Here is a little mental exercise to try: imagine Ireland’s culinary culture without Sham Hanifa. That Ireland wouldn’t be the same place we know today. The culinary culture would be way poorer. The social culture of the place would be way poorer. There would be less of the light that Sham brings.
The galvanising spark of creativity and colour that Sham Hanifa has brought to his adopted country over the last 24 years, in his food, his work ethic and his joyous personality, would not be something we have the luxury of taking for granted.
But that creative colour is there when we open a bottle of Sham’s sauces, or switch on the telly to see him rustling up something deliciously simple on the Six O’Clock Show, or book a table at Sham’s Kitchen in Carrick-on-Shannon. And now, with his first book, Agak-Agak, the brightness of his cooking bursts from the pages.
The success of Agak-Agak is partly the result of a long tenure in kitchens – aged 12, Sham was working until midnight in a Chinese restaurant in his hometown, Taiping. Agak-Agak is filled with vital tips, a lifetime of secrets learnt the hard way: the char makes the satay skewer; satay must be as thick as jam; there is no substitute for lime leaves; they love Bee Hon Soup in Carrick-on-Shannon; both Indonesia and Malaysia lay claim to inventing Beef Rendang; Sham’s gran, a Buddhist temple cook, made the best crab laksa; the spices in chicken sambal must dance in your mouth.
The book also benefits from the fact that Sham’s background has given him an imprint from each fabric of Malaysia’s ethnic jigsaw: his mother’s family were Thai and Chinese, his father was from an Indian background. This brings a rich understanding to his Malaysian palette, and gives him an ability to both synthesise and specialise flavour elements, and thereby explains why his restaurants have been such a huge success.
Quite simply, Sham knows how to mainline the flavours so they go straight to your deepest pleasure points. His food is screamingly delicious, whether he is serving something as forthright as beef rendang in My Kitchen, or as purposefully defined as Thornhill duck with sesame and hoi sin served in The Cottage.
Agak-Agak is a delicious statement of the riches that immigrant cultures bring to a country that is not their own. When the Puerto Rican immigrant Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote, in Hamilton, his musical about one of America’s founding fathers, that “Immigrants, We get the job done!” I have no doubt whatsoever that he was thinking about Sham Hanifa, and of the incoming citizens who enrich our cultures with their colour, their energy, their generosity. We are lucky to have them.
Agak-Agak also continues the important role that Blasta Books is playing in giving us various ethnic cooking primers that come straight from the horse’s mouth. Blasta Books are written by cooks who articulate, practice and represent their various cuisines, so the recipes are echt and unmediated, the pure drop.
Sham Hanifa’s life and work mean that Agak-Agak is a work of supreme authenticity. The voice is that of the kid working in a Chinese restaurant at midnight, the voice of the dude who has become a dynamic television personality, the voice of a supremely creative individual who runs restaurants that improve everyone’s life.
Agak-Agak is published by Blasta Books.
Thank you, John and Sally! X