{"id":3187,"date":"2025-09-03T08:54:49","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T08:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/?p=3187"},"modified":"2025-09-03T10:57:25","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T10:57:25","slug":"tastes-like-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/tastes-like-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Tastes Like Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


Baba Colin Chee reviews The Tastes of Home \u2013 Easy-to-Cook Dishes from Singapore and Malaysia<\/em> by Baba Ong Jin Teong. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When I first received Dr Ong Jin Teong\u2019s third and latest cookbook by courier late last year, it looked unpretentious. The paperback\u2019s size is 15cm by 21cm with 169 pages of simple recipes. Yet it recently garnered the Gourmand World Cookbook Award Lisbon 2025 for the Best of the Best 1995-2025 Food Culture, having been shortlisted for the Easy Recipe Category. The Tastes of Home<\/em> is handy and practical. It won\u2019t take up much kitchen counter space when you need to refer to it while cooking. Nor do its recipes take up a lot of mind space for the first-time cook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not a coffee table book. It is a paperback that begs to be used. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you will use it because it is simply written with 40 plus simple-to-prepare recipes that hark back to mummy\u2019s and grandma\u2019s everyday dishes, from Lap Cheong Omelette to Nyonya Sambal Fried Rice to Teochew Moi to Bee Hoon Fried With Canned Stewed Meat to Fish Curry and to desserts like Sago Gula Melaka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t these dishes sound familiar? I could enjoy every nostalgic aroma emanating from Singapore\u2019s and Malaysia\u2019s home kitchens just browsing the book\u2019s pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are familiar, everyday comfort foods that make life worth living!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simply because they were set out to be such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his email to Baba Emeric Lau, editor of The Peranakan Association Singapore\u2019s newly launched e-magazine, The Peranakan<\/em>, Baba Ong, a Penang Peranakan Chinese, wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cMy original intention for my latest book was to help students going overseas to cook. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt turned out that the easy dishes are those cooked at home by my mother, aunts and cousins and many of the dishes are similar to those in Singapore and Melaka.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI also realised that very few of our younger generation of Nyonyas and Babas can cook. The younger generation has to learn the basics of cooking before they can cook Nyonya dishes!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

My wife Linda and I, together with a few other friends have been fortunate to be invited to feast on Baba Jin Teong\u2019s delicious and authentic Penang dishes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is a humble cook and always a little surprised and abashed that we should enjoy his cooking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His mother taught him to cook simple dishes as a young man before he went overseas to study for his electrical engineering degree. And he studied abroad long enough to hone his cooking skills before obtaining his PhD in electrical engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who says engineers can\u2019t cook!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Tastes of Home<\/em>, published by Landmark Books, is Baba Jin Teong\u2019s third book. His two earlier works are Penang Heritage Food: Yesterday\u2019s Recipes for Today\u2019s Cook<\/em> published in 2010, and Nonya Heritage Kitchen: Origins, Utensils and Recipes <\/em>published in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both books also won Gourmand World Cookbook awards.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Baba Colin Chee reviews The Tastes of Home \u2013 Easy-to-Cook Dishes from Singapore and Malaysia by Baba Ong Jin Teong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3187"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3201,"href":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187\/revisions\/3201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peranakan.org.sg\/theperanakanmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}