COMMENT The recent proposal to ban migrant workers from cooking in food outlets in Penang is hypocritical as it displays an ignorance of what constitutes culinary excellence.

First of all, it is a gross injustice against migrant workers who have been employed by the proprietors of these food outlets. Migrant workers are not commodities that employers and the state can hire and fire as they like. They are human beings like the rest of us.

Secondly, it is hypocritical to appeal to xenophobic sentiments when the majority of Malaysians - except for the Orang Asli and indigenous peoples - are of immigrant stock. The Chinese and Indians are certainly immigrants and even the top Umno leaders are of immigrant stock from Bugis, Javanese and other foreign origins.

Many Malaysians tend to lapse into selective amnesia and delusions of grandeur when they lament the fact that ‘foreigners’ are taking over hawker centres and even ‘Chinatown’. It is not as if it was government policy that demanded that these food outlets be taken over by migrant labour - it was the proprietors themselves who employed migrant labour because they were reluctant to pay higher wages to employ local workers.

If there is anyone to blame, blame it on the proprietors themselves, not the migrant workers!

If the outlet proprietors are really concerned about the quality of the food they serve, they can make the effort to train their migrant staff in the art of their specific culinary excellence. The current movie circuit is showing ‘Hundred foot journey’, a film that is precisely about the zen of good cooking. It portrays how an Indian (migrant) cook becomes a three star Michelin chef in French haute cuisine in Paris.

Who says migrants can never cook excellent cuisine? During colonial times, the legendary (immigrant) Hainanese chefs who cook traditional British Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding in Malayan rest houses is another example of the correct attitude to food appreciation and culinary practice. Even today, tourists come from all over the world to savour the steak cooked by Hainanese chefs at the century-old Coliseum Café in Kuala Lumpur.

Nyonya cuisine is yet another example of Chinese immigrants creatively blending the essence of local, Chinese and even Indian culinary skills into a unique cuisine that could qualify for world heritage status.

The fault, dear people, lies with ourselves

The fault, dear people, lies not with migrant labour, but with ourselves that we let slip the zen of cooking. As I watch the old Teochew master precisely slicing his stewed duck that he has painstakingly prepared, it matters not whether his apprentice is his own son, daughter or a migrant from Myanmar. Ultimately, the art of preparing and serving Teochew stewed duck can be learnt if the apprentice has the attitude toward the zen of cooking Teochew stewed duck.

Sensory acuity is not usually inculcated in schools and universities. In our mad pursuit of intellectual and rational accomplishments, we can easily miss appreciating the sights, sounds, scents and textures in our surroundings.

We clink our glasses when we drink but how many people are aware of the rationale for this practice? Ah, it is the 'sound' of our clinking glasses that is the missing component in that gastronomic ceremony when we sit down to eat after seeing, feeling, smelling and tasting the food.

In Chinese culture, culinary skill is also a ‘gongfu’. Like the martial arts, there is no short cut to cooking mastery.  The master can only try to teach the skills to his or her apprentice. Like the martial arts, practice makes perfect. Many of our rocking and rolling youth may not aware of the fact that it took Eric Clapton at least eight hours of practice on his guitar every day to be the ‘God of the Guitar’.

Practice, making mistakes and persistent focus will lead to unconscious competence; instincts sharpen and mastery is achieved...

Ultimately, preparing and eating food is communing with our own deepest nature; we are enacting a ritual that binds us in the unity of all life. We honour mother earth’s resources. Food has no nationalistic fences. Eat mindfully, compassionately and reverently. Culinary excellence, like life, is a journey - every step of the journey is a destination in and of itself. Don’t poison the food with resentment or self-pity.  

Like the hundred foot journey, learning to cook and eat can teach us how to live and work for a better world without misplaced faults on migrants or other causes.

DR KUA KIA SOONG is a chef at Cheras Freedom House.