Custodians of Malay heritage

MUCH has been written about Malay heritage cuisine, but none is as extensive or profound as The Food of Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels Through the Archipelago - a whopping 624-page tome that was 11 years in the making.

It was written by Khir Johari, a respected researcher specialising in the history and culture of the Malay Archipelago, who has "always been fascinated by how we're connected through food".

There's little documentation when it comes to Malay food, which is "under-researched and under-recognised", says Khir, who went to university in California and taught mathematics there from the 1990s to 2000s, before returning to Singapore in 2007.