The 1st cooking class was on Langkawi Island on the 9th Jan

This is where we cooked with Pia at her restaurant and cooking school, “Pia”s the Padi”. 
Love the sign!

Here we learned her Malaysian versions of the Indonesian's Beef Rendang, Indian Chicken Butter Masala, Fish Sambal and many more. Because Pia is Malaysian/Chinese and her husband is Malaysian/Indian the dishes we learnt were as they say Nyonya.  This was a fusion of food cultures and a very unique experience as it was located a 40min drive inland to a padi field. 

The scenery and the drive to get there (in and a rust bucket of a taxi van) was reminiscent of Fiji 30 years ago. 

This is a developing tourist location and thankfully is still much untouched by western influences so the experience was still quite real. The cost (unreal) of the taxi from the ship was 4 times the cost back so someone is making big dosh at the ports (tourist $) while the locals taxi is still working happily at a realistic local cost for the work/task done. It was a bit disappointing that if the ports are charging the tourist off the ship so much that they can’t employ some locals who are clearly on a lower wage to do some rubbish removal to make the entrance to their ports an experience that would make tourists want to return and not feel ripped off by the government departments running the filthy ports. OK Pete off your soap box! So, with that aside the people we had dealings with in Malaysia were beautiful hearted people who couldn’t do anything more to make our time in their county a pleasure and a culturally unique experience. 

All the dishes we cooked with Pia were big ticks, I love a good rendang and the Malaysian’s sure know how to cook and flavour fish.

 The stand out dish we learned from Pia was the Chicken Butter Masala from scratch. (Margret and John L) Sandy can’t wait to cook this for you. It’s all about the butter and when and how it is applied that makes this dish a roasted, smoky and buttery delight and not just a creamy safe sauce that we have come to know from all the ones I’ve tried in Australia. Maybe I’m wearing rose coloured glasses and it’s just a Malaysian food fling! but truly I have never had it taste so good and now we have the technic from a local Malaysian chef, Pia. May need to improve our outdoor kitchen facilities, oh … and it can’t be cooked on a total fire ban day!!