Kampong Gelam: Kitchen of the Malay World

[Music playing] 

Jimmy
Hi, everyone. My name is Jimmy, and I’m the Editor-in-Chief of BiblioAsia, a publication of the National Library of Singapore. Today, Kampong Gelam is known as a place for hipster cafes, Middle Eastern restaurants and too many souvenir shops. However, back in the 19th- and early 20th-centuries, the area was very different. It was a capital of Malay intellectual, political and religious life in Singapore and as a result became the birthplace for what has become the classics of Malay cuisine. One writer has called Kampong Gelam [an] “incubator for the Nusantara kitchen”. That writer is our guest today. Khir Johari is an educator, food historian and author of an award-winning book The Food of Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels Through the Archipelago published in 2021. Since then, the book has won, among other things, the “Best of the Best Book” at the 28th Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, known as the Oscars of the cookbook world. Khir was a guest chef on season two of From Book to Cook, the video series produced by the National Library of Singapore. 

Jimmy
Welcome to BiblioAsia+, Khir. How are you? 

Khir
Very well, thank you, Jimmy. Thank you for having me. 

Jimmy
It’s a pleasure. And congratulations, by the way, on winning all these awards. How does it feel to be famous? 

Khir
Well, all I wanted to do right from the start was to document. I didn’t realise it was going to lead to all of these nice things. 

Jimmy
Yeah. You know, your book is beautiful. We’re going to talk about it a little bit later. But I want to take us back to the video series that you did. You made something called mee maidin, a noodle dish. Can you tell us a little bit more about this? What is this dish? What does it look like? 

Khir
The consumption of noodles can be traced back to three different sources: China, Siam and Persia. So over time they became staple food among the people, and they are regarded as their own culinary tradition. So, one such noodle is the yellow mee, the word mee itself is from the Minnan dialect. 

The pairing of these raw mee with a distinct concoction, say, a gravy, a broth or a spice mix creates a dish. Such is the case with mee maidin, the pairing of the yellow noodle, mee, and a unique ragu. I call it ragu here. I’ll tell you why. Made of krill. So ragu is called ragu because the sauce is thick. It’s been slow cooked [so] that it’s rich and flavorful. Well, krill takes centrestage for this ragu. Krill – we call it locally udang geragau, sometimes it’s udang grago. Or pa-pai or ribbond, you know, depending on which geography you are located. Now it is served with lettuce, bean sprouts, hard boiled eggs, tofu, fried shallots, cut fresh chili and calamansi. 

Jimmy
Where does maidin come from? 

Khir
This is a very interesting question. This mee was created by someone by the name of Mamak Hussain. You can tell from the name, Mamak Hussain. So Mamak Hussain was from India, and he settled in Singapore. You know, he settled over at number 34 Bussorah Street. So that was his host family, with some time, it became his adopted family. 

So, in my study of food history in Singapore, I notice that Indians have a knack of understanding what the audience likes and what would sell. And we look at this array of food that’s not from India, but it has been adopted and adapted, chendol to mee siam, to rojak to popiah. So, the Indians have actually assimilated and made it their own. 

Now, here comes Mamak Hussain who understands what’s available locally. And he came up with this particular ragu that became very popular. But before he passed on, he passed a recipe to this adopted family, a couple by the name of Nor Din with his wife, Salmah. So, it was originally called or at least called among the people of Bussorah Street as mee mahdeen because he popularised it. So, then Mah, because Mah is his wife, Salmah, and then Deen is his name, but to call it mahdeen requires more effort, as opposed to maidin. So over time, it morphs from mahdeen to maidin. But if you look at Haja Asfiah’s book, Hidangan Warisan Kita, a monumental cookbook, she recorded it as mee mahdin. 

Jimmy
That’s so interesting. Did he sell it? How did people encounter it if you weren’t a friend of his? 

Khir
So, he went around on his food cart to sell [the noodles] when he was taken over by Wak Din. They called him Wak Din. And then with time, you know, like all good things, you know, ideas proliferate, people try to copy, to reverse engineer. So, yeah, it got really very popular within Kampong Gelam and beyond.

Jimmy
Okay, that’s very interesting. But I have to say, I’ve never eaten mee maidin, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen mee maidin being sold around Singapore. So, it is a dish that’s still available? 

Khir
Well, I’m afraid, commercially, it’s extinct. But, of course, you can still find it, you know, homes still prepare this. In part, it’s got to do with the cost of making geragau. In the past, Clive Street market, which was the equivalent of [today’s] Jurong fish port, was just a stone’s throw away from Kampong Gelam. It’s part of the larger Kampong Gelam. So, it was very easy. It was inexpensive. If you happened to have relatives in areas like Siglap, when geragau was in season you could just scoop it out of the water. But these days this gets very expensive. 

Jimmy
Ah I see. So, you need fresh geragau. 

Khir
You definitely need fresh geragau. And at the same time, you know, it’s something that requires a bit of work. 

Jimmy
I wish I had, you know, been there when you were making it. Someday I hope I will be invited. I’m inviting myself to your home to eat mee maidin someday. 

Khir
I would be very honoured. 

Jimmy
Okay, so this dish is a Kampong Gelam original. And you’ve called in your book, you’ve called Kampong Gelam an incubator for the Nusantara kitchen. What does that mean? And how did that happen? 

Khir
Well, I think we have to understand what Kampong Gelam was. Kampong Gelam was, and still is, an urban cosmopolitan space where people from various backgrounds can mingle and learn and appreciate so much about each other’s culture. And the other thing about Kampong Gelam, too, is to understand that when we say Kampong Gelam we are looking at this larger umbrella, this largest district. Within Kampong Gelam, there are many sub-kampongs. 

Jimmy
I did not know that. 

Khir
For instance, there’s Kampong Intan within Kampong Gelam, as the name implies, that’s where the Bancharis would do the diamond polishing then, cutting and polishing. We have Kampong Tembaga that’s the Coppersmiths kampong – that’s lower Bussorah Street. Upper Bussorah Street is Kampong Haji, lower Bussorah Street is Kampong Tembaga. 

So, for instance, Arab Street, which is the other high street that we have – we have High Street by the Parliament House and then we have the more mainstream High Street, this Arab Street. Arab Street has this vernacular name called Kampong Jawa. Kampong Jawa is one of the sub-kampong within Kampong Gelam. 

Jimmy
So Kampong Gelam, was that nexus, maybe. 

Khir
Yeah, so because it’s urban, it’s cosmopolitan, there’s some level of affluence. People, well, you know, a new place calls for a new recipe, people were experimenting. With affluence you have access to ingredients, exposure to what other cultures were making, so we see quite a bit of a hybridization in food and localisation as well. 

A total of four main arteries of food production in Kampong Gelam. First, we have Bussorah Street, also known as Kampong Haji. Margaret Sullivan, in her book called Can Survive Lah, she was looking at trades that were at risk of disappearing. So, she looked at various people making, say, the wooden clogs, people dealing with basket weaving. And she was looking at kueh making. When it came to kueh, food production, she identified Bussorah street as the epicenter of that production, in part because it was the place that people congregated every year during Ramadan to buy food, to break their fast and was prepared by the locals. And yet everybody had their own specialty within Kampong Gelam that they shared their creation with. 

Arab Street is this emporium, you know, of textiles, of carpets, of spices and flowers. Then there’s Kandahar Street. But today you don’t see Kandahar Street as what it used to be. Imagine the whole line of street – when you stepped on the street, you could hear people speak in Malayalam, in Tamil, in Punjabi, in Gujarati. This was the place that you would encounter all sorts of, this whole kaleidoscope of curries and bread from chapati to roti kirai. You know it has been adopted by the Indians, to appam, to parata and then there’s the terracotta yoghurt. Yoghurt in terracotta pots. And then we also encountered fried quails. All produced by the various Indian communities all along the stalls lining Kandahar Street. 

And then we have the nasi padang. We have – at one corner – Pariamman at the other end of Kandahar Street, we have the Sabar Menanti family and the spinoff of it is the Rumah Minang that we see today. So, there we have that. And then there’s also number 51 Sultan Gate. But that is Rumah Jawa. So, with the advent of the silver screen, all these arts, all these artists, sort of transformed themselves and created a central kitchen. 

But central kitchen faces Kandahar Street. The central kitchen will create a kitchen like a guild house where everybody has a role. So, for instance, we have Jimmy – “You will go to the market”, and Gek Han – “You will do the marination”, and then Tony will do the skewering of the meat and then somebody else will make the gravy. And yet another group will take care of the satay by 4 pm to sell to either the Alhambra Theater or to Rex. 

Jimmy
Wow. 

Khir
So that was a central kitchen. So, we have Indian curry shops. We have the Waroeng Nasi Padang, we have the Javanese Central kitchen, and not to mention the two Hainanese kopitiam on both ends of Kandahar Street. 

Jimmy
Okay, so we have Bussorah Street and we have Kandahar Street. 

Khir
And the third one would be Jalan Sultan. That’s the original home of your sup tulang. When you make your mutton chop, when you don’t discard your tulang. Somebody came up with this idea. What if we make this broth, this red-colored broth out of it, and you can enjoy the bone marrow? So, it all started over at Jalan Sultan. And over at Jalan Sultan as well they were selling the popular sup kambing. Interestingly directly across there’s also a Hainanese version of sup kambing. 

Jimmy
Really?  

Khir
With different spicing. And you’ll know the roles played by the Hainanese in various, you know, the restaurants and homes. It’s interesting in Jalan Sultan, as a kid growing up my grandpa would take me to this place, the only place in Singapore that sold mee odong. And so there’s something very distinct about this broth that they make to go with [the] mee, the noodle. So, while working on this project I’ve realised that mee odong – it’s a Malay corruption of “udon”. 

Jimmy
I see. 

Khir
Because the owner had worked with a Japanese family. 

Jimmy
It’s amazing. Okay, so we’ve covered three. Is there a fourth one? 

Khir
Fourth one. It has to be North Bridge Road. North Bridge Road is where the – till today we’re very fortunate to still able to enjoy – the murtabak row, there used to be three of them. All of them century-old establishments. 

Jimmy
This is Zamzam. 

Khir
Zamzam, Singapura and Victory. And then we have briyani houses – so famous not just in Malaya. And those people from Jakarta would come to enjoy, to want to enjoy Islamic and Jubilee briyani houses. 

Jimmy
You know, you talking about all this is just making me salivate, and I’ve had lunch. That’s an amazing sort of food map of that area and I’m really impressed. I understand why you say like you know it is like the incubator of Malay cuisine. I mean there are all these influences and all these shops and all these people that are all living in the area. And, so like mee maidin was one of the original dishes that came out of Kampong Gelam. But what else came out of Kampong Gelam? Sup tulang, you mentioned. 

Khir
Yes, sup tulang out of Jalan Sultan. There’s mee siam. 

Jimmy
Oh mee siam is also a Singapore dish? It’s not a Thai dish? 

Khir
It’s not a Thai dish, yeah, this is a long, stringy thing we call noodles. As I mentioned earlier, it came to the Malay world through China, through and from Siam. We have an 1820 colonial report by the port master about how many tonnes of what produce arrived here. And here we have dried vermicelli from Siam. 

Jimmy
Wow. Okay. Okay. 

Khir
And you know dried vermicelli, the rice noodle, traveled well. Well, so that’s mee siam. The raw ingredient. But the mee siam, that concoction did happen in Kampong Gelam. While digging out material thanks to our great libraries we have in Singapore, I stumbled upon this report called The Chemical Analysis of Foods of Singapore. Of course, the title sort of turns you off, the chemical analysis of food. But actually, it was a colonial project to collate what was sold on the streets of Singapore. 

Jimmy
When was this published? 

Khir
1940. So they went around, and they must have brought it to the laboratory. And, of course, before that there must have been people watching because judging by the various columns for every entry – let me give one example: Mee siam – we are talking about mee siam. 

Jimmy
My favorite dish. I love mee siam. 

Khir
It is indicated: What would the ingredients involve? How to make, and who prepared the food? Who makes the food? When is it sold? How much per bowl? 

Jimmy
That’s very, very detailed. 

Khir
So, while we look at mee siam, there is support that it is Javanese. 

Jimmy
Well, mee siam is Javanese? 

Khir
Made by urban Javanese, Singapore Javanese over in the Kampong Gelam area. Once they acquired this flavour profile. They use taucheo. So, the tau has really been introduced to the Malay world very early on. Indeed, the first record of tauhu can be found in the temples that lay in Java, dated 10th century. 

Jimmy
Wow okay. 

Khir
So taugay, tauhu, taucheo, it’s has really been part of the Nusantara staple you know? So, the Javanese in Singapore must have experimented with taucheo using chives using this this mee vermicelli and various other good ingredients. Of course, what turns up would be the dried shrimp. And tadah, you have mee siam with the gravy. So popular was this flavor profile that the folks around it created other iterations and then we have the total of three types of mee siam that came out of Kampong Gelam. 

Jimmy
Which is the... 

Khir
Dry mee siam, with a bit of a touch, you know, just drizzle [of gravy]. There’s the gravy version. There’s another one. It’s also dry, but it’s almost like the deconstructed version of mee siam. That means instead of having the hae bee, the dried prawn, within the mee siam, it is served as a floss, on the outside. 

Jimmy
That’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve had that one, but I need to maybe go down to Kampong Gelam to look for it. 

Khir
The last one that I mentioned, it’s gone, unfortunately. 

Jimmy
Okay. So, I’m very sad. You’ve done, obviously, done a lot of research. This map of Kampong Gelam and all the streets and all that. I mean, of course, you grew up in Kampong Gelam, didn’t you? I mean, how old were you? You know, how many years did you live in [Kampong Gelam]? 

Khir
Well, I was born in Kampong Gelam, and I was there till 14. 

Jimmy
Okay. 

Khir
But the family is still there. I was there almost every day until the building, the house where I lived in got acquired, yeah. 

Jimmy
Well, what was it like growing, growing up in Kampong Gelam? You know, back then? 

Khir
You know, I have vivid memories of the yearly Sufi festival over on Kandahar Street. We have over on Telok Ayer Street, the Nakhor Dargha. But so Nakhor, it’s a place in Tamil Nadu. So, the Tamil community, the Tamil-Muslim community here would do an annual celebration of the Sufi saint, Shal Hamid. They set up the shrine in Penang and in Singapore, but they have this annual commemoration of this Sufi saint. In order to do that, they needed to raise money. And I’ve seen with my own eyes how everybody chips in, regardless of your background, my Chinese launderette would give money yearly to this gentleman who went around collecting money from, you know, the Hindu neighbors, and the money would be used to bring musicians from Tamil Nadu. And they would have for three nights there’s this music festival, so much beautiful drumming, music, dancing. Just like we see, you know the Sufi-istic kind of dance. 

Jimmy
Where did this happen? 

Khir
On Kandahar Street! Right, right on my five-foot way, in the building that I grew up in. 

Jimmy
Wow. 

Khir
As kids, we looked forward to every night that food would be given away. So, me and my best friend, Ah Chong, whose father owned the Hainanese kopitiam, we would wait so that we would get this packet of food and sweet meats and so on. 

There is also that, the publishing house. From my bedroom window, I could see Pustaka Nasional. On Kandahar Street. So as kids, you know, we walked around Kandahar Street, there’s Al-ahmadiya Press, I didn’t know I was going to be a book collector. If I had known I would have gone and gotten every copy, every first run of every book published by Al Ahmadiya Press on Jalan Sultan. And there’s Haji Hashim Bookshop. But what I encountered growing up, Jimmy, I think that was the sort of the remnants, the tail end of this whole publishing and printing business in Kampong Gelam. 

Jimmy
Kampong Gelam, you know, it was a center for, you know printing and publishing, and a centre for Malay intellectual life. And it also published a whole bunch of books. And as you say, you’re now a book collector. Are there any particular books that were published in Kampong Gelam that are particular treasures of yours? 

Khir
Every time someone offers me a book from out of Kampong Gelam, I see that not just as a book, I see that as an artifact. I have a whole stack of the magazine on fashion. The first fashion magazine in Malay, written in Jawi, started in 1951 or 1952. I have that, and I have a bunch of other books that, I mean, it ranges from religious books or theology or religious treatise. Comics in Jawi, and also classic literature. Persianate literature, based on classic works by Hikail Amer Hamzah, I have that, and also Hikhail Mohammed Hanafiah. 

Jimmy
You’re a serious book collector. 

Khir
I think it’s important because it’s part of writing this book on food. There’s a whole chapter on looking at food through pantuns and classic text to understand food. I am really working on getting my hands on the copy of Hikayat Binatang. 

Jimmy
Hikayat Binatang? 

Khir
I was over at the Lenin Library in Moscow, and I saw a copy and I almost jumped out of my skin, because it says Singapura 1840-something. 

Jimmy
Where was it published? 

Khir
In Singapura, published in Kampong Gelam! So, I checked. I checked Ian Proudfoot’s book on early printing in Singapore, and it was printed in Kampong Gelam. 

Jimmy
Well, I’ve never even heard of Hikayat Binatang. 

Khir
So I thought it would be something like the Aesop’s Fables or something. No, no, it’s a book on zoology. 

Jimmy
Really? Wow. So, do you have a copy yet? Hopefully the library will have a copy. Well, let me turn to your amazing book, The Food of the Singapore Malays. I mean, it’s obviously a labour of love. I know it’s like 600 pages long. It’s got amazing photographs, recipes. And maybe what’s more important, the stories, right?  Why did you want to put this book together? What was so important about this that you spent many years on this? 

Khir
I spent 11 years on this. I lived in the Bay Area for 12 years, and each time I came back to Singapore, for summer break and Christmas – I felt – because when you are here, you don’t see the differences, the changes – so, I felt there was a need to document, to do something serious, not just a cookbook, not that a cookbook is not serious. There’s a place for that. But I wanted it to be food ethnology. I wanted to use food to explain a people. So, let’s take a look at the food of this group of people. That was my main motivation, Jimmy. 

Jimmy
But I mean, like 11 years. What did you enjoy most about putting that book together? 

Khir
I think what started off as a documentation project became a project to celebrate the lives of the people, the custodians of these recipes and [their] wisdom and knowledge. And, of course, it requires quite a bit of research and I enjoyed doing that. Whether going to the library – you know I traveled all the way to Leiden. I made three visits to Leiden. Leiden, the Dutch library, is the largest repository of material from the Malay world and, of course, the British Library, the Royal Asiatic Society, not to forget our own National Library. 

Jimmy
The National Library. Yes, our own library. Wonderful place. I hope my bosses are listening to how much I love the place. What was the research process like? I mean, you said it’s under-researched and it can’t be easier because people eat food. They don’t typically write about food. 

Khir
That’s the challenge because you don’t have it down in print. So that requires you to interview as well. So, when you start doing that, you need to have a certain methodology, right? How do you go about interviewing who you interview, what exactly [do] you want to interview [about]? This whole project can be divided into four parts. 

The first part I wanted to talk about was people, space and place. So, while you can talk about food and history – history is always debatable – food and geography, aha! It is something that is hard for you to argue. So, let’s look at geography. Let’s take a look at people, space and place. So, the book is about the food of Singapore Malays. I thought it’s really important to unpack right from the start what is a Malay, who is a Malay? We’re not looking at sort of ethno-racial geography, but we’re looking at a fluid space where so many diverse cultures come together. And hence that is what we call the Malay world culturally. 

Jimmy
I realise that I know very little just sitting there and listening to you. I realise the depths of my ignorance. 

Khir
This is something that I think we all know. We all know somehow. But what I’ve done is actually make it, you know, make it more palatable. So, we have this fourth section. There's a chapter on kitchen accoutrements and implements. So, I need to interview because some of the objects have gone. Take one example. Putu piring. So, we know a commercial version of putu piring, big aluminum, but was putu piring ever served at home? What would it look like? So, I needed to go down and interview, and when you talk about interviewing people, elders, you are racing against time. 

Jimmy
It is. You are right. 

Khir
The passing of an elder, of a grandmother, is like the closure of a library. I go around interviewing libraries. Of course, these days we are very fortunate to have digital searches. 

Jimmy
Right. 

Khir
Thanks again to the NLB I can do research on Singapore newspaper archives. 

Jimmy
Yeah NewspaperSG is an excellent resource. Yes. 

Khir
Go to the Australian University Malay concordance project. I type in belachan or bungah telang and out comes all the bungah telang information that you need to know. 

Jimmy
Yeah, that is remarkable. If you want to check out what Khir’s done, BiblioAsia has actually published the chapter on foraging in an earlier issue of BiblioAsia. We’re very grateful you were able to take time out to come to do this interview with us. What are you working on now? 

Khir
Well, this project has been sort of my “lifetime project”. Some people call it my baby. So, if it’s a baby, okay, the baby’s already out. But what I want to see is the baby grow. I’m enjoying this growth. I’m enjoying the discourse that’s happening right now. I’m seeing a change in how people look at Malay Food. 

In the past, you tended to link, to associate Malay food with, maybe the hawker center and suddenly you realise there’s a lot more to Malay food. There’s so much sophistication; it’s multilayered. I think the book is no longer a book, there is a movement. People now are ready to showcase Malay food as a fine dining affair, people experimenting with new things. People are remixing, not only experimenting to see. They retained the flavour profile, the character. 

Jimmy
Wow. Okay. Khir’s book is a joy. It is. It belongs on everybody’s bookshelf. We’ve come now to the part of the interview where we ask questions that are not necessarily related to the book, but, you know, more about Khir himself. You know, if you lived in Kampong Gelam, if this was the 19th century, what do you think you’d like to be? Would you like to be a writer, a bookshop owner? What would you like to do if you weren’t doing what you’re doing now? 

Khir
Well, let me see. Can my answer be related to what I’m doing now? 

Jimmy
Absolutely. 

Khir
Let me think. What would I be doing if I had lived in Kampong Gelam in the 19th century? I’m a collector, too. I collect musical recordings, I collect textiles, I collect old books. There’s something about collecting them in the 19th century. How about this? You know the expression. Cairo writes, Beirut prints and Baghdad reads. So, Kampong Gelam in Singapore. I want to be a collector. Singapore collects and preserves. 

Jimmy
Okay, so you want to be a librarian? 

Khir
I want to be a librarian. 

Jimmy
Okay, very good. 

Khir
I want to be a librarian. I want to collect and preserve. Yes. 

Jimmy
Wonderful. Wonderful. Let me ask you, you know, I love Malay food, by the way. What do you think is the most maligned ingredient in Malay cooking? 

Khir
It has to be the poor coconut. The poor coconut that we enjoy so much. 

Jimmy
Why? 

Khir
You know there’s all this notion about being unhealthy, about coconut milk and yet look at the line for Katong laksa. Look at the line for nasi lemak. There’s something that’s amiss. Here we are thinking that it’s very bad, but you cannot make your laksa with soybean or your cow’s milk or almond milk, you can’t do it. 

What makes it laksa? It’s the lemak that comes from the santan, from the coconut cream and folks would also need to read this article great that came out of the New York Times some time back. It’s called “Once a Villain, Now a Hero”. So, the industry at one time told you that coconut oil is bad. Look at the price of coconut oil now – the size of your peanut butter jar – is 36 bucks. I don’t know. Or thereabouts? I grew up trying everything in coconut oil. Until the industry tells you this. There’s something else. It’s called vegetable oil, which is actually palm oil. So, I think it’s been so maligned for coconut. But is it again, the coconut? It’s just so wonderful. This from coconut oil, to coconut cream and the coconut pulp itself, the kernel, there’s so much you can do. 

Jimmy
I wouldn’t have thought that coconut was maligned at all because I’m very fond of it actually. When people buy your book, what is the one recipe you would tell them to try out? 

Khir
Wow, that’s a tough one, Jimmy. Very, very, very hard. It’s like you have 10 kids and I ask you, Jimmy, which kid do you love most? 

Jimmy
Okay, what if it’s for someone who, like, you know, has – I won't name names – fried an egg and managed to burn his foot. What recipe would you recommend to them to try? 

Khir
Well, let me see. Let me think. So, no frying involved. Now that you have rephrased the question then I got to think of what would be easy to make… mee siam. I mean it’s fairly easy. That’s not because you talked about mee siam already earlier. So, let’s talk about something else. 

Jimmy
Nasi lemak. Another one of my favorites. 

Khir
So, lots of them. This bit. Quite a bit of dexterity and practice. 

Jimmy
Okay, you know what? I think you’re too much of a perfectionist. I will never be able to make any kind of good Malay food because clearly whatever you know, your bar is very high. 

Khir
No, no. It’s not that my bar is very high. But I’m just trying to think of something that, you know – I keep telling people the recipes have been tested, retested and retested such that if you give it to anyone, give it to a teenager, he or she should be able to cook and produce the food the way it should be. 

Jimmy
Okay. I will take you at your word, Khir, and I will allow your book in my kitchen and I will make mee siam or mee maidin then and if it doesn’t work out well, you know, I’ve got your number here. I’m going to be knocking on your door. 

Khir
You feel free to do that. 

Jimmy
Okay, last question. Complete this sentence. Food is...? 

Khir
Hmm... Food is nourishment for the body and soul. A universal language that brings people together and tells stories of culture and tradition. 

Jimmy
Okay, that’s beautiful. Yeah. You know, thank you Khir for joining us on BiblioAsia+. To watch Khir make mee maidin and to get the recipe check out BiblioAsia.nlb.gov.sg, and of course check out Khir’s book as well, available in all good bookshops and the National Library. Khir, once again, thank you for joining us on this very rainy afternoon. It is a pleasure to have you. I’ve learned so much. It is just tremendous having you here. Thank you. 

Khir
Thank you so much, Jimmy. Thank you NLB for having me here. Yes, for this wonderful and fun kind of programme, BiblioAsia+. 

Jimmy
Thank you, Khir. 

Khir
Thank you.

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

Khir Johari, The Food of Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels through the Archipelago (Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2021). (National Library call no. 394.120899928 KHI -[CUS])

Mazelan Anuar, "Early Malay Printing in Singapore," BiblioAsia 13, no. 3 (October–December 2017).

H. A.. Canton, John Lewis Rosedale and Joseph Padua Morris, The Chemical Analysis of Foods of Singapore (Singapore: Govt. Printer, 1940). (National Library call no. 664.07 CAN)

Hajjah Asfiah Haji Abdullah, Hidangan Warisan Kita (Singapore: Times Books International, 1986).

Toffa Abdul Wahed, "Belacan: Caviar or Vile?" BiblioAsia+ podcast, 38:21.

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 Khir for coming on the show.

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