Singaporean cuisine as it is known today has come from a long history of adjusting and adapting and doing things ‘‘to taste’’, Shu Han Lee says.
She has even named her cookbook Agak Agak after the colloquial Malay word for ‘‘somewhat’’ agak. Agak agak loosely translates to ‘‘estimate’’.
‘‘It’s a way of thinking that comes to life in particular in the kitchen. Cooking the agak agak way is cooking with intent and intuition, honed by years of experience at the stove.’’
Lee, now a food developer and author, found herself growing up watching her mother cook but did not get hands-on in the kitchen until she moved to London at the age of 18 and was forced to learn how to cook through that same ‘‘try-test-taste’’ approach.
A craving for the flavours of home led her to make those dishes herself but instead of trying to find hard-to-get ingredients normally used in Singaporean food she used the seasonal produce available.
‘‘Often the results would be cheaper and taste better, as the ingredients hadn’t been flown halfway across the world a week ago.’’
When she hosted superclubs, she hesitated to call these dishes ‘‘Singaporean’’ and when she started her spice paste business she worried Singaporeans might miss the shrimp paste in her sambal tumis as she had tweaked the recipe to be vegan friendly.
‘‘But it turned out none of my diners nor customers found the food inauthentic. The Singaporeans living in London even confessed to having the same approach to cooking here.’’
Many Singaporean dishes were born out of cooks trying to find a taste of home in a foreign country. With different ingredients and tools, they used their senses to approximate the flavours they missed.
The early Chinese immigrants gave Singapore its national dish, Hainanese chicken rice, and other national classics are born out of a happy collision of cultures such as Peranakan cooking — a combination of the spices and herbs of Malay cooking with typical Chinese techniques and ingredients.
‘‘The incredible array of food you find in Singapore didn’t come from simply following iron-clad measurements and methods; it came from decades of changing things up.’’
For Lee, her latest book is about not just passing down Singaporean recipes, but sharing a way of cooking, one that is creative, intuitive and fun.
‘‘It’s the way I learnt to cook, and the way I watched my mum cook.’’
There are instructions on how they eat in Singapore and how she still loves to eat with rice as the cornerstone of almost every meal. So the book begins with a chapter on rice. There is also a chapter on one-dish meals as well as tasty tidbits to eat between meals and the sauces and sprinkles that are often laid out on a table for people to help themselves to.
She has included tricks, tips and twists of Singaporean hawker favourites, lesser-seen dishes served only at home with friends and families, as well as ideas combining her childhood with her life in London.
The book
This is an edited extract from Agak Agak: Everyday Recipes from Singapore by Shu Han Lee, published by Hardie Grant Books. Available in stores nationally, RRP$59.99. Photography by Ola O. Smit.
Two easy home-made wontons
Here’s a little guide to making and folding your own wontons. Once you’ve mastered that, you can play around with fillings. I’ve shared two filling recipes to start you off.
The first is pork and prawn - a classic you will recognise in most Chinese restaurants. It’s a classic for a reason, because it’s wonderfully savoury and juicy, and the prawns give sweetness and a tantalising hint of orange colour through the translucent dumpling skins when cooked.
The second is a vegetarian filling I developed for Low Carbon Chinatown, a community project by my friend Ling to create more environmentally conscious versions of Londoners’ favourite Chinese dishes.
I use tofu as it’s a brilliant flavour sponge; carrot, to mimic the sweetness and colour of prawns; and finally, leek stir-fried until savoury and sticky to bind everything together.
Makes 40
Ingredients
1 pack of fresh or frozen wonton wrappers
For the classic pork and prawn filling
200g fatty minced (ground) pork
100g raw peeled prawns (shrimp), finely chopped
2 spring onions (scallions), finely chopped
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1½ tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp Shaoxing rice wine
½ tsp sesame oil
¼ tsp white pepper
¼ tsp fine sea salt
2-3 Tbsp cold water
Method
For the classic pork and prawn filling
In a large mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients. Stir in the water as you go, making sure the meat fully absorbs the liquid and turns into a sticky paste. Beating water in is the key to a nice juicy wonton.
How to fold
If using fresh wrappers, make sure they’re kept under a damp cloth while you’re folding, or they will dry out and tear easily. If using frozen wrappers, make sure to defrost in the fridge overnight until soft and pliable; you can’t speed it up by defrosting on the counter or the wrappers turn into a soggy mess.
Get your station ready: your bowl of filling, a small bowl of water, a tray to lay out your finished dumplings.
To fold, dip your finger in the water and wet the edge of a wonton wrapper. Place a tablespoon of filling in the middle. Fold in half to get a rectangle, making sure to press around the filling to remove any air pockets. Wet the bottom corners and bring together, towards you, pressing to seal. Or, for the lazy, just bring all the corners together, scrunch up and press to seal.
How to freeze
At this stage, you could freeze the uncooked wonton dumplings, in a single layer, on a tray lined with baking parchment (parchment paper). Once frozen, pop them into a freezer bag for easy meals. They cook brilliantly straight from frozen.
How to cook
Bring a saucepan of water to the boil and lower the wonton dumplings carefully into the boiling water. Turn the heat down so it is at an aggressive simmer.
When the wontons float to the top, cook for another minute or so, before removing with a slotted spoon.
Serve either with noodles (see below); or in chicken or vegetable stock, seasoned to taste with salt, white pepper and sesame oil.
Childhood wonton mee
This is a noodle dish you’ll find in many countries with a large Cantonese community - Hong Kong, of course, as well as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. It’s no wonder this dish is so popular; springy egg noodles and slippery, juicy wonton dumplings are a match made in heaven.
They can be served wet in a light chicken broth, or dry tossed in a light soy dressing. Singapore has its own spin on the classic dish; we like things sweeter, so the noodles are dressed in a sweet dark soy sauce and sambal (for the grownups), or ketchup (for the children).
What marked my transition from childhood to adulthood was the gradual addition of sambal to my wonton mee. In the recipe below, you’ve got a choice of either, or feel free to mix the two to a ratio of your liking.
Serves 2
Ingredients
100g greens, such as Chinese broccoli or tenderstem broccoli
10 home-made wonton dumplings
2 nests of thin egg noodles (200 g fresh or 125g dried)
1 Tbsp fried shallots
spring onion (scallion), finely chopped
1 Tbsp pickled green chillies (optional)
For the noodle dressing
2 Tbsp dark soy sauce
1 Tbsp kecap manis
1 Tbsp shallot oil
1 Tbsp tomato ketchup, or sambal tumis (see below)
Method
Put two saucepans of water on the stove to boil. Stir together the ingredients for the dressing and divide among two bowls.
In one saucepan of water, blanch the greens until they are tender.
In the other saucepan, lower the wontons carefully into the boiling water. Turn the heat down so it is at an aggressive simmer. When the dumplings float to the top, let cook for another minute or so then remove with a slotted spoon.
When the greens are done, remove and set aside. In that same pot of water, boil the noodles until they are just cooked. Fresh noodles only take seconds while dried noodles will take about 2 minutes — steal a little strand to test.
Drain with a sieve (fine-mesh strainer), rinse in cold water, then dip again in hot water to warm up just before slipping into the bowls of sauces. This process gives the noodles a wonderful springy bite. Toss with a pair of chopsticks so each strand is well-coated with the sauce.
Place the wontons on the side of the noodles, along with the blanched greens from earlier.
Finish with the fried shallots, chopped spring onion and pickled green chillies the latter is optional but makes a classic sharp accompaniment to the sweet, salty noodles.
Hainanese chicken rice
This is a dish brought over by the Hainanese immigrants and looks deceptively plain: poached chicken, served with rice cooked in the chicken broth and fat. But done right, it’s a masterful lesson in drawing flavours out of basic ingredients and carrying them through all the elements on a plate.
The Singaporean twist to the original Hainan dish is the addition of pandan leaves or lemongrass for extra fragrance, as well as a punchy chilli sauce. This used to be a dish I would reserve for weekends, as the traditional method of poaching a whole chicken requires a fair bit more time and more friends to feed!
Using chicken thighs means I can do this in half the time, with all the flavour for a midweek treat. Get the best chicken you can afford corn-fed/free-range/organic as it’s such a simple dish, you want your few key ingredients to really shine.
Serves 2-3
Ingredients
4 chicken thighs (about 600g), skin on and bone in
Coarse sea salt, for rubbing
About 750ml (3 cups) water
1 garlic bulb, smashed
2 thumb-sized pieces (30g) of fresh ginger, peeled and smashed
2 pandan leaves, knotted, or 2 lemongrass stalks, lightly bashed
2 spring onions (scallions), chopped
150g (¾ cup) jasmine rice, rinsed and drained
2 Tbsp light soy sauce
¼ tsp fine sea salt, or to taste
2 tsp sesame oil
For the ginger-garlic sauce
1 Tbsp grated ginger
1 Tbsp grated garlic
½ tsp light brown sugar
¼ tsp fine sea salt, or to taste
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1 Tbsp chicken stock from poaching chicken
To serve
Ginger-garlic sauce (above)
Garlic-chilli sauce
Thick dark soy sauce or kecap manis
Chicken stock from poaching chicken
Ground white pepper, to taste
½ cucumber, sliced
Small handful of fresh coriander (cilantro)
Method
Prepare the chicken by trimming any visible fat. Set it aside for later. Rub the chicken all over with generous pinches of coarse sea salt.
Place the chicken in a large pot, wide enough to fit the thighs in a single layer. Pour in just enough of the water to submerge the chicken, but you might need a bit more or less depending on the size of your pot.
Add half the garlic, ginger, pandan or lemongrass and spring onions to the pot and bring to a rolling boil then turn the heat down to a bare simmer.
Cook for 10 minutes, skimming off any scum. Turn the heat off and let the chicken sit in the hot water, covered, for another 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, render the chicken fat by cooking over moderate heat in a pan. Discard the solids.
Once the chicken is cooked, remove and place straight into a large bowl of iced water. This will give it a nice springy texture. You also now have a pot of flavourful stock from poaching the chicken.
Combine the rice with 250ml (1 cup) of chicken stock, the rendered chicken fat, sesame oil, the remaining ginger, garlic, pandan and spring onion.
Season with the fine sea salt. Cook in the rice cooker or on the stovetop, before fluffing and serving.
While the rice is cooking, get all the other bits ready to serve. Make the ginger-garlic sauce by combining the ginger, garlic, sugar and salt in a small heatproof bowl.
Heat the oils in a small pan and pour over the mixture, then stir in the chicken stock. De-bone and slice the chicken, then drizzle with the remaining teaspoon of sesame oil and soy sauce.
Get your other dipping sauces ready in little saucers. Warm up the chicken broth and season with salt and white pepper, to taste.
To serve, arrange the cut chicken and cucumbers over the warm rice, alongside your various sauces and little bowls of chicken broth. Garnish with the fresh coriander.
Black sticky rice pudding with rhubarb
Pulut hitam is heaven in a bowl - warm chewy grains of black glutinous rice, toffee-sweet with palm sugar and creamy coconut milk.
But much like the best desserts, it can feel a bit heavy, especially if you are having it at the end of a big meal.
I adapted it for a supper club dessert by combining it with bright, sharp, poached pink rhubarb.
Serves 5-6
Ingredients
175g black glutinous rice
100ml (scant 1 cup) coconut milk
about 1 litre (4¼ cups) water
1 pandan leaf, tied into a knot (optional)
¼ tsp fine sea salt, or to taste
75g gula melaka (coconut palm sugar), or to taste
For the poached rhubarb
100g rhubarb, cut into 2cm pieces
10g caster (superfine) sugar
50ml (¼ cup) water
To serve
100ml (scant ½ cup) coconut milk
pinch of fine sea salt
Method
Soak the black rice overnight in cold water. This helps the rice to cook more evenly and faster.
I also like to prepare the rhubarb the day before. Spread out the pieces in a single layer in a non-reactive frying pan and sprinkle with the sugar. Set aside for 15 minutes.
Add the water and cook very gently, over very low heat, for a few minutes until it just starts to soften. Immediately turn the heat off and let cool. Then transfer into a container to chill in the fridge, making sure the rhubarb pieces are all submerged in the pink syrup.
The next day you’ll see the black rice grains have absorbed the water and expanded. Drain, rinse and bring to a boil in a saucepan with coconut milk, the water and pandan leaf. Turn the heat down and simmer for another hour or, stirring once in a while, until the grains soften and break up, about 1 hour.
You might need to top up with a bit more water as you go, though most of the liquid should be absorbed towards the end - you want to get to a thick porridge-like consistency. When it’s done, season with the salt and gula melaka, tasting and adding more or less to your liking.
When you’re ready to serve, in a separate small saucepan, warm the coconut milk with a pinch of salt.
Scoop the black sticky rice into bowls and serve with the cold poached rhubarb and an extra drizzle of the warm coconut milk.
