Spice Hunting's tour of the world of specialty sugars has already explored earthy turbinado and rummy piloncillo; now it's time to talk about my absolute favorite: palm sugar. More

You can smell the char kuey teow stall before you see it. And you can see the smoke as soon as you smell it—a smoldering, sultry cloud wafting down Kimberley Street, a prime street food strip in Georgetown, on the Malaysian island of Penang. More

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When I first started jotting down notes for this post in Malaysia, it was a list of "10 Malaysian Dishes You Should Know." After a few more days grazing in Penang, ten turned into fifteen. By the time I got to Kuala Lumpur, my list had sambal stains all over it... and five more dishes. (Once you start getting excited about Malaysian food, it's really hard to stop.) Here are 25 Malaysian dishes you should know—laksa and rendang are only the beginning. More

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Roti canai is probably Malaysia's more famous roti, but the lacy, crepe-like pancakes known as roti jala are even prettier—and much simpler to make. A simple batter of eggs, coconut milk, and flour is drizzled in concentric circles onto a hot pan, cooking in seconds and then folded to form a loose, netlike pancake whose nooks and crannies are ideally suited to mopping up curries and sauces. More

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The noodle soup laksa is one of Malaysia's iconic dishes, which takes many names and even more forms. But today, we're talking curry laksa, its broth rich with coconut milk, topped with prawns and egg and spicy sambal. Come see how it's made, step by step! More

America gets a lot of credit as a melting pot. But it's got nothing on Malaysia. Walk down a street in Penang and you'll pass an Indian man pulling tissue-thin dough for roti canai next to Chinese women tossing noodles in pork lard. You can eat dim sum for breakfast and mutton curry for lunch. You'll dip coriander-turmeric fried chicken in a Worcestershire-based sauce. Chinese, Malay, Indian, Thai; it's how these culinary traditions alternately merge and remain distinct that makes Malaysian cookery so fascinating—and so hard to summarize concisely, a Venn diagram of flavor whose every overlapping sliver is its own compelling story. More

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Gado gado is the classic street food salad of bean sprouts and other vegetables coated in a savory-sweet Javanese peanut sauce. Let me just say that I don't think gado gado is a perfect dish. It never looks appetizing, for starters. Gado gado means potpourri, which certainly describes the muddy color of the peanut sauce doused all over an assortment of seemingly random items. It's usually served with shrimp chips on top, but it's the peanut dressing that keeps me coming back. More

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Rendang are dishes that are as integral to Malaysian cookery as laksas or satays. A rendang is a dish of meat stewed slowly in a coconut-curry liquid. Aromatic pastes are added in the beginning. As the meat stews in the paste and coconut milk mixture, the liquid reduces until only the oils of the coconut milk remain. To finish, the meat is lightly browned in the remaining coconut oil. The resulting dish is intensely flavorful and tender yet crisp and sticky on the outside with bits of browned aromatics. More

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For the next few weeks, Seriously Asian will be Seriously Malaysian, a celebration of that little-known, under appreciated cuisine with tendrils that reach into so many other, more familiar Asian cookeries. Malaysian cooks employ techniques and ingredients that we've come to associate with the Chinese, Indian, and Thai, yet the balanced, sophisticated flavors that the cuisine offers are entirely novel to palates unaccustomed. This week, we'll be discussing the basic ingredients that are, relatively speaking, unique to Malaysian cookery. More

Lynn of To Short Term Memories made these lovely macarons for herself after teaching a cooking class. One's filled with dulce de leche and the other with kaya, a rich, creamy jam made with coconut milk, eggs and pandan leaf most popular in Singapore and Malaysia and usually served spread on toast. I do not know how I will continue to exist in the world today knowing I cannot have these in my mouth!... More