The Food of Singapore Malays

11 years of anthropological and auto-ethnographic research has led to a book debut titled The Food of Singapore Malays, a treasure trove of 400 photographs of food and culture around the region and 32 detailed recipes for Malay dishes.

My fondest memory as a kid was my first time munching on sate kerang (steamed cockles skewered on the dried spine of coconut fronds and doused in peanut sauce) prepared by relatives in the four kitchens of Gedung Kuning where I grew up. Most of these traditions are preserved in many Malay households. One example is the cooking and weaving of ketupat with young coconut leaves — an artisanal process that takes skill, patience, and time.

A few, however, have been lost to the time pressures of modern-day living. You have to cook with sincerity. When you cook with pride and care for the people you love, you will always give your best, and never cutting corners.

Soon after moving to the Bay Area in California to study and then to teach, I was able to embrace the city as my second home. As non-American Asians are a minority there, I took it upon myself to be a cultural ambassador of sorts. Once, I even had the privilege of cooking a spread of Singapore dishes for a dinner party held in honour of the Mayor of Cupertino!

California’s Asian kitchens however have mostly been colonised by American tastebuds. What I missed most was the range and complexity of flavors found in Malay food. At present, it is generally accepted that there are five core tastes in cuisine — sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami. However, there are 12 flavour categories in the Malay language. Half of these categories are not perfectly translatable into English.

It is important for us to understand what “Malay” refers to. The term encompasses multiple, overlapping identity categories. Are you Malay by race (an anthropological definition), ethnicity (perceived by language and cultural practices), nationality, geography, self-identification or cultural affiliation? I don’t think Malay people in any part of the world can be reduced to a singular “cultural identity.”