With apologies to folks elsewhere, this is mostly a pop-up announcement, but it’s also a fragment of what’s probably my first memory of kueh. It’s been an intensely busy couple of weeks, and I’m behind on writing for you, writing for this other wild undertaking, writing for the job I accidentally started, writing for everything. And there’s so much cooking to do.
This Sunday May 12, 1-3pm | Kuih-Muih | Formaggio Kitchen on Huron Ave, pre-order here till 6pm today. I’ll also have things to sell on the spot, like kow teng kueh, on which more below.
It’s Mothers’ Day, so I’m making kow teng kueh – nine layer cake. To me this is the taste of grandma walking me home from kindergarten, a pleasure I’d outgrown by first grade. There was a market between the pre-school and her flat, and of course a stall selling kueh. Kow teng kueh is peasant luxe, about the simplest sweet thing you can make. The base is coconut milk sweetened and set with starch. It’s aromatized with pandan leaf, and while it really should have nine layers, the layers are all the same, except for the color.
I made this on a winter’s day in Cambridge two years ago. The opacity is a sign that the starch has retrograded, which it does almost instantaneously in the cold. It was perfect for about 15 minutes before the slow firming set in. But the colors in this photo look true to me. Pandan green, a bright, unsaturated red from red yeast rice, alternating layers of red, green, and white. The layers seem cosmetic, but I think the same batter steamed in a single mass would be claggy, one step from solid porridge.
I ate them straight from the plastic bag, peeling the layers apart like an archaeologist, feeling obscure sorrow when they tore. Today I think about how these layers must have developed, the cost and pride embodied in that refinement, how they at one point probably represented the limit of luxury.
Modern versions of this cake, edible rainbows, dense with color, are big on instagram. Kueh as metaphor, for a life more saturated, more intense, more shaped around the need to be seen online. I think you can eat the modern ones the same way, peeling them apart layer by layer, but you have to do it for the camera.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. I’m guessing you’re local to Cambridge, and so I’ll mention a couple more pop-ups.
Thursday May 24, 5pm-late | Hawker food | Lamplighter Brewing on Broadway
I think I’m making chye tau kueh, but no promises. There will almost certainly be kaya toast again, and Chinese chicken curry with baguette on the side.
Saturday June 8, 7:30pm | Tok Panjang | Formaggio Kitchen on Huron Ave, Tickets here.
Most of what I cook at pop ups is pastry or hawker food, because I’m either popping up in bakeries or bars. This one’s a little different – Formaggio’s letting me turn their space into a private dining room for a night, to do a tok panjang – a “long table,” a feast. I’ll be cooking Peranakan food, the refined, haute bourgeoise cooking of the Straits Chinese. It’s mostly Malay, a little Chinese, all extraordinarily labor intensive and complex. The downside is that this is technically a class, so you’ll have to listen to me talk about the food – but it’s also the kind of food you won’t be able to get anywhere else (unless you’d like to book me to cater your next dinner party).
"Modern versions of this cake, edible rainbows, dense with color, are big on instagram. Kueh as metaphor, for a life more saturated, more intense, more shaped around the need to be seen online." I love this reflection 🥲 Sad but true.