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.”
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ;)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Chubby Hubby's beautiful meal at Ming Kee Live Seafood.
Ming Kee Live Seafood is tucked among a busy row of restaurants and eateries on Macpherson Road. It's next to a famous fried intestines shop and a few doors down from Swa Garden, Ignatius Chan's favorite Teochew restaurant. 2We had a splendid meal, made even better through the edition of some amazing wines supplied by N, including some JJ Prum Rieslings and a 1996 Flor de Pingus. We began our feast with a perfectly roasted suckling pig. This was followed by the most beautifully tender mussels cooked in a lovely, umami, soy sauce based sauce. After this, we had equally delicious steamed scallops covered in young garlic. We then had some fried mee sua that was good but not great. The next course, steamed crayfish, on the other hand, were excellent.
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