The three largest racial groups in Malaysia are the Malays, Chinese, and Indians. Through two centuries of living together they have retained their own distinct identities, languages, and cultures, though an element of cross-cultural borrowing lends a great deal to the cuisines of each group. Nonya cuisine is a unique example of the blending of two culinary schools � Chinese and Malay. Nonyas and Babas are descendants of early 15th century Chinese settlers who intermarried with the Malays and adopted elements of their hosts' language and cuisine but retained their own religion, traditions and social structures.

Rice is the staple food and many Malaysians will joke that they are "rice buckets", unable to go a day without their quotient of rice. The way in which rice is cooked is as varied as the regional dialects spoken. Malays cook it in coconut milk as the accompaniment to a range of spicy dishes and garnishes in nasi lemak, boil it in little woven ketupat baskets to form rice cakes that are eaten with satay, or make sweet delicacies from cooked rice. Chinese fry it, cook it with marinated chicken in claypots, boil it in chicken stock for Hainanese chicken rice, serve it as porridge with a whole range of garnishings, or grind it up into flour to make noodles and rice paper for popiah rolls. Indians cook rice with chicken and spices for heavenly briyani, grind it up to make their own version of rice noodles that can be eaten with hot curry or a sweet garnish. And this is by no means a complete list!

Life is lived very much outdoors in Malaysia. Street hawkers and roadside stalls abound, selling fresh fruit and freshly squeezed fruit juices and soy milk, sugar cane and coconut water, as well as tasty sweet and savoury snacks, and delicious freshly cooked fast food such as fried or soupy noodles, rojak. Coffee shops are a notch above street stalls. These are usually open-fronted and house a number of different stalls offering varied fare. You can wonder through the shop checking each stall out and ordering from the ones that catch your fancy. Many larger towns or cities boast gluttons' squares � a open-air square bordered by a large number of food stalls. At the upper end of the scale there are, of course, air-conditioned restaurants. Skimming the Sunday papers in a coffee shop, enjoying a brunch of dosai, roti chanai, nasi lemak, pau, laksa... or sitting outside in a gluttons' square as the day cools, sharing a heap of satay, char kuay teow, popiah, hokkien mee... with a group of friends is surely one of life's great pleasures.

Most Malaysians don't bother with dessert, opting instead for fresh fruit. Who can blame them when there is such an array of fresh fruit to be had: several varieties of bananas that are full of taste, sweet and juicy tree-ripened mangoes and papaya, pineapple, jambu, chiku, jackfruit, custard apple, pomegranate. Then there are the seasonal fruits: durian, mangosteen, rambutan, langsat, dukun.

Durian is considered by many Malaysians to be the king of fruits, though unconverted westerners may disagree. Alfred Wallace provides a wonderful description of it in The Malay Archipelago: "The Durian grows on a large and lofty forest tree, somewhat resembling an elm... The fruit is round or slightly oval, about the size of a large cocoanut, of a green colour, and covered all over with short stout spines... From the base to the apex five very faint lines may be traced... these are the sutures of the carpels and show where the fruit may be divided with a heavy knife and strong hand. The five cells are satiny white within, and are each filled with an oval mass of cream-coloured pulp, imbedded in which are two or three seeds about the size of chestnuts. This pulp is the eatable part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich butter-like custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but intermingled with it come wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, brown sherry, and other incongruities. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid, nor sweet, nor juicy, yet one feels the want of none of these qualities, for it is perfect as it is. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact to eat Durians is a new sensation, worth a voyage to the East to experience." Wallace imparts a word of caution: "When brought into a house the smell is often so offensive that some persons can never bear to taste it. This was my own case when I first tried it in Malacca, but in Borneo I found a ripe fruit on the ground, and, eating it out of doors, I at once became a confirmed Durian eater."

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