Marketing labels add adjectives to the names of fruits and vegetables, influencing how we think about them too. “Sweet”, “airflown”, “Japanese”, “premium” and many more have been used to create distinctions among the same types of vegetables, mostly to raise their value. While one could use science to dispute these distinctions, I recently found out that taxonomy itself isn’t free from commercial influences. Decisions to lump or split plants depended on what colonial botanists considered was valuable for trade. This gave me the idea to create a new taxonomy for commercial vegetables, to highlight the ludicrosity of labelling languages while also acknowledging the capitalistic motivations of the 18th-century classification system.

And so I published a small book. Side A features seven stories about fruit and vegetable names and the implications of their use today. Each story comes with an illustration by Sokkuan Tye that cleverly conveys the absurdity and humour that I may or may not have properly delivered through words. Side B covers my experiment with the new vegetable taxonomy and my critique of four types of labels that mystify rather than clarify the plants we eat. Almost Useful designed the book, using typography to help differentiate the vegetables discussed.

The book is available here.

My favourite reading this year: Margot Finn’s Discriminating Taste. The author observed a shift in America’s mainstream food culture during periods of widening income gap, and attribute the greater attention that people today pay to food to what she calls “class anxieties”. When the middle class is doing well and the upper class isn’t claiming much of the nation’s wealth, she explains, the former could scale the social hierarchy through hard work and the money they are paid. But when the super-elites emerge and even professional incomes are not enough for “class-climbing”, the middle class rely more on cultural forms of distinction, such as the gourmet or organic food they eat. While some “foodies” may be genuinely concern about nutrition or sustainable agriculture, they are also looking to differentiate themselves from the masses.

These two arguments left a deep impression on me:

There are as many opinions about taste as there are permutations of upbringing, cultures and socioeconomic environments. Gourmet food did not become one because they are universally pleasing. They have been judged to be good taste by people, specifically the elite tastemakers, who based their opinion primarily on scarcity. This is why gourmet food are either expensive or require a very niche knowledge to access. The author has no interest in judging people who consume gourmet food to distinguish themselves, but she takes issue with those who claim that this practice is “classless”. Many food enthusiasts argue that they aren’t highbrow if they also eat lowbrow food. But gourmets eating diversely, Finn argues, doesn’t make eating gourmet food inclusive, and their ability to buy and enjoy both high- and lowbrow food only serves to communicate their privilege. Calling gourmet eating an inclusive gesture, she adds, obscures the fact that food reproduces class hierarchies.

The book also deals with the elitism of contemporary food movements. The advocates of organic, local, or slow food consider their food choices morally superior, but few have evaluated their real impact. For example, transportation contributes only 11% of greenhouse gas emissions in the total lifecycle of food supply chains, as opposed to the 83% generated during the production stage. But people are fixated on food miles and fail to consider the energy efficiency of farm operations. Few are also aware that organic certifications permit the use of organic pesticides and fertilisers, some of which are highly toxic to marine life and have caused worker injuries. Being natural doesn’t mean no or low toxicity. Supporters of these food movements pay more for “better food” without enough understanding of these things suggests that it is the idea of “virtuous eating” that they are more interested in.

This is my interpretation and it may not do justice to Finn’s arguments. Best if you read it yourself. I liked the book because I never thought to look at food trends in tandem with income inequality. Compared to the others I’ve read, the author is also more critical of the movements (some may say too critical), nudging me to evaluate the motivations behind my food choices.

Rebel With A Course reads like an ah chek regaling with colourful tales of the good old days prior to the hawker centres and HDBs. Except, Queen’s English rolls off the author’s, Damian D’Silva’s tongue, and the slightest details that usually escape one’s mind embellish his stories — “The wet market had two rows of food stalls at the front, selling a host of dishes from the different Chinese dialect groups. There was you char kway, lor mee, yong tau foo, chwee kueh, and our favourite, mee pok tah.”  I am captivated and almost convinced that the past was better than the present. Perhaps, heritage dishes, like he says, should be preserved the way it was.

But I’m afraid D’Silva and the many else of his generation are the only ones who truly appreciate heritage dishes. They have had their fair share from the street peddlers, or have been forced to help cooking some at home. Pleasant or not, these experiences in their formative years shaped their preferences. Today, where the flavours of the past are no more, they yearn for the old and lambast the new.

Preserving heritage dishes becomes a tricky business, because the subsequent generations have developed a taste for what D’Silva calls the “bastardised version.” While hawker centre fare are more prominent in their lives, the bygone foods live only in the memories of an older person. They are murky, unattainable, thus, always beckoning envious “likes” should their pictures occasionally appear on one’s Facebook feed.

If by any chance the new generation finds their way to a hawker adhering to old methods of cooking, or they travel to Malaysia where more of such person exist, it remains a question as to whether they would appreciate the food in its previous, supposedly better life form.

I grew up eating factory-made muah chee and had liked its firm and chewy texture. A few years back my ex-boss, a man also belonging to an earlier generation, proudly introduced me to a hawker believed to be the last man making muah chee by hand. I had wanted to like it, so that I can claim connoisseurship of hawker culture.

But the handmade muah chee was limp and lifeless in texture. It was not what I had indulged my schoolgirl-self in, along with ramly burgers and Taiwanese sausages from the pasar malams.

Most Singaporeans today prefer crispy to the gooey or luak. They also like their wanton mee with chilli sauce, instead of just soy sauce, lard, and broth. In both cases the latter is traditional. Evidently, staying traditional doesn’t guarantee popularity across generations. Otherwise, the versions we know today wouldn’t have become the norm.

Since heritage foods are irrelevant to the younger generations, for whom are we preserving them?

Practicing traditions builds a community and perpetuates one’s identity; it is important that they are handed down. But it is impossible to replicate wholesale. All traditions practiced today are interpretations of the past, with modifications to suit the present. If we had expected all sambal to be prepared with a mortar and pestle, the condiment would not be as ubiquitous as it is today.

Traditions have to change for them to stick around for a long time, so instead of lamenting the inevitable, facilitating it can ensure that the outcomes stay culturally relevant.

D’ Silva also emphasised the importance of methodical cooking. I think heritage can be more meaningfully preserved in terms of methods than dishes. This is so that when creativity strikes, chefs and cooks will look within, instead of looking out, to the French, the Japanese, or the modernists, as they do now, for different approaches to familiar foods.

In passing on traditions, some will be lost. The best we can do is to make sure not all will.

Image taken from Amazon.com

A meal can simultaneously be good to eat and good to think (words borrowed from Levi Strauss), as I learnt from the recently published Experimental Eating. It is a book that compiles more than 60 food-based creative projects across the globe, most of which intersect with art, design, and science. They push boundaries on how we understand, relate, and experience food, and also call attention to neglected topics, either related or tangential to food. To induce salivation and considerations at the same dinner table is no small feat, given that few will voluntarily ponder over climate change and slavery when presented with a plate of tantalising fish steak. As the book’s authors, The Center of Genomic Gastronomy, writes: “Contemporary art is an essential domain of experimentation and research, because art still makes room for unpopular views, freedom of expression and non-instrumental research.” Let’s digest some of these projects…

Smog Tasting by The Center for Genomic Gastronomy

An egg-whipping performance that made smog visible and tastable. During the performances, egg whites were whipped at traffic junctions and on rooftops to harvest air pollution. As egg foams are up to 90 percent air, smog from different locations could be tasted and compared in the form of polluted meringues. This project urges us to think about the relationship between food, the environment, and our body.

Image from The Center for Genomic Gastronomy

Sharing Dinner by Marije Vogelzang

The artist intervened the way a group of people interacted over a Christmas dinner by getting her participants to eat through the same tablecloth that extended from the table top and over each person’s head, leaving holes for the head and the arms. As each could feel if the tablecloth was pulled, this dinner enforced an attentiveness and intimacy between the diners.

Image from Marije Vogelzang

Image from Marije Vogelzang

Self Made by Christina Agapakis & Sissel Tolaas

Many of the stinkiest cheeses are hosts to species of bacteria closely related to the bacteria responsible for the smells of human armpits or feet, so the duo asked, “Can knowledge and tolerance of bacterial cultures in our food improve tolerance of the bacteria on our bodies?” They inoculated swabs from human hands, feet, noses and armpit into whole milk, curdled the milk, and then pressed them into eight cheeses varying in texture, colour, and odour. The cheeses, which reflected “an individual’s microbial landscape,” challenged the observer “to confront the microbiological aspects of their food and their body.”

Image from agapakis.com

Ridley’s Restaurant by The Decorators & Atelier ChanChan

An architect and a design studio in London collaborated to create a barter-based restaurant to revitalise a historical but forgotten market. Visitors would go to the market to purchase one of several ingredients laid out on the restaurant’s daily shopping list. They would then deliver these ingredients to Ridley’s, where they could be exchanged for a cooked lunch. The produce collected at lunch was used to cook dinner. To eat dinner at Ridley’s, customers paid £15 for their meal, and receive £5 back in the form of market voucher. The money made at dinner was used to buy ingredients for next day’s lunch, and the vouchers brought people to the market long after the pop-up restaurant had ended.

Image from popupcity.net

Image from popupcity.net

Meat Helmet/SWAMP

The artist created a helmet that forces the user to chew at specified intervals and length of time. It is an art vehicle to expose fast food eaters to the pains of enjoying the ‘luxury’ of such foods. The helmet is controlled by a computer programme that calculates the amount of chewing time required to burn off the number of calories of these foods. In case you are wondering, it takes eight hours of chewing to burn off a Big Mac that is 560 calories.

Image from SWAMP

I’ve been thinking about death lately. I am afraid, yet hopeful, about the prospect of consciousness after life. I will like a chapter two to my brief humanly existence, but I also fear, that in this sequel, I will be written into a new plot with completely different characters. I appreciate personal accounts of impending death, be it of one’s own or of the loved ones, as I wanted perspectives, preferably one that can help me see the silver lining to the eternal separations with my parents and my soon-to-be husband. If that’s not possible, at least I wanted to know how others deal with the pain.

***

“One day—May 30—you’re in Brooklyn Fairway doing a big food shop to prepare for your husband’s return from climbing Mt. Rainer; the next day, the National Park Service is calling to say your husband has been killed… Life changes fast. I took the first flight to Seattle, and life as I knew it ended.”

Writer Lisa Kolb shared this story in Remedy Quarterly, a food magazine that accompanies all its recipes with personal stories. Kolb contributed a recipe for the chocolate chip cookies that her husband brought with him to his climbing trip. It was the last thing she ever made him.

After her husband was gone, Kolb wrote, she lost her appetite and her ability to cook, as she didn’t know how to do so for one. She ate more over time and she relearned, more slowly, the pleasures of cooking. She stopped preparing large, heavy dishes that she used to do for her husband and instead made salads or even just a glass of lemonade for herself. She still ate cereals in place of a proper meal, but that’s okay, she said:

“I have not regained all my weight. I cannot throw out a strawberry yoghurt—his strawberry yoghurt—that remains in the refrigerator. There are still bowls of cereals. But that’s OK. I will get there. For every bowl of cereal in front of the TV, there is a lovely soft-boiled egg breakfast at the table with the Sunday paper, or a warm mug of chickpea stew, hearty and fragrant, cradled in my hands as I read a book. I still make too much food, but that’s OK. I will save the leftovers for another day.”

***

I never baked, but I made Kolb’s cookies in honour of her husband. My biggest gripe about death is that life goes on for millions of others as if the deceased never stepped on earth before.

The cookies turned out to be rock hard — not unlikely to break a tooth if a popcorn had done that to mine. I screwed up because I used a blender, instead of a cake mixer, to cream the butter. I also measured flour, oatmeal and sugar by sight.

But that’s okay. The man I am about to spend the rest of my life with voluntarily reaches for my cookies-gone-wrong for breakfasts, and, whenever I dilly dally in the kitchen.

My food doesn’t always turn out well, but that’s okay, because this special someone would eat with so much glee I wonder what I’ve done to deserve him.

I still cannot imagine, after reading Kolb, how life, or death, would be, alone, but I learnt how to be grateful for the present.

“Good Fruits and how to buy them” is not only a point-blank title for a book but also its authors’ blunt statement about people’s level of ignorance of an everyday know-how. Many consumers have a clearer set of logic for clothes shopping than for fruit picking, even though the latter would have greater impact on their lives. It doesn’t help that fruits these days are uniformly looking by design, giving shoppers the impression that there is no meaningful difference from one orange to the next. But according to the authors, who published the book in 1967, there are telltale signs of a sweet, ripen fruit even amongst the uniformity. The book teaches about more than 20 fruits available in the U.S., but remembering the characteristics of just seven that are common in Singapore would be a good start.

Avocados

Avocado skins may be smooth or leathery or rough, depending on the variety. The authors found no relationship between skin texture and quality of the flesh. “Select heavy, medium-sized avocados with bright fresh appearance and which are rather firm or which are just beginning to soften.” Softening may be hastened by placing the fruit in a warm humid place. Inversely, softening may be delayed by keeping the fruit in cool dry place. But not below 5.5 degrees C, as low temperatures will turn the flesh black and ruin the flavour. Therefore, don’t buy avocado which the grocer had refrigerated.

Bananas

Only buy bananas that were mature — stopped enlarging but not yet ripened — when picked. There is no way of telling whether a banana was mature if it is all green, so buy those with green tips, and the remainder a light yellow colour. A fruit picked before it was mature will never fully ripen. Banana should be kept at room temperatures until fully ripen. The best time for eating is when the fruit have speckles on their skin. Some people think speckled bananas have gone over the hill but it is actually a sign that fruit has reach a stage when it contains the lowest starch and highest sugar content. Bananas cannot be stored below 13 degrees C, which means they have no place in the fridge.

Oranges

They look all the same on the rack so the trick is to feel them in your hands. A good orange should be heavy. Light-weight citrus fruits means “there is air where there should be juice.” An orange that is a little green is probably one that grew on an inside branch. Since it didn’t get as much sunlight as the ones that grew on outside branches, the flavour will be poor. If the oranges came from Florida a thin skin is a good index of quality. However, the Californian varieties are usually thick-skinned but still taste good.

Grapes

Judge the grapes by their stems. Dry stems indicate that the fruit has been out of storage for two to three days when it should be kept at about 0 degrees C. I used to buy grapes that have fallen off the stems because it would saved me the trouble of plucking but it turns out to be a sign that the fruit has been held too long in storage. Avoid dull, lifeless, and sticky grapes because they have suffered from freeze burn.

Cantaloupe

Buy cantaloupes with no stem attached.

Cantaloupes with whole or half stem attached are rated poor because they were picked before they fully matured. Melons in general ripe at full slip which means that the fruit is mature enough to detach itself from the vine without taking a part of the stem with it. This, however, does not apply to watermelons. Place purchased cantaloupe in room temperature, not in the refrigerator. A pleasant aroma indicates that the fruit has developed its full flavour. At this point it may be refrigerated before serving, but not for more than 48 hours.

Pineapples

If you love your guests cut the pineapple lengthwise. If not, serve the top few rings as shown on the right.

As with other fruits, pineapples must be mature when harvested, indicated by a green and firm skin with eyes that are plump. Reject those that are purple and with eyes that are sunken and dull. Bruises, discolouration, watery eyes or at the base of the fruit are signs of decay. When pineapples are ripened, it developed full colour and aroma. Note that the fruit ripe from bottom to top, which means that it is sweetest in the lowest part. It is best to cut it lengthwise into wedges, so that everyone sharing the fruit gets both the sweet and the acidic ends.

Watermelon

This fruit has few external marks of quality; difficult even for an expert to select. But there are three things to watch out for. Firstly, select a melon that is uniform in shape. An oblong melon indicates an ovary this is not completely pollinated. Then select a heavy melon. The heavier it is, the more juice it contains. Finally, the underside of the melon, the part that rests on the ground, should be slightly yellow rather than pure white.

Book: The Food of Singapore
Distributed in: United States
Year: 1995
Author: Lee Geok Boi (Singaporean Straits Chinese)
Editor: Wendy Hutton
Recipes by: Djoko Wibisono and David Wong, both chefs at The Beaufort Sentosa (now known as The Singapore Resort and Spa Sentosa)

Short chapters on Singapore’s immigrant history, the nation’s kopitiam culture, and the characteristics of each ethnic food precede the recipes. Even though the author breaks down the cuisine into Indian, Chinese, and Malay, she makes sure to highlight the interactions of their techniques and ingredients in dishes such as Indian rojak and satay bee hoon. Insightful observation: the main difference between Malay and Indian curry is that the former tends to include galangal and lemongrass, while the mainstays of the latter are coriander, cumin, and fennel powder. The author also points out that Indian restaurants, even those own by Hindus, do not serve pork. This is because, she explains, the Muslim Mughal Empire once extended to a large part of the Indian continent. Therefore, Indian restaurants all over the world tend not to serve pork even though only beef is forbidden by Hinduism.

Book: Southeast Asian Cooking
Distributed in: United States
Year: 1987
Author: Jay Harlow for the California Culinary Academy cookbook series

Like many cookbooks dated this far or further back, it features extensive instructions on techniques, including how to bruise a ginger. Sounds like ABC to a seasoned cook but it is downright strange to those who are not. I don’t remember knowing that it means whacking the food until a cookbook I came across was decent enough to explain. Anyway, this author also teaches one how to create kecap manis with soy sauce and molasses—very useful if you are living in the states where the sweet and dark soy sauce is hard to come by. Most recipes also do not explain how to produce coconut milk, least to say the proportion of coconut shavings to water. This book suggests 1:1, a good place to start until one finds the perfect ratio for the desired thickness. If you prefer to use canned coconut milk, which is typically thicker than the freshly squeezed one, the author also suggests ways to thin it or to extract the cream from it. Again, this book reflects the author’s personal preferences; it is not a bible. Not especially when the author says satay “is probably derived from the English word ‘steak’.” Unsupported claims and untested recipes irritate like nails on chalkboard, but they are not uncommon, so it’s always wise to compare with other sources when you’re not sure.

Book: The Pleasure of Chinese Cooking
Distributed: United States
Year: 1969 (first published in 1962)
Author: Grace Zia Chu (Shanghai-born culinary instructor and author)

Grace Zia Chu is one of the authors credited for introducing Chinese cooking to America. The first quarter of this book, which Craig Claiborne wrote a foreword for, explains how one should hold the chopsticks, use a Chinese cleaver and wok, and where to buy Chinese produce in the major cities. (Check out the promotional video for her book.) Her explanations on why Chinese cut the meats and vegetables into small pieces before cooking are insightful. She says Chinese cooks had to collect fuels such as wood, charcoal, twigs, and leaves for cooking. The smaller the food, the faster they cooked, thus, the lesser fuel it took. Another reason because Chinese eat with chopsticks, and we all know it’s easier to pick up strips of meat than, say, a steak with two sticks.

The author also enlightens us on oblique cutting, which creates many exposed surfaces on the vegetables to help them absorb the flavourings and also to cut off the stringy fibres. This is achieved by making a slant cut, and then rolling the vegetable until the cut is facing up before making another slant cut.

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

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.

My growing collection

As you would realise by now, food plays a mere supporting role in this comic: individual eating habits reveal personal stories which the author Abe Yaro carefully ensures that they draw no sympathy but resonance from his readers. Upon entering this eatery, the characters put aside the baggage of Japanese virtues – politeness, self-control and honour, and a real world equivalent could be izakaya, little casual drinking shops where reserved Japanese white collars morph into warm blooded beings after a few glasses, only in the comic, no alcoholic booster is needed to be one’s self.

That’s not to say the featured dishes are uninviting. The chef in the story is capable of making just about anything that comes to mind, including stew meat with potato, barbequed corn, meat dumplings, red bean soup with mochi, and the famous octopus-shaped sausage. The only catch is many of these dishes are put together with canned food and instant mixes. The red bean soup for example is made from a can of Azuki beans. See, the chef is not trying to win an award here, but to satisfy specific desires of his customers, whom upon food they reminisce, they heal and they live.

The comic is available in Japanese and traditional Chinese (translated in Taiwan) and is found in major bookstores. There is also a recipe book (below) featuring dishes mentioned in the comic.

Comic’s recipe book