Deliverables

Here are our end products!

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Ang Ku Kueh is a small round or oval shaped pastry with soft sticky glutinuous rice flour skin wrapped around a sweet filling, which is the centre. It is moulded to resemble a tortoise shell and is presented resting on a square piece of banana leaf. In the ethnic group of peranakans, this kueh is prepared for occasions that are culturally important to the Chinese, such as a newborn baby’s first month or birthdays of the elderly. Eating red tortoise cakes during these times is meant to represent blessings for the child and longevity for the elderly.

Fun Fact: one of our group members carved the designs on the ang ku kueh herself using some tools we got!

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Kueh Dadar: Another term for Kueh Dadar is Dadar Gulung. Dadar literally means “omelette” or “pancake” while Gulung means “to roll”. This kueh is actually a rolled crepe flavoured with pandan juice and filled with grated coconut steeped in gula melaka or Malaysian palm sugar. The green exterior of kueh dadar is made of batter coloured with natural pandan juice extracted from pandan leaves, containing the tempting sweet fragrance of pandan leaves.

Kueh Lapis: Kueh lapis is a common nyonya dessert you find in Singapore and is the easiest to recognise and remember due to its colourful layers. some call this “thousand-layer cake” but it actually only has 9 layers. This was a snack many of our parents used to eat a lot during their childhood days. It is made out of tapioca, rice flour and coconut milk before being steamed. Children usually would enjoy peeling and eating this kueh layer by layer.

Kueh Salat: Kueh Salat is a two-tiered Nyonya delicacy: a base of sticky rice, riotously streaked with fresh butterfly pea extract (blue), weighted down by a thick layer of custard flavoured with freshly squeezed coconut milk and pandan juice (green). While this is commonly enjoyed as a breakfast or tea-time snack by many now, it was prohibited from being served so casually by the Peranakans in the past. The blue, white and green version made with daun pandan and bunga telang (Clitoria ternatea) bears the colours one would associate with funerals and mourning.

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The complex Nyonya birthday noodles is a must-have among many ethnic Chinese families especially during birthdays. This is the Peranakan version of the Chinese birthday noodles – Mee Sua with eggs. Though some families may still practice the tradition of cooking up a big pot of broth for some birthday noodles – to represent longevity – during a family member’s birthday, it is no longer a common in modern times unfortunately. Also known as “lam mee” in Hokkien, a simple warming bowl of this dish is perfect for breakfast, lunch, tea break or a light dinner. This dish consists of prawns, chicken, chilli, vegetables, and many more. For this food model, we used super glue and poured over the clay so as to get the shiny and glossy look which was supposedly to be soup!

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The smaller ongol ubi food model was our first attempt of it! We decided to remake it as we weren’t satisfied with it. We later decided not to use this as our main prototype as we weren’t able to find much cultural significance behind it. However, it is a tasty peranakan snack made out of tapioca which was rolled in grated coconut after being steamed.

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About the title “Beyond the taste: Peranakan Edition”
We wanted not only to take note of the taste of these Peranakan delicacies, but also their unique history or meanings as well as their contributions to the Peranakan culture.

What’s that in the centre?
That is a tingkat. It is a few metal containers, usually up to 4, stacked together. In the past, Nyonyas would use tingkats to store food for their family members. Regarding the flowery designs on it, this is taken from the Chinese culture, which was infused into the Peranakan culture.

Kueh border?
We decided to go with kueh as the border as we felt that people usually associate Peranakan culture to kueh, especially ones like Ang Ku Kueh and Kueh Lapis.

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BEHIND THE SCENES

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