Sunday 9 September 2007

The Babi Panggang story

Last week a friend of Liu Shu came to spend some time here after his traineeship ended in Belgium. He asked me, do i know what is Babi Panggang. I asked "why?". Well according to him Babi Panggang is a famous Chinese food in Belgium. Apparently some smarty pants Malaysia/Indonesian had came to Belgium and introduced Babi Panggang to the Belgian market under the category of Chinese food. Very entrepreneurial of him/her don't you think? But why use Bahasa Malaysia? Anyways, everybody in his LC was asking him about babi panggang and how to cook it and stuff since he was from China. But he hasn't got the slightest idea as to what Babi Panggang was. He added that the LC members told him that most of the Chinese restaurants were selling them and its very famous. Some Belgian people had even searched for the delicacy in restaurants in China, going form shop to shop but to no avail.

It was quite funny since the word "Babi Panggang" itself is not a Chinese word let alone a Chinese delicacy. Babi Panggang is Malay for barbecued pork , but since Malays don't eat pork its impossible that its a Malay cuisine. The only explanation i can give him is it is most probobly a straits Chinese cuisine. They are famous to giving Malay names to their cooking even though it involves pork. Well as they don't know who strait Chinese, i told the whole story of Zheng He and the time he brought Hang Li Po to the sultan and brought along the Chinese who then stayed in Melaka and married the local people and so the straits Chinese were born. Well, actually not quite sure of the facts thats why i told him it was a theory how the straits Chinese came to be. But its better than no explanation....hehe

So, do u think Babi Panggang is a Nyonya cuisine? How did the Straits Chinese come to be anyway?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is an Indonesian dish. Some chinese restaurants serve this dish with Singaporean Hainanese rice. Babi panggang can also be bataknese dish. Depends on how you cook it, it practically means roasted pork...

Muhaimin Zamri said...

I guess so. But the fact that the dish is named in Bahasa Indonesia means that its an Indonesian dish:)