Singapore's cuisine: a cultural melting pot

From Peranakan food, to curry fish head, the island nation's culinary offerings are linked to its immigrants

Lydia Soh (middle) in the middle of a culinary class at Food Playground. Provided By Food Playground

"The history of food in Singapore is inextricably linked to the country's immigration history," says Allan Lim, a Singaporean entrepreneur.

Lim was sitting at Indocafe - the white house, a restaurant located at 35 Scotts Road which specializes in Peranakan food, developed by the offspring of 15th century Chinese immigrants and the local island population.

"According to legend, a Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) princess Hang Li Po was sent by the then Ming emperor to marry the Sultan of Malacca around the mid-15th century," says Lim.

"After that, Chinese immigrants arrived in Indonesia and Malaysia, blending in with the locals through marriage. Their descendants were known as Peranakan Chinese - boys were called Baba and girls Nyonya - and the hybrid culture they spawned is referred to as Peranakan culture."

These days the word Peranakan has an antiquated ring to it. Yet, for those who are interested, there's one place where the tradition is alive and well outside of a museum. It's on the menu.

"Cooking to satisfy two unique and distinct cultures is an art. Nyonya cooking demands a mother's love and constant tweaking of each ingredient's proportion to ensure perfect taste," says the restaurant's website.

Diners can sample the rich flavors and fragrances by ordering steamed "Chawanmushi" egg custard with fish fillet seasoned with coconut milk, herbs and spices.

Another highlight is slow-cooked wagyu beef cheeks in a special blend of spices, ground using traditional mortar and pestle.

With Singapore being an island country, seafood dominates the menu. Worth trying are the stir-fried fresh squid with a sambal spice blend, as well as crispy "Top Hat" pastry cups with shredded turnip, served with prawns and crabmeat.

The dining experience is enhanced with a beautifully crafted ambience complete with mood lighting, plush furniture and a wall display of the restaurant owner's collection of Peranakan antiques, including authentic Nyonya clothing whose accentuated femininity has been embraced by Singapore Airlines in dressing their own stewardesses.

However, according to Lim, decadence and luxury were probably far from the minds of early immigrants who had come from other parts of Asia.

"Mostly involved in hard labor, these immigrants developed recipes that used relatively cheap ingredients, which were believed to have an augmenting effect on muscles and bones," he says.

One example is the curry fish head, an early culinary invention by Singapore's Indian community. "Originally, fish heads were considered inedible and were simply discarded. Then someone came up with a recipe - offsetting the smell of fish heads with a cornucopia of spices, for which Indian food is traditionally famous," says Lim.

"And it's not surprising that the Chinese then came up with their own lighter version."

Both versions were improved over the ensuing half century, before appearing in its current incarnation, embedded in Singapore's culinary history.

Like curry fish head, the origin of "pork ribs tea" is probably equally humble, although this has not prevented it from becoming a huge favorite with the Chinese community in Singapore.

"The name of the dish may lead many to think that the pork ribs are boiled in soup with tea leaves, which is not true," says Frankie Gwee, a second-generation immigrant whose parents came to Singapore from the Chinese province of Guangdong during the Japanese invasion in the 1940s. Today, Gwee and his sisters run three Chinese restaurants in Singapore, with pork ribs tea having pride of place on the menu.

"The tea is served separately, during dinner. This is done as the pork ribs soup is a little greasy, and to let diners degrease," says Gwee.

"The early 20th century Chinese immigrants invented the recipe, combining it with the deeply-rooted tea culture they had brought to Singapore from their native Guangdong.

"Most of them were coolies who simply couldn't afford to get ill. Therefore, the peppers and the garlic. While the peppers enhanced the immune system, the garlic was an antiseptic," the restaurateur says, listing the ingredients used in the otherwise slightly bland soup.

According to him, the pork ribs were bathed in soup because for those early immigrants, the top concern was to fill their stomachs.

"For the same reason, ingredients like turnips and starch-rich food including cakes and pancakes appeared on the tables of our forefathers."

Speaking of pancakes, it is impossible not to mention roti jala, a net pancake, although it's more Malaysian than Chinese.

"Fancy-looking, roti jala is unbelievably easy to make," says Lydia Soh, a culinary instructor at Food Playground, a cooking school set up in 2012 to offer tourists and expatriates what Daniel Tan, the school's founder, calls "a cultural immersion experience".

The school is located at 24A Sago Street.

One afternoon in mid-June, I was under her tutelage trying to drip batter, through the holes of a device called the roti Jala mold, on a preheated pan to create the net effect.

"A key point is that the batter, made by mixing flour, water, coconut milk and raw egg, must be runny enough so that the dripping is continuous," she says.

"Another thing is that when you do the dripping, you must move the cup swiftly and keep it close to the pan. Otherwise, you are most likely to get a knotted jumble rather than smooth, beautiful netting."

For those who consider a certain level of sophistication - and hard labor - essential to cooking, making a professional, coconut chicken curry is what they need to try. The pounding of all the seasoning - from ginger and garlic cloves to lemon grass stalks and cumin seeds - into an unrecognizable mash seems to take forever. (A suggestion for the women: better bring along a male friend to the class if you want to cook this dish.)

"The dish is a perfect example of cultural amalgamation on a plate," says Soh.

"Among the ingredients, turmeric powder and coriander seeds are traditionally Malaysian. At the same time, cloves and cinnamon are considered Chinese while cumin and funnel seeds are Indian."

"The subtle balance of flavor, and the magic made possible by the interplay of the various ingredients, offers an apt metaphor for Singapore's multiethnic society," says Soh.

Before joining Food Playground, Soh, who learned cooking from her mother, was a housewife for 12 years.

"I had no earnings then and had no bought a gift for my husband for 12 years," says the 44-year-old mother of two, who had trained as an athlete earlier in life, and looks considerably younger than her age.

"This place (the cooking school) offers flexi-hour jobs for stay-at-home mothers like me, who can pass their culinary skills and stories."

Indeed, a food story is inevitably a human story.

Gwee opened his first restaurant in 1991, four years after a severe car accident disfigured his face. "The restaurant was opened with the compensation money," he says.

"It turns out that for me good taste had as much as healing effect as time," he says.

Yang Wanli contributed to this story.

zhaoxu@chinadaily.com.cn