Heavenly Fragrance. Carol Selva Selva Rajah
were all around us, pervading our lives. I lived with my family on a large sprawling property planted with a jumble of fruits and herbs. Mango and rambutan trees framed my window, the aroma of mango flowers brushing past the mosquito netting, spreading their light caramel-like fragrance around my room. Now whenever I bite into a juicy Bowen mango from Queensland, I close my eyes and am immediately transported back to the warmth and comfort of my childhood bedroom. Stalwart jackfruit trees stood like soldiers along the back fence, producing meter-long fruits which resembled spiky green balloons hanging ponderously from the stems. As these fruits slowly matured, they gave forth a spicy, pineapple-honey scent that enticed everyone passing the open breezeway to the kitchen and the chili beds beyond. These beds were only chili in name— in fact they were littered with the distinct lemon-oil scents of lemongrass and galangal and the pungent, oily turmeric, yielding a tousled jumble of aromatic citrus and rose whenever disturbed, especially on a hot afternoon. These herbs and spices were gathered and tossed together on occasion into a beautifully tart jackfruit salad—colorful, fragrant and deeply satisfying, having come straight from our own garden.
Drawing of the family home and garden in Klang near Kuala Lumpur. To the left of the old colonial bungalow was the attached kitchen with herb garden beds and badminton court. On the right were orchids and various fruit trees. In front of the house stood the bougainvillea bower and the fish pond underneath it (as shown in the diagram).
Our garden was a place where you ate with your eyes and your nose before you even got to the dining table. There was perfume everywhere. In front of the house was a high metal planter that supported scarlet bougainvillea and delicate white flowers of orange blossom and red hibiscus which were thrown into juicy Sri Lankan sambols. Under this impressionist splash of color sat a circular fish pond with darting blue fighting fish, watched benignly by the resident tortoise. Nearby was a mass of blue pea flowers that colored our Nonya cakes and gave off a delicate perfume. Behind the house, an old roseapple or jambu ayer tree struggled for survival, laced with pale lichen and crawling with giant red ants, all headed for the special juicy sweetness in the fruit that we, as children, all craved. These beautiful juicy roseapples had the aroma of peaches and were used in our family Rojak salad—their sweetness contrasting with the spice of chili and pungent shrimp paste.
My father and mother when they were very young sitting in the garden by the side of the house. By the time I had grown up this garden was filled with rambutan, mango, jambu, roseapple, and jackfruit trees.
On one side of the house we had curry leaf bushes which gave off peppery aromas that ended up in my father’s hot Ceylonese curries and a famous sour, salty Mulligatawny soup known as rasam in India. The subtle, newly-mown grass scent of the pandanus palm pervaded our garden and glamorized our coconut rice cakes. Father’s bud-grafted trees, gnarled and bent with heavy green pomelo fruits, with pink pockets of lemony-sweet fruitiness on the inside, jostled with the lime trees whose fruit was indispensable in the kitchen. Everytime my father was annoyed, my Amah would produce her Pomelo and Shrimp Salad to placate him with its soothing colors and aroma, often involving the jambu ayer roseapple and several herbs from the garden. The kalamansi lime bushes with their cherry blossoms of dark green that spurted orange-sweet juice that was used for the ubiquitous lime cordials—so loved for their thirst-quenching properties, was a necessity in the tropical heat. Nothing was wasted—the spent fruit, rind and all, was massaged into scalps to create squeaky-clean, lime-perfumed and shampooed hair, again a strong Proustian channel to childhood innocence.
Central to all of this was the kitchen, tucked onto the back of the house yet the pivot of the home. The kitchen was divided into two areas: the “wet-kitchen” where pounding, grinding and slicing of spices and herbs was done each morning in preparation for a meat or fish curry, close to a running tap so that everything could be splashed clean. The other “dry-kitchen” was for cooking—where the old wood and coal stove sat squat across from the sink and wash area, and on it, a huge pot bubbled quietly with a joint of mutton for a curry or filled with chicken bones for stock inside. A vast wok sat on top of the stove almost permanently where a special dry chicken curry would be slowly sautéed, full of potatoes, tomatoes, chili and plump chicken pieces. I remember being drawn to the kitchen by the sharp, nose-tickling spike of the chili as it splattered into the hot oil, burning my eyes and nostrils until the onion and the soothing garlic were thrown in and left to mellow slowly in the wok. Amah, my “other mother,” would be there, stirring the mixture calmly, adding the soft citrus and gingery aromatics— the lemongrass and galangal and the earthy, fecund shrimp paste—finally converting it all miraculously into a composite of satisfying aromas, flavors and colors.
My Cantonese Amah dressed in her white Chinese samfu top and black pyjama pants holding me on my second birthday.
Amah was a natural cook, a master of flavor and aromatic patterns. As part of my multicultural extended family, she observed and learned the Jaffna Tamil and Malay influences of our country and added it to her own store of cooking and Chinese herbal lore. She was Cantonese but her and our food heritage was from everywhere. Sri Lankan fish and shrimp curries with their soul-satisfying coconut soupy sauces followed the spicing rules of my father’s people. For Chinese cuisine, we adhered to the strong herbal and saucing traditions of Amah, intertwined with my mother’s early Hokkien and Nonya food experiences in Penang, where her first loves were the hot and spicy shrimp pastes and chili heat of the Nonya Laksa and Mee Siam. There were other influences of course, like the Malay dishes that friends and neighbors prepared and the formal European dinners that were given by my mother’s colonial associates and missionary friends. These recipes were all eagerly borrowed, recorded and tested again and again at our home until they gradually became our own, carefully recorded in old broken-spined school exercise books.
Every morning before school, under Amah’s expert tutelage, I learned to pick and portion the herbs. In one instance lemongrass, galangal, chili and turmeric would evolve into a mouth-watering curry paste for her unique Sambal Shrimp (see page 66). We would start first with a collection of chopped onion and garlic and pounded shrimp paste and tamarind puree. Working on the grinding stone, she would grind the chili, pulverize the onion and garlic, then add the rock-hard turmeric—so difficult to judge, coloring everything it touches with a saffron stain—until it splinters and releases its rose-musk fragrance. Lemongrass would go in next. As more herbs were added, they actually made the grinding easier. From her I learned the secret of layering ingredients when cooking, adding first the garlic and waiting for it to release its enticing aromas, then adding the next ingredient and then the others in their turn so that the oils and fragrance in each spice was released separately to build on the flavor of what came before. The Sambal Shrimp that finally emerged was a mixture of all these perfumed ingredients and remains an indelible memory of my ancestral home.
While we went to our gardens frequently for the aromatic herbs and spices for the grinding stone, it would be off to the jostling, noisy market for our fresh produce—always at dawn before the sun wilted away the best ones. Crisp green beans and jelly-like tofu—shaking as we picked it up from its aromatic banana leaf container—and the fresh scents of kailan (chinese broccoli), and mustardy choy sum (flowering cabbage) with its peppery yellow flowers, jewel-like eggplants and bright green, knobbly bitter gourds— all of these would be carefully selected, wrapped and dropped into our bulging shopping basket.
Asian markets are tumultuous, exciting places. Some are mere collections of tiny little thatched lean-tos. Others are rambling, colorful and well-stocked. How lavish the brightly-colored mix of the vegetable stalls always seems. Pyramids of fresh green wing beans—I salivate at the thought of using them for a quick, crispy stir-fry with dried shrimp and slowly caramelizing onions. Orange and saffron-colored bananas, bright red tomatoes, towers of food looking so neat yet so precarious. What hilarity to see them accidentally scattered amongst the regal purple brinjals (eggplants) and the jungle-green bittersweet drumstick beans! The sweet fragrance of coconut, reminiscent of ripe cucumber, cream and pandan is a Proustian link to palm trees and beaches, so