. this place used to be vibrant in the 60's and 70's but now it has been given new life. New food court and event area were built. Also, Tune Hotel also made its mark by building its Penang branch next to this place.

Other organizations also participated by setting up their booths there. Most of them were from the tourism industry: hotels, places of attractions, services.

I am happy and proud to be invited as one of the guest chefs to this event. (I am not a chef, I don't wear tall hat), but it was a big honor.

My two sessions were 30 minutes each. In the first session, I mainly talked about Malay spices, its usage, methods of storage and grinding. I also mentioned quite a bit the usage of spices in traditional medicine, modern cosmetics and also ancient rituals. This was capped by a short demonstration how to process coconut to get fresh coconut milk.

Even the locals were surprised to see how much coconut milk could be squeezed manually using my technique.

On the second session, I talked about fresh local herbs, and showing each ingredient, I described their properties. I made a simple kerabu (Malay style salad) that was very delicious even though a tad spicy. Here is the some of the action captured on video:




If you would like more tips, visit my food web site or contact me to sign up for my cooking class at Tropical Spice Garden.

Cooking traditional food class

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