Singapore’s Peranakan cuisine

Chef Mary Chong (right) with her daughter Julie at Sedap, their family-run restaurant on London’s Old Street

The combination of an e-mail from a reader in Hong Kong and the onset of temperatures close to 30° Celsius in London prompted a recent visit to Sedap, a small family-run restaurant whose name means “delicious” in Malay Chinese.

The reader was telling me about her imminent return to her native Singapore. She signed off her e-mail by urging me, on my next trip there, to try Peranakan cooking, also known as Nyonya. My enthusiasm for this fascinating style of cooking had already been whetted by my last visit to the city. So rather than wait for my next trip, and spurred by the high temperatures reminiscent of steamy Singapore, I headed to Old Street in London, where Sedap serves authentic Peranakan food.

The names Peranakan and Nyonya refer to the descendants of Chinese traders who intermarried with women living along the British-controlled straits of Malaya or the Dutch-controlled island of Java in the 15th and 16th centuries. Over the years they absorbed many different culinary influences: Indian dry spices, Malay curries and Thai herbs, as well as the differing styles of the many Chinese regions. Then there is the buah keluak, the nut from the kepayang tree that grows wild across Indonesia and Malaysia, and is the distinctive ingredient of Peranakan cooking.

Now more than 500 years old, Peranakan cooking is far more than fusion. It is a manifestation of a very distinctive culture and its renaissance today among young Singaporeans is due to the fact that, like many others around the world, they are finally beginning to appreciate the importance of their forebears’ cooking. They see it as a reflection of a past way of living that could, even quite recently, have so easily disappeared.

The food bears the hallmarks of the best of home cooking. Many of the time-darkened dishes are slow cooked and so take on a rich, unctuous texture. The dishes are hot, so fitting for a steamy climate, but while less spicy than Indian or Thai food, the flavours are more intense than most Chinese food. A lot of work goes into Peranakan cooking, so creating it is a labour of love.

Two Singapore restaurants, True Blue, which opened in 2003, and Candlenut Kitchen, which opened six months ago, represent very different manifestations of Peranakan cooking.

True Blue is located next to the Peranakan Museum and is one of the most effective combinations of restaurant and museum I have come across. Black and white wedding pictures adorn the walls; cabinets are full of blue and white china; intricately embroidered costumes are on show alongside pairs of beaded shoes. Enlivened by a small courtyard, the room exudes Peranakan style.

In every other respect bar one, True Blue lives up to its reputation for authenticity. Set up by Benjamin Seck, it is family owned, a Peranakan tradition. His mother, Daisy Seah, is the chef and his sister, Irene Ong, is the pastry chef. The restaurant’s elegant crockery adds extra lustre to dishes such as the banana blossom salad with cucumber; minced chicken and prawn rolls; duck with sweet coriander powder; a rendition of the classic Malaysian beef rendang, beef simmered in coconut milk; and steamed tapioca balls topped with durian, the fruit that smells so strong that my Peranakan friend ordered it specifically because his fastidious wife was not eating with us. True Blue only wavers from complete authenticity in its owners’ decision not to serve the pork that is usually a central part of Peranakan cooking, out of deference to its Muslim customers.

The slight, rather nervous Malcolm Lee, who opened Candlenut Kitchen, is at 26 young enough not to share such inhibitions. Having graduated top of the class from the main Singapore culinary academy, he could have chosen any top professional kitchen to work in but decided instead to cook the dishes his grandmother once prepared for him. Although she is now too infirm to visit the restaurant, she ensures standards are maintained by sending Lee’s uncle along with dishes she has cooked for him to taste.

The simple, modern layout of the restaurant provides a marked contrast to a menu that includes such dishes as Mum’s curry and Yeye’s curry, described as a fourth generation recipe. But, as well as a definite sense of history, Lee’s menu also provides a strong connection to the wild ingredients that are the building blocks of Peranakan cooking.

The candlenut, after which the restaurant is named, comes from a tree found widely across Indonesia and Malaysia, and is used as a thickening agent in curries and sambals, the popular chilli-based sauce. But Lee’s dish of ayam buah keluak epitomises Peranakan cooking. These nuts, poisonous when first picked, have to be thoroughly soaked overnight. They are then cracked open and their contents are combined with minced prawn, sugar and salt. These are pounded in a mortar before being pushed back into the shell and served with slow-cooked chicken and pork ribs. They add a distinctive flavour, which some find too strong, as well as a particular aroma. The restaurant charges S$2 (£1) for each additional nut (on top of the two or three already in the dish), a price well worth paying.

Buah keluak nuts are rarely found outside Asia even in the few restaurants that do specialise in this particular style of cooking. Until 2009, a restaurant called Nyonya existed on a V-shaped site in Notting Hill Gate, west London. But then the family members who were working there decided to set up on their own, opening Sedap.

It is a family affair. Father Dheng Chye Yeoh and daughters, Julie and Purdy, run the restaurant while their mother, known to one and all as Mary Chong, is the chef. A photo of her mother hangs above the restaurant because as Julie explains: “Mum cooks but all the recipes are my grandmother’s.” Sedap’s food and friendly service attract a diverse clientele from Singaporeans living in London to the men who served in the British army in Malaysia many years ago.

Peranakan cooking occupies a distinctive place in the world today. It is part of a universal craving for what we perceive as the comforting dishes of the past. But unlike so many other cooking styles that have travelled seemingly so easily, and apart from a few rare exceptions such as Sedap, Peranakan food is at its best and most authentic in that particular region of Asia where it evolved centuries ago.

nicholas.lander@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/lander

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Details

True Blue, 47/49 Armenian Street, Singapore, www.truebluecuisine.com

Candlenut Kitchen, 25 Neil Road, Singapore, www.candlenutkitchen.com

Sedap, 102 Old Street, London, www.sedap.co.uk