Uniting over love of our food

IT NEVER ceases to amaze me how quick Malaysians are to unite over food, especially when it comes to celebrating or defending our favourite eats. And if foreigners should dare to criticise a national dish, well, watch out world!

I’m referring, of course, to the case of the Malaysian MasterChef UK contestant and the chicken rendang that was not crispy.

Zaleha Kadir Olpin had made a traditional nasi lemak with chicken rendang in the quarter-finals of the show but was eliminated after judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace decided the chicken was not crispy enough.

“I like the rendang flavour, there’s a coconut sweetness. However, the chicken skin isn’t crispy. It can’t be eaten and all the sauce is on the skin so I can’t eat it,” Wallace said.

Torode added that the rendang was a “mistake” and the chicken didn’t have time to cook down and become soft.

Cue instant outcry from Malaysians, Indonesians and even Singaporeans, who have been flocking to social media to criticise the judges for getting rendang all wrong and point out that it is never crispy.

A Justice for Chicken Rendang page has sprung up on Facebook with a petition calling for an apology from the judges.

In the midst of election season, the culinary controversy even managed to achieve the impossible in Malaysian politics by getting Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and his arch-rival Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad on the same page to defend Zaleha’s dish.

“Who eats crispy rendang?” Najib tweeted with a picture of chicken rendang, while Dr Mahathir quipped, “Maybe you are confusing rendang chicken with KFC” in response to Torode on Twitter.

Knowing a good opportunity when it sees one, KFC posted a “Not Rendang” photo of its fried chicken with the caption “The only thing that should be crispy is our fried chicken”.

Sure, there’s outrage over the perceived insult to a local dish, but there’s humour too.

If nothing else, the response shows that Malaysians care deeply about food, especially our much-loved dishes and how they should taste.

I think it also shows that we’re actually quite proud to be Malaysians and food is a big part of our identity.

We may argue among ourselves over where to find the best laksa or nasi lemak, but when outsiders make ill-judged remarks about our food, we are quick to close ranks and defend it. National pride is at stake, after all.

Moreover, in these politically-charged and divisive times, there’s a gnawing sense that we share fewer things in common than we used to.

We have become so divided over politics, who to vote for and even the question of whether to vote or not that maybe it comes as a relief that #CrispyRendang gives us a common cause to fight for.

How to cook chicken rendang might not be the most pressing issue facing the nation, but at least it shows that we can still come together and unite over something.

Imagine if a politician ran on a platform of defending the authenticity of Malaysian cooking; he would probably win by a landslide.

And the KFC advertisement shows that we have not completely lost our sense of humour.

Perhaps we’ve grown so weary of feuding over issues such as injustice, corruption, poor governance and the growing cost of living that the rendang episode comes as a brief respite.

For once, it gives us the opportunity to agree on one thing at least.

This points to the challenge we face. Sure, there are some things we can all agree on, such as non-crispy rendang, or the evils of corruption and the burden of high living costs.

But there are other matters which invite a diversity of thought and opinion, such as the extent of corruption or the high cost of living and how best to address it.

Just as there is no one way to cook rendang, there will be different ideas, proposals and viewpoints on societal issues and political affairs that we may have to agree to disagree on some points.

What’s important is to encourage healthy, civil discussion rather than demanding blind agreement, because ultimately we want what’s best for the nation.

And that is something we can all agree on!