An icebreaker activity I was introduced to in lockdown last year was to go around the Zoom room asking each person how they cook rice—and the results are wildly varying, despite the fact that cooking rice is something that everyone does. Some people use packet rice in a microwave, some people use a rice cooker, some people only eat Japanese sushi rice (chewy), some people have very exact ratios when cooking on the stovetop (the colander is a bone of contention).
To be fair, I have come across this conversation before. When I was studying abroad for a semester in the UK, I was absolutely shocked to learn that I had friends who microwaved rice, and other friends who put in so much water with their rice that it had to be drained several times. And English people think they’re cultured! (My very specific recipe is to cook a cup of long grain Basmati rice with a cup of brown rice on a stovetop with 1.5 cups of water for the Basmati and 2 cups of water for the brown rice. My mum is a fussy but talented cook in the kitchen; you’ll see what I mean later.)
But to realise that something so simple as cooking rice can differ for a variety of reasons—how you grew up, where you grew up, what you grew up with (for me, a rice cooker originally), who you live with… It all makes a difference.
The thing about food, and I think this is true for every community, no matter where you are, is that food is communal, food is fellowship, food is when we come together and put aside our differences and simply connect with each other. Whether it’s Sunday lunch or Wednesday dinner, mealtimes are highly treasured in our family, as a time to catch up on each other’s day.
And food and cooking in my family, as the stories in these photos tell, is very much communal too. Food is what can help to bind a family together. (Also, hat tip to my mum, dad, sister and friends whose hands appear in these photos!)
Peranakan Chinese culture is very much intergenerational, and especially when it comes to food. Our recipes are passed down from mother to daughter, from aunts and grandmothers to younger women. There are many reasons why I admire the strong women, the Nyonyas, in my family, and one of them is because of this culinary heritage that is passed down from generation to generation. Often these recipes have been family secrets for over a hundred years, which also means sometimes we don’t agree with other families over the authenticity of our Nyonya food!
My Mama (mum’s mother) is Hokkien, born in Malaysia, but that meant that when she married my Kong Kong (mum’s father), who was Baba, she had to learn from my Kong Kong’s mother all the many recipes that she then taught my mum when she was growing up as the only daughter among five children.
My Mama used brass and granite and charcoal to cook in the humid climate of Malaysia (which I will NEVER understand), my Mama sold cookies for Chinese New Year (we insist she was underpaid for the huge amount of work required), and my Mama continues to find new recipes on the internet despite her age.
I have watched and learnt from my Mama, and I have very fond and treasured memories of Melaka where we spent hours in the kitchen measuring ingredients, or at the dining table rolling out dough, or in the sewing room putting buttons on shirts.
My mum and I try to continue to cook our old recipes, though it’s not always easy to find the right ingredients or moulds even in Melbourne (looking at you buah keluak nuts and bunga telang flowers), and our dinners generally aren’t particularly Nyonya or as elaborate, since I don’t really eat much spicy food, which is a hallmark of our cuisine (sorry Mum!). And we tend to buy readymade pastes like rempah (spice paste) and sambal (chilli paste) and belachan (shrimp paste) rather than pounding spices from scratch with a mortar and pestle.
We generally cook for festivals, or for special occasions like birthdays, and we do have a soft spot for our cookies and cakes (I have a very sweet tooth!). I record notes on our recipes, and in today’s world, there’s no reason not to look at other families’ recipes.
Having said that though, Nyonyas are notorious for not being precise, but rather what we call agak agak, or cooking by instinct (in my opinion, that’s just guessing, or maybe that’s just practice). I’ve tried to ask my Mama countless times what the exact measurements are for a recipe since that’s what I’m used to doing when I bake macarons or brownies or Victoria sponge cakes. And the thing is, despite the guestimation, Nyonyas are extremely meticulous and exacting cooks, spending hours and hours in the kitchen.
It’s simultaneously puzzling, frustrating, and wholeheartedly endearing. But I suppose that’s the beauty of this culinary heritage, that we can recreate dishes our ancestors made based on our memories, rather than strict by-the-book rule following.
I recently asked my mum what my grandparents’ favourite dishes would be—my Kong Kong loved his hati babi (pork and duck liver balls) and teehee (pigs lungs with a “caul” layer) and pork kidneys too for that matter, while my Mama loves her mee sua (rice vermicelli noodles soup).
The love of innards was definitely not passed down, though I share my mum’s love of popiah (fresh spring rolls), while my sister loves her laksa (spicy noodle soup). I guess I’m the only sweet tooth in the family. Nevertheless, we share our home-cooking with our friends and family, whoever and wherever they are. We lay out the food on the tok panjang (long table), and everyone gathers around to eat.
Even if we sometimes argue over the ingredients in our dishes, I’ve discovered that whatever we think Nyonya cuisine actually is, nothing ever exists in a vacuum. Just as my grandmother adapts recipes according to trends (green pea in every type of cookie was the healthy trend for a few years of Lunar New Year baking), my mum also adapts—we eat Indian and Chinese and Hawker food just as much as we eat pasta and pizza and burgers and French onion soup.
We borrow and mix from the cultures surrounding us, and I so admire the fluidity and cosmopolitan nature that is at the essence of being a Nyonya. We have always adapted to create a fusion heritage, and we have always reinterpreted old traditions. And we’re not really pure Peranakan, but what we do have is a shared cultural heritage, which we must continue to share.
One way to do this is through cookbooks, like the ones pictured. The recipes for the President (of Singapore) was a gift from my dad to my mum; the Malaysian Festival Cuisine is my mum’s; the most special one is Mrs Lee’s Cookbook, which was a gift from my Kong Kong to my Mama, who both gave it to my mum.
Sometimes we do follow traditions, like frying the flour, but other times we use modern conveniences like a hand beater or an electric pan. What really matters is the joy, the belonging, the heritage of our cooking.
