Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

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December 12, 2014 By cheryl

Malay Ayam Masak Merah: Sugar and (Lots of) Spice

Ayam masak merahIn many ways, the holiday season in Singapore is not unlike that of many other cities.

Forests of tinseled trees and explosions of twinkling lights take over malls and shopping streets; there is an unceasing assault of cheeseball tunes wishing you a Holly jolly Christmas. And tables everywhere are packed with glistening hams, turkeys or perhaps, a big plump goose.

This being Singapore though, my family often likes to include a local favorite or two at a Christmas meal — which is how we sometimes find ourselves chasing a plate of hearty roast beef with something curried. So when my sweet Let’s Lunch friend Lisa at Monday Morning Cooking Club suggested sharing a non-traditional holiday dish for our monthly virtual lunch date, I started craving something spicy.

One of my favorites? Malay ayam masak merah, a dish of fried chicken doused in a complex tomato-based gravy that’s both fiery and sweet …

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Asian, Holidays, Let's Lunch, Malay, Poultry, Recipes, Singapore, Singaporean Tagged With: Ayam Masak Merah, Malay, Singapore, Singaporean

November 20, 2014 By cheryl

Kim’s Fried Hokkien Prawn Mee (Singapore): A God of Noodles

Kim's Hokkien MeeIf you happen to wander into the cozy hawker center perched on a sleepy bend in Singapore‘s Bedok neighborhood, an incongruous sight may catch your eye.

Amid the usual phalanx of hawkers in jeans or shorts sweating over hot stoves and churning out bowl after bowl of tasty cheap fare, you’ll see a stately man in a tailored black trousers, a white dress shirt, his hair neatly slicked and combed back. With a gold Rolex watch on one wrist and a towel casually draped over one shoulder, this man silently and deftly stir-fries woks of Hokkien mee, a delicious Singaporean Chinese dish featuring three different kinds of noodles stir-fried with shrimp, eggs and squid in a thick shellfish-inflected gravy.

When I first spied this on a recent trip home, I had to stop and stare for a moment. Who was this man? Why was he dressed like a banker to fry up noodles?

Most important — how was his Hokkien mee?

Well, there was only one way to find out …

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Asian, Chinese, Hawkers, Hokkien, Holidays, Noodles, Seafood, Singapore, Singaporean, Southeast Asian Tagged With: Bedok, Bedok Army Camp, Bedok Corner Food Centre, Hokkien Mee, Kim's Fried Hokkien Mee, Makansutra, Seafood

November 4, 2014 By cheryl

New Ubin Seafood (Singapore): Eating The Dream

New Ubin SeafoodFor months now, I’ve been tortured by Instagram.

Specifically, a seemingly endless stream of Instagram photos from a place called New Ubin Seafood in Singapore. In the middle of the night in Brooklyn, I’d find myself scrolling through photo after photo of gigantic crabs, split open and doused with gravy, wooden platters piled with glistening chunks of steak — and I would think, why have I never been to this restaurant?

Thankfully, I have good friends who wanted to fix this right away. So on a humid Saturday night, I found myself wending the desolate night streets of an industrial estate in Singapore’s Sin Ming neighborhood …

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Asian, Chinese, Meat, Restaurants, Seafood, Singapore, Singaporean, Tales From the Road Tagged With: American, Baked Crab, Bishan, Black Angus Ribeye, Boss bee hoon, Brinjal, Fried rice, Kai Lan, New Ubin Seafood, Noodles, Pulau Ubin, Sin Ming, Singapore, Sri Lankan Crab, Steak

November 3, 2014 By cheryl

Bedok Mian Fen Guo (Singapore): Perfect Peanut Pancakes

Bedok Mian Fen GuoMy mother rarely let us have sweets in the house when I was a child — something I have a great appreciation for now. (I realize I have her to thank for my lifelong aversion to soda and overly sugary pastries.)

There was one treat that she shared — rather, showered us with, however: Bee chian kueh.

Magically, this spongey Singaporean pancake — filled with crushed sweet peanuts — would appear in our kitchen, usually following a trip she’d made to the wet market for groceries. It’s typically eaten for breakfast, with strong coffee, or as a late morning snack. When done well, the pancake’s firm sponginess encased in a crispy crust, combined with the crunchy peanut filling, is just delicious. And if you bite into it while it’s still hot, it’s simply divine.

I hadn’t had this pancake in many years — it’s not something I’ve found in the Chinatown haunts of my adopted home, New York, and when I’ve visited Singapore, I’ve tended to focus on crossing off the meals I miss, not snacks I somewhat dimly remember.

In recent years, however, this pancake has started magically appearing in my Singapore kitchen again. One day, my mother took me to a nearby hawker center so I could see why …

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Asian, Breakfast, Comfort Food, Hawkers, Singapore, Singaporean, Snacks, Southeast Asian, Sweets Tagged With: Bedok, Bedok Mian Fen Guo, Bee chian kueh, Mian fen guo, New Upper Changi Road, Pancake, Peanut, Singapore, Snack, Sweets, The Straits Times

November 2, 2014 By cheryl

Eleven Finger (Eu Kee) Scissors Curry Rice (Singapore): A Cut Above

photo (30)A few years ago, after I mentioned my big love for Singapore‘s Hainanese curry rice to an old friend who knows her food, she immediately asked, “Have you been to that ‘Nine Fingers’ place?”

Now, if you’ve ever had curry rice, you’ll understand why that name might be disturbing. It basically comprises a bunch of different dishes of your choosing (breaded fried pork chops, crispy fried eggs, curried squid, braised tofu or chicken wings, etc.) snipped up into bite-sized pieces with a gigantic pair of scissors, dumped on a plate of rice and then doused with mellow Hainanese curry.

“Nine fingers?” I asked, wondering whose plate that lost digit might have ended up in.

“I forget how many fingers,” my friend Jill said. “But it’s good.”

Since then, I’ve been intrigued by this curry rice — finally, this week, I decided to make the journey. It turns out that it’s eleven fingers, not nine. Not that that makes the name any less bewildering …

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Asian, Chinese, Comfort Food, Hainanese, Hawkers, Rice, Singapore, Singaporean, Southeast Asian Tagged With: 3838 Eating Place, Bugis, Eleven Fingers Curry Rice, Eukee, Hainanese, Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple, Singapore

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