Singapore baba vs Penang nonya

The nonyas can discuss for hours, the merit of the sambal belacan.

The George Town Festival continues to surprise with yet another original idea: pitting a relatively under-the-radar Penang nonya cook against one of Singapore’s most articulate food writers and cookbook authors.

One of the highlight dinners of the festival, the North-South Peranakan Cook-off happening this weekend will see Lee Su Pei adding more cili padi to her sambal belacan to amp up her firing power when she meets her Singapore counterpart Christopher Tan.

When the babas and nonyas declare war in the kitchen, don’t play play – it’s going to be interesting. Whose sambal belacan will be more fearsome? Whose cincalok more whiffy?

You know it is serious when they bring out their ultimate weapon, the deadly buah keluak – a seed, actually, that has a reputation of being able to bring about dramatic endings.

For the main course, Lee is pitting her Buah Keluak Prawn against Tan’s Buah Keluak Pork Ribs, two dishes seldom found on Peranakan restaurant menus in Penang.

Buah keluak or Indonesian black nut dishes are more associated with the cooking of the Malacca and Singapore Peranakans and not thought of as Penang nonya dishes. Lee, however, remembers her nonya grandmother-in-law cooking the buah keluak with fish and prawns.

“Before the 1960s, buah keluak was a common dish on the dining tables of Penang nonya families. Due to its acquired taste and laborious preparation methods, the dish slowly disappeared from the scene.

“It’s now also almost impossible to find buah keluak in Penang markets,” says Lee, adding that she thinks it’s been a very long time since Penang folk got to enjoy this delicacy.

A unique dish of Buah Keluak Prawns. 

“The nut is usually used to flavour a pork or chicken curry elsewhere but grandma did the seafood versions. She would prepare the nuts by burying them in ash and then soaking them in water for a week to neutralise the poison – that gives you an idea of how much prep work that needed to be done in the old days before you can even start cooking the dish.”

Tan regards buah keluak as one of the great treasures of the Peranakan kitchen. “I think it should be as emblematic of our cuisine as, for instance, black truffle is emblematic of French cuisine,” he says.

“I am preparing a pork rib and buah keluak dish that is my own version of my dad’s recipe. I don’t want to spoil the surprise for the diners, so suffice it to say that Su Pei’s dish and my dish will be – we hope – a unique combination when experienced side by side.”

Perhaps we can look forward to a more contemporary rendition of Peranakan food from Tan, a passionate cook, food critic, consultant and well-travelled, award-winning writer and photojournalist who has dined at some of the world’s top tables. He has penned several cookbooks with his father Terry Tan, also a leading cookery teacher, consultant, historian, broadcaster and writer. Among the books they have written, perhaps the most ravishing is Shiok! a cookbook of exciting tropical Asian flavours, including Singapore Peranakan classics. Chris Tan’s latest book is Nerdbaker.

Married into a Penang Peranakan family, Lee Su Pei had to learn how to be a nyonya.

To Christopher Tan, Peranakan cuisine evolved in family kitchens and private homes, and these are the places it must continue to evolve, in order for its true spirit to survive.

“In NerdBaker, a collection of baking recipes from my life and travels, I use Peranakan flavours and approaches in a new setting or a different light in several recipes. For example, I have a chapter called ‘Baba babas’. In French and Italian cooking, a ‘baba’ is a yeast-risen cake that is drenched with syrup and served for dessert. I created two different versions, a sweet baba stuffed with prunes and soaked in a syrup infused with kueh lapis legit spices, and a savoury baba stuffed with chicken and soaked in ayam kurmah sauce. Both look unusual, but in the mouth, I think they taste totally Peranakan,” Tan shares via e-mail.

For dessert, for this weekend’s dinners, he is preparing Pulut Hitam Kueh Kosui, his original recipe. “Pulut hitam is such an aromatic and amazing ingredient, and yet in nonya desserts we mainly prepare it as Bubur Pulut Hitam, whereas in Thailand and Indonesia, it is used in other confections also. So I created this kueh to highlight the flavour and fragrance of pulut hitam in a new way.”

New generation Peranakan cooks like Tan and Lee are ever-conscious of the need to spread the word about the cuisine, which is still relatively secret to the world.

Pulut Hitam Kueh Kosui, an original recipe of new generation Singaporean baba cook Christopher Tan. 

“As journalist, cooking instructor and author, I do my best to promote and explain food heritage, wherever and however I can. Sometimes this involves banging a drum for the continuance of well-established traditions; sometimes it requires more creative efforts to make established heritage relevant to young or new eyes.

“Some years ago, I did cooking demos at La Musee Quai Branly in Paris, a cultural museum, in conjunction with a Peranakan exhibition and made Nasi Ulam – with couscous instead of rice, and with as many of the proper herbs as I could find at Paris’ local Vietnamese-Chinese groceries. One French lady had four helpings! And I got the French kids to help me tumbuk sambal belacan,” Tan says.

“I am also a member of Slow Food Singapore, our local chapter of the international Slow Food movement, which is dedicated to preserving traditional foods and foodways. We are a non-profit group, so we constantly have to find innovative ways to bring traditional food to people’s attention.

“Recently, we held a Kueh Appreciation Day, where we invited small businesses to hold cooking demonstrations and to sell traditional kueh-kueh. Over one Sunday, over a thousand pieces of Peranakan, Hainanese, Teochew, Eurasian and Indian kuehs and snacks were sold, and many people came to attend, which was truly good to see.”

Lee feels the future of nonya cuisine can be preserved if it is taught academically in cooking schools. Meanwhile, she and her husband Jerry Kong organises cooking workshops to share the cooking techniques and recipes with the public. Lee was one of three main contributors to Nonya Flavours, a complete guide to the cooking of the Penang Straits Chinese cuisine jointly published by Star Publications and the State Chinese (Penang) Association in 2003. The book was a bestseller for five years and remains one of the most referenced cookbooks on the Penang nonya cuisine.

The publication of the book was a minor feat in itself as the nonyas were – and some still are – notoriously famous for their secrecy when it comes to recipes.

Kerabu Ong Lai Sim or Pineapple Heart Spicy Salad.

Lee believes that nonya food is still best prepared the traditional way and continues to compile Peranakan recipes and now has a collection of more than 500. Her passion for the Peranakan arts and culture extends to nonya embroidery and beading, and the couple promotes all things Peranakan through their company, Su Pei Handcrafted (www.nyonyasupei.com).

Tan, on the other hand, believes that a living, breathing culture must always change. “A culture that does not change is a dead one. No culture can sustain itself solely by constantly celebrating – or preventing change to – old traditions or recipes. Those traditions and recipes must be applied to contemporary life, and practised and extended with passion and interest, in order for them to truly live and breathe.

“Every generation of Peranakans must build and nurture cultural expressions that are authentic to their specific time and place. I cannot buy the same chillies and the same belacan that my grandmother bought, because the world has changed since then – but does that mean I give up eating sambal belacan? Perish the thought!

“In Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and other centres of Peranakan culture, Peranakan cuisine evolved in family kitchens and private homes, so for me, these are the places where I feel it must continue, in order for its true spirit to survive.

“It makes me happy to see chefs exploring Perakanan techniques and ingredients, but we cannot and must not rely on professional kitchens and companies to keep our food culture alive.

“Similarly, we cannot and must not rely on museums and cookbooks to preserve recipes and traditions – these things can be recorded and kept on the page, but they cannot live on the page. They must be practised and prepared in order to live.

“All traditional home-cooked cuisines are facing the threat of irrelevance or extinction, because of the prevalence of convenience products, and because people are too busy.

“It is not true that people have no time to cook nowadays – it is just that they do not place a high enough priority on cooking, or they prefer not to allot time to it – instead they spend the time working, or recovering from overwork!”

Tan says the dinner was conceived as “a rare opportunity to explore dishes from different corners of the Peranakan culture on a single menu, and also from two different family heritages. We want to showcase and contrast recipes and flavours that aren’t often seen.”