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Atiqah Nik Ghazali’s family recipes represent Malay food from all over Malaysia
BUBBLY and exuberant with a ready smile, Atiqah Nik Ghazali is completely at ease in the kitchen, where she ladles out hot spoonfuls of nasi goreng ulam from a large wok into her mother’s treasured Noritake serving bowls. This charming scene is a recurring theme for Atiqah, who grew up in a family of good cooks and started developing her culinary skills as a teenager.
As a child, Atiqah had fond memories of her “balik kampung” trips to Kelantan where food was a highlight. Her grandmothers especially played a huge part in shaping her love of food, as both were excellent cooks.
“Once or twice a year, we would go back to Kelantan and I would be exposed to nasi kerabu, laksam and all the different kuihs. So I started to really like what I tasted during my childhood years,” she says.
Both Atiqah’s grandmothers passed away quite suddenly (11 days apart of each other) when she was in her early 20s, and her longing for them and their food intensified.
“When you miss someone so much, you really want to taste their food. I would often ask my aunties for the recipes. But the older generation, when you ask them, ‘How do you cook this?’, they will say, ‘Ah, sini sikit, sini sikit.’ They don’t really have the measurements. So now with technology, I can actually use the recipes my aunties gave me and Google for inspiration on how to adapt it to the taste that I remember,” she says.
Although Atiqah is passionate about cooking the Malay food she grew up on, she is also a realist and advocates shortcuts and modifications, as she works full-time in sales and marketing and understands that some recipes can be particularly time-consuming. Like her nasi goreng ulam, which is a simplified version of nasi kerabu.
“If you want to make nasi kerabu, you need a team. One to prepare the rice and ulam-ulam, another person to make kuah kerabu and someone else to make keropok and solok lada (stuffed green peppers). And if you want the real kerabu, you need 10 types of herbs, and it’s super hard to find here, so I make this instead,” she says.
Atiqah’s flavourful ikan percik has also been modified and represents her rendition of the dish. “It’s a simplified version of the authentic Kelantan version,” she says.
After getting married a few years ago, Atiqah inherited an even larger arsenal of recipes from her mother-in-law, who is also a fabulous cook. In fact, right after she got engaged, Atiqah’s mother-in-law shared her treasured recipe for rendang Taiping with her!
The deliciously rich, slightly sweet curry apparently has its origins in Penang’s rendang mamak but was adapted when her in-laws’ family moved to Taiping, Perak. The recipe was then passed down to Atiqah’s mother-in-law, who according to family lore, is the only one of her 13 siblings to make it exactly like her mother!
“It’s my husband’s favourite and even during Raya, my in-laws’ family will come to my mother-inlaw’s house and there will be requests for rendang Taiping. You’ll hear them say, ‘Rendang Taiping! Rendang Taiping!’ It’s her signature dish,” says Atiqah.
Atiqah’s recipe for puding buih, meanwhile, is inspired by her maternal grandmother, who moved around Malaysia quite a bit as her husband was a policeman. The puding is from Pahang and is a jelly concoction with a sweet, milky custard accompaniment.
It’s very rare to find pud-ing buih anywhere, even at Ramadan bazaars. There are thousands of jellies, but none have that special taste, so to me , this is special,” she says. As Atiqah works full-time, she makes it a point to cook every single weekend. “When you work, you don’t care what kind of food you eat – you just eat because you’re hungry and you need something fast. But I get sick and tired of everyday food, so over the weekends, my husband is home and I actually want differ-ent kinds of dishes. So I will cook it," she says. Atiqah says she will continue cooking these Malay dishes as not only do they form the fabric of her childhood, she also thinks they represent heritage food that is slowly dying off.
"I see food as another element of a culture, you need to know how to cook traditional food or a similar version of it. Mine is a bit of fusion, but you need to know how to make it because otherwise it will die off. And he cause it’s traditional food, it’s important to keep the heritage going,” she says.