AUGUST: Food, home & business

This year I've been writing a play that looks at how food feeds into our understanding of home and belonging. It's about a Malaysian woman who moves to the UK, misses home, sets up a street food stall selling Malaysian food...

The play is called 'Don't sing in the kitchen, or you'll marry an old man', check out the project here: www.DontSing.co.uk

As part of research for this project I have been speaking with people in London about food and home. In the series ‘Home, Food & Business’ I have been focusing on those who have developed a career around food that reminds them of home and who predominantly have ‘home’ in multiple places.I thought I would gather those interviews here.

So far, I have spoken with Mandy and Guan, there will be more coming!

Mandy from Sambal Shiok

Safiah and I are bad Malaysians. We hadn’t been to Roti King in Euston till Monday 6 July. Luckily Mandy, of Sambal Shiok, saved the day and showed us the road home. Roti canai and kopi. Real kopi, kopi with sweetened condensed milk.

Sambal Shiok is a Malaysian Street Food stall, run by Mandy. Sambal is a Malaysian chilli sauce, often made with shrimp paste served as a condiment. Shiok is Malaysian slang for delicious.

Mandy started her business in December 2013 at Harringay Market on Sundays as a guest spot for Christmas/New Year. Speaking to Mandy it’s clear to see the drive and the passion. Originally trained as a lawyer, Mandy worked as a partner in a corporate law firm in London, before realising that that pace of life was no longer making her happy - and food, and cooking was something that did.

And Mandy Part two, about support, advice and the importance of networks.

Guan and Nyonya

I meet up with Guan on a Tuesday lunchtime, I had just got back from a week in France and although I had a lot of work to do that day I was still in holiday mood, so it wasn't hard for Guan to twist my arm into having a glass of wine with lunch. Or rather - "are you the sort of person who has one glass and then thinks another is a good idea? Maybe we should just have a carafe?"

With that one sentence, I knew me Guan were going to get on.

Guan gave up his Investment Banking career to train in traditional French cooking at Cordon Bleu in London for a year. But for his cooking post-studying Guan went back to his roots and developed a very specific style of cooking, Nyonya food. A combination of falling in love with cooking and a lucky break on TV with 'The Taste' meant Guan ended up changing careers and giving a life in the food industry a shot.

The Body Eats

When I first saw Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring (1975) I remember feeling a deep hunger. My belly rumbled, my torso tightened and the muscles sucked into my belly button as my body concaved in on itself. I could feel my arms wanting to desperately reach out and seek things to fill me up, to bring close to me, to suck up and consume. I wanted to devour the world. I watched it the first year of my Performing Arts undergraduate, where I thought I would major in dance and movement. In the end I didn’t, switching in the final semester to acting, after struggling to feel fully comfortable with my body moving through space for people to watch. I decided I preferred to hide behind words. Dance has always been a space of thirst, for cravings, for desire – a way to seek out and pursue, a way to rampage through ideas. Moving to be sated. Finishing dance exams growing up I would always be hungry, never being able to eat when nervous. Navigating how to feel in leotards, in front of mirrors, o

The undoing and redoing of me

I am often thinking about the line between public and private, the way it wavers, blurs, disappears. In a world of social media it is a question for everyone, and not just for the stars, royalty, politicians. For me the question broadens into the realm of work. Where do I begin, and where do ‘I’ end. The ‘I’ must interrogate my place within power structures, within cultural narratives, within relatability. My academic research was about a community I am part of, through my father. It was an ‘objective’ approach to examine storytelling, but because it was not a culture I participated in on a daily basis I was constantly negotiating my position in the work, my lens in the re-telling, my biases, my outside-ness and my inside-ness. The story of me became integral to the condition of the research. And, as my professional career has progressed, my approximation to this culture, one that is less known in the wider world, means I have become a tool to crack into these spheres - I have the con

Understanding Malaysia: part one of ?

‘The (Malay)Asian Friend’ I think this will be a series of essays, a disgruntled thread that may take a lifetime to untangle. The continued misunderstanding of a complex nation, where borders and boundaries come from flux, where the jungle makes lines in the earth an impossibility and yet politics, nationalism, colonial lens and the exotic touristic eye compete to limit and define a nation built on migration and the movement of people. (and I realise that this could refer to not just Malaysia!) My original gripe comes from the limitation of how Malaysia food, and therefore Malaysians, gets represented in London. I write in my book (out in a year’s time) that we are boiled down to a few dishes - “roti canai, beef rendang, nasi lemak, nasi goreng, maybe sambal, and now laksa.” The request for these dishes is like a checklist of if a restaurant is ‘authentically’ Malaysia, or someone is authentically Malaysian if they know/like/eat them. You don’t crave nasi lemak, are you really Malaysi

TALKING ABOUT FOOD

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