Kampong Kitchen - Eating in Old Singapore

By Maureen Ker

Kampong Kitchen is an evocative culinary journey that brings the sights and smells of old Singapore to life. 

Packed with over 40 delectable recipes, including dishes like popiah, mee siam, fish head curry and pineapple tarts, this historical cookbook will delight cooks and history buffs alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maureen Ker
• Release date: Apr 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9789810942915

Book preview

For Kyra

Free Recipes

The following represents a few selected samples from my new book, Kampong Kitchen – Eating in Old Singapore. I hope you enjoy these excerpted sections from the book.

For more free recipes and details on 6 additional chapters, go to www.auntiebelacan.com.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Welcome to the Kampong Kitchen, the birthplace of Singapore cuisine. In a world where everything is globalized, including food, Singapore has managed to draw millions of food tourists to its shores, no small feat for a small country. But what makes Singapore cuisine so appealing?

The answer lies in Singapore itself. For almost two centuries, the island had been home to immigrants hailing from China, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and parts of Europe and the Middle East, resulting in a melting pot society where multiculturalism is not only the norm, but embraced as part of its national identity. This is, after all, a country where its citizenry speaks a pidgin incorporating words from no less than four languages.

This easy-going attitude has also carried over to Singapore cuisine, which can best be described as a glutton's dream buffet. It draws inspiration from the venerable cuisines of China, India, and Indonesia, and adds its own flair to create signature dishes like rojak, laksa and fish head curry. In Singapore, it's perfectly acceptable and sometimes preferable to mix up cuisines, such as pairing an Indian curry with French baguette or chili crab with a side of deep-fried Chinese mantou.

So how did this swampy backwater of an island end up with such a vibrant food scene? The answer can be traced back to 19th century Singapore, when it was a newly established British colony and almost everyone was an immigrant from elsewhere. These early settlers lived in rustic kampongs with no running water or electricity. And when they were not laboring in the tropical heat, they cooked out of ramshackle kitchens to recreate the nostalgic dishes of their ancestral homes. They made do with what was available and invented new recipes out of unfamiliar ingredients. This adventurous and no-rules form of cooking gave birth to a uniquely different cuisine and paved the way for Singapore to become a global culinary capital.

Many of these inventive kampong cooks were not kitchen professionals they were ordinary men and women looking to dish up a tasty meal with what they had on hand. This practical and imaginative way of cooking is essentially what kampong cooking is all about. So if you have ever