E7 – Kueh and the Unlikely Dutch Affair

Hosted by Dr Noby Leong and Philip Gibson
Produced by Dr Noby Leong and Philip Gibson
Sound Design by Jack Barr
English Dub by Anindya Kenyo Larasti 

Satay? Okay! is produced by Kopi Productions Limited and supported by the Golden Chopsticks Scholarship, by the Oxford Cultural Collective Trust

The Way of Kueh (2019), Christopher Tan

Nerdbaker: Extraordinary Recipes, Stories & Baking Adventures from a True Oven Geek Paperback (2015), Christopher Tan

Nerdbaker 2: Tales of the Yeast Indies (2024), Christopher Tan

A History of Malaysia (2016), Barbara Watson Andaya, Leonard Y. Andaya

Merchant Kings – When Companies Ruled the World 1600-1900 (2010), Stephen R Bown

The Batavia Massacre: The Tragic End to a Century of Cooperation (2019), Kimberley Wilhelmina Wells

The Dutch East India Company – BBC Sounds

Kuih Keria Antarabangsa, No.29-1 Jalan Kristal Merah 2, Taman Limbongan Jaya, Limbongan, Malacca City, Malaysia

Please note that this transcript may contain errors and typos

Welcome to Satay? Okay!, a podcast about the foods that
have shaped Malaysia. I’m Dr. Noby Leong, scientist,
food writer and broadcaster. And I’m Philip Gibson,
photographer and cartographer. And in this series,
we explore the history, cultures and cuisines
of Malaysia, from the ancient lands of Southeast
Asia, all the way through to the creation of
a modern day nation. And in today’s episode,
we look at Kueh and the unlikely Dutch affair.
So, so we in those lips because it’s time for
Sate. Okay. So in the last episode, we took at
Melaka in the th century. And at that time,
Portugal invaded, took over Melaka, and then
the Sultan of Melaka fled and set up a new residence
in Johor. where he had routinely tried to come
back and retake malacca what nine times many
many times yeah he was very persistent well quite
right it was his claim today we’re continuing
that journey into the th century now with the
arrival of a new european player in the region
and that is the dutch voc but before we get into
that let’s look at the food of the day that symbol
that connects us with the past and that is quay
okay no that’s spanish So, Philip, do you know
what Kueh is? Well, you know what kueh is. I’ve
been introduced to Kueh. Do you think people
know what Kueh is? No, I don’t think they do.
I don’t even know that our expert today could
actually articulate what Kueh is. Yeah, Kueh
is one of those foods that is really not easy
to translate into the Western language. Right.
So, in order for us to all figure out what Kueh
is, we thought we’d first… take you to our
guest of today, Christopher Tan from Singapore.
So Christopher Tan is a bonafide Kueh master.
He’s the author of the brilliant book, The Way
of Kueh. So if anyone’s going to be able to help
us with defining Kueh, it’s Christopher Tan.
So let’s hear from him. It is a tricky one. There’s
no exact cognate with anything in the Western
world. Okay, my name is Christopher Tan. I am
a Singapore -based cookbook author, cooking instructor,
food writer in general, you know, food history
nerd, all these things. The word kueh itself
comes from a southern Chinese dialect, but because
of migration throughout the Southeast Asian region.
Over the last few hundred years, the word kueh
got absorbed into Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia.
Although there are other words for the same kind
of food there as well. Kueh has probably the
most widespread usage across the region. But
it refers to… See, even snack doesn’t quite
sum it up. Because a kueh can be sweet, it can
be savoury, it can be steamed, it can be fried,
it can be pan -fried, it can be fermented, it
can be baked. It’s a very wide and broad genre
of food. Many kuehs are associated with special
occasions, festival times or seasons. But they
are a distinct genre in that while they might
be served… during the course of a meal, at
least to me, they stand outside the meal a little
bit. They have their own corner of the cuisine
and the culture. I would say portion -wise, mostly
they are small. But again, small is subjective.
All right, so that was Christopher Tan attempting
to describe what kueh is. And I’m not actually
sure if we got to a definition in the end. Christopher
is one of those people who knows so much about
Kueh that every time he comes across what he
thinks is a good definition, he can probably
think of something that doesn’t quite fit. Yeah,
it’s the opposite of Dunning -Kruger. It’s that
bell curve of like, the more you know, the less
you think you know. I try to kind of anglicise
what, in my experience of it, has been, because
it is sweet and savoury, as he says, and it is
sometimes soft and jelly -like, but also sometimes
baked or deep -fried, which those two things
don’t quite, they don’t naturally make you think
of one type of food group. Yeah, yeah. I usually
think of kueh as a sweet or savoury snack that’s
often served in small, discreet… portions discreet
yeah i’ve got visions of these like uh victorian
and georgian women and their big ball gowns like
hiding themselves eating tiny like petty fours
or something like that petty fours yeah uh definitely
a type of Kueh so from a western point of view
it made me try to think what food it reminded
me of and the best I could think of is when you’re
in primary school certainly in the early primary
ones and twos when you end up inviting your entire
class of students to go to a gym hall somewhere
and run about for a couple of hours yeah the
party food that would get served would be yeah
like little slices of cakes like little kind
of like french fancies or maybe even like an
empire biscuit actually or millionaire shortbread
cut up into little things or shortbread things
but then also In Australia, you’ve got fairy
bread, which is not quite typically cut up into
mini snack size. Yeah, your triangles of plain
white bread with margarine and then hundreds
and thousands sprinkled on top.
So yeah, kueh is this very broad
genre of food that’s popular across Southeast
Asia. Lots of different cultures have their own
kueh. They can be sweet, they can be savory.
The two kueh that always pop in my head when
someone mentions kueh are, well, the first one
is kueh lapis. So this is layers of coconut jelly
alternating. typically in like pink and white.
It’s very pretty. And it’s given to you in like
a small square or diamond. And as a kid, you
kind of take off layer by layer with your hands
and eat it. So it’s very, very fun to eat. However,
I’ve seen some people now that I’ve been trained
in the ways of eating it, they just bite into
it. Yeah. Which look, you can, but it’s not that
fun. No, I’m trying to think what like chocolate
bars and stuff like that that we have over here,
where there’s a particular way that you’re supposed
to eat it. And then when you see some people
eat it. A different way you’re like, you’re a
fucking monster. Oh, like a Kit -Kat bar. If
someone doesn’t like… Snap them in half. Or
worse, it’s not just like the two finger one.
It’s the four finger one that’s stuck together
and somebody just bites into it. You can see
the entire imprint of their teeth across the
entire four channels. Savagery. Yeah, so if someone
eats a quail epis with just one bite and doesn’t
peel it, that’s like if someone just bites into
a Kit -Kat. Yeah, it’s also not a nice way to
enjoy it. You want the experience of like the
chocolate in the wafer on an individual stroke.
You also want to extend the eating experience
of it. Yeah. The other one I think about is something
called onde onde. These are really small balls
of dough that are kind of like mochi in texture,
but they’re filled with palm sugar and then rolled
in desiccated coconut. So you kind of pop it
in your mouth. it explodes and then this palm
sugar syrup just like oozes it’s freaking addictive
and delicious yeah the gula melaka is pretty
nice especially when they’re quite fresh because
like because you boil them right yes yeah yeah
so when they’re still quite warm and you’ve tossed
them around the kind of coating that you put
them in that’s pretty good yeah so yeah those
those are probably my the two that i think of
i’d say a lot of the sweet ones traditionally
they’ve got either three flavors pandan coconut
and palm sugar i think those three ingredients
a pretty typical to a sweet kueh experience and
the way that people have used these three ingredients
to make radically different dishes I’ve always
found quite admirable in kueh making. So kueh
is a really vast category of foods and that really
tells you a lot about the many many different
cultural influences of kueh. The word may have
come from southern China but there are lots of
kuehs of Malay, Indian, influence Portuguese
a lot of Kueh there Dutch certainly English
but that does lead us to today’s history lesson
where we’re going to try and connect more of
those influences with the point in time that
they originated so again last episode we looked
at Melaka in the th century falling to Portugal
and then after Portugal arrived a new European
player came onto the scene the Dutch Verena Well,
as a Melakan, I don’t think you need to apologize.
I do try. I try hard to pronounce every language
correctly. That is very gracious of you. I try.
So essentially, the VOC is the Dutch East India
Company. So a little bit of backstory of who
they are. The VOC are basically a really large
trading company, but they weren’t owned by a
single person or single family. They were owned
by a collection of shareholders and essentially
run by a board of directors. And the way that
the VOC ran itself. is basically how a lot of
multinationals run themselves today. So the VOC
is the blueprint for a lot of capitalism that
you see today. And we’re talking at what, when
was this? Early th? So this was in the early
th century that they formed. Right. So the
shareholders, they weren’t just like wealthy
people. They also just included just ordinary
middle -class Dutch people. Right. Because Amsterdam
did have a stock market at that time and the
VOC was floated on the stock market. Right. So
it wasn’t unusual for families to have shares
in the VOC. and from what I understand at that
point in time the Dutch were the kind of the
trading masters even within europe like they
were doing a lot of trade in the baltic with
fur and things like that and so they already
had a bit of a precedent for yeah for sea trade
and i guess that’s why the voc formed because
you had all these disparate trading companies
that were kind of competing with each other so
they decided to amalgamate into one bigger company
so they weren’t competing with each other anymore
and probably having seen what portugal were up
to wanted a slice of the action exactly so like
other european nations they were really really
interested in the spice trade And they wanted
to capture more of that spice trade for themselves.
But unlike some of the other European traders,
the VOC had quite a lot of power. So they were
essentially an arm of the Dutch state. The VOC
could make treaties, alliances. They could wage
war. They could have their own army. They could
erect forts, appoint governors, etc. The difference
was, though, that they didn’t… have any accountability
so they didn’t have to answer to the public um
to voters as it were not that there were voters
back then yep um they just had to make money
so a bit of a private militia that made money
through trade essentially yeah and so the voc
has this purpose to enter the spice trade it
has a lot of resources to do so but unlike portugal
who wanted to control trade in southeast asia
The VOC wanted to control not just trade, but
also the production of spices. So they were going
one step further in their ambitions. And a particular
spice that they were interested in was nutmeg.
At the time, nutmeg could only be found in one
place, which was the spice islands of Indonesia,
in particular, the Banda Islands. So the VOC
heads to the Banda Islands in the early th
century. And at that stage, the Bundanese…
the people of the bunda island they’re already
pretty established traders and merchants they
have a preference at this stage for trading with
chinese arab and javanese traders because they’re
giving them things that they actually want so
buttocks so cloths that are all right beautifully
patterned rice sago palm porcelain and also medicine
these traders also pretty nice they respect their
religion they’re not trying to push their religion
yeah they respect local customs And they’re also
known for just like exchanging cultures in a
friendly manner. Right. This is not something
that the Dutch VOC is really about. Aside from
their poor manners, their disrespect of the Bandanese
people in general, they also don’t really have
anything that the Bandanese actually want. What
they’re trading mostly with are wool and velvet.
And if you’ve spent any time in the tropics,
you would know that those are two… materials
you do not want touching your body yeah i would
say so the dutch voc aren’t having much luck
on the banda islands but they want the chiefs
of the banda islands to sign a contract to give
the dutch voc a monopoly on the nutmeg trade
right so effectively this is a land grab at this
point yeah that really or rather a treaty dressed
up as a treaty? Yeah, basically. So the treaty
itself is written in Dutch. I do not believe
that the chiefs can read Dutch. Right. Some of
them end up signing it anyway because they don’t
want to offend the Dutch merchants. I feel like
there was probably also a lot of presence when
you saw that many cannons pointed at you. Exactly.
And a lot of them did fear for… their life
and they feared that there would be a violent
reprisal if they refused right so some of them
end up signing it but they don’t actually keep
to the agreement whether or not they understood
it or not right naturally the voc pretty pissed
off by this and in the dutch tell them that
you’ve broken your promise we’re going to build
a factory and fort on your island right for processing
and what have you Bandanese pretty pissed off
by this. And then they end up killing various
members of the VOC forces. Right. This begins
this back and forth between the VOC and the Bandanese.
The VOC retaliate. They order a naval blockade
and stop food from getting to the island. Effectively,
they’re starving the population of the Banda
Islands. Right. This forces their chiefs, therefore,
to surrender more formally and accept the terms
of the treaty. Right. Of course, You know, people
don’t just let go of their grudges. No. And there
are whispers that the Bandanese are planning
to launch an attack against the VOC again. Okay.
So in the Dutch VOC decided to do something
about it. At this stage, it’s helmed by a man
named Jan Pieterszoon Coen. He… I want to use
the C word, but I want to keep this a bit more
PG. Sure. But he was… quite an awful human
being with little moral character. And he is
quoted as saying, we cannot carry on trade without
war, nor war without trade. So he wants war on
the Banda Islands. And so in he arrives
with ships and nearly troops. Right.
He captures, tortures, and eventually kills the
ruling class. He then proceeds to destroy their
homes. He rounded up entire villages, enslaved
the people that lived there. He transported them
onto ships where many died of starvation and
disease. Out of an estimated ,to ,
people on the Banda Islands, just ,people
remained. So in effect, Coen had ethnically cleansed
the island. Yeah, and I believe the people that
were left behind were only left behind to carry
on working on the plantations and things like
that. He replaced those people with… other
enslaved people that he could subjugate. And
so with this move, he effectively did monopolize
trade of nutmeg. Yeah. I believe there are some
traditions still practiced on the Banda Island
to commemorate the anniversary of this massacre.
I believe there’s some sort of dance where I
think five of the young boys dance with flowers
in their mouths as if to symbolize their tongues
being cut out and not having a voice and stuff
like that. Yeah, I saw a bit of it in a documentary
and The people on the Banda Islands are still
very much in mourning about the complete annihilation
of their culture from odd years ago. It is
not to be overlooked that one spice so sought
after by Europeans caused so much hurt on the
other side of the planet where it was being farmed.
When we talk about the spice trade and the involvement
of Europeans in the spice trade, we so often
don’t really acknowledge the impact of the local
people. Yeah, I mean, we’re starting to reflect
more on that now. And I think a lot of attention
has been given to what happened with the transatlantic
business, but there was just as much destruction
and genocide going on in the East as well. So
I will say that there were some people in Coen’s
company that did resist and did not want to take
part in this ethnic cleansing and they were killed.
There was some in the ruling class in Amsterdam
that did object to Coen’s methods in some way,
but I don’t think they did enough about it, because
obviously it still happened. Well, if the guy
was a bit like Stalin, then you probably didn’t
want to cross him, did you? But for all the cruelty
that Coen enacted at the Banda Islands, for his
actions of ethnic cleansing, he was given a promotion,
because all that the people in Amsterdam cared
about was money, and he delivered that. ends
up kicking off a period in the th century known
as the golden age of Dutch culture. All this
money ended up flowing back to Amsterdam to their
shareholders where science and arts thrived.
People like Rembrandt, people like Vermeer, artists
that we know today. And are internationally still
talked about. Yeah, and still profited from,
emerged at this time. And so it’s really important
that we make that connection that the wealth
that enabled the Golden Age in Holland was on
the backs of Southeast Asians. Yeah. I’m not
going to be able to look at Geralt apparently
doing the same, am I? Yeah. Exploitation fuelled
the Golden Age. Okay, so at this point, the Dutch
VOC is making enemies left, right and centre.
Author Stephen Bowen, who wrote the book The
Merchant Kings. describes the VOC at this time
as, quote, a trading enterprise that within its
first two decades was in conflict with nearly
every maritime nation in the world. So not only
has it got enemies across Indonesia, but it’s
got a lot of enemies within English forces, absolutely
hates Portugal, absolutely hates Spain, and they
basically want to oust everybody, particularly
those that are active in the spice trade. And
so this is where we now bring in our friends
in Johor. So if we remember, the Sultan of Johor
friggin’ hates the Portuguese. Right. They burned
his home down. And the rulers of Johor… Not
just burned his home down, they stole all of
his treasure. Yeah, they did everything. Which
then sank in the sea. So the rulers of Johor
had, on nine separate occasions, tried to reclaim
Melaka from Portuguese forces, but failed every
time. But Philip, as they say, th time’s a
charm. Right. And the rulers of Johor end up
partnering with the Dutch VOC. And in they
launch a joint strike against Portuguese Melaka.
And in the following year, they succeed in ousting
Portuguese forces. Right. What an unlikely…
I mean, unlikely in some ways, but totally predictable.
It’s that classic phrase, the enemy of your enemy
is my friend. I guess so, but I can’t imagine
that the Johorians would have known what the
Dutch had just committed in Banda. Possibly,
yeah. And so I would imagine that they might
not have been so quick to buddy up with the Dutch
if it meant… Yeah. Well, who knows how it could
have gone. So the Dutch and the rulers of Johor
end up jointly ruling Melaka from this point.
Right. And I think they’re pretty cordial in
their relationship because I think neither one
really cares about Melaka as a trading port
anymore. It had lost its prestige after years
of Portuguese rule. Exactly. And Johor was rising
as a trading empire. And the Dutch VOC had based
themselves in Jakarta, which they’d named Batavia.
Right. So both Dutch and the Malay rulers of
Johor. were pretty happy with what they had and
so malacca just toppled on so the dutch have
left a pretty substantial imprint on malaysia’s
culture today if you were to go to malacca you
would see a lot of heritage buildings all in
red so the old town is full of red brick buildings
old churches clock towers and those are all legacies
of this unlikely partnership between dutch and
malay rulers Yeah, you’ve got the Christchurch,
which is ancient. Oh, it’s s or something,
isn’t it? And then there’s the Stadthuis, is
that what they call it? Yes. The old administrative
building. Yeah, so some of the museums are in
these old Dutch buildings now as well. That’s
one of the reasons why Melaka gained its World
Heritage status by UNESCO. But we also have the
Dutch Eurasian community. So last time we talked
about the Portuguese Eurasian community, which
is the Kristang, but there’s also Dutch Eurasian.
Right. They’re really not talked about much at
all. Yeah. They’re quite underrepresented. Perhaps
there might be more Dutch Eurasian people in
Indonesia, given that that ended up being the
main Dutch colony over there. Yeah, yeah. But
of course, there is a huge Dutch influence on
the food. And so Dutch influences now start to
make up what you can see as a very, very internationally
influenced cuisine. At this point in history,
you have Chinese. Indian, Arab, local Malay,
the broader Nusantaran culture converging with
Portuguese and Dutch culture. And I think this
sort of mishmash of influences is best seen in
something like Kueh. So we want to find out a
bit more about the stories behind Kueh, the many
different influences. And that was the original
point of talking to Christopher Tan. Right. So
let’s continue our chat with the Kueh master
himself to hear what he has to say about the
history and culture of Kueh and where it’s heading
into the future. And one thing that I’m always
exploring and I love to highlight in my writing
is how connected the world is because of migration
over centuries and trade routes, oceanic silk
route, the maritime silk route and the overland
silk route. And also just how deep a single food’s
history can go. I mean, if you look at the basic
ingredients of kuehs, rice, coconut, palm sugar.
you know, aromatics like pandan leaf, Indonesian
spices. As long as you have a country with a
coastline, they’re going to have some kind of
thing with coconut in it, some kind of thing
with palm sugar, some kind of fermented fish,
some kind of rice -based cooking method if they
have rice paddies. So you see a lot of parallel
evolution. Just because of that. And then if
you look at Indonesia specifically, and the same
is true of Melaka, that sort of whole Dutch
colonial connection has led to a lot of kuehs
in Indonesia being made with butter, cheese,
dairy products, you know, which prior to the
colonials coming in. were not super common and
now you find cheese in everything. I mean, you
can get pineapple tarts where they mix cheese
into the dough. No one bats an eyelid now. At
one point, you have to think, people must have
thought, oh, butter pastry. I mean, we were just
talking about the Melakan pineapple tarts. That
whole big flat format with the exposed jam and
then the lattice on top, that’s essentially a
Dutch fruit tart miniaturised. other than demonstrating
just how connected the world is the influence
of dutch and other european food traditions into
southeast asia raises some really fascinating
points about who is preserving whose culture
we spoke about this in context to kek lapis legit
a type of layer cake with all these different
influences are there any generalizations you
can make where you could say the Dutch clearly
had an influence on this because it was a tart
based or British had an influence on these types
of kuehs because of this feature or Indian influence
because of this other feature. Are there any
sort of hints like that? In some cases, I mean,
if it has butter and cheese in it and it’s Indonesian,
quite likely there is some Dutch influence. I
wrote another article about spekkoek, you know,
kueh lapis legit, which… is very Indonesian,
but clearly has developed in some way from a
Dutch cake, even though there is now no extant
Dutch layer cake in Holland like that. It’s almost
interesting to think that the Indonesian cake
lapis is the preservation of Dutch culture, if
you think about it the other way. Yes, kind of.
It is known in Holland now, but if you look at
the historical text, there are actually two types
of lapis. There’s one where you alternate plain
and spiced batters. So it’s brown, white, brown,
or brown, yellow, brown, yellow layers. And that
is the more Dutch type. The more Indonesian type
is only a single batter, and the layers are much
thinner, and you have more layers in a given
span of cake. So there are two distinct types.
While the connection between Holland and Southeast
Asia is clear in some food items, it’s not so
clear in others. And there’s some debate that
rather than kuehs being influenced by Dutch dishes,
it’s Dutch dishes that have been influenced by
kueh. There is one interesting example which
I don’t know about. I don’t really know the answer
to. We have a kueh called kueh chara chara. Kyokara,
there’s a few different names. And it’s basically
a rice -based sweetened batter and you drizzle
it from a very thin nozzle into hot oil. The
traditional implement was a coconut shell with
a few holes bored in it and then you drizzle
it and it forms like a nest of crispy thread
in the hot oil and it cooks into a pancake and
then you fold it up and then you serve it. In
Holland, in I think the Frisian region, they
have something called a drabelkak, which is a
sweetened batter but wheat flour, not rice flour.
and drizzled into hot lard and it forms a nest
and you get a crispy cake so so it’s actually
it’s a funnel cake but but but the asian version
is much finer thread it’s almost like bihun yeah
that that is that thin um but but the resemblances
between what they use in the netherlands to drizzle
it you know it’s like a like a multi -funneled
cone thing it it’s just so tantalizing but we
don’t know yeah yeah you know and i’m sure you
know kwe bolu right Oh, yes. Kueh bohulu, the baked
sponge cake. Yeah, but baked, usually traditionally
baked in brass pans here with different motifs,
you know, flower motifs, seashells and things.
People think that Kuehbolu, bolu, people think
it comes from the Portuguese bolo, which just
means cake. My theory, it comes from the Portuguese
pau -de -lo, which means… sponge cake, specifically
sponge cake, because kueh bolu are sponge cake.
If you look at the traditional spanning of kueh
bolu, it’s bahulu, b -a -h -u -l -u, bahulu.
If you say paolo softly and quickly, paolo, paolo,
paolo, it elides into baolo fairly easily. In
Holland, again, in the sort of, I think, th
or th centuries, they had… cake pans to bake
what they call even vilcis, which means equal
sized cakes. And what are the motifs in those
cake pans? Seashells, flowers. They look exactly
like kueh bolu pan. But which came first? We
don’t know. We literally don’t know. We know
it was the Dutch who sort of refined that technique
of casting brass pans to be put over a fire to
bake things in. And so the kind of traditional
brass pans that we use for a lot of kueh in Indonesia
probably comes from the Dutch. But in the case
of kueh bolu, The batter for the kueh probably
comes from the Portuguese. Very egg -heavy, very
sweet. So, you know, tangled web. While some
kuehs, like pineapple tarts, have a European
origin that, when explained, make total sense,
there are some kueh origin stories that are far
more unusual. Christopher talked about a kueh
called kueh pie tee, much loved by the Chinese
Peranakan community. But the origin of kueh pie
tea shows just how interconnected the world is.
So that is a fried batter pastry cup that’s filled
with a savory filling. And I just researched
an article for it. That’s American. So the format
of frying, dipping a mold into liquid batter
and then into hot oil to deep fry, that we think
dates back to Turkey some or years. And
from Turkey, it spread to the rest of Europe.
And then Scandinavian immigrants brought it to
the States. And it’s my theory that American
expats brought it to Singapore in the s because
before the s, you don’t read about it in
Singapore media at all. And they had a Turkish
name, and then they went to Scandinavia, and
they were known as rosettes. And you know, kueros
is actually a rosette cookie. So kueros are made
in Scandinavia, but they’re called rosetten.
And then when they moved to the States, when
the immigrants moved to the States from Sweden
primarily, but also Denmark and Norway, they
called them rosette cookies. And then the Americans
pioneered many sort of slightly modern… cup
shapes which they put things like like um cream
salt cream vegetables or you’re like a chicken
pie filling in there and they call them patty
shells okay and the and the moles were called
patty irons that i think then made its way over
to singapore and if you look at the earliest
mentions of the dish and the tool in our in our
early cookbooks and media they’re called kway
patty after patty shell, right? Kway patty. And
then over the years, suddenly it became kway
pai ti. Because pat is not a syllable that you
find in any Asian dialect or any Chinese or Malay
dialect, right? So, you know, patty shell became
kway pai ti because it’s a kway, right? Because
it’s bite -sized. So what we think of this very
traditional Singaporean is actually American
via Scandinavian via Turkey. And that’s not the
only influence from the Americas. If you look
at how buns are sold in a typical bakery in Indonesia
or Malaysia or Singapore where you see all the
buns are there and you get your tray and you
get your tongs and you select your buns. And
at the same system in Japan as well, right? You
know it’s from Mexico? Is it? How? That’s how
a traditional Mexican bakery… sells bread.
Because I think of that as such an Asian concept.
And this is really, I still don’t know the full,
I don’t know all the details of how it happened,
but in Japan, many bakeries are called panaderias,
which of course is a Spanish word. In Japan they
say panaderia. So a lot of people from southern
China migrated to Mexico to build the railways.
And I can’t remember exactly which decade this
was in, but, you know, over a century ago. And
some of them, after the railways were built or
after, they were in underclass, certainly. A
lot of them settled there. A lot of them went
back to Hong Kong or to Macau. And because they
had been living among the Mexicans, they felt
at home in Macau because of the Portuguese history.
And a lot of them brought back bread recipes
and started baking them there. So I talk about
this in my new book. And so things like, so you
have things like the Mexico bun. and you have
polo pao, which, you know, pineapple buns, which
have exact cognates in Mexico. Exact, as in they
look exactly the same, they are made exactly
the same. And I have to think that they brought
back that whole style of serving bread as well.
And people are only now starting to realise it.
With food so closely linked to one’s culture
and identity, I asked Christopher if people ever
got defensive when learning that their favourite
kueh has its origins elsewhere. In my teaching
and writing, I always take care to communicate
the fact that food grows from a community. Food
doesn’t come into being in a vacuum. It’s from
people passing recipes over back fences and people
making food for their kampung and sharing it
at festival time. So it’s not like there is one
traditional way of doing things and everything
else is illegal. Someone who lays down the law
in that way does not know how culture works or
how food history works. Food evolves just like
any other thing. So I think a lot of people don’t
even give it a whole lot of thought. They know
maybe what their family makes, maybe they know
what their neighbours make, but they may not
know where a particular step. or comes from,
you know, to go back to pineapple tart. South
American fruit, Indonesian spices, cooked down
with Indonesian spices, wrapped up in Dutch butter
pastry, right? And then depending where you are,
the garnish on the tart is different if you’re
Peranakan or Malay or Eurasian. Chinese Peranakans
make pineapple nuts for Chinese New Year. Malays
make pineapple tarts for Hari Raya. Eurasians
make pineapple tarts for Christmas. Chetty Pranakans,
Indian Pranakans, they make pineapple parts for
Diwali or Deepavali as they call it here. But
to me, the most fascinating thing about not just
Kuez but a lot of foods in our region is really
how connected, how many threads come together
into that dish, you know, or how far and wide
the history of that dish goes. Frankly, the world
is getting more fractured by the day. So anything
we can do to tease out where unity lies, I think
is great. How should we connect then, I guess,
so many people want to claim this kueh is mine,
this kueh is mine, but given the shared history,
the many different influences, how should we
be thinking about kueh and identity and those
sorts of topics, do you think? Again, who owns
English? Does England own English? All the different
Englishes that are spoken around the world? With
kueh, certainly, and with many other things,
curries, sambals. So much is shared. So much
is shared. So much overlaps. And there are so
many dialogues and multilogues, if that’s the
right word, to be had. And there is this trend
in the cookbook world now, particularly in the
West, to have very, very… deep ethnographic
narratives attached to a cookbook where people
talk about their childhood in this country or
within this culture and how, you know, and whether
they grew up and then moved somewhere else or
they were experiencing their own culture in diaspora
and how that changed their cooking. Many, many
more cookbooks are being published with that
kind of a shape and a narrative, which to me
is great. I think we need to see more of that.
We need to see more books drawing together threads
of history and connection in this way. Christopher
Tan’s knowledge of kueh is vast and his enthusiasm
for it is palpable and really quite infectious.
It’s perhaps no wonder why he wrote an entire
book on the subject. But telling the stories
of kueh and encouraging people to cook kueh has
a deeper purpose for him. Eating around Singapore
and just being a food writer and watching our
food scene evolve. In the mid -s, I noticed
a lot more interest in Western pastry trends.
And at the same time, I saw a lot of our traditional
cake shops and kueh shops slipping out of the
limelight a little bit. They didn’t occupy as
much of the average person’s mindshare, to put
it one way, as they used to. And as a cooking
instructor, I noticed that fewer people seem
to be cooking at home or cooking as often. And
one of the things about kueh that is so special
is that many kuehs are associated with special
occasions, festival times. And because many of
them require a lot of effort, it’s a family activity.
You get together, you make kueh for New Year
or Hari Raya or Easter or Christmas. That didn’t
seem to be as high a priority in Singaporeans’
lives. And then I saw a lot of old kueh shops
closing down. I was like, you know, I need, I
grew up with it. I feel if I have the opportunity
to write a book like this, then I really should.
Because I wanted to read a book like this, a
comprehensive book about kueh and the history
across our communities. And I couldn’t find one.
And if you can’t find it, you have to write it,
right? And, you know, thank God I was in a good
place to be able to write it. I got a grant from
my heritage board to help support the project
as well. As we move to a more modern life, we
see less and less traditional recipes cooked
in the home. And so, in some ways, we’re losing
the ability to know what traditional kways are
even supposed to look and taste like. Especially
with traditional dishes, you have to really experience
a really good version of it. to know how good
is good enough. Right? And it’s a mistake to
think that all traditional cuisines are rustic.
Chinese cooking, peranakan cooking, a lot of
it depends on very fine knife skills. You know,
we are very particular about mouthfeels and textures,
Thai food especially even, and things like fine
balance between acid and salt and sweet. You
know, just because a cuisine hasn’t been codified
in the way that French cuisine or Italian cuisine
has been. Just because it hasn’t been codified
in English doesn’t mean that it’s not every bit
as sophisticated. And this is true not just of
Kueh but of many foods. I think when a food starts
to get sold commercially so that people don’t
need to make it at home anymore but they can
go out and buy it, certain compromises are always
made to adapt a recipe to a commercial setting.
shops that sell food, they have overheads, they
have a bottom line they need to meet, they have
staff to pay, they have marketing to shell out
for. And they get the ingredients from suppliers
as opposed to going down to the wet market and
buying everything, every single thing themselves.
So there are different constraints to a commercial
business than there are in a home kitchen. And
this leads to necessary differences in the quality
of the item. And I think if you never made something,
yourself but you only have ever bought it that
affects your perception of how good that thing
can possibly be because you can you’ve only experienced
what you can buy you assume that must be the
best it can get whereas that may not be true
you know so so when i when i in writing that
my quay book and in teaching i always tell people
if you put care and attention and love into it
what you make at home will be in a different
room to anything you can buy just because you
can spend time you can spend money you can invest
effort and attention. So I think, you know, a
key step is getting people to realise really
how good something can be if you make it yourself.
And sadly, the modern world is such that the
way societies work now, you know, a lot of us
are robbed of the time to cook at home in any
significant way. And so for a man that has such
a vast knowledge of kueh, what is his favourite?
I don’t have one. Getting to know so many of
them, you know, there are like recipes in
my book and more that I couldn’t even fit in.
Getting to know all of them, they are kind of
all like my children or my extended family. I
can’t pick one. There are kueh that are particularly
meaning for me. I grew up making pineapple tarts
and kueh bangke with my grandma. So those are
the ones that I have the strongest memories of,
you know, but I love every one of them for their
own particular identity and character. Because
they are your children in many ways. Yes. And
I hope as many people as possible adopt them
too. As we said right at the beginning, it’s
a genre that is hard to explain and not widely
appreciated outside our region. And I really
hope they find their homes in More Hearts. The
More Hearts… any dish can find a home in around
the world, the more likely that dish is to survive
and persist. So spread the food, spread the love.
So that was Christopher Tan, author of The Way
of Kueh, which really is a brilliant book. It
has so many recipes about so many different kuehs.
And if you were like me growing up eating the
kuehs, but you never knew how to make them, this
is really the perfect book. Yeah, no, it was
an incredible, it’s an incredible book and it
was incredible to sit there and listen to him
talk and he talks so knowledgeably about so many
different facets from the etymology to he even
made a point which we didn’t include in the interview
there about all of these recipe books coming
out of Europe and what have you but all of these
fine cakes and what have you and you know how
long you’re supposed to leave your bread to prove
for which you know living in Scotland it’s freezing
cold and even with the central heating on it
might say leave to proof for minutes and if
you’re a novice bread maker that bread will not
prove adequately for you to make a decent loaf
of bread and it took me the longest time to realise
oh actually the best method for me in a controlled
environment is to leave it for like a hour
proof in a fridge overnight well Scotland is
cold right and so therefore Christopher’s on
the opposite end of the spectrum where it is
hot and humid and he might have to leave something
out for minutes and it’s completely ready
to go yeah and so he talks about how um i think
in the setup of the book he talks about i have
written this book in this kitchen in this part
of the world with these is the ambient temperatures
yeah i’ve got it here that uh he developed these
recipes a mere one degree north of the equator
where daytime room temperatures range from
to degrees nighttime temperatures from
to degrees and humidity ranges from from
to percent so when christopher describes himself
as a bit of a baking nerd uh that’s the kind
of level of nerdship that i think i actually
um really kind of uh respect and admire because
it there is no one -size -fits -all when you’re
making things that need to ferment and things
like that uh so You know, I think having that
context in there really actually for someone
like me who likes to get a bit in about it was
relevant and a valuable context. Well, it’s also
got two other books. One is called Nerd Baker.
All right. And the sequel, Nerd Baker which
is also called Tales from the Yeast Indies, tells
you a lot about Christopher Tan’s love of the
pun. Yes. The way of kueh. the east indies no
i he was quite incredible to listen to just given
how knowledgeable he is and how he he every single
thing the fact that he sort of delivered it was
then also referenced based in some sort of a
way where you could talk about those bakeries
in mexico which you know having you know the
the time spent in adelaide you know there was
plenty of like chinese bakeries and i think the
glasgow might have one or two kicking about but
i was like why is there a hot dog bun How did
this end up in a Chinese bakery? What’s going
on here? Is this some interwar thing? But to
learn that it actually comes from bakeries in
Mexico, quite mind -blowing. It does make you
realise how interconnected we all are, as he
mentioned, but also how deep our food history
can go. And that really everything that we eat
today can tell us something about the past. And
so everything that we eat is an opportunity to
engage with our own history and culture in a
different way. And that’s, I think, what fascinates
me about food and why I got into food writing
and this podcast. Yeah, I think if you have any
sort of an imagination, it’s quite easy to then
sit there and think about how the Portuguese
went to Central America and discovered chilies.
And like we said in the last episode, brought
them around and was able to produce chilies to
make sambal and eventually things like rendang
or whatever. And yeah, when you think about the
fact that this global trade has existed, well…
When I say global, I mean entirely global from
the Europeans coming into Southeast Asia. You
now have a global trade network that has been
going for years. It’s not something that
only came about with the invention of containerization
and like post -war, you know, or Panama Canal
even. Like, you know, people were taking the
long way around to get to these places for the
longest time. So the chat with Christopher Tam
was super, super interesting. And we had a very,
very long chat. And we will be throwing back
to Christopher Tan in later episodes of this
series. If you’re enjoying this episode, you
can follow us on social media at SatayOK. We’ll
be sharing beautiful photos taken by Philip of
Malaysia, its people, and of course, the food.
We’ll also share photos of Malaysia from the
archives so you can see how the country has changed
over time. You can also find links to give us
a tip or donation to show your appreciation for
the work we’re doing. So head to our socials
at satayok or visit our website, satayok .com.
So Christopher did mention that traditional kueh
making is on the decline, unsurprisingly, just
like many other food customs across Southeast
Asia and the world. Right. And so we wanted to
get the perspective from traditional kueh makers.
And so we spoke to Noora Azura. She is based
in Melaka and she runs a kueh business called
Kueh keria Antarabangsa. We got her perspectives
on how to run a thriving kueh business. No, I’m
nervous. I’m nervous. My name is Nur Azura. I
am the daughter -in -law of Haji Jalil. Kueh
keria. Kueh keria. How do I explain it? This
kueh keria is made from sweet potatoes. Yes,
made from sweet potatoes. Ours is different from
others. We use % sweet potatoes compared to
flour. Our kueh has more sweet potato in it.
Kueh keria is like a sweet potato donut. We visited
the shop and watched as they cooked sweet potato,
mashed it, added flour to make a dough, and then
shaped that into small discs. These were deep
fried and then coated in a palm sugar syrup.
It’s a classic Malay kueh and very addictive
to eat. Azura’s business, though, didn’t actually
start with her. The idea came from my father.
Originally, my father was a fisherman. The idea
at first was to sell in the village. Then as
it got tastier, the demand kept growing. The
first shop is this one, this shop, right behind
here. That used to be our original shop site.
We fried the kueh using firewood. When frying
using firewood, it actually tastes better. How
do I say it? The flame is just right, the kueh
turns out beautifully. The kueh looks nice, tastes
great too. Then we moved next to the mosque.
The wood became harder to find. With fireworks,
moving it around, transporting it, but higher
cost. It’s the cost, right? That’s when we switched
to gas. A few years ago, the business was featured
on a TV show. And all of a sudden, sales boomed.
Now since we got featured on Majalah people
of all races have started coming here. Now, from
Canada and all Taiwan. Everywhere. Because it’s
like donut. Familiar taste, even from Thailand.
After appearing on Majalah before that I only
sold ,pieces a day. Before, it increased
to ,and now we can’t even keep up. We
had two, me, my sisters, one of them a former
factory manager at TDM, two of them were teachers,
all quit. We opened together, but it’s not enough,
we can’t serve all the customers. The expansion
of her business is astounding, so much so that
other members of her family quit their day jobs
to open up more shops. And the secret to their
success? Well, there literally are no secrets.
We just gave up the recipe. But even then, the
taste still aren’t the same. We are totally open
about it. What in front of people, we don’t keep
secrets. I have no secrets. Open, you can see
it. People can watch. If they ask, we tell them
how to make it. But still. It’s really astounding
that one kueh has changed the fortunes of this
whole family. People come here. They say things
like, you only sell kueh? You rent both upstairs
and downstairs? How much is the rent? ,
ringgit? Can you afford that just by selling
kueh? Some people doubt us. Can you really afford
renting two floors just selling kueh? Now I pass
it on to my children. Now my daughter, my daughter’s
doing it. My son too. We’ve taught them. Like
my sister, she used to work in a factory, big
salary, all quit to the business. The first one,
she was a university manager. Number two was
a teacher, also quit to the business. Number
three had a diploma in law, quit too. And that
was Nua Azura with English dub by Anindya Kenyo
Larasti. So Philip, I found it very refreshing
to talk to someone who’s traditional. food business
was thriving yeah i’m quite conscious the last
couple of episodes whoever we’ve spoken to it’s
always just been a bit kind of like sad and lamenting
about this declining kind of culture but here
you have this malay tradition of cakes and donuts
effectively that are booming that you know you
have all of these highly qualified professionals
in the family but I don’t know, it kind of resonates
with me in a bit of a way that you kind of get
a bit sick of the corporate life and actually
all you want to do is just hang out with friends
and family and make cakes all day. And the fact
that they’re having a success story I thought
was quite inspiring. I was like, hmm, well, I
don’t know that I’m going to open a bakery anytime
soon, but, you know, it’d be nice to do your
own thing. It was inspiring to hear that members
of her family… had jobs as lawyers or teachers
or whatever and then quit that job to come join
the family business because often you hear the
opposite that the parents don’t want their children
to take over the business because it’s too hard
so they send them for university or education
right they get jobs elsewhere and then they never
return and so this was total which i thought
was was amazing yeah and i think it’s also goes
to show that young people aren’t afraid to work
hard i think sometimes society treats young people
as these like really lazy people that just want
to sit on the couch and they just want to do
easy work like quay making is not easy work but
when there is an economic incentive when business
is good Young people are willing to work hard.
They just want to be paid equitably for it. I
dare say that might also be a symptom of Western
capitalism and the service -based economy that
we have over here, that it’s actually just not
very fulfilling. And to have your hands dirty
covered in sweet potato and flour and all the
rest of it, but you’re just standing there idly
gossiping, listening to the radio or whatever,
while you’re making tens of thousands of doughnuts
every single day. Actually, maybe you just…
you wash your hands at the end of the shift and
you go home and you feel quite content instead
of coming home and reaching for a bottle of gin.
That sort of way is kind of like, perhaps actually
in the West we’re all miserable because we hate
our office jobs because we’re human and we’re
not supposed to be in air -conditioned rooms
constantly. They weren’t the only businesses
that we did speak to that felt like that. You
know, we spoke to a biscuit manufacturer and
they were telling us how their sons took over
the business because there was economic opportunity.
They could expand the business. They had their
own ambitions, but it was all centered around
their family’s biscuit recipe. Which is odd
years old or something, isn’t it? It’s kind of
those shortbread things, right? Yeah. No, they
were delicious. I was also talking to a friend
of a friend in a place called Slemban and they
were saying that post -COVID you did see some
young people open up hawker stalls because COVID
made them realise they hated their day job, they
hated their office job and would rather work
for themselves. Yeah, what’s the opening bit
in the video game Stardew Valley? Yeah! He literally,
like, there’s this, like, really, like, impactful
sort of statement at the beginning of this guy
who… well, the character in the game anyway,
that leaves the office and goes to start up a
farm, which I thought, when I remember reading
it, I kind of had my head in my hands going,
oh my God, that is me. Too real. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah. But I really liked her comment about
the transparency of the business that she was
sharing the recipe. You know, like when she talks
about how kind of transparent it all is, you
walk into this large kind of airy restaurant
and you see the ladies up the back. Yeah. just
with these huge huge bowls of just like the kind
of mash that they’re sitting there forming up
and shaping and putting on their trays the cauldron
of of this huge walk that was probably almost
a meter in diameter just boiling very scary with
oil with all of these donuts just bobbing away
in the top of it you’re kind of like god it only
would take one splash of oil to go over the side
of that i was too scared to really get anywhere
near that yeah having having been to enough like
uh chip fan fire kind of demonstrations about
what not to do in the event of it and you know
we’re not cooking like that domestically There
were three generations at that table, all working
with the dough together, and it was quite nice
to see. And they all looked happy. Yeah. Philip
did take some really beautiful photos of this
place, and we’ll post them on social media, so
do check that out. Yeah. But back to our food
of the day, back to Kueh. When I think about
Kueh, I think of something that is probably complex
to define, because I’m often trying to explain
it to other people. But that complexly tells
you a lot about the many different cultural influences
of Kueh and that’s reflected in Malaysia’s really
complex history when it comes to maritime trade,
people sort of moving back and forth between
the many islands of the archipelago and also
just the influences from all over the world.
So when you try some Kueh, when you think about
Kueh, think about the very many different influences
that Malaysia has experienced over many, many
centuries. No, it’s… The plot is thickening.
Okay, so now if we turn our attention back to
history and let’s go back to our friends in Johor.
With Portuguese forces expelled from Malacca,
Johor begins to rise in power. And so by the
end of the th century, things are looking pretty
good for them. Okay. That all changes though
in So at this point, Johor is ruled by
a boy sultan, Sultan Mahmud Shah II. Okay. If
anyone has watched Game of Thrones, there are
a lot of parallels between this sultan and Joffrey
Baratheon. The sultan is pretty much uncontrollable.
He doesn’t really care about the trade empire
that he’s ruling. And under his rule, trade suffers.
He only really seems to care about himself and
satisfying his own urges and predilections. And
by all accounts, his behavior was very cruel
and evil and sadist. Right. I cannot read to
you the list of crimes that the Sultan committed
because they are too heinous and too violent.
Yeah, the trigger warning. This is a family show.
Yeah. But yeah, there are really a lot of parallels
with Joffrey Baratheon in their age, in their
character, and in their life circumstances, I
suppose. Yeah, no, the cruelness of this one
individual’s actions is quite galling. Yeah,
yeah. So, Jorhor has this renegade boy sultan,
and after tolerating his behaviour for a little
while, the nobles decide that they can’t really…
sit idly by whether they’re motivated by economics
or morality probably uncertain probably a bit
of both i would imagine and so in when the
sultan was on his way to the mosque a group of
nobles descended upon him and one by one they
stabbed him sultan dies obviously yep so when
you assassinate a sultan though there are consequences
regicide And when you consider that this particular
Sultan was a boy, he had no direct descendants
to the throne, those consequences start to become
magnified. And just a reminder that the Sultan
of Johor can trace his lineage to the Sultanate
of Melaka, and then can trace that lineage to
the Sultanate of Srivijaya before it. Oh, okay.
So now you have this very, very long line of
Sultans that has been broken. And so what follows
this regicide is a monumental tussle for power,
not unlike Game of Thrones. Power vacuum, not
another one. Yeah. Yeah, it’s becoming a running
theme of Nusantara, isn’t it? Yeah, power vacuums
and family squabbles. Yes. And so it’s these
events that we’re going to explore more in the
next episode entitled Laksa and the Great British
Lie. Okay. It’s like we’re combining the Great
British Bake Off. with traders. Aha. The Greek
-British trade -off. Maybe that’s it. Maybe,
yeah. So join us for the next episode of Sate.
Okay.