Wednesday 14 February 2024

Much More Than A Colorful Collection Of Malay Recipes

 

Much More Than A Colorful Collection Of Malay Recipes

M. Bakri Musa

 

Khir Johari:  The Food Of Singapore Malays:  Gastronomic Travels Through The Archipelago

Marshall Cavendish, Singapore, December 1, 2021. Illustrated, hardcover.

ISBN 9789814841924; 624pp; US $80.00

Foreword by Anton Mosimann

 

What made CNN’s series “Anthony Bourdain:  Parts Unknown” popular and its late host endearing was that he went beyond describing the various exotic tantalizing recipes of the world to telling the unique enchanting stories of the people behind them.

 

         Likewise, Khir Johari’s The Food Of Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels Through The Archipelago goes far beyond being simply a rich and colorful compendium of Malay recipes. No surprise that it is now in its third printing after its first in December 2021 and had won many prizes, locally as well as internationally. I was fortunate to get one of the last copies. On a recent California book tour, Khir was pleased to see his book displayed in local Target stores.

 

         At 624 pages with generous high-resolution images on top-quality paper, and weighing nearly eight pounds, this is more an illustrated encyclopedia of Malay culture focusing on the culinary arts. The volume has four sections (“People, Space and Place,” “Indigenous Ingenuity,” “Food As Civilization,” and “Food and the Politics of Identity”), each comprising three to six chapters. Within each chapter are short inserts, with distinct fonts and color page margins, dealing with specific mini topics and loaded with well-researched materials. For example, Chapter I “Setting Sail,” has three –“Malaya Irredenta, Malays, Malayans and Malaysians,” “Melayu” with a quote from Usman Awang’s immortal poem of the same title, and ending with the first recipe, “Asam Pedas.”

 

         As per the foreword, “Khir’s book provides us a deeper understanding of Malays themselves. . . . [O]f how an ingenious people have been able to tap into the advantages of their location between mountain and sea, and their maritime connections, to create a cuisine that is typical of who they are as a people – warm and engaging, willing to experiment and eager to please.”

 

         As for the greater Malay world Nusantara, or Maritime Southeast Asia, this is how Khir Johari describes it in his first chapter:

 

         “Like clouds drifting in a serene sky, a vast constellation of isles and peninsulas – the Malay Archipelago – unravels in majesty from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea. The island of Sumatra reclines in esteemed repose. The Malay Peninsula meanders like a vine. Arching gently like a string of pearls lie Java and the Lesser Sunda Islands.”

 

         No surprise to the elegant prose. The writer has a graduate degree from Stanford and had taught for some years at a Silicon Valley public school before returning to Singapore.

 

         Khir’s culinary interest began early, having been brought up in a traditional multigenerational Malay family in Kampung Gelam, Singapore, and seeing his mother, grandmother, and assorted aunties concocting tantalizing aromatic dishes in their communal kitchen. Kampung Gelam, in Khir’s words, “was once the capital of Malay intellectual, political and religious life in Singapore.”

 

         Later as an advisor to his California school’s culinary club, his interest was reignited when one of his students whose family had come from India had an Eureka moment: “I have found myself in front of a tandoori oven!” As an aside, it reflects the richness of the curricular offerings of California’s public schools that they have culinary clubs!

 

         While there are many books on Malay history and society, “that on Malay food was under-researched and under-recognized . . . . In order to preserve what we have, we need to document. Sometimes in order to document, we need to first reconstruct.”

 

         And document and reconstruct Khir did, with meticulous research into areas hitherto unexplored, leading him to conclude, “Our island [Singapore] is not only a recipient of the creations from all the reaches of the Archipelago . . .[but also] a creative kitchen hub, spewing forth its own interpretations of what it means to be delicious, and through that, what it means to be a Malay.”

 

         If I were to liken this volume to a publication in my specialty, it would be a super surgical atlas where the author has gone beyond the myriad technical minutiae of detailed drawings and real life illustrations of organs in living colors to adding the history and biology as well as historical vignettes and towering personalities associated, thus bringing out the human dimension to those miraculous operations.

 

         Seeing pictures of those ladies in their baju kurong stirring their kualis brought back my own precious memories of my mother and grandmother back in my Minang Sri Menanti kampung. Thank God Malay women then were not Bedouin wannabees. Hijabs and burkas are serious fire hazards in the kitchen!

 

         This book blazes new, vibrant, and exciting fields. As such, like all good research, it prompts more questions. Khir Johari pines in us for the taste of related cuisines, as with the Philippines’ Mindanao, Southern Thailand, and coastal Indochina’s Chaim community, as well as of Hindu Bali, Protestant Batak, and Catholic Ibans. Beyond are the Malay diasporas on Christmas Islands and Sri Lanka; further west, Madagascar and South Africa; and in the New World, Surinam and the West Indies. Then there is the converse; the influence of Malay cuisines on local Peranakan Chinese and Indian dishes.

 

         The biologist in me is also curious on whether the spread of cuisines across Nusantara would also have its own equivalent cultural so-called Wallace Line, the invisible barrier between Bali and Borneo to the west with Lombok and Celebes to the east that accounts for the distinctly different flora and fauna on either side.

 

         The vibrant vignettes of history, perceptive sociological observations, and captivating human dramas interspersed in this rich volume makes it an invaluable addition to any library, quite apart from increasing the repertoire of creative and adventurous chefs. For Malay kitchens and others interested in Malay cuisines, this is an essential addition.

Monday 12 February 2024

Cast From the Herd Excerpt #116 Alberta, Here I Come!

 Cast From The Herd:  Memories of Matriarchal Malaysia

M. Bakri Musa

Excerpt #116:  Alberta, Here I Come!


I arrived at Edmonton’s Nisku International Airport on a cool autumn evening, the sun still glowing bright orange in the low western horizon, the residuum of the midnight sun. The outside solitary flag post cast a long shadow onto the pavement. As I emerged from the arrival lounge, a familiar-looking young man extended his hand. 


            “You must be Bakri!” he said with a ready smile. The mention of my name in a strange city and in a foreign country, properly pronounced too, warmed my heart. “I am Ben Azman; we are your welcoming committee,” as he introduced another Malaysian. 


            They took my bags and off we went to his car. “I oso from Malaysia, lah!” the other student finally blurted as he introduced himself. Unlike Ben, he was more Malaysian, meaning, he was rather taciturn. Also unlike Ben whose diction was clear and slow, this other fellow’s words just rushed by in a torrent, made worse by his singsong Malaysian accent, as with emphasizing the last syllable in Malay-see ah as well as oso and ending with the all-encompassing lah. As I was still fresh from my native land I could comprehend him. However, after having listened only to Canadians for the past few days, I found his words just swishing by. 


            “It’s hard to call ourselves Malaysians,” Ben said as we drove off. “We’re so used to being Malayans.” 


            I told him that I was still Malayan as per my passport; I left on the eve of the formation of Malaysia. 


            “This is Alberta,” as Ben waved his right hand across the clear windscreen of his Ford sedan, “wild rose country.” 


            The scene looked familiar, thanks to the many colorful brochures sent to me earlier by the university. I looked around; vast open sky and endless flatland. The soft evening sun gave a subdued beauty to the landscape. It was right out of a Zane Grey novel except for the smooth car ride on the undulating well-paved freeway. That prompted me to ask, “Are there many wild buffalo here?” 


            “Nope, not on these plains! The wild buffalo here are all fenced in. We’ll take you to Elk Island National Park this weekend,” Ben suggested. 


            You could never fence in the wild buffalo back home, I thought to myself. The seladang there is feared; its mere mention would make villagers tremble with fear. Here in Canada, wild buffalo are fenced in and turned into tourist attractions!


            The supreme irony! Here I was in praise of the solitary seladang, cast from its herd and free to roam far and wide. I modeled myself after it. I had flown across the vast Pacific, the towering Rockies, and the rolling prairies only to discover that my idolized wild buffalo but of the Canadian variety had been fenced in. 


            Oh Allah! Bless and guide me in my new life’s journey. Let me be like the seladang of my native land, respected if not feared, and free to roam God’s vast earth, guided only by my deep abiding faith and rich resilient tradition but tethered to neither. Oh Allah! Spare me the fate of my grandfather’s buffalo, well fed and lovingly cared for but alas even the village idiot could lead and control it by holding on to the rope attached to the ring through its nose.


Next:  Excerpt #117:  An Unexpected Identity Crisis