The table-setting for our first Malaysian Family Dinner, complete with printed menus that I made

For the table setting, I used local orchids and banana leaves to create a tropical feel.  Banana leaves show up in all sorts of dishes here, and even as a plate — there are banana leaf curry restaurants all over town that serve a delicious curry and rice using the banana leaf as the “container” to hold your food.

A variation of the Lee Brothers’ pimento cheese and crackers, for snacking

For our starters, I made pimento cheese, a classic Southern staple, and a Deep-South rendition of a Malaysian karipap (curry puff).  I blackened local red chilies to put in the pimento cheese instead of the traditional red bell pepper, which made the dish a little more fiery than usual.

Cover your eyes, Mom: the curry puffs aren’t the prettiest, but tasted good, I think

The other appetizer I made was the karipap filled with homemade Southern-style spicy sausage, apple, onion and curry.  Traditional Malaysian curry puffs usually contain chicken or beef, potatoes and sometimes, a hard-boiled egg.  I based my recipe on the amazing beef curry puffs that my mom and dad usually make for special occasions in my family.  My mom is probably shuddering in a corner somewhere looking at the imperfect edges on my curry puffs, because only she (and, oddly enough, my sister’s boyfriend) are capable of making perfectly braided edges.   I was especially excited when the pastry dough turned out flaky and not clunky, as I’ve done in the past (as I’ve mentioned before, I lack of some serious skills in the baking department).

The dish of the evening: tamarind prawns and polenta with a scoop of sambal, a variation from Southern shrimp ‘n grits

The main course was a variation of shrimp and grits, which has to be one of my all-time favorite comfort foods.  I developed my own recipe years ago, after eating quite possibly the best shrimp and grits ever at a now-defunct little place in Charleston, South Carolina called The Bookstore Cafe.  I chased those shrimp and grits in my dreams until I decided to do something about it, and spent a weekend in the kitchen trying to reproduce Bookstore’s version as best I could.  The South by Southeast Asian version was a local prawn and polenta dish in a tamarind-based gravy.  Tamarind is a popular tangy ingredient used in a lot of Malaysian dishes, and I recently had learned how to make tamarind juice by squeezing the living daylights out of fresh tamarind pods.  It’s fun because it’s kind of messy.  The tamarind gave the tomato gravy that accompanies the shrimp a little more depth, and I also made a sambal (chili sauce) served in porcelain soup spoons so that each diner could adjust the level of heat to her own taste.  I picked up that little trick of the trade from my favorite curry laksa lady.

Above: my Malaysian chef-teacher pours gula melaka (palm sugar syrup) into a Malaysian tapioca dessert; for this dinner, I whipped this syrup with butter, and served it alongside cornbread

The shrimp and grits came with three family-style sides: homemade cornbread muffins and whipped butter, which I spiced up by flavoring with gula melaka, a deep brown palm sugar.  Boiled down into a thick syrup, Malaysians use gula melaka in all sorts of desserts, and it makes for a caramel-y sweetness with just a hint of coffee.  I usually beat in a little maple syrup with butter to serve alongside my cornbread, so it was fun to see everyone fall in love with gula melaka just as much as I have when they tasted it in the butter.

I also made a Malaysian-style ambrosia salad.  In the South, ambrosia salad is a cloying concoction with a dried-coconut, mayonnaise, peeled oranges, marshmallows, pecans, and canned fruit cocktail.  I decided to make a little sophisticated version with local grapefruit, oranges, avocado, and fresh grated coconut and coconut milk.  The coconut milk and avocado served as the creamy conduit, and it made me much happier to make a salad without having to drench it in Hellmann’s.

Side dish: Malaysian long beans slow-cooked with potatoes and bacon

The other dish, pictured above, is my proverbial red-headed stepchild of the evening, because he doesn’t photograph all that well.  I made a Malaysian long bean and potato casserole, which slow-cooked all day with a big hunk of bacon.  Even though Asians love eating greens crisply sauteed and bright green in color, I thought it would be fun and tasty to use local long beans and cook the daylights out of them, Deep South-style.  The beans held up well to the hours of slow heat, and even absorbed some great smoky flavor from hanging out with the bacon, like they were sauna buddies or something.

Foreground: a belated birthday smile from yours truly; background: my Pocky-scripted cake aglow in candlelight

Of course, every good meal needs a good dessert, and the hubby stepped in as the patissier for the evening to make me a belated birthday cake.  The hubby believes that no one should ever make their own birthday cake, and he thought our first Malaysian Family Dinner would be the perfect time to present his masterful creation.  Bear in mind that the hubby and I have very different dessert palates (I love fruit-based, delicate desserts, while his philosophy is that of a seven-year-old’s: the more gooey, sweet crud that’s in the dessert, the better), so every year we negotiate for weeks about what my birthday dessert will be made of.  This year’s was the ultimate compromise: homemade strawberry ice cream on top of a cheesecake brownie crust from scratch, layered with white chocolate shavings.  The piece de resistance was the words “Happy B-day, Ann” spelled out in broken bits of strawberry Pocky.  That man is a keeper, I tell ya.

By the end of the night, our guests’ bellies were full and we’d had hours of hilarious and entertaining conversation topics ranging from excessive bag usage in Malaysia (seriously, once I purchased a cookie from a street vendor, and he put it in a cellophane bag, then a small plastic bag, then put the entire thing in a large shopping bag, so what’s up with that?) to memories of our favorite meals back at home.  As the last of our guests trickled out, the hubby and I were beaming from ear to ear, because oh, man, we love to eat, especially when we’re with a big group of fun people.