A TEST OF TIME FOR EURASIAN FAVOURITES
People are more health-conscious and have less time to prepare dishes the way their mothers or grandmothers used to. How has this affected Eurasian festive fare? ponders
WHEN he was growing up, Mark Felix, 50, remembers feasting on Eurasian favourites at Christmas open houses, like devil’s curry, sekku curry (mutton dry curry) and sebak ( a dish using pork offal).
Finding a place on most tables are other favourites like beef semur (stewed beef), shepherd’s pie, ambilla (ham hock simmered in tamarind curry with long beans) and egg salad, which are still being served today.
“Turkey was served only in recent times, when it became more affordable and influential. Before this, roast chicken was the general choice and still is at some homes. We also had feng (pork liver and heart, all chopped up and curried). Two reasons why we don’t see it anymore is because nowadays people prefer not to eat pork innards due to health reasons,” says Mark, who is the owner of the MakanHouse Restaurant in Jalan Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur.
The eatery produces Portuguese Eurasian kristang and Kelantanese cuisine.
“Even for sebak, the Eurasian community prefers to use lean pork instead of offal, because it’s too much for some to stomach. Another slowly disappearing dish is the acar chili, which paired well with the local ceveza (beer). You don’t see muliu (brinjals and prawns in coconut sauce) on the table anymore. On Boxing Day, we normally eat inchimintu (homemade fishball and stuffed bitter gourd with fish paste curry) and stuffed cincaru (hardtail scad), but only a handful of people cook these nowadays.
According to Mark, devil’s curry is made differently by Eurasians in Penang, Malacca and Singapore.
He said sugee cake was readily available in the Port Sett Portuguese settlement, and the taste has not changed over the years, but another festive favourite, pang susi (a bun stuffed with mince meat) is now normally seen at weddings, rather than on Christmas Day.
“There are a few types of cakes that have almost completely vanished from the Christmas list. One of them is bolu coku (which is similar to kuih bahulu), the sesagong (which is similar to sagon) and jelly made from seaweed.”
He said many were unwilling to make bolu coku and sesagong as they required great time and effort. Furthermore, it was difficult to get local seaweed due to sea reclamation activities.
Anne Jantzen, 50s, a retiree working with the National Cancer Society Malaysia
Christmas celebrations were something that Jantzen looked forward to when she was a child. She remembers travelling by train from Taiping, Perak, in the 1960s to spend the year-end school holidays and Christmas with her large extended family in Kuala Lumpur.
She remembers helping her Aunt Mildred (Pinto) to make the traditional Eurasian chili pickle for Christmas.
“I was given the task of peeling shallots for the pickles, because I wasn’t affected by their pungency.
“My aunt used to make pang susi, which is rare today. She would buy a slab of pork from the butcher, which she would chop with a large knife. She believed that doing it from scratch prevented the mince from being too dry. Joe De Costa, retiree, 85
“Those days they served white dodol and wajik. Before the war, only Eurasians made these two delicacies, which eventually made their way into mainstream local culture. Tarts used to be huge, the size of jam lids and jar mouths, because people then did not have tart moulds and used whatever they had at home to recreate the shape of the tart. Tarts were then made in a large copper pot called grinsing, and the tarts would be placed on a charcoal fire in the grinsing and then the pot would be covered by a zinc (panel) with charcoal on top.
Sylvia Bernadette Michael, late 50s, teacher at an international school
Sylvia from Balik Pulau, Penang, is a dab hand at making sugee cake, which is one of the main cakes on her festive table at Christmas time. To her there is a much simpler version of the traditional sugee cake.
“My cakes are the basic sugee and almond mixture, but older versions used to be rich with dried pumpkin pieces, raisins, and sultanas. It would not only be costly to make, but also difficult to get some of the ingredients today. Some people even put cinnamon in their sugee cakes, but I keep mine simple. My grandmother used to make the jam for her pineapple tarts from scratch, painstakingly grating the pineapple by hand, then adding clove and cinnamon sticks and cooking it into an aromatic and rich pulp that she would pile generously on top the tart cases. Today, few people make their own jam filling because these can be bought from stores.”