When Ana Abdullah was a child, and she’d been naughty, her father - a school teacher, and a strict disciplinarian who, unusually for men in Malaysian society, did all of the cooking in her household - would make her sit outside the house in their village as punishment. Stubbornly, she would sit in the baking sun and refuse to come back in. “I’ll die out here!” she would say, with not a little drama.
But then she would smell her father’s crisp corn fritters frying in hot oil in the kitchen, and would come running back in. On a recent Tuesday morning beneath the Corn Exchange, she taught a group of us how to make them - equal amounts of plain flour and water, sweetcorn, red onions, turmeric - not too much - and then a dipping sauce made with lime, chilli, palm sugar and fish sauce.
It’s simple and homely cooking, but nonetheless transformative for that. I now want to make them every day. Ana, who has run a cookery school in Kuala Lumpur for 15 years, has recently made the move to Manchester, to Chorlton in fact. It’s a new chapter for her, her children now grown up and the opportunity to travel possible again.
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She’s taking over the teaching of Tampopo’s cookery school, which prior to her arrival was run on an adhoc basis by the boutique South East Asian restaurant chain’s boss David Fox. He would do a school every couple of months or so, showcasing dishes from the menu and beyond. But he hopes with Ana now at the helm, it can expand and grow.
It should. She is a fantastic teacher, warm and brilliantly funny. “I’ve known Ana for 15 years,” Fox told me. “Part of my research back then was to go to Malaysia to learn about Malaysian food. So our beef rendang, our nasi goreng, our chicken satay, our corn fritters, they’re all made with Ana’s help and input.”
“I love doing this,” Ana says. “I love people, and I can interact with them and explain Malaysian cooking. I need to do this as authentically as I can. Because I want to educate people. This is how we eat, not trying to localise the flavours to what people might be used to. That’s my dream.”
Her food comes from family, and from living in rural Malaysia growing up. And from her father, the cook, of course. “He was so strict,” she says with a smile. “It almost dashed my hopes of becoming a cook! The way you’d cut, the way you’d cook the rice a little bit wrong, he would rap on my knuckles! I hated it when I was young, but now I appreciate it. He was trying to do his best. He was so fussy about food. But not everyone is so passionate.”
She describes herself as ‘a village girl’, where her parents were sent to teach. It was a hard life for many around her. She remembers having no electricity, and learning to swim in the river rather than the swimming pool. “We were not rich people, but food made us happy,” she says. “Food made our neighbours happy. So we’d always invite them around, or cook and send food over to them. This is very common in Malaysia, we exchange food.”
Does she have any other memories of food growing up? “Durian!” she says in an instant. Durian is the large, spiky fruit, so overpowering in its odour that it’s banned on most forms of public transport across South East Asia. The smell is described vividly and variously, from sharp cheese to sewage, the flesh akin to custard. Some love it, some hate it. Ana admits it is an ‘acquired taste’.
“People in the village would give them to us, as they would grow them,” she remembers. “My father would make rice, hot, with raw flesh of the durian, coconut cream, then massage with his hands, removing the seeds, and we’d eat it like that. It is one of my best memories of childhood. It is an acquired taste. I have friends who do not like it, but it is so yummy.” Sadly, I fear it may struggle to reach the menu at Tampopo. We may not be ready for it.
The nasi goreng is another matter. Ana teaches us to make the famous fried rice dish, which has variations all over the world, but in Malaysia features dried and then rehydrated shrimps, shallots and garlic which are slow-cooked until they’re dark and caramelised. Then it’s in with red peppers, basmati rice cooked the day before, lime leaves, spring onions, soy sauce and eggs which are scrambled in the wok.
We also make fresh summer rolls, with lettuce, vermicelli noodles, carrots and prawns, then rolled in soft rice paper wrappers and served up with a sweet peanut sauce. In fact, everything we eat is marvellous, and the way Ana teaches it is engaging and, at times, hilarious. “You have to massage the ingredients,” she explains. “Ingredients are just like people. You need to massage them to get the best out of them.”
Having traded Kuala Lumpur for Manchester, she’s slowly getting used to the ways of the city, not to mention the weather. Ana and David joke about spells in the walk-in fridges in order to acclimatise to the northern chill.
“I love walking, and I love the parks,” she says. “Everywhere there are parks. In Chorlton, I like the Unicorn and Beech Road. It has a lot of restaurants. Malaysia is hot all year around, but I hope I’m getting used to it. It’s all in the mind. I will try to be strong! With layers, hopefully I will survive.” She needs to. Someone needs to spread the gospel of Malaysian cooking, and it could be that there is no one better to do it.
To find out more about the Tampopo cookery school, head to their website...
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