A Personal Reflection on Babi Pongteh

Image from Annielicious.

Although my mother was never capable of making dishes using exquisite ingredients that graced the tables of the affluent, I will always regard her as a good cook. Even though she knows nothing of preparing Shark’s fin or abalone and such, I will remember her cooking—especially her Babi Pongteh.

My mother arrived in Singapore three decades ago, from Malacca, in search of employment. She found work in manufacturing in a company producing cassette tapes and met my father. Since her marriage, she seldom returned to her hometown. But on the occasions we do visit her birthplace, we remember the eating.

Her place in Malacca was surrounded by farms producing kangkong, chillies, asparagus and all manner of popular Asian greens. She grew up eating free fresh vegetables tossed into the wok with sambal belachan and chilli padi. When my maternal Grandfather was alive, he would wander into the asparagus fields—half naked, and only dressed in a sarong—to pick the shoots for the dishes that would welcome our arrival. He was an intuitive cook who learnt to cook like most chefs in the older generation; he was one who learnt to cook by watching, rather than from recipes like we do today. It may be hard for many of us to imagine doing the following, but he made all his delicious food on charcoal and wooden stoves under a tin-roof kitchen. Among all the dishes he made, the Babi Pongteh was the one my brothers and I missed when he was gone. The person who made it afterwards just did not made it the same.

It was the dish my mother tried to replicate in the modern kitchen in Singapore. Without a doubt, it was different from the one my grandfather made. But this particular dish is what connects my family and me to the asparagus field of Malacca and the memories of my grandfather in his sarong. For those who grow up in the Singapore today, the links between our country and Malacca may not be very obvious. Yet the Babi Pongteh reminds me of this link, of the time when Singapore was part of Malaysia, when people on both sides of the shore shared blood ties and a common heritage.

Despite the heritage importance of the Babi Pongteh, it never fails to make me wonder, just like the Singapore Rojak or Laksa. I find myself imagining the moment when this dish was born. What could have been the inspiration for this fusion dish whose tau chioh (or fermented beanpaste) speaks of its Chinese-ness and the copious amount of onion paste, giving it a heady aroma points so strongly to the indigenous influences it has wonderfully soaked up? This marriage of onion and fermented bean paste created under the sultry heat of the tropics holds plenty of promise for us. It points to something in the atmosphere here, conducive for wonderfully delightful marriages between unlikely elements.

So I will bring the Babi Pongteh along with me when I move out and have a family of my own in future. It will be a precious heirloom I hold close to my heart and make for my children. It would not taste the same as my mother’s or my grandfather’s. That doesn’t matter. But it will remind my children, of where we come from, especially when my future father-in-law is a great Teochew cook and would make plenty of traditional Teochew dishes rarely seen anywhere these days.