Chapter Six

Peranakan

The Peranakans are the descendants of early Chinese traders — mostly Hokkien and Teochew men — who settled across the Malay archipelago from the fifteenth century onwards and married local Malay women. The kitchen they built is neither Chinese nor Malay but its own thing — a hybrid of pestle-pounded rempah, fermented soybean paste, palm sugar, kaffir lime, coconut, and the slow-disciplined patience that defined the matriarchal home table. The Bibik and Nyonya kept the recipes; the tok panjang long table was where the household entertained its kin. The five dishes in this chapter trace the arc — from the festive announcement of buah keluak, to the family-table register of babi pongteh, to the quiet itek tim, to the tea-party variety-shot of kueh pie tee, to the laksa that walked out of the home kitchen and onto the hawker street.