Burning in the right way

There’s something immediately forbidding about debal curry. Even though ‘debal’ actually means ‘leftovers’ in the local Kristang language (a creole version of Portuguese), many visitors assume it means ‘devil’s curry’. It’s not hard to see why. The dark ochre colour telegraphs its intention to burn a layer of skin off your tongue.

Still, it’s not like some Szechuan dishes, which seem designed solely to inflict maximum agony. It’s hot enough to make most people sweat, but it burns in the right places. The heat lingers, but doesn’t seem to overstay its welcome. A little rice and a cold beer help to take the edge off.

Perhaps no dish better encapsulates the tiny ‘Portuguese’ community here in Malacca, a city on Peninsular Malaysia’s south-west coast. The inhabitants descended from Portuguese settlers who came here in the 1500s. And although they’ve mixed extensively with other communities, they remain a distinct group with their own traditions and cuisines. In a single bowl of debal curry, there are reminders of the Catholicism and half a millennium of geopolitics that helped to shape this culture.