December 12, 2014 By cheryl

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

In 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 …

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November 4, 2014 By cheryl

New Ubin Seafood (Singapore): Eating The Dream

For 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 …

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November 3, 2014 By cheryl

Bedok Mian Fen Guo (Singapore): Perfect Peanut Pancakes

My 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 …

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November 2, 2014 By cheryl

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

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 …

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November 1, 2014 By cheryl

Sin Heng Claypot Bak Koot Teh (Singapore): Peppery Pork Rib Perfection

There are very few people I trust whole-heartedly when it comes to making food decisions. Especially if I’m in a city for a limited time, I find few things worse than a bad or even mediocre meal — that’s just one valuable eating slot needlessly squandered.

In Singapore, I’m fortunate to have several food gurus — among them, I have absolute blind faith in my dear friend Willin, who has never steered me wrong. He’s a chef, after all — check out his newly revamped Wild Rocket if you haven’t — so he is particularly discerning.

When I recently mentioned to Willin that it’d been ages since I’d had bak kut teh (which means “pork bone tea”), a peppery pork rib soup that’s a favorite dish of the Teochew Chinese of Singapore (i.e. my people), he immediately had a suggestion.

“Go to Joo Chiat,” he said, referring to a small neighborhood on Singapore’s East Coast that has recently become a hotbed for eats (and Vietnamese prostitutes). “That place on Joo Chiat Road is one of the best.”

Since this was Willin, I didn’t need to think twice. As soon as we found ourselves hungry again, my mother and I headed over …

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