Cooking the Peranakan Way

Growing up in a Peranakan household, I've always been fascinated with cooking and the activities that went on in the kitchen. As children my brother and I spent our school vacations with our maternal grandmother in Malacca. She lived in a typical Malaccan house made of brick and wood and surrounded by a Malay kampong. It was also located by the sea. The kitchen was a shed built next to the main house. I guess in today's context it would be called a wet kitchen. All the cooking was done on a brick stove kindled by a wood fire. I can still see the blackened pot of water on the stove and remember fondly all the wonderful dishes that were turned out from that rustic kitchen. There was duck in chilli sauce that was hot and sweet at the same time ; soy sauce chicken with the soy sauce that was dark and thick and delicious; dishes that made meal times an experience you remembered the rest of your life.
My mum brought those recipes to Singapore after she married my dad over 50 years ago and today at age 87 she still cooks them with the same passion her mother used to. I have time and again tried to get her to write those recipes down but if you know what Peranakan cooks are like you will understand how difficult it is to get the exact recipe on paper. A pinch of this and a dash of that; how much is a pinch or how many grams is that? Well, its a near impossible task and the only advice my mother gave me was that cooking skills come with practice. It is something you develop yourself. Every Peranakan cook has his or her version of a particular dish. It is like "personalizing" every dish. I have yet to hear one Perankan cook praise another's cooking. Each nyonya thinks her version is the best. Every buah keluak or babi pongteh dish is different. The basic taste is there but each person adds something that makes it his or her own. Peranakan cooking is very communal and best cooked in large portions. It involves many ingredients, most of which are not easy to find especially when you don;t know what you're looking for.
My father was an avid cook too and when he got the chance ( when my mum was not in the kitchen) he would whip up dishes of his own. The greatest lesson I learned from my mum is that a good cook is able to improvise and to make do with ingredients at hand to whip up dishes that are in everyway as tasty as the original. Using canned and bottled spices and mixes helps cut down a lot of the preparation time. Ok so it's "cheating" but it sure helps when you;re like me , someone who just wants a meal that's easy to prepare and looks and tastes great. Today you can get ready to use Peranakan mixes in almost every supermarket which makes it a breeze to cook your favourite Peranakan dishes. Don't be afraid to try cooking whatever tickles your taste buds; who knows, maybe you'll come up with your own special version of a timeless Peranakan dish.
Happy Cooking !

Death of the Peranakan Culture

Death of the Peranakan Culture How many times have you been to a Peranakan play in Singapore and lamented the fact that the average age in the theatre was about 75 ? The culture is dying and if nothing is done right now to check the decline ; all that will be left at the end of the decade will be Peranakan stuff in the Asian Civilization Museum. The Peranakan Association is hardly operational let alone "breathing". It seems like all it does these days is to organize one maybe two gatherings for the "old folks" to joget the night away. Other than that nothing else is done to keep the culture alive; even the website is "dead". It’s hardly updated and no one bothers with the rants and raves posted on it. Our children are not into the culture at all. They don’t even speak the language anymore and the cuisine is something that will soon become only available in specialty restaurants and you know how that tastes compared to the genuine home-cooked meals. The Government does nothing to preserve this culture which they ( The Tourist Promiton Board) shamelessly tout as being uniquely Singapore. Maybe they want it to “die”; didn’t someone say that dead things were more appreciated. Nothing is done in the schools to promote the culture. School-going kids today are required to learn their mother toungue but the assumption is that all Chinese speak Mandarin. Wrong!! Peranakan or Straits - born Chinese speak a patois but it would not be wrong to say that the Peranakan language is probably closer to the Malay language than to Chinese. So being “forced” to learn Chinese in school, Chinese peranakan children no longer understand the language of their forefathers. Why children from Perankan backgrounds were not offered the choice of learning Malay instead of Chinese is something beyond my comprehension. Language is the key to sustaining a culture; without it the Culture is doomed.
Labels: culture, language, Peranakan, Peranakan Association