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Flavors of Singapore
| Article
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20426 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1992 |
1,458 Words |
| Author
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Adrianne Marcus
Adrianne Marcus has published in Food & Wine, Menus, Travel &
Leisure, Good Food, Cooking Light, and other magazines. |
Singapore, The kitchen of the world. Never have I been so gloriously assaulted by as many foods as on that small island (617 square kilometers,) where cultures have converged and left indelible essences of themselves. It's no wonder that in Singapore the salutation is "Have you eaten yet?"
In Singapore, eating is the first preoccupation. And when night falls, balmy and tropical, with the heady perfume of the evening flowers in the air, the hardest decision to make is, what kind of food to have tonight? In my time in Singapore, I only repeated myself once, and only once did I have a meal to which I was vaguely indifferent.
Course by course, the food arrives; everything from dim sum to a vast array of fresh seafood, tofu in every imaginable guise, pork as light as chicken, chicken as flavorful as it ought to be, double-boiled rana with lotus seeds. The senses are overwhelmed by the richness and diversity.
As a tour guide who greeted us on our first day informed us, of a population of two and half million 76 percent are Chinese, 15 percent are Malaysian, 7 percent are Indian, and most of the rest are English, Pakistani and Eurasian. There are four official languages; English is the language of administration, Malay is the national language of Singapore, and Chinese and Tamil are used.
Once settled in Singapore, I took off her the market in China town, watched noodles being made by hand, saw the "wet market," where fish swim in their tanks and are chosen on the sport, saw cages of frogs and of chickens also waiting to be chosen, and was overwhelmed by the vast array of fresh fruit and vegetables. I swooned over Mangosteen, a tiny purple fruit with a succulent sweet white interior which I ate carefully, as I had been warned that the juice would stain my clothing forever. I had pungent jackfruit, which tastes a bit like pineapple but smells infinitely stronger. Stronger yet was durian, a fruit that the Chinese adore but characterize with the adage," Smells like hell, tastes like heaven".
Scattered throughout the city are hawker stalls, outdoor eating stalls that offer a variety of Chinese, Indonesian, Malaysian, and Western foods. These are the ultimate fast food outlets, and the crowds know it. We tourists slurp noodles with the best of them. These outdoor stalls are scrupulously clean, and the only problem, I've ever had is in trying to decide exactly what it is I want: an Indian repast, Malaysian meal, complete three course Chinese
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