Concorde Hotel Shah Alam’s Chef Alham delves into his love affair with Negeri Sembilan and shares why food from his hometown will always have a special place in his heart.

People say that the kitchen is the heart of the home. For me, that heart was always filled with the love of my mother and grandmother. Food was their love language. I used to come home from school to be greeted by the scent of fermented durian or fried chilli padi wafting around the corners of my mother’s kampung home in Negeri Sembilan. I say it’s her house because here, the family home goes to daughters, not sons—a tradition our ancestors brought with them from Minangkabau in Sumatra.

The heart of a kampung home – the kitchen.

A living room filled with memorabilia.

At mealtimes, me and my 15 siblings would tuck into the woody, earthy flavours of the catfish she had painstakingly smoked or chew on the glutinous rice my grandmother had stirred in brown sugar and coconut milk for hours. Even when they cooked simple meals, just fried eggs with ketchup, you could taste their unconditional love. That’s why everyone says their mum’s food is the best.

But food didn’t always have this much meaning to me. Growing up, I loved my mother’s cooking, but it was something I thought about only when I got hungry. I was far more occupied playing marbles in the dirt underneath the kampung house next to the chickens we reared in bamboo cages, or eating mangoes with my friends behind the crowd of bamboo trees that shielded us from the world.

The backyard of a kampung home with fruit trees and a well.

When it was time to come home, I would know it. All the neighbours would know it too. “Alham!” my mother’s call would echo through the kampung. And I would come running. I never wanted her to worry.

Near my house was a river where we would swim or catch fish. Sometimes, we would hike up to the waterfall in Bukit Tinggi—the hill that has always kept vigil over my kampung. But my favourite past time was flying kites. I would fly them near the house so that my mother could keep an eye on me. My brother taught me how to make my own kite out of bamboo and paper. When the weather was good, I would run with it tailing behind until a gust of wind caught it and tugged it into the sky. I would watch it soar ever higher without a care in the world, as the hill watched from a distance.

Chef Alham pointing out the familiar scenery from his childhood.

There was a padi field near my grandmother’s house. When the stalks grew taller and turned an emerald green, the farmer would pay me 10 or 20 cents to pull the string attached to the scarecrow to chase the birds away. It was a lot of money for a young boy in those days. Once the padi was harvested, we would wade into the shallow waters to catch fish with our bare hands. I would bring the day’s catch home for my mother to cook.

Life was simple and carefree. But as I grew older, I became restless. The kampung with its green fields enveloped by the hill was losing its shine. Once I finished school, I took off. My friend told me of an opening in a hotel restaurant in Penang and I grabbed it. I had no idea what awaited me, but I didn’t care. I wanted to see the world.

The kampung road leading away from home.

For the next four years, I stayed in Penang training to be a chef. Then I moved to France. Then to Thailand. Then Singapore. Before I knew it, 10 years had passed and I hadn’t been home. Not once. I was a professional chef skilled in Malay, Japanese and western cooking. I could carve fruit and ice sculptures. I had seen the world well beyond what my childhood kampung self had dreamed of. But I felt a strange tug in my heart. I had learnt to cook the world’s cuisine except my own. And now, I longed for that familiar taste of home, of love.

It was food that brought me around the world. But it was also food that brought me back home. Returning to my hometown, my 10 years away felt like a lifetime. Development had changed the place. Stretches of padi fields had surrendered to concrete and steel. The once-clear river was now murky brown, like tea. Only two things stayed the same —the hill with its familiar outline carved into the sky and my mother’s food.

The small bamboo grove next to the once-clear river.

I lost no time in becoming her apprentice in the art of Negeri Sembilan cooking. As a boy, I wasn’t expected to help her in the kitchen. That task fell on my sisters. So, at almost 30 years old, I was learning from scratch how to coax fragrant aromas from coconut milk, chilli padi and turmeric; smoke meat to infuse it with the region’s signature flavours; and stir coconut oil into a hot pan—our secret to a tasty gravy.

We don’t use onions. That’s why our food doesn’t go bad so easily. In the past, people in Negeri Sembilan were not well off, so food was very precious. Anything that didn’t get eaten was kept and served at the next meal or the next day. Or the day after.

Our food is also quite spicy. Maybe it’s because of our Minangkabau heritage. Maybe we’ve just always liked it that way.

In its own way, food connects us to the people who have gone before us. Every ingredient has meaning. Every dish carries the weight of our people’s culture and heritage, with each flavour and texture weaving a story that dates back generations.

That’s why I respect traditional recipes. After all these years, the Negeri Sembilan dishes I prepare are still made with my mother’s recipes, using the techniques she taught me. Every time I taste them, I remember her and my grandmother. In sharing these dishes with others, I am inviting them into our story to savour the love of a home-made kampung meal.