No Compromise For Quality

In the Johor Streets today

an Interview with Chef Long Thean Liang

at Lotus Desaru Beach Resort

Long Thean Liang, 46, is the executive chef of Lotus Desaru Beach Resort. He also owns the Magic 1 restaurant in Jalan 5/51, Penang.

The recipe for my Penang assam laksa is a gift from my mother who is a very good cook. She is 63 this year and lives in Batu Ferringhi, Penang.

My father passed away when I was five years old, and my mother single-handedly brought me up. I have no other siblings.

Though I am based in Johor now, I make frequent trips home to visit my mother, get my favourite prawn paste, and check on my restaurant in my hometown.

I can get prawn paste from a supplier in Johor but I have to be careful that it is made at the original factory.

Several years ago, I bought, what I thought was my preferred brand of prawn paste here. The packaging looked the same. When I used it to cook, I found it tasted different.

I read the label and discovered that it was not made at the original factory.

It was a genuine product except that it was made in another factory by the same manufacturer.

That is why I am particular about the ingredients that I use.

Although I am the executive chef of a resort, I try to go to the market myself to buy the ingredients that I need.

I am very fussy when it comes to certain ingredients, such as lemongrass, for instance.

Lemon grass is grown at the resort, but it is not enough for my kitchen, so I buy the rest from the market.

Recently I made another discovery and that is water also plays a part in the taste of a dish.

I discovered this when I got together with some friends from the northern states.

They decided to cook a dish that they specialise in.

We went to the market to get the freshest ingredients that we could find. After the meal was done, we found that the distinct taste from the north was not there.

No matter what we did, the flavour eluded us. We were dumbfounded.

Then I remembered having done an experiment once where I made a cup of Nescafe, and used water from a tap in Johor, and another cup using water from a tap in another state.

There was a distinct difference in the tastes of the two cups coffee.

You can try the same experiment, if you don’t believe me.

My mother worked hard to make ends meet when I was growing up. So I decided to leave school at a young age.

At the age of 16, I was already helping out in the kitchen of an eatery. It was different in those days. A kitchen helper had to peel the prawns and prepare the vegetables for the cook.

Being a kitchen helper nowadays is not as tough as the old days as many items are readily available in the frozen section of a supermarket.

My mentors were quick to reject any item that did not meet their standards. I think their mentality have rubbed off on me, and it is something to be thankful for because it is a chef’s pride and joy to serve the best to a diner.

I also learnt that I had to fine tune a recipe to suit the taste buds of local diners. What works in the north may not work in the south.

The different ethnic groups in the same local community have different preferences.

So, these are some of the things an executive chef has to bear in mind when drawing up the menu.

sourced from NST online