Grandma’s Ngoh Hiong

Tuck shop ngoh hiong

In Cantonese opera, men and women spar over love, money, and politics. A similar drama unfolded in my grandparents’ home, but the topic that triggered it was cooking. My grandfather liked to brag about his mastery in cooking. While sitting cross-legged on a single-seat sofa, with a cigarette between his fingers, he cried, “Your grandmother doesn’t know a thing!” Then he let out a chuckle.

My grandmother uttered a feeble “humph,” but she was no docile sheep of a woman as many in her generation were expected to be. One day, when I asked her to teach me how to make ngoh hiong, a Hokkien meat roll that was the mainstay of our dwindling family dinners, she took the opportunity to show her husband of 60 years who called the shots in the family. To demonstrate how she would marinate the ground pork, she got my 86-year-old grandfather walking up and down the kitchen to fetch her ingredients. When he looked uncertainty, she belittled him mercilessly. “Of course you have to wash the bean curd! Where is the oil? What are you looking for? The bean curd skin is right here!”

My grandfather spewed a couple of Hokkien vulgarities—he could cook himself and was the master of vegetable stew and pig’s stomach pepper soup. But he was accommodating, so my grandmother marinated the meat, texturized it with chopped water chestnuts and shallots, and rolled it in bean curd skin. Seven minutes later, the meat roll emerged from the steamer in one piece. Was this a metaphor for their marriage?

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Bitch

Bitch Winter Issue

Bitch Winter Issue

This issue of the Portland-based feminist magazine tackles women’s food production and consumption roles. What is refreshing about this magazine is that many of its contributors take on a scholarly approach, calling on histories, data and stakeholders’ interviews to challenge the readers’ existing knowledge of the topics at hand. Yet the articles are not typical of scholarly papers—incessant and sometimes sleep-inducing. Most stories run only a couple of pages, an appropriate length for a casual read over a cup of coffee.

The piece that I find most intriguing is about a group of women who quit their jobs to collect, categorize and utilize coupons in the most efficient and tactical ways coupons can possibly be used. The larger issue revolving around couponing is that it challenges the age old idea of shopping as trivia and the women responsible for it as frivolous and wasteful. Full-time couponers demonstrate wisdom and economic muscle, no less than the working women, and as a result they save thousands on child care, commuting, and grocery bills yearly. Most importantly, couponing proves the economic value of household chores that is so often ignored by the tax-paying segment of society. How homemaking is different for these women compared to their home bound mothers and grandmothers is that it has become a financially viable choice as opposed to a duty imposed upon them. But what I wish the author had also discussed is the types of food discounts available on the coupons. My fear is that the choices are limited to nutrients-deficient processed food and that couponing further drives the domestic diet towards a high-in-sodium/fat one if modernity hadn’t already done that. In other words, couponing isn’t as empowering as it appears to be. Instead, it has given manufacturers and retailers more intimate control over where consumers spend their buck.

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Modern Farmer

A modern connection to the lay on serious farm issues

A modern connection to the lay on serious farm issues

As the world wonders how it can feed itself with the growing appetite of the new rich and the increasing population in the underdeveloped world, some nations have turned to GMO for answers. GMO promises higher yield compared to conventional crops and better resistance against bacteria and pests. But it also destroys the livelihoods of smallholder farmers who can’t afford the more expensive seeds and the chemicals it requires. Modern Farmer, which content proves more constructive than its cover gives credit for, features success stories of farmers who returned to conventional seeds after their failed venture with GMO, which benefits waned after a few years of harvests. Their move is encouraged by the growing demand for non-GMO products and supermarkets like Whole Foods that recently decided to label all its foods containing genetically modified ingredients by 2018.

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Japanese comic serves palatable underbelly

A stripper walks into an eatery she frequents and orders mentaiko (cod roe). Medium rare, she says. Weird, because she usually likes it raw. But the chef and fellow regulars understand quickly – the change of her taste also means the change of her heart. She has met someone new, again. But no matter how she much wavers between how it is done, mentaiko is here to stay, as the sac that it comes cocooned in resembles the full lips of her childhood sweetheart.

One fine day at work (as she sits wide-legged on stage), her eyes meet with those of a man who wears a smile that looks deliciously like mentaiko. She disappeared from then on. Rumour has it that she retired to marry her childhood sweetheart.

Of course, like all of her past relationships, this didn’t last long either. “That man is a mummy’s boy,” she complains when she returns. So, amidst merriment, business resumes, and so is her hyper-variable craving for mentaiko.

Awkward reunion with childhood sweetheart

Awkward reunion with childhood sweetheart

This is chapter eight in book one of 深夜食堂 (literally translated Middle of Night Canteen), a Japanese comic on the events that happen in an eatery which operates from midnight to dawn. Because of its odd operating hours, its customers are often the underbelly of Japanese society – stripper, triad leader, elderly gay man, retired porn director, spinsters and obese woman. At this eatery, these people obtain redress as their person unveil in each chapter. The stripper desires love like any woman; the gangster turns out to be a generous man sharing expensive fresh Hokkaido seafood with the other customers; the director is coarse with the starlets but is a gentle lover to his girlfriend; the obese woman draws laughter and empathy as she swings between the extremes of starvation and food orgy.

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Recipe: Yong Tau Foo

Mdm Eileen Chin has been cooking since she was a child. It used to be a chore that fell upon her, just as it would have on the daughters of other Chinese families, but after she got married, Mdm Chin gladly did it for her husband and three kids. One of her specialties is Hakka Yong Tau Fu – a variety of bean curds, like tofu and tau pok, stuffed with a mixture of minced meat and fish paste. The 60-year-old learnt the dish from her mother, who made it on every Chinese New Year’s eve. On that day, the employees at her father’s medicinal hall would join them for reunion dinner.

During the sixties, it was common for the towkays to show appreciation to their employees by treating them to a dinner. There were hundreds of beancurds to prepare, and Mdm Chin was made to stuff the meat into every one of them. Until today, Yong Tau Fu reminds her of this dreadful chore. But there was one Yong Tau Fu making session that was particularly memorable for Mdm Chin. Leading up to the festive period, her family would receive many cans of abalone as gifts. One year, her housemaid got creative with the expensive ingredient. She stuffed the remaining fillings between two slices of abalones and steamed them. They were, as it turned out, “impossible to chew”. Mdm Chin and her sister threw away the abalone and ate only the minced meat. “We got into serious trouble with our mother,” she said.

Nowadays, Mdm Chin hardly cooks Yong Tau Fu as it takes at least three hours to get it done. Besides, there’s no one at home to eat it. Now that her daughters are married and her son hardly comes home to eat after work, she has switched from cooking three dishes and one soup for dinner to the time-saving grilled chicken with salad. Yong Tau Fu is only made upon special request, not by anyone, but her children.

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Go Bananas

banana tree

Patrick looking for bananas to harvest

Patrick Tse had been told that the goreng pisang stall was famous in Johor, so he popped by to get a few. He then dumped them at the back of his car and drove back to Singapore, but he got caught in a traffic jam and only made it home two hours later. When he finally took one out and sunk his teeth into it, the banana was, to his surprise, still crispy.

Goreng Pisang, or Pisang Goreng as it is known in Malaysia and Indonesia, is a deep-fried battered banana eaten as a snack. Before the 80s, it was mainly sold at the Malay hawker stalls. The original recipe simply constituted of rice flour, salt, water, and “kapo” – a type of white powder used to oxidise the batter. The final crust is crunchy like a cracker but turns soggy almost immediately in a humid weather.

Over the years, more Chinese hawkers joined the rank of goreng pisang sellers, the most famous being Lim Kim Yong, who used to have a stall at Orchard Road’s Gluttons Square. He and the other newcomers offered lighter, crispier goreng pisangs that shatter like glass when you bite into them. The improvised version became very popular, but short-lived. Today, customers demand for higher standards. “A good goreng pisang must meet three requirements. It must be crispy, it must not be oily, and most importantly, it must be crispy even after it turns cold,” said Patrick.

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Thanks to Malaysia, Singaporeans have a place where they can relive the past

tanjong pagar railway

In the final days of Tanjong Pagar Railway

“Bhai makes one of the best teas.” Salem S.O. took a sip of his tea and put his cup back onto the table. The rest of the men around the table nodded in unison and picked up their drinks too. It was a humid Tuesday afternoon and the lunch hour crowd had just left. From 11a.m. on, all of the 50 or so tables at M.Hasan Railway Station Canteen were filled with workers from the nearby port and offices. As the lunch hour ended, the crowd had dispersed, leaving behind their plates of leftover curries and noodle soup and customers like Salem and his uncles.They are the people who neither live nor work nearby, but will travel here as often as once a week, ordering multiple rounds of teas and lingering to admire their surroundings. In the evenings and during weekends, they even come with their families — all three generations in tow — as part of their weekly or monthly gatherings.

All the food in this canteen is Halal: no pork, and all other animals except fish are slaughtered according to Islamic law, which explains why most of the customers are Muslims. But the food is only part of the reason why Salem and the others alike keep coming back here. Except for the one or two outstanding dishes, the Malay and Indian cuisines served here, according to them, are common and ordinary in taste. What keeps them attracted to this canteen is that it looks, smells and sounds like the past. The aged stonewalls and exposed water pipes; the train engines’ deafening boom; and the pungent smell of belacan that wafts freely in the air and then clings to people’s clothes — all of them attract the connoisseurs of the old and the forgotten.

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Kimchi

kimchi

For those who work late and have no ready dinner at home, we recommend you store some Kimchi in the fridge. The versatile fermented vegetable could be cooked with rice, made into soup with pre-packed stock, beef and tofu, or added into Korean instant noodles to spice it up – all in less than half an hour. It is a refreshing and spicy awakener that can be kept for up to three months.

Two weeks ago, I made about eight kilos of Kimchi, entirely from scratch. It was my second time after picking it up at the Korean Tourism Board. The procedure may be tedious but the final product is likely to turn out like what it should be, unlike Nian Gao or Beef Wellington. So here is a very detailed Kimchi recipe together with the simple instruction to cook Kimchi Fried Rice.

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Poached Chicken

poached chicken, hainanese chicken rice, chicken rice

Delish, even when it’s cold

When I told my godma that I wanted to learn how to make poached chicken, she bought the ingredients right away and showed me that very night. Cooking is that easy to her. No need for planning or practising. My godma, also my mother’s sister, is one of the most casual cook I’ve seen. She stirs and scoops with one hand on her waist and often leaves the stove to mingle with her guests. But somehow the food always turns out perfect.

To make poached chicken, she first filled a pot ¾ full with tap water and heat it up over the stove. She then put some garlic and ginger into a plastic bag and placed it on the table. “Just smash them with a cup. Don’t need special equipment,” she said casually, but I could sense her mockery of the people who purchase fancy equipments for every step of their cooking. She took a mug from the shelf and hammered the plastic bag until the garlic and ginger ripped opened. “That’s all!” she exclaimed.

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