Penang Heritage Food

Book excerpt: This book won the Gourmand World Cookbook award for best national culinary history, and has proven to be a classic. Over the years, many Penang heritage dishes have been modified so much that what is served today is just a pale image of the original. With the absence of recorded recipes, modifications of family dishes are inevitable due to the preferences and dislikes of members of the household, and hence the original tastes were not faithfully reproduced from one generation to the next. Similarly, for some restaurants, the original recipes and the tastes were not faithfully passed from a retiring chef to his successor. This book preserves the Penang heritage food from days of yore, covering home-cooked food, restaurant and café food, and hawker food. Meticulously researched, the author has recorded the recipes of his grandmothers, mother, aunts, uncles and cousins. Every time-tested recipe is prefaced with heritage information and, together, they trace Penang heritage food to its Thai, Hokkien, Hainanese, Indian and Malay roots.