A week after returning from Singapore, I’ve had time to process the food experience somewhat. It’s such a starburst of flavours, colours and influences, each with its own unique history, that what I’m left with is a jigsaw whose disparate pieces join to create a bright picture. My writing can’t capture the essence — I fear it might emerge as a mere listing. Food historians have written muchly of the Chinese, Malay and Indian elements… and then there are the dishes that are considered typically Singaporean.
Over the week we were there, I tried to sample as much as possible. The memories are a bit blurred, but I remember the Hainanese chicken rice. White breast of chicken delicately cooked and sliced up, accompanied by rice cooked in fat, probably duck. This had the smell of intensely concentrated chicken broth, but was minimally spiced. The meat, so tender it could be cut with a spoon, was in a dark, thin, savoury juice, and the rice was flavourful and rich.
Oyster omelette. Photo: Wiki Commons
At the same place we had an oyster omelette. I’m intrigued at the implement they seem to use for all Eastern cooking; there’s a wok, of course. But instead of a long-handled flat spoon they use a rounded ladle, which is wielded with such dexterity that they manage to swiftly fry up noodles or green leaves or eggs without battering the food. The oyster omelette was fried at high heat in a prodigious quantity of oil. The eggs were stirred in the wok, with the round ladle, and the omelette fried so quickly that it retained its freshness. So many fresh, plump, firm oysters were added that we could barely finish them. Most food courts and hawker centres had huge tubs of halved green kalamansi limes, and we squeezed them on to most everything. Maybe it’s just the novelty, but I do believe that the kalamansi lime has a much richer fragrance than does our local everyday nimbu .
Kaya toast and laksa
The coffee shops, kopitiams , apart, there are cafes where we could have the famed kaya toast. The description, coconut-egg jam on bread, sounded just up my street, particularly because the kaya recipe can include pandan, my favourite flavour. Unfortunately, I was underwhelmed: the bread has to be sliced white, which is now exciting, there’s a layer of yellow salted butter, like our Amul, so thick it’s a slab — not that I mind — and there’s a pale greenish spread, the kaya. It tasted of nothing much, but maybe I should taste it elsewhere next time. It was brunch time, so we also had laksa. Somehow I keep trying laksa, and somehow I’m always disappointed. This had a nice coconutty soup, as many long beansprouts as noodles, a hardboiled egg, and bits of chicken and fried tofu. It contained all the flavours, including fish sauce and coconut, but didn’t add up to much. Probably this wasn’t the best outlet.
Island Penang Kitchen
My friend of more than 50 years has relocated to Singapore, and, apart from spending time with her, a large part of my motivation in making this trip was to eat with her. She loves and understands food, and is game to try new things whenever she can. One day we ate in her home in the bay area, a bright, welcoming apartment overlooking the harbour, with a cool evening breeze making air conditioning unnecessary. Despite our pleas that she not spend time slaving over a hot stove, she had cooked. But some little effect we had made her order in one dish, a local speciality. It was so good that on another night we walked over to a restaurant, Island Penang Kitchen, and ate the same thing — assam curry fish head.
It’s not from our Assam. I discovered on an earlier trip to Malaysia that the word ‘assam’ is used for curries with a thin, slightly tart base. And fish heads are not my thing — I’m Punjabi. But it was so delicious and so new to me, that I tried asking the chef for the recipe. He either couldn’t understand or affected not to, so I don’t have it. But I googled it and what I can put together is that it has vegetables, usually okra and aubergines, and that the curry is thinner and more intense than most of our Indian ones.
It had the very strong flavour of roasted coriander seeds, a mild underlay of mixed dry spices, a faint echo of sambar powder, and the sourness of tamarind. My friend carved out a piece of fish for me that didn’t reveal that it was part of the head.
It was probably golden snapper, fresh, clean and flaky. The aubergines were cut into long batons and the okra, also cut long, had no sliminess. The curry was orangey brown, just the right thinness to mix into white steamed rice. It needed no accompaniment. It had a richness of textures, including fried beancurd skin. We also ordered another fish, steamed and with a thick red gravy. And spinach, simply stir-fried, and minus the dried fish they usually serve it with. Though the pièce de résistance was the Assam curry fish head.
Pepper or chilli crab?
Another day, we ate what I had long planned, crabs — both Singapore chilli crab and pepper crab. This was in a restaurant called Long Beach on Dempsey Road, and after they served the whole crabs, so that we could ooh and aah, they whisked the creatures away and took them apart so that we could eat without fracturing our teeth on cracking the shells.
The first dish to arrive was Gai Lan, or Kailan, a deep, emerald green brassica, sautéed gently with light soya sauce and generous amounts of chopped garlic. The leaves were tender and succulent with none of the sharpness of mustard. Some of us asked for rice, but the two of us had buns, golden brown, mildly sweetened rectangular pieces of deep-fried dough — a bit like doughnuts minus the sugariness.
We dunked bits in the sauce: sweet chilli, to accompany the crab. Of the two crabs, I preferred the pepper flavoured one, whose dark, hot sauce was a startling contrast to the white almost-sweetness of the crab flesh. Later, as we waited outside for a taxi, we smelled the odours wafting from Samy’s next door — agarbatti and sambar!
Wagyu beef rendang. Photo: Wiki Commons
But the next day we went to a fancy place called Candlenut, also on Dempsey Road, where we ate Peranakan food with a stylish twist. Peranakan is a Malay word for Straits born Chinese. Of course I asked for the shrimp omelette, but the most delicious two dishes were wagyu beef rendang and the king tiger prawn with gula Melaka coconut sauce, lemon grass and Thai basil.
The rendang was probably the best I’ve eaten, the meat fork-tender and the flavours rich and deep, like an old, multi-hued tapestry. And the prawn’s gula sweetened coconut sauce was delicate and unexpected. Not only do the ingredients of this dish literally come from different parts of the globe, but their joining is a metaphor for the culinary world of Singapore.
Where the writer reflects about every association with food. vasundharachauhan9@gmail.com
