A repository for Penang local food recipes: Why this man thinks it is important

GEORGE TOWN, Sept 27 — Ong Jin Teong, 79, who is a trained electrical engineer with a PhD, is on a mission.

He wants to collect as many Penang local food recipes as possible so they are not lost or forgotten in years to come.

“I have collected recipes from my mother and occasionally, people would also give me their old recipes,” he said at the launch of his third cookbook The Tastes of Home - Easy-to-Cook dishes from Singapore and Malaysia in the Penang Institute recently.

“In China, in some regions, they have websites that list out traditional recipes so I feel that Penang should do something like this... collect all of the old traditional recipes from Penang families, including Nyonya families, and preserve them to make it easy for anyone to search and refer to it,” he said.

He said this is also another way for Penang to define its Nyonya food that is different from the Nyonya food in Melaka and Singapore.

“Penang Nyonya food is different from the southern Nyonya food, and each Nyonya family has a different recipe even for the same dish,” he said.

He said there may now be many Nyonya recipes available online and on YouTube but there is a danger of these recipes causing Penang’s very own unique Nyonya recipes to be lost.

“It could lead to the homogenisation of dishes from Penang with those from Melaka and Singapore,” he said.

He said if the Penang state government does something to research and collect these traditional Penang Nyonya recipes, define it and preserve it, these could also be another heritage that could obtain Unesco recognition.

Ong has discussed with Penang Institute plans to create a repository of the recipes in his collection with the hope of encouraging other Penang local families to contribute their own recipes into the collection.

“Some people would write down their recipes in their notebooks but when they pass away, their families would throw these out so I hope that instead of throwing them out, they could hand it over to Penang Institute or to me so that we can preserve these old recipes,” he said.

He said there are possibly thousands of recipes out there and if everyone was to contribute their recipes, Penang Institute might not be able to handle the volume.

“Hopefully, there is a sponsor out there willing to set up a repository to keep and preserve these recipes as I know Penang Institute’s resources are also limited,” he said.

Ong, who is a Penangite with a Baba Nyonya heritage, started researching Penang and Nyonya cuisine in 2006 when he was recording his childhood memories and his family history in Penang.

This led to a compilation of Penang Nyonya recipes and his first book, Penang Heritage Food: Yesterday’s Recipes for Today’s Cook published in 2011.

He went on to write a second book Nonya Heritage Kitchen: Origins, Utensils and Recipes and both of his books won the Best Culinary History national award at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.

Nonya Heritage Kitchen also won the Best in the World Award in the final round in May 2017 at Yantai, China.

The Tastes of Home is published by Landmark Books and is now available for sale online at Entrepôt Publishing.