It looks bland, by international western standards that dictate how star chefs are rated and dishes are awarded. There is hardly any colour and by conventional imagination, it would lead one to believe that it’s mushy, soft and devoid of texture. The two or three pieces of cucumber and tomatoes sat on it like a sad attempt on culinary cosmetics. You would not even venture into the taste department. So, how do you justify our nationally adored chicken rice. How would you sing of its intensely flavoured chicken rice and the smooth, juicy and soft poached chicken pieces and what the sensation is like especially when you dunk it in a garlic and lime chilli sauce and gulp it down with the help of the same ginger, garlic and pandan leaf stock that was used to boil the chicken.

Chicken rice sushi hors d’oeuvres anyone.

Staring at me holding a microphone was about 400 students at the St Michael’s College at Ontario in Canada who were just about to tuck into a few local Singapore chow. They were all looking for a few words from me to enliven their lunch. This was the third leg of our multi cities “tour de makan” in Canada. It is a mission organized by International Singapore (IE) and Sodexo, the biggest food caterer in the world, they provide meals and solutions to thousands of schools, organizations, companies and functions worldwide. The objective was to tout our food culture and the related products and services IE and Singapore had on offer. We had already been touting and cooking our food in their kitchens at universities in Vancouver (Trinity Western University) and Ontario (Brock and St Michael’s College). Such fun and challenge ( imagine having to demonstrate then get their chefs to fry this “strange” Hokkien prawn mee in a western kitchen devoid of woks, for 400 students).

The executive chef at their St Michael’s kitchen, Suman Roy, a jolly chef who’s a veteran with the company, had visited Singapore once before and had been stung by the local makan bug and adored munching down in our hawker centers. His suggestions for our mission was “ the food you cook for us in Canada must be unforgivingly authentic, no compromise please.”, and it echoed through with his counterparts in the other Sodexo kitchens we had planned to visit.

Coming in from a daily diet of sandwiches and muffins, it was quite easy to win these students at St Michael’s over with
chicken rice and beef rendang

So with a deep breath, I boomed into to microphone in that St Michael’s dining hall, adorned with seven to eight little makan stations offering our goodies, “.. a lot of stuff like ginger, garlic, chicken oils, stock, fine jasmine rice blah blah blah, goes into making that dish but, FORGET IT ALL, just put that into your mouth and slowly devour, let it speak for itself. This dish isn’t from Hollywood, it’s not about looks but performance.” And perform it did. It was the most popular dish throughout the three places we visited so far. So I continued “ Now you have an idea why chicken rice is our national dish, it’s our “hamburger”. A very close second was beef rendang on steamed rice with sambal string beans and shitake mushrooms. It helps that they used a good grade of home bred Alberta beef (which wasn’t too expensive there) and it came supremely soft and juicy after three hours of stewing in rempah ( I have never cooked rendang for 400 people in one go with a giant tilt skillet, which was very handy for such feats.) They sweetened that deal with bubur cha cha (made with gula melaka, not plain sugar) or washed it down with bak kut teh (made with prime baby back ribs and a lot of cheap pork bones for the stock, which are considered “discards” by their suppliers. The vegetarians had a field day with tauhu goreng (although the quality of the tofu could be better) and gado gado. The other familiar looking fave with the students was the “stir fry”, something they call anything stir fried which comes out of a wok, in this case our “cha hae mee” or Hokkien prawn noodles. We could not get prawn heads for the stock so we improvised with lobster cream and clam juice – not at all shabby replacements.

And at a private tea reception for Sodexo’s clients and board members of the schools, we took the same makan and turned it into pretty hors d’oeuvres. Chicken rice was served sushi style and rendang came like a kebab with rice cakes. Bubur cha cha went in tequila shot glasses and Hokkien prawn mee came in little banana leaf cones. It was very well received - the Dean at St Michael’s ate then dapau the chicken rice sushi on his way off to another appointment.

Up ahead next week, reactions from the folks in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.