No chili sauce please, we are Malaysians

That was breakfast this morning.

McDonald's sausage and egg sandwich with tomato ketchup as sauce. Unlike other Malaysians, we can't stand chili sauce especially Maggi chili sauce.

It really drives us nut to find chili sauce in our McDonald takeaway instead of the original American takeway that come with only ketchup (without having to mention tomato). Just because Malaysian take everything with chili sauce, they presume every Malaysian only take chili sauce with their McDonald's burgers. .

Our more internationally exposed tastebud is more choosy. Different food goes with different sauces. There is no one sauce to go with all dishes the way Malaysian do with their ubiquitous chili sauce.

Perhaps it does not apply to all Malaysian. To the Chinese, they have many type of sauces., Light soy sauce is great with steam fish. Using many basic sauces like black bean sauce, plum sauces, hoi sin sauce, etc. they develop unique sauces for different dishes.  

Japanese have their own version of soy sauces. One popular industrial brand is Kikkoman that goes into their cooking. For sushi and sashimi, it has it's own soy sauces. There is also specially concocted soy sauce for yakotari.
 
Maybe this fascination with chili sauce is only a Malay habit.  

French Onion Steak with chili sauce anyone?

It reminded us of an incident in our days as a Banker. We were dining out with some Bank Bumiputera bankers abroad at a French restaurant. This Perakian bloke from Taiping ordered a steak.

When his steak arrived with all the side dishes and sauces, he requested for chili sauce from the waiter.

Suddenly, the head chef appeared in full all white attire asking in his thick French accent, "Pardon Monsieur, anythink ghrong with de foot?"

To the French chef, it is an insult to his culinary skill to request his painstakingly prepared gravy sauce replaced by Nestle's industrial Maggi chili sauce. The least our friend could have done was to ask for the British Wochestershire sauce or American steak sauce, A1 or HP sauce.

However, our friend was being a typical Malaysian to forsake the refined and simple French brown or herbal butter sauces for Maggi chili sauce for his steak. We had a good laugh of that incident whenever we get together today.

Another friend, a chef who used to be Managing Director of Dutch food service company and made the mistake of returning to be a local restauranteer, described to us the basic component of prepared food. All prepared food comes in three basic components; the main dish, sauce and condiments.

Steak dinner comes as steak as the main food, steak sauce as sauce, and vegetable or potato as side dish or condiments. While, the simple ! local fas! t food of nasi goreng is made up of rice as main food, perencah as sauce, and food bits thrown in as condiments.

The French and generally European has lots of different sauces that major restaurants would have specialist chef to prepare only sauces.

Sauce is usually liquid, creamy or semi-solid served on or at times, similar to our nasi goireng perencah,  used in preparing other foods. It serves to add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to the main dish.

Salad dressing are sauces. It is basically an emulsion of olive oil, acidic fruit juice like lemon or lime, salt, black pepper, herbs and other stuff.

To the Italian, Greek, Arabs, and other Mediteranean, olive oil forms the main ingredient if not the only ingredient for their sauces.

Malaysian sauces tend to be spicy or three-in-one taste of sweetness, saltiness and spiciness in their sauces. Common ingredient for Malaysian sauces are tomato usually with chili or soy.

Other than Indians, most Malaysian are not used to sourish tasting sauces like the European Mayonnaise, Hollandise and Bechamel sauces.

Talking about sourish sauces reminded us of those Greek yogurt sauce that came with their gyros kebab we had in Chicago before a night at the Blues joints.
    
Sauce is a French word taken f! rom the L! atin sauce, meaning salted. And possibly the oldest sauce recorded is garum, the fish sauce used by the Ancient Romans. The Thai's Nam Pla could be as old as civilisation.

Thai version of chili sauce is making a market entry into the chili sauce craze Malaysian market. So does Thai's green curry "sauce" is finding a natural positioning here in also curry craze Malaysia.

Curry sauce has reached international standing that almost all American and European are used to curry dishes. They even have their own prepared version of curry sauces.

Malaysians are beginning to acquire the taste of the egg and oil sauce, mayonnise. 

To get kids with problematic eating habit, make them spaghetti with thick tomato spaghetti sauce with all the veggie they hate meshed in it and they'll gobble it up to the last drop. The green pine nuts and basil pesto sauce is making market entry in Italian restaurant.

In Johor, they invented the garlic with soy dipping sauce that goes with almost all fried food, including the evening tea pisang goreng.   

It puzzles us why Malaysian must have chili sauces all the time when there are thousand other unique selection of sauces to go with their food.
Though ! we must admit being a chili sauce junkie in our teens.

But that was out of necessity to add flavour to badly prepared dishes in mass cooking dining hall in boarding school. Food was so bad that we had rice with Maggi chili sauce.

That was until Aminah Hassan nutty tasting chili sauce came in the market.

But Nestle was mean to buy them out and kill off the product. Can someone produce that sauce and give Nestle a run for their chili sauce?

However, we've not actually put a total ban on chili sauce.All those mispacked McDonald chili sauces are kept and accumulated for only one purpose.

Chili sauce is still great as dipping sauce for jemput-jemput as Johorean would call it or cucur kodok or gross literall translation of skewered toad to other Semenanjung Malays.

For keropok or keropok lekor, do not waste it on that common chili sauce. Get those cottage made sos dedicated for it. Be sure to accumulate it in one of those trip along the Easy Coast of Kelantan to Kuantan. Help our poor fishermen.

So happen we gave shared this idea to our friend, who is the owner of the brand Enaq Malay kicap sauce (watch the TV ad) that was recent market entrant, to help develop further the product, market and distribute this kampung folks recipes and give them a chance to be millionaires too.

He dreamt of a Mark and Spenser of local product. So happen, one friend, To Ki, who is the President of Muslim Consumer Society have got a shop at the Mall as marketing outlet for Muslim made and kampung products.
   
For a start, someone must develop one chili sauce meant for jemput-jemput or cucur kodok. It will be a great beginning to free Malaysians from the shackle of dependence to Nestle's Maggi chili sauce.

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