Singapore Food and Traditional Family Recipes

-Talk given on March 22nd 2005, at the Culinary Historians of Boston meeting, in Newbury College Library, Boston, USA-

Singapore is an island-state in Southeast Asia located off the southern tip of West Malaysia.  It may be a major city today, but it was a forgotten small fishing village inhabited by indigenous Malays and sea gypsies when traders from the British East India company arrived to colonise it in 1819. They found the inhabitants living a simple existence growing fruit but no rice, and depending on their livelihood by collecting jungle produce, fishing, small scale trading and piracy. Little is known of Singapore before that, though archaeological digs suggest that it was a lively trading port in the 14^th century before it went into decline. 

Singapore, which achieved independence in 1965, has a resident population today of some 4 million consisting largely of Chinese, Malays and Indians. There is also a very small but vibrant community of Eurasians who are descendants of intermarriage between Europeans and Asians. Most of Singapore’s population have migrant origins. In the course of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries the Chinese arrived from the southern Chinese provinces of Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan, while most of the Indians migrated from the Southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala as well as Sri Lanka. The Eurasians trace their origins to the 16^th century during the Portuguese conquest and occupation of the Malay Sultanate of Malacca.  The Malays came from the Malayan peninsula and neighbouring Indonesian islands.

The Food of Singapore

 Singapore’s cuisine is derived from the culinary traditions of each of her community’s ancestral lands. The  flavours are robust, flavoursome and frequently spicy. Commonplace ingredients are Chinese condiments, Indian spices and Malay herbs such as lemongrass, chillies, coconut and galangal. 

Most of the migrants who arrived in Singapore in the colonial days were usually merchants, workers or peasants.  Reflecting their humble origins, the food is most often rustic and without the subtlety and grandeur of aristocratic traditions that are to be found in various Asian cultures with a history of royalty. With them they brought their style of cooking for the home and for the roadside stalls known as Hawkers.  Hawker food is usually a one-dish meal or a snack, and is undoubtedly one of the more colourful characteristics of Singapore cuisine.  In a way, this is Singapore’s own traditional fast food.

Home cooking while sometimes simpler is as colourful.  I have alluded previously of how the cuisines of the various groups in Singapore had influenced each other, and this continues to be the case in the sanctuary of the home kitchen.  So it is common to find in many Singapore pantries a mix of Chinese, Malay and Indian ingredients. Food is often cooked on a stove. Cooking styles include stir-fry, stewed, fried and boiled.  Each family adds its own twist and preferences to cooking styles and traditional recipes. However, there are some broad practices along ethnic lines. For instance, a Chinese family would favour the wok with the use of high heat, while an Indian or Malay family would favour pan frying and slow cooking.   Regardless of their culinary mores, one thing they share is not having a tradition of oven use.

Invariably, our cuisine has also been influenced by the British. These influences reveal themselves in the use of canned sardines, luncheon meat, condensed milk, toast and tomato ketchup. From this legacy, we have the familiar British fare of pork chops, cream puffs, sardine sandwiches and chicken pies, though many have a spice or chilli twist to them.

Traditional Singapore cooking is thus formed from the traditional cuisines of its various communities.  Some are true hybrids of Singapore, such as chilli crab and mee goreng. Others are direct imports from the ancestral homelands of its people – such as the Chinese wonton noodles , Malay rice cakes or ketupat, and Indian breads of chapattis, idlis and thosais. 

Recording Traditional Family Recipes

I am a fourth generation Singaporean and this rich tradition of cooking is part of my heritage. For this reason I have embarked on this research of traditional Singapore dishes.  Food history as a discipline is not particularly established.  Most cookbooks are usually published in the last 30 years and the absence of Singapore cookbooks before 1970 has a lot to do with the tradition of oral transmission of the art and science of cooking in many households from mothers to daughters or learning from friends.  The low literacy rates during Singapore’s colonial period also played a part.  Even after 1970, many of the cookbooks and recipes that were published catalogued the nyonya cruisine of the Straits Chinese. They are a community borne out of inter-marriage between the Chinese and Malays in the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian islands dating from the 17^th century. This cuisine, notable for sambals and curries, is well-documented because many of the food writers in the 70s hailed from Straits Chinese families which were usually better educated and conversant in English. 

There is therefore a gap in documentation of many traditional dishes from the various communities.  Curiosity about the food that I had grown up with inspired me several years ago to seek out traditional recipes.  I started with my own family, collecting my grandmother’s Teochew recipes.  Teochew, is a Chinese dialect group from the Chaozhou district of Guangdong in China, and is also popularly known in Hong Kong and the U.S. as ‘Chiuchow’.  In a few months, in the midst of work and packing to leave Singapore for Boston, I managed to compile 14 recipes which were distributed to family members. 

Now I am also working on my grandmother in-law’s recipes which are vastly different as she is a Ceylonese Tamil.  My husband’s family had migrated from Sri Lanka three generations ago.

Both my grandmother and grandmother-in-law were born and raised in Singapore and Malaya to immigrant parents. They learnt most of their cooking from family and friends from the same community.  Both started to help in the kitchen at the tender age of 7 or 8 and learnt their culinary skills and recipes at the side of their mothers and aunts.  The parallels in their lives continued as both were married during the Japanese occupation of Singapore in World War Two, my grandmother at 13, and my grandmother-in-law at 17. 

From my grandmother I picked up a number of Teochew classics such as the mashed taro dessert- oh nee, the mixed seafood and vegetable soup – chap huay tng, Teochew steamed fish and braised duck.  The hallmark of Teochew cooking, unlike Cantonese or Sichuanese cooking, is its delicate flavours and preference for steaming and braising.  At the same time, I also learnt of two of the more obscure dishes, the first which is the kow lak ar, the braised duck stuffed with chestnut, mushroom and carrots, which I is a Teochew restaurant favourite in the 1950s.  The other is nak yee kia, the Teo-Yeo Meat Balls, which is more like a savoury confection and for which is fairly unknown in Singapore today except among a select group of elderly Teochews who hail from the Teo-Yeo district of Chaozhou.  However we have the good fortune to try it today, thanks to Mark Zanger who attempted the recipe. 

From my grandmother-in-law, I learned of several Ceylonese Tamil recipes, such as chicken curry, mutton curry, fish curry and appam, a rice flour crepe.  Ceylonese Tamil cooking has close roots to South Indian Tamil cuisine. Popular dishes include coconut milk based curries, and rice flour based snacks such as thosais, idlis and appam. Ceylonese Tamil cooking is also influenced by the Sri Lankan Sinhalese preference for dark coloured curries due to their predilection for roasted spices of cumin, coriander, fennel and the use of cinnamon.  Today, I have made a dark dried curry of lamb for you which is distinctly Ceylonese Tamil in flavour.

Having lived in Singapore all their lives both my grandmothers had absorbed part of the culinary styles of the other communities.  For instance, my grandmother’s Sambal dried shrimp with belly pork, is distinctly Malay for its use of sambal.  My grandmother-in-law’s repertoire also has dishes with a local twist.  Her sambal shrimp, is an extremely spicy rendition of this Malay dish, with the shrimps first marinated in tumeric and chilli powder then deep fried, a rather South Indian style of cooking, then cooked in the striking red Malay rempah of chilli, shallots and shrimp paste, and finished with a dash of Chinese black soya sauce.

In recording these recipes language has sometimes proves to be a challenge.  My grandmother only speaks the Chinese dialect of Teochew, though she understands some Mandarin. My Tamil grandmother-in-law speaks English with a strong accent which I sometimes find hard to follow.  I speak in English and Mandarin, but only basic Teochew and not at all in Tamil. However, I have managed with the tricky process of reducing the oral testimony of recipes to a written record with the occasional assistance of my mother and my mother-in-law.

I have found that the best way to record a traditional recipe is to observe the cooking process and recording it as one goes.     Like most homecooks who rely on their experience and instinct rather than cookbooks for their cooking, my grandmother and my grandmother-in-law do not measure their ingredients with formal precision.  So they were hard-pressed each time when I had them put a measurement to the little sprinkle of soya sauce or cumin powder that they had added.  The task has thus called for some testing and verification work after recording their recipes. 

During the testing phase, I have at times been tempted to add a modern twist.  For instance, in many of the recipes that I recorded from my grandmother, I was tempted to add chicken stock, an ingredient that we are all familiar with and which is used often in recipes today.  However she seldom uses chicken stock relying instead on water.  That is a hallmark of homecooking in a household of moderate means.  For where would a busy housewife with 5 kids find the time to make chicken stock regularly for her meals? Also chicken in those days was considered expensive and only to be had during festivals.   

Similarly, many of my grandmother-in-law’s recipes for curries use chopped onions and chopped tomatoes rather than grinded onion paste and tomato paste that are popular today especially with the food processor being so accessible in many kitchens. 

In documenting these recipes, I also found it fascinating to record a part of my family history and learning the history of each community through their food.

In all this has been immensely satisfying work for me. There is indeed more work to be done with my two grandmothers.  But I hope to venture beyond that and speak to the home cooks of other communities –the Hokkiens, Hakkas, or the Cantonese among the Chinese, the Tamils and Malayalees among the Indians, the Eurasians, the nyonyas and the Malays. 

Today, I have put together with Mark Zanger’s assistance a small spread of food from Singapore.  The Teo-Yeo meat ball is a Teochew recipe from my grandmother, while the dark dried curry of lamb is a Ceylonese Tamil recipe from my grandmother in law.   I have also prepared a popular local bar counter snack of fried anchovies and peanuts with sambal which is distinctly Malayan and to finish off we have a nyonya dessert of glutinuous rice topped with coconut milk and pandan custard. 

Thank you.

Ai Ling Sim-Devadas 

www.singaporefoodhistory.com / Copyright 2005 Ai Ling Sim-Devadas