Grilled Baby Grouper in the Style of the Portuguese

What’s a Portuguese-style grilled fish doing at a Malaysian fish restaurant run by a woman in a black Muslim headscarf? Indulge me in a bit of history. For thousands of years (literally), Melaka on the west coast of mainland Malaysia has been a center of the spice trade, first with the Chinese, whose junks sailed around Singapore; then with Islamic merchants, whose dhows crossed the Indian Ocean; then with the Portuguese, who turned Melaka into an armed stronghold from which they wrested th