Cookbooks rescue Singapore's food heritage
Jaime Ee | The Business Times | Wed May 16 2012
by Jaime EeSingapore, May 16 2012
Traditional Asian foods may be going the way of the dodo in this era of high-speed living and instant gratification, but thanks to the efforts of a concerned few, our culinary heritage is at least being preserved on the printed page.
With the recent release of several cookbooks by publishers Marshall Cavendish and Epigram Books, traditions of the Chinese, Malays, Indians and Peranakans are recorded in detail for home cooks to reproduce, regardless of their own ethnicity.
There are already plenty of cookbooks on Asian cuisine in the marketplace, but this series of Singapore Heritage Cookbooks was a joint project between Marshall Cavendish and the National Heritage Board “to document and preserve our cultural and culinary heritage”, says a spokesman for the publisher.
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This is not intended to compete with TV shows or chef contests but more to give Singaporeans a reference to the past through our common love – food”.
Plus, there’s a discernible demand for such culinary tomes.
“At the recent London Bookfair, there was an increased interest in Asian cuisine titles compared to previous years,” adds the Marshall Cavendish spokesman.
For cookbook authors like Sharon Wee and Tan Lee Leng, it was also a chance to explore their own heritage.
Wee is the author of “Growing up in a Nonya Kitchen”, a collection of her mother’s recipes and a colourful re-telling of her family’s history.
Tan wrote “Uncle Lau’s Teochew Recipes” as a tribute to her father, who grew up in China and whose recipes in the book reflect “the tastes of our Teochew forefathers”.
For the Heritage cookbook series, seasoned food writers like Christopher Tan and Amy Van co-wrote “Chinese Heritage Cooking”, while Devagi Sanmugam, Philip Chia and Rita Zahara respectively penned the Indian, Peranakan and Malay versions.
“In all my heritage-related work, I always relish the chance to present food in a different way,” says Christopher Tan about his involvement in the Chinese cookbook.
“For example, I’ve never seen a detailed English recipe for Foochow fishballs, so I included it in the book.”
The ultimate purpose, of course, is to “put recipes out there so they can live on in people’s kitchens”.
“There really aren’t many cookbooks that focus on food from different dialect groups, so it’s good to document these recipes,” adds Van.
“As I’m Hakka, I learnt a lot about making homemade rice wine from my mother and aunt.
One of my favourite recipes is the simple but potent Hakka rice wine chicken, which I’m glad to share in the book.”
All of them agree that the younger generation tends to be wowed by fashionable cuisine and the glamour of celebrity chefs on TV and Michelin-starred restaurants at the expense of foods of their own culture.
The books are a way of addressing this.
“Personally, I feel the interest in foreign taste is a passing fad,” says Sanmugam.
“There is nothing like our own heritage food – we can eat it again and again without getting sick of it, and we can modify it to suit the ‘modern’ look or make it healthier.”
“Glamorous foreign cuisine will always be an option because we are more global and Singaporeans in particular, are great travellers,” says Wee.
“But these are not cuisines we grew up with. Yes, I can make paella or blanquette de veau, but that is not what I grew up eating.
“We will always gravitate towards our tried and true, cheap and good heritage food.
I am so much happier with ohr luak, satay, chicken rice, mee pok and murtabak. Heritage food is what defines home for me.”