SINGAPORE – There was a time when the proper way to make otak was to wrap the spiced fish paste in nipah palm leaves, cut in such a way that the stem and strips of leaf on either side form a sturdy pocket for the filling.

These days, if people want to wrap their otak in aluminium foil, cookbook author Terry Tan is not, he says, going to make a “hue and cry”.

The 85-year-old says: “It’s not the end of the world if somebody says, ‘Oh, I made the best otak with foil.’ Forty years ago, I would have said that this is just not done. It’s different now. Do whatever you want with the cuisine, and do it with confidence, knowing that it’s not going to be that different, frankly.”

The former advertising copywriter, journalist, restaurateur and cooking teacher has a new book out. Terry Tan’s Peranakan Classics, published by Epigram, updates his first cookbook, Terry Tan’s Straits Chinese Cookbook, published in 1981.

He will be taking part in a panel discussion on July 26 as part of the two-day Baba Nyonya Literary Festival 2026 organised by The Peranakan Association Singapore. The session, titled Peranakan Culinary Heritage: A Journey Through Taste And Tradition, will be held at the National Museum of Singapore. A standard ticket for the festival on July 26 costs $40.

He says about 90 per cent of the recipes in the original book are in the new one, and the recipes come with tips and suggestions on how to make cooking classic Peranakan dishes less time-consuming and daunting.

Rempah or spice pastes, the foundation of many Peranakan dishes, can be made in a mortar and pestle, or in a blender, and he suggests the kind to buy. Belacan or fermented shrimp paste can be toasted in the microwave.

In newspaper interviews in 1981, when the first book was published, he said he wrote it in part to save Peranakan food from dying out because of modernisation, and the fact that the cooking methods were laborious.

Today, he says, the cuisine is much more available to people who want to cook it.