There’s this thing about cooking Singapore makan for folks in New York – the sincere curiosity of their palate and their love for makan- key reasons that made them the foodie capital of America. They won’t enjoy nor eat what they can’t taste in their minds, imagine and be primed for. A simple but yet complicated dish like laksa can tip either way in their enjoyment meter. Up, if the complex spices used and techniques introduced were carefully reconstructed visually before them and the flavours slowly painted in their minds, and down, if we just told them it is some well loved spicy Peranakan noodle curry dish.

MIND OVER MATTER: KF Seetoh priming his audience for the
char kway teow being fried in the wok.

A team of hawkers, chefs and assistants that were recently up in New York for a Singapore makan stint organized by IE Singapore and The Singapore Tourism Board recently found out the hard way. The hawkers, never before in their life, had to dissect and be held accountable for every ingredient used in their food. The team of five, boss Willin Low (and his assistant Andy) from Wild Rocket Restaurant, Sam Mohd of Alhambra Satay at Gluttons Bay, Ah Heng (and his son Kelvin) of Tian Jin Hai seafood, Kam Yong Kuat and myself at Makansutra, were set up for an exclusive evening of local makan for about two hundred invited media folks and guests at the Tunnel – a preserved old road tunnel turned into a uber hip function over a hundred meters long with an amazingly high ceiling. Funky little eateries, bars, retail shops and even art galleries dot this tunnel space just beside the Hudson River. We were also set for three demo stints- one at the prestigious and newly made over Saveur Magazine test kitchens in Manhattan which was personally graced by the no less than the respected editor in chief himself, James Oseland and his team of writers and kitchen chiefs, where the crew from Devour TV filmed the session, and two stints at the Whole Food Markets (a humongous, country wide version of Cold Storage) education kitchens. It was a sold out ticketed event for about fifty people and we understood another 150 were on the wait list. Some on the “unfortunate” list even wrote in to personally explain and mitigate the reasons why they should be given spaces.

KF Seetoh and boss Willin Low from Wild Rocket at the prestigious and newly made-over Saveur Magazine test kitchens in Manhattan

At the Tunnel event, eight open cooking stations were set up for the hawkers with a sign above stating the food name with a photo- no much food for thought to the famished but curious New Yorkers staring at a “Char Kway Teow” picture sign. But when Sam, in his own inimitable manner explained how his satays were exactingly skewered and robustly marinated in a combination of ground and blended lemongrass, galangal, turmeric, ginger, shallots, sugar, chillies and a host of other spices over four hours, the anticipation level was heightened. The gleeful faces lined in a row right on a table right before his hotplate was pure reward for Sam, proclaiming “Some came back three times just to have two sticks each time.”. He was only too happy to talk about how his satay sauce was made. My take on Char Kway Teow, as I was frying it before a crowd, was how it was the most ugliest but well loved fried pasta dish here and how the heavens above did not have looks in mind when they engineered this dish. It came almost black and laced with a weird and wonderful combination of salt (soy sauce), umami (dash of oyster sauce) and sweet ( sweet soy or molasses), all furiously fried into the noodles one at a time and topped with prawns, sotong rings, chinese lap cheong and textured with bean sprouts and chives (it is near impossible to get blood cockles or seehum in the Big Apple). They lapped it up, despite the messy aftermath the wok ended up in. The story of Teh Tarek was sung about how a overly thick, hot, and smoky Indian red tea was smoothened with two types of milk, evaporated and condensed, and dragged from one cup to another a couple of times to create the perfect environment friendly (as no electricity was used to create the forth) Indian pulled tea latte.

But bak kut teh, was a tad too simple to tell yet easy to enjoy. So Willin came up with a hip dash to the equation- to top it with a bak kut meat ravioli, laced with foie gras and truffle oil with cubes of water chestnuts. But, it was frowned upon by the animal rights concerned policies at Whole Foods Market, so he replaced it with mushrooms instead.

Overall, it was a great stint and we left realizing the benefits of first feeding the flavours to the mind, before food to the stomach.