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The soul man of dim sum
By K.F.Seetoh |
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He once had bowl of a not very appetizing mee suah soup and could not finish the meal. It sat for an hour and it turned into a clump of damp mee suah cake, with bits of ingredients stuck in between. He pondered and wondered on just how it would be if he chill-dried it, cut into cubes and deep fried it. He did, and now, one of their main signatures at his eatery is the fried mee suah cake. The mee suah cake is very crispy on the outside, tasty and soft in the inside - great with chilli sauce “No choice, have to innovate even though we are a little street side dim sum coffeeshop”, and Mr Chan Ann Tan knows that these are the stuff that customers remember you by. Anyone serious enough can go into the dim sum business and hawk har kow, siew mai, baos, lor mai kai and century egg porridge, but for longevity in the business, you can’t stick with these chicken feet feats. Mr Chan should know, as at the puberty age of 12, he had apprenticed at his relative’s dim sum shop, slept on chairs there, rose at 5am to open up the shop, learnt to clean, wash, buy, prepare, cook and serve - way back in the 60’s. Today, he knows the place like a sharp hawk knows where all the gopher holes are. He even knows that a good bao does not just come from a good recipe. “You have to look at the flour upon delivery. It cannot be the fresh, it must be aged.” To spot check, he usually performs a dough ball test which he checks for colour, texture, smell and taste. Their signature meat baos have a dough texture that is soft and smooth and just short of fluffy and is very hearty - quite unlike the Hong Kong gummy and fluffy style. It is simply stuffed with a halved boiled egg, a whole black mushroom and chunky minced meat with some vegetables, and it comes moist. But the most difficult part to manage and maintain, is the people, both staff and customers. He admits that “ it is very hard for a not well educated person like me to teach these things. Cooks just come here and follow the recipe- so much flour to so much water and knead, yet it comes out wrong. They don’t bother about quality of supplies, and worse, there are not many around who wants to take up these jobs today.” To fussy customers, he mostly gives in.
Although his nephew Mr Tony Ting is now set on course to take over the business from his near retirement uncle, Tony honestly says “ I cannot just learn what he knows, his knowledge comes from 50 years of experience, teaching won’t work, it’s all about doing and understanding along the way. I’ve been at it for five years only. When he retires, against my will - headache lah, he knows everything here.” Another item which I personally adore, although not
new, is the prawn and banana fritter. Lightly sweet
banana is mashed up with succulent albeit smaller
prawns, wrapped in bean skin, battered and crisped
over hot oil. A regular chef customer from Hong Kong
was jaded with their usual stuff and whispered the
idea to Mr Chan who promptly came up with a prototype.
They never looked back.
So they now offer a very appetizing Szechuan chilli wanton ( I like), sour, tangy, spicy but a tad oily. These chefs will freshly “La” (pull) the noodles in front of customers and churn them into spicy Szechuan dan dan mian and zhan jiang mian. Their xiao long bao is tasty but it’s a tad flaccid and the soup within seeps if you don’t devour el-pronto. Now these new range of Chinese dim sum/snack offering
have become one of their top sellers. But if that
fails the local regulars, then there’s always
their all time top sellers, the big meat bao, lor
mai kai (chicken is succulent), mee suah kueh, steamed
egg chicken (great with rice), sesame seed ball (jian
dui) and the banana prawn roll. I’ll admit that
their har kow, although reveals three small prawns
inside, is one of those cook-by-recipe items- it just
lacks juiciness and crunch.
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