Being like a hawker down in ulu town. |
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To fully immerse in hawker food culture , I write about them, film, expose and dissect their food, understand the people, take foodies on a food safari there to devour, enjoy or be polite about hating their creations and recently, as if being the last “bronzeman warrior” to fight to realize this quest, I had that being-a-hawker moment. I had to fry 400 plates of cha hae mee (fried hokkien noodles) and dish 200 bowls of bak kut teh and serve up 120 plates of chicken rice over two days.
This was part of the menu on offer at the St Francis Xavier College university campus dining hall and at Fredericton University in New Brunswick, where we were invited to cook and showcase Singapore makan. The Tasty Singapore day, organized by IE Singapore and food giants Sodexo was part of a “road trip” makan mission we embarked on in Canada and the US. St Francis Xavier was located in the town of Antigonish in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where if everybody living there showed up for a shopping spree in Vivocity, you would not notice the crowd. It’s a whistle stop town. Their 2,500 population could not quite fill up the ground floor. And when the school term is in full gear, this ulu town population suddenly doubles. It is so small, they don’t even have a Macdonald’s outlet. And in one of the two Chinese restaurants there, they still whip up old fashioned American Chinese chow like Moo Goo Guy Pan, Chowmien, Chop Suey and Singapore Noodles ( in a moment of folly, I tried them all and I won’t go down that what-is-it alley, I’ll save it for a rainy day). New Brunswick was saner - they had shopping malls and parking meters. Sure, their kitchens were slick and polished, very western and they use big brand name industrial sized equipments to make soups, beef chillis, fry, steam, broil and grill their usual western canteen fare like sandwiches, burgers, fries, soups and pizzas. But their “stir fry” international section was pathetic- just a couple of small skillet on induction burners where we can only juggle at most 3 mid sized portions per fry (imagine a hawker frying cha hae mee on a 12 inch flat base pan- yeah, you can almost hear the impatient cries of “faster can or not” or “how long ah” from your customers). The queue at that station any time over dinner, was at least 25 thick. So, it was a regimented hawker routine over 120 minutes of garlic in, then eggs, followed by hokkien mee and beehoon, fry-fry to loosen the noodles then soften it with our own made prawn stock (brewed with pork bones, prawns, clams, and dried shrimps), seasoned it with fish sauce and dark soy, steam the noodles a bit, then fry in the seafood toppings of prawns, sotong and pork slices with bean sprouts and chives – for about 80 times over two hours each days. Fortunately I had help from their cooks (I said “help” although they had never managed this before but we survived somehow) and cleared the crowd without much delay.
It was a joy, especially when it began to snow and our station had a clear view of the St Francis Xavier dining hall windows that looked out to a dull blue Antogonish day besotted with falling flakes of dry snow- like a shaved ice falling off an ice kachang machine in slow motion. Then I realized that I had been under pitching the perfect soup for that moment - bak kut teh. I boomed over the speakers about how this soup, clear and strange looking (what with bones sticking out of it) was the perfect soup for the day – it had meat, was garlicky, gently salted and had a kick of white pepper that would keep them awake for homework and kept them warm for the weekend. The reaction dictated that I had to dish out 200 portions, two ribs flooded in bak kut teh, one bowl at a time. And in between, I had to somehow debone and chop up ten chickens and serve up 120 portions of chicken rice, offered with chilli sauce , cucumbers with tomato and doused with a soy and sesame oil sauce. Dear God, thanks for the experience, but please try not to make me a full time hawker. Very siong leh!
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