Accomplished nyonya chef Sylvia Tan shares ideas for evolving our recipes into the future
During my childhood, I only ate Peranakan food, albeit homestyle: simple soups and perhaps a fried fish with the occasional sambal or curry. For special occasions, we had the Hainanese chompors come over to cook a fancy tok panjang meal, with various dishes laid out in bowls (laok mangkok) or on plates (laok piring).
Nobody complained then about how difficult it was to cook such food; it was what we ate daily. I would love to see such times again….
While I am heartened by the fact that everybody seems to adore laksa, mee siam and nasi lemak, few actually cook them at home. Their preparation is tedious – it is far easier to buy them ready for consumption. And yet we need to cook our Peranakan food for it to thrive.
In a way, I blame the nyonyas of old for this state of affairs. Every bibik who cooks seems to wax lyrical about the laboriousness of cooking nyonya food. It’s difficult and lecheh! And woe betide anyone who takes a short cut! “Tak sepekah (not proper)!” came the cry, or heran (strange), they whispered to each other.
But the truth is that we need short cuts, lots of kitchen help (and I do not mean domestic helpers) and a willingness to break away from the past to bring Peranakan food into the modern era.
With women pursuing careers, we must revamp the old recipes and their methods of preparation if we want people to keep cooking them!
This is why I like to test out the old recipes to see if there are steps I can cut, aids that I can use or substitute with store-bought pastes to make things easier.
And I am unashamed about such shortcuts.
In the past, our grandmothers had only the lesong or batu giling to grind the spice pastes so essential in the cuisine.
I remember making sambal chilli in the lesong, and how convoluted it was! I had to wear long sleeves and cover the whole mortar with a plastic sheet with a hole that allowed the pestle to poke through, just to ensure the chilli seeds did not splatter into my eyes.
Today, we have the food processor or chopper, but people lament that this does not grind down the chilli seeds properly. Still, isn’t this a small price to pay for the convenience? I unashamedly make my sambal chilli, sioh rempah, rempah for laksa and such, in a food processor.
Does it also occur to you why so many nyonya recipes such as sioh and babi assam garam, demand a tedious two-step cooking process? My guess is that they never had an oven in the old days, so had to sear the meat by frying to obtain an attractive brown finish after first boiling it to ensure tenderness. Today, I simply use the oven to cook these dishes.
Similarly, I now make my nasi ulam with a herb paste made in the processer. I still keep to the essential five herbs, but reduce them to a paste that can be easily tossed together with the rice and other condiments.
The key point is that these ‘short cuts’ mean I no longer baulk at cooking these dishes. I can turn them out quickly and easily.
I recall once making a simplified sayor lodeh late at night for a group of friends who refused to go home. I had taukwa and vegetables in the fridge but no rempah. So I opened a bottle of nonya sambal chilli (a larder staple), and boiled that up in a pot of water, together with dried shrimp, added some powdered turmeric, galangal and coriander and finished off with coconut milk to make a pot of lemak gravy for my vegetables and taukwa. I also boiled some eggs to add into the pot.
All my cookbooks emphasise such stripped-down methods. They are based on old recipes, but innovated to simplify or to shorten the time spent in the kitchen. I also suggest readily available bottled condiments to make it easier to turn out Peranakan meals.
For me, this is the way forward for Peranakan food.