Growing Up in a Nonya Kitchen: A Peranakan Family’s Food Memories of Singapore (2nd Edition)

Revised and expanded from an earlier edition, this is a charmingly detailed and authoritative account of traditional cooking in the mid-twentieth century kitchen of a Singaporean family. In particular one of mixed Chinese and Malay descent, members of an ethnic group known as Peranakans. (Among the Peranakans, Nonyas are the married women, who keep traditions alive.)

Generations of author Sharon Wee’s family story are woven into the recipes she has gathered from her mother, other relatives, and family friends. Her account reveals the many overlapping cultural influences in Singapore, as well as the changes which have taken place there with independence and modernization.

Turning what was once passed along by direct kitchen training into written recipes, Wee includes a section on fundamental ingredients, equipment, and technique before launching into an array of very detailed recipes for an array of distinctive dishes, such as:

• Pong Tauhu, a pork, prawn and tofu meatball soup
• Itek Sio, braised duck with tamarind and coriander
• Nonya Laska, rice noodles in spicy coconut milk gravy
• Ayam Limau Purut, chicken simmer with lime leaves
• Kueh Lapis Spekkoek, Dutch-Indonesian spiced layer cake

Wee writes straightforwardly about cultural traditions which have waned or vanished, always eager to pass along what she has learned in two decades of informing herself.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.