Great Taste in a Bowl, the Sunday Times, 8 November 2009
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26 taste thesundaytimes November 8, 2009 Eater’s Digest Great Tan Hsueh Yun Asian food is in the spotlight this week. Intellectually, I can wrap my mind taste around the concept of a healthy recipe. Flavour and a luxurious mouth feel do not always have to come from lavish use of butter, cream or oil. In practice, though, so many of in a them are earnest and dull, dull, dull. There are exceptions and I am glad to say the recipes I tried from food writer Sylvia Tan’s new book turned out to be flavourful and anything but dull. I have attended her cooking classes, cooked from her books, sampled her Taste – Healthy, bowl cooking, and her food never tastes Hearty Asian Recipes like anything the doctor By Sylvia Tan recommended. Marshall Cavendish The recipes in the book are simple Mrs Jo Seow’s omelette soup, ST PHOTOS: LAU FOOK KONG Cuisine/2009/Paperback/ Preparing the dish (above) is a breeze, as Mrs Jo Seow (below) also shows in her book Soya & Spice. and fuss free, the sort you can easily 144 pages/$29.96/ which is from a family heritage tackle on a weeknight. Flavour comes Books Kinokuniya recipe, is easy to cook from spices, herbs and umami rich published recently by Landmark Books. ingredients such as shiitake mushrooms and fish sauce. It features Teochew recipes such as her late Asian Pork Terrine, a meatloaf made with lean ground pork, paternal grandmother’s soon kueh and uncle’s was easy to put together and very aromatic from the basil, mint, fish ball soup with tang hoon (mung bean laksa and coriander leaves. Chilli added a spicy kick and an egg Singapore Cooks vermicelli). made it taste a little more luxurious. Huang Lijie It also includes non-Teochew family I will make Healthy Orh Nee again too, even though a friend favourites such as her late father’s lor mee asked: “What’s the point?” The mashed yam dessert is made with (stewed noodles) and Malay-inspired dishes such light olive oil instead of lard, and sweetened with a simple sugar rs Jo Seow, 47, a Teochew, was as assam sotong and chilli belacan selar (fried syrup flavoured with vanilla and rum. bewildered the first time she was horse mackerel stuffed with chilli and belacan), The result wasn’t quite like the rich, unctuous versions served offered rice for lunch. which her maternal grandmother learnt from her in Teochew restaurants, but it tasted good and did not sit in the She was then a teenager and mother-in-law, who lived in a Malay kampung. belly all night. That, I think, is the point. had been invited to a Cantonese Among the recipes is an unusual dish, Mfriend’s home for a meal. omelette soup, where a fried omelette, mixed California-based food writer and She says: “My family had porridge for lunch with dried shrimps and tang hoon is boiled in cooking teacher Andrea Nguyen every day and rice for dinner. Until then, I soup. interprets dumplings very broadly. thought everyone ate the same way my family She says: “The soup might sound strange Her new book covers everything did.” because you don’t usually boil a fried omelette, from gyoza and siew mai to samosas Indeed, porridge is to Teochews what laksa is but the women in my mother’s family have been and pineapple tarts, but does not, for to Peranakans, and having grown up in a cooking it for generations.” some reason, contain any recipes for traditional Teochew family, much of her While she is uncertain if the soup is a zongzi (Chinese rice dumpling). childhood dining experiences centred around traditional Teochew dish, she likes that it is Still, there is much to explore in classic Teochew fare such as braised duck, simple to cook and flavourful. this detailed, well-written book, steamed fish and soon kueh (steamed rice flour Besides giving a new lease on life to her which gathers recipes from the dumplings). family’s heritage recipes, writing the book has Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, The eldest of six children born to a car also helped her learn more about her family’s Thailand and Vietnam, among other mechanic father and housewife mother, she was history. For example, her late paternal places. often roped in to help cook these family meals as grandmother’s chinchalok (fermented prawn The instructions, for the most part, well. dipping sauce) recipe came about because she are clear and direct. Nguyen gives Was she bored of eating porridge daily? “Yes. I was trying to make ends meet after the war. those all-important visual cues most grew sick of eating it repeatedly with the same According to Mrs Seow’s aunt, she lived in a recipe writers leave out – how to judge Asian Dumplings side dishes such as steamed fish, pickled stilt house near a shore then but could not afford when the oil is hot enough for deep By Andrea Nguyen vegetables and preserved beancurd,” says the to buy fishing nets. So, she sewed mosquito nets frying, what the consistency of the Ten Speed Press/2009/ part-time home economics teacher. had a sudden craving for pork porridge. She used together and used it to catch baby shrimps, dough should be. These tips make it Hardcover/234 pages/ So when she moved out and started a family to eat it as a child but had not eaten it for which she then cured to make chinchalok and easy for a novice to tackle the recipes, $52.85/Books Kinokuniya with her businessman husband, she began decades. That prompted her to rediscover her exchanged with fruit plantation owners for fruit some of which are quite challenging. to sell. experimenting with different types of cuisines, culinary roots. I decided to tackle the Basic Dumpling Dough and use that to Mrs Seow says: “I hope that people who buy such as Western food, which her two sons, who She says: “I realised I had stopped cooking and make guotie, or potstickers. On my first try, I produced ugly but are now teenagers, enjoy eating. the book will be inspired to find out their own eating many Teochew dishes which I had eaten perfectly delicious dumplings. My wrapping techniques need She would borrow cookbooks from the library culinary roots and talk to relatives who are still work but I will be cooking from this book again. and search for recipes on the Internet to learn to as a child. My mother had also stopped making around. I am sure they will have stories and them because she was busy trying out new make new dishes such as squid ink pasta and recipes to share and pass down to their children.” You know a cookbook is going to be cuisines, baking shepherd’s pie and pizzas. hearty meat stews. She also took an interest in well-used when you run out of Post-it baking and learnt to make everything from “And I thought it would be a pity if these [email protected] notes flagging recipes in it. focaccia and onion dinner rolls to chocolate recipes were lost.” Lee Geok Boi’s book is full of chunk cinnamon rolls and sweet pizzas topped So she asked her maternal grandmother, Soya & Spice is available at major bookstores, tempting pictures and easy recipes for with chocolate, marshmallows and caramel. mother and aunt for family recipes, which including Kinokuniya, for $26.75 (inclusive making salads with vibrant hot, sour, However, one day about five years ago, she resulted in her cookbook, Soya & Spice, of GST). salty and sweet flavours. Crunchy peanuts and vegetables, tender greens and juicy fruit make the Asian salad a textural delight too. Among the countries represented MAKE IT YOURSELF: OMELETTE SOUP are China, Japan, Laos, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Turkey and Afghanistan. It is interesting to see how differently INGREDIENTS shrimps and stir-fry over a gentle flame until they use the same vegetables in it is fragrant and crispy. salads. Classic Asian Salads 2 heaped Tbs dried shrimps 4. Place the fried shrimps, tang hoon, eggs, Badhapu Vambotu Sambola, a By Lee Geok Boi 40g tang hoon (mung bean vermicelli) light soya sauce and white pepper in a fried eggplant salad from Sri Lanka, Marshall Cavendish 4 tsp oil bowl and mix well. Set aside. was simple to make and delicious. Cuisine/2009/Paperback/ 4 eggs 5. Heat the chicken stock and water in a The turmeric-rubbed, pan-fried slices 224 pages/$34.24/ 2 tsp light soya sauce 1 pot on medium flame. of eggplant were drizzled with a Books Kinokuniya /4 tsp ground white pepper 6. Add the remaining oil to a heated pan tangy coconut cream dressing and 500ml chicken stock and fry the egg mixture to a deep golden 750ml water topped with pungent sliced onions and red and green chillies. brown. Cut the omelette into bite-sized 1 stalk coriander leaf Winged beans, a very underrated vegetable, were used to pieces with a spatula. marvellous effect in the Thai salad Yam Tua Poo. Okay, to make 7. Add the omelette pieces to the soup. METHOD it, I needed to refer to five other recipes – for fried garlic, fried Allow the soup to come to a boil before shallots, toasted grated coconut, palm sugar syrup and nam prik 1. Wash, drain and coarsely pound the lowering the heat and leaving it to simmer pao (a chilli paste). dried shrimps. Set aside. with the lid on for two minutes. But when it all came together, I polished off half the salad, 2.