Posted by Wan Yan Ling, October 20, 2008 at 2:45 PM
Ahhh, a nice cuppa tea and a sit down. The sky may be falling in, but there's always time for a break, especially the kind that gives you a minute or two to yourself and something sweet to nibble on. Some people "forget to eat" when they're stressed (what a concept!). I forget lots of things (like the ironing, or a looming paper deadline), but I've not quite found a way to ignore a rumbling belly. A good thing, given I'm always left restored and better able to take on the world post-break.
You'll have your own perfect tea-and-munchie combination, of course. But to my belly, nothing beats a piping hot pineapple bun, fresh from the oven, accompanied by a rich, milky mug of yuan yang or "mandarin duck" tea.
Pineapple buns or bo lo bao are perhaps the most popular any-time snack in Hong Kong, Macau, and amongst the diasporic Chinese communities in the West. A soft, fluffy, yeast bun is crowned with a golden brown, "pineapple" cap that ranges from a sweet, crumbly "skin" (at a stingy bakery), to a buttery, almost streusel-like topping. Despite its name, no pineapples were harmed in the baking, because the "pineapple" here refers to the similarity of the bun's checkered top to a pineapple's skin. If you ask me, I reckon it's because the pineapple is a homonym for "prosperity comes" in Chinese, and so the more "pineapples" the Chinese can bring into their lives, the better.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, October 13, 2008 at 2:15 PM
Creamed corn has not a whit of cream yet lives up to its name through virtue of its milky, golden creaminess. Pig intestine noodles are completely vegetarian, yet no one would disagree with their resemblance to porcine tracts. Most foods deserve their names—even if the names don't always make sense. Because more often than not, you can see where the original christener was coming from.
Yet the one thing that stumps me is shaved ice. It doesn't matter what it's called—Japanese kakigōri, Pinoy halo halo, Korean bingsu, Thai nam kang sai, or Chinese bao bing—none of them have a consistency anywhere close to what I'd term "shaved." Ground, maybe—with their coarse, gritty grains that kind of lump together before going crunch in your mouth. But shaved?
Bear with me here, please. Think of the last time you fixed pasta or dessert. Think of the curls of cheese and chocolate slowly wafting from your microplane onto your food. Think of the richly marbled, paper-thin shavings of jamón ibérico that you paid $180 a pound for—every cent worth it. Think of flakes of Maldon sea salt and the way they dissolve expansively on your tongue. Then think of the sharp, granular bite of kosher salt. Am I the only one who's confused?
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, September 29, 2008 at 1:45 PM
Crisp, golden Chinese crullers enrobed in silken, barely-there rice flour rolls, then lightly drizzled with your choice of sauces—a savory-sweet, fermented flour paste (a lot more approachable than it sounds), nutty, roasted sesame, seasoned soy, and a vinegary chile. Zhar leung is a dish so simple that hardly anyone gets it right.
A thin sheet of batter is ladled over a steamer.
First, the steamed rice flour rolls have to be so thin as to be translucent, yet be strong enough not to tear when picked up with chopsticks. Good rice flour rolls will boast a glossy sheen and a pleasingly elastic “bite,” which will then yield to a dreamy, melt-away texture. The only way to achieve this is for the cook to make the rolls on-the-spot –because anything this delicate will turn unappetizingly soggy if left waiting on a warmer.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, September 22, 2008 at 2:45 PM
Wandering the streets of Hong Kong, I stumbled upon a sight I’d usually expect to see at a farmers’ market—a fresh noodle store. Unlike the oftentimes too-pricey-for-a-grad student handmade pasta, these noodles were much more affordable. At an average of four nests of noodles for sixty-five cents (each nest feeds one!) it made me wonder: what makes Italian pasta so much more expensive? Is it the ingredients? Or could it be that pasta-making is far more laborious than Chinese noodle-making? Are the two processes very different?
History is littered with stories of how the string-like food made from unleavened dough came about. Some claim that Marco Polo introduced noodles to the Italians on his return from China (now debunked), and that these same noodles followed the Arabian conquerors to Sicily during the 10th century.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, September 15, 2008 at 2:00 PM
Fish is a big deal in Asia. The older generations can tell, at a taste, if the fish presented to them was wild caught or farm-raised. More remarkably, they can tell if the fish had been gaily swimming just prior to being cooked, or if it had been bottom-up for hours. This super palate can be quite the annoyance, especially when everyone else around the table is starving. A highly exacting uncle of mine has a reputation for sending fish that’s not screamingly fresh back to the kitchen with a caustic “Please, have some.” I love him dearly, but I make it a point of having a pre-meal meal before dining with him. My stomach has rumbled through one too many perfectly good fish being turned away at the table—for being just shy of screamingly fresh.
Having said that, I reckon Uncle would be quite content with the offerings at Hong Kong’s outdoor seafood markets. Entire streets are lined with vendors, and tubs upon tubs of live fish, shellfish, and even frogs. From geoduck with their elephant trunks, to prickly sea urchins, and alien-looking shellfish, the dazzling array would render even the most demanding of gourmets satisfied. Plus, competition among vendors is intense, guaranteeing you the best and freshest of the day’s catch.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, September 8, 2008 at 2:00 PM
If you were on the run and had no access to electricity, what food would you pack? Field rations, space food, and/or squeeze packs of Nutella? (This last option gets my housemates’ unanimous vote.)
400 years ago, the Hakkas—an ethnic Chinese group fleeing South from the constant warfare in North China—invented "lei cha" or thunder tea rice to sustain them over the long, hazardous journey. With no means of heating water and limited resources, the original dish consisted of a handful of grains and beans ground to a fine powder and mixed with cold water. The “thunder” in the dish refers to the racket made as the ingredients were crushed with a traditional wood pestle in a coarse-surfaced clay bowl.
While the dish staved off hunger, munching on it must have been as appetizing as munching on raw, sodden grits. Fortunately, once the refugees made it South, they settled in the hills and were able to cultivate rice paddies, tea plantations, and other vegetable crops. The original “hard times” dish of lei cha evolved to a far more palatable—but no less modest—offering that remains popular today.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, September 1, 2008 at 2:00 PM
In Singapore, it is not uncommon for my grandparents' generation to speak numerous dialects, but only a smattering of English. So imagine my surprise when I heard a grandfatherly type holler at a coffee shop, "Lao ban, lai yi bei Michael Jackson." ("Boss, give me a glass of Michael Jackson.")
Michael Jackson? What is this, a new type of beer? I stay to look and it turns out a Michael Jackson is no alcoholic drink, but a virtuous concoction of creamy soy milk and squiggles of immortal jelly.
I haven't a clue why the black jelly is considered "immortal" (I suspect ad man involvement), but it is also known locally as chin chow, or grass jelly. Made by boiling the dried leaves and stalks of the Mesona chinensis (a member of the mint family) in water and potassium carbonate, the strained liquid cools and sets to a gelatin-like consistency. Once set, it is cut into ribbons and served bobbing in simple syrup or added to shaved ice desserts like ice kacang.
Grass jelly has a pleasant, lightly herbal flavor that reminds me of rooibos tea—especially the rooibos and honeybush blends. It is this honeybush flavor, or scent, rather, that makes grass jelly such a shoo-in for traditional Asian desserts like Vietnamese chè and Malaysian cendol. Supposedly, Mesona chinensis's high levels of estrogen also makes grass jelly popular among women seeking to conceive, as it is believed to boost fertility (if you ask me, that's just another reason to indulge in dessert).
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 18, 2008 at 2:30 PM
My great grandmother (who was illiterate and never attended a day of school) had an interesting yardstick for the heft of large objects. Things were classed as: If I throw it at a man, he’ll die; If I throw it at a man, he’ll be out cold; or simply, “mosquito fart.” I did not get to spend much time with this feisty old lady but the survival-esque nature of her wisdom constantly pops up in my head—particularly when I’m faced with ginormous things.
The jackfruit, the largest treeborne fruit known to man, would most certainly fall in the man-killing category. Averaging the size of a grown man’s trunk, they can weigh up to 110 pounds and remind me of obese, green pangolins—only with nubs instead of scales.
The Smell Issue
These green giants have what’s been called a “rotting onion” pong when ripe, but if you're a durian lover, you’ll agree that the scent of ripe jackfruit is a sweetly glorious, almost overwhelmingly ambrosial delight. For those who believe the durian is just too much, the jackfruit is easier on the nose.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 11, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Pulasans.
Venomous animals and insects are often strikingly colored and marked to warn off predators or just plain nosey folks – evolutionary cues for survival and a quiet life. Maybe that’s why the rambutan and it’s close cousin, the pulasan, look so forbidding. With their threatening spikes and crimson armor, both look like accessories to violent crime. Yet, pick them up and you’ll find both soft and almost cuddly. The pulasan’s spikes are thick and rubbery, while the rambutan’s are thin and pliant – like a shock of hair (“rambut” means “hairy” in Malay).
Rambutans.
What is dangerous though, are the swarms of fire ants that live in rambutan trees. The fruit is so sweet that people with the trees in their backyard have to fight the vicious, stinging ants off when it’s time for harvest (and let me tell you from experience that those suckers really hurt!). My granduncle used to hoist a long pole with cutters attached at the end into the tree and make fast work of the fruit while fighting off the ants. Experienced as he was, it was impossible to escape unscathed and he would always have angry, red blisters to show – as well as bunches of the juiciest, sweetest rambutans – for his efforts.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 4, 2008 at 3:00 PM
I am a bad daughter. My dad, an aircraft engineer who keeps planes in the air for a living, forwards every piece of email he receives that carries “useful” information: “What to do if you’re being followed down a dark alley; Beware of poisonous spiders lurking in restrooms; Don’t eat red and blue foods together lest your bowels explode.” Being ungrateful, I tend to mock the information, convinced that if an email claims that drinking tomato juice while skipping will prevent disease, Dad will stockpile tomato juice while skipping ropes in earnest.
So when I read Dad’s latest email, entitled: “Starfruit can be deadly,” I was ready to dismiss it. How could such a pretty little thing cause harm? It doesn’t even have thorns! But Dad’s sources were on the money this time.
The Health Risks
Turns out that starfruit’s high levels of oxalic acid—the same substance that gives it its delectably tart flavor—can aggravate a kidney patient’s already weak organ, leading to hiccups, insomnia, confusion, convulsions, and even death.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 28, 2008 at 2:15 PM
If you’re of South East Asian descent, you know that being called a “potato eater” is a grave thing. It implies that you’ve rejected your culinary heritage of rice as the basis of, and main source of carbohydrates in, your diet. Instead, you’ve embraced the “white man’s” dietary staple of potatoes. The stereotype-laden metaphor encapsulates everything from the languages you speak (or are unable to speak), choice of pastimes, and even the values you hold.
While my diet is a heart-healthy, wholegrain-heavy one, my fondness for potatoes (and inability to speak multiple Chinese dialects) slaps a great, flashing, potato-eating sign on my head. Strangely enough, one type of potato-eating is “excusable," but unlike normal potatoes, this one grows on trees.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 22, 2008 at 1:45 PM
I don’t know about you guys, but the most exciting part about traveling for me is discovering new things that smack you in the face with a great, big, “Hello, I exist! And I am delicious!”
Last week, I poked through Hong Kong’s street markets, asking vendors nosy questions and snapping surreptitious shots of seafood still splashing in tubs. There was eating too—lots and lots of eating. Many of the sights were a blast into the past, a remembrance of how things ought to be and still are on this island of startling contrasts. Rice flour rolls freshly steamed and rolled before your eyes; towering skyscrapers amidst bustling, squawking, croaking, cawing, livestock markets. But the one thing that stopped me dead in my tracks—these yellow-skinned lovelies called wampees.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 14, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Meet the longan. Its name literally translates to “dragon’s eye," which I can only assume stems from the way its translucent, off-white flesh resembles the eye's sclera, with a pupil-like black seed within. I was tempted to take a picture of all their beady little eyes exposed and peering out, but it’s impossible to eat just half a longan. Like biting into a plump cherry tomato or succulent grape, cramming the whole thing in your mouth is almost a matter of principle.
With a sweet, almost-crisp bite, the longan’s flavor is very much that of a subtle, floral honey. Lychees and longans are often compared to each other—probably because these two fruits come into season at the same time. Whenever you see the brilliant, glistening, ruby coat of the lychee, you’ll no doubt spot the plain, mottled brown skin of the longan, too. The poor longan, not as lusciously sweet, decadently perfumed, or extravagantly juicy as the lychee, is often put down as inferior—referred to, in fact, as the “handmaiden of the lychee."
Fresh or Dried
Yet, in the final race toward human consumption, the longan is the dark horse. Being drier, fresh longans fare much better than lychees during transportation, with significantly better odds of arriving at tables none the worse for wear. Grown in Florida and Hawaii, fresh longans appear in dishes as diverse as mahi mahi and longan ceviche and chicken with longan and macadamia salad. I like them plenty fresh and out of hand, but here’s the cincher: Unlike lychees, which aren’t very good past their prime, I’m just as enamored of longans dried.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 7, 2008 at 2:45 PM
Housemates’ wild partying grating on you? Time to ante up. Get your hands on a bunch of these scaly beauties, peel them, and leave the skins scattered about—the housemates will be convinced there’s a molting snake on the loose! That should put a temporary stop to the parties.
Step 1: Buy a bunch of snakefruit.
Step 2: Peel the fruit, and plant the skins in the housemate’s room.
Step 3: Go up to your housemate, look concerned, and ‘fess up about the snake you brought home and “kinda lost.”
Step 4: Watch your “too cool” housemate freak out when he discovers the molted snake skins in his room. Fun!
Fortunately for my housemates, I’m dotty about them. And while abundant in Southeast Asia, here in the States, snakefruit or salak are only grown in South Florida and that’s a bit too much of a trek—even for a good prank.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 1, 2008 at 3:00 PM
At a gelati stand, I remember being thoroughly confused when my friend asked, “So what kind of nut is the lychee?”
“Huh?” I exclaimed.
The friend fairly thumped the counter pane with his finger, indicating the near-empty tub of Lychee Nut Sorbet.
“The lychee isn’t a nut… it’s a fruit!” I said.
“Bet?” challenged the friend. He knew two things: 1) that I would be dying to rush home to consult the google gods; and 2) that I had an afternoon of appointments far away from civilization. This fiend-friend delights in tormenting me.
But he soon owed me dessert. As it turns out, this whole lychee nut business stems from a mistake. Lychees deteriorate quickly once picked and dry out in days if left in a cool, non-humid environment. The warty, ordinarily deep red skin (sometimes tinged with green) browns and turns brittle, while the luscious, creamy white flesh on the inside shrivels like a raisin. Somewhere along the way, a very confused person decided these dried lychees were nuts—a mistake that has enjoyed a curious longevity on Chinese restaurant menus.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, June 23, 2008 at 11:15 AM
I write with trepidation. I know if I casually toss out a claim that, “Red-fleshed dragon fruit are always sweet,” someone, somewhere, will run up and toss a bland, sickly, red-fleshed dragon fruit in my face. So I proceed cautiously: I’ve yet to stumble upon a stingy sourpuss of a red-fleshed dragon fruit. All the ones I’ve had have been glorious.
I say this because it occurred to me that with mangosteens suddenly becoming legally available in the U.S. and people there shelling out insane amounts for its antioxidant-rich juice, hard-to-get-your-hands-on tropical fruit may just be the next big thing. And while I’m in Asia—where tropical fruits don’t cost half the earth—I figure I’ll eat my way through the lot and share them here.
I’m starting the ball rolling with dragon fruit because I’ve noticed bloggers buying the impressive-looking, white-fleshed variety, paying a zillion dollars for them, and pronouncing them blah. That breaks my heart. It really does. There’s nothing more tragic than an unsatisfied, zillion-dollars-poorer, eater. So here’s a “secret”: I know the white-fleshed variety (Red Pitaya), studded with brilliant black seeds on the inside and festooned with lurid green “spikes” on the outside, looks fantastic. Yet, despite its dramatic good looks, it tends to under-deliver on flavor. More often than not, white-fleshed dragon fruit fall on the wrong side of insipid.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, June 16, 2008 at 10:30 AM
There’s a saying that a girl’s father is her first true love. The first man who loves her—and whom she loves—wholeheartedly.
My dad has a sweet tooth, which is probably why I find men who enjoy dessert so appealing. I once had a date who gave me the bleeding heart routine, telling me with a soulful, faraway look in his eyes that he avoided all things sweet. Why? "Because life is hard," he said. His family struggled for years to make ends meet. Denying himself sweetness was his way of reminding himself not to take things for granted. It was a touching story, but I dodged a kiss and was quick to offer my hand in friendship at the end of the night—just like Dad told me.
Unfortunately for Dad and his soft spot for dessert, he’s noticed over the past few years that cakes, pies, and cookies have been giving him the dreaded bloat (as in gas, not heft). But it wasn’t until I stumbled upon floggers chronicling their battle with gluten intolerance that the coin dropped. Since then, Dad has been turning a sad, puppy dog look on me every time the house fills with the familiar, mouth-watering aroma of banana bread, yo-yos, or fruit crumble in the making.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, February 18, 2008 at 8:30 AM
There is nothing more gladdening to a homesick student’s heart than the sight of many, many red-lidded jars…all filled to the brim (layers of protective bubble wrap in between) with handmade Lunar New Year goodies. Even better when said homesick student has spent the week shoveling snow in Ithaca while her relatives flood her phone with picture messages of all the glorious treats she’s missing out on. The bastards.
So when she wakes up to find golden, buttery, pineapple jam pastries redolent with cloves, crumbly, melt-in-your-mouth, salty-sweet sugee (semolina) cookies, richly fragrant cashew nut sablés, and miniature pork floss (think candy floss, but made with pig) spring rolls in a giant package at her door, she starts to think a little better of her not-so-heartless-after-all family.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, February 11, 2008 at 10:00 AM
Photographs courtesy of Cheryl Chia
This Wednesday will be the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, also known as “Ren Ri”—the universal birthday of man. Celebrating families have been feasting for an entire week on a myriad of goodies, but the one festive staple is Yu Sheng—a pun on the Chinese terms for "abundance and growth" which literally means “raw fish.”
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, February 4, 2008 at 8:30 AM
In the bustling North Indian city of Kolkata, it seems ironic that the two things I’m most excited about (besides the mind boggling variety of street food) are probably also the most generic items to be found: leaf bowls and terracotta cups used by wallas (street hawkers) to contain yummy goodness.
These bowls and cups are disposable, biodegradable, ecofriendly, and—best of all—take the place of the nasty paper, plastic, foam, and foil stuff ubiquitous everywhere else.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, January 21, 2008 at 11:00 AM
A friend of mine has a "theory" regarding Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). He reckons TCM stems from a simplistic belief the Chinese have: food resembling body parts must be beneficial for those same body parts. For instance, walnuts resemble the brain and are therefore nourishing for the brain. Ginseng roots look like little men (or voodoo dolls) and so are considered therapeutic for total body wellness. I'm no TCM expert, but a cursory search online indicates "ancient Chinese doctrines" (no citation whatsoever) support my friend's theory...
Add to this list the prized (and pricey) sea cucumber. With it's decidedly phallic appearance and behavior—"on being kneaded or disturbed slightly with fingers...it swells and stiffens, releasing a jet of water from one end...after releasing the jet, it looses its stiffness and reverts to its original state"—it's no great leap of the imagination deducing what the Chinese reckon it valuable for.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, January 14, 2008 at 3:00 PM
In Singapore, watermelon seed consumption is a predominantly Chinese affair. At wedding ceremonies the seeds are fertility symbols for the couple (representative of their family’s eager wishes), and at traditional Taoist three-day funerals the seeds are everywhere you look. Strangely enough, despite the Chinese love for symbolism there does not seem to be a significance for the watermelon seeds’ ubiquity at funerals.
In the past week, I’ve asked all the matriarchs I know as to whether a deeper meaning lies behind it, and I’ve come to a (half-baked) conclusion. But first, a little preamble (bear with me): The Chinese believe that the deceased’s body needs to be watched over at all times—lest a pregnant cat jumps over the coffin, prompting the corpse to sit up. Now, I don’t know how true this is, only that it’s a very good thing Chinese families tend to be large and extended…so relatives can take turns to "chor ye"—the filial duty of staying up to shoo cats away. Everyone knows staying up requires munchies, and what better to munch on when struggling to stay awake than something as tedious and time consuming as watermelon seeds?
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, January 7, 2008 at 8:00 PM
Editor's note: Our Grocery Ninja, Wan Yan Ling, is currently visiting Singapore, from where she's filing additional Snapshots from Asia.
The concept of "chestnuts roasting over an open fire" is an alien one to Asians, and the notion of buying chestnuts raw and roasting them yourself even stranger—why would anyone choose to go through all that hassle when the streets are lined year-round with hawkers frying them right before you?
When I lived in Australia, I was horrified by the price of hot griddled chestnuts sold on the streets, and no wonder they were exorbitant: Each individual chestnut would be meticulously turned and cosseted as it cooked, and it would take (to my impatient mind) till the cows came home for the vendor to roast up a goodly sized paper bag full of them.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, January 1, 2008 at 3:00 PM
I like to think I'm serious about food, but every so often, someone or something comes along to make me question the extent of my devotion. Like when a friend returned to the States from a trip home to Singapore, toting three pounds of bak kwa (Chinese barbeque pork). Stopped at customs and threatened with confiscation and destruction, he said, "I need a minute," before proceeding to eat his entire booty of pig.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, December 24, 2007 at 10:00 AM
Editor's note: Wan Yan Ling, aka the Grocery Ninja, is in Asia over winter break. She checks in with a Snapshots from Asia piece filed from the sweltering heat of Singapore.
You often hear about turf wars in relation to street gangs, but here in sweltering Singapore, turf wars are fought by geriatric ice cream men jostling for favorable positions along busy streets. These men show up on motorbikes with dry-ice-filled metal carts attached, staking their claims on prime real estate. With a giant umbrella for shelter from the relentless heat, they display their wares—airtight containers to keep sugar cones and wafers crisp despite the island's 99 percent humidity, loaves of cottony, rainbow-hued bread, and little Dixie cups—as well as a menacing butcher's knife and plastic chopping board.
Aside from the usual Neapolitan flavors, local favorites include honeydew, mango, durian, sweet corn, and taro, a potential headache for the indecisive solved by opting for the "everything" flavor, where all the flavors are mixed (much like a tropical tutti-frutti but tasting, really, of watered-down durian—testament to the king of fruit's pervasiveness).
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 30, 2007 at 1:40 PM
Editor's note: This is the last of Wan Yan Ling's Snapshots from Asia series, as she's now back in the States for another semester of graduate school. I've really come to look forward to these twice-weekly little windows on day-to-day life in Singapore and am sad that this is the last one on Ling's figurative roll of film. The good news is that Ling is going to continue to write for us on a periodic basis—one that we'll figure out once she gets settled in for the fall. So, without further ado, here you go. —Adam
There was quite a lively debate about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) here a while back, so I thought it apropos to introduce the good ol' TCM hall as it is today.
A popular image conjured up for TCM dispensaries is of a wizened, gray-bearded old man with spidery fingers, carefully measuring out roots, seeds, and twigs on sheaves of paper. There would be floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall shelves of glass alchemist jars threatening to avalanche at the slightest inquisitive prod, and labels in illegible hieroglyphs that told you nothing at all.
Not too welcoming, huh?
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 28, 2007 at 1:00 PM
Photograph by Shimin Wong
To my imagination, these look rather like exotic, tentacled sea creatures and associated body parts, but they're actually rather pedestrian. The stringy ones on the left are sweet and salty mei cai (preserved mustard cabbage), with the former being lighter in color. While the knobbly ones on the right are zha cai (pickled mustard stems), also known as Sichuan vegetable (whence they hail).
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 23, 2007 at 3:00 PM
So there's good chewy—think perfect, translucent, bubble tea pearls that are neither too soft nor too hard, but just so. Then there's bad, overcooked-squid-tentacle chewy. The Taiwanese call good chewy "QQ" and delight in it—and are joined in their love of chewy goodness by what seems to be the entire Asian continent. The Japanese are stuck on mochi; Koreans revere dduk; and the Malays, Indonesians, and Pinoys have an enduring love affair with rainbow-hued, multilayered, glutinous flour-based kuihs (cakes).
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 21, 2007 at 1:00 PM
Photographs by Shimin Wong
Most of us think of comfort food as fat food: creamy risottos and pastas, hearty stews, buttery mashed potatoes, mayo sandwiches, hot chocolate, cheesecake, hot fudge sundaes. In Asia, there are a host of dishes people make a beeline for when they get off a plane, return from grueling military training, or when they've had a rotten day—dishes I affectionately call "a highway to a heart attack." (A straw poll will likely turn up "lard" and wok hei or "wok's breath—the essence imparted by a hot wok to food"—as determining factors in succor-level.)
One would imagine the ultimate comfort food to be riddled with saturated fat and swimming in carcinogens then. Interestingly, this granddaddy of comfort foods is also considered premier invalid food—the kind of food grandmothers, mothers, and hospitals dish out. Jook, better known as porridge or congee, is essentially a rice gruel given depth and "nutrition" with ingredients such as minced pork, fresh fish, century egg, dried seafood, nuts, and the like. To the average Chinese, this is the one dish we associate with nurturance—with all that is good and healing in the world. Because the most basic of versions would involve just rice cooked in plenty of water (about one part rice to 12 parts water would be just about right), a pinch of salt, and some pickled vegetables on the side, it's also known as "poor man's food," and has come to the rescue of many an impoverished grad student.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 16, 2007 at 12:15 PM
Photograph by Shimin Wong
It’s tricky being vegetarian in Singapore. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are a myriad of suburban, organic, Buddhist vegetarian eateries, hip green joints in air-conditioned shopping malls, Indian vegetarian restaurants galore, and even a handful of swank, gourmet vegetarian places. Leafy greens and tropical fruit abound and tofu and tempeh-lovers are spoilt for choice. (Psst… you know how tempeh comes in nubbly, vacuum-packed slabs from the supermarket? Here, it comes wrapped in a banana leaf scroll…still warm in all its fermenty-goodness and very much alive!)
So, back to the tricky. Singapore’s an island. And we like seafood. We like seafood a lot. So we tend to add it to everything. And unlike an average Western salad, where you could, in a pinch, cast aside the offending shrimp/ahi tuna/salmon, it’s not that simple with a local salad. Because the shrimp’s a tad more…tenacious, shall we say?
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 14, 2007 at 2:40 PM
Photograph by Shimin Wong
Smooth as a baby's bottom. That's how silken we want our tau foo fa (bean curd blossoms, also known as "jellied bean curd"). So incredibly delicate that a quivering spoonful will slide deliciously down your throat with the barest tilt of your head—no teeth required.
Made of soy milk that's been coagulated with a tiny amount of gypsum powder (calcium sulphate) and cornstarch to form curds, it is, at its most basic, served in a pool of simple syrup. Dressed up for company, it's been known to sport a crown of gingko nuts and lotus seeds, occasionally bobbing in a sweet, gingery broth. And yes, it's essentially sweetened tofu for dessert—and breakfast, and supper, and any time in between really (midday merienda, anyone?).
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 9, 2007 at 3:15 PM
Photographs by Shimin Wong
I was not a picky eater growing up and would obligingly down the chewy offal; floppy sprouts; and sea sweet, still-bloody cockles my mom, grandma, and various aunties would spoon me. So it was only a few years later, when my fussy-pants baby brother came along, that food got cute—fancy shapes and unnatural colors cute. Octopus wieners and smiley-faced hard-boiled eggs cute.
Whereas I had been perfectly content with standard-issue oblong crackers, my brother would wail and fling and let no crumb pass his lips that was not distractingly shaped. It was a completely unfair situation—especially since I was deemed a big girl by then, too old to eat "baby food"—as only he got the lucky star-shaped fish-paste cakes.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 7, 2007 at 12:30 PM
We like crisp bits, no matter if they appear in sa po fan, donabe-taki, or dolsot bibimbap, Photograph by Shimin Wong
A dish you will find in various guises all over Asia, claypot rice is at its most basic—rice cooked lovingly in a vessel over an open flame. Now, I know what you're thinking. And, no, it's not just rice. In a forum populated with dotty food lovers, it's important to be specific, and what I'm raving about here is what the Japanese call okoge—the nutty, slightly charred crust of grains that sit on the bottom and sides of the pot. Okoge have been known to inspire fierce paeans and ferocious fork battles among otherwise easy-going makan khakis (Singlish for "nosh buddy").
Most modern kitchens here in Singapore rely on an electric rice cooker for their daily starch. The cook throws in grains and water, and voilà! In half an hour, you have the singular aroma of freshly steamed rice wafting throughout the house. It's fast, easy, and takes all the guesswork out of producing fluffy, individual grains of rice that beckon invitingly and glisten in the light.
However, if it's okoge you're after, you will have to sacrifice convenience and turn to a more traditional vessel—and do the hard work of monitoring the heat and resisting the urge to peek, all while salivating over visions of the meal to come.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 2, 2007 at 4:30 PM
Photograph by Shimin Wong
This delectable little morsel is a chwee kueh, or "water cake." A popular breakfast item in Singapore, it may not sound terribly appetizing (or plausible), but for most locals, the thought of sinking their teeth into these gems is enough to make mouths water.
They're made from a mix of one part rice flour to almost five parts water—hence the name. Steamed in shallow aluminum cups that look like tiny flying saucers, the "cakes" themselves are bland, but the best will boast an incredibly soft yet dense texture and yield effortlessly to the bite. They are then topped with sweet-salty chye por (preserved radish), which have been bronzed in a generous amount of lard, along with garlic, shallots, and sesame seeds. As with most local dishes, there is the omnipresent dollop of chili paste on the side.
Health concerns and a desire to reach out to the Muslim community—who are forbidden all things porcine—have led to many hawker stalls proudly sign-posting: "We use vegetable oil only. No lard." But ask the old-timers and they'll agree—it's just not the same without. (Psst… gram for gram, lard has "less saturated fat, more unsaturated fat, and less cholesterol" than butter!)
About the author: Wan Yan Ling, Serious Eats's overseas summer intern, is an impoverished grad student and sourdough finger-crosser living in Singapore. She can usually be found in the kitchen procrastinating on "real work," or online tracking down obscure recipes. Ling thinks eating alone is no fun, and she still believes in hand-mixing.
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 31, 2007 at 11:55 AM
Photograph by Shimin Wong
It's late. You've had a long day. You trudge home, glad to leave the city's noise, grit, smells, and people behind. You wonder if you should have picked up something for dinner. A wrap, a salad, a protein shake, something swimming in oil?
You're in no mood to cook. And, if you're Asian, you probably need rice. More specifically, rice and three sides. And somehow, it's not the same if you head to the Chinese-y takeaway—only vaguely Chinese with its "leftover graveyard" offering of chop suey and mystery soup, and not in the least Singaporean with "Singapore noodles" that no local has ever encountered at home nor would, while sober, order.
What you really want is the ubiquitous cai fan (vegetable rice) stall that dots the island (memories of which wake you up in the middle of the night with hunger pangs).
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 26, 2007 at 3:00 PM
Photographs by Shimin Wong
So, I had a theory. It was a very good theory, except it was ruthlessly and unscientifically disproved by a quick phone call to my grandparents. Not that it was a very precise notion to begin with.
I had decided, against all the collective wisdom that is Wikipedia, that lemonade did not, indeed, originate in seventeenth-century Paris, but that it had been imported from the Old World—the “warm temperate to tropical regions” where native sugarcane thrives—namely Asia and Africa.
You see, if lemonade consists of sugar (made from dehydrated sugarcane juice), water (to rehydrate the resulting sugar crystals), and lemon juice, then wouldn’t sugarcane juice with lemon be one evolutionary generation younger?
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 24, 2007 at 2:10 PM
Photograph by Shimin Wong
Those of us who have Chinese friends may have heard them speculate on the "heating" or "cooling" properties of food. The curious among us may even have pressed them to elaborate on this singular notion that foods have "temperatures"—and no, it doesn't refer to ice cream being cold or hot potatoes being hot.
Based on a Buddhist Taoism belief that food is medicine, the kind and amount of food one takes is intimately related to one's health, and the selection of the "right" food is dependent on one's bodily condition at that time. The need to maintain balance—the complementary forces of yin and yang—for optimal health informs the categorization of food into hot or cold, and less significantly, wet or dry groups. Nourishing food is considered bu, which literally means "to repair" but is generally associated with "strengthening the bodily systems."
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 19, 2007 at 4:44 PM
When the weather’s sweltering and you’ve got beads—no, rivulets—of perspiration trickling down your limbs and the sun dazzles so you could almost swear the air is shimmering, most people lose their appetite for "real food." They slurp ice pops, dive into bowls of ice cream, down milk shakes, attend fro-yo socials, stick their heads in refrigerators when the environmental police are not looking, and plot escapes to air-conditioned havens.
Here in Southeast Asia, where the weather’s like that, oh, pretty much all the time, and where women are commonly seen drawing lines through their food before digging in (dieters generally eat half a portion of what’s already half to a third of an average American serving), such calorie bombs are a no-no, but dessert still comes first ;)
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 17, 2007 at 3:00 PM
Photographs by Shimin Wong
It’s been called “God’s gift to vegans” by devotees who love its naturally rich, creamy texture and pronounced bittersweet flavor. It’s also been accused of reeking of stale gym socks, sewage, and onions (all at once) and is persona non grata on public transport. Locals have a healthy respect for it—those spikes are sharp and will draw blood! And no one really dares test the myth that chasing it with alcohol will cause one’s bowels to explode.
Since the durian, this “king of fruits” has been much written about, along with its “queen," the mangosteen, I won't dwell on how, like grapes, they come in different varietals, with "aficionados" assessing them the way wine connoisseurs do wine. Neither will I elaborate on fans who regularly fork out obscene amounts of money to savor its pungent flesh. Nor reveal that similar to “hair of the dog” remedies, a time-honored way of ridding one’s fingers of residual scent and body of excess “heat” (a traditional Chinese medicinal concept), is to fill the empty durian shell with water and salt and stir with said fingers before downing the brine.
I will instead point out the red bucket suspended in the air—a common sight in many of Asia’s family-run businesses. Used in place of an electronic cash register, it’s rigged to a simple bell-and-pulley system. Each time money changes hands, the hawker simply reaches for the bucket and does his thing. This works well in small, open-air enterprises, where everyone is alerted to the bucket’s whereabouts by its jingling bell. No one person has monopoly over the register, and there’s no need to abandon one’s post so as to traipse to the back of a shop for change.
Oh, did I mention that the thorny fruit weighs so heavily on the local psyche that women openly and admiringly discuss the number of “durian seeds” (abdominal muscles) their men sport?
About the author: Wan Yan Ling, Serious Eats's overseas summer intern, is an impoverished grad student and sourdough finger-crosser living in Singapore. She can usually be found in the kitchen procrastinating on "real work," or online tracking down obscure recipes. Ling thinks eating alone is no fun, and she still believes in hand-mixing.
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 12, 2007 at 2:15 PM
In Singapore, to chope something is roughly the equivalent of "I bag this!" or "I've got dibs!" Growing up, my brother and I would race to the family sedan, competing to slap our palms against the front passenger’s seat window—the first to get there and hence winner would yell chope! loud and clear, thus claiming his “prize” for the road trip.
Chope is also a talisman of sorts to ward off “evil”: in grown-up terms, whoever yells chope last gets to inform the boss of the firm’s budget deficit. In this case, what looks like an innocuous pack of tissues on a hawker center or food court stool is actually shorthand for “Chope! This seat is taken!” Bewildered tourists have often mistaken them for local gestures of generosity—how kind of that nice lady or gentleman to take pity on the sweltering foreigner and offer a pack of paper napkins for relief! But tourist beware: Usurp the seat and you will be faced with one rattled local.
Serious Eaters may be wondering: Why not a backpack or a carrier to denote temporary ownership then? Why a pack of tissues? In a country of naturally cautious residents, the thought pattern runs thus: No one would steal a half-used pack of tissues worth all of 10¢, but the meaning of chope is universal.
Photograph by Shimin Wong
About the author: Wan Yan Ling, Serious Eats's overseas summer intern, is an impoverished grad student and sourdough finger-crosser living in Singapore. She can usually be found in the kitchen procrastinating on "real work," or online tracking down obscure recipes. Ling thinks eating alone is no fun, and she still believes in hand-mixing.
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 10, 2007 at 1:00 PM
This is a C grade. But not just any C grade. This is a C grade issued by a Singaporean Ministry of Health official to a none-too-hygienic food hawker. A nationwide scheme introduced in 1997 to “enable consumers to make informed choices of the food outlets they want to patronize," hawkers here in Singapore are required to display their cleanliness grades prominently beneath their signage.
A C grade is "average," with only a D grade, "below average," worse than it. You would assume that in a country as notoriously perfectionist as Singapore, a lousy grade would doom a stall—customers would shun it, suppliers would not want to be associated with it, the sky would fall down, that sort of thing.
But like I said, it’s not just any C grade—it’s a money-making C grade. Here’s the local logic: Being generally one-man outfits, if the hawker’s food were any good, he would be flat out busy taking orders, cooking, serving, collecting payment, and doling out change. Where would he find time to clean the stall to the obsessively nit-picky standards of a government official? Therefore, only nonpopular stalls with sub-par food would be able to earn an A or B grade.
A D grade, however, is in local parlance “asking for trouble." Hence in Singapore, the wise patronize the C's (and you see how this becomes a profitable, “virtuous cycle” for hawkers—for surely only a stall with seriously good food would be able to survive with a C grade?), the sua koos (ignorant) and most tourists patronize hawkers with A's and B's, and the emm zai ci (not afraid of death) play gastronomic Russian roulette with the D's.
Photograph by Shimin Wong
About the author: Wan Yan Ling, Serious Eats's overseas summer intern, is an impoverished grad student and sourdough finger-crosser living in Singapore. She can usually be found in the kitchen procrastinating on "real work," or online tracking down obscure recipes. Ling thinks eating alone is no fun, and she still believes in hand-mixing.
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 5, 2007 at 3:30 PM
This is how we like our coffee in Singapore: sans violence.
The Chinese-Singaporeans have a phrase, sha ren fang huo, which pretty much means "to murder, pillage, rape, and set fire to" (actually, just literally the first and last, but you get my drift). It’s the kind of thing we say at the Starbucks counter when the grinning teenage barista cheerfully demands all the change in your wallet, pockets, and nether bag regions—and your first-born child to boot. Mostly because we’re utterly spoiled when it comes to the almighty bean, with the average triple-shot cappuccino costing 40¢—and that, for comparison, is in a country where a can of soda costs 75¢.
Of course, the average Singaporean wouldn’t know the difference between an arabica and a robusta bean, and he wouldn’t really be ordering a “skinny cap.” He would, however, be asking for a kopi gow (thick coffee), peng (iced), da pow (to go), and maybe siew nai (easy on the sweetened, condensed milk)—if he were counting calories.
And he would receive it, in the olden days, in an emptied-out milk tin with a hole drilled through the top and cleverly knotted with raffia string for a handle, or more commonly nowadays, in a little plastic bag tied to-go (straw optional).
The coffee-maker’s tool of choice? Not a fancy-schmancy machine with an unpronounceable foreign name but what the French affectionately call “the sock,” and what locals reverently call “grandma’s pantyhose."
Photograph by Shimin Wong
About the author: Wan Yan Ling, Serious Eats's overseas summer intern, is an impoverished grad student and sourdough finger-crosser living in Singapore. She can usually be found in the kitchen procrastinating on "real work," or online tracking down obscure recipes. Ling thinks eating alone is no fun, and she still believes in hand-mixing.
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 3, 2007 at 1:00 PM
Photograph by Shimin Wong
By Wan Yan Ling | The one thing that continually amazes me here is that people fry perfectly good fish. Not fish that’s starting to pong, or has been sitting for yonks in the depths of the freezer, but beautiful, glistening fillets fresh from the ocean. Back home, where only the crummiest, one-day-short-of-being-fed-to-the-trash bin specimens are given the hot oil treatment, doing so with prime fish would scandalize frugal housewives and start off a neverending chorus of "what a waste!"
You see, among the Chinese, fresh fish is exulted. It’s almost always steamed, with maybe a splash of soy sauce, ginger, some sesame oil, and a few delicate sprigs of cilantro—nothing that would overwhelm, compete with, or otherwise obliterate its sweet, delicate flavor. Which leads me to speculate that maybe Americans don’t really like the taste of fish and therefore strive to mask it with beer batter, mayo, cheese, and buttered breadcrumbs?
In Asia, the fish of choice has not been filleted and snugly cling-wrapped on a Styrofoam tray but is displayed in full undecapitated glory. Buyers unabashedly prod the fishmonger’s wares, checking that flesh is firm, eyes are glossy, and the lifting of gills exposes bright, ruby-red insides. Pails of water with bobbing lemon slices—the finger bowl’s working class cousin—ring the stall for a quick rinse. Of course, in the quest for great fish, some things are universal: It helps to be BFF with the friendly neighborhood purveyor ;)
About the author: Ling is an impoverished grad student, sourdough finger-crosser, and stone soup extraordinaire. She can usually be found procrastinating on "real work" in the kitchen or online tracking down obscure recipes, and thinks eating alone is no fun. She still believes in hand-mixing.
About the author: Wan Yan Ling, Serious Eats's overseas summer intern, is an impoverished grad student and sourdough finger-crosser living in Singapore. She can usually be found in the kitchen procrastinating on "real work," or online tracking down obscure recipes. Ling thinks eating alone is no fun, and she still believes in hand-mixing.
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, June 26, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Ladies and gents, before jumping right into things here, allow me to introduce Wan Yan Ling, who will be serving as an intern for Serious Eats during her summer break. Ling, who's based in Southeast Asia at the moment, will be bringing us short reports on the various dishes to be found in the region. Today, kway chap, a Singaporean specialty. Enjoy! —The Serious Eats Team
By Wan Yan Ling | In a March interview with Anthony Bourdain, eater of eyeballs, testicles, and still-beating hearts, the man pegs his rise to "serious eater" rank to “when the Chinese and Singaporeans began to take me seriously."
While we Singaporeans aren’t exactly in the habit of breakfasting on lions (too mafan or hassle-ly to prep), we do take our food, or makan, with utmost gravity. See us put on our "game face" when tackling a steaming bowl of kway chap—spicy, stewed pig innards served alongside silken, slippery rice noodles. Dished up with flavor-packed hard-boiled eggs stained brown from the soy sauce broth, steamed fish-paste cakes flecked with chili and scallions, firm pressed tofu, and fried tofu puffs, it sounds like an omnivore’s delight. But really, it’s all about the offal—with everything on just the right side of chewy. Not forgetting the obligatory vinegar-tinged chili sauce, of course. Those of us who made the hike to Singapore Day know the locals like it mouth-numbingly, chilli padi (think jalepeños) hot.
About the author: Wan Yan Ling, Serious Eats's overseas summer intern, is an impoverished grad student and sourdough finger-crosser living in Singapore. She can usually be found in the kitchen procrastinating on "real work," or online tracking down obscure recipes. Ling thinks eating alone is no fun, and she still believes in hand-mixing.
