Читать книгу Food of Singapore - David Wong - Страница 11

Chinese Food in Singapore

A potluck of Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese cuisines

When two Chinese meet, the traditional greeting is to ask whether the other has eaten, highlighting the central place of food in Chinese culture. The greeting must surely have been brought about by the cycles of famine long a part of Chinese history, which have made Chinese cooks firm followers of the adage "waste not, want not". This approach to food is also characteristic of a people with strong roots in the soil; you ate whatever was plentiful, or in season, and you made the best you could of it. And Chinese everywhere, including Singapore, do make the best of everything they can get their hands on.

A little can go a long way when there are several kinds of ingredients cut small, tossed into a hot kuali (wok) with a bit of oil, and stir-fried with garlic and fermented soybeans. Slicing food into bite-size pieces makes for rapid, even cooking. Small pieces are also easier to eat when you are manipulating two thin pieces of wood to pick up your food, and they simplify sharing in the communal style of eating Although large chunks of meat are not unknown, these are cooked until the meat falls away from the bone and can be eaten in bite-sizes, or else the meat is cut into small pieces before being taken to the table When using large meat cuts to sweeten soups, the meat is often not eaten, but is left in the pot with remaining herbs.

Cantonese cuisine is a perennial favourite, especially the tidbits known as dim sum, enjoyed here in a typical Chinatown teahouse cum restaurant.

While stir-frying is very Chinese, so is steaming, where the prepared food is placed in bamboo baskets over a kuali of boiling water. Equally popular is braising or stewing—the long, slow cooking with seasonings such as soy sauce, bean paste, oyster sauce or garlic transforms tough cuts into melt-in-your-mouth, flavourful morsels. Deep- or stir-frying is sometimes combined with braising or steaming; a sauce prepared with chicken stock, rice wine, soy sauces, perfumed greens like spring onions and coriander leaves (cilantro), and other colourful vegetables, is poured over the deep-fried ingredient.

Many Chinese dishes combine several vegetables with meat or seafood, making for naturally colourful food Pit-roasting is another cooking technique used for delicacies such as roasted suckling pig, and various roasted meats are done in kiln-like ovens or large drums—note however that Chinese "roast" chicken is actually deep-fried.

Although the basic cooking techniques are used by Chinese everywhere, different provinces tend to prefer certain techniques and ingredients. The northern Chinese use mutton, unheard of in the south, which accounts for the unfamiliarity Singaporean Chinese have with mutton. Northern cooks use more garlic and bean paste, while cooks in Sichuan in the West and Hunan in central China rely on chillies as well. Northerners eat mantou, a wheat-flour bread, as a staple, and rice is more common in the south.

Foods from all regions of China are well-represented in Singapore. There is both elegant Shanghainese and Beijing cooking, the stuff of Imperial kitchens, as well as spicy Sichuan and Hunanese food From the south comes Cantonese cuisine, which can range from elegant nouvelle Hong Kong with its small portions and fruity flavours, to hearty, homely sa poh braised food cooked in claypots Cantonese roast meats such as suckling pig, roast pork and red-roasted pork (char siew) are justifiably popular.

Cantonese dim sum or "little hearts" go down well the world over and Singapore is no different Dim sum is especially popular for lunch, whether quick or leisurely in Singapore, the Hokkiens (originally from Fujian Province) are the largest dialect group, followed by the Teochews (from Swatow), then the Cantonese. The relatively small size of the Cantonese community is not obvious given the high profile of Cantonese cuisine in Singapore. Teochew cuisine is also quite popular, and is characterised by light soups, steamed food and fish dishes—many in the community were, and still are, in the seafood business.

Light and very popular not only for breakfast, but lunch, dinner and supper is Teochew savoury porridge, rice gruel eaten with various boiled, stewed, steamed and fried dishes, whether cooked at home or eaten at porridge restaurants.

Elegant Chinese restaurants, such as Li Bai, serve impeccable Cantonese cuisine to discerning gourmets.

By contrast, fewer restaurants serve the more homely Hokkien cuisine, with its characteristically hearty braised dishes, such as tau yew bak (pork braised in black soy sauce) eaten With steamed buns, oyster omelette and Popiah. The Cuisine is strong on pork dishes, especially "white pork" meat With plenty of marbling, trotters complete with the fatty skin, or belly pork garlic and soy sauce are used generously soups are good, especially heavy soups With meatballs and vegetables.

One much-loved Hokkien contribution to Singapore hawker food is Hokkien mee, the yellow noodles found not only in Hokkien Fned Noodles and Hae Mee (mee in prawn-flavoured soup), but also in Malay Mee Rebus, Soto Ayam, and Indian Mee Goreng in fact much of the character of the food cooked by once-mobIle hawkers, now located in food centres, comes from the wide range of ingredients used by different dialect groups, put together in different ways by other communities.

Like yellow Hokkien mee, Teochew fishball is a classic Ingredient accepted by all the races in Singapore and found in many dishes, be it Indian Rojak, Chinese noodle soup, or cooked with Malay sambal. The fishballs made by grinding fish meat with tapioca flour, salt and water to get a bouncy, white fish paste. The same fish paste can also be used to make fishcake, which is another essential garnish in Singapore food.

Although it may appear that the Chinese live only to eat, they also eat with health in mind. Stalls specialising in tonic of herbal soups are now common in Singapore These soups, usually a combination of chicken and ginseng or pork With Sichuan vegetables or watercress double-boiled for tong periods of time, are believed to nourish the body.

Yet long before the link between food and health became fashionable, the Chinese were developing a complex philosophy of dietetics certain foods are believed to be cooling", or yin, while others are "heaty, or yang, and some are neutral The human constitution is classified the same way, With some people being more yin, while others are more yang. The Chinese believe that a balance of yin and yang in the body by eating the correct foods maintains good health, and it is therefore important to eat a wide range of foods in moderation.

Delectable Malay food can be enjoyed throughout Singapore in food stalls and restaurants, and even a few line dining venues.