Kampong Gelam: Kitchen of the Malay World

You hear Malay, Javanese, Tamil and Punjabi as you wander the streets with shops selling colourful textiles and carpets, spices and flowers. Here you find different curries and bread, nasi padang, sup tulang, mee siam, a Javanese kitchen, Hainanese coffeeshops. Bookstores sell literature and newspapers as far away as Cairo. In this episode, Khir tells us about the Kampong Gelam he grew up in.Khir Johari was born and raised in historic Kampong Gelam, Singapore. He studied mathematics at Santa Clara University in California, and completed a masters in education at Stanford University. Since returning to Singapore, Khir has focused on research into the food cultures of maritime Southeast Asia. He is the author of The Food of Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels through the Archipelago (Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2021).What Khir Talked About02:32 – The origins of mee maidin, the dish that Khir cooked in From Book to Cook07:18 – Kampong Gelam as the incubator for the Nusantara (Malay World) kitchen09:19 – Four main streets in Kampong Gelam selling food, including the only place in Singapore that sells mee odong14:35 – The origins of mee siam17:46 – Three types of mee siam that came out of Kampong Gelam18:36 – Khir’s childhood in Kampong Gelam, where the Tamil Muslim community organized an annual commemoration of a Sufi saint20:23 – Publishing houses in Kampong Gelam22:51 – Why Khir spent 10 years writing the book The Food of Singapore Malays27:12 – What Khir is working on now28:38 – Khir’s dream job if he lived in Kampong Gelam in the 19th century29:37 – The most maligned ingredient in Malay cooking31:15 – The one recipe in his book Khir wants people to try33:07 – Food is…Transcript and ResourcesRead the transcript: https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/all-sections/podcast-kampong-glam-kitchen-malay-world/Watch Khir make mee maidin: https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/all-sections/videos-mee-maidin/Subscribe to BiblioAsia for more stories about Singapore: https://form.gov.sg/616799db4d9b61001398f79bThis episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by One Dash. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Khir for coming on the show.Produced by the National Library Singapore, the BiblioAsia Podcast tells stories about Singapore history.