Kaya Toast
Personal Ramblings by Kenneth Lyen
Kaya is a jam whose main ingredients are coconut milk, sugar or palm sugar, and eggs. Kaya means rich or wealthy in the Malay and Indonesian languages.
There are two main types of kaya, the Hainanese and the Nonya. During the 19th century, when Britain was expanding its empire into southeast asia, many Hainanese came to work for the British as cooks and tailors in the newly established cities and aboard British merchant ships. When they saw the British eating jam on toast, the Hainanese cooks developed a cheaper kaya jam, using what was available locally, namely coconuts. This version of kaya is orangy-brown in color because they used brown or caramelized sugar.
The second version is Nonya kaya. Early Chinese migrants to southeast asia referred to themselves as Nonyas or Peranakans. The word Peranakan is taken from the Malay word anak or "child" and means "descendant", with no suggestion of the ethnicity of descent. The word Nonya is borrowed from the old Portuguese word for lady, “donha”. During the Portuguese colonial period, Malays referred to these European foreign married ladies as “nyonya”, and when they were replaced by the Straits Chinese, they continued to address the Chinese immigrants as “nonyas”. The nonyas learnt to speak Malay, adapted some of the indigenous cultures, and blended local foods with Chinese cuisine. They also learnt how to make kaya. Nonya kaya is green in color because of the use of pandan leaves to infuse their fragrant scent.
The word kopitiam is an amalgamation of “kopi” referring to coffee, and “tiam” meaning shop. Originating from England, coffee shops became popular in southeast asia. The oldest surviving Hainanese coffee-shop in Singapore, established in 1919, is the Killiney Kopitiam situated at 67 Killiney Road. It serves kaya toast with two barely cooked eggs, accompanied by a hot cup of kopi. In case you were wondering, Killiney is taken from the name of an Irish seaside resort.
Perhaps one of the more successful and best documented franchises is the Ya Kun Kaya Toast kopitiam. This was started by Loi Ah Koon from Hainan. He came to Singapore in 1926 at the age of 15 years old, clutching a black wooden suitcase, and started working as a coffee stall assistant. After working there for 10 years, he decided to open his own coffeestall at Telok Ayer Basin. He got married in China and his wife joined him in 1936. She helped develop homemade kaya spread for the toast, while Ah Koon roasted his own coffee. He had a small wooden cubicle which served as his home in 15-B Cross Street, but he preferred to sleep on the hard wooden countertop at his stall so he could wake up at 5am to serve his first customers. In 1972 he relocated to Lau Pa Sat, and renamed his stall Ya Kun Coffeestall. “Ya Kun” is the hanyu pinyin spelling of “Ah Koon”. When Lau Pa Sat was being renovated, he moved his kopitiam to Far East Square.
The origin of dipping toast into scarcely cooked eggs appears to be lost. Southeast asian kopitiams often pour the contents of the soft-boiled eggs into a small shallow bowl. Some coffee stalls adopt a do-it-yourself policy. There is an art to cracking eggs so that eggshell fragments do not fall into the bowl, and the liquid egg does not contaminate your fingers.
Nowadays, kaya toast is ubiquitous in southeast asia, and remains a favorite, especially at breakfast. More recently, kaya toast is also eaten at lunchtime. For the older generation, eating at no-frills kopitiams, sitting on wooden stools and marble-top tables, evokes the nostalgia of our childhood.
Has kaya toast evolved? Délifrance, the French Café came to Singapore in 1983, and they created a kaya feuilletes (turnover) which I particularly enjoyed. But unfortunately, sales were low, and in 2016, production ceased. What a disappointment. Well, this is Darwin’s natural selection at its cruelest!
Still, I hope kaya toast will be fit enough to survive another millennium or more.
Kenneth Lyen
5 December 2016
References
http://www.killiney-kopitiam.com/about-us/
The Top Toast: Ya Kun and the Singapore Breakfast Tradition by William Koh. Published by Cengage Learning 2nd Ed 2015. ISBN: 978-981-4633-77-2
The End of Char Kway Teow and Other Hawker Mysteries by Dr Leslie Tay. Published by Epigram Books 2010. ISBN: 978-981-08-6513-3
http://yakun.com/the-ya-kun-story/history/
http://blogtoexpress.blogspot.sg/2011/05/ya-kun-kaya-toast-then-and-now.html
