PETALING JAYA, March 24 — The Peranakans are well known for their fierce pride in their rich heritage, and Debbie Teoh, 46, is a shining example.
This petite woman champions her cause as an active member of the Persatuan Baba Nyonya KL Selangor through cultural projects and cooking demonstrations. In 2012, she represented Malaysia in the International Slow Food Conference in Italy where she showcased dishes such as ayam pongteh and lemak nenas udang to visitors of the event.
In addition, she also works with Tourism Malaysia on Nyonya food. Her cooking repertoire extends far beyond Nyonya food as she also develops all kinds of recipes for food magazines. Currently she runs her own home-based catering business where her biscuits, cakes, rice dumplings or bak chang and Nyonya kuih are popular with the general public.
Debbie boasts an enviable lineage – the best of both worlds linked through marriage – a Baba father from Malacca and a Nyonya mother from Penang. As a young child, she recalls a childhood with her grandparents in Malacca. Her grandfather was a land surveyor who was tasked to document the rail tracks in Malacca.
One of her delicious memories is of a long-forgotten dish: kun cheang or pig’s intestine skin filled with glutinous rice. The tea-time treat required the utmost patience and sharp skills to cook slowly over low heat to prevent the delicate skin from splitting.
Some other dishes are old wives’ remedies like the pigs’ brains omelette with ginger and garlic; a dish Debbie licks her lips over as she recalls its creamy taste. “Whenever we complained of a headache, they would make pigs’ brains omelette for us. In those days, you ate the corresponding body part to heal it.”
Generally, Nyonya matriarchs guarded their family recipes closely and only bestow those they favoured with their secrets. The youngest in a family of three girls, Debbie was the only one who took on the initiative to learn the hand-me-down recipes. As her mother, Esther Teng, 79, was busy with teaching, her two aunts in Penang stepped in. After she finished Form 5, Debbie temporarily relocated to Penang where her two aunts – Annie Lee and Ah Choo Ee – taught her their secrets.
The two aunts were unmarried cousin sisters who both had different strengths in cooking. Ah Choo Ee was the one with the good palate, teaching Debbie how to cook the agak-agak way by tasting. Her cooking skills were so impressive that she could prepare acar hu or Nyonya pickled fish by deboning 50 pieces of the small fish in a short time.
With Auntie Annie, her interest was cakes like butter cake, Indonesian layer cake, fruit cake and sugee cakes. Debbie also learnt how to make spiral curry puffs from her. Aside from cooking, Auntie Annie was famous for her delicate and fine needlework for kasut manik or beaded shoes, a skill she wanted to teach Debbie who unfortunately was not interested.
Debbie’s food philosophy centres around the use of good quality ingredients. “You must use good ingredients if you want the dish to be good.” Unfortunately, that same philosophy is not shared by most customers. “They want to eat good but pay cheap.” Since Peranakan food is known for its high standards, expectations are also high for the dishes, unlike for instance, the simpler to prepare Hokkien noodles.
Unlike wily Peranakan ladies who often omit crucial instructions or even ingredients from their recipes, Debbie is generous with her cooking tips and hides nothing when it comes to her recipes. One example is the classic Nyonya dish ju hu char. Despite its simple appearance, the ju hu char dish tests out a Nyonya’s cutting skills.
According to Debbie, there are no short cuts as the yam bean has to be painstakingly hand cut. She recalls catering for a wedding for 450 people that required three skilled assistants to cut the yam bean for half a day. Cheating with a food processor or a mandoline results in a failed dish – all mushy where the strands clump together. One simple trick, Debbie reveals is washing the cut strands until the water runs clear.
Like all Peranakan fare, the dish is best eaten a day after it is cooked as the flavours develop. The ju hu char is traditionally eaten during Chinese New Year, where you wrap it up with a salad leaf accompanied by a dash of spicy sambal belacan.
Another famous Peranakan dish is the ayam buah keluak or chicken cooked in a thick gravy with keluak nuts. The popular Malaccan Nyonya recipe laced with tamarind juice for a slight sourish taste differs from family to family. Some use pork or seafood like prawns or even tenggiri fish in the curry.
Beef is usually avoided due to Buddhist beliefs. The keluak nuts are painstakingly extracted by hand, the old fashioned way after it has been soaked for hours. With a crack with the back of a cleaver, the lid is opened and the black treasure is dug out. Some cooks prefer to dispense with scooping out the filling and toss it straight into the curry as they feel it is too troublesome.
Debbie warns against this way since there’s no check-and-balance for rancid nuts. She prefers to season the nut paste, adding beaten egg white, salt and pepper before stuffing it back into the nuts.
Labelled as the Asian truffle, these black nuts are prized for their chocolate-like aroma and slightly bitter taste. Find them at Malacca markets – you choose the nuts by weighing them on your palm. The heavier ones are preferred. According to Debbie, these nuts can be kept outside for a few months as long as they are intact.
To order Debbie Teoh’s food, you can email her at [email protected]
#Part 2 continues next week and this time we will talk about Nyonya kuih making.
This story was first published in Crave in the print edition of The Malay Mail on March 23, 2014.
