As you should know by now, Nonya or Peranakan is a cuisine which evolved from the coming together of Chinese (mostly Hokkien) and Malay cuisine cultures. Sometimes, it reflects foreign cultural influences like Portuguese, Dutch and English as well, those being the colonial masters of earlier years. It is also called "Straits Cuisine" as most of the areas where Nonya culture evolved from were port cities like Melaka, Penang and Singapore.
In this recipe, using the tau-chu or soy bean paste is obviously from Chinese cuisine. But what other ingredient marks it out as Nonya? Tamarind paste and ketumbar.
Ketumbar is basically a Malay term for Coriander powder. Technically one should call it serbuk ketumbar, but typically the term alone speaks for itself. Tau chu+ ketumbar + tamarind, and the coming together of this Chinese and Malay paste and spice in this recipe reflects it's inter-cultural roots.
