Penang Nyonya Cuisine – Hawkers’ Delight

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Bee Lee Tan
1996. National Library of Australia
Colour illustrations
Softcover, 29.7 cm x 21cm, 120 pages
ISBN 0646296035

RM90.00

This cookbook is the companion to Bee Lee Tan’s other offering, Penang Authentic Nyonya Cuisine: Mother’s Recipes. This volume comprises over 200 authentic recipes, ranging from simple sweetmeats to complex savoury concoctions, giving you the opportunity and the pleasure of both cooking and eating Nyonya cuisine and sharing the results with friends and family.

Says the author “There are a few rules to consider such as tumi and no boiling of coconut milk, adding ingredients in the right order, especially in cakes, but adding your own personal taste with plenty of room for the imagination makes sense.”

In writing “Nyonya Cuisine”, she selected recipes that are a simple sequence of steps that are easy to follow. Most dishes are three or four generations old, like “]iu Hoo Char”, “Kohn Ah Sam” and the perennial favourite “Chicken Curry”. In the quest for authenticity she has travelled to Malacca and sought out friends and relations to verify her recipes. She was careful to keep everything as traditional and ‘fusion-free’ as possible.

In many ways, the self-taught Bee Lee Tan has tried to make the recipes simple without losing the authenticity but at the same time allowing for experimentation by the  reader. By exploring possibilities, one can only improve one’s skill and at the same time, to get away from the strain and stress of modern living.  All ingredients are available in Asian grocery stores.

Cooking can be fun!

About the author: Malaysian-born Bee Lee Tan descends from a Nyonya family of exceptionally good cooks. Once banned from the kitchen for her curiosity as a child, Bee Lee is now an expert in Nyonya cooking. She lives in Perth, Australia. Bee Lee’s first cookbook, Penang Nyonya Cuisine: Hawker Delights met with much critical acclaim and has brought her recipes and culinary skills into the kitchens of both Western and Asian homes. Her frequent visits to Penang and Kedah, her birth place, to research family recipes (many of which are three or four generations old) has produced highly interesting results for beginning and experienced cooks Worldwide. Bee Lee Tan has conducted master cooking classes at Beaconfield, Fremantle Australia as well as cooking classes in Perth’s T.A.F.E Technical Colleges and all over the world. She owned a Nyonya restaurant in Mindarie, Perth and has worked in the hospitality and food industry.

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Weight 800 g
Dimensions 21.0 × 0.8 × 29.7 cm

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