Laksa for Breakfast – Kobo eBook

Funny, tender and honest, Laksa for Breakfast is a memoir with recipes. It is a book about belonging, and about the way a table can make room for you when you are not sure the world will. It is a book for anyone who has ever cooked for someone they love or wished they had asked for the recipe while they still could.

‘In Malaysia, the first question is never “How are you?” It is “Have you eaten?”‘

Alvin Quah grew up in a kitchen where the answer to every question was ‘You’ll know when it’s ready.’ His mother cooked by feel and by smell and never wrote a recipe down. How much ginger? This much. How long does it cook? Until it’s ready. Alvin learned to cook the same way: by watching, by absorbing, and by getting things wrong until he didn’t.

Laksa for Breakfast is an uplifting story about family, belonging and the power of food as the ultimate act of love and compassion. Woven through Alvin’s personal story of finding his place in Australia are recipes and instructions for dishes ranging from Malaysian classics to the bakes he has made all his life, each one carrying its own story and significance.

Here is a boy from Kuala Lumpur, who goes on to become a scientist, a corporate communicator and a two-time MasterChef Australia contestant. Here is a young pharmaceutical representative who discovers that a tray of boozy brownies can open a door that a clinic’s policy has firmly closed, and a job applicant who ends his cover letter with ‘I am charming and you really need to meet me.’ Here, too, is a man who spent three years refusing to accept Vegemite, and who now (reluctantly) concedes it has its place.

Along the way are the recipes that shaped him: his mother’s kaya and Babi Pongteh, a pavlova worth negotiating with, a Nutella cheesecake with candied hazelnuts and the chocolate chip cookies he has been making for as long as he can possibly remember. Each one comes with the story behind it, and the quiet lesson that the people who feed us are teaching us how to pay attention.

From a family kitchen in Kuala Lumpur to a MasterChef set and the tables of friends in Melbourne and Sydney, this is a story about the people who make room for us, and about learning, slowly and often by accident, how to make room for others. It is also, quite unapologetically, about food: the noodles worth crossing a city for, the soup that arrives last, and the sambal that improves absolutely everything.