Food of the Peranakan Indians

[Music playing] 

Jimmy
Mention the word Peranakan, and the image of some Chinese looking lady wearing a kebaya comes to mind. But what most people don’t know is that there’s actually a community of Indian Peranakans as well – known as the Chetti Melaka. The culture shows many similarities to the Chinese Peranakans, but also important differences as well. 

I’m Jimmy Yap, and with me in the studio is Tanya Pillai-Nair. She’s a member of the Chetti Melaka Association in Singapore. And recently she helped put together a beautiful cookbook, Heritage Food of the Peranakan Indians in a Chetty Melaka Kitchen. Tanya was also a guest in an episode of the National Library’s cooking show From Book to Cook. And in that episode, she made a dish known as otak blangah with the help of her Aunty Danam. 

So, welcome to BiblioAsia+, Tanya. You put together this book, and I have to say thank you for giving us a copy. It looks amazing. For the people who don’t know about the Chetti Melaka, who are the Chetti Melaka and where did they come from? 

Tanya
Love to share that with you. So, you know, some people are Chetti Melaka but don’t even know it. So, I’m hoping that this will reach them. So, if you remember your grandmother wearing a kebaya, cooking certain foods, speaking Patwa Malay, her own version of Malay, chances are you could, you know, be related to all our Chetti Melaka family. 

We originated in Melaka, in this lovely little town of Melaka. And we would have come out from as far back as the 13th century. 

Jimmy
The 13th century. That’s pretty far back. 

Tanya
Yeah. With the Chola Empire, actually. In essence, we were merchants. They would come up with the monsoon winds for six months and couldn’t go home. So, we had to stay put and formed families, married Malay women, and would then return back to the Coromandel coast – you know, Tamil Nadu – and return with goods from the Malay Archipelago. So that trade route was very, very critical for centuries, and people don’t realise, but that little village still exists. 

Jimmy
Oh, where is it? 

Tanya
It’s in a place called Gajah Berang, which means angry elephant. And at the start of the kampung, you will see these two elephant heads as a gateway. And then this beautiful little kampung will unfold before you. 

Jimmy
And it is a Chetty Melaka kampung? 

Tanya
It is. But, you know, in the kampung, you still do have some old Chinese families. They’ve lived there for hundreds of years, too, along with us. And temple trustees own the land. And on this land, they have 13 different temples and shrines. 

Jimmy
How big is this place? 

Tanya
I would say five Padangs. 

Jimmy
How many families live in this village? 

Tanya
We know that about 200 families that still live [there]. We’ve moved all over the world, you know. Some of us are in Sweden, lots of us in America. Many in Australia. And the beautiful thing about this little book is that people write to us from different parts of the world now. 

Jimmy
Since the book has been published, you mean? 

Tanya
Yes. Relatives have given them the book and they’re busy trying to transform them with local ingredients. And they tell us, “We want more books. We want to buy more books.” Or, you know, give us little snippets of what they are cooking today. 

Jimmy
That’s lovely. So, you gave us some examples: wearing a kebaya, speaking a version of Malay. How are the Chetti Melaka similar or different to and from the other communities? 

Tanya
The Chetti Melaka have a very strong Hindu faith there. They’re Shivites, you know. 

Jimmy
And you mentioned there’s like 13 shrines and temples. 

Tanya
And all very important, you know, and some of the festivals that we have, like the Dato Chachar festival. People come from all over the world, all over Malaysia as well, because they want to, you know, have a cure for chicken pox and any kind of skin ailment. So, they go to that particular deity and temple for a cure. 

And festivals are really central to this village, and that’s how they’ve maintained a culture over the centuries. And interestingly, the food culture is very, very special. We didn’t realise until midway through this book how critical food culture is and how it needs to be documented. And what we have is just the tip of the iceberg, Jimmy, because there is a ritual called parachu. And this is our ancestor worship. 

Jimmy
What happens at parachu? 

Tanya
So parachu takes place twice a year. One of them is fruit parachu in June. And June is where you have all your, you know, mangosteens and durians. And then around January, February, we also have a meat parachu. 

A parachu is when we serve the dishes that our ancestors enjoyed the most, you know, and those dishes have to be cooked in exactly the same way. You cannot taste it. You cannot talk as you’re cooking it. 

Jimmy
Oh, you cannot taste it as you are making it? 

Tanya
You cannot. It’s like an offering, right? And then you display on a banana leaf and you’re done in the evening. Then all your family members will gather, even the ones that live far away from KL. They come home and then they sit down. We let the ancestor[s] enjoy this meal that we prepared for them. We invite them to it. 

And then around 8 pm, when they finish their meal – we give it about 45 minutes – then we eat from the same banana leaf, you know, we share it. So as a child, I have really, really, vivid memories of this. 

We would do our parachu while my grandmother, great grandmother were alive. We would do it in the home that they lived in, in Seletar Hills, with their daughter, my Aunty Chemmi. So, I remember sitting around a leaf. You have to choose who you sit with, because you want someone that doesn’t eat half of the leaf. You want to have some left over. So, we pick and choose which cousins we sit with. 

Jimmy
Not the big guys. 

Tanya
Yeah. And then you get to enjoy all the dishes. And coming back to why it’s so special. This food culture is because the dishes don’t change how you cook it [SP1] . You have to cook it in its traditional way. So, you don’t use a blender; you use a batu giling. You don’t use a steamer. You use a traditional steamer charcoal burner. So, you keep it as authentic as you possibly can. 

Jimmy
Wow. That sounds like a lot of work. 

Tanya
And recipes are authentic, too, you know? Okay. So, for example, there is a very special dish called lauk pindang, in our book. And we like to think everybody does a pindang, you know, even the Malays. And we were always told growing up, better cook this dish, because if you don’t cook it, it won’t be around for much longer. So we knew it’s like a dying dish. 

Jimmy
Yeah, but there's value in that, right? Because as you say, you know, apart from the religion, the food itself helps to keep the community’s identity. 

Tanya
Absolutely. And also a reminder of what they enjoyed. And this is typically what a parachu leaf would look like. So, lots of little dishes surrounding a big mountain of rice. And every family has a different parachu. As I said, just now – a sambal telok belimbing. So belimbing is a sour starfruit, a mutton curry, a chicken curry, a buncis rempah, which is like a cabbage. A kacang panjang rempah, long beans. Kubis rempah, I think that’s cabbage. Terong masak ikan kurau. This is a cucumber with salted fish. Timun santan again, cucumber in coconut milk. Achar chilli, this is our version of achar. Everybody knows Nyonya achar right, but just slightly different classic kuyit timun using just the cucumber skin and udang goreng. Delicious. Another dish you must try: lots and lots of melaka belacan in that, kambing goreng. This is all the fried things, the fried dishes. Ikan goreng, ayam goreng, all the fried dishes and then the rice is nasi lemak, so we do a nasi lemak kukus, which is like — 

Jimmy
— steamed. 

Tanya
Steamed rice. It takes eight hours. And that’s the rice for parachu. 

Jimmy
Can I ask you: so parachu, is that something that only the Chetti Melaka do or is that a Hindu thing as well? 

Tanya
It’s, well, I think we do it in this really unique way with all the dishes. The favourite dishes of our ancestors. But I’ve seen, you know, other Hindus, like my husband is, you know, from Kerala. His family's from Kerala and they do it in vegetarian dishes, but they would have the same 12 different dishes, but all vegetarian and very small. 

It’s just you put it, it’s like a little offering on a banana leaf just for your parents. But for us it is seven banana leaves laid out on the floor… seven, five, one. You choose depending on how big your family is, right? The ones that come back to participate. 

Jimmy
That is very interesting. So, we are starting to see some of the differences and similarities with other communities. And of course, the language itself is also based on Malay? 

Tanya
With a few nuances. I mean, there’s a few words that are slightly different. Like, for example, if we ask you in Malay, we would say “Ini hari masa apa?” What are you cooking today? We would say “Nyari masak apa?” So, we would just join it up, so nyari becomes a word. Or like Krishna, a very common Hindu name, right? We would then use Kisna. Kisna. So, my dad’s a Kisna. It’s a very cute way of, you know, saying Krishna for example. So, these are things I didn’t realise were different. 

Jimmy
That’s so amazing. And I want to play for everyone this amazing song that the Chetti Melaka Association commissioned a couple of years ago, which I think really captures what being Chetti Melaka is, you know, how it’s a combination of different cultures. And some viewers or some listeners might actually find this song a little bit familiar. 

[Music] 

Tanya
Yes, we’re a very musical bunch and we will ronggeng in a heartbeat. You know, and in all our homes, I’ve seen accordions, tablas, violins even. So, when the [Association of Chetti Melaka] put the CD together, they wanted to capture the sounds of what you would hear in a village. 

They did all of our favorite folk songs with a very nice, you know, Indian composition, and this was in 2018 when this was created, and we felt there was a space for it, right? So, we combined Indian classical musicians with Malay instruments. So, you can hear, in that song, a very unique arrangement, don’t you think? 

Jimmy
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve never heard Di Tanjong Katong quite like that. So, you know, that was, that was quite wonderful. How big is the community in Singapore? I mean, there’s an association, right? 

Tanya
We have a lovely story to share with you on that. So, I would say about 5,000 Chetty Melakas. We estimate, you know, maybe about 500 families. Like I said, not many people know that they’re Chetty Melaka. So, when the book was launched, people would come up at the book launches. They would show us pictures of their grandma, and they would say to me, she wore a kebaya, but I’m not sure, you know, if she’s Chetty Melaka. So, I laugh and I say, definitely Chetty Melaka. What did you eat growing up? And then they tell me their dishes – and I know they are. 

So, isn’t it funny not being aware of your heritage? Not realising it. Thank goodness for this little association because it really encapsulates what we love best about it. The openness, the diversity. Because it’s not just Chetty Melaka. You know, we have people from all walks of life and all different Peranakans, we have different people that join us because we want to keep it alive and we need the skill set of everyone. 

Jimmy
This association – when was it set up? 

Tanya
So, in 2005 – President [SR] Nathan, himself. His mother was Chetty Melaka. Yes, she wore a baju kurong. Anyway, so he then calls up Lee Kip Lee at that time in 2005, who is the president of the Peranakan Association [Singapore], and says, “Do you have any one Indian that’s in your [association] that signed up?” 

Jimmy
So out of nowhere he calls Lee Kip Lee. 

Tanya
Yup, and so [Lee] said, “Do you know I had this one fella called Mr. Pulu Kalasri and he signed up a week ago.” And so President Nathan said, “Well, I’d like to invite him to the Istana. Can you give me [his] contact details?” So, then he was summoned to the Istana – Mr. Pulu that is – and President Nathan said, “You need to, you know, do more. You need to start an association and you need to build, you know, knowledge and awareness about who the Chetty Melaka are.” And then he introduced him to his very good friend, Samuel Doraisingham, and said, “Samuel Doraisingham is actually of Sri Lankan origin, he’s a historian and he’s going to help you document your culture.” 

Tanya
And so this book was then created, Peranakan Indians of Singapore and Melaka. 

Jimmy
And that book was published in 20…? 

Tanya
15. 

Jimmy
2015. 

Tanya
Yeah. 

Jimmy
And so the association then, dates back to 2015? 

Tanya
Yes. Yeah. We had President Nathan inaugurating that of course, and he wrote the foreword. So, you know, we were so lucky to have that jumping off point. Right? 

Jimmy
Well, when the president tells you gotta go and do this, I think most people jump. 

Tanya
Yeah, it was so wonderful, right? I’m so lucky. I think he must have felt the love in the kitchen, I suspect. I’m sure. And never forgot it. 

And we keep trying to, you know, enroll more, have more sign ups. And now with the book launch, we can add a lot more people to it. So we’ve had, you know, Clarence Ling, who runs Allspice [Institute]. And he and his chefs helped us recipe test, which was critical. Because our recipes came in different ways. We had katis, we had cups, we had agak-agak, like a ball-size of this or a palm-size of that. 

Jimmy
You had to, like, standardise everything. 

Tanya
You had to, enough for a professional cookbook. So, the chefs came in and they didn’t get involved with the recipe at all. All they did was they measured all our agak-agak. So, we measured it together and we cooked it. It’s not easy to replicate without very clear measurements. 

Jimmy
So, tell me about the coming together of this cookbook. This was a project of the association? Did you just open up, you know, a tattered exercise book and just type out all the stuff in there? 

Tanya
How do you know that? It is really old exercise books. You’re absolutely right. It is beautiful recipe books. So, two years in the making. Again, seed money came from the National Heritage Board. And at that time we really didn’t know how to create a cookbook. You ask for your seed money, which is basically 40 percent of what the book costs to produce. And what we asked for was nowhere near what you need for a book. 

So, we realised now, you know, it was probably underestimating the whole project completely and we had to do it because if you don’t, you have to give back your seed money. So, there’s no way we could have – there was no option out. Once you went down that path, you had to really stick to your guns, and you had all the different timelines that we had to meet. 

So, we got to a point where we actually managed to build momentum. Lots of people worked on it, different people, different committee members, you know, previous committee members even worked on it. 

Jimmy
Where did these recipes come from? 

Tanya
They came from mothers and grandmothers and from the village itself. You know, the Gajah Berang, Melaka Village as well. So many of these dishes are scribbled in exercise books. It’s in English, it’s in Malay, it’s in all these different measurements. We had to make some sense out of it. But that was the fun of it. So, we had two wonderful editors. One of them is Rowena Rao, and we all have day jobs. We don’t really do this as a job. 

But she is Chetty Melaka. She knows the voice of nenek [grandmother]. So, as we were doing this, we used that as our benchmark, “What would nenek do?” ”How would nenek do this?” Because we know our nenek was a really good cook, right? And then we realised everybody’s nenek is the same, you know? And somehow that little voice in your ear is the voice in the cookbook. 

So we’ve tried very hard to infuse, you know, nenek’s essence into this book. And from her recipe books, you know, I don’t remember our neneks writing anything down, but they would always say, “Watch me.” Then you learn, right? And that's the only way to learn. Our neneks are no longer here, so we have maybe third- or fourth-hand versions that they carry. 

Yeah, but thank goodness they invited people into their kitchens. So, Aunty Danam’s mother and father were in Melaka, but because her eldest sister married into a family in Singapore, our family, they then decided to send her to live with my grandmother for three years to learn to cook because she didn’t know how to cook. 

She was 16 years old. So, she came to our kitchen and the nenek looked after her, protected her, you know, cherished her and taught her everything that they knew. And lots of wonderful kueh she learned and all these different dishes. When we were doing this, she said, “I'll give you the otak blangah recipe. Your grandmother gave it to me. I learnt it in your grandmother’s kitchen, your great grandmother’s kitchen.” So, you know, that’s how this recipe came back to us. I never cooked it. And then we did it for you, you know, yesterday, because it’s a difficult dish to cook if you don’t see it done. And there is so much, so much in the steps. You need to see how the ikan parang is cut, little nuances that you can’t get, you know, from a book unless you’re watching the nenek cook. You know, that’s how we did it. 

Jimmy
Sounds amazing. And how many recipes are there in a book? 

Tanya
So, we put 91 in. But the truth is, now we could go higher because people are coming in with – when they see how we’ve treated these recipes, they know that there’s so much love involved in it. The authenticity is key for us. The measurements are important. The fact that we don’t take sides, you know, that same recipe can have six different family versions. We don’t want to change anything, nor do we put ownership to one. 

Jimmy
So how do you – if [there are] six versions, what version ends up in the book? All six? 

Tanya
We have a baseline version, which is very similar throughout. Otherwise, it’s not the same dish, but every family will do it a little bit differently, so maybe they’ll add a different ingredient. So yeah, that’s the gift of this book. You know, different variations. Nobody’s left out. Nenek’s voice is there telling you that there are many variations to this same baseline dish. But so far, you know, we’ve been so buoyed by the, by the enthusiasm of so many and also the memories. It’s a very visceral connection to your past. 

Jimmy
That’s the wonderful thing about community projects. It sounds like this book brought the community together and now that it’s published, is continuing to bring the community together. And as you say, bringing people who didn’t even know that they were Chetty Melaka. 

Tanya
Right, right. 

Jimmy
Tell us a little bit about your own sort of journey as a Chetty Melaka? Did you grow up knowing you were Chetty Melaka? 

Tanya
So mum is a Chinese Peranakan and dad is Indian Peranakan. And [the] food is so similar both my grannies cooked the same food, and I realised that we were different because of the fact that we spoke Malay at home, that we ate sambal belacan that none of that put us off. 

So, how did I know we were different? I think I started to realise when I was about seven or eight that, you know, our parties were huge, made up of everybody and everybody. Food, lots and lots of food, every table covered by food and unusual food. When you go to other people’s parties it’s not the same. 

And then, of course, people [spoke] English and Malay. It’s a mixture. So yeah, I noticed that we were a little different then. And then my dad used to say, you know, he couldn’t speak Tamil; people would expect him to speak Tamil, he could only speak Malay. And in a kampung he had to spend many a time, you know, defending himself because he couldn’t speak it, being bullied for not speaking. So that was funny, I thought. 

Jimmy
Was your father Hindu originally? 

Tanya
Yes. So, the family’s all Hindu. I mean, there’s a funny story, but my grandfather would wake up at 4 a.m. in the morning and pray. Okay, very loudly. 

Jimmy
This is in Singapore, right? 

Tanya
In Singapore. All his life. So, the story. My grandfather’s unusual, shall I tell you? He sold goat’s milk. And he was orphaned at the age of 10. And we don’t know his origin. We have no idea. But with his goat and his goat’s milk, he sold it in the Gajah Berang kampung. 

So, he meandered through the kampung in the morning and would sell goat’s milk. And the person that adopted him, took pity and took him in, he had a cow herd and he took [my grandfather] in and raised him as one of his own, educated him, you know, because he was a smart boy. So, he educated him and then [my grandfather] rose through the ranks of the civil service and moved to Singapore. 

Anyway. So, coming back to his religion, midway through [his life], I think in his late fifties, he actually had a vision of the Virgin Mary [during] one of his 4 a.m. prayers. Yeah. And then he had to make a decision, you know, how is he going to continue [being] a Hindu? Is he going to become a Catholic? So, to get permission, he had to go back to the village, ask for permission from his family, his adoptive brothers. And they agreed because, you know, the Hindus believe that everybody is born Hindu. That’s you and everyone. Okay. But we choose different paths. So you are Hindu first, and then you choose Catholicism or Taoism. Isn’t that a beautiful way of looking at religion? 

Jimmy
I’m amazed that he went back to the village to ask for permission. This is like serious business. 

Tanya
It’s the village that took him in as a child and he owed them so much – educated him ahead of other children. So, he really felt that he needed to get permission and so he did. 

Jimmy
Okay. That’s amazing. 

Tanya
Yeah. And so when he became a Catholic, he actually was allowed to have a few of his children join him. So, some of our family are Hindu and some of them are Catholic. 

Jimmy
What kind of dishes are distinctly Chetty Melaka or recognisably Chetty Melaka? 

Tanya
We have to have, you know, a nice fried fish. We have it almost for every meal. 

Jimmy
Okay. So fish is very important. 

Tanya
Yes. Fish. Fish is always, you know, definitely a staple – fried fish. Being seafarers. You know, a lot of people in the village actually would, you know, go take their boats out and they would fish. Right. The ocean might give you different different fish, different times of the year. We would love to cook. How about a sotong masak hitam? 

Jimmy
Ah okay. Okay. 

Tanya
We would love a nice prawn dish. We would do a sambal udang. We would definitely use melaka belacan and that one you’d have to get from Melaka – it’s thin, thin flat square bricks of belacan. Not so salty. 

Jimmy
It has to be melaka belacan. 

Tanya
And then maybe a nice meat dish. So here I would always do ayam buah keluak. Interestingly, not many people cook buah keluak. Buah keluak is the black nut. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. 

Jimmy
Yeah. The Peranakan Chinese. 

Tanya
Yeah. It’s expensive. You know, so many families will grow up not eating it because it’s too expensive to buy. 

Jimmy
It’s a lot of work, right? 

Tanya
It is a lot of work. So how we do it is slightly different from the Chinese Peranakans. We would not, you know, scoop out the ingredients and then mix it with pork, chicken and stuff it back in again into the nut. We would just let you taste the nut on its own. 

Jimmy
You never scrape out all the ingredients? 

Tanya
We never. You scrape that yourself. 

Jimmy
In From Book to Cook, you and your Aunty Danam made otak blangah. For the people who have not watched the episode yet: How is this dish different from, you know, the otah that more people in Singapore are familiar with? 

Tanya
So the blangah is like a clear pot. So everything, all these ingredients are combined into a claypot and the patty is meat. And that is put into the sauce of the clay pot. And you can make it as dry as you want. You can make it as liquid as you want. So depending on what you eat it with, right? So if it’s like a side dish, I would make it fairly dry when you have other dishes with gravy. But yesterday we made it with roti jala. So we want[ed] to make it a little watery. 

Jimmy
The roti jala that you had yesterday is a little bit different [from] the roti jala that [most] people know as well. 

Tanya
It’s a thicker pancake. You know, and therefore it doesn’t crisp as well. And that’s probably what we are more used to eating now. So, if you were to buy it from the shops, that’s the Malay version, right? And then we have our version where we use the little five spouted ladle and the circles that we make are very small concentric circles and it becomes like a laced pancake. 

So this is called roti jala because jala means “net”. So same batter, but different style, you know, different style of shaping it onto a hot griddle, hot pan, like that. And we used to have to eat it crispy and hot, slightly crispy and hot. So the only way to achieve this is to cook it for you at the moment. 

My dad has always been fastidious about his Christmas parties and we always produce roti jala and we have to make it hot at that moment, you know, for all guests. No matter how many guests that come, one of us is stationed at the oven doing it. 

Jimmy
Well, tell us about, you know, now that the book is out. So where have you gone. Who have you gotten feedback from? Like, how far afield? 

Tanya
How far afield? I think, well, I would say Canada. They’re starting to cook the dishes. The USA, they’re starting to cook dishes there too. Australia. Beautiful, beautiful comments have come because some relatives have already started mailing it to them. They’ve ordered it and I think what people are really amazed at are the photographs. 

Jimmy
The photographs are brilliant. 

Tanya
Yeah. 

Jimmy
So gorgeous. 

Tanya
Yeah. So, we have Annette Wong, our photographer, for the whole book and she has so much heart, and a wonderful eye and, and you know, like I said, we had very little budget for this book. But a lot of it, people put in, you know, a lot of love and attention and time, you know, and and I would say Annette gave us far more than, you know, than anything that we could have given her for the book. 

Jimmy
And hopefully she got to eat a lot of these dishes. 

Tanya
Every time. So, yes. So the photoshoot day was fun. You know, photoshoot day starts at 9, and doesn’t end till 8. 

Jimmy
Constantly eating? 

Tanya
Constantly eating – 17 dishes. And on a tough day, we were doing 17 dishes at a go. 

Jimmy
It sounds like this is a lot of work. I mean, I cannot imagine and none of you would working on it full time. So this was your part time job? What’s next for the Chetty Melaka Association then? 

Tanya
I think we are going to be focusing on doing more with the book this coming year. We would love to have fairs, you know. Even our friends from the Arab network – they were so excited at our book launch, as we invited them, and they were saying we should be doing a festival together. So, you know, and of course, the museum now with the Peranakan Museum reopening – almost quarterly, there’s an event there. 

So, we’d love to, you know, participate more and more. And I would love to see some of these dishes being cooked in, you know, in schools, even [by] our children. It’s everybody’s heritage. Right. And I’d like to see some of that happen as well. I remember cooking some very Peranakan dishes in my home economics class. 

We used to make the ikan bakar for sure, and, you know, many of these dishes. I think I would love for Singaporean children to be experts in. And they can take it wherever they go. 

Jimmy
Thank you very much for taking time to speak to us. At this point in our podcast, we typically, you know, move away from the heavy topics and go off on a little bit of a tangent. What is a must-try dish in your cookbook, something that’s also relatively easy to make for someone with no cooking skills like me? 

Tanya
So, Jimmy, really the lauk pindang is simple. It’s just boiled rempah and a bit of coconut milk. And you’re set. 

Jimmy
And you’re saying even I can make it? 

Tanya
Anybody can make it. 

Jimmy
Okay, I will try and make it. Complete the sentence. It’s important to preserve our heritage foods because….? 

Tanya
They are so connected to our biodiversity. If we don’t eat this food, we won’t have it anymore. You can see the petai in the market. But remis, you [don’t] see anymore. So that’s because we don’t eat it, right, there’s no demand for it. So I would like to see us go back to eating more kampung vegetables. And these vegetables should be in, you know, our food vernacular almost. 

You know, we don’t have gardens anymore, right? I’d like to see us get more culturally specific about our food and keep that heritage. Otherwise, it’s gone. It’s gone forever – only exists in cookbooks. 

Jimmy
I hope not. Okay. Complete the sentence. Food is… 

Tanya
Love. 

Jimmy
Why is it love? 

Tanya
I remember when you come home from a long journey. You know, like my Aunty Bira. She’s been thinking of you. You’ve been working long hours, and you know, you haven’t called home yet, so you haven’t had a chat. And I would get a message from her to say, “Today I went to the market and I found ikan terebok.” Which is a very scaly fish that you fry. And it’s amazing when you fry it. And she goes, “Make sure you come for dinner, you know.” And so this will be the invitation. I haven’t seen you for a long time. I go to the market and I look for things that you love. And I think of you whenever I buy, right? And I cook for you. And once she goes, you won’t get that anymore, right? 

Yeah, it is love. So, this book is all about that love, actually. 

Jimmy
Fantastic. Thank you, Tanya, for joining me on BiblioAsia+. 

To watch Tanya and her Aunty Danam make otah belangah, to get the recipe and to learn more about Chetti Melaka, check out the BiblioAsia website at BiblioAsia.nlb.gov.sg. 

Tanya, once again, it was wonderful having you. I’m now very hungry because of all the food that you’ve been talking about. I want to leave everyone also with the amazing version of Di Tanjong Katong that was produced by the Chetty Melaka Association. Thank you, Tanya. 

Tanya
Thank you, Jimmy. 

Jimmy
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter. Thank you for joining me on BiblioAsia+.

Peranakan Indian (Chitty Melaka) Association Singapore, Heritage Food of the Peranakan Indians in a Chitty Melaka Kitchen (Peranakan Indian (Chitty Melaka) Association Singapore, 2023). (From National Library, Singapore, call no. RSING 641.595951 PER)

Chantal Sajan, “Life Lessons in a Chetty Melaka Kitchen,” BiblioAsia 14, no. 4 (January–March 2019).

Dhoraisingam S. Samuel, Peranakan Indians of Singapore and Melaka: Indian Babas and Nonyas—Chitty Melaka (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2006).

This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by One Dash. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Tanya for coming on the show.

The BiblioAsia Podcast by the National Library Singapore tells stories about Singapore history.