Why Peranakan food is so challenging to cook, according to Peranakan experts

Recipe riddles

First off, recipes—or rather, the lack of them—aren’t as straightforward as an instruction manual from Ikea. For many Peranakan home cooks, these time-tested recipes are shaped by memories, experiences and individual tastes. Seasoned home cooks can often tell from an aroma, a sizzle or a visual element, the exact moment to toss in the next ingredient or to execute the next step. Chee, a passionate Peranakan cook who learnt from her mother, recalls: “I was my mother’s sous chef the moment I could handle a knife safely, in primary school.” As the only daughter, she was trained from a young age to master the complex techniques and recipes of Peranakan cooking.

There she observed how her mother and aunties make their spice mixes, never by measure. “Takpa, lebeh sikit pun boleh”, which translates from Malay to English as: “Never mind, a bit more is fine,” Chee remarks. That instinctive approach—or agak agak, as most locals know it to be—is still hard-fastened in many households, resulting in different recipe variations based on the same foundational recipes today. “Every family has a unique story that influences their cooking. These recipes are seldom shared publicly or documented in detail, often passed down through memory,” adds Lee, the chef-owner of contemporary Peranakan restaurants Candlenut and Pangium.

Naturally, these tweaks and edits would often lead to differences in opinion which can be rather paradoxical. Yapp, who regularly hosts private dining experiences featuring his mother’s Peranakan recipes at The Intan Museum, expounds: “Imagine back in the day when a young Peranakan lady learns to cook from her mother, she develops her first foundation with Peranakan cooking. She later gets married where she learns and adjusts her cooking to cater to her husband’s taste buds—and sometimes even the mother-in-law’s. That adds another layer to her cooking foundation where she is bound to alter her recipes.”

Elbow grease

We often hear of how laborious Peranakan cooking is and for that, we trace back to a few centuries ago, when many Peranakans built fortunes upon arriving in Southeast Asia. While the men kept busy with business, women had all the time on their hands. “Just imagine the courtly life of Downton Abbey,” quips Oon. Without modern entertainment such as television or even social media, making handicrafts (glass bead slippers and embroidery) and cooking then became favourite pastimes. “Old-school recipes were actually time-consuming back when I first learnt how to cook Peranakan food.”

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Chee echoes the sentiment. She remains firm in keeping to tradition and cooking exactly like how her grandmother and mother taught her till today. “No grating of the jicama or buying ready-fried shallots. These acts are considered anathema,” she stresses when speaking on shortcuts. Take the buah keluak for instance, which makes for a tough nut to crack both literally and figuratively. Yapp shares that his mother used to spend so much time picking out heavier nuts which meant more paste. When cracking the nut, she had to ensure that no chipped nut shells contaminated the paste as it would be sacrilegious if any loose shells were found in the paste later.

Peranakan cooking is also often a family affair, especially during the festive seasons over a tok panjang. “The more the merrier. That is why we love to call over our relatives, to come together to share the work, chat, gossip, and makan together,” delights Chee. “Nyonya cooks like to cook for an army. As we say, you might as well cook more to make it worth the trouble.”

Ingredient inquisition

The scarcity of farms in Singapore is an open secret as the island nation relies heavily on imports. Staple ingredients like buah keluak and gula melaka are not easily accessible. “We often have to work with what suppliers can offer,” laments Lee, highlighting the constant battle between tradition and availability while maintaining the quality of the food in his restaurants. “Moreover, the high costs in Singapore result in most suppliers prioritising volume over quality, adding yet another layer of difficulty.” At present, Lee has built strong relationships with his suppliers to secure the best ingredients for his restaurants consistently.

Home cooks like Chee and Yapp are no different as they also emphasise using high-quality ingredients. The secret to finding them? Skip the supermarkets and head for the wet markets instead. Knowing the right supplier is one thing, but the willingness to spend on produce that may easily cost twice or thrice as much as supermarket options is another. “Gula Melaka from the wet markets versus ones that you get in supermarkets makes a world of difference despite them looking the same,” affirms Yapp, that the latter always falls short when it comes to intensity. The same goes for taucheo, which is a type of salted fermented soybean paste commonly used to build flavour in Peranakan cooking.

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While “some things that we enjoyed in the 1960s or 70s are hardly available in Singapore now”, Chee is not afraid to reveal her sources either. She adds, “Seasoned cooks would head to Tekka Market to find Mr Seah (known as the buah keluak man), or go to Geylang for ready-squeezed fresh coconut milk and the plumpest banana hearts.” She also reckons that the best palm sugar is sourced by her cousins or her friends in Malacca. Oon, on the other hand, has a more positive outlook. She points to the blue pea flower, an ingredient used for its edible dye, that has become fashionable again. “When there’s demand, there’s supply. More people are buying it so more people are growing it,” says Oon.

Authenticity authority

Ask ten Peranakans about the “authentic” way to make a dish, and you'll probably receive eleven different answers. Like its heritage, the Peranakan community’s authenticity of one’s cooking is hard to trace. Authenticity is subjective as what feels authentic to one individual may differ from another. “It is this diversity that reflects the beauty of Peranakan cuisine and the unique stories we each have of our families and our heritage,” muses Lee. Known for his award-winning progressive takes on time-tested Peranakan dishes, Lee reckons that “the true essence of authenticity lies in understanding the foundational heritage behind the dishes and adapting them to our current context and preferences”.

For Oon, unlike most who learnt from their parents, she was fortunate enough to be invited into multiple households, exposing her to skills and techniques from different kitchens that spanned across generations. Bearing witness to generational discrepancies, she now concurs that “each generation loses something” which questions the notion of authenticity. As for Chee, there is simply no right or wrong. “A seasoned cook would know the key ingredients and how to prepare any typical Peranakan dish. And yet not everyone would agree if the taste of this or the other version is authentic,” quips Chee. “You can argue till the cows come home.”

Expectations and emotions

But perhaps, the hardest thing about cooking may be meeting the expectations of your guests. And cooking Peranakan food for Peranakan guests is, without a doubt, intimidating. “Peranakans are often very protective and opinionated about how dishes should be prepared and how they should taste. They often compare Peranakan dishes served outside to their family's versions, and they almost always find the home-cooked ones superior,” reflects Lee, admitting that he is sometimes guilty of the exploit too. The pressure, however, doesn't seem to bother Chee as she shares that most of her guests hanker for home-cooked Peranakan food. “Unless I am cooking for the likes of Violet and Malcolm,” she jokes.

Between pure-blood Peranakans and Peranakan food lovers, there is one thing in common: it is about trying to relive a memory or an emotion through food. As for me, perhaps revisiting the drawing board for a chance at redemption with Oon’s kuih kochi doesn’t sound as daunting anymore. And Yapp sums it up best: “Whether it is what you ate as a child growing up in a Peranakan household or trying Peranakan cooking for the first time, replicating that feeling is one of the toughest things in life. And when it comes to Peranakan cooking, you never really forget your first. It is emotional food lah.”

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