MooMooFoodie

Cook and Share A Pot of Curry From MooMooFoodie's Kitchen! :)

Tom Yam Curry Chicken from MooMooFoodie's Kitchen! :)

Participate in this meaningful event and spread the importance of intercultural understanding between countries and also between the different races and nationalities within one country!

For background info:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=254441147918239

This is a Facebook Page created by a group of Singaporeans after a report came about that a mainland Chinese family (from China) told a local Indian Family not to eat curry and not to cook curry. The appointed mediator - a certain Madam Giam facilitated the case in such a way that : the Indian family could cook curry only when the mainland Chinese family is not at home. (mediation agreement).

So far, more than 60,000 around the world (mostly Singaporeans!) are joining in. Cook a pot of curry or buy a take-out from a restaurant (if you can't cook or too busy to do so).

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Excerpt from Facebook Page:

http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC110808-0000102/Number-of-neighbour-disputes-hit-high (this is the link)

and this is the clarification to the case:
http://app2.mlaw.gov.sg/Highlights/tabid/168/Default.aspx?ItemId=568

and 16th Aug 2011 (The Law Minister's clarification)
http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20110816-294757/2.html

How we feel
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How could a appointed mediator facilitate the case in such a way that restricts the lifestyle and cooking norms of the Indian family? Or any other local family who practices a cultural lifestyle that we have all made our own? In this case, Curry has always been part of our culture since the 1800s. It can be anything else that you or I hold dear.

There is a native Malay proverb "Di mana bumi dipijak, di situ langit dijunjung" ("You should hold up the sky of the land where you live") - ie one should respect the country in which you choose to live in. ( ie blend/ assimilate/ understand/ tolerate / integrate into the community of your chosen choice)

What we wish for
-----------------------------
When the new immigrants arrive here, we wish for them to respect / embrace the cultural / lifestyle and linguistic norms of this nation. We wish for all new immigrants and citizens to understand and appreciate the various and diverse cultural aspects of the various ethnic-minority groups we have here.

This is Singapore and we are part of Malayan culture. Our hinterland previously was Malaysia and the Indonesian archipelago. Our ancestors came, met and mingled and through an adventurous and open mindset, created something unique and beautiful... (thus our local culture as such- curries/ spices/ a vast melting pot of people and mixed heritages)

* A message to all new citizens: We sincerely hope you integrate into our local culture and make attempts to assimilate and embrace/ appreciate the various multi-ethnic cultures we had built up so painstakingly over the decades. Because at the same time, we are definitely open to taking the best that you have to offer, and to create new and beautiful Singaporean things.

*We Singaporeans are basically nice and tolerant people. We will accept you as new citizens and hope you blend in and integrate with us well.


Upset with CMC
-----------------------
We are mainly upset with the "Community Mediation Centre's" mediation action of actually facilitating such a mediation agreement. It is the inalienable right of the Indian family to cook curry at any time they wish to within the four walls of their home. (having said that, let us all- natives, new citizens or otherwise, embrace the multi-cultural aspects of our nation)

Every Singaporean should just cook a pot of curry and eat it (regardless of race / language / religion). We are Singaporeans and we LOVE our curries - be it chicken curry / fish curry / lamb curry / beef curry / beef rendang / lontong / mee siam/ laksa / Petai sambal belachan / ayam buah keluak etc

Thank You Very Much for supporting "Cook A Pot of Curry" Event!

- from the Admin Group

NY Times: Chasing Stingray All Over Town

 

November 2, 2010

Chasing Stingray All Over Town

By JULIA MOSKIN

KOK FYE SEETOH shot me a warning look.

I was jammed into a restaurant kitchen in Queens with the pre-eminent translator to the English-speaking world of the food of Malaysia and Singapore. I had serious doubts about a sauce.

A sweet sludge punctuated by large pieces of raw shallot, it was presented by the restaurant’s Malaysian owner as “popular with Americans.”

As the owner turned away to put the fish in the fryer, I asked Mr. Seetoh under my breath, “Would you really eat this in Singapore?”

“We’ll talk outside,” he said, tersely.

Mr. Seetoh, a former photojournalist who now publishes exhaustive guides to street foods in Southeast Asia, was my wingman for what may have been America’s first stingray crawl. Its goal: to mine Mr. Seetoh’s expertise by choosing one popular dish from the alluring, often bewildering menus of New York’s Southeast Asian restaurants, and chasing it all over town.

In sunglasses, he strode into kitchens with the imperious confidence of Keith Richards and judged them with the tender harshness of Gordon Ramsay. He rode waves of enthusiasm and dropped into valleys of despair, pleasantly surprised by the juicy fish at one place but tormented by the careless spicing at another.

“They make too many compromises here,” he said flatly as we left, dismissing the offending sauce as not authentic and, worse, just not good. Ikan pari pangang, stingray coated with a spicy sambal and grilled on banana leaves, was the test he chose for local cooks. (Stingray is known on our tables as skate; the French call it raie).

Originally a dish for fishermen and peasants, made with what was considered a “trash fish” but deliciously aromatic from the spice paste and toasted banana leaves, ikan pari pangang is now a classic outdoor dinner and an accompaniment to cold beer. As the moist heat suffuses the fish, it should take on a tangy, dry crust but stay juicy near the central spine. (The flesh slides off easily after cooking.) Served with wedges of lemon and rings of onion, with lots of juicy bits to poke at with chopsticks and swipe through the sauce, it makes a pleasant, indolent meal, like picking at a whole barbecued pork butt.

It is a dish with Malay roots, which sets it apart from the many popular Chinese- and Indian-influenced snacks that the region is famous for, like curry-rich roti canai (pronounced CHEN-nye), Hainanese chicken rice, kangkung belachan (water spinach cooked with shrimp paste) and savory stir-fried Chinese-based noodle dishes like char kway teow, a crunchy, savory tangle of rice noodles, bean sprouts, shrimp, pork and chili paste.

But grasping those flavors, especially from far away, is not easy.

Southeast Asia covers a huge area, in both culinary and geographic terms. Singapore, with a slightly smaller landmass than New York City, is a dot in the huge stretch of islands that swirls off the coast of Vietnam — including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Singapore’s history as a free port under the British empire, its central location on trade and spice routes and recent decades of high-speed economic growth have made the cuisine there a heady international brew. And Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s ever-expanding capital city across the Strait of Johor, has a food scene almost as intense.

In New York City, “Southeast Asian” restaurants try to cover a range of food from Malaysia and Singapore, often stirring in popular dishes from Thailand and Vietnam; some have hundreds of items on the menu. Most restaurant owners here are ethnically Chinese: noodles, rice, stir-frying and steaming are fundamentals, and even kung pao shrimp may appear on the menu. But dishes with chilies, lemon grass, galangal, coconut, curry spices and funky fermented seafood products like belachan (shrimp paste) are signs that the food isn’t just arriving from China.

I knew that Mr. Seetoh, whose Makansutra guidebooks contain detailed culinary analysis of individual dishes, down to the perfume of the duck broth and the springiness of the fish balls, would be able to answer my lingering questions: What makes one dish Malaysian and not Singaporean? Why are some dishes called by Malay names, and others Cantonese? And most important for a food lover, does this dish taste as good as it is supposed to, or was the flavor lost in translation?

Malaysian food leans more toward tangy flavors, and Singapore food toward the richness of peanut and coconut, Mr. Seetoh said, but other than that, the distinctions are usually traced to individual cooks.

At Coco in Elmhurst in Queens, where David Lim, the chef and an owner, serves a local crowd of Southeast Asians, Koreans, Chinese and Latinos, the stingray was sweeter and less redolent of dried shrimp and shrimp paste. At Sanur in Chinatown in Manhattan, Mr. Seetoh was impressed by Sun Chen Lai’s hack: to adapt the method from an outdoor grill to a basement stovetop, Mr. Lai, the chef and an owner, deep-fries the fish first, then enfolds it in a round lotus leaf and tosses the packet deftly in a hot wok until it is good and charred.

But Mr. Seetoh was not entirely satisfied with anyone’s sambal, the cooked sauce that acts as a cooking medium and a table condiment. “When they gentrify the food, it’s understandable, but it is completely the wrong idea,” he said.

Barriers of language and culture, he said, prevent many immigrant cooks in the United States from presenting their best food to outsiders. “In traditional culture, selling food on the street is one degree above prostitution,” he said. “We need to learn to be proud of what we have.”

It is a given for Mr. Seetoh, a first-generation Singaporean whose parents were born in mainland China, that hawker versions are always an improvement on the original dish: more savory, richer, better balanced.

“I went to Hainan to taste the chicken rice,” Mr. Seetoh said, referring to the island off southern China that was the birthplace of Singapore’s unofficial national dish of steamed chicken, white rice, cucumbers and chili sauce. “It was totally boring,” he said, pointing out that in the Singaporean version, the white rice is gilded with chicken fat and butter, and scented with the sweet, vanilla-like pandan leaf.

Hainan chicken rice is a main dish of the region, making it a subject of frequent squabbles between Malaysia and Singapore. Last year, Malaysia’s tourism minister staked an official claim to the dish for his nation, bringing simmering cross-Straits resentments to a boil.

Singapore is especially reliant on food hawkers, according to food historians, because it was initially populated by young, mostly Chinese men, who could not afford their own households. The thousands of food vendors (in Singapore they are gathered into “hawker centers,” and in Malaysia a food stall is a “warung”) tend to specialize in a single dish or a small family of foods, refining it over the years to try to grab a bigger piece of the market share. Thus, Mr. Seetoh said, the best food always wins.

“Food is the greatest democratic institution in Singapore,” he said. “There is truly no bland food and no bad restaurants.”

Even by New York standards, Singaporeans seem to be obsessed with food. “I have tried to cook Singapore food in Brooklyn, but at the end there was always something missing,” said Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, a writer whose memoir of “food and family” will be published in February. When she left Singapore to attend Northwestern University in Chicago in 1993, she said, she missed the food of home so much that she would trek through snow to the computer center to gaze at Internet photos of her favorite dishes. “A lot of what you love in Singaporean cuisine is the flavor of the hawker center,” she said. “It might be MSG, it might be the heat or the humidity or the sweat, you just don’t know.”

Continuing the crawl solo at Overseas Asian in Chinatown, I found an ikan pari that seemed too wet to my Seetoh-trained palate. (But the best roti canai I’ve had in New York: fluffy, yeasty, lightly sweet.) The last stingray was the best: an excellent, smoky version at Redang Island in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, where the fish is rubbed with spices and steamed before the final cooking.

One of Mr. Seetoh’s primary goals is to preserve such dishes, which he sees as a product of diverse, resourceful and often desperate communities. The hawker food will be lost, he fears, as the population becomes affluent and aspiring cooks can afford Western education — culinary or otherwise. Asian cooks are opening French and Italian restaurants in the cities now, he said, and the traditional hawkers are aging. “They are old, and their sons are old, and their grandsons go to Harvard,” he said.

Just as many hawkers have transcended street life and the day-to-day grind, Mr. Seetoh himself has become more than a food guide. He appeared on “Top Chef” last season and has taught Martha Stewart to make laksa, the iconic meal-in-a-bowl of the region. Now he is a global entrepreneur, working with real estate developers to build self-contained hawker centers, populating them with his favorite cooks and tailoring the food to its neighborhood. “In a business district, you don’t want noodle soup — too messy for office workers, and it takes too long to eat,” he said.

Over all, he said, Southeast Asian food in New York City is about 50 percent as good as at home. To lift that number, he hopes to bring a hawker center here. “Like Eataly, but with hawkers,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be great?”

Some places to taste Southeast Asian food in New York:

CAFE ASEAN 117 West 10th

Street (Sixth Avenue), Greenwich Village; (212) 633-0348 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (212) 633-0348      end_of_the_skype_highlighting, cafeasean.com.

COCO 82-69 Broadway (Elmhurst Avenue), Elmhurst, Queens; (718) 565-2030 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (718) 565-2030      end_of_the_skype_highlighting, cocoasiancuisine.com/elmhurst.html.

OVERSEAS TASTE RESTAURANT 49 Canal Street (Ludlow Street), Chinatown; (212) 925-3233 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (212) 925-3233      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

REDANG ISLAND 5112 Eighth Avenue (51st Street), Sunset Park, Brooklyn; (718) 686-6680 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (718) 686-6680      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

SANUR 18 Doyers Street (Pell Street), Chinatown; (212) 267-0088 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (212) 267-0088      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

TASTE GOOD 82-18 45th Avenue (Broadway), Elmhurst, Queens; (718) 898-8001 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (718) 898-8001      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

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November 2, 2010

Sambal Stingray in Banana Leaf

Adapted from K. F. Seetoh

Time: 1 hour

 

FOR THE SAMBAL

1 ounce (about 1/2 cup) dried red chilies

2 ounces (about 1/2 cup) dried small shrimp (available in Asian markets)

10 to 12 large garlic cloves

8 to 10 shallots, peeled

3-inch piece ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped

3-inch piece lemon grass, white end, coarsely chopped

1 teaspoon belachan (shrimp paste, available in Asian markets) or 2 teaspoons fish sauce

1 tablespoon tamarind paste or lime juice, more to taste

2 tablespoons light brown sugar, more to taste

1/4 cup raw peanuts

2 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus more for fish

 

For the fish

1 whole, skinless skate wing, 1 1/2 to 2 pounds, or firm fillets like snapper, about 3/4-inch thick

3 banana leaves (available frozen at Asian and Latin markets)

Slices of lemon and white onion, for garnish

Sprigs of cilantro, for garnish.

 

1. Make the sambal: In separate bowls, soak the chilies and the dried shrimp in water to cover for 10 minutes, then drain. Remove and discard stems and seeds from the chilies.

2. In a blender, combine the chilies, shrimp and remaining sambal ingredients, except the oil, with 1/2 cup water. Blend until finely chopped but not smooth. Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium heat and add the sambal. Cook, stirring often, until it is moist, thick and dark red, adding water 1 tablespoon at a time if needed to prevent scorching.

3. Cook the fish: Rinse and dry the fish and sprinkle it with salt. Heat a grill to high, or place a heavy skillet (with a lid) over medium-high heat. Spread one side of the fish with a thin layer of sambal. Place a banana leaf on grill (or in skillet), drizzle lightly with vegetable oil and place the fish on top, sambal side up. Cover grill or pan and cook about 8 minutes, until the banana leaf is toasted and the sambal is dry and fragrant. Remove the leaf and fish from the heat. Place a new banana leaf on grill or in pan, drizzle it with oil, flip fish onto it and spread more sambal on top. Cover and cook another 6 to 8 minutes, until cooked through.

4. Place another leaf on a platter. Flip the fish onto it, spoon more sambal over the top and garnish with lemon and onion slices and cilantro sprigs. To serve whole skate, slide the fish off the spine with a spoon.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

ST: Forget peaches, have a peacherine

News

Home > News > Home > Story

Oct 10, 2010

Forget peaches, have a peacherine

Supermarkets are bringing in more exotic hybrid fruit to meet rising demand

By Jessica Lim

The hybrid pluot is sold at FairPrice Finest outlets. -- ST PHOTO: WANG HUIFEN

View more photos

 

They are doing it to fruits now. Cross-breeding them, that is.

So, how about an aprium (75 per cent apricot, 25 per cent plum), pluot (75 per cent plum, 25 per cent apricot), or a peacherine (half peach, half nectarine)?

These imported exotic hybrids are gaining in popularity here.

Higher-end supermarkets, like Cold Storage and Jasons Market Place, say the demand for such fruit has gone up by 80 per cent compared with three years ago.

FairPrice supermarket, which introduced hybrids in 2007 at its gourmet FairPrice Finest outlets, says interest has increased too.

Heartland chains like Giant and Shop N Save are harvesting a similar trend, albeit to a smaller degree, with sales up by 20 per cent compared with three years ago.

Given such consumer response, more supplies will be brought in, mostly from the United States and Australia, where the fruit tinkering mostly happens.

FairPrice has stocked more than 10 varieties of hybrid fruit on its shelves so far this year, a 50 per cent increase from the whole of last year.

Cold Storage and Jasons Market Place had only two to three types of hybrid fruit three years ago. Now they have more than 15 types.

Such fruits, say importers, are about three times more expensive than regular varieties.

Mr Tan Chin Hian, vice-chairman of the Singapore Fruits and Vegetables Importers and Exporters Association, said pluots cost about US$5 (S$6.50) per kg, more than three times the price of regular plums, which cost about US$1.50 per kg.

Hybrids, he said, are grown in smaller quantities and are tedious to produce.

The cross-breeding requires painstaking effort. Pollen from one fruit plant has to be hand-brushed onto the pistil and stigma of another to induce pollination.

This is repeated on a mass scale, and goes through many generations of harvesting and blending.

Still, the proof is in the eating, despite the higher prices. Best-sellers include the aprium, pluot and peacherine.

The popularity of these fruits, said Dr Patrick Loh, an agri-business adviser to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore, is due to these varieties usually being bigger and sweeter.

'Cross-pollination over many years leads to bigger and better fruit,' he said, adding that currently, only species of the same family can be cross-bred.

'The trend is that people are now trying all sorts of things overseas with fruits. We started importing them in small amounts about 10 years ago, and popularity is really picking up now,' he added.

One customer, IT consultant Greg Lim, 45, buys pluots at least once in two weeks. He first tried them last year when he was on holiday in the US.

'They are sweeter and are not as mushy as plums,' he said, adding that the higher price is worth it.

Others, like part-time teacher Wang Peiqi, 27, tried one for the first time last week.

'It's just fun trying new things, and they taste good too. I will probably buy them again,' she said.

limjess@sph.com.sg

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BITE INTO THESE HYBRIDS

THE PLUOT

What is it: A cross-breed between a plum and an apricot (75 per cent plum, 25 per cent apricot).

Characteristics: Closely resembling a plum, the fruit has smooth skin and is known for sweetness, intense flavour and a juicy pulp.

Price: About $2 each

THE PEACHERINE

What is it: A cross-breed between a peach and a nectarine (50 per cent peach, 50 per cent nectarine).

Characteristics: The fruit has fuzzy hair on its skin and is sweet and juicy.

Price: About $2 each.

THE APRIUM

What is it: A cross-breed between an apricot and a plum (75 per cent apricot, 25 per cent plum).

Characteristics: The fruit resembles an apricot on the outside, and is usually dense. It is noted for its sweet taste and has a flavour that is a mix of apricot and plum aromas.

Price: About $2 each

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DON'T JUDGE A FRUIT BY ITS APPEARANCE

The next time you pass by the wet market in Tekka Centre in Serangoon, look out for the apple-guava.

It looks like an apple but it is not. And it is not a hybrid fruit too.

The apple-guava is actually a variety of Thai guava sold with its skin already peeled off, and shaped to resemble an apple.

Chee Boon & Son Fruits Paradise, located on the first storey of Tekka Centre, is one of two stalls there that stock this particular fruit.

The owner, who wanted to be known only as Mr Tan, 48, has been selling this variety for about a year now.

Packaged in threes in a plastic bag with Thai words printed on it, the fruit is best kept in the refrigerator or, as Mr Tan said, 'it has to be chilled'.

A pack of three costs $4.50.

Mr Tan said: 'Though we sell only a small quantity at a time, there are a few regular buyers, mostly Malays or Indians.'

'The Chinese don't really like it as it looks artificial,' he added.

As sold, the apple-guava's outer layer is a glowing shade of bright green.

On the packaging are the words 'Guava mixed Chinese plum with Honey'. They also say that there is 'no colouring' added. It is said to be low in calories too.

The fruit is firm to the bite and tastes artificially sweet. But a hint of guava is present.

Kon Xin Hua

ST: Crab evolution

Lifestyle

Home > Lifestyle > Taste > Story

Oct 10, 2010

Crab evolution

This sambal chilli crab recipe, which has oyster sauce, took 25 years to perfect

By Eunice Quek, Singapore Cooks

Ms Serene Kwok cooked chilli crab when she was 10 as her mother's version of it was too healthy for her. -- ST PHOTOS: MARYANNE TAN

 

Ms Serene Kwok's sambal chilli crab recipe has been marinating for a long time - about 25 years, to be exact.

In all that time, the recipe has undergone many tweaks by Ms Kwok, 35. The regional marketing manager of premium home kitchen appliance company De Dietrich first whipped up the dish when she was 10 years old because she did not like her mother's version of the local favourite.

Says Ms Kwok: 'Her version was too healthy and only mildly spicy. So I decided to do it myself. I killed a live crab in less than a minute. After she tried it, she said I could take over the kitchen.'

Back then, the recipe called for a lot of tomato sauce, but as its creator grew up, it became based on sambal chilli, as well as two unusual ingredients: coconut milk and oyster sauce.

Both are used for thickening the sauce. Ms Kwok says her mother often used oyster sauce to add flavour to her dishes, and that is why she included it in her recipe.

The sauce also has an extra egg-like consistency because her husband, Mr Christoph Yan, 39, is a huge fan of it.

She says: 'He's not really a seafood person, so he will eat the sauce with white rice.'

She prepares a separate dish of butter crab for her daughter, Christel, as the nine-year-old sometimes finds Ms Kwok's dish too spicy.

The student at CHIJ (Kellock) is following in her mother's footsteps. A good cook, she has tried making her own butter crab and instant noodles.

Ms Kwok was never taught how to cook. Instead, she picked up basic skills by observing her mother in the kitchen.

She was given the liberty to prepare her own dishes and received the thumbs-up from her family with her very first dish of black soya sauce chicken, at the age of 10.

She says: 'My mum was not the traditional mum who sewed and cooked. Whatever we wanted, we had to do ourselves.

'She cooked with only my dad in mind. Very healthy food that was always steamed or boiled. We always had to add extra salt or sugar to the dish.'

On Saturdays, her eldest sister, Shirley, cooks up a storm for their weekly family feasts at her house.

Ms Kwok is the youngest of six siblings. Should Shirley take a break from her weekly chef duty, Ms Kwok commandeers the stove and prepares her chilli crab dish, along with other dishes, such as roast duck and bak kut teh.

To jazz up instant noodles, she adds dang gui or angelica root, as well as wolfberries for a more herbal twist.

Since her job requires her to eat out at fine dining restaurants and indulge in French food frequently, she says she appreciates homecooked food. Her only gripe is washing the dishes. Luckily, she says, her husband gamely does it.

The family of three eat out frequently at Tiong Bahru market, but Ms Kwok makes it a point to cook at least twice a week, especially when her daughter requests specific dishes.

She says: 'When it's examination time, she will ask me to make plain porridge with silver bait, scallop and wolfberries. She can eat it for all three meals.'

euniceq@sph.com.sg

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MAKE IT YOURSELF: SAMBAL CHILLI CRAB

INGREDIENTS

2 large live crabs

Oil for stir-frying

1/2 Tbs chopped garlic

1/2 large red onion, sliced into rings

4 Tbs sambal chilli paste

1/2 cup water

1/2 Tbs oyster sauce

1/4 cup coconut milk

2 eggs, beaten

Salt or sugar to taste

Garnishing (optional)

One stalk of spring onion, chopped

Handful of parsley, chopped

1 chilli, sliced

METHOD

1. De-shell and clean the crabs. Divide each crustacean into five parts (shell, two pincers, two body parts, above). Lightly crack the pincers so that the sauce can infuse the meat during cooking.

2. Heat oil in wok over high heat. Add chopped garlic and sliced onions when oil starts to heat. Fry till fragrant.

3. Add sambal chilli paste and fry over medium heat for one minute.

4. Add the crabs and stir-fry for five minutes. Ensure they are evenly covered with the paste.

5. Add 1/2 cup of water and oyster sauce. Continue to stir-fry over medium heat.

6. Add coconut milk (amount may vary depending on how rich you want the sauce to be). Simmer for five minutes.

7. When the crabs turn red, add eggs into the sauce to thicken it. Add salt or sugar to taste.

8. When the sauce thickens, dish on to a plate. Garnish with spring onion, parsley and sliced red chilli.

9. Serve with steaming hot mantou or rice.

Serves two

ST: Delectable dialect dishes

Lifestyle

Home > Lifestyle > Taste > Story

Jul 25, 2010

Delectable dialect dishes

Some like it hot, some like it steamed or fried... put them together and they make up the yummy dishes of Chinese dialect groups

By Rebecca Lynne Tan

To some non-Chinese, Chinese food is all about sweet and sour pork, stir-fried vegetables and fried rice.

With so many dialect groups in the community, confusion arises and others can be forgiven for lumping Chinese food under one giant umbrella.

The distinctive cuisines of Chinese dialect groups are in the limelight now. They are the theme for this year's Singapore Food Festival, which began 10 days ago. The annual festival ends today.

Singapore is made up of a diverse mix of ethnicities and ethnic Chinese form the majority, making up about 76.8 per cent of the population, according to figures from the last Singapore Census of Population, published in 2001.

Most Chinese Singaporeans belong to the Hokkien dialect group. Other dialect groups here are Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, Hainanese, Foochow, Henghua, Shanghainese and Hockchia.

Cuisines differ a great deal among dialects - from the way a fish is steamed to the way porridge is cooked.

For example, a Teochew-style steamed fish would involve boiling slices of ginger with preserved sour plum, tomato and slices of preserved vegetable. Broth is then added to the fish before it is steamed.

The result is a fish served in a slightly tangy light broth.

Traditional Cantonese-style steamed fish looks and tastes completely different - it is steamed and usually coated in fragrant hot oil and soya sauce, and topped with spring onions and Chinese parsley.

As for porridge, the Teochew style is more like soupy rice, versus the smooth, creamy Cantonese style.

Preferred cooking methods also differ. Some, such as the Teochew, prefer to steam food, rather than fry or deep-fry. The Hainanese, too, prefer simple cooking methods of simmering and blanching.

On the other hand, Cantonese cooking is known for its 'wok hei' - the aromatic charred fragrance which is infused into the food as a result of frying the ingredients over a big flame.

Some dialect groups also use ingredients that others do not.

Hakkas and Foochows are known for fermenting their own wine, which is made from glutinous rice, and often use this in their cooking.

Chef Chan Kwok, 54, group master chef of Orchard Hotel who heads its Cantonese restaurant, Hua Ting, says: 'Cantonese people are well known for brewing good soups. To them, every meal should begin with a bowl of piping hot soup.

'Cantonese chefs believe that soups can help to improve and build up our bodies because of the ingredients and herbs used.'

And if soups are definitive of Cantonese cuisine, Hokkien fare is often characterised by its hearty dishes, such as kong bak pau, which are slices of braised pork belly served in steamed buns.

Hakka cuisine is known for its flavourful and light cooking style, and its popular dish of abacus seeds, which are small yam dumplings cooked with minced pork.

And what about Hainanese chicken rice and pork chop?

Mr Tan Yoke Han, 67, president of the Singapore Hainan Society, says those dishes have been localised.

The chilli and garlic sauce that is served with chicken rice is unique to this part of the world.

The ubiquitous Hainanese pork chop in tomato gravy served with fries or potato slices, he says, was created by Hainanese cooks who worked for the British army and in hotel kitchens and it is an evolution of Western-style dishes.

Foochows come from the coastal region of Fujian province and hence, there is a strong focus on seafood items. Popular dishes include cold crab and clam soup.

Their red wine chicken soup and deep-fried pork liver dishes are also well known.

Mrs Magdelene Low, an executive board member of the Singapore Foochow Association, 57, says: 'We have a good balance of both meat and seafood dishes in our cooking. Our cuisine is slightly heavier than Teochew cuisine.'

But many home cooks believe that the most authentic fare is prepared at home, with recipes passed down through generations.

Housewife Tan Eng Choo, 62, who is Teochew, says: 'I learnt many dishes from my mother and grandmother - how to steam fish, how to make stewed belly pork and how to braise duck.

'We have to keep these dishes true to tradition and remember our roots.'

rltan@sph.com.sg

How can we keep our dialect dishes alive? Write to suntimes@sph.com.sg

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Teochew

Healthy fare include steamed fish with preserved vegetables, tomato, sour plum and ginger (top); pig's trotter jelly (above); and snacks (below) such as pink peng kueh, filled with rice; and white soon kueh, with bamboo shoots and/or radish. -- PHOTOS: DESMOND FOO, ST FILE

Geography: The Teochews are the second largest Chinese dialect group in Singapore, making up about 21 per cent. Many Teochew ancestors came to Singapore from Shantou, in the eastern part of Guangdong province.

Characteristics: Fresh flavours. Sauces are often light but fragrant and tasty.

Cooking methods: Steaming is preferred; other methods include braising and stir-frying.

Famous dishes: Steamed fish with preserved vegetables, tomato, sour plum and ginger; braised goose or duck in soya sauce gravy; pig's trotter jelly or aspic; orh nee, a yam paste dessert; and Teochew porridge, a watery gruel with large fluffy grains of rice. The porridge is often eaten with condiments such as preserved olives, preserved lettuce and salted egg, and simple dishes such as omelette with preserved radish.

Where to try: Chin Lee Restaurant, Block 115 Bedok North Road, 01-285, tel: 6449-5454; Ah Orh, Block 115 Jalan Bukit Merah, 01-1627, tel: 6275-7575; Guan Hin Teochew Restaurant, Block 34 Whampoa West, 01-01, tel: 6298-3179

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Hakka

Favourites include suan pan zi (above) or abacus seeds cooked with minced pork and mushroom; soon kueh made with yam-paste skin (top) and sweet dessert of black bean kueh (below).

Geography: About 8 per cent of Chinese Singaporeans are Hakka, who come from several regions in China, including north-east Fujian province, Guangdong and Jiangxi. The Hakka reportedly moved from central China to southern China during the early dynasties.

Characteristics: A combination of rich and hearty flavours, as well as light soupy fare.

Cooking methods: The use of home-made wine is common in traditional Hakka cooking. Steaming, stir-frying and braising are also popular methods.

Famous dishes: Suan pan zi or yam coins that resemble abacus seeds fried with minced pork and mushroom, and served with shredded cuttlefish; yong tau foo, beancurd stuffed with minced pork; Hakka soon kueh, steamed rice-flour dumplings with a yam-paste skin; lei cha fan or thunder tea rice, rice dish topped with vegetables served with peanuts; and black bean kueh.

Where to try: Plum Village Restaurant, 16 Jalan Leban, tel: 6458-9005; Kew Garden, 315 Outram Road, Tan Boon Liat Building, 02-313/315, tel: 6222-2313

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Hokkien

Yummy goodies include kong bak pau (above) and ngoh hiang, a minced pork, prawn and chestnut roll wrapped in beancurd skin (below).

Geography: Over 41 per cent of the Chinese people in Singapore are of Hokkien descent. Their ancestors came from Fujian province, which is along the south-east coast of China, just north of Guangdong province.

Characteristics: Simple and hearty fare.

Cooking methods: Simmering for soups, braising for meats, frying and stir-frying.

Famous dishes: Kong bak pau, which is sliced braised pork belly served in a steamed bun; Hokkien mee, thick yellow noodles braised in a dark sauce and stock; hae cho, a deep-fried prawn roll; ngoh hiang, a minced pork, prawn and chestnut roll wrapped in beancurd skin; pig's trotter bee hoon or rice vermicelli, and oyster omelette.

Where to try: Beng Thin Hoon Kee Restaurant, 65 Chulia Street, OCBC Centre, 05-02, tel: 6533-2818; Bee Heong Palace, 134 Telok Ayer Street, tel: 6222-9074; Westlake, Block 4 Queen's Road, 02-139, tel: 6474-7283

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Foochow

Red wine chicken soup (above), a Foochow speciality.

Another Foochow must-have is deep-fried liver served with kai lan.

Geography: There are about 50,000 Foochows in Singapore. Other dialect groups closely related to Foochow include Hockchia, Henghua and Hockchew. Most come from the Fuzhou area in Fujian province.

Characteristics: Often cooked with home- made wine, using more meats than seafood.

Cooking methods: Simmering and stir-frying.

Famous dishes: Red wine chicken soup, deep-fried liver with kai lan, fishballs stuffed with minced pork, dumplings, cold crab.

Where to try: Singapura Seafood Restaurant, Block 9 Selegie House, 01-31 Selegie Road, tel: 6336-3255; Lee Do Restaurant, 61 Ubi Avenue 2, 01-13, tel: 6742-6233

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Cantonese

Roast duck, char siew and roast pork (right) are good starters for Cantonese meals. -- PHOTOS: BUSINESS TIMES, DESMOND FOO

Geography: Cantonese people make up about 15 per cent of the Chinese here. Many Cantonese come from Guangzhou, the biggest city in Guangdong province, in southern China.

Characteristics: Rich and robust flavours, tasty soups and dishes with 'wok hei', the charred aroma that infuses the food as a result of being wok-fried over high heat.

Cooking methods: Double-boiled soups, steaming, frying at high heat.

Famous dishes: Roast duck, char siew, steamed fish with soya sauce, braised sea cucumber and Chinese mushrooms, braised spare ribs, watercress soup with pork ribs and red dates, winter melon soup, century egg and lean pork porridge.

Where to try: Hua Ting, 442 Orchard Road, Orchard Hotel, tel: 6739-6666; Mitzi Cantonese Restaurant, 62 Tanjong Pagar Road, tel: 6222-0929

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Hainanese

Hainanese dishes include pork chop in tomato gravy (top); yi bua, a rice- flour kueh filled with coconut, sesame seeds and peanuts (above); and art bua, a rice-flour kueh doused in shredded coconut, and sesame seeds cooked in brown sugar (below).

Geography: Hainanese people come from Hainan island, which is China's southern-most and smallest province. The Singapore Hainan Society estimates that there are about 200,000 Hainanese people here.

Characteristics: Simple cooking with strong flavours.

Cooking methods: Methods typically include boiling and blanching. Cooking styles in Singapore have evolved to include Western-style dishes.

Famous dishes: Bai zhan ji or steamed white chicken which is often eaten with chicken rice; Hainanese pork chop served in a tomato gravy; yi bua, a rice flour kueh filled with coconut, sesame seeds and peanuts; art bua, a rice flour kueh doused in coconut and sesame seeds cooked in brown sugar.

Where to try: YY Kafei Dian, 37 Beach Road, 01-01, tel: 6336-8813; Yet Con, 25 Purvis Street, tel: 6337-6819; Chin Chin Eating House, 19 Purvis Street, tel: 6337-4640

FT: Singapore's Peranakan cuisine

Singapore’s Peranakan cuisine

By Nicholas Lander

Published: July 24 2010 01:51 | Last updated: July 24 2010 01:51

Chef Mary Chong (right) with her daughter Julie at Sedap, their family-run restaurant on London’s Old Street

The combination of an e-mail from a reader in Hong Kong and the onset of temperatures close to 30° Celsius in London prompted a recent visit to Sedap, a small family-run restaurant whose name means “delicious” in Malay Chinese.

The reader was telling me about her imminent return to her native Singapore. She signed off her e-mail by urging me, on my next trip there, to try Peranakan cooking, also known as Nyonya. My enthusiasm for this fascinating style of cooking had already been whetted by my last visit to the city. So rather than wait for my next trip, and spurred by the high temperatures reminiscent of steamy Singapore, I headed to Old Street in London, where Sedap serves authentic Peranakan food.

The names Peranakan and Nyonya refer to the descendants of Chinese traders who intermarried with women living along the British-controlled straits of Malaya or the Dutch-controlled island of Java in the 15th and 16th centuries. Over the years they absorbed many different culinary influences: Indian dry spices, Malay curries and Thai herbs, as well as the differing styles of the many Chinese regions. Then there is the buah keluak, the nut from the kepayang tree that grows wild across Indonesia and Malaysia, and is the distinctive ingredient of Peranakan cooking.

Now more than 500 years old, Peranakan cooking is far more than fusion. It is a manifestation of a very distinctive culture and its renaissance today among young Singaporeans is due to the fact that, like many others around the world, they are finally beginning to appreciate the importance of their forebears’ cooking. They see it as a reflection of a past way of living that could, even quite recently, have so easily disappeared.

The food bears the hallmarks of the best of home cooking. Many of the time-darkened dishes are slow cooked and so take on a rich, unctuous texture. The dishes are hot, so fitting for a steamy climate, but while less spicy than Indian or Thai food, the flavours are more intense than most Chinese food. A lot of work goes into Peranakan cooking, so creating it is a labour of love.

Two Singapore restaurants, True Blue, which opened in 2003, and Candlenut Kitchen, which opened six months ago, represent very different manifestations of Peranakan cooking.

True Blue is located next to the Peranakan Museum and is one of the most effective combinations of restaurant and museum I have come across. Black and white wedding pictures adorn the walls; cabinets are full of blue and white china; intricately embroidered costumes are on show alongside pairs of beaded shoes. Enlivened by a small courtyard, the room exudes Peranakan style.

In every other respect bar one, True Blue lives up to its reputation for authenticity. Set up by Benjamin Seck, it is family owned, a Peranakan tradition. His mother, Daisy Seah, is the chef and his sister, Irene Ong, is the pastry chef. The restaurant’s elegant crockery adds extra lustre to dishes such as the banana blossom salad with cucumber; minced chicken and prawn rolls; duck with sweet coriander powder; a rendition of the classic Malaysian beef rendang, beef simmered in coconut milk; and steamed tapioca balls topped with durian, the fruit that smells so strong that my Peranakan friend ordered it specifically because his fastidious wife was not eating with us. True Blue only wavers from complete authenticity in its owners’ decision not to serve the pork that is usually a central part of Peranakan cooking, out of deference to its Muslim customers.

The slight, rather nervous Malcolm Lee, who opened Candlenut Kitchen, is at 26 young enough not to share such inhibitions. Having graduated top of the class from the main Singapore culinary academy, he could have chosen any top professional kitchen to work in but decided instead to cook the dishes his grandmother once prepared for him. Although she is now too infirm to visit the restaurant, she ensures standards are maintained by sending Lee’s uncle along with dishes she has cooked for him to taste.

The simple, modern layout of the restaurant provides a marked contrast to a menu that includes such dishes as Mum’s curry and Yeye’s curry, described as a fourth generation recipe. But, as well as a definite sense of history, Lee’s menu also provides a strong connection to the wild ingredients that are the building blocks of Peranakan cooking.

The candlenut, after which the restaurant is named, comes from a tree found widely across Indonesia and Malaysia, and is used as a thickening agent in curries and sambals, the popular chilli-based sauce. But Lee’s dish of ayam buah keluak epitomises Peranakan cooking. These nuts, poisonous when first picked, have to be thoroughly soaked overnight. They are then cracked open and their contents are combined with minced prawn, sugar and salt. These are pounded in a mortar before being pushed back into the shell and served with slow-cooked chicken and pork ribs. They add a distinctive flavour, which some find too strong, as well as a particular aroma. The restaurant charges S$2 (£1) for each additional nut (on top of the two or three already in the dish), a price well worth paying.

Buah keluak nuts are rarely found outside Asia even in the few restaurants that do specialise in this particular style of cooking. Until 2009, a restaurant called Nyonya existed on a V-shaped site in Notting Hill Gate, west London. But then the family members who were working there decided to set up on their own, opening Sedap.

It is a family affair. Father Dheng Chye Yeoh and daughters, Julie and Purdy, run the restaurant while their mother, known to one and all as Mary Chong, is the chef. A photo of her mother hangs above the restaurant because as Julie explains: “Mum cooks but all the recipes are my grandmother’s.” Sedap’s food and friendly service attract a diverse clientele from Singaporeans living in London to the men who served in the British army in Malaysia many years ago.

Peranakan cooking occupies a distinctive place in the world today. It is part of a universal craving for what we perceive as the comforting dishes of the past. But unlike so many other cooking styles that have travelled seemingly so easily, and apart from a few rare exceptions such as Sedap, Peranakan food is at its best and most authentic in that particular region of Asia where it evolved centuries ago.

nicholas.lander@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/lander

.....................................

Details

True Blue, 47/49 Armenian Street, Singapore, www.truebluecuisine.com

Candlenut Kitchen, 25 Neil Road, Singapore, www.candlenutkitchen.com

Sedap, 102 Old Street, London, www.sedap.co.uk

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.

ST: New-style preserves - preserved fruit snacks

Lifestyle

Home > Lifestyle > Taste > Story

May 30, 2010

New-style preserves

Preserved fruit snacks have been revamped with new flavours to attract young buyers

By Veronica Koh and Kezia Toh

Adding variety is the way to draw customers jaded with the old flavours of preserved fruit snacks, say retailers such as East Ocean. --ST PHOTOS: LAU FOOK KONG, BENJAMIN NG

Preserved fruit snacks have been popular with Singaporeans of all ages.

But the kiam sng ti (literally salty, sour, sweet in Hokkien) tidbits of yore have been made over with an explosion of new flavours.

On the shelves of the supermarket snack sections, among the usual raisins and nuts are snazzy packets of preserved fruit with exotic flavours such as green tea and mint. And these new-fangled flavours are proving to be a hit with consumers.

Said accountant Linda Wong, 28: 'I've been eating preserved fruit since I was very young and I love the new flavours that are available now, especially the mint ones. They add variety to the usual products.'

For 62-year-old taxi driver Lim Hock An, the new flavours add spice to a traditional snack. He said: 'I'm quite used to the traditional flavours that have been around for a long time but the new flavours in the market are just as good, if not better.'

Food retail company Umeya, which specialises in preserved fruit snacks, has expanded to 14 outlets since it first opened at Liang Court in 1999. The chain offers about 20 different types of flavours of preserved fruit snacks at its outlets, from more common ones such as shredded plum strips to unusual ones such as licorice lemon.

To keep customers coming back, new products are frequently brought in. Said co-founder of Umeya, Mr Peter Tan: 'We try to source for interesting and tasty new flavours and introduce them at our outlets when we find them.'

Some of the new flavours the company has recently introduced include Dried Phillipine Green Mango and Hot Guava.

Its competitor, snacks retail outlet East Ocean, brings in 10 new flavours every three months.

Said co-founder of East Ocean, Mr Alan Loh, 53, who runs the business with his wife: 'Even though preserved fruit is a traditional snack more popular with the older generation, it can be revamped to attract younger customers by packaging it nicely or by bringing in new flavours for added variety.'

His products are mostly imported from Taiwan.

He added: 'While it used to be mainly aunties who patronised my shop, I see more youngsters buying preserved fruit now, including boys. They enjoy very sour and salty flavours, so I try to bring in what I think they would like.'

Some consumers like these snacks because they believe that they aid digestion and relieve nausea.

Said housewife Alison Wee, 39: 'It is good for dispelling bloatedness. And when I was pregnant, I ate them frequently to relieve nausea.'

However, according to nutritionists, there is no scientific evidence that preserved fruit snacks have any medicinal effect.

And while Singaporeans are fond of their preserved fruit, eating too much of it may be bad for health.

Nutritionist Teo Kiok Seng of private nutrition consultancy Nutrition Network Services explained: 'Preserved fruit is usually high in salt, sweeteners and other food additives such as sulphites. And during food processing, much of the fruit's nutrients is destroyed.'

Those with high blood pressure should also steer clear of it, as the high salt content can cause a rise in blood pressure, added Ms Teo.

Instead, preserved fruit lovers may want to consider the healthier Japanese pickled plum, umeboshi.

It is typically prepared using less salt and steeped in seasoned liquid or vinegar.

But this makes no difference to those who enjoy their pickled nibbles.

Student Kelvin Ho, 19, said: 'I care more about whether it tastes good than whether it has health benefits. So many snacks out there are bad for you anyway, one more won't make a difference.'

keziatoh@sph.com.sg

vkoh@sph.com.sg

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Bestsellers

LICORICE LEMON

What: Whole dried lemons with a tough powdery texture and intense sourness, mixed with the woody sweetness of licorice.

Where: Umeya stores

Price: $3.60 per 100g

SEEDLESS COOL PLUM

What: Velvety flat folds of preserved plum with a subtle mint flavour.

Where: Umeya stores

Price: $6.80 per 100g

TAMARIND MANGO

What: Thin tough strips of dried mango dotted with candied tamarind.

Where: Umeya stores

Price: $2.40 per 100g

GREEN TEA DRIED SEEDLESS PRUNE

What: Conveniently packaged in nifty resealable packs, these finger-sized pieces of dried prunes combine an intensely sour flavour with the bitter piquancy of green tea.

Where: Cold Storage supermarkets

Price: $2 for a packet of 30g

BAN MEI (Mandarin for half plum)

What: Neatly sliced halves of crisp preserved plum with the seed intact. Sweet and pleasantly tangy.

Where: East Ocean Foodstuff, B1-03B Bugis Junction

Price: $2.80 per 100g

BLUEBERRY PRESERVED PLUM

What: Bite-sized cuts of preserved plum dusted with blueberry powder. Tart and sweet.

Where: Most medicinal shops, such as Goodtrust Marine Product Trading, Block 269 Queen Street, 01-245, tel: 6336-8385

Price: $2 for a packet of 200g, three packets for $5

RYUJIN ORGANIC UMEBOSHI

What: Organic salt-pickled plums from Japan, which are said to be a healthier option. Smooth and velvety texture, laced with a salty and sour aftertaste.

Where: Essential Living at Far East Shopping Centre, 15-08. Also available at Paragon Market Place and ThreeSixty Market Place at Ion Orchard

Price: $19.90 per 150g

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Where to buy

Umeya

14 branches island-wide, including outlets at:

Raffles City Shopping Centre B1-47, open: 10am to 10pm daily

Junction 8 Shopping Centre B1-02, open: 10.30 am to 10pm daily

Yue Hwa Chinese Products

Two branches island-wide at:

70 Eu Tong Sen Street, open: 11am to 9pm (Sundays to Fridays), 11am to 10pm (Saturdays)

Jurong Point Shopping Centre, 03-05/06/07, open: 10am to 10pm daily

East Ocean Foodstuff

Bugis Junction B1-03B, open: 10am to 10pm daily

FT: Food at Singapore's Tiong Bahru market

Food at Singapore’s Tiong Bahru market

By Nicholas Lander

Published: May 21 2010 23:31 | Last updated: May 21 2010 23:31

Carrie Chen prepares a pot of Iron Goddess tea at Tea Bone Zen Mind in Singapore

At the home of a food and wine lover in Singapore recently, I enjoyed a meal as good as any I would hope for in a restaurant. Between dishes such as kong bak (marinated pork in a bun), and abacus seed balls (similar to gnocchi but made of yam and so-called because of their similarity to abacus balls), I asked my fellow diners for suggestions on where to eat over the next two days.

Many recommended Tiong Bahru market for breakfast, a 10-minute taxi ride north of the city centre. So at 8am the following day, in already sweltering heat, I sat down at a corner café opposite the market, in the company of five of the previous night’s guests. We were handed bowls of clear, peppery pork rib soup, dark brown strips of bean curd, white rice cakes and tang oh, a steamed, green vegetable. When I offered to pay the bill of S$30 (£15) for five, I was promptly rebuffed. “You can pay when I come to London,” one said. “It’s far more expensive there.”

Aside from its good value, there are other reasons to visit the market. Its two floors include many of the hawker stalls common to the rest of the city, serving prawn noodles, chicken and rice, and the highly popular carrot cake (the latter, in fact, made from radishes and rice flour), with many vendors preparing the food from scratch on site. One particularly popular stall is Teck Seng Soya Bean Milk, where Ah Song and his wife serve freshly made bean curd and warm soy milk from 5.30am, having started preparations at midnight.

The market is in an area of 1950s buildings, no more than a few storeys high, in contrast to the skyscrapers you see in much of the city. It is increasingly popular with those who come to be reminded of what Singapore was like 50 years ago.

Referencing Singapore’s culinary past is what drives chef Damian D’Silva, who will open his Soul Kitchen restaurant in its National Museum in July. Among the dishes he will be reviving is roti jala, a pancake served with curry commonly sold by Muslim hawkers, and kai fan (chicken rice), another popular street dish. When I ask D’Silva about his favourite restaurant, he takes me to the Changi Road, a 10-minute drive from the airport, for an unforgettable meal at a roadside restaurant called Seng Kee Black Chicken Herbal Soup. In business since the early 1970s, the restaurant’s setting is far from romantic. Across the road is a petrol station and, by day, motorcycles from the next-door shop crowd the pavement. But at 6pm, the motorcycles are replaced with tables and chairs, which are filled within minutes and remain so all evening.

The food is extraordinary good value for money: our meal comprised steamed tail of red snapper; clams in a sauce that managed to be at once sour, spicy and sweet; fried tofu with minced pork; beans with spicy sambal chilli; rice and beer, and came to S$50 (£25) for two. Seng Kee is also the only restaurant where I have been served by a waiter with a pair of pliers, tools the staff use to carry hot metal plates to the table.

While Seng Kee is a one-off, the 11 branches of the Imperial Treasure Restaurant Group, founded by Alfred Leung, are giving great pleasure to many across the city.

Its most recent opening, a fine dining restaurant in the Marina Bay Sands Casino, is already popular with the Chinese high rollers excited by its top French wines, but I head to its much less expensive noodle and congee restaurant in the basement of the vast Ion shopping mall.

With a menu offering more than 200 items, this is an ultra-modern version of a dim sum restaurant that will delight any shopper. Congee, noodles, the flakiest roast pork puffs and an assortment of dim sum came to S$80 (£40) for two.

The past, present and future of Singapore merge on the second floor of 38A Seah Street, by the Raffles Hotel, now home to a shop and tea room, Tea Bone Zen Mind, owned by Carrie Chen.

As a little girl, afternoon tea was a fixture in her life because her grandmother served it to the British forces. Today, she blends tea from China and Taiwan and commissions artists to produce exceptional teaware: a small but equally memorable example of how food and hospitality imbue the life of this enterprising city.

nicholas.lander@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/lander

............................

Details

Seng Kee Black Chicken Herbal Soup, 467 Changi Road, tel: +656746 4089

Imperial Treasure Noodle & Congee House, ION Orchard #B317, tel: +656509 8283

Tea Bone Zen Mind, 38A Seah Street, tel: +656334 4212

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.

ST: You are what you eat

Lifestyle

Home > Lifestyle > Reflect > Story

Mar 21, 2010

You are what you eat

Food is never just food, is it? It embraces who we are, who we have been and who we want to be

By Wong Kim Hoh

On the fourth day of Chinese New Year last month, a horde of relatives congregated in my mother's home for dinner. First aunt, second aunt and fourth uncle were there, so too an assortment of cousins, nephews and nieces as well as their spouses and significant others.

They turned up, not because of the prospect of 'yu, har, hai' (literally fish, prawn and crab in Cantonese), a colloquialism meaning a right royal feast.

Frankly, most of us were pretty feasted out by then. You would be too if you had been gorging on various permutations of chicken, duck, pork, sea cucumber, mushrooms and aforementioned seafood at every meal since New Year's Eve.

In fact, mum did not prepare many dishes that night. There was lotus root and peanut soup, sweetened with pork ribs and red dates, which she brewed for several hours.

There was braised pork belly done Hakka style, marinated with, among other things, fermented red bean curd, five spice powder, ginger juice, soya sauce and Chinese wine, and then stewed and served with black fungus.

And there was what had brought everyone there: a big pot of choi geuk, Cantonese for leftovers. Yes, scraps of roast duck, fried chicken, chilli prawns, braised mushrooms, salvaged from previous meals and stewed with 3kg of mustard greens in a piquant broth seasoned with tamarind juice, dried chillies, bean paste and ketchup.

By the time the choi geuk made its appearance, everyone had already abandoned conversations, the idiot box and their mahjong tiles to gather around my mother's old formica dining table, bowl with chopsticks in hand.

It's a ritual, one which takes place every year.

Choi geuk is a humble dish but it's not hard to fathom why we love it so.

It's a deviously addictive conspiracy of flavours - sweet, sour, bitter, spicy - and textures. It's also light on the palate; you can consume bowls of it without being weighed down by that heavy feeling in the pit of your stomach when you take on more than you can chew.

But I suspect there is another reason why we are so hooked on it: It tastes of nostalgia, love and family.

It reminds us of our beloved grandmother, a superb cook who first introduced it to us. Over the decades, she served it up lovingly each Chinese New Year, a tradition which my mother took over when my granny passed on.

I was shooting the breeze recently with Chef Andre Chiang from Jaan par Andre restaurant at Swissotel. Considered by many foodies as the most accomplished culinary artist in Singapore, Chiang waxed exuberant about food and life.

Food, he declared, makes you feel alive as a person; it is also like a love song and can touch you in different ways.

I agree. Food has a soul. Ingredients, skill and artistry may yield a stunner on the palate, but other intangibles can add taste, tinge and texture. The person who cooks it and how, the people you eat it with, the place and your state of mind when you consume it... all these will affect the way flavours dance on your tongue.

I believe that food made with love tastes a lot better than food made without.

If you were to ask me what my idea of the perfect breakfast is, I'd say my late granny's mincemeat noodles.

She often made that for my sister and me, when we were schoolchildren living with her.

She would prepare a sweet broth from pork bones and dried anchovies the night before. At the crack of dawn, she would wake and beaver under a dim light in the tiny kitchen of her one-room flat - mincing pork, dicing chives, frying shallots - so that my sister and I would have steaming bowls of noodles when we woke.

There was so much love in what she did and so much attention she paid to detail. She knew exactly how many spoonfuls of her homemade chilli sauce I liked in my broth and how soggy my sister preferred her noodles.

And that love, more than anything else, was what made those noodles so nourishing and satisfying.

Food prepared with love is always eaten with love. We savour it, we dig in with our hands and we pay homage to the care which has gone into its making with wide eyes, slack jaws and delirious sighs.

Which is why I believe good food should always be shared with good friends and enjoyed in great company. It has the power to strengthen bonds, and deepen ties.

There is nothing quite like sitting at the sushi counter in Akashi with two of your colleagues, trying to outdo one another with orgasmic moans, when chef Melvin serves up a choice slice of toro or a sublime helping of uni.

Or making small work of an entire suckling pig at Beng Hiang with two friends as you trade gossip and discuss the woes of the world.

When I'm feeling particularly happy and gregarious, I like to invite good friends over for dinner.

Recently, I hosted one such gathering, serving a rack of prime ribs, which I roasted after leaving to sit overnight in a marinade of hoi sin and soya sauce, honey, garlic and Chinese wine.

I also dished up fried crabs in a thick sauce made from shallots, garlic, chilli and caramelised fresh tomatoes; as well as giant tiger prawns which I fried at very high heat and coated with a spicy tomato sauce my mother taught me to make.

Dessert was a batch of banana cupcakes - filled with pieces of walnut and bitter orange chocolate - baked and served with scoops of lychee martini ice cream.

The reaction was gratifying. It brought on smiles, it fuelled chatter and it filled the apartment with an affecting sense of warmth and camaraderie.

While the sight of empty serving dishes and mountains of crustacean shells on plates was great for the ego, what gave the greater satisfaction was the fact that in my own little way, I had spread a little happiness and given a little pleasure.

Food writer Molly Wizenberg wrote in A Homemade Life: Stories And Recipes From My Kitchen Table: 'When I walk into my kitchen today, I am not alone. Whether we know it or not, none of us is.

'We bring fathers and mothers and kitchen tables, and every meal we have ever eaten. Food is never just food. It's also a way of getting at something else: who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be.'

How true.

kimhoh@sph.com.sg

Sumiko Tan is on leave.

NY Times: Singapore's Culinary Melting Pot

October 18, 2009

Choice Tables

Singapore’s Culinary Melting Pot

By GISELA WILLIAMS

UNTIL recently, Singapore’s food scene was ruled by two very different eating experiences: the city’s venerated street stalls, appropriately glorified by food writers like Calvin Trillin; and upscale European-style restaurants like Iggy’s and Au Jardin.

But a small group of chefs is reinventing the city’s traditional food culture, finding a balancing point between the city’s cheap but hard to navigate street food and the expensive white-tablecloth spots.

This past May I dove into the city’s restaurant scene along with a food-loving college friend who has lived in Singapore for the last four years. I made a point of waiting until after my trip to contact K. F. Seetoh, the acknowledged rajah of the local food guidebook series, Makansutra, whom many food writers before me had followed around the city. I wanted to rely on my own instincts and not be influenced by his favorites. So it was especially remarkable to discover that restaurants from the two Singapore-based chefs he respects the most — Damian D’Silva and Willin Low — also ended up on the list of my favorites.

When I later asked Mr. Seetoh what he believed was driving the city’s next generation of chefs, he answered that it was Singapore’s rich food culture.

“Tomorrow’s flavors aren’t just about new or old in Singapore,” he said, “it’s about ingenuity for a market that’s very fickle, choosy and unforgiving.”

BIG D’S GRILL

The chef Damian D'Silva set up his shop, Big D's Grill, with an ambitious young team of sous-chefs in the middle of a small hawker center. He serves traditional Singaporean cuisine that incorporates Chinese, Malay and Indonesian ingredients and techniques.

Big D’s Grill (46 Holland Drive, No. 01-359; 65-9662-7040) is in a former coffee shop in the middle of a small hawker center. Although it has the same simple plastic tables and glaring fluorescent lighting that you’ll find at a typical Singaporean street food stand, there are obvious signs that something unusual is cooking: an ambitious young team of sous-chefs is squeezed together in the closet-size open kitchen; professional pots and pans hang from the wall; and a small crowd of conspicuously stylish urbanites is waiting in line or crowding in at the tables.

In the center of it all is Damian D’Silva — Big D himself — a barrel-chested bear of a man who towers above his assistants. Although the self-taught 50-something started cooking at a young age with his Singapore-born grandfather, Mr. D’Silva came into the restaurant business fairly late.

In his early 40s he abandoned his career as an aeronautical engineer, flew off to Europe and spent two years working in kitchens in San Sebastián, Spain, and in Sardinia. Back in Singapore he picked up more experience at several European restaurants before he opened his first cafe: the Soul Kitchen on Purvis Street.

Singaporean food bloggers still write rapturously of the Soul Kitchen; it was a cultish spot that served a mix of European and Peranakan food, a traditional Singaporean cuisine that incorporates Chinese, Malay and Indonesian ingredients and techniques. Mr. D’Silva still maintains that formula at Big D’s, and his fans have followed, even after Big D’s moved locations earlier this year.

Those fans appreciate the chef’s attention to detail, most notable in the intricate dishes that sometimes take a full day to prepare, like a “lost” Cantonese recipe from his childhood, loh kai yik, a stew of braised chicken wings in fermented soy bean sauce, which Mr. D’Silva might offer as an off-the-menu weekend special to his in-the-know regulars.

One of those regulars, wearing a tailored black suit and matching hipster glasses, was in front of my friend and me in line. He turned around to look at us with a curious, friendly stare and asked, “Where did you hear about this place?” When I told him I had read about it online, he responded: “You’re lucky to have found it. It’s the neighborhood’s insider secret,” and went on to rave about the fish and chips and the rib-eye.

A braised pork belly dish at Big D's Grill.

But we weren’t at Big D’s to eat steak. Instead I wanted to taste what the food bloggers rave about most often: spicy pastas and Peranakan dishes. We ordered the anchovy pasta (17.90 Singapore dollars, or $12.43 at 1.44 Singapore dollars to the U.S. dollar), crabmeat linguine (10.90 Singapore dollars) and sambal buah keluak (12.90 dollars), a Peranakan dish made with finely minced pork and ground buah keluak, an Indonesian nut with pitch-black meat with an earthy, rich flavor; it has been called the truffle of Asia.

“Mix some of the buah keluak sauce in with the anchovy pasta,” Mr. D’Silva suggested.

The combination was impressive — an explosion of salt and earth with a hit of spice — but almost too powerful to repeat more than two or three times. On its own, the anchovy pasta was perfectly balanced. Likewise, the sambal, served simply with steamed rice, was complex and rich and unlike anything I have ever tasted, and the crab meat linguine was thick with fresh meat and a rich sweet tomato sauce with a touch of peppery spice.

WILD ROCKET

Wild Rocket is in the designer youth hostel called the Hangout Hotel on Mount Emily Park. The out-of-the-way location requires searching, but restaurant regulars find the trip a small price to pay for the contemporary gourmet take on Singaporean and Western comfort food.

Thanks to its out-of-the-way location within a designer youth hostel, the Hangout Hotel on Mount Emily Park, Wild Rocket (10A Upper Wilkie Road; 65-6339-9448; www.wildrocket.com.sg) requires searching out. But restaurant regulars find the trip a small price to pay for the chef Willin Low’s contemporary gourmet take on Singaporean and Western comfort food, which he calls Mod Sin (modern Singapore).

The dining room at Wild Rocket.

During our visit, on a Saturday afternoon, all the tables were loaded with animated, well-dressed locals. Our view through the dining room’s floor-to-ceiling windows was of a parking lot, but once the food started to arrive we were fixated entirely on our plates. Having opted for the six-course chef’s menu (58 Singapore dollars), our first taste of Mr. Low’s cooking was a crispy espresso-size pastry shell filled with laksa mayo tiger prawns — a nod to one of his signature dishes, the laksa pesto linguine with Tiger prawns and quail eggs, which regulars have forbidden him to take off the menu. The pesto is made from the laksa leaf, an Asian herb that has an intensely minty, peppery flavor. This initial bite — a rich explosion of pesto and the prawns — was enough to let you know you were in the hands of a chef who, like Mr. D’Silva, wants to engrave the tastes of Singapore deep in your taste buds.

At Wild Rocket, one of Willin Low's signature dishes is the laksa pesto linguine with tiger prawns and quail eggs. Regulars have forbidden him to take it off the menu.

The next course, a refreshing and light peppercorn and sesame chicken salad with “pasta” made from thinly cut ribbons of cucumber, cooled things down before a bowl of crab congee soup, served with a tiger prawn and egg emulsion — a dressed-up version of local comfort food.

The highlight of the meal was an excellent fish dish: roast Chilean sea bass masak merah with kaffir leaves. Masak merah is a sweet and spicy Malaysian tomato-based paste typically served with chicken; Mr. Low draped his version of the sauce over the juicy fish fillet, which sat on a bed of green asparagus.

One of my dining companions had ordered another of the chef’s most blogged-about dishes: the crab meat linguine in chili tomato cream. It was creamier and richer than Big D’s version and left a lingering bit of spice on the tongue.

The dish is a somewhat Westernized version of one of Singapore’s most popular dishes, chili crab. Both chefs have translated it into an unforgettable pasta dish, despite the fact that both shudder at the mention of fusion cuisines. “Con-fusion cuisine,” Mr. Low joked.

“East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” Mr. D’Silva said. “I’m not a fan of fusion, but sometimes when I eat a dish I think, ‘This can be improved on.’ I believe something new should only be added when it truly makes it a better dish.”

RESTAURANT FIFTYTHREE

The diverse food culture of Singapore is driving the city's next generation of chefs. Michael Han, left, at right, from Restaurant FiftyThree, takes an avant-garde approach to his cuisine. Tracking down the best ingredients, he experiments with cooking and combining them until he creates a dish deemed innovative and successful enough to be put on the menu.

Michael Han, the head chef and a co-owner of Restaurant FiftyThree (53 Armenian Street; 65-6334-5535; www.fiftythree.com.sg), which opened in February, is a very different kind of local cooking talent. Singapore’s most exciting chefs tend to focus on one of two schools of cuisine: a style of cooking based on emotion, which involves perfecting and modernizing regional comfort foods; and the kind of cerebral, mad-scientist cooking popularized by the Spanish chef Ferran Adrià.

Mr. Han, a 32-year-old Singapore native, is from the latter school. He started cooking in his late teens and apprenticed at two of the most famous avant-garde restaurants in the world: Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck in Britain and Andoni Aduriz’s Mugaritz in San Sebastián. And while these days it seems that every city has its molecular gastronomy specialist, Mr. Han stands out for both his ambition and innovation.

Like the food, the intimate décor at Restaurant FiftyThree is modern and multitextured.

FiftyThree, which opened early this year in partnership with Singapore’s prestigious Les Amis restaurant group, is in a charming two-story colonial-style wooden row building. There’s a private dining room and a semi-open kitchen on the first level, and a wine cellar and main dining hall with five tables on the second.

The intimate restaurant’s décor, like the food, it turned out, is modern and multitextured, and you can sense that Mr. Han, who is behind both, is a perfectionist obsessed with the smallest detail.

Mr. Han’s technique is to research feverishly and track down the best ingredients he can get his hands on and then experiment with multiple ways of cooking and combining them until he creates a dish that he and his close-knit team deem innovative and successful enough to put on the menu. The obsession with detail makes the expense (198 Singapore dollars) of the mandatory seven-course dinner menu a little easier to swallow.

One course, titled Potato and Duckweed, Coffee and Parmesan, appeared to be potatoes on a bed of earthy soil served on a large, smooth stone. In fact the “soil” consisted of coffee, Parmesan and grated chestnuts, while the potatoes (heirlooms, of course) were first oven baked, then cooked sous vide. It may not have been the kind of dish you find yourself craving daily (like Big D’s anchovy pasta), but it was memorable nonetheless.

Even the petit fours were an unexpected adventure. We were each offered a jelly wafer, served on a smooth dark stone, by Leandros Stagogiannis, the restaurant’s sous-chef and pastry chef. He described them as the perfect gin and tonic. “You can decide on how strong you want it,” Mr. Stagogiannis said. “Just let it dissolve on your tongue until you’re satisfied.”

Someone at the table wondered about the restaurant’s fixation on stones; another of my dining companions answered: “But of course! It’s a gin and tonic — on the rocks!”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company