Japanese couple goes to great lengths to replicate Malaysian YouTube sensation's banana leaf chicken curry recipe at home

Malaysia's YouTube sensation Sugu Pavithra's sumptuous home-cooked dishes have won her a legion of fans, not just at home but also internationally.

Her videos have been a hit on YouTube since she and her husband started sharing them in January this year, allowing the couple to earn a monthly income from the video-sharing platform. 

One of their fans is Hong Kong-based Japanese YouTuber iChang RM, who bravely attempted to recreate Sugu's Malaysian chicken curry recipe with her partner Jimmy.

Their cooking adventure turned out to be more than a little complicated for two reasons.

Firstly, Sugu's cooking videos are all recorded in Bahasa Melayu, so the Japanese couple had to depend on Google Translate to decipher the names of ingredients like ginger and turmeric powder.

Secondly, the couple could not buy the chicken curry's main key ingredient — Baba's curry power — in Hong Kong, so they took it upon themselves to make their own curry powder from scratch.

They also measured how much of the ingredients to use by watching Sugu's video carefully.

As if that wasn't enough, the determined couple even stepped into a forest at a nearby hill to forage for a huge banana leaf, so as to recreate the ultimate Malaysian banana leaf dining experience.

The banana leaf was given a thorough cleaning in iChang's bathtub with soapy water, and then sterilized with boiling hot water which dulled the banana leaf's vibrant green colour a little, to the couple's amusement.

After painstakingly crushing and grinding the exotic spices into fine curry powder using a granite pestle and mortar, it was finally time to make the chicken curry.

The mouth-watering aroma of the spices cooking made iChang and Jimmy more excited by the minute. When the chicken curry was done, they dished it out on top of piping hot rice and ate with their hands — banana leaf style.

To cap off the spicy hot meal, iChang made onde-onde and badak berendam, two traditional Malay desserts.

The YouTube video has earned more than 370,000 views since it was posted on April 15.

The video also caught the attention of Sugu, who left a comment to thank the Japanese couple for trying her recipe and expressed her amazement that they made the curry powder themselves.

As an avid fan of Malaysian food and culture, iChang has also posted other videos on her YouTube channel recreating nasi lemak and roti canai at home.

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melinamoey@asiaone.com