Cooking for the President: Reflections & Recipes of Mrs Wee Kim Wee (3rd edt)

With Cooking for the President, Mrs Wee Kim Wee and her daughter Eng Hwa have given Singapore a legacy to treasure.



You have to marvel at the amount of painstaking research, labour and love that went into its making by her daughter Eng Hwa over a period of 21 years. The 556-page masterpiece is the grandmother of all Nonya cookbooks. It is a record of nearly 230 common and not-so-common dishes beloved by the Peranakans (Straits Chinese) and contains traditional delicacies, family favourites and buffet specials for diplomatic functions.



Apart from the recipes and helpful step-by-step pictures, it has an encyclopaedic and well illustrated compendium at the back of the book on ingredients, methods, tools and menus that will go a long way to preserving this important culinary heritage for generations to come. There is even a multi-lingual glossary of terms in Nonya, Malay, English, Hokkien, Indian, Cantonese and Mandarin plus two indices, general and recipes.



Unlike most other cookbooks, it also includes a biography of Wee Kim Wee, the fourth President of Singapore and Mrs Wee. A lovingly written tribute reveals how a resourceful Mrs Wee put food on the table for the family during World War Two and why she insisted on taking Peranakan spices and cooking utensils to Japan. “I have cooked for countless people and they all like the food,” said the 94-year-old Mrs Wee. Be her guest as she shares her reflections and recipes.



With this book Mrs Wee and her daughter Eng Hwa have assured themselves of a place in Singapore’s history.