A Table of Feasts

  What is Eurasian cuisine, beyond the obvious East-meets-West implication?

The Portuguese were the earliest to arrive in this part of Asia in the early 1500s, settling in Goa on India’s west coast, which became an important base from which they built their Asian empire. The Spanish staked their claims in Asia with their settlement in Cebu in the Philippines by the mid 1500s, followed by the Dutch in the 1600s, who focused their attention primarily on the Indonesian archipelago. The British were hot on the heels of their European counterparts, and with the establishment of the British East India Company in 1599, announced their interest in Asia, which lasted all the way till the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997.

In the ensuing decades and centuries after their arrival, many Europeans settled comfortably in their newfound lands. Some brought their families from the old country and built new homes; others married local women. Over time, in genealogical terms, it became a glorious meeting of diverse gene pools that gave birth to striking children. The same can be said on the culinary front where a predominantly meat-and-potato diet met its love match in fiery chillies, exotic spices and aromatic soy sauce.

In the early days, before air travel brought ingredients to the far-flung corners of the globe, necessity was the mother of invention. European and Asian wives in interracial marriages found themselves adapting European dishes using local ingredients readily available in Southeast Asia. Beef stews were seasoned with dark soy sauce instead of salt, giving them a lovely, aromatic depth; breadcrumbs were often substituted with crushed soda biscuits; and plenty of chillies, galangal, onions and shallots made up the rempah, or spice mix, and were used to thicken stews. Canned evaporated milk or coconut milk became ready substitutes for fresh milk in desserts and cakes.

It became a two-way cultural and culinary exchange: local palates acquired the European appetite for meat, even as the latter pushed the limits of their tolerance for spice. It was a rich, vibrant amalgamation of flavours, ingredients and culinary traditions.
Over the years, as families are joined by marriages and other ethnicities and cultures make their way into the mix, new traditions evolve. What is now identified as Eurasian cuisine draws from the culinary traditions of not just two cultures, but all the diversity contained within East and West. There is the Portuguese influence, evident in pork-centric dishes such as pork vindaloo (pork curry) and porku sal pementer (sliced pork fillet in dark soy sauce); there is the Dutch legacy in dishes such as bitterballen (deep-fried beef balls) and the rich, yeasted breudher cake. The English, meanwhile, passed on their fondness for stews, cakes and Worcestershire sauce. Alongside these colonial influences, there is the unmistakably Asian — whether Straits Chinese, Malay, Indian or Indonesian — palate for robust flavours, spice and the heady perfumes of cinnamon, cloves, cardamom et al.

A bold cuisine thus enriched by its differences, diversity and varied cultural idiosyncrasies, Eurasian food defies straightjacket categorisation. Nowhere is this more evident than during Christmas, the most important festival on the Eurasian social calendar, where every Eurasian household serves up their unique version of Christmas dinner.

 

To see the rest of the story and the recipes featured, pick up the Appetite December 2011 issue now!