Rice

It goes without saying that rice is a staple to go along with many Peranakan dishes. It is cooked plain, made into nasi lemak and nasi minyak and boiled into bubor.

Rice is woven into the Peranakan psyche with notions that if you do not clean off the loose grains of rice on your dinner plate, you will definitely end up marrying a person with a pock-marked face! My mother also had a favourite saying ‘tambar nasi’ meaning ‘to exaggerate’. My older relatives also swore by the tiny square box of compressed ground rice powder called bedak sejuk. They used it as a face powder and they attributed their smooth and fair skin complexion to it.