Sarawak Eurasians' Cookbook Wins Global Award

KUCHING (Sarawak, Malaysia), March 28 (Bernama) -- An effort by the Eurasian community in Sarawak to produce a cookbook of "family favourites" has won global recognition when it took the "Best in the World" prize for the local cuisine sub-category at the 17th Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in Paris earlier this month. Entitled "The Sarawak Eurasian Association Legacy Cookbook", it was among more than 8,000 books from 162 countries vying for honours this year in the competition, regarded as the "Oscars" of the culinary world. The Sarawak cookbook won in the World Cuisine-Local sub-category against competition from countries like Canada, Finland and Lebanon. It had started as a project of the Sarawak Eurasian Association (SEA) to remember the Eurasian families who have called Sarawak their home, said SEA President Dona Drury-Wee, daughter of an American timber consultant, the late Donald Rugh Drury. She said SEA had long wanted to put together a book, but with such diverse origins of the various Eurasian families in Sarawak, it was hard to come up with an idea as to how to collate different stories into one book. "With forefathers from all corners of the world, our pot luck parties always looked like something out of the Malaysian branch of the United Nations. So we decided to look at the one unifying factor, food, for the book," she revealed. With the help of freelance writer Melissa Murphy and local writer Adeline Liong, Drury-Wee said the book turned out to be a beautiful collection of recipes and photos from days or yore, binding together memories and emotions that only the sight of food can evoke. Sarawak's Eurasians have a unique history that goes back to the days when Sir James Brooke arrived in Kuching and was declared the first White Rajah in 1841. They are the descendants of Europeans who had come to serve under the government of the Brooke Rajahs. Drury-Wee said the book was more than just a definitive coffee-table publication for food lovers as it was also an "evocative paean or song of praise to the Eurasian people and the place to which they belong." "We hope this book will be enjoyed by all as a fusion of cultures, as all Eurasians are, with individual stories told and preserved here for their own future families," she said. For Murphy, putting the book together had required a lot of cajoling to get some of the shyer members of the Eurasian community to contribute. "We visited some of the families to interview them for the stories, sifted through family photographs and finalised the measurements for the recipes. "Many of these recipes are 'family favourites', handed down through the years, adapted to each family's taste and 'localised' with ingredients that are more readily available in Sarawak state in east Malaysia. Most of these dishes usually evoke different tories of bygone times and family gatherings," said Murphy. The book, published by Rhino Press, also included a section called "Recipes of the Land" to include dishes that can only be described as truly Sarawakian with some main ingredients that can probably only be found here such as the Assam Payak and Paku, she added. -- BERNAMA