My Cantonese Soul |
Suddenly, like an epiphany or some social awakening, many people are digging into their roots to see if scraps of Peranakan culture coloured their family tree. The Nonya folks have been on our shores in this part of the world for hundreds of years but it took just one television drama series to egg many of the million plus viewers of The Little Nonya (just ended its first season with a highest ever rating for a Chinese drama on Channel 8) to peer deeper into the fascinating world of the Peranakans, something that had been evolving right under their nose all these while. Well, not me. I am as Cantonese as they come. I tried speaking Mandarin to the cabbies in Shanghai and they can tell my heritage. I think it’s also the way I order “i wan shui jiao” (a bowl of dumplings), I’ve been told it sounds like “I want to sleep with you”. Palate wise, I can’t complain. The Cantonese has some of the wildest and weirdest palate for food. It is believed they made Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) really popular by exporting their love for civet cats- as a dish. My late dad (bless his soul and his devotion to good food) jumped onto a sampan and out of Kai Ping in Guangzhou (where the Seetohs originated from), China, and made his way to Singapore in the 50s. My mummy is pure local bred umpteen generation Cantonese here. Which brings me to the makan I grew up with. Comfort food to me was not the heady stuff we find in hawker centres or street vendors then although I adore them then and now. As a kid, meals at home, which was very often, was regimented Cantonese style. We always had a soup (I cannot count the ways it came). One would think “alamak, Cantonese, sure got soup like watercress, red date and ribs, lotus root with dried cuttlefish and lean pork or some bittergourd concoction”. Yes, all that plus the double boiled anything my dear mummy would believe can make our system “cooler”, like pears, apples, papaya or even aloe vera with some meat like chicken or pork, or all together with some light herbs. Fish is usually steamed as a way to tell us we are getting it fresh, as “only the silly will ask for fried fish in a seafood restaurant as that’s what chefs do when they want to get rid of older stuff in the freezer”, was my dad’s mantra. It also usually came with steamed water eggs that has bits of minced meat or century egg and a plate of fresh wok tossed greens (my fave then and now was kangkong ,yaumak or romain lettuce tossed in fu ru, a fermented tofu paste.) I don’t quite eat with that kind of social diligence these days. It is easier and cheaper to eat out and every cze cha stall is selling whatever anyone likes to eat. It’s not Cantonese nor Teochew or Hokkien and they even throw chilli crabs into the menu for good measure. So it was a nice surprise when an ex Straits Times Press colleague decided to record all their iconic classic Cantonese soul food her mummy served up all her life. Ms Lulin Reutens is known to wield the pen better than a pan but she took the trouble to diligently verbally archive those recipes and test them out. She is from that generation, not too distant from mine, that is at a stage where we are always lamenting about how food quality has gone to the mutts, “ Terrible la, the cooks these days don’t even know how to fry vegetables properly. Don’t even understand the dynamics of wok hei”. So she inked Madam Choy’s Cantonese Recipes, a handy sized tome done with a design that does not steal away from the honesty of the recipes, dedicated to her mum. There are no pictures and well laid out with lots of breathing space but I can taste the recipes, many of which are comfort makan to me. Some are so simple as it was created to max the integrity of the ingredient like Salt Baked Chicken. It uses only ginger, a bit of oil and 2.5kg of rock salts which you bake and heat the grease paper sealed chicken in. Very old fashioned and it is gorgeous with a bowl of rice. Even simpler is the “Cheng Jeng Hie”(steamed crabs), done with just strips of ginger to contain the stench. I always slurp the juices that collect at the base of the platter or splash it over my nasi. Well, I too have this hobby of collecting and testing many newer Cantonese dishes that cropped up in our local menu over the years and here’s one, well loved and slightly modified from her version and found in my head and stomach. Har Cheong Kai (deep fried prawn paste chicken)
Ingredients (for 5 wings) Method: |
