Nyonya Food or Peranakan cuisine as it is popularly referred to, was formally known as Straits Chinese food. It is an interesting amalgamation of Chinese and Malay dishes thought to have originated from the Peranakan (Straits Chinese) of Malacca over 400 years ago. This was the result of inter-marriages between Chinese immigrants and local Malays, which produced a unique culture which has survived till today. The women are called nyonyas and the men babas.
As a result, many of the traditional ingredients of Chinese food and Malay spices and herbs are found in the cuisine. However, it eclectically seasoned and different than either Chinese or Malay food. In a sense this is Malaysian traditional fusion cuisine at it’s best. Nyonya food is also native to Penang and Singapore. However, over the years, distinct differences have evolved in nyonya cooking found in Penang and Singapore than that in Malacca. The proximity of Malaka and Singapore to Indonesia resulted in an Indonesian influence on nyonya food.
Malacca Nyonya food is generally sweeter, richer in coconut milk, and with the addition of more Malay spices like coriander and cumin. Meanwhile, the Penang Nyonya style of cooking drew inspiration from Thai cooking styles, including a preference for sour food, hot chilies, fragrant herbs, and pungent black prawn paste (belacan).
Influences aside, nyonya recipes are complicated affairs, often requiring hours upon hours of preparation. Nyonya housewives of the past would spend the better part of their lives in the kitchen, but they were fiercely proud of their unique cuisine, preferring nyonya food to any other type of food. Nyonya cooking is also about the blending of spices, employing pungent roots like galangal, turmeric and ginger; aromatic leaves like pandan leaf, fragrant lime leaf and laksa leaf, together with other ingredients like candlenuts, shallots, shrimp paste and chilies. Lemon, tamarind, belimbing (carambola) or green mangoes are used to add a tangy taste to many dishes.
For dessert, fruits are seldom served and are instead replaced by cakes. Nyonya cakes are rich and varied, made from ingredients like sweet potato, glutinous rice, palm sugar, and coconut milk. Popular desserts are bubur cha cha which is cooked with yam, sweet potato, sago, coconut milk and brown sugar. Not to be missed is onde-onde which is basically palm sugar stuffed glutinous rice balls rolled in freshly grated coconut.
Most Nyonya restaurant will serve either one or all of the following. Nyonya fried rice is quite unlike other fried rice as it is cooked with chopped dried shrimp, sliced mushrooms, hot pepper-soy sauce, chili powder, and shredded lettuce. Another popular dish is udang lemak nenas, a mild prawn curry cooked with fresh pineapple cubes, coconut milk, and spices that includes coriander, star anise, and tumeric. Chicken kapitan is a curry using tamarind juice, candlenut, fresh turmeric root and belachan, a shrimp paste, among other ingredients. Besides the usual steamed white rice, this dish is excellent served with rice.
Noodles also feature in Nyonya cooking such as assam laksa which is thick rice noodles served in a tangy mackerel gravy and lots of aromatic herbs. Fresh garnishing of shredded cucumber, lettuce, pineapple, onion and fragrant mint leaves complete the dish. On a gastronomic journey of Malaysia some of the above Nyonya dishes are a must on the itinerary.
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