Indonesia's peranakan cuisine, a blend of Malay and Javanese culinary traditions with borrowings from Chinese and Dutch cuisines, is widespread in home cooking but has rarely been documented.

A number of restaurants bearing a peranakan theme use home recipes passed down orally from one generation to the next. In Central Jakarta, you can check out Dapur Babah on Jl. Veteran. Three South Jakarta restaurants offer peranakan fare: Kembang Goela on Jl. Jendral Sudirman, Meradelima in Pondok Indah and Kedai Tiga Nyonya on Jl. MT Haryono.

"There is so little documentation on peranakan cuisine in Indonesia," said psychologist Myra Sidharta, 81, who is also an expert on Chinese-Indonesian culture.

Myra has collaborated with gastronomy expert Suryatini N. Ganie, 78, to compile classic as well as little-known peranakan recipes which have been published as Dapur Naga di Indonesia (Dragon kitchen in Indonesia).

"We compiled the recipes from interviews," Suryatini said.

The 200-page book contains recipes for all manner of dishes that meld Chinese and Indonesian cooking traditions. The authors give recipes for appetizers, soups, vegetable dishes and meat dishes that rely on seafood, pork, beef, goat, chicken and even pigeon. Noodles naturally play a starring role.

One of Suryatini's prized finds is Mi Goreng Jawa (Javanese fried noodles). She managed to collect this recipe from the family of one of Indonesia's founding fathers and the nations's first vice president, Mohammad Hatta.

Mi Goreng Jawa is a lively mix of fried egg noodles with slices of chicken, cabbage, bean sprouts, garlic, chilly, and ginger.

Besides recipes, the cookbook contains lore on how noodles and other Chinese foodways made their way from China to Indonesia.

Chinese settlements sprang up in coastal areas of Indonesia that date back to the early 15th century when the Chinese explorer Admiral Zheng He voyaged to Southeast Asia.

Myra said the Chinese brought their cooking utensils along with them. "They carried what they needed to make tofu and such."

"The Chinese sailors and explorers were all men who arrived without companions, so they sought out local women to be their wives and settled here," Myra said.

The mixing of culinary traditions began in those kitchens, where the island wives would mix Chinese cooking practices with their local ways.

"The wives didn't like Chinese food. Chilly peppers had already arrived in Indonesia, so the wives wanted their food to be spicier. They also preferred to cook with coconut milk. That's how we got Mi Laksa (Laksa noodles)," Myra said.

"In Indonesia there was no fish sauce, a stable seasoning in Chinese food, so the women replaced it with sweet soy sauce", giving a tinge of sweetness to peranakan cuisine.

Myra and Suryatini present a classic example, their Laksa China recipe. Ingredients include rice noodles, chicken meat and chicken liver and heart spiced abundantly with onion, garlic, ginger, chilly, lime, and pepper.

One famous peranakan dish is missing from the book, lontong capgom*h, a dish Chinese-Indonesians serve to celebrate Cap Go M*h, the 15th day after the Chinese new year begins.

Lontong capgom*h is steamed-rice cakes served with various side dishes, lodeh soup, made with bamboo shoots, and telur sambal petis, egg cooked with shrimp paste and soybean powder.

That classic item aside, Myra and Suryatini offer us a selection of other mouthwatering recipes less renowned than lontong capgom*h, such as beef with slices of bamboo shoot and martabak Shanghai. Who can resist those?

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