April 28, 2009 By cheryl

If Chewing Gum Makes You Smarter …

In my 15 years in the U.S., I've found that Americans who discover I'm from Singapore often have the same initial questions: Do they really cane people? Is Singapore math really that good? So, you really can't chew gum there?

The answers are, yes, yes and not really.

(Not that I'm endorsing it but, one could hypothetically bring gum into Singapore from elsewhere. I suspect the Customs dogs aren't exactly trained to suss out Doublemint contraband, after all.)

Recently, however, the Los Angeles Times reported a finding that could just make a case for legalizing Dubble Bubble in my home country.

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April 27, 2009 By cheryl

A Fashion Critic's Bacon-Fat Cookies

High-end fashion and bacon fat.

I couldn’t think of two things more disparate and yet, flipping through the pages of the New York Times a few years ago, there it was: Fashion critic Cathy Horyn‘s paean to a recipe for Swedish ginger cookies made with bacon grease that she has “cherished for years.”

My first reaction: Be still my beating heart, both figuratively and, quite possibly, literally. The cookie seemed like an insane, artery-clogging idea. The first ingredient listed, after all, was “3/4 cup bacon fat, cooled (from 1 1/2 to 2 pounds Oscar Mayer bacon).”

Two pounds of bacon? Cathy was officially my new hero.

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April 25, 2009 By cheryl

Bacon Fat on a Summery Saturday

What to do with close to 3/4 cup of bacon fat? Why, bake cookies, of course.

More later …

April 23, 2009 By cheryl

Of "Heaty" and "Cooling" Soups

Soup was my nemesis.

It was inescapable at the dinner table in my Singapore home. And the breakfast table, too, for that matter. And, sometimes, if Mum thought I looked too “heaty” (which, sadly, is hardly the saucy condition that you might imagine) and needed something with yin in it to “cool” me down, there it was at lunch as well.

A college friend likes to recall the column by Singapore humorist Colin Goh where he notes, “If Harry Potter went to school in Singapore he’d learn in potions
class that there are two kinds of potions: heaty and cooling.”

You may laugh. But it’s true — Singaporeans take these piping-hot brews very seriously. These broths featuring pork or chicken with a mish-mash of vegetables and Chinese herbs are generally concocted with the idea that they can solve some medical problem you have.

Sore throat? Impotence? That gunshot wound in your tush? No problem — just take two bowls of this and call your Mum in the morning.

Given that some of these herbs actually resembled wizened fingers or a tangle of human hair and smelled like my grandmother’s socks, however, I wasn’t too crazy about them.

But it’s funny how you suddenly crave the thing that you loathe as a child once you know it’s no longer there at your elbows, just waiting for you to push it away.

Walking through Chinatown with chef Simpson recently, we stumbled upon a basket of massive, beige root vegetables. My eyes brightened, I practically ran toward the basket, grabbing a particularly lengthy, sturdy one, speechless with excitement as I cradled it.

It had never struck me up until that very moment that this tuber bore an uncanny resemblance to a sex toy.

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April 20, 2009 By cheryl

The Spice Market Epiphany

Fear is my new friend.

He sat down next to me at a Singaporean cooking demonstration at Spice Market in New York City Friday afternoon and I have not been able to shake him off since.

Watching Singapore food TV host KF Seetoh whip up dishes like harjeong gai, chicken wings slathered in a thick shrimp sauce and then deep-fried, and laksa, a spicy curry noodle soup involving what seemed to be something like 7,000 ingredients, with Spice Market owner Jean-Georges Vongerichten‘s highly skilled battalion of chefs behind him prepping Southeast Asian noodles and frying up chicken, I suddenly began to feel nervous as I thought of the nine months ahead of me.

I had recently decided to spend chunks of the next year eating and cooking my way around my native Singapore. The hope is to learn enough to be able to bring my family together at next year’s Chinese New Year for a meal cooked by me — the Americanized, prodigal daughter who never earned her stripes in the kitchen as many proper Singaporean teenage girls do. I don’t even want to think of the “loss of face” it is to my parents that I’m now more adept at whipping together meat loaf than fried rice. (And no, it does not help that my meat loaf is pretty darn good — if I do say so myself.)

I had thought this quest would be pretty straightforward, perhaps even possibly a piece of cake. But watching Seetoh produce an entire tray of tiny bowls filled with chopped up ingredients just to make char kway teow, a basic but delicious fried noodle dish that I had completely taken for granted up until this point, I started to think, “Holy (something a nice Singaporean girl wouldn’t say)! That looks like a heckuva pain in the (something else a nice Singaporean girl wouldn’t say)!”

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