Singapore Food – from street to sleek
By Sheere Ng - Friday, Oct 14, 2011
Singaporean food culture is rojak – not as in the Asian salad but its urban meaning of “mixture”. We add southeast Asian spices such as garlic, ginger and chilli to the sedated chicken rice from the Hainan Island; we combine noodles, a Chinese staple, with Malay spices and rempah culinary techniques to create a repertoire of “mee” soup; and we add minced mutton, egg and Indian spices to western baguette and invented a new dish for the British, or John, and named it after them.
So Singaporean food is born out of cross-cultural exchanges, will this fact make us more accepting towards attempts to alter it? What would you say if the tourism authorities and relevant agencies here Singapore Tourism Board (STB) wants to publicise Singapore food, but in a different way from how we have always known them?
Last week, 21 chefs from 15 different cities were in town for the Singapore International Culinary Exchange organised by Singapore Tourism Board (STB), IE Singapore and SPRING Singapore. During the event, the chefs came up with their own interpretation of Singapore-inspired dishes, which they may feature in their own restaurants.
Amongst them was Chef Alvin Leung from Bo Innovation, Hong Kong, who is well-known for his modern interpretation of Chinese cuisine. He made a poached egg in laksa stock, with cockles on the side and deep-fried rice noodles as garnish – turning the main ingredient into a side ingredient and vice versa.
Chef Leung said he retained what he liked about the original laksa, but changed what he didn’t fancy. “I didn’t like the hardboiled egg so I made it into a poached egg under 63 degree heat,” he said. He kept the cockles rather than the prawns (he used them to make the stock instead) because it has a softer texture and blends well with the egg when chewed together.
While the first dish still has much resemblance to its traditional form, Chef Leung’s other creation stretches your imagination. In his rendition of Rojak, which he said was made to suit a kid’s palate, he replaced turnip with Chinese pear, prawn paste with black soy sauce, peanuts with pine nuts and added rose apples and vanilla ice-cream.
“The DNA of Rojak is found in its textures. My creation has similar bite to the original ingredients, but I think children will prefer my version,” he said. The taste, as you would have guessed by now, is entirely different.
Most of the other chefs picked out a sauce or an ingredient to create something entirely new. Chef Josean Martinez Alija from Nerua, Spain, for example, made a soup out of banana flowers and the plant’s stem after discovering the ingredient at a Peranakan restaurant here. “I like to look out for new things, it could be a new dish or an ingredient, and then play with it and experiment with it in my cooking,” he said.
Most of these chefs have turned local street food into haute cuisine. These, or other similarly high-toned dishes, will be introduced into their restaurants’ menus for at least six months as part of STB’s effort to promote Singapore to the rest of the world. “The chefs are free to exercise their creativity in presenting their own interpretation of Singapore food, reflecting our position as a capital for culinary innovation,” said Ms Ranita Sundramoorthy, STB’s Director of Attractions, Dining & Retail.
What we are curious about is whether these are how Singaporeans want their food to be introduced to the rest of the world. Are you the one who will laud the creativity and audaciousness of these chefs or do you belong o the opposite camp that says, “No, we don’t want the essences of our traditional dishes to be tainted!”?
Tell us your thoughts!
