KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 4 — Hidden in Damansara Heights, you’ll find kumi. — which means “eat” in Kristang — a restaurant owned by cousins Rueben Moissinac and Ammos Stevenson.
It showcases Eurasian food they grew up eating and dining here feels like you have been invited to dine in someone’s home. You know... the kind of meal where someone has spent a whole day preparing everything from scratch. “The recipes are my grandmother’s and these are the sort of dishes you eat when you go home,” explained Rueben.
Opened about two plus years ago, the restaurant was the brainchild of 35-year-old Rueben. Previously working as an airline cabin crew member for about 12 years, he decided to venture into the F&B business after he was retrenched.
“It was difficult to find a job so I decided to start my own business. As it was difficult to find Eurasian cooks, I asked my cousin to join me.” The 25-year-old who has an engineering degree tells us, “It is something different.”
Both cousins grew up at their late grandmother’s home in Bandar Hilir, Melaka and Ammos has been cooking since he was a young boy.
Every Saturday, he would be experimenting in the kitchen, tweaking recipes. Some of his skills were picked up from his father who rose from a rank and file position in a professional kitchen from the age of 16. For 10 years, Ammos’ father worked as an executive chef for a hotel cum casino at Tinian Island before he retired.
Once you taste kumi.’s food, you will understand why most of their customers are of the older generation. “Maybe they appreciate the food better as everything we do is from scratch. We don’t take shortcuts like using cili boh,” said Rueben.
In a Eurasian home, curries are prepared a day ahead to allow the flavours to develop. For the restaurant, the cousins prefer to cook their curries fresh... every day!
They believe it is too risky to leave the curry overnight since it may jeopardise the health of their diners. So, every day once lunch service is over, you will find them prepping the ingredients for the rempah or spice paste.
No pre-prepared chillies and onions are used since they may contain preservatives. They also source some of their ingredients like the belacan and cincalok from a trusted supplier in Melaka who is Rueben’s friend’s father.
You’ll be surprised but kumi. doesn’t serve any pork. Eurasian dishes can be quite pork-centric but Rueben took a commercial decision to omit it. He believes he can reach a bigger audience with a pork-free approach.
He also added, “I wanted to try it out as from my own perception, there are a lot of places that serve pork which don’t do well.” So far, it has worked out for them.
To compensate for the substitution of meat, Ammos uses a stronger tasting rempah. “You have to balance it out so the chicken dish won’t be so bland,” explained Ammos. Some Eurasian dishes like seh bak, a dish that uses pig’s offal and pang susie, a pastry with a filling of minced pork are hard to replicate with other meats.
A year ago, they introduced a modern interpretation of the Eurasian favourite, the devil curry... in the form of a pie! Reuben explained that this was a nod to their more health conscious customers. “Most diners want a variation aside from rice and they will ask us whether we have noodles or bread instead?”
They also make a vegetable pie and a non-spicy chicken pie. All the pies are encased in a buttery crust, using a family recipe.
From Thursday to Saturday, kumi. serves keluak chicken curry. The dish is not commonly found in the Klang Valley since it’s incredibly tedious work. It’s a favourite of Ammos’ and possibly the first dish he cooked when he was 11.
“I was quite a fussy eater when I was young and I wanted it to taste a certain way. For example, when my mum cooks, it’s a bit dry and I wanted more gravy.”
The highlight are the keluak nuts farmed from the kepayang tree. These nuts dubbed ‘black gold’ are filled with a black paste which has a cocoa-like taste with a hint of savouriness.
As the raw nuts are poisonous with cyanide gas, they need to be treated before they are edible. You need to cure them by boiling, immersing them in volcanic ash and burying them. All this work, even before one can even consider using them for cooking. Usually, the nuts are brought in from Indonesia.
To his surprise, Rueben managed to source the nuts in a night market near his house. Previously, he used to get them from Melaka.
Once they reach kumi.’s kitchen, they need to be soaked for at least three to four days to remove all the ash. Every day, the water needs to be changed, or the nuts will go bad.
Once scrubbed clean, you can crack the nuts. It’s not so simple, as only an expert like Ammos can distinguish if the nuts emit any weird smells when cracked. “The first knock, you got to smell it, to see if there is any gas. For those who don’t eat it, they will taste all bad. We will know which nuts are bad or good,” said Ammos.
Even after the nuts are cracked, they need to delicately remove the broken pieces otherwise diners will have an unpleasant dining experience should one be bitten on.
Unlike the keluak chicken curry served by the Peranakans, the Eurasians don’t remove the black paste and it is kept intact. “For the Peranakan ones, they take their keluak paste out and mix it up with other things so you get one taste. The Eurasian ones are different. You may get bitter ones. Sometimes you get a hard or soft paste,” explained Ammos who prefers the bitter ones.
He has fond memories of looking for the bitter tasting nuts... just like a treasure hunt. You can’t tell the taste of the paste until you scoop it out and put it in your mouth. The most you can feel is its weight by holding the nuts.
If you think keluak chicken curry is a Peranakan dish, it’s not. According to Rueben, “It’s a Eurasian dish as the Peranakan will hire Eurasian cooks so it came from there.”
Down south, in Singapore, there’s been many keluak dishes popping up. From keluak pasta, keluak fried rice to even dark chocolate keluak ice cream, the black nut paste is highly sought after.
No matter how popular these can be, Ammos believes that the traditional way is still the best. “If someone used it for pasta, I feel it’s a waste of keluak as I prefer it in a curry to be eaten with rice,” said Ammos.
He recalls how the family would fight for the keluak nuts during gatherings when his aunt would cook the curry. Sometimes, they will even limit each person’s consumption since preparing the nuts is just so tedious.
He also elaborated that the curry accompanying the keluak must also have a mellow tangy taste which balances out the rich-tasting keluak paste.
The menu also features various dishes with different flavours that go well with rice. “Each dish has its unique taste and we have customers who come for certain dishes,” said Ammos. The food here has “kick” which is how the cousins remember the food they grew up eating.
Even though their grandmother died in 1997, their aunts will often drop by to check the taste of their food.
Look for the quintessential devil curry here. The chicken and potato curry has got a distinct tangy taste, thanks to the use of vinegar and mustard seeds. Or try the fish pimante where tenggiri fish is served with a yellow coloured curry with peppery tones. They use whole peppercorns and crushed pepper to create that unique taste. Other popular dishes include ambilla kacang, a tamarind curry with luncheon meat, curry seku and mutton ketumbar. If you’re not into spicy food, there’s also the pong teh or chicken served with a tauchu sauce.
Another crowd favourite is their fried brinjal. Usually Ammos’ mother would just serve this dish seasoned only with black pepper and salt. After much experimentation, Ammos serves his tweaked recipe using a batter as he wanted a crunchier version. “The hardest thing about cooking brinjal is it soaks up oil so I coat the whole vegetable with batter. The batter soaks up the oil and it becomes crunchy.”
On the side of each plate of rice, you’ll find sambal timun. The tangy cucumber dish is a perfect foil to the rich curries. “It helps clear the palate since our curries are so rich,” said Rueben.
You will also find that the Eurasian menu doesn’t feature many vegetable dishes! Rueben explained that a friend once told him, it’s the same in Portugal. “We don’t really have vegetables and even then, it’ll be fried with belacan or deep fried,” explained Ammos.
For dessert, try their sugee cake baked by their aunt. The cake covered with butter icing has a light crumb that is not too oily, making it perfect to end a meal at kumi..
Growing up in a big family has also equipped Ammos with the skills to cook in bulk. His mother is from a family of nine children. This has helped a lot in the restaurant’s operations. He tells us that during Christmas, there’ll be at least 50 people attending, from their uncles, aunties, cousins and now even their cousin’s children.
The whole family chips in during the festive season, bringing all their specialties. “When we cook at home for Christmas, it’s like cooking for a private function.” For the festive season, he will be busy making pineapple tarts and fruit cakes.
The Eurasian version of pineapple tart is different from the ones we usually get. “It’s the taste... saltier and not so crumbly. If a Eurasian pineapple tart drops, it doesn’t break. That’s how I test my pastry,” explained Ammos. He cooks up the jam himself, flavouring it with cinnamon and cloves.
And even though the family all learned the same recipes, each person has put their own individual stamp on the dishes. For instance, Rueben explained that even though the four sisters in the family learnt the same recipe from their mother, each one of them have tweaked the flavourings to suit their husbands’ tastebuds!
“All the sisters have got a different way though, made according to their husband’s taste.” Hence the keluak chicken curry is sweeter when cooked by Ammos’ mother but saltier when it’s prepared by Rueben’s mother.
For the restaurant, both cousins compromised... making it less sweet! We’re happy they reached an agreement as it means, we get to tuck into this rarely seen dish to relish the “black gold” in the keluak nuts... without making a trip to Melaka!
kumi.
21, Lorong Setiabistari 2
Damansara Heights
Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 012-651 1182
Open: 11.30am to 3pm, 6pm to 9.30pm.
Closed on Sunday
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kumi.malaysia/
The restaurant also offers in-house catering. Any pre-orders can be made up to three days in advance but it’s dependent on their cooking schedule.
