The Source of Chilli Bean Sauce

A soy sauce is a soy sauce; an oyster sauce is an oyster sauce; a chilli sauce is a chilli sauce; right? Wrong.

No two sauces are the same; yet few cookbooks or recipes ever mention that. And, to top it off: often the one factor that makes a good dish great is…the sauce!

Sauces come in many grades and brands -- and thus quality. But this fact is often neglected, even by otherwise good cooks. I recall an incident in my teens: I once attempted a recipe of my grandma’s umpteen times over, because I couldn’t get the quality right. Frustrated, I called Grandma and painstakingly went over each step and ingredient with her, to the point she almost lost her cool with me. Then I suddenly realized.

It was the soy sauce; the one I had used tasted different from the one I remembered when Grandma cooked. When I re-cooked the soy sauce and tweaked it as close as possible to the taste I remembered, everything fell into place. But that episode left me with a phobia.

I was terrified that I could never again duplicate the flavors I grew up with, and have come to love. I began in my teens to collect recipes of sauces.

I have since learned to make my own oyster sauce, chilli sauce, XO sauce, and others. Vinegar and soy sauces were beyond my means to make, so I have relied on a few cottage manufacturers for my supply all these years. If I’m overseas, I would get whatever brand was available, then re-cook the sauce to my needs.

On my recent trip to Shanghai, I attended a cooking lesson conducted by The Langham Xintiandi, Shanghai. As the recipes taught were for beginners, I found them, initially, simple and familiar. Until the chilli sauce that accompanied one of the dishes caught my eye.

Tony Su (pictured), the Executive Chef for Chinese Cuisine, later disclosed to me that the sauce was an in-house recipe, which he, nonetheless, shared with me. Tony is Shanghainese and trained in both Cantonese and Shanghainese cuisines. And now, thanks to this young and generous chef, this recipe has become my favorite sauce to make as a gift. I’m featuring a recipe of stingray cooked with this chilli sauce, but I’ve discovered that it also makes a great base sauce for meat dishes. Yum!

Sichuan Chilli Bean Sauce

Oil                                       3 tbsp

Shallots                              100 g, minced

Sugar                                  150 g

Garlic                                  100 g, minced

Chilli powder                     10 g

Dried shrimps                    50 g, minced

Chicken powder                10 g, optional

Sichuan bean paste          3000 g

Method:

1. Fry shallots over low heat and add sugar just before the shallots caramelize. Add garlic, chilli and dried shrimps and fry for another 5 minutes.
2. Add Sichuan bean paste and fry until fragrant.
3. Cool and store in a bottle.

 Fried Stingray with Sichuan Chilli Bean Sauce

Oil                                        ½ tbsp

Onion                                  50 g, diced

Green pepper                   80 g, diced

Red chilli                             20 g, diced

Stingray                              200 g, cut into chunks

Sugar                                    1 tsp

Sichuan bean paste         2 tbsp

Method:

1. Saute onion, green pepper, and red chilli until slightly brown. Remove them from the wok and drain. Saute stingray until slightly cooked, remove from the wok and drain.
2. Fry Sichuan paste for 2 minutes over high heat. This is to “wake up” the sauce. Add a tbsp of water to the paste if it begins to burn.
3. Add stingray and sugar, quick-fry until the fish is totally cooked.

Note: Sichuan bean paste or四川郫县豆瓣酱 is available at Yue Hwa Department Store, Chinatown, Singapore or some Chinese grocery shops.

Live Pink, Drink Pink

Being gay in Singapore in the 1980s was lonely. In the days before the Internet, there was little to tell us what we were, or why we were; so many of us grew up thinking we were simply misfits, or worse, evil or sick; and that to conceal and deceive was the way to live our lives. Without community or a sense of support, gays felt a strong sense of being apart and different from others, and life took on a clandestine nature.

Most of us developed an innate “gay-dar” (radar, gaydar – get it?) to detect “kindred spirits”, or, as we like to say, PLU – People Like Us. There were clues apart from dressing and behavior. For instance, bring up the subject of favorite singers, and the mere mention of Tracy Huang, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Linda Ronstadt, or Madonna, would be a dead giveaway. Friendships would quickly form, and the siege mentality of gays at that time ensured that friendships usually lasted a long time -- although friends came and went as there were always some who were “unsure” of their sexuality.

Unlike “straight” circles, a gay circle had the tenor of a support group. Doubts, fears, hopes, and heartbreaks were shared; jealousies, infatuations, and pettiness confessed; bitching, gossip and attempts to “out” other closeted gays, enjoyed. There was always a shoulder, or shoulders, to cry on. Some groups even spoke in “code” in public to guard against eavesdroppers!

Still, there were dark moments aplenty in the 80s: people were more mean and vicious with their remarks; prejudices were more entrenched. Effeminate gays were victimized and ridiculed; and “straight” people hesitated to be seen with their gay friends in public.

Gay culture, especially movies and books, was almost non-existent in Singapore then. There were several gay movies produced in the 80s, but they were never screened here. Remember films like Making Love, Torch Song Trilogy, My Beautiful Laundrette, and Maurice? An underground “market” emerged for these treasures, and they made the rounds as VHS tapes, often becoming the highlight of some pink home movie party. I remember that only a very small number of gay shows made it to our local cinema screens. One of these was Cruising, starring Al Pacino, because it contained a “bad” ending for the gay character. 

Gay books were also hard to find in local bookshops. A few made it: Maurice, The Glass Menagerie, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the autobiographical sex-change account, Conundrum, by Jan Morris. No one would dare linger around the shelf to browse. One would grab the book and rush to the cashier immediately, hoping no one had seen you. I bought my “indecent” books in London or New York.

Gay nightspots were few and far in between. Many of us hung out at Hangers, a disco located in a hotel on East Coast Road. Cha Cha was the rhythm of the day; and the dance floor was pretty wild, with local personalities and socialites letting their hair down and having fun. The other gay-centric discotheques were Niche at Far East Plaza on Scotts Road, and Marmota at Leisure Drome in Kallang. My favorite haunt was Pebbles Bar at Orchard Road, where one of the my favorite local bands, Tania, played.

The first case of AIDS was diagnosed in Singapore in the 80s, and the gay scene changed forever. Gays were thrust into the social spotlight; their lifestyles exposed and examined, then vilified. The result was that while gay promiscuity declined, an ardent gay activism rose. One sign was the increasing number of my friends who joined groups such as Action for AIDS to raise social awareness about the disease and lend support to its victims.

Thirty years on, the stigma of gayness has become less damning. People are more open and accepting of gays, and with the Internet and social networking media, the sense of isolation is fast diminishing. More organizations exist to guide, counsel, support, and improve the lives of gays. But there’s still a long way to go in terms of gay civil rights – the repeal of Section 377A of the Penal Code; the failed registration of PLU (People Like Us) as a social organization; the recognition of same-sex unions….

But there is a clear feeling we have turned a corner. The PINK DOT is the clearest indication of that. For the third year running, the support from local LGBT members, and their families and friends, has been bold, encouraging, and heartfelt. So much so, that the concept has been adopted by several countries who would be organizing similar gatherings of their own. We have indeed come a long way; and I can gladly say that my memories of the 1980s, while forever a part of me, can be safely consigned to the dust heap of history.

While on the subject of Pink, there is a drink which is commonly found in Malay and Indian drink stalls. It’s called Ayer Bandung. It’s a simple-to-make drink. Just mix rose syrup (which is easily available in supermarkets in Singapore or Indian grocery shops in Hong Kong) with ice water and evaporated milk. I personally like it with ice water only.

For those who can’t find rose syrup, here’s a recipe for you. : )

Rose Syrup

Rock sugar                   3 cups

Water                           2½ cups

Egg white                     ½ + shell

Cochineal                     2  tbsp

Rose essence               2 tbsp

Method:

1.    Boil sugar and water until sugar is dissolved. Add egg white and egg shell, crushing the shell a little. Simmer for about 30 minutes until the syrup has thickened.

2.    Pour the syrup through a sieve. Add cochineal and rose essence into the syrup.

3.    Store in a clean bottle.

Fried Hakka Dumplings…Extinct?

In the 1960s, the whole of Chinatown, Singapore, was one giant open-air wet market. The market sprawled along Sago Lane, Sago Street, Temple Street, Banda Street and Trengganu Street -- and being there was an experience.

Chinatown then was an enclave of narrow streets and rows of 4- to 5-storey pre-war shophouses and SIT (public housing) Art Deco buildings.

Conditions were slum-like. The street level storey was usually given over to retail or commercial use, while the upper stories were used as residential units. Individual tenants and multiple families occupied tiny, dark cubicles and shared common kitchens, toilets, and corridors. Times were hard but there were simple joys and plenty of community spirit.

The market itself was a motley conglomeration of mostly mobile makeshift stalls occupying the streets and five-foot-ways. Apart from the grocers and dried goods merchants, there were sellers of rattan furniture and other household knick-knacks. Fresh produce such as pork, fish, fruit and vegetables were displayed on pushcarts and mobile stalls. Chickens would be kept alive in cages and slaughtered before one’s eyes when a purchase was made. It was common to see live chickens transported, tied by their feet in twos or threes, dangling upside down from bicycles.

Several stalls among Smith Street offered more exotic meat such as civet cat, frog, snake, monitor lizard, pangolin and pigeon. By mid-afternoon, the hurly-burly business day would wind down, the carts and cages pushed away, and the area cleared for the other “shift” – the hawkers and stalls of the night market. It was a daily cycle.

The people -- more even than the stalls and produce -- gave the market its ambience and allure. The place was thronged with the neighborhood’s denizens – mainly amahs (unmarried Chinese female domestics), laborers, and odd-job workers.

The smell was indescribable: sweat, dirt, livestock and food, and the distinctive penetrating odor of old stone and wood from the buildings themselves. Fortune-tellers squatted by the wayside, and professional “letter writers” offered scribal services to the largely illiterate crowds. Hawkers touted, haggled, and quarreled; children screamed, and were screamed at; mothers gossiped loudly; and somewhere a dog barked…you get the picture.

Here's a video of Chinatown the way it used to be: 

The food of the street market was mainly Cantonese, as the different Chinese dialect groups congregated in their own “areas” within Chinatown. Clan and ethnic associations, understandably, were very strong among the early-arriving immigrants. The Teochews lived around Carpenter Street and South Canal Road; Hokkiens in Telok Ayer Street and Hokkien Street; and the Cantonese around Temple Street, Mosque Street, and Kreta Ayer Road.

I remember, in particular, a stall at the end of Sago Street, next to Keong Siak Street. The actual street no longer exists, having being replaced by Chinatown Complex. The stall consisted of a wooden tray, roughly the size of a school-desk top, perched on a crate. Next to the tray was a charcoal stove with a wok of boiling oil. It sold Fried Dumpling; in fact, she was the only person selling this food that I’ve ever met!

During research, I discovered that Fried Dumpling was an old Hakka creation that has disappeared even from China. It used to be called “za” dumpling (砸粽); since “za” sounded like “fried” (炸) in the Hakka dialect, it gradually came to be called “zha” dumpling (炸粽), as “zha” was the actual word for “fried” in Hakka.

The version in mainland China was a dumpling fried until crispy and then eaten dipped in sugar, salt, or ginger/garlic dip. However, the Sago Street dumplings were dipped in batter and fried, and then eaten with five-spice salt. I’ve tried to replicate the taste as I remember it – and I think I’ve succeeded.

*Note*

The area across which the market stretched, as described above, was affectionately known as “Da Po” (大坡) in Mandarin. The names the streets were known by in the 1960s: Sago Lane was Si Ren Jie (死人街); Smith Street was Xi Yuan Jie (戏院街); and Trengganu Street was Si Yuan Heng Jie (戏院横街).

Fried Hakka Dumpling

Glutinous rice                       1 kg, soaked in water overnight and drained

Water

Alkaline water                      2 tbsp

Oil                                        4 cups plus 2 tbsp

5-spice Salt                          1 tbsp

Batter:

Self-raising flour                  4 tbsp

Rice flour                             4 tbsp

Corn flour                            1 tbsp

Salt                                      a pinch

Water                                  ½ cup

Method:

1.              Add alkaline water and 2 tbsp of oil to the rice and marinate for 30 minutes.

2.              Grease a baking pan and pour the rice into it.

3.              Steam for 2 hours.

4.             While it’s hot, place a heavy weight on the rice and let it be compressed for 2 hours.

5.              Cut the dumpling into pieces.

6.              Prepare the frying batter by mixing all the ingredients and letting it rest for 10 minutes.

7.              Heat oil in a wok.

8.              Dip the dumpling into the batter, then fry it until it turns golden brown.

9.              Remove and drain the oil.

10.          Dip in 5-spice salt to eat.

Claypot Pig Liver Recaptured!

I literally grew up in the shadow of People’s Park Complex. It was a big shadow, because it was a mammoth of a building. You won’t miss it if you were in Singapore’s Chinatown.

In its heyday (the late 1960s) People’s Park Complex was a statement-making piece of architecture. Today it sticks out like a monolithic green-and-orange sore thumb at the foot of Pearl’s Hill.

Before People’s Park Complex was built, a market stood on this one-hectare plot of land. It was called People’s Market. I remember the maze of zinc-roofed hutches, which sold mostly textiles and household ware. There were also hawker stalls and open-air restaurants, all ringed by wire fencing with a couple of openings. It was filthy and smelly, but full of character and life.

I was six, and this place gave me with some of my earliest adventures in food. I remember a couple of stalls that were famous for things such as “Scissors Rice” (ie. a combination of pork chops, curry chicken and rice), Chinese desserts, and roast meats. There was a particular restaurant my family often brought me to. Its name slips my mind, but not its location next to a huge drain that ran between present-day Eu Tong Sen Street and New Bridge Road.

There were certain dishes that were de rigueur with each visit: Salt-baked Prawns (盐焗虾), Fried Spring Chicken (炸子鸡), Bitter Gourd with Pork Ribs (苦瓜焖排骨), Sweet Sour Pork Ribs (排骨王), and Claypot Pig Liver (砂煲猪润). Not only my family loved them; everybody did, because they were “in”. They were the Prawn Paste Chicken and Crab Noodle of their day! I came to learn that food, like clothes, could come and go.

Sadly, the market burnt down in 1966; and shortly after, People’s Park Complex rose on the same location. The shopping center quickly became very popular, and was a favorite gathering place for old folks living nearby because of its air-conditioned atrium. Even today, the sight of this building always brings a tide of memories.

I’ve loved pig liver since young, and ate it frequently in all its forms and cooking styles (of which I’ll share more in the future). My favorite style is Claypot Pig Liver. It was instant love when I first tasted this dish at the restaurant in People’s Market all those years ago, and I’ve measured all later encounters against this first meeting.

Claypot Pig Liver remained popular in Singapore until the late 1990s -- when people became conscious of calories and cholesterol. Though it still appears on restaurant menus, what’s served today seldom recaptures the former glory of this dish as I remember.

Claypot Pig Liver

Pig liver                                  200 g, sliced into 3-cm thick

Sesame oil                             ½ tbsp

Ginger                                    60 g, sliced into 1-mm thick, preferably “young” ginger (子姜)

Spring onion                        60 g, separate the white portion from the greens

Chinese wine (花雕酒)     1½  tbsp

Marinate:

Oil                                           1 tsp

Oyster sauce                       ½ tbsp

Soy sauce                             ½ tsp

Salt                                         ¼ tsp

Dark soy sauce                   ¼ tsp, optional

Chinese wine (花雕酒)    ½ tsp

White pepper                      a pinch

Caltrop starch (生粉)        1 tsp, mixed with ½ tbsp of water

Method:

1.     Place the pig liver flat on the cutting board. With the knife slanted at 60°, cut the pig liver into 3 mm-thick slices.

2.     Add oil to the pig liver and mix thoroughly. This step is important, as it prevents the pig liver from getting rough. Next, add oyster sauce, soy sauce, salt, Chinese wine, pepper, and mix well. Finally, add caltrop starch and marinate for 30 minutes.

3.     Heat claypot over high heat and add sesame oil. When the oil is heated to around 180°C, stir-fry ginger and spring onion (white part only) until both turn slightly golden brown.

4.     Add pig liver and quickly stir-fry for about 30 seconds; add the remaining spring onion. Trickle some Chinese wine onto the claypot rim. This ensures that the alcohol in the wine evaporates before reaching the liver, thus lessening the” bitterness” of the wine. Cover the pot with its lid and remove it from the flame.

5.     Pour 1 tbsp of Chinese wine around the circumference of the lid and let it brew for 3 minutes. The remaining heat from the claypot will continue to cook the liver.

6.     Remove the lid and quickly stir the food, and scoop it onto the serving plate.

Note:   Measure of success – the liver should be just cooked, and remain tender and succulent.

            Don’t over-marinate; the flavor of the liver should come through.

            The final drip of Chinese wine around the lid is to provide a “fragrance” when the lid is lifted.

Steamed Tapioca Cake in War & Peace

I remember Grandma fondly. We spent a lot of time together.  I remember the stories she told me about World War II – of how it affected and changed my family’s destinies.

They were stories of tragedy and windfall; of opportunities thrown up by the vicissitudes of war; opportunities grasped or missed that led to fortune or disaster. Grandma was such a vivid raconteur that my ancestral family came to life in my mind as an album of living full-blooded persons, though I had never met any one of them.

The downside was, as a naive little kid, I became “indoctrinated” with the prejudices and stereotypes Grandma wove into her stories -- which I have struggled to dispel to this day. And though she would often ramble and repeat herself for the umpteenth time, each telling would bring a small, previously unknown, embellishment or fact to light. And a new layer of emotion or insight would be added. Through her simple words, Grandma made the war appear more real to me than all the books, movies, and documentaries, that I later had access to, ever did.

Maybe, it was from Grandma too, that I grew to love the romance of the War Years – from its furniture and interior designs to its music, cabaret life and clothing styles. And, for sure, too, Grandma’s stories made me “grow up”, by acquainting me with the seamier side of human nature – of life’s underbelly.

She often told of an uncle of mine who made his fortune peddling opium in Singapore during the war. It was said he made enough to fill large kerosene containers with jewelry, gold and cash. With war’s end, he left for China, taking along all his “earnings”, and became a landlord. When the Communists came to power, he had everything taken away, and became destitute. He took to writing letters home to Singapore pleading for help and money. But, recalling his departure for China without a cent or thought for those left behind, his family and relatives chose to ignore him, and left him to his fate. …And to think I belong to a family like that!

Grandma would also paint an interesting picture of the food that people ate during the war, of the types of ingredients available then, and of how they were obtained from the black market. I became all ears whenever Grandma got to the food part of her stories. And when I pestered her hard enough, she would even cook some of the dishes she talked about.

During the war, food was naturally scarce, so people made do with whatever they could lay their hands on. One of the staples was tapioca, as it was easy to grow and harvest. It was common for families to eat tapioca for 3 meals a day, on its own or accompanied by simple dishes such as salted fish, porridge, or mixed with potatoes. It was not surprising to learn that many people suffered from malnutrition during the war.

By itself, tapioca is tasteless; but when steamed and eaten with sugar, it makes a nice snack. I must confess that tapioca hardly figures on my table, and I do not have a liking for it except in the form of this cake featured. I learned the recipe because it didn’t require much technique or skill; and Grandma would insist that I make the cake just to get me out of her hair whenever I became too much of a handful!

Steamed Tapioca Cake

Tapioca (木薯）        320 g, grated            

Sugar                           85 g                          

Egg                               1, lightly beaten

Coconut milk              180 ml, or can be substituted with milk              

Pandan juice               2 tbsp, optional

Salt                               a pinch

Method:

1.    Combine sugar, egg, coconut milk, pandan juice and salt, and stir the mixture until the sugar has melted.

2.     Add grated tapioca and mix thoroughly.

3.     Pour into a greased pan and steam for 45 minutes.

4.     Cool the cake completely before slicing it for serving.

Note:   The sliced cake can be coated with steamed grated coconut before serving. 
             Two versions are featured. The green one has pandan juice and milk, while the white cake uses just coconut milk.
             There is a baked version of this cake. It's called Kueh Bingkar Ubi in Malay.

My Encounter with Original Sweet & Sour Pork

Clinging to ghosts…sad, regretful, and looking to bring back the past…

Oh dear, do I sound like I’m describing myself?

Fortunately, no; instead I was remembering an old chef I once knew, and from whom, for a short while, I learned some of the finest techniques of Cantonese cooking when I was eleven.

Being a new immigrant to England, this chef had a hard time adjusting to his adopted land. As he was not able to speak any English, he hardly ventured out of the restaurant, or his home. His world consisted of work, sleep, meals and occasional chitchat with fellow chefs, and little else.

Though trained as a Cantonese chef and working in a Cantonese restaurant, he was called upon to make tremendous adjustments and “adaptations” to dishes he knew so well. As anyone who’s traveled to the west knows (and remember, this was the 1960s), “Cantonese” is never really Cantonese over there. All Cantonese food had been localized to suit the western palate; outside of China, there was no such thing as “authentic” Cantonese – something my chef friend quickly came to learn. And it made his woes worse.

Stuck in an alien society and a hard, unrelenting work cycle, he spent a lot of time lamenting his decision to leave home. When it became especially bad, he would cook some ethnic Cantonese dishes for himself, to take the edge off his homesickness. As I spent a chunk of my childhood hanging around the restaurant kitchen, I inevitably became his listening ear – and beneficiary of his “comfort” cooking. I also learned some recipes from him, and one of these was Sweet and Sour Pork.

Unlike the ones we’re familiar with, this recipe uses no tomato sauce at all, but instead, preserved plum sauce. Apparently, tomato sauce was introduced as a substitute by chefs in America and Britain, to an audience more familiar with the flavors of the tomato than the Chinese plum.

Also from him, I learned a version of Sweet and Sour Pork, authentic enough, and mean enough to actually help me through my college days! I would teach cooking in private homes to earn extra pocket money, and a very popular mainstay of my repertoire was western-style Sweet and Sour Pork which I adapted from his teachings.

Sadly, I never knew what became of my friend the chef…I never saw him again after I left the restaurant kitchen.

Original Sweet & Sour Pork

Pork  loin with some fat       200 g, cut into 2.5cm squares

Soy sauce                                  1 tsp

Oyster sauce                            ½ tbsp

Egg yolk                                     ½

Corn flour                                 ½ cup + 1 tbsp

Red chilli                                    1, sliced thickly

Green chilli                                2, sliced thickly

Sauce:

Preserved plum sauce          ¼ cup

Hawthorn (山楂)                      20 g, mashed

Salt                                              ¼ tsp

Method:

1.    Season the pork with soy sauce, oyster sauce, egg and 1 tbsp. of corn flour for at least 30 minutes. Add 1 cup of corn flour gradually, until the pork is well coated and has a crumbly texture.

2.    Deep-fry pork until slightly golden. Remove and drain the oil completely.

3.    Once the pork has cooled sufficiently, deep-fry the pork again until it is golden brown. This step ensures the pork stays crispy. Remove pork and drain completely.

4.    Mix the ingredients for the sauce thoroughly.

5.    Heat the wok and quick-stir-fry chillies for 1 minute.

6.    Pour the mixture and stir thoroughly. Add pork and fry for another 30 seconds, or until the sauce coats the pork and chillies thoroughly. There shouldn’t be any sauce left at the bottom of the wok.

7.    Remove and serve immediately.

Note: Hawthorn gives a slightly sourish taste and a reddish tinge to the dish.

            A hallmark of a good sweet and sour dish is a strong contrast of sweetness from the plum sauce, and sourness from hawthorn.

Before There Was Instant Noodle

It may be hard to believe…but there was a time when instant noodles didn’t exist. And when one wanted a quick snack, one had to scoot down to a nearby coffee shop for a fish ball noodle or kaya toast.

In those days (I think instant noodles appeared sometime early-70s), the equivalent of instant noodles was the dried cakes of noodles sold by the shops making fresh noodles and wonton skins (see my previous post). You’d see these noodle cakes displayed in huge glass containers lining the wall of the shop, and they’d be sold by the cake or by weight.

Every household had a few of these dried noodle cakes in the larder. There were different flavors – plain, egg, dried scallop, and more. I remember even having them for breakfast, made into fried noodles by hawkers.

Unlike instant noodles, the cake noodles were not fried and didn’t come with little sachets of soup flavoring and seasoning – but were packed with flavor nonetheless. That’s because the noodle itself contained ingredients such as egg, prawn, or abalone. And what it didn’t contain was msg, so it tasted of the natural ingredients and not of artificiality.

All you actually needed, to go with these noodles, was a good home-made broth, or, as I would do, a home-made oyster sauce, sesame oil, vegetables, and chilli – tossed and eaten neat.

Yes, I make my own oyster sauce, and the recipe is below. I find that it tastes worlds apart from any off-the-shelf equivalent, and totally transforms any dish it is used with.

So here’s to eating minimalist-ically….but incredibly well!

  

Noodle with Home-made Oyster Sauce

Water                                      2 litres

Egg noodle                            90 g

Oyster sauce                          1 tbsp

Soy sauce                              1 tsp

Chilli sauce                            1 tbsp (optional)

Oil                                           ½ tbsp.

Vegetable                               50 g

Sesame oil                             a dash

White pepper                                   

Home-made Oyster Sauce

Fresh oysters                         500 g

Corn flour                               2 tbsp

Garlic                                      4 cloves, minced

Ginger                                    15 g, minced

Shallots                                  6, minced

Oil                                           ½ cup

Salt                                         2 tsp

Sugar                                      1 tsp

Method:

Oyster sauce

 1.      Mix corn flour and oysters thoroughly. Rinse with water until clean. The corn flour helps to remove impurities in the oyster.

 2.      Heat oil under low flame. Add garlic, ginger and shallots and continue to cook under low flame until it turns slightly golden.

3.      Remove the garlic, ginger and shallots and blend them with the oyster until smooth.

4.     Return the oyster mixture to the infused oil and continue to cook. Initially, there will be a lot of foam in the oil. Continue to cook in medium heat until the foam subsides.

5.     Cook the mixture for another 30 minutes.

6.     Turn off the heat and let the oyster sauce cool.

7.      Pour into a bottle and chill it.

8.      The oyster sauce must be eaten within 2 weeks.

To assemble:

1.    Cook vegetables in boiling water. Remove the vegetables and drain completely. Place the vegetables on a serving plate.

2.    Place the noodles into boiling water and cook them until al dente. Rinse the noodles in cold water to give it a crunchy texture. Return noodles to the boiling water and cook for another 30 seconds.

3.    Meanwhile, mix the oyster, soy, and chilli sauces thoroughly in a bowl. Toss noodles with the sauce and place the noodles on top of the vegetable.

4.    Drizzle sesame oil and white pepper and serve immediately.

Wonton with a Difference

Stepping into the supermarket is no big deal these days. But it wasn’t always so.

Back in the 1960s, the 4 or 5 supermarkets in Singapore were very exclusive places, frequented only by “ang moh” (Caucasian) residents and expatriates, and very well to do Singaporeans. The rest of us did our marketing or grocery shopping at neighborhood wet markets and provision shops (or “mama shops” as they were known). There were also many small cottage industries that churned out foodstuffs, such as fresh noodles, for residents living nearby.

I loved these small shops and the people who ran them, as they had their own secret recipes and particular identities. For instance, some shops specialized in soy sauces, and various types of bean pastes and sweet sauces, which they made themselves, or, in turn, obtained from other cottage suppliers. Back then, there was greater variety of tastes because there was greater variety of origins; unlike the food shops of today where the source is usually a “big” manufacturer or distributor that supplies the whole – or almost whole – of Singapore. 

The noodle suppliers were usually wonton skin makers too; and every morning, I watched as fresh wonton skins were pressed in roller-machines, cut into round or square pieces, and carefully wrapped in brown paper, or even used newspaper, to prevent them drying out. The packets were displayed in a glass cabinet at the front of the shop, next to other cakes and bundles of fresh-made noodles; refrigeration being unheard of in those days. And the whole shop smelled peculiarly of dry powdery flour.

After cutting, the edges and other odd pieces of wonton skin would be thrown into a tray. The scraps would by then have turned brittle and dry, and be sold for as cheaply as 20 cents per 300 grams; however, that would have been enough for a family of four!

There were different ways to prepare these remnant wonton skins. I preferred mine with fish stock and minced pork balls, as they produced a hearty comfort food that was great for a hot afternoon.

Wonton Skin Soup (for 4 persons)

Wonton skin             320 g, laid out and dried for 1 hour.

Choy sum                  100 g, or any leafy vegetable

Ikan bilis                     200 g, soaked in water for 1 hour and drained. Keep water for the stock.

Ginger                         2 slices

Pork bones               250 g

Water                         6½  cups + ½ cup of water from soaking the ikan bilis

Meatballs

Minced pork             150 g

Spring onion             1 tbsp

Oyster sauce             1 tbsp

Soy sauce                   1½ tsp

Pepper                        ½ tsp

Water                          1 tbsp

Corn flour                  1 tbsp

Garnishings

Fried shallots

Spring onion

Chillies

Method:

Stock:

1.   Deep-fry 50 g of ikan bilis until golden brown. Drain and set them aside for garnishing.

2.   Boil water.

3.   Saute the remaining ikan bilis and ginger for 2 minutes; 

4.   Add boiling water and pork bones, and simmer for 1 hour.

5.   Drain and keep the stock only.

Meatballs:

1.   Add marinate to the minced pork and mix thoroughly with a pair of chopsticks, stirring clockwise until the meat appears sticky.

2.   Roll the meat into balls and drop into the stock with the leafy vegetable.

3.   When the meatballs float to the surface, they are cooked.

Wonton skins:

1.   Boil 2 liters of water. Once boiled, cook wonton skins in a ladle for 30 seconds.

2.   Meanwhile, scoop boiling stock into 4 serving bowls.

3.   Divide the wonton skins into the bowls. Top with meatballs and garnishing.

4.   Sprinkle spring onion, chilli with a dash of pepper and sesame oil before serving.

Good to the Last!

It’s a funny thing…as adults, going to a wedding dinner is a chore; but when we were kids, going to a wedding dinner was fun. Maybe I was just plain greedy.

Remember the routine? Dressing up and combing your hair; meeting cousins, relatives and friends – people you haven’t seen in years; then waiting, and waiting, for dish after dish to appear on the table…

Certain dishes you only get to eat at a grand feast like a wedding. My particular favorites were the cold dish with crab-meat omelet and salad prawn, the shark’s fin soup, the roast suckling pig, and the steamed chicken with ham and kai lan.

The portions were big, well, at least they appeared big to a kid. After all, a wedding was a huge matter of face to Chinese; it would be unthinkable for your guests to go home with half-filled stomachs. Therefore food and drink flowed as abundantly as the wishes heaped upon the wedding couple. In fact it was common to have leftovers when each dish was cleared for the next course.

When dinner was over, close relatives and friends would linger a while to chat and catch up. A charming ritual then takes place. Boxes of leftovers, thoughtfully packed by the restaurant, would be brought out and offered to those who stayed behind. After pretending to noisily demur, the guests would happily bring the boxes home.

This practice may sound weird and unhygienic, but it was totally normal and acceptable. Like I said, things were simpler then. And you could never be sure what was in the box; chicken, duck, roast meat, prawns, and vegetables were all mixed in. In fact, so welcome were these leftovers, some restaurants even sold them to regular guests the following morning. They were known as choy giok （菜脚）in Cantonese or chai mui (菜尾) in Hokkien.

Every family has their own recipe for making something of the leftovers, but I liked my choy giok cooked with assam, mustard, chilli and bean paste. The dish tasted better as it “aged” -- the sourness of assam, the spiciness of chilli, and the earthy savoriness of bean paste mingling and slowly marinating in the pot day after day. And the bitterness of mustard leaves lending some freshness to the flavors.

For me, the greatest thrill of this dish is poking your chopsticks in and seeing what surprises await. As goes the Gump-ism: “Life is like a box of chocolates…you never know wad you’re gonna git”.

Choy Giok 菜脚

Oil                                          1 tbsp

Bean paste                           1 tbsp

Garlic                                     2 cloves, minced

Dried chillies                        5, soaked in warm water and chopped coarsely

Assorted roast meat            250 g

Salted vegetable                 50 g, optional, soak and wash thoroughly

Assam                                   2 tbsp, mixed with ½ cup of water, and strained

Water or stock                      1½  cups

Fried prawns                        100 g

Mustard leaves                    100 g

Salt and sugar                      to taste

Method:

1.    Saute bean paste, garlic and dried chillies over low heat. If necessary, add 1 tsp of water to prevent the paste from burning.

2.    Add assorted roast meat, salted vegetable, and fry for one minute over high heat.

3.    Simmer the meat with assam and water/stock for 5 minutes.

4.    Add prawns and mustard leaves, continue to simmer for another 10 minutes.

5.    Add salt and sugar to taste.

Note:

The dish tastes better overnight.