RESTAURATEUR Johnny Yeo's culinary pride and joy is a nut. Not any old peanut, mind you, but a specially-imported Indonesian black nut which is scrubbed clean and soaked in water for three days before the meat is delicately extracted.
Only then can the dish preparation begin for buah kauluak, one of the many Peranakan-style specialities at Yeo's homely Nonya and Baba restaurant in a suburb of Singapore.
It helps to know a little bit of Peranakan history, not to mention the strange-sounding lexicon, to appreciate the food fully. Peranakans are a race of people who emerged from marriages between wandering Chinese sailors, who put down anchor in Singapore, and local Malay lasses.
The merger of the two cultures led to a hybrid cuisine, which carries elements of southern Chinese fare, combined with the spicier, heavier, food preferred by the Malays.
A whole sub-culture emerged with its own terminology: the men were known as babas, the women as nonyas, or bibiks, as they progressed towards matronly middle age. Peranakans had their own style of dress, their own dialect, a mixture of Chinese dialect and Malay, and their own district in Singapore.
But despite the early-century richness of the culture, it had been dying a slow death during the latter part of this century, the 200,000 or so Peranakans letting traditions fade away.