Stake a claim

THE Tourism Minister sparked off a cyber food fight a couple of years ago when she declared that Malaysia would lay claim to certain dishes, which she believed had been hijacked by other countries (no names mentioned but chilli crabs were cited and Singaporean food bloggers immediately took point in the debate). The spat was over quickly and the online ranting died down when everyone realised the absurdity of the whole affair.

No doubt, we each have many interesting dishes, and as nations that have much to be proud of in our cuisine, we like to argue about who has the better tasting dish. But the origin of a dish can only be an issue if we are able to determine how, when and where it was created – and in a region like South-East Asia, especially, where we borrow so much from each other, how many dishes can a country truly claim as its own?