Milk Street is Going to Malaysia. You Should Come Too

There are three reasons I designed our new trip to Malaysia. First, Malaysia is the one place every world traveler I know wishes they had visited sooner, stayed longer and eaten more. Second, within the culinarily sophisticated country of Malaysia, the Penang island is renowned for its rich and delicious culinary traditions and innovations. Third, planning this trip is an excuse to work with two phenomenal people: Linda Tay Esposito and Hoo Peng Poh (aka Captain Poh).

Linda is a regular teacher at the Milk Street Cooking School, and each of her classes reveals a new flavor or technique that quickly becomes part of my regular repertoire. For example, her grandmother’s curry blend—an intoxicating blend of spices—is now an essential pantry staple in my home, perfuming everything from chicken to cauliflower to popcorn. Captain Poh, a Penang local, is a highly sought-after tour guide with an infectious laugh, immense knowledge of culture and history and insider access, which she’ll share with us. There’s no better duo to teach us how to cook Malaysian food and introduce us to the culture responsible for it. They are a power duo!

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With Captain Poh and Linda leading the way (and me tagging along), you’ll spend eight days immersing yourself in Penang. You’ll make Linda’s family recipes at a cooking school inside a spice garden, cook a multi-course traditional Nyonya Peranakan feast with culinary ambassador Sue Pei, taste a selection of 50 sun-fermented soy sauces, harvest nutmeg and durian at a family farm on the western coast, eat roti breads that look like enormous lace doilies, order late-night fare at the famous hawker stalls, slurp bowls of noodles in the legendary Chowrastra market and try your hand molding and cooking cookies known as Love Letters. When we’re not eating or cooking, we’ll visit historic homes and villages, learn about intricate Nyonya beadwork and fabrics and stroll George Town’s picturesque streets.

As we cook, eat, tour and visit, the intricate history of this tiny island will emerge. Located at the strategic entrance to the straits of Malacca, Penang was once a trade powerhouse, gatekeeping the sea route between the East and the West. As a result, it’s home to many different immigrants and the birthplace of new, blended cultures. One of these is the Nyonya Peranakan, and their historic and contemporary foodways are the focus of our trip with Linda and Poh.

Born when Fujianese Chinese traders married local women, Nyonya food tells a story of trade, family, gender, cultural interaction and geography. Here’s one example you’ll learn through experience on our trip: Nyonya food can be extremely intricate and exacting to prepare. Cooks slice herbs into gossamer threads for their nasi ulam, grind spices and alliums by hand for their rempah spice paste and create tables laden with many beautifully colored and carefully crafted dishes. The food is fragrant with aromatics like lemon grass, galangal, coconut and spices and made substantial with rice and ample fish and meat. This beautiful food—and the time and means to prepare it—is thanks to an economically advanced history: The Nyonya Peranakan culture was born out of the trading class, and this more affluent status is reflected in the food.

Nyonya cuisine is also matriarchal; only the women are in the kitchen and are expected to be the keepers of the family’s recipes. These women can be strongly secretive about their family recipes, so much so that nothing is written down but rather passed down orally through apprenticeship in the kitchen. Thankfully, through the generosity of Linda and Poh, we get access to a few families’ recipes, practices and food.

I hope you join us in June 2026. I am confident we’ll all wish we’d gone sooner.

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Rosemary Gill

Rosemary Gill is the Director of Education at Milk Street Cooking School. An educator dedicated to helping people create lasting home cooking habits, she oversees the development of hands-on and online cooking classes as well as Milk Street's community initiatives.