Custodian of Malay food heritage

[The_King]

An array of popular sambals PHOTO: MARSHALL CAVENDISH

MUCH has been written about Malay heritage cuisine, but none is as extensive or profound as The Food of Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels Through the Archipelago - a whopping 624-page tome that was 11 years in the making.

It was written by Khir Johari, a respected researcher specialising in the history and culture of the Malay Archipelago, who has "always been fascinated by how we're connected through food".

 

There's little documentation when it comes to Malay food, which is "under-researched and under-recognised", says Khir, who went to university in California and taught mathematics there from the 1990s to 2000s, before returning to Singapore in 2007.

Being in the US triggered some existential angst in him, sparking his journey to rediscover his roots and cultural identity. The book doesn't just cover food in Singapore, but explores its connections to Malaysia, Indonesia and beyond.

The Food of Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels Through the Archipelago by Khir Johari  PHOTO: MARSHALL CAVENDISH

 

Rich foundation

Khir himself boasts an upbringing rich in tradition. He was born and raised in Gedung Kuning (Yellow Mansion) - once an annex of the Istana or royal palace of the Sultan of Singapore.

Khir Johari, author. PHOTO: Marshall Cavendish

His merchant great-grandfather bought it in the early 1920s, and it still sits in the middle of Kampong Glam. But now, it houses a restaurant specialising in Nusantara cuisine.

Khir, who lived there from the 1960s to 70s, soaked in the multicultural influences of the neighbourhood.

"Right behind is Kandahar Street, an important artery in those days. We had a Jewish neighbour, and a Hindu family from Mumbai. There were a lot of parties and celebrations, as well as exchanges of ideas and recipes."

He was also exposed to European cooking when his great grandfather employed a cook from Indonesia who had worked for a Dutch family.

At Gedung Kuning, 4 generations and 40-plus relatives lived under the same roof, and Khir's maternal great grandmother was the matriarch who took charge of the home's 4 kitchens.

Wooden kueh moulds PHOTO: MARSHALL CAVENDISH

He remembers the heavy-duty food preparation like grinding rice flour and chilli paste being done in the open-air kitchens, and the elaborate nasi minyak his great-grandmother would prepare. This clarified butter rice often made its appearance at weddings, served with ayam masak merah, and condiments like achar and pineapple pachri (spiced and sweetened fruits or vegetables).

Khir was heavily influenced by both his great-grandmother, who taught him about finesse, aesthetics and the importance of sharing, and his mother, who conducted cooking classes.

Above all, "Mum taught me about sincerity in preparing food, and especially patience." Particularly when making sambal, which needs to be "slowly cooked over low fire, and reduced until the whole kitchen is filled with a wonderful aroma".

Building blocks

That same patience and attention to detail extended to his research for the book, which he had to start from scratch. It took him more than a decade to identify people to speak to, hunt for artefacts, kitchen implements and recipes, meticulously stitching everything together to make a framework. It's not just about googling for information. "Sometimes you just need to travel," he says.

His research took him to the University of Leiden, a public research university in The Netherlands, the British Library and the Royal Asiatic Society in the United Kingdom, the Sanskrit Library in Kolkata and the Gajah Mada University Library in Indonesia.

His travels also involved searching for tools used to acquire raw ingredients, and learning about foraging and techniques of yore.

"One good example is the serampang. A journal of the Royal Asiatic Society talks so much about catching fish using a serempang in the Telok Ayer basin and off the coast of Kampong Gelam, but what is it? We went around and realised that it looks like what Aquaman has in his hands - a trident."

He adds that after the descendants of those who lived in coastal areas moved to HDB flats, such instruments disappeared. In the end, Khir had to travel to the closest island, south of the Raffles Lighthouse. There he met a fisherman who had a serampang mata empat (four-pronged fishing spear), as illustrated in the book.

Stirring Dodol using a gaint wooden spatula PHOTO: MARSHALL CAVENDISH

There were also rare tools for food preparation like giant brassware or cast iron cauldrons. "If you had a seafront property and a house on stilts, you'd have a basement to store them. But how do you do that in a three-bedroom flat? When tools disappeared, knowledge was also lost."

To capture the spectrum of images, Khir worked with photographer Law Soo Phye. The book features over 400 stunning photographs of food and culture around the region as well as 32 recipes for key Malay dishes.

Khir recounts how he had to play different roles of historian, botanist, zoologist, and anthropologist - to connect the dots. "The information was scattered, so you need to put the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. Many indigenous cultures are about oral history, passed down from one generation to another. Because of that you always need to do a lot of cross referencing."

Bubor sagu PHOTO: MARSHALL CAVENDISH

Hundreds of people in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia readily contributed photographs, stories and artefacts, once they understood that this book was meant to document their ways of cooking and living. "I'm indebted to them … this book was authored by so many people," he acknowledges.

"When I talked to people, there was this immediate buy-in. This is about the food of Singapore Malays, but it also uses Singapore as a vantage point to look across the archipelago. To see the interconnectedness, and how Singapore plays an important role as a creative kitchen hub."

Dexterous hands rolling the batu giling PHOTO: MARSHALL CAVENDISH

Dedicated to the next generation

Khir believes that if you don't preserve tradition, it will be lost entirely. He also believes in passing down knowledge of how dishes are prepared the original way.

"If you don't pass the baton to the younger generation, recipes will be forgotten," adding that he's optimistic about younger chefs who are trying to explore and rediscover dishes from the past.

Chef Haikal Johari, who helms the kitchen at the Michelin-starred restaurant Alma, agrees that The Food of Singapore Malays comes at the right time.

"Younger Singaporeans Malays dine out a lot," he says. "Being in a multicultural society, sometimes we tend to forget our roots. Even for myself, I am trying to find out more about my heritage. After doing European cuisine for over 20 years, I now realise how important it is to preserve our cuisine."

Khir himself has seen similar responses. "People have been writing to me to say how the book has re-ignited cherished memories of their own childhood experiences and taught them things about their own culture that they never knew."

He adds, "That's why it's so important to do all this documentation, because that's how you preserve. And if people are inspired, that's fantastic."