Deep fried in Malaysia

I'm well tired of people telling me that the food in Malaysia is awesome. There is more to food than gobs of fat, gobs of rice, gobs of MSG, a deepfryer and sugar dusting powder. Everything is fried. My chicken breast last night had been biffed in the deep-fryer. Rice is fried in great gobules of fat in a wok. Satay? Deep fried! Salad? Fried shit all over it, not to mention great gobulous smears of processed mayonnaise. Oh and it's cabbage, not lettuce (remember: cabbage is a punishment, not a vegetable). I am fried from trying to find AN INGREDIENT. 


An ingredient is something that is freshly prepared and/or harvested that has had a little something something done to it to enhance certain of its natural properties. That little something something often requires technique. It may require a little of another ingredient or two, but the main ingredient should always remain the star of its own show -  not the fucking deepfryer!


In case I wasn't convinced that this is a food wasteland, I can't even get a pot of frigging green tea. What you get instead is instant tea with sugar added. You cannot stop them adding it. They do not know how to make it without it. I take my coffee black with no sugar but this is the land of 3-in-1. When you find some real coffee and if you can stop them putting in sugar syrup, they try to spoon in honey or dump in packet sugar. I've taken up diet coke or grabbing a coffee at McDonald's. McDonald's is the equivalent of diet food here. Besides that, the coffee is actually quite decent. 


Even things that are done well here are fatted to death. Gravies and sauces are where the flavours are if you're lucky. If not, it will be brown sludge with gobs of MSG to burn out your taste buds. In a sauce there will generally be an ingredients to oil/fat ratio of 1 to 3 on a good day. On a bad day, make your after dinner reservation at the local heart unit before eating. 


On a positive note, I had the best Thai green curry of my life in a market in KL. It was the sauce. Balanced flavours, unfortunately the only occurrence of this phenomenon in the country, and a smooth as silk sauce that was spicey but not make-you-gag spicey (because it was smooth). The treatment of the eggplant could have been improved but on the whole, a lot of Thai cooks could learn a thing or three about not splitting the sauce from these guys.


Now some might say, don't eat the fatty food. Unfortunately, there is very little else to eat. I'm staying in an area with every kind of food available from street food to award winning restaurants, and I've been through the whole range. The best meal I've had was half a dozen natural New Zealand oysters with two glasses of prosecco. Hard to fuck up really, but putting thick chunks of lemon on top of those fresh, fresh, salty, succulent babies is the beginning of a fuck up. I saved them by my quick actions of whipping the lemon off them pronto, thus reducing the acidic cooking process which had already begun. The prosecco was lively.


I can't say the same for the people. About being lively that is. Although generally nice, and often quite chatty there is a general lack of energy amongst the populace. Not surprising given the diet. I'm having visions of all their poor livers, kidneys, intestines and hearts encased in fat, struggling to do their processing, hardening from the abuse, the life being squeezed out of them by all that fat squeezing into all the nooks and crannies. And they are big people. Every shape and size but mostly fat, fat, fat. Even some clothes shops have mannequins that are bigger than me. This place is a complete fatmare.


So all in all, I am not having a good time with my food. I have even been making my own salads  sometimes but that's a little difficult with the whole chopping veges on your lap in your teeny tiny seedy hotel room with no refrigerator. Tonight I leave for Singapore. Again, everyone raves about the food, but will I be able to find what I'm looking for - fresh, tasty, lively without the fatty crutches of a poor cook?