Akar Nusa
A Penang street stall at midday. A bowl arrives, sharp with tamarind, cool with mint and pineapple, rich with fish. At the next stall, a different bowl is thick with coconut. Both are called laksa.
The story
Laksa is a family of noodle dishes found across Malaysia, and every region has its own. The word comes from Malay and is traced to the Persian word lakhshah, meaning "slippery", a name for noodles.
Where it began is not agreed. It is generally thought to be Peranakan Chinese in origin. Peranakan families came from the mixing of Chinese traders with local Malay women, and their cooking mixes Chinese, Malay and Indonesian tastes. One view, favoured by historians, is that Chinese traders added local spices and coconut milk to a Chinese noodle soup. Another links it to the voyages of the Ming admiral Zheng He in the 15th century. Recipes also moved through ports such as Singapore, Penang, Malacca, Medan and Palembang, which makes any single birthplace hard to prove. In Malaysia, the earliest version is believed to have been introduced by Peranakan Chinese in Malacca.
The regional bowls tell different stories:
- Asam laksa (Penang): a sour tamarind broth with mackerel, mint, pineapple and a dark shrimp paste.
- Curry laksa (Klang Valley): a coconut curry with fried tofu, cockles, long beans and mint, over yellow noodles or vermicelli.
- Sarawak laksa: a broth of sambal belacan, coconut milk, tamarind, galangal and lemongrass, with vermicelli, chicken, prawn and omelette.
- Laksam (Kelantan and Terengganu): thick flat rice noodles in a white gravy of fish and coconut, traditionally eaten by hand.
- Nyonya laksa: a rich spiced coconut gravy, "lemak" meaning rich.
Johor has its own, made with spaghetti. That shows how a dish adapts to what a cook has at hand.
The word may be older than the dish. A Javanese inscription from 1391 uses hanglaksa, meaning a maker of vermicelli. In West Java, the Baduy people hold a harvest ceremony called ngalaksa that uses a rice-flour noodle, which suggests the name has a local root. Laksa may be Peranakan in its modern form, but its story belongs to the whole region.
Where you can still see it today
- Penang for asam laksa.
- Melaka, where Nyonya laksa is popular, and heritage places such as Heeren Street, Jonker Street and the Baba Nyonya Heritage Museum.
- Klang Valley coffee shops for curry laksa.
- Kuching for Sarawak laksa.
- Kelantan and Terengganu for laksam.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
DNA cannot taste a laksa. The dish moves with people, not with genes, so a region estimate says nothing about what you cook or eat. A family tradition of laksa may have come from a Chinese, Malay, Peranakan or mixed home.
What a region estimate can do is hint at the long mixing of peoples in this part of the world, which is also the story of the laksa. It cannot say whether a person is Malay, Chinese or Peranakan. DNA does not decide race, religion or any legal status.
