The ice cream lady
A retiree’s new adventure is set to warm Malaysian hearts while keeping them cool under the blazing sun, discovers
“LOOK Ammama, ice cream!” my niece tugs at my arm, one balmy evening as we sit down for a huge dinner at the famous Wei Yin seafood restaurant located at 9th Mile Port Dickson. She points to a modest kiosk located right outside and looks at me with imploring eyes. “Ice cream!” she repeats and promptly runs outside, drawn to the confectionery displayed like a moth to a flame.
The colourful sign hung up at the front says Coco Moo. Artisanal ice cream, it declares. I’m surprised. Artisanal icecreams in upscale big-city Kuala Lumpur isn’t a rare sight. But here in the middle of a sleepy seaside resort town away from the glitz, trends and hype surrounding major cities, artisanal ice cream is being served up right outside a Chinese restaurant in the middle of nowhere!
Smiling at my incredulity, proprietor (or “ice cream lady” as my niece calls her) Chong Siew Lian practically beams from behind the counter, saying: “They’re all homemade... you should try some!”
The steamy humid weather we’ve been experiencing in Port Dickson had not abated even as night fell. The air feels heavy, and unreasonably warm, yet to be fair, it is perfect ice cream weather. We haven’t had dinner yet, but the lure of ice cream proves irresistible. Minutes later, we’ve abandoned the dinner table temporarily and have milled around the kiosk, with little cups of ice cream in hand.
Local delights have found their way into swirls of lush ice cream — coconut, durian, black sesame and even gula melaka — the uniquely Malaysian version of coconut palm sugar that’s both smoky and toffee-edged in flavour.
“It’s delicious!” I murmur after my second cup of ice cream, and Chong asks with a wink: “Would you like to try another flavour?”
There’s something inherently decadent about eating ice cream for dinner, and Chong’s uniquely flavoured ice creams are a hit with my family. But still, Port Dickson of all places? Chong chuckles at my incredulity while serving up another scoop of durian ice cream to my delighted niece.
Day. His written proclamation states the delicious treat is “the perfect dessert and snack food”.
Pop culture agrees with the late president, because there have been so many top ice cream moments in TV and movies over the years, from Oscar-winning movies to hilarious classic sitcoms. They’re so good they’ll have you craving a scoop for yourself. You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream indeed.
Ice cream does do something funny to a lot of us: it makes us nostalgic and happy and, if you take your cues from Bridget Jones, it helps us recover from heartbreak. The world is more colourful, slower-paced and simply more fun with an ice cream.
There are a few reasons why this is the case. We are particularly conditioned to like foods that change texture in our mouths: as ice cream melts from solid to liquid, it keeps our brains interested.
When you lick an ice cream, the emulsion covers all the sensors of your tongue, from back to front, making your taste buds sing with sweet, savoury and sharp sensations. It is easy to digest and places very low on something called the satiety index, which means you can eat a lot without feeling unpleasantly full.
When you break down the chemistry behind ice cream, it’s easy to see why it remains a perennial childhood favourite. It’s been engineered to the perfect combination of elements — sugar, fat, frozen water and air — that make up the mouth-watering concoction. It really isn’t your fault that ice cream is so tempting — it’s science!
“The best ice cream is what comes with experience,” Chong avers. “I’ve tasted some of the best ice creams from around the world, and I wanted to ensure that anything I produce would somehow taste better. That’s the only way I understood it would work.”
Like so many foods, ice cream has headed merrily into the world of local, handmade, artisanal elevation. But ice cream that pays less rent — the oldschool regional ice creams on which entire childhood narratives have been built — remains immune to such culinary pressure.
“Practically every flavour I’m offering is an ode to my childhood,” declares Chong enthusiastically. Her initial flavours were based on the desserts she had as a child, she reveals, adding: “...things like red bean, sweet corn, pulut hitam (black glutinous
rice pudding) and all the fruits I loved like mango, jackfruit and durian!”
It would be difficult to argue that any other food holds a stronger connection to memory than ice cream does. Ask most Malaysians about their favourite childhood dessert and the descriptions will be vivid and specific.
“My ice creams evoke those memories,” states Chong, smiling. Business, she tells me proudly, has been good and there’s a growing community of people who would travel all the way to Port Dickson for her ice cream.
In some circles, the nostalgic beauty of a quart of Chong’s pulut hitam creamy concoction in Port Dickson beats out any fancy high-fat, chef-spun ice cream.
Still, it took a while for Chong to actually venture into the ice cream business. Born in Penang, Chong recalls growing up in hotels.
“My mother was a UK-trained hairdresser and she had a salon at the E&O Hotel. I was attracted to the industry, seeing the hotel general manager walk around in a shiny suit. I wanted the same for myself!” she recounts with a laugh, adding: “Of course, it was such a naive illusion at that time!”
She pursued a hotel management and catering qualification in Switzerland where she tells with another chuckle, how the illusion of glamour was shattered into many pieces.
“I was horrified. The perceived glamour was just that. A perception. I had to wash dishes and that quickly wiped off any form of grandeur I had with the hotel industry!” she says, grinning. Still she grew to enjoy it and started off her career in the hotel industry at the age of 18.
“I loved the food and the people but I didn’t quite like the long hours attached to the industry. That wasn’t for me,” admits Chong.
Soon after, she left and joined the airlines where she remained for 20 years. “Once you’ve done all the travelling and