Cookery Magic, Singapore

Good question: why, having flown 14 hours and many, many miles around the world, would anyone choose to spend their precious time on a cooking course?

The answer seemed simple to me pretty soon after arriving in Singapore.  It’s actually less of a question of why one would do that, and much, much more a question of why wouldn’t you do so.  You see, Singapore is a food city.  There’s so much of it, and most of its good.  It’s a focal point for everyone – whether local or ex-pat.  My guidebook made a quip along the lines of ‘people in Singapore start talking about where to go for the next meal before they’ve started eating the last one’.  I assumed that was hyperbole.  It’s not.

So learning some of the local food cultures and traditions seemed a good idea.  I therefore spent some time researching the best cooking classes you can do in Singapore.  And one name kept coming back to me, over and over again: Cookery Magic.

Now, I’m going to go through all of the reasons why I had a great day, and how much fun everything was.  But I want to start by saying this: there is one and only one very good reason why Cookery Magic comes so highly recommended, and it is this woman.

Ruqxana Vasanwala. 

I can think of all sorts of people who can, and probably would, make a fantastic cooking tutor.  And all sorts of the right sorts of qualities that you’d need to do the job well.  Ruqxana has them in spades – she is clear, informative, friendly, fun, patient – all the necessary elements needed for a good teacher, especially in the kitchen.  She’s been running the school for over a decade now, and it’s immediately obvious to any visitor why she’s still going strong. 

Our menu for the day was ayam lemak (chicken cooked in spicy coconut milk, almost (but not quite!) like a green curry), sambal terung (aubergines stuffed with sambal, a kind of red chilli paste, and dried prawns) and bubor pulut hitam (black glutinous rice pudding).  I’m not going to completely undercut Ruqxana by giving you the exact recipes, but I’ll talk you through them.

First point to note, everything was provided fresh as a daisy.  There were pandan leaves from Ruqxana’s garden, we toasted and ground our own spices, and everything else had been sourced from Singapore’s infamous wet markets. 

The first step was actually to get pudding going - the rice takes a while to cook.

And, once it's getting there, it's time to add all the goodness - including this incredible semi-fermented palm sugar Ruqxana had cultivated.

We started by making the curry paste for the chicken.

Now, I’m sure you’ve all done this at home – or know someone who has.  You shove all the ingredients in the blender, right?

Wrong.  You grind them.  You know how, when you make a Thai curry (for instance) at home sometimes and it tastes nothing like a Thai curry from your favourite restaurant?  And you know how you followed the recipe exactly, and still can’t figure out the difference?  Well, I can now tell you: It’s the paste.  Your blending it, which will fundamentally change the nature of the proteins, fats and sugars – the result being that it will, as a matter of fact, taste different. 

No, if you want to create the authentic flavours, you have to get grinding.  Which is HARD WORK.  Seriously.

Even so, sooner or later we had pounded the ingredients into a smooth(ish) paste, which then gets cooked off until it’s nice and aromatic.

Then there's the addition of coconut milk...

…and then the chicken itself, which goes in in great big pieces, and is allowed to cook off.

Next up was the aubergines, the first stage of which is to create the sambal.  Now, I won't lie - when I saw this collection of ingredients (basically, chillies, chillies and more chillies) I was a touch concerned.  I can handle hot food, definitely, but this was a little… well, intimidating.

Much like the curry paste, the sambal is made by being ground into a fine paste.  If I thought that grinding the curry paste was hard work, it was nothing compared to this.  Seriously, nothing.  Still, it was totally worth it.

And again, much like the curry paste, cooking the sambal off when it's fully ground releases all the flavours and aromas.

Next step was to slice the aubergine into big thick rounds, performing a half slice in-between each round, to provide for a little stuffing pocket.  Filling this up with sambal, the rounds were ready for frying off.  Ruqxana pointed out that these could be grilled instead, if one was being a little more health conscious.

Pretty soon, we were ready to serve up.

Ayam lemak.

Sambal terang.

Bupor pulut hitam, served with coconut cream and mango.

I cannot recommend Cookery Magic enough.  Definitely worth a half day - especially if you're a foodie.  Ruqxana is absolutely magic.  Also, a big hat tip needs to be given to my co-pupils, who were a great bunch of people and a lot of fun to spend a morning with.

 - GrubsterBoy - 

Food Porn #6: Sunday Roast at the Avalon

Roast beef with all the trimmings at The Avalon, a Clapham pub that does surprisingly good foor - their roasts being no exception.  With an extra Yorkie - because no roast is complete without one.  Bloody Mary's pretty good too...  This is what Sundays should be about - but make sure you book; they get extremely busy.

Singapore Sling, Raffles Hotel

So many drinks have a story behind them.  Sure, lots don't but many do.  And stories are to be celebrated.

The Singapore Sling, the city state's contribution to worldwide imbibition, is no exception.  To find out what that story is, you have to visit Raffles Hotel. 

Raffles (as it is generally known) is not – as the name seems to suggest – and trendy Chelsea hangout for late-teenagers but instead more of an memorial to Singapore's colonial past.  Named in honour of Sir Stamford Raffles, whose name appears around the city, and who can take credit (and blame) for much of Singapore's Nineteenth Century development, it is a towering edifice of Victorian style in a far-away land.  Today it is more of a mall (and a strangely quiet one at that) than a hotel, but peering around one can still catch a glimpse, every so often, of the colonial glory the building once embraced. 

The setting for our drinking, however, is the Long Bar.  Due to the fame of the Singapore Sling, this is the one part of the building that seems far from quiet.  In fact, unless you've booked in advance or come at a particularly antisocial time, you're likely to face a pretty hefty wait for a table – that or be shunted upstairs to the, sadly rather empty and soulless, less popular bar. 

The bar itself is a testament to the time it was built. It's decked out exactly as one would suspect it might have been when Raffles was first developed (although, in fairness, I have no idea whether this is affected or preserved chic). It's all wood panelling, tiled floors...

...and slowly flapping fans.  Once presumably cranked by some poor punkhawallah, now they are electrically operated and add a real sense of what the place may have been like (although they add nothing in the way of ventilation whatsoever). 

The floors are a sight as well.  Not something one usually picks up on, but for this: there is an old habit of serving the drinks with little bags of peanuts in shells.  As if one were sat in an old gentlemen's club, the fashion is to munch away, discarding shells on the floor.  The end result is a big mess, but again some kind of historic, colonial feel is given off.  Like it or not (and I make no comment), it gives the place an air of authenticity – even if it is (as well it may be) completely inauthentic.



But enough of this chat.  On to the drink.



The recipe for the Singapore Sling, it turns out, is hotly disputed.  It's not disputed like a martini is disputed (ie, how many parts gin/vodka to martini, but that's pretty much all the argument you get).  No, it's disputed right down to what on earth goes into it.  The recipe given by Raffles is as follows:

30ml Gin
15ml Cherry Heering
7.5ml Dom Benedictine
7.5ml Cointreau
120ml Sarawak Pineapple Juice
15ml Lime Juice
10ml Grenadine
Dash Angostura Bitters
It's a lot to cram into a cocktail, and it makes for a pretty sweet concoction.

A friend of mine rather snootily described it as the worst Singapore Sling he'd ever had.  I don't know about that - but then, this was the first Singapore Sling I'd ever had, so what do I know.

But look, here's the thing: You don’t go for the quality of the drink, as such.  Nor do you go because you love Singapore Slings (although if you do, GO).  You go because going is like dropping into La Floridita in Havana and drinking a daiquiri, or visiting Harry's Bar for a Bellini.  Sure, they may not serve the best, or even the most authentic, versions of the drink.  And certainly they're going to flog you the most expensive one you'll ever taste.  But you haven’t gone to have the best, or the truest, or the greatest, or the cheapest.  You've gone because you're visiting the place where the drink was invented, like a pilgrimage (without the religion) to try to rub off some tiny vestige of what that place was like, what the history of that drink is, how it came to pass.  And the Long Bar at Raffles can give you that.

 - GrubsterBoy -

Maxwell Hawker Centre, Singapore

Anyone who's ever been to Singapore will be familiar with the concept of hawker centres.  In fact, lots of people who haven’t been to Singapore will be familiar with hawker centres as well – thanks, in a large part, to the work of Street Feast London / Tweet Up's Hawker House.  But for those visiting Singapore, like myself, for the first time, a visit to a hawker centre is an absolute must.

The hustle and bustle is really quite something as well.  I went relatively early on at lunchtime and already the place was heaving – barely enough room to find a corner of a table to perch at.  Hawker centres are sometimes talked about as if they are the heart of Singapore – and I can see why.  Here you will find all walks of life – families out with kids or grandparents for chicken and rice, Singapore's ultimate comfort food, to high-flying suits, scoffing down noodles and fish balls. 



Maxwell Road's hawker centre is (I am told) amongst the best.  Located in Chinatown, it has a very Chinese-focussed cuisine.  But that's not to say that you won’t find plenty of other foodstuffs on the menu – from Arabic grills to Indian curries - all washed down with copious fresh juices and kopi.

At the nearby Chinatown Heritage Centre I learned that food hawking started in Singapore in the late Nineteenth Century, as the booming populations began to flog (or hawk) their edible wares from the five foot way in front of each shophouse.  However, it wasn't until the mid-Twentieth Century that hawking really exploded in Singapore, with the occupation of the Japanese during the Second World War.  The economy took a nosedive and so, in an effort to scrape together a living somehow, locals began to cook and sell food for very low prices.  Such hawking was eventually formalised into the hawker centres we know and love today.

Today's hawker centres are a little different to how I imagine the first centres looked.  They are big, clean and well run.  Each little booth contains a stovetop or other cooking apparatus and encompasses an entire kitchen – bringing in the fresh produce and turning it into ready-to-eat food. 

The biggest challenge I faced was choosing between the hundreds of offerings.  Eventually, I just had to plump for something.  Following the rule that lots of people = good food, I joined the back of a long queue.  Pretty soon I found myself at the front of that queue, utterly bewildered and unsure what to do.  The friendly chap who ran the booth offered to do my a mixed plate.  I readily accepted. 

What is it all, I hear you cry? Well, here goes: fried noodles; spicy pork sausage (red ringed meat); bean curd (yellow cubes, top of the plate); egg and pork cake (browny-orange cubes, bottom of plate); fish ball (looks a bit like a tater tot, left of the plate); and neck of pork fried in the skin (underneath the whole lot, not shown).  The two sauces are sweet plum (left) and fiercely hot chilli (right) (YUM).  All washed down with a mug of green tea.

I cannot recommend a visit to a hawker centre more highly.  The food is fantastic, the atmosphere electric, and the price unbelievable.  In a city that prides itself on its food but has seemingly no limit to what it's prepared to charge it was fantastic to eat like a prince whilst paying like a pauper.

 - GrubsterBoy -