Making onde-onde and learning what it means to live

“Steam sweet potato until tender.”

Its ambiguity raises a series of questions: How much steaming time does the spud need to get tender? How tender are we talking? Can I just boil it instead? Aware that I was handling Mother Nature’s products, I recognised that it was their inherent unpredictability which rendered the recipe writer incapable of precision. Perhaps this was as exact as he could get.

The sweet potato was indeed a random, irregular thing: gnarly in places, smooth in others. Its form meandered: wide-bodied and curvy in some parts, narrow and wiry elsewhere. I sliced it in two, so it could fit the steamer I had fashioned out of a pot and small bowl. “Steam for 12 minutes, and then a chopstick poke to test, but the tenderness is all your call,” whispered my gut to my brain, to my gut. Drawing upon a reservoir of memories, experiences and mental notes, from my years of cooking and baking, and guided by my instincts, I embarked on my onde-onde-making journey.

After my tender spud encounter, I found myself wondering about the pandan leaves on the kitchen counter. Whenever I’d used pandan—for sweet soups, say, or kueh dadar—I had only to harvest a few blades from a garden in Singapore. The leaves never warranted an extensive wash, for they grew only with sunlight, rain, and other organic nutrients. This time, armed with store-bought pandan, the only kind available in Berlin, where I live, uncertainty lingered about their cleanliness. Opting for caution, I rinsed the leaves multiple times and wiped them with a kitchen towel. A grey residue blotted the towel, so I rinsed the leaves again, undertaking the slow and meditative task of wiping each blade clean and dry. I wondered whether others embarked on a similarly meticulous ritual, if this was the kueh-making tedium Peranakan aunties, drained but still radiant in their kebayas, would quip about around the table.

When it came time to fill and shape the onde-onde, I found myself struggling to interpret the recipe’s directive to “bring up dough to enclose gula”. I applied tried-and-tested techniques, recalling videos I had watched of tangyuan, mochi and mooncake-making. My wrists and fingers moved in an improvisational dance of their own, reshaping and remoulding themselves as I manipulated the dough. One of my improvisations resulted in rugby ball-shaped onde-onde. No bother…

Many of my peers would likely struggle to offer a more nuanced description. In The Food of Singapore Malays, writer Khir Johari noted a concerning trend: the cultural understanding essential for preserving Malay gastronomic tradition is fast fading. “Many younger Malays do not feel the need to express serious appreciation for their culinary heritage.” This lack of interest and understanding, I believe, transcends race and ethnicity. 

Khir cited the onde-onde cake, a popular café and bakery offering of pandan-coloured sponge cakes layered with gula melaka (a type of palm sugar) and coconut, as evidence of a broader lack of understanding about the meanings and origins of our food. Just because a cake uses pandan, palm sugar and coconut cream does not make it onde-onde, because dozens of other kueh mueh are also made with the same mix of ingredients, wrote Khir. The so-called onde-onde cake could equally be labelled a “dadar cake”, since kueh dadar also contains pandan, palm sugar, coconut, and even wheat flour, which is absent in onde-onde. Khir also criticised the use of “onde-onde” as a shorthand for the cake, highlighting that the word “onde” originated from the Tamil word, “untai” (pronounced un-dei), meaning “round” or “globular”, referencing the shape of the kueh. The only thing really “onde-onde” about the cake, then, is the name used to sell it.

This disconnect with our food cultures may explain why discussions about onde-onde and other “heritage foods” never quite progress beyond the topics of cost and aesthetics. As we gripe about price hikes (this is certainly a valid concern in a cost-of-living crisis) and obsess over Instagrammability, important details and stories are lost. Onde-onde, for instance, is often misattributed to Peranakan cuisine. According to Christopher Tan, author of The Way of Kueh, onde-onde likely originated in Java, where it is called “klepon”.

Today, onde-onde is typically enjoyed as a snack or treat, though younger Singaporeans may be more familiar with Western-style confections and bubble tea. Although the idea of “afternoon tea” is typically associated with the English and Europeans, Malays have a longstanding equivalent, minum petang, which often includes onde-onde. In Sri Owen’s Indonesian Food, the author, a prominent Indonesian food writer, paints a vivid picture of 1940s’ Java, where street vendors would visit homes around four in the afternoon. As children woke from their afternoon naps, vendors peddled klepon and other tea-time treats such as nagasari (steamed rice flour cakes with banana), pisang goreng (fried bananas) and rempeyek kacang (savoury peanut brittle).

In Malacca, onde-onde is known as “buah Melaka”, after the round, green fruits of the melaka tree (also known as Indian gooseberry or amla). The kueh’s rotundity also serves a function: round shapes are easy to mould and cook evenly. But roundness is not an essential feature. In Bali, klepon takes on an oval, teardrop-like shape. Iya Dewi, who owns Warung Klepon Gianyar in Bali, told me over Instagram: “The dough is shaped like that so that we can easily put melted palm sugar inside. The reason why the palm sugar is liquid is so that when you bite into it, the sensation of popping comes out. That’s the uniqueness of eating klepon.” Dewi’s klepon were declared the “best in the world” by Indonesian culinary experts.

Round variants typically house grated palm sugar that melt when cooked in simmering water, while teardrop-shaped ones are filled with melted palm sugar. Malaysian Nonya chef and cookbook author Debbie Teoh explained that teardrop-shaped onde-onde are more challenging and time-consuming to make. True. While I’ve filled many round variants with grated palm sugar, I’ve only managed to fill and seal one onde-onde with liquid gula melaka. Sure enough, it was the best of the lot.

Many kueh mueh have symbolic and contextual meanings as well, though one rarely hears about onde-onde. For Dewi, the green symbolises prosperity and fertility, and is a celebration of the lush, green landscapes of Indonesia. Klepon also imparts lessons in mindful eating, she said, as it discourages eating and talking at the same time, and chewing with one’s mouth open. This striked me as a statement that is just as much about slowing down, savouring and appreciating our food, as it is about etiquette.

Aside from variations in name, appearance and symbolic meanings, the spelling of “onde-onde” also varies. The kueh’s name can be spelt with an “h” or without the hyphen, for example. Owen spells it with an accented “e”: “ondé-ondé”. Such variations may be due to locale, language, preference, habit, or a combination of these reasons. In Sri Owen’s Indonesian Food, Owen explained that English speakers spell tempe (Bahasa Indonesia) with an “h”: “tempeh”, to “remind us that the word has two syllables.” This could be true of “ondeh-ondeh” as well.

The onde-onde was ready. I held one gently between my thumb and index finger, careful not to apply too much pressure. Snow-white coconut shreds clinging onto the glossy pastel-green mound was a thing to marvel.

What is fresh, made-by-your-own-hands onde-onde like? Sublime. Onde-onde never tasted this good. Most onde-onde in shops have probably been sitting around for a few hours. Christopher Tan, in a conversation with chef and fellow food writer Pamelia Chia on Chia’s “Singapore Noodles” podcast, asserted that homemade kueh, made with love, can taste a hundred or thousand times better than those sold in shops. Tasting a fresh one made me aware that kueh mueh are just as fine, intricate and singular as Japanese wagashi and French viennoiseries. I not only understood Tan’s sentiment on an intellectual level, but felt it resonating throughout my entire being.

Enjoying the fruits of my labour, my eyes squeezed shut and my cheeks scrunched up in delight. I half-ran and skipped up and down the length of my kitchen as the textures and flavours revealed themselves, melded together and transformed. My senses were dancing, rushing to memorialise the experience in sensations and images that were playing out across the expanse of my body.

These sensations and emotions returned me to my body and myself—I had not realised, until then, that I had mostly been living in my head. That evening of making onde-onde marked about 16 months since I had left Singapore for Germany, and stepped into a particularly chaotic chapter in my life that continues to unfold. I understood that leaving home and family, and setting up in a new, foreign land would be challenging. But I couldn’t have anticipated just how challenging. Throughout those 16 months, my days were a grind consisting of activities aimed at securing my visa status and livelihood. I spent much of my time applying for jobs and attending the occasional interview. The kitchen offered relief from this bleak and depressing cycle. I looked forward to mealtimes, when I could lose myself in the cross-section of purple cabbages, the sizzle of hot oil meeting Sichuan peppercorns and dried chilli flakes, the various citrusy, peppery and smoky aromas of the pantry.

I wasn’t entirely sure why I wanted to make kueh and why onde-onde. After all, my purse strings were tight, and I disapproved of myself spending money on food that wasn’t meant for breakfast, lunch or dinner. I think I wanted to make kueh because it felt both familiar and unfamiliar. Familiar, having been a part of my life since childhood; but unfamiliar, because I’d never made it—back home, I could pop into a Bengawan Solo if I needed a fix. But, immersing myself in the unfamiliar making of familiar foods felt more manageable than the unfamiliar living of life in a new city.

The modern-day job search offered a glimpse into why living feels so unfamiliar, why I find living difficult and challenging beyond life’s inherent difficulties and challenges. Seeking answers to the many questions I had about how to secure a job led me onto the internet and social media, where I found—and was inundated with—tips, tricks and advice. Despite their great numbers, none of the internet’s expert recommendations and “how-to” articles were capable of making room for detail and complexity, of the circumstances and many factors that made securing a job hard for me and countless others.

A genre of reels that has been bothering me of late are those that juxtapose two videos headlined with symbols “✓” and “X”, to show how you should tuck your blouse into your pants, tie your ponytail, and present yourself at job interviews. These forms of content reduce life into binaries of good/bad, black/white, yes/no, leaving no room for details like the texture of one’s hair, the material of one’s clothing, one’s personality and experience with virtual interactions. These factors significantly influence the outcomes of our endeavours, whether they be low or high stakes. How could these search engine results and reels capture the size, weight and shape of the sweet potato I was to steam until tender? At best, these “answers” may carry a “YMMV” (your mileage may vary) disclaimer, reminding readers and viewers of their limitations. Most, however, assert themselves as unbiased, unerring and objective.

The extraordinary amount of knowledge that was easily accessible brought me no closer to solving the problem that was my unemployment. Instead, they left me feeling more confused, doubtful and distrusting than ever of myself. My approach to job searching revolved around the acquisition and accumulation of information, a strategy borne out of and reflective of our reliance on data in the digital age. Recruiters take this data-driven, algorithmic approach when choosing applications worth considering and so do healthcare institutions when determining who deserves an organ transplant. In Ways of Being, James Bridle—writer, artist and technologist—explored how humans have attempted to understand the world through data acquisition and processing, leading to the creation of ever-larger databases and ever-more powerful computers. Bridle noted that these attempts, rather than clarifying the complexities of the world, have only increased uncertainties, “leaving most of us paralysed, fearful, angry, and subject to ever more opaque forms of oppression and control.” This diagnosis resonates with my own experience. I failed to recognise how dysfunctional hiring practices were and instead internalised setbacks as personal flaws, fostering the pervasive belief that I was undeserving and “not good enough”.

One often feels lost and confused in teenagehood. Yet, at 32, I did not expect to feel more lost and confused than at 16. Does life experience not count for something? In an “On Being” conversation, Esther Perel, a psychotherapist best known for her research on human relationships, spoke of how our penchant for data has led to the loss of intuition: “There is a different kind of knowledge and information that is much more data-driven, that is systematised, that tries to be rational, and that is taking away our ability to sense things. Most of all ourselves.” In her keynote speech at last year’s South by Southwest festival, Perel also voiced concerns about our predictive technologies, how they make us “unprepared and unable to tolerate the inevitable unpredictabilities of life.” The problems that people bring to her office require “technicolour strategies”. Said Perel: “I suggest we stop treating these dilemmas like technical problems that have clear-cut solutions.”

Perhaps, the growing disconnect with our culture, food or otherwise isn’t only the result of having too many options. It could, in fact, be reflecting something else back at us: the disconnect we feel with ourselves. Likewise, the apparent lack of interest, curiosity and pride among younger Singaporeans in their cultures isn’t so much the result of youthful arrogance and ignorance. Rather, it is a state of stupor, a terrible hangover from which we barely recover before another choice is sold to us. I believe this is partly why the effects of numerous food and heritage festivals, centred around buying and consuming, are short-lived—enthusiasm for all things food and culture dies as quickly as kueh mueh deteriorate in store displays.

My experience making onde-onde helped me realise that to begin reconnecting with ourselves and our cultures is to rediscover a connection with our bodies. The adage “food heals” isn’t only about what we eat, but also about how we come to eat at all. The act of growing, preparing, cooking and eating recruits and requires every facet of ourselves: mind and body, brain and gut. It is how I thought to improvise a steamer from a pot and bowl, determine sweet potato steaming times and desired tenderness, and ultimately, make onde-onde. Those who work closely with food, like cooks, food and recipe writers, live close to ingredients and so, to nature. This proximity allows them to embrace life’s complexity, unpredictability and uncertainty in their work. I think this is why their voices on the page are akin to those of friendly guides—without the self-assuredness found in typical “how-to” articles or the detachment of codes and algorithms.

There is space in “Steam sweet potato until tender”, space for objective “data”, including the history, knowledge and wisdom acquired and accumulated by the recipe writer and expert kueh-makers. At the same time, it allows for subjective experiences: my numerous cooking and baking endeavours, my preferred level of tenderness for sweet potatoes and kueh, and my amateur kueh-making hands and sensibilities.

“Steam sweet potato until tender.”

How vague. 

How liberating.

Zi-Ting is a freelance content writer working in the restaurant and tech space. She enjoys exploring culture and community through the lens of food.

Letters in response to this piece can be sent to sudhir@jom.media. All will be considered for publication on our “Letters to the editor” page.