Bryan Koh, the author of such compelling books as Milkier Pigs and Violet Gold: Philippine Food Stories and Tamu: A Guest at the Bornean Table, has always ranged away from home, creating investigative travelogs which offer cultural insight along with recipes. Here, in Among Ixoras, Koh shifts his focus to his native Singapore, specifically the food he grew up eating in a household that reflected the city-state’s diverse ethnic range of people from throughout Southeast Asia. Koh’s beautiful photography pairs wonderfully with his writing. Although Among Ixoras is not as prosy as some of his earlier books, he’s still capable of evocative writing about the most everyday tasks, as when he describes the way his Malaysian-born grandmother made and buttered her toast. Page after page we encounter a panoply of traditions, dishes which come from Hokkien, Cantonese, Hainanese, Teochow, Portuguese, Thai, Indonesian, Indian, and FIlipino kitchens. Koh’s recipes are detailed and his descriptions elevating: liang, which is prosaically dried taro leaves braised in coconut milk, is also “a big personality, immensely savoury, rich and smoky.” Ixoras, by the way, is a flowering plant common throughout tropical Asia, where it thrives in myriad forms. Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.
