recipe
photograph LUKE J ALBERT
Norman Musa is a Ma laysian-born chef, author, TV host, tutor and restaurateur based in Leeds. He was executive chef of Kua la Lumpur restaurant and bar, and is currently a tutor for the Waga ma ma Chef Academy. He’s been a chef for Formula One racing, featured on Tom Kerridge’s Best Ever Dishes on the BBC, and is the author of Bowlful and Amazing Malaysian. Here, he tells us about one of his favourite family recipes.
I moved to the UK in 1994 to go to universit y, and was constantly on the phone to my late mum who ran a food stall in Ma laysia, asking her how to cook many of my favourite dishes that she made when I was a boy. I recreated them using the ingredients I could find in the UK. Without my mum’s g uidance and willingness to share her knowledge, I don’t think I would have learned the basics of Ma laysian cuisine. In 2006, without any culinary background, I set up my first restaurant in Manchester. W hen I told my mum, she called me a ‘stupid boy ’ for giving up my full-time job as a sur veyor. I told her I would take this as a cha llenge and prove to her I could make a good living by becoming a chef.
Grow ing up, I would visit the night market with my mum, two minutes from our home in Kampung Sungai Ny ior, where she’d pick up the best fresh ingredients. R ice is our staple food and it was ser ved with curries – either sea food or meat – accompanied by a vegetable stir-fr y and some fresh leaves we called ‘ulam’ – for exa mple, cassava shoots or cashew leaves.
Norman teaching a Wagamama Chef Academy class
Ayam bakar (the market’s baked chicken & slaw)