She may be 72, but Datin Norhayati Mohd Nor has the energy of someone half her age. In her cavernous kitchen, this sweet, gentle lady hustles and bustles relentlessly and seems perennially perky, despite having spent the past three days cooking up a storm for Hari Raya. But this isn’t particularly surprising, given that Norhayati has been hovering around kitchens since she was seven years old.
“I’ve loved to cook since I was a young girl. When I was seven, I went to live with my grandmother in Negri Sembilan for three years. I was the only girl staying there – my four other cousins were all boys.
“So after my studies, if I had time, I was asked to go to the kitchen. So, naturally, when I watched my grandmother cooking, I tended to be curious and wanted to know more. "I was so interested in cooking that I started making butter cakes when I was eight.
We didn't have an oven – we were from an average family in the kampung. So my grandfather would cut out an aluminium tin or cooking oil container and we used coconut shells as a source of heat – so that became our oven,” recalls Norhayati, laughing. Norhayati has been hovering around kitchens since she was seven years old.
When Norhayati grew up and married her husband, Datuk Abdul Malek Abdul Hamid, 76, she had the opportunity to learn from another formidable home cook – her mother-in-law. “When I got married, I watched my mother-in-law cook and she was a lady who was very strict about her cooking, so I learnt.