In his bestselling tome, The Food of Singapore Malays, the food historian shares the stories and recipes that make Nusantara cooking delectably unique
Food lies at the heart of one’s identity. As a Singapore Malay, food historian (and former maths teacher) Khir Johari embarked on a life’s mission to weave the histories, cultures and beliefs of the Singapore Malay community into stories, travelogues and recipes that make up his 624‑page tome, The Food of Singapore Malays. First released in November 2021, the book has been reprinted twice: in March and September last year. The book also won the Best of the Best Book in the World award at the recent Gourmand World Food Culture Awards 2023.
It was more than a decade in the making, Khir shares, given that “a dedicated book on Malay food like that didn’t exist at the point of its inception” in the 2000s, when he was still teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area in the US. In the book’s preface, he recalls how being far away from home made him realise how “food can help us realise who we are”, thus further strengthening his identity as a Singapore Malay. “There’s so much to share about Malay gastronomy in the Singapore context,” he adds, and it became his “cultural calling” to share it with the world.
In telling the culinary heritage of the Singapore Malays, one often starts in their own kitchen. Khir tells us that he spent his formative years in Gedung Kuning, the iconic yellow house situated in Kampong Gelam. “It was a treasure house of recipes, given its connection with the larger Malay and Muslim community,” he explains. So while he savoured dishes such as ayam masak puteh and mee siam cooked by his mother and relatives in his home, he was also exposed to an even bigger Nusantara feast courtesy of the community in Kampong Gelam.
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“When it comes to culture, especially food culture, we’re a community for whom sharing and absorbing ideas are not just in our DNA, it is our strength,” he surmises. And with Singapore being geographically linked to the Malay Archipelago, which includes Malaysia and Indonesia, Khir lets on that “our cuisines are not confined to individual nation states”, since the people moved around the borderless region before the territories were carved out in 1824. Thus, the “similarities and differences of Malay cuisine in all of these places reflect our historic connectedness and shared heritage”, he says.
Nusantara is an expansive region, and Khir had the arduous task of shortlisting 32 recipes from the nearly 200 he collected from families, friends and cultural custodians he met on this journey. “It’s a thoughtful process to have a representative for every genre,” he shares. “There is a rice dish, a noodle dish, a vegetarian dish, a sweet dish, a dish that’s forgotten, a dish that’s been modernised, and so on.”
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