Food evolves. Or rather, people evolve and food transform in response to it.

This change of one’s heart, and palate, comes as a result of growing affluence, exposure to foreign cuisines, and changing dietary habits.

Commercialism also has a hand in it. To outplay one another, eateries find ways to offer something more and something different. If successful, their creations gain popularity, copycats emerge and eventually the originals become the minority. It is the natural selection in the food world.

There are three local dishes that have gone through stages of evolvement – Lor Mai Gai (glutinous rice with chicken), Nasi Lemak and Yong Tau Fu. The last two have been heavily “accessorised”, while the modern day Lor Mai Gai has become a completely different story from its predecessor.

A New Yorker food writer once said this in his article: “It takes only one generation to turn against a thing, and the next generation has no idea what it’s missing.” In the case of these three dishes, it happens to be my generation he’s talking about.

Lor Mai Gai

There are two common versions in Singapore. At dim sum restaurants, one can find steamed glutinous rice with chicken, salted egg yolk and mushrooms wrapped in lotus leaf. The other type is just rice with chicken packed in a plastic container and is sold at coffeeshops.

This Cantonese dish goes way back to the ancient times. Then, the glutinous rice was stuffed into a whole chicken. The bones are removed through a small slit under the wing, and then the chicken is stuffed with stir-fried glutinous rice through the same passage. The whole chicken is then deep-fried, until the meat is cooked and the skin become golden brown and crispy.

This dish is rarely seen today although you may find variations like chicken wings or chicken drumsticks stuffed with glutinous rice.

Nasi Lemak

The original Nasi Lemak offered only deep fried selar kuning (a decadent inclusion in the old days), hardboiled egg, and fried ikan bilis with peanuts. There was no chicken wing, which has now become a mainstay of this dish. The range has expanded to include otak otak, fish cakes, stir-fried brinjals, curried vegetables, sambal sotong, mussels, fried wanton, luncheon meat and counting.

The owner of Boon Lay Power Nasi Lemak, Mr Badrol Hisam, egged on by his customers, added chicken wings to his menu in the late 80s and continued to introduce more items thereafter. “My Chinese customers suggested that I add chicken wings and fish cake, and my Malay customers asked me to sell Ikan Pais (whole fish otah) and Redang (spicy caramelised beef),” he said. But Badrol didn’t think that he is changing Nasi Lemak, since the core ingredients are still available. He is merely providing more choices, he said.

Yong Tau Fu

The triangular stuffed tofu that we are familiar with may find its heritage linked to dumplings.

Before the Hakkas’ mass migration from north to south China, due to political unrests, floods and famine, the dialect group ate dumplings regularly. However, dough was not available in southern China, so the Hakka people replaced it with tofu, hence creating Yong Tau Fu.

“Tofu is synonymous with the Hakkas because we invented it when we were still residing in the Central Plain, which is the modern day Henan. This was way before we were called the ‘guest people’,” said Mr Lai Fak Nian, owner of the Hakka Restaurant Plum Village.

Therefore, the alpha version of Yong Tau Fu did not have the range that we see today. As life got more comfortable, ingredients like stuffed bittergourd, stuffed chilli, fish ball, cuttlefish, bak choi and tomato were subsequently added to this once humble dish.

Perhaps, it is also out of practicality. After all, how many stuffed tofu can one person eat? But if there are other ingredients, the hawkers can sell more of it as part of a one-dish meal.