Our interview with Malaysian chef Norman Musa

Odyssey World reunites with International Chef, author, TV host and tutor Norman Musa for the Great Culinary Escape to Malaysia in September 2022. Experiencing the Malaysia that only locals know, Norman will escort a small group of foodie enthusiasts on a true farm to fork cookery tour, exploring the origin and use of spices and plants and teaching masterclasses en-route with chefs from some of the country’s most stylish 5 star hotels.

We caught up with Norman to see what he’s been doing and what we can expect from this magical tour of Malaysia.

What are you doing now?

I’m now based in Leeds since I moved back from the Netherlands. I’ve joined a newly opened restaurant in Horsforth. It’s a Malaysian restaurant, so they have appointed me to be the executive chef. The original plan was just to train the kitchen team for a month until they offered me a full-time position.

So you’re full-time in the kitchen?

I’m doing four days per week and other things like consultancy work as well, which I will announce soon because it’s still top secret with a big client!

What’s the best thing about being back in a restaurant kitchen?

This is my passion, and to be able to have a kitchen to work on my creativity and cook for other people – it’s something that I always enjoy ever so much! Cooking during covid was very weird because I had to do cooking demos and everything else from my home kitchen, it wasn’t something that I was really enjoying.

The new restaurant is called Kuala Lumpur Restaurant and Bar. The funny thing is after I told Malaysians they were laughing about the title, but I think it was quite unique because everyone would remember Kuala Lumpur as the capital city of Malaysia, so for any locals here it’s easy for them so they call it KL restaurant. I have to give a thumbs up to the owners because it was a good move.

You’ve had an unusual career as a professional chef, living in lots of countries with different jobs. Any particular highlights?

Once I gave up my full-time job as a quantity surveyor, I never thought my life would be so colourful! I had the opportunity to travel all over the world working for Formula 1 , which sparked my ambition to promote Malaysian cuisine. Since then I’ve been offered to run cooking demos everywhere, from Dubai and all around Europe.

Before covid, even my followers couldn’t track me down, I kept moving from one place to another. But I think the opportunity I was given to run the restaurant in The Hague (after moving to the Netherlands in 2018) was a highlight because it was a different way of promoting Malaysian cuisine. But it was also quite challenging, for example, there was a competition with Indonesian cuisine which was massive.

Since 2018, my book Amazing Malaysian was translated into Dutch as well so I created a platform to promote Malaysian cuisine in the Netherlands and this year I’ll begin filming a new cooking show in Germany, which will create another platform. It will be a follow-up to East West Bake, recorded with mentor Brian Mellor.

Asian cuisine is deeply rooted in tradition and the old recipes are the best. But are you seeing any new trends in Malaysian cooking?

As much as Malaysians are very proud of their cuisine and try to keep it as authentic as they can, you can see that different states of Malaysia have different twists. For example, Rendang – if you go up north to Penang where I’m from, it’s more spicy. If you go to the east coast around Kelantan, their dishes tend to be more sweet.

In terms of trends, it depends on where people are and how accessible it is to get ingredients to replicate it like it’s done in Malaysia. But we try to keep it as authentic as we can, especially when using dried chilis, for example – I’ve found the perfect chilis that are not too spicy and won’t scare the British off!

What’s your favourite dish at the moment?

Laksa! Before it was Rendang. It never fails to excite my masterclass students. I always love to assemble all these ingredients and teach them to prepare the spice base from scratch. So they’d see the spices like coriander and cumin together with the lemongrass, chilis, and even galangal sometimes, mix together and cook with noodles. You can do it with seafood, chicken or even vegan/vegetarian too! In future, I’m going to teach my classes how to make the noodles from scratch as well!

Wow, that’s a challenge!

It’s actually really easy, you’d be surprised!

One of my favourite things about Malaysian cooking is the art of the preparation, so you assemble all these different ingredients and create this colour palette in front of you, I guess that’s one of the good things about laksa, isn’t it? All the different layers and textures, it makes it so beautiful.

That’s how you would appreciate the time and effort that you put in. You spend 45 minutes to prepare the food, cook it for 10 – 15 minutes and then you eat it in 5 minutes! That’s one of the reasons Malaysians are put off by cooking in Malaysia. But I always encourage people to spend time and see what’s going into a dish like Laksa and you will appreciate the beauty of it and how the spices complement with the herbs etc.

We’re lucky in the UK to have great Asian food.  But what do you think is the difference when you experience cuisine in its country of origin?

This is something I explore in my new book, out in Autumn this year. Growing up in that part of the world made me appreciate neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Burma as well. Not many people know about Burmese food. We can classify Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian food as similar – we use coconut milk in cooking, with lots of ingredients involved. When it comes to Vietnamese, it’s very clean, fresh, soupy – I like it! For me, their food is an easy approach, and always on the healthy side; not too heavy. I always look out for Vietnamese food if I want to take time away from my cuisine.

And Burmese food, for example, they don’t use coconut milk. They do use spices, but are more into tamarind and vinegar to create something sour.

Sri Lankan food is almost quite similar to what we have in Malaysia because Malaysian cuisine is very diverse due to the Malay, Chinese and Indian influence.

          

For those lucky foodies travelling on Odyssey World’s Great Culinary Escape to Malaysia in September, what can they expect when travelling with you?

I know I’m going to get detailed explaining the cuisine and the areas we’re going to be visiting, but I want to make sure that they’re going to have some fun! I’m not all that serious all the time!

It’s going to be very educational and the places that we visit aren’t going to be touristy places, so for example, I’m taking all the guests to the village where my late dad grew up in the middle of Butterworth so you will see beautiful scenery.

In the past, I took guests to one of the local eateries in the remote farmlands – it’s a seafood grill restaurant. We sat at this long table, and all the locals that had never seen tourists before came to the restaurant, even my cousins! We had a great time and enjoyed fresh coconut water from the fruit stalls. Everything in front of you was real and authentic.

This time I’m including a visit to one of the lesser-known islands in Malaysia, Pangkor Laut, and we’re going to be doing masterclasses. We’ll be going to the fresh market, picking out our own ingredients, and then going back to the kitchen to cook. Very authentic!

Whenever I do masterclasses in the UK, I wish I could take my students to the fresh markets and explain to them how they grow these herbs etc, so it will be very educational and hopefully inspire all of our guests to come back home and create something from the experience.

Anything else we should look out for from you?

I have my book launch in autumn and some TV promotion.

At the restaurant we’re doing lots of events, many are already selling out! The restaurant also has the garden and we’re doing all kinds of BBQ events, so you can imagine satay, grilled chicken etc may be one of the dishes on the menu. Summer is coming!

There will be lots of food festivals that I’m going to be touring and promoting Malaysian cuisine through cooking demonstrations, as well as masterclasses all over the UK.

You can find Norman Musa via his website, Instagram and Twitter.

The 10 night Great Culinary Escape to Malaysia departs on September 22, 2022. Limited spaces remain on this tour and you can secure your place from just £2,500 per person. Find out more here and contact Odyssey World to book now.