Word: nyonya
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...irony is both sad and delicious. The Little Nyonya, a Singaporean television serial about a Chinese Peranakan family that concluded in the middle of January, was told entirely in Mandarin, a language whose creeping bid for dominance in Singapore has lately eclipsed Baba Malay - the pidgin Malay at the heart of Peranakan culture. But in a sly act of revenge, the immensely popular serial triggered a boomlet in all things Peranakan - like the batik fabrics Peranakan women used to stitch their sarong kebayas, worn most famously by Singapore Airlines' stewardesses, or the lavender-and-purple-colored porcelain bowls from which...
...national unity is a dangerous development with profound consequences for the country. But, on a personal level, the parallel universes into which Malaysia's ethnicities appear to be moving is also bad news for my food fetish. Malaysia is home to one of the world's first fusion cuisines, Nyonya, a melding of Chinese cooking and Malay flavors that evolved, in part, from intermarriage between the two groups. To my taste buds, Nyonya is one of the most delicious cuisines ever created. I could write odes to its fish-head curry, and its aromatic braised meats...
...last time I ate Nyonya was at an outdoor food court in Kuala Lumpur. The dish was Chicken Kapitan, a coconut-laced curry redolent with tamarind, turmeric and shrimp paste. The waiter who delivered the bowl of curry was Malay. With me were TIME's Malaysia stringer, an ethnic Indian, and our taxi driver, a Chinese. Both snuck spoonfuls of gravy from my dish. I didn't mind. There was more than enough for all of us to share...
...mundane fodder of food courts? Pandan tuna wraps, Peking duck pizzas and (the horror! The horror!) green-tea frappuccinos are freely available. So are Singapore's traditional syncretic cuisines. Long before fusion godfather Jean-Georges Vongerichten was mixing tamarind with truffles, local hawkers were fusing ingredients with aplomb. Nyonya cuisine (Chinese-Malay), Mamak food (Indian-Malay), and kaya toast (English toast with coconut-egg custard) are all fusion foods, doled out daily to office workers for $2 a pop. That's why class-conscious diners are being drawn to less chewed-over culinary styles...
...Sometimes Nyonya's fusion creates confusion; a crestfallen customer recently asked : "You don't serve sushi?" But with food this good for less than $15 a dish, Londoners are happily catching on. No reservations. tel: (44-207) 243 1800; www.nyonya.co.uk