BOOK REVIEW

Singapore Heritage Food � Yesterday�s recipes for today�s cook

By Sylvia Tan

Singapore : Landmark Books, 2004

This is one of the few Singapore cookbooks dedicated to its heritage food.  Various Singapore cookbooks had included many traditional recipes, but few were written in the context of Singapore�s food history.

Sylvia Tan, a Singapore journalist and food writer had done a wonderful job writing the book.  Dividing the book into six sections, each focuing on a style of cuisine that shaped Singapore�s food, she steered away from the convention of categorizing recipes according to ethnicity.  Such a approach is a welcome breath of fresh air.  Besides thumbing through well-loved recipes, it is equally delightful to read nuggets of food history in each section.  Sylvia Tan put in context the food Singaporeans ate with the times they had lived.  

The recipes are organized under six main culinary themes, �The Colonial Heritage � Flavours from bungalow kitchen�, �The Snackbar Era � The Hainanese Connection�, �The Cantonese Banquet � Revolutions in dining out�, �Street Food � The proof of loyal customers�, �Singapore Fusion � Mixing and matching�, and �Ethnic Supermarket � A new era in Singapore eating.� 

I particularly enjoy the first three categories, as it recognizes the food of a bygone era which many may have forgotten.  The �Colonial Heritage� celebrates the food of the Europeans in Singapore before independence, while the �The Snackbar Era� recalls the Asianised western food from several Hainanese-run eating places and snackbars in the 1950s and 1960s.  How interesting it is to find recipes for the Asianised chicken stew, the curry tiffin, chicken pies, oxtail stew and even the Russian Borscht, made popular by the few Hainanese-Russian restaurants!  The �Cantonese Banquet� is splendid with its repertoire of gourmet delights from the old-time Cantonese restaurants.  Besides some familiar favourites such as Fu Yong Hai ( crabmeat and shark fin omelette) and Har Loke  (caramelized prawns) which can still be enjoyed in many restaurants today, it is equally fascinating to find Yoke Lan Kai (steamed chicken with ham and kai lan) and paper-wrapped chicken which seemed to be dropped from many menus now.

Stumbling across many such forgotten favourites made this compilation a treasure to be had on many kitchen shelves. Although the other sections cover more contemporary hawker and restaurant favourites, there are several yesterday gems to be found.  Satay celup and Loh Kai Yik (Braised chicken wings in fermented soya bean sauce) are two recipes that I am particularly excited of, as these are two dishes that have disappeared.

Beyond these forgotten food, there are many familiar favourites to be found in the book.  It is a true treasure for many of us who may want to re-create the  or luak (oyster omelette), the local salad of rojak or chilli crab at home.

The last section, �Ethnic Supermarket� looked at food today - of those influenced by the convenience of packaged sauces and the cosmopolitan flavours Singaporeans have become accustomed to. She provided some fail-proof recipes in using these packaged sauces to create local dishes such as Chicken Rice and Bak Kut Teh to making cosmopolitan favourites such as the Thai seafood soup of tom yam kung, and the Japanese chirashi sushi.  Even traditional recipes such as the nyonya bubur cha-cha (sweet potato and yam in coconut milk) and the Malay otak otak (Malay fish custard grilled in banana leaves) were updated for the busy cook today with the use of packet coconut milk and packet sago flour cubes for  bubur cha-cha..   

As much as I have enjoyed the book, I can�t help but notice the absence of food that were eaten at home, and food that were eaten during festivals. Many of the recipes documented here is food that are usually eaten outside of the home, in a restaurant, snackbar, bakery, coffee shop or hawker stall.  Although a few dishes eaten traditionally at home were included in the book, this leans heavily towards nyonya and Eurasian favourites.  This perhaps is a reflection of Sylvia Tan�s Peranakan heritage.  Yet including the wider repertoire of home food from the various communities in Singapore would have made the book more complete.  

However as Sylvia Tan had acknowledged in the book and which I agree, there is little documentation on food history in Singapore.  Putting together this collection with notes on each style of cuisine would have already been a challenge, which she did admirably through old cookbooks, musty newspapers and interviews.

Nevertheless, this is a wonderful book on Singapore food, and a contribution to the documentation of Singapore food history.

April 2005 

www.singaporefoodhistory.com / Copyright 2005 Ai Ling Sim-Devadas