My first meeting with Christopher Tan, food writer from Singapore, was at the launch of the book "Inside the Southeast Asian Kitchen."
Though we were contributors for our respective countries, we had only communicated with the book`s editor, Tan Su Lyn, and never with each other. But, at the end of the week, we shared stories and agreed about most things culinary.
As part of the launch, we both participated in a cooking workshop at the Miele kitchen, showroom of the German maker of kitchen equipment. Chris had much more to do because he had to conduct a cooking demonstration of Nyonya birthday mee (noodles). It`s a must in every Peranakan birthday celebration, said Chris.
He should know. He is Peranakan, the mix of Malay and Chinese. That is just one of the many peoples of Singapore that also include Chinese, Malay and Indian.
Because of the mix, Singapore cuisine is so varied and so rich. And, while the provenance of each dish served is known, Singaporean cooks have made those dishes their own.
Re-exported
Chris wrote how the Hainanese chicken rice was really a culinary specialty in the Hainan Island of China transported to Singapore by Hainanese chefs. He noted with amusement that the same dish was re-exported to Hainan and was now called "Singapore chicken rice."
Chris also served as the food stylist of the book and tested the recipes. He told me that, among the recipes, it was the biko that was such a hit with the employees in the showroom that he had to set aside some of it for his mother to taste.
Chris and I both agreed that, when going to a new place, a visit to the wet market is a must. The market is the best place to know what ingredients are used in the area and how. For a food writer, the market is the perfect place to do research.
Over here, Chris went to Aranque market in Chinatown where he saw the black chicken called ulikba, which has dark meat. He told me that a multi-story building would house the present market.
That just shows that I haven`t been to Chinatown for quite a while. I hope the new place will not rob Aranque of its character and atmosphere.
While in Chinatown, Chris went to the Ongpin chocolate factory by following his nose, as I told him to do. Well, the aroma of chocolate beans being roasted and then ground does permeate the air but it also helped that I told him that the shop was on Ongpin Street near the Binondo Church.
The tsokolate tablea was one of Chris` must-buys. The other was green tamarind used for sinigang. He asked me how it looked and how it was used.
It`s a good thing it is summer so tamarind trees are bearing fruit. I chanced on some at the supermarket and bought two packs for him to experiment with, such as the sinigang na bangus included in the Philippine chapter.
Green tamarind
We also discussed that, among Southeast Asian countries, only the Philippines used green tamarind. Others usually used a ball of tamarind paste, brown in color but just as sour.
While there are differences in the cooking of the 10 Asean (Association of Southeast Asian nations) members, the similarities are striking.
The Nyonya birthday mee could have been any of our pancit though in the picture it was closer to pancit palabok. Tapal from Brunei Darussalam is fermented rice like our buro or balaw balaw. Cambodian stuffed frogs (kang-kep baob) is like the Pampango betute. Myanmar`s shwe yin aye is very much like our guinomis, minus the former`s glutinous rice.
The flavoring condiment to the noodles was a sambal, a mix of chili and balachan (shrimp paste). Chris brought the Indonesian version. As the sambal was made, we discussed how Southeast Asian countries all had some form of fish sauce and shrimp paste. I told him that the two kinds of balachan (one variety darker than the other) he used looked exactly like the Iloilo guinamos, a drier bagoong.
Chris also found out that there was hardly any red finger pepper here because we only used green ones. In an interaction with workshop participants, we learned that Lolita`s at Farmer`s Market in Cubao carried many ingredients used in Asian cooking.
Because he was advised that he would appear on television to discuss the book, he decided to cook bingka in Singapore then brought it here to compare it with our bibingka.
I asked him to visit the Via Mare kitchen and photograph the process of cooking bibingka only to be told that an oven was now used instead of the traditional charcoal and clay pot cooker.
Thankfully, the restaurant`s catering section still had the original cooker and so Chris was able to document the old way.
The bingka is Singapore`s version of our cassava bibingka. Both use grated fresh cassava but, instead of the coconut milk used in the Philippine version, the bingka uses grated coconut.
Throughout Chris Tan`s stay, our conversation was interspersed with culinary similarities and differences. The best discovery was that the word indicating regret for ordering too much food and not finishing it all was the same in Singapore and the Philippines. "Sayang!"
Source: www.asianjournal.com (13 Mei 2007)
