Once in a while I tend to go through periods of missing KL; and this mostly involves missing food and the people who make it. I am lucky - I come from a family of people who share the same love of food and every festive season during family gatherings, conversation mainly revolves around what’s on the table. I guess this is true of most Malaysians. It is hard to ignore the heavily-spiced curries, or the freshly made rice wine mee sua (a Fuchow dish) in the mornings. I think what I miss most of all about KL is our family kitchen. I have so many fond memories of the place; every day when I came home from work I used to walk straight to the kitchen and open the fridge door just to see if there was anything new. I never knew what I was looking for; some times I would be rewarded with my favourite fish paste wrapped in bean curd, some times mom will have a carton of juice for me. It is a habit I never broke over the years and I still do it when I am in KL!

My love affair with food started at a very young age; for this I have my mom and grandma to thank - there is nothing better to keep hyperactive kids busy than to get them involved in simple cooking tasks in the kitchen! One of my favourite tasks was to pound spices in the mortar and pestle. There was a certain technique to getting the spices evenly grounded, or the chillies into a uniform paste. I learnt how to do both from watching my grandma. She used to insist I spend time observing her before trying it out for myself. We cooked a lot with chillies. Some times I would be pounding fresh chillies, other times I would be grinding the slightly more resilient dried chillies that had been soaked in hot water to soften a little. To this day, the sound of a spoon scraping the sides of the heavy stone mortar still gets me salivating! Thus I grew up wishing I was old enough to help out in the kitchens of the restaurants my aunts and uncles used to run. These ambitions were not uncommon in my family; my grandfather used to run a coffee shop in the heart of the city.

One of my favourite dishes from my childhood involves yu pang (Cantonese) or fish paste. Like most things I learnt from watching grandma in the kitchen there is no strict recipe to follow. She does most things by taste and feel, and perhaps this is why I never write anything down myself either!

Making the fish paste involves filleting a whole mackerel and then gently scraping off the meat with a spoon. The more delicate your scraping, the less work you have to do later. When you are done you should have a bowl of fish paste and a little bit of arrowroot starch (cornstarch can be used as well but arrowroot is way better) is added to it. My grandma then takes a bowl of heavily-salted water and uses both her hands to spread salt water on the surface of the fish paste. The salt water gets slowly worked in while mincing with a cleaver. It is important that the working temperature be kept low. When she is satisfied, the fish paste gets thrown onto a marble surface (our kitchen table) a few times. This was my favourite part! I think it is to remove the trapped air in the paste. It is then left to rest in the fridge in smaller, flattened balls for about an hour. The final texture depends on your technique; my first attempt left me with slightly pasty texture and no springiness to the fish paste when cooked.

I found a few recipes but the techniques are quite varied - if anyone is interested, this one probably comes the closest.

Whenever I see my grandmother making this I would always wonder what the end product would be. Fish paste is extremely versatile; one of my favourites would be to wrap fish paste in bean curd sheets and braised with tauchu (preserved soybeans).

This is my other favourite - chillies stuffed with fish paste yong tau foo style!

So whenever I am missing KL I tend to cook more. Cooking these things brings me back to my family kitchen; it’s true what they say about food being able to transport you to a different place and evoke all sorts of emotions! Perhaps that is why it is something I let myself indulge in often. Tonight I will be making Fuchow fish balls; it is a chewy, springy fish ball with a heavily-seasoned mince pork center cooked in a simple dried anchovy-based broth and served with loads of white pepper and spring onions!