Sambal Ikan Bilis (Crispy Anchovies with Chilli)

The good news is, anchovy stocks have doubled because their predators – the type that doesn't have legs – have declined sharply in numbers. This is where we, the two-legged predators, need to step up our efforts. Eat more anchovies, people!

I don't know about you but I don't need much persuasion to eat sambal ikan bilis. The salty little fishies and deep-fried peanuts make a perfect ménage à trois with the sweet and spicy sambal.

Nasi lemak simply woudn't be complete without some sambal ikan bilis. No coconut rice? Never mind, it also goes well with Teochew porridge and steamed rice. Or just eat it on its own, but be warned that once you start nibbling, you won't stop till you eat everything. Which is fine if it's everything on the plate. Just don't go eating every anchovy in the oceans.

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Teriyaki Salmon	Teochew Steamed Fish Head	Baked Fish Intestines	Baked Cod

Pickled Green Papaya – And a Pickle Story

A story about pickles, as told by Bob Farrell:

I’ve been coming to your restaurant for over three years. I always order a #2 hamburger and a chocolate shake. I always ask for an extra pickle and I always get one. Mind you, this has been going on once or twice a week for three years.

I came into your restaurant the other day and I ordered my usual #2 hamburger and a chocolate shake. I asked the young waitress for an extra pickle. I believe she was new because I hadn’t seen her before. She said, “Sir, I will sell you a side of pickles for $1.25.” I told her, “No, I just want one extra slice of pickle. I always ask for it and they always give it to me. Go ask your manager.”

She went away and came back after speaking to the manager. The waitress looked me in the eye and said, “I’ll sell you a pickle for a nickel.” Mr Farrell, I told her what to do with her pickle, hamburger and milkshake. I’m not coming back to your restaurant if that’s the way you’re going to run it.



He signed his name and, fortunately for me, included his address. I wrote him a letter and enclosed a card for a free hot fudge sundae. I assured him we don’t run our business that way, apologized, and asked him to please come back. I had a chance meeting with him years later and I thanked him in person for his letter because it became the “war cry” of our young company, “Give ’em the Pickle.” When something happens with a customer and you’re not sure what to do? “Give ’em the Pickle!” Do what it takes to make things right!

If the customer had sent his letter to a restaurant in Singapore, chances are he won't get a reply. He'll then write to The Straits Times and, if his letter's published, the restaurant will say it's 'company policy' that customers pay for extra pickle. The bulk of the commenters, probably waiters who blame everyone except themselves for their dead-end jobs, will call the customer a cheapskate. If the customer stops going to the restaurant? Thank you very much, the restaurant would say, and mean it.

Bob Farrell's customer had a sweet pickle story. I have a pickle story too, but it's sour. I used to go to Cedele Depot, where I usually ordered the rosemary chicken sandwich with cranberry sauce. I always asked for extra sauce, and the cafe always obliged. One day, however, the lady serving me said I had to pay 50 cents extra. Which I did, but that was the last time I went to the cafe.

Charging customers for extra pickle is bad enough, but promising extra pickle and then not giving any happens all the time. OCBC, for instance, is a good example. Well, you know what? Customers are to blame for bad service, just as parents are when their kids behave badly. Spineless customers who don't stand up for their principles have as much to learn from Bob Farrell's pickle story as businesses.

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Me, a Bank & a Birthday Cake	Lemon Tarts	Ginger Cake	Lemon Curd Marbled Cheesecake

Bubur Cha Cha (Yam & Sweet Potatoes in Coconut Milk)

Coconut milk is the most important ingredient in bubur cha cha, so I've got a photo of a coconut tree:

Nice 'trunk', eh? ....... . . . .. ... . . ... . . .... . .. . . . . . .

How does Miranda Kerr get her million-dollar bikini body? By eating coconut oil everyday, as reported here and here. If you think coconut oil is evil, you are so last century. There was a time when the luscious oil was public enemy number one because of its saturated fats, but it's now the darling of health food enthusiasts.

What's the spin this time? It's medium-chain fatty acids. The MFAs, found in great abundance in coconut oil, supposedly help your body burn fat, and boost your metabolism. In other words, coconut fat is a fat that makes you thin. I'm sure the health 'experts' will, in due course, change their minds. But until then, coconut oil is the 'miracle food' of the moment. Not only does the wondrous liquid make you look like a Victoria's Secret model (only from the neck downwards, I presume), the lauric acid it contains helps boost immunity, improve digestion, stop itching and inflammation, kill viruses, bacteria and fungus, prevent aging, high cholesterol and high blood pressure . . . .

I'm not into coconut oil much but I love coconut milk. So I'm inhaling laksa, nasi lemak, curries, all sorts of Nyonya kueh . . . anything cooked with coconut milk, all in the name of good health. Oh yes, mustn't forget bubur cha cha, the Peranakan sweet soup that's as colourful as a sarong kebaya. Mustn't forget my bikini either. See? It's working already. MFAs improve the memory.

'Hey, anyone seen my bikini?'

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Mrs & Ms Lee's Cookbooks	Vegetarian Cruelty	Are You Afraid of Lard?	Customs and Food

How to Make Fried Wontons

Fried wontons are different from wontons in soup, apart from the fact that they're fried.

The filling for boiled wontons should have dried sole (大地鱼, aka 铁脯). The fish is toasted till brown, crisp and fragrant, then chopped into little bits. If it's not available, deep-fried shallots are a good substitute. With either of these ingredients in the filling, wontons cooked in soup would have a rich, intense aroma they wouldn't have otherwise. In Hong Kong, the motherland of Wonton Soup, the stock used is made with dried sole, amongst other things.

Fried wontons, on the the hand, don't need any dried sole or deep-fried shallots because the fragrance from the golden brown wrappers is sufficient.

Boiled wontons may be any size so long as the seams don't burst. Fried wontons, however, have to be quite small. If there's too much filling, the wontons would be brown before the inside is cooked. How much is too much? It depends on the mix of meat – use less if there's more pork, more if there's more prawns, and chicken would be somewhere inbetween. If you like your fried wontons big and meaty, 100% prawns would be the way to go.

If you hate deep-frying because of the mess it may make, fried wontons would be good news. The wrappers are dry, so the oil doesn't splatter at all. Having your deep-fry and no cleaning is better than having your cake and eating it too!

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Cereal Killer!	Salted Crispy Chicken (盐酥鸡)	Orange Glazed Pork Ribs	Sesame Balls (煎堆)

Spicy Baba Belachan Fried Rice (Nasi Goreng Rempah)

Fried rice is one of those things. It may be a great chef's finale for a grand Chinese banquet, or it may be something rustled up by a hungry youngster snooping round the kitchen when Mum is out. Brilliantly executed, fried rice is sublime. If not, it's (usually) at least edible.

Baba fried rice is easier than the Chinese version. The latter requires fierce, intense heat for best results (imagine a massive fire breathing dragon underneath the wok). The Straits Chinese, however, use spices to create an alluring aroma. Finely pounded shallots, dried chillies, fresh chillies and candlenuts, along with belachan and dried prawns, are slowly persuaded over gentle heat to release their fragrance. Each and every grain tastes of the spicy, aromatic and umami paste, so the fried rice is delicious even when it's lacking in wok hei.

Leftover rice is great for making fried rice but, contrary to popular opinion, freshly cooked rice is perfectly ok too. All you have to do is use a bit less water than usual, and the cooked rice would be quite dry, as if it's been drying out overnight. If the rice is cooked at a lower temperature, by steaming instead of boiling in an electric rice-cooker, it's even better because the texture would be firmer and more chewy.

I don't wait till I have leftover rice to enjoy a bowl of fried rice. But I always make fried rice when I have some. Resteamed overnight rice isn't very nice, but I hate throwing away leftover rice because I grew up singing: planting rice is never fun, bend from morn till set of sun, cannot stand and cannot sit, cannot rest a little bit . . . .

Planting rice is no longer the back breaking work it used to be. Nonethess, each and every grain is precious. Savour it, fried or otherwise.

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Mee Siam (Nyonya Spicy Rice Vermicelli)	Fried Glutinous Rice (生炒糯 米飯)	Chicken Bee Hoon (Rice Vermicelli) Soup	Steamed Glutinous Rice with Chicken (糯米雞)

How to Make Kaya (Coconut Jam) – In 10 Minutes

If you google 'kaya hours of stirring', you'll find people (like here and here) who really do stand beside their pots of kaya, stirring away for hours on end. I greatly admire their patience, dedication, and tenacity but, sadly, these are virtues I don't possess. So I make kaya the quick way, in 10 minutes.

What's the difference between the longie and quickie? More importantly, is the quality compromised if you take 10 minutes instead of two hours? Well, the ingredients are more or less the same except for egg whites. The longie has egg whites; the quickie doesn't. Egg whites, being 90% water and 10% proteins, make the kaya less rich. That is, to me, not a good thing, especially when 'kaya' means rich. But I imagine those in the anti-fats brigade (like Sylvia Tan) would jump with joy. (I wouldn't be surprised if she makes a whites-only kaya, minus coconut milk and sugar. Urgh!)

Kaya made with whole eggs has to be cooked at a very low temperature. That's why it's heated over a water bath, and it has to be stirred continuously. If the temperature is too high, the egg whites would cook too quickly, turn lumpy, and ruin the kaya.

Meanwhile, the sugar has to caramelize, which starts happening at about 160°C. But it's sitting in a pool of coconut milk that consists of mainly water. H2O's maximum temperature is 100°C, right? That's way too low for browning sugar. So, before any caramelization takes place, most of the H2O has to evaporate. Which is done gently gently over a water bath so that the princessy egg whites don't get grumpy and lumpy. Even when the caramelization finally happens, along with the thickening as water evaporates, it's very slow because of the minimal heat. Now you see why making kaya takes hours of dedicated stirring?

The hard labour may be easily avoided by doing two things: One, omitting the egg whites, thus allowing the kaya to be cooked at a higher temperature without a water bath. Two, caramelizing the sugar separately, away from the watery coconut milk, which is done in a matter of minutes. The simple reengineering slashes the cooking time to 10-15 minutes. Efficiency improves, productivity rises, hallelujah! Making kaya is a royal pain no more.

Imagine smothering your morning toast with kaya that's full of the fragrance of fresh coconut milk, caramel and pandan. But it's not cloyingly sweet, and you're in the comfort of your own home instead of fighting the crazy crowds at Ya Kun or Chin Mee Chin. Oh yes, don't forget the slices of cold butter and half-boiled eggs, and tea or coffee to wash everything down. Now that's a breakfast worth waking up for!

Did you know Bob Marley also loved 'kaya' for breakfast?

(Wake up and...) (Wake up and...) (Wake up and...) Wake up and turn I loose, For the rain is fallin'! Got to have kaya now (kaya, kaya), Got to have kaya now (kaya, kaya), Got to have kaya now (kaya, kaya), For the rain is fallin' . . . .

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Pandan Cake	Kacang Putih (Frosted Peanuts)	Sesame Balls	Tau Suan (豆爽, Split Green Bean Sweet Soup)

Buah Paya Masak Titek – Peppery Papaya Soup

If I had a dollar for every bad recipe I come across . . . . Who is it this time? It's Sylvia Tan, whom I absolutely loathe because she's such a killjoy. She goes on and on about cutting out the fat from this, that and every other recipe. Biggest turn off ever, she is!

I used to have zero respect for Sylvia Tan, but that was before I saw her on TV. Believe it or not, she made skinless, low-fat (of course!) Kong Pao Chicken with sambal belachan! Did she think the people in Sichuan ate belachan? Or did she think it was ok to totally disregard the recipe's authenticity? After that awful, bastardized chicken, my respect for her fell from a big fat zero into negative territory.

Sylvia Tan hit the rock bottom in my book. You might think that was the worst rating possible but the amazing woman had the ability to penetrate rocks. This time, it was the recipe for Papaya Titek in her cookbook, Modern Nyonya. Her stock for the Peranakan soup was made with the heads and shells of 50 g of prawns! For those who don't know, 50 g would be two prawns each about the size of a woman's forefinger. According to her recipe, the heads and shells of these two small crustaceans boiled in one whole litre of water for 30 minutes would make stock for 4-5 servings. Le sigh . . . . She's considered an authority on Singapore cooking, you know?

Modern Nyonya was clearly a load of ****. The Best of Singapore Cooking, on the other hand, would have given me a very salty papaya soup. The recipe had a huge amount of salted fish bones and dried prawns, in addition to salt and a chicken stock cube.

The recipe in Cooking for the President wasn't ideal either. It was more like a stew than soup since there was more papaya than water. There were no fresh prawns, and it was less spicy than The Best Of. But I liked the idea of dry-frying the dried prawns before they were simmered.

In the end, I sort of combined the two better-but-not-ideal recipes. I didn't use as much papaya as Cooking For, nor as much salted fish bones as The Best Of. The salt and stock cube were omitted but there were fresh prawns, as well as dried ones dry-fried till very fragrant. Lastly, I went along with The Best Of's amount of white peppercorn and chilli.

The soup didn't make me jump up and down with excitement, but I liked the fruity sweetness of the papaya contrasted with the salty and mildly spicy stock. Le purr . . . . I'll definitely make Buah Paya Masak Titek again when I have a papaya that's too green for eating straight, and too ripe for pickling.

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Salted Fish Head & Tofu Soup	Wonton Soup	Bombay Duck Soup	Glass Noodle Omelette Soup

Ikan Tempera – Nyonya Sweet & Sour Fish

Previously on Kitchen Tigress, in the episode on Kueh Bengka Ubi in 90 Seconds, Mac wanted to eat fish.

Ikan, which means fish in Malay, is Mac's favourite food. 'Wai doesn't shee kook ikan?' she wondered wistfully.

Suddenly, there was something in the air. *sniff sniff* 'Fee-fi-fo-fum . . . feesh! I smell the blood of . . . feesh! Ikaaaaan!'

Is KT cooking fish? Oh yes, she is! Mac waited anxiously. 'Wai is shee taking so 'ong? 'urry up!'

Finally, KT was done. 'Do you want some fish, Mac?' 'Ai wan! Yes, yes! Ai wan feesh!' Mac nodded her head so fast it was a blur.

'There you go, Mac, your all-time favourite.' .... .... . . . ..... ..... .... ... .. .... .... ...

'Oh boo hoo hoo, ai don't eat chilli!' ..... ..... ... ........ .. . . .. . . . . .. . ... ..

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