The highlight of the Peranakan Museum is the Baba Bling, but I’m sure most people would agree that the highlight of Peranakan culture is the FOOD! The Longest Peranakan Buffet held last month at Clarke Quay, but Filipina food writer Arpee caught a sneak preview of the food at the Peranakan Museum a night earlier.

Peranakan Food is all about the fusion – usually Chinese ingredients and Malay forms of cooking, but because the influences are so Southeast Asian it’s not surprising to find similarities with food from our neighbours.

Arpee writes:

This is the Peranakan version of our Puto or rice cake. I was surprised that the Peranakan rice cake was NOT sweet but slightly salty. Foodfella.com’s Christopher Tan was quick to read my mind and tell me that it was nothing like the Filipino puto that I knew though it looked the same. He explains that this rice cake is dipped in the sauce of the dish that it came with, pretty much like the Italians eat their bread with their soup. That night, it came with sauteed lobster and this rice cake was supposed to have been eaten with the lobster as a side dish. Forgive this old Pinoy barbarian, but, admittedly, I do enjoy learning new things about foreign cuisine even if it meant being embarrassed. Only goes to show how delightful it is to learn new things!

I think that Singaporean food is coming pretty close to a collection of fusion cuisine – these days our modern food courts have Chinese, Malay, Indian, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese food. It won’t be long before these influences meld to create a unique dish for the local palate!