A Tiger In The Kitchen

At-Sunrice: Getting To The Root Of Things

In the lush greenness, we were led, like foragers, from tree to tree. Stopping occasionally to sniff at some bark or nibble on a fresh leaf, the experience was about as close to the source of food that you can get.

The setting was quiet Fort Canning Park in Singapore, a place that's as known for being a lovers' lane as it is for being the panoramic hilltop spot on which the country's first colonial settlers built their homes. My friend Willin (my stomach-of-steel dining partner in Singapore) and I had trekked to the park for a tour of its spice garden and At-Sunrice, the cooking school that's perched next to it. (Think of it as the Cordon Bleu of Singapore.) 

Before we checked out the school's Chinese, pastry and Western kitchens, however, we'd taken a little detour, wending our way along a garden that dates back to the early 19th Century, to get to the root of what we cook and eat. Even with the advent of farmer's markets and lengthy explanations of the origins of ingredients on restaurant menus these days, it can be hard to feel a sense of connection with where our food comes from.

But when you're holding a broken-open nutmeg shell while sniffing and stroking the thin film of mace that covers the seed, you start to have a deeper appreciation for all the cakes and pies that you've beaten mace into. 

(It also made me want to get back to my oven and whip together my favorite apple-pear tart with a mace crust. And pronto.)

Orgo: Mile High Martinis

 
I have been known to enjoy a cocktail now and then.

My requirements for boites, they're generally basic -- a clean seat, a friendly-bordering-on-flirty bartender and a decent wine list are all I need to be golden.

A fabulous view, however, now that's a quality that never fails to keep me coming back. And in Singapore, I recently discovered a boite with an exquisite one: Orgo, a calculatedly hip restaurant and bar that's perched atop the waterfront Esplanade arts center and has a sweeping view of the city skyline.

Now, as far as my three basic needs go, this place meets one -- the seats were clean. 

The staff, it was perfectly perfunctory, if a little drowsed and unhurried. (Particularly unforgiveable given the place was almost empty on the nights we were there.) And the wine list -- well, by the glass, you have two options: House white and house red.

But, what can I say? I'm a sucker for a bar with a view.

Winging It: An Easy Chicken Stew

My mother will be the first to tell you that she is not a cook. 

(Even though she is. Sort of.)

In my family's Singapore home, however, it is our maid Erlinda who does the magic in the kitchen most days. Her dishes are typically simple, delicious and never fail to hit the spot.

Like many good home cooks, improvisation has been the mother of many of Erlinda's inventions. One of my favorite dishes is a super-easy chicken-wing stew that she first tossed together while thinking of the adobos she grew up eating in her hometown of Baguio in the Phillippines.

The stew she makes here, however, is quite different because my mother typically doesn't stock vinegar in her kitchen. Instead, dark, sweet soy sauce is the main ingredient -- but the result can be just as satisfying.

Fifty Three: The Young And The Creative

Singapore can be such a by-the-book place that when you come across something truly creative, you can't help but stop for a moment to marvel and think: This must be applauded.

Dinner at Fifty Three, a fairly new addition to the Singapore dining scene, is filled with moments such as these. From the amuse bouche of a crispy potato chip dusted with sour yogurt powder to the inventive finale of a melt-in-your-mouth gin and tonic gummy candy, the restaurant had me enthralled through and through.

Chef Michael Han, a former lawyer turned chef who's an alum of the Fat Duck in the U.K. and Noma in Denmark, may only be in his early 30s but his hand is sure, his vision is appealingly playful and his dishes will remain with you long after you've left.

Gourmet: A Letter to Si Newhouse

Dear Si,

By now, you may have heard from others like me--the heartsick and the grieving, all mourning the demise of Gourmet magazine, a formidable kitchen companion to many for almost 70 years.

By now, you may have seen the words "iconic" and "institution" bandied about. You may have heard the sepia-toned reminiscing of armchair travelers and culinary voyeurs whose lives have been the better, even for just moments, because of Gourmet.

And you've probably heard the words: Save Gourmet.

Gourmet has been a victim of the economic downturn, to be sure. The financial reasons for the close are clear -- its advertising revenue had plummeted 43% in the first half of 2009, a bigger drop than the industry average, and newsstand sales have suffered as well.

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Condé Nast chief executive Chuck Townsend said of Gourmet: “It is the epitome of Condé Nast photography and journalism, but it’s a poor business.” On the flip side, Bon Appetit, with its more accessible, recipe-heavy emphasis that hews more toward Rachael Ray than Anna Wintour, has fared better in this economy.

I get that. I do.

But I also mourn the broader cultural shift that this shuttering reflects -- the move toward the practical instead of the aspirational. The embracing of the everyday and the 30-minute meals that populate it at the expense of the fantastical and the imaginative -- the meals, the experiences, that many only dream of one day having.

Through Gourmet, I've been able to get an intimate glimpse of Paris through the young and newly infatuated Aleksandra Crapanzano's eyes in the award-winning piece "Benedictions." I've also been transported to little Ragusa in Sicily, where I got to know the Modicana cow, which produces some of the richest milk in the world.

Many magazines tell stories such as this -- Gourmet always did so memorably. 

Yes, the practical is essential -- and right now, that's what sells. But it must exist alongside the other side of food journalism -- the one that enriches lives beyond just one meal.

Without the lush pictures and the glorious tales of meals made and eaten in far-flung locales, cooking and eating becomes reduced to just pots, pans, recipes and the mere act of putting food on the table.

And with the closing of Gourmet, we're a big step closer to that.

Sincerely,

A Fan

 

Broccoli-Slaw Salad: One Tasty Memento

 
Every relationship has its souvenirs -- a card, a necklace, letters from afar.

I've discarded more than I can recall over the years but there's one that I hold so precious and pull out so often that it's riddled with the marks of a well-worn life: oil splatters, vinegar stains, bits of grainy powder now glued to its surface for all eternity.

It's a recipe for broccoli slaw salad -- lovingly shared by the very sweet mother of an old boyfriend. I first received it in the 1990s when I was just starting to cook and this was one of just three things I knew how to make.

Years later, my culinary repertoire has expanded, yet I still return to this recipe time and again. It's incredibly easy to assemble for weeknight dinners and last-minute summer cookouts -- and tasty, to boot. And because its ingredients include nuts and seeds, it also makes for an especially lovely fall salad. (Yes, it goes well with turkey, too.)

So, when my Let's Lunch group, a gang of intrepid cooks spread out from San Diego to Paris who have a virtual lunchdate once a month, decided to do fall salads for October, once again, out came Mrs. Nak's recipe.

Mooncakes: The Taste of Sweet Rebellion

 

You know you're walking into a hardcore kitchen when the first thing you see is stacks upon stacks of boxes filled with gorgeous home-made mooncakes.

The women on my Dad's side of the family in Singapore -- they're fearless cooks.

Pineapple tarts, bak-zhang (glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves), black vinegar-braised pig's trotters? They could whip those together with their eyes closed.

Recently, however, the task at hand was Chinese mooncakes, eaten to mark the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls this Saturday.

Now, there are a few old stories that explain the reason for eating these little cakes, which usually are filled with sweet lotus-seed paste and come either with a thin, baked crust or a soft, pliant dough skin that's scented with pandan, a vanilla-like flavoring used in many Southeast Asian desserts. My favorite is the one of Ming revolutionaries planning to overthrow the Mongolian rulers of China during the Yuan dynasty and spreading word via letters baked into mooncakes. (Julia Child would've been so proud!)

During my Singaporean girlhood, I'd known the stories, I'd eaten the cakes. As for making them? That seemed so laughably difficult it never once crossed my mind.

It turns out, however, they're incredibly easy to make -- you just need the right teachers.

Daniel Boulud on Beijing, Lotus Leaves & Duck A La Presse

 

Daniel Boulud may like the potential of doing business in Beijing, but that doesn't mean he likes Beijing.

Speaking via Skype to a small audience in Singapore Tuesday night from his home in New York City, where he was just getting his day started, Boulud was surprisingly candid about his thoughts on Beijing for a man who'd recently opened a restaurant in China's capital. (Maison Boulud à Pékin opened in July, 2008.)

Boulud, who was dialling in to kick off the premiere of a reality TV-style show he'd done for the Asian Food Channel, recalled how he had flown to Singapore from Beijing during his trip last year.

"Coming from Beijing, I tell you, Singapore felt good -- Singapore was a little more civilized," he said, noting that one of the first things he did after getting off the plane was get a haircut. "I didn't trust anyone in Beijing to cut my hair."

Boulud, dressed in his chef's whites and flanked with a portrait of himself hoisting a glass, then breezed on to close with a nugget, noting that he hoped to open a restaurant in Singapore. (A public relations person for Singapore's Marina Bay Sands Resort & Casino was perched in the audience. Singapore's first casinos, which are still under construction, have been courting high-end chefs to open in their establishments.)

Such frankness, unfortunately, was a little less apparent in the reality show, "One Night in Singapore -- Daniel Boulud," which chronicled the chef's first trip to Singapore and his process of putting together a seven-course meal for a group of 50 diners.

The intention to showcase tension is there, of course -- the show kicks off with a dramatic voiceover heavy with Discovery Channel gravitas that notes the obstacles Boulud has to overcome to make his dinner a success: "high humidity ... a kitchen that is too far removed from the main dining area." But Boulud is too skilled a chef for much of that to be believable.

Let's face it, the man could probably toss together a seven-course meal with little problem if he were air-dropped into the middle of a desert and had one hand tied behind his back.

Sin Huat Eating House: A Red-Light Special

 

To say that the prospects of having a good meal at Sin Huat Eating House seemed dim when we first arrived would be quite an understatement.

For starters, it was hard find the place. Located in a desolate corner of Geylang, Singapore's big red-light district, this restaurant situated in an open-air coffeeshop was so dark that it blended right into the furtive blackness of its block. On top of that, every so often, its few fluorescent lights would flicker and go out for several seconds.

Then, there was the row of grimy, green fishtanks displayed front and center. And the sweaty cooks who would emerge now and then to reach into these fishtanks up to their arm-pits in order to scoop out shellfish whenever someone placed an order.

This was the place that Anthony Bourdain had included on his list of "13 Places To Eat Before You Die" for Men's Health magazine?

In all my years of eating around Asia, however, I've come to learn that it's usually the least appetizing-looking places that create the most memorable dishes. And in Singapore, some of the best places to eat are to be found in the seediest of neighborhoods. (In a travel story I did for the Washington Post this weekend, I list a number of mind-blowing places to check out in Singapore's red-light districts. These would be places to eat. Food, that is.)

And Sin Huat, once you get past its stomach-churning trappings, definitely fits this bill.

Light Wheat Bread: Simple Does It

The last time I baked a bread, what emerged from the oven was a loaf of casatiello, a gorgeous hunk of Italian bread studded with salami and oozing with hot cheese.

So you might understand why I wasn't exactly looking forward to this week's Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge loaf: Light wheat bread.

After the sexy Italian, wheat bread seemed like the yawner of a boy next door.

(You know -- the ugly one.)

But after having spent several weeks in Singapore without an oven at my disposal, I was itching to bake something. Anything.

And, as it turned out, this plain boy next door actually had his surprises.