Sikpou Saturdays: Lemongrass Chicken

Lemongrass is just such a versatile plant. Its flavour is friendly to both sweet and savoury dishes, and yet it is completely unmistakeable, standing out like an attractive and sociable person in any setting. Even outside of food, it has its uses; the oil is a good insect repellent, especially since it smells better than most alternatives, and also has antiseptic effects.

No wonder it’s so popular in the tropics, where food is strongly flavoured and the bugs are everywhere. The Malays use it liberally to season grilled meats; the Thais put it in their soups. But in my family, lemongrass goes with chicken, and a rich, dark gravy.

I asked my mother for specifics about this recipe, which I rarely do on my own, and now that I have it, there is a striking similarity between her recipe and the Vietnamese recipe for a lemongrass marinade to grill pork with. Of course, as a marinade, the ingredients are properly blitzed and basted; but all the elements are there. How on earth my mom learned this recipe (she doesn’t know any Vietnamese people or restaurants, as far as I know) is a bit of a mystery again. But you know what, I’m not complaining at all. Life is so much poorer without mysteries. And lemongrass chicken.

Being a proper homemaker and cook, she says I ought to use chicken legs with the bones included; the high heat cooking can glean more flavour from the bones. I didn’t do that in the end, but that’s personal preference. I expect chicken wings would do well with this sauce as well, if you brown them first; then the gravy becomes more of a deep-coloured glaze, fragrant with a slight ginger-kick.

Travel Wednesday Special: Review of Riddle and Finns

I’m with George Orwell on a lot of things, but In Defence of English Cooking is an essay I have always been a bit ambivalent about. Nonetheless, in London at least, I can see his point. If someone says that the Brits can’t cook, the capital has plenty of Berkeley-style refutations (kick optional).

But.

Ah, the slippery, denigrating bastard says. I never said Brits can’t cook anything. What I mean is, they can’t cook seafood, and they can’t cook it in a British style.

That’s a bit harder to refute in London, where seafood is generally (and mystifyingly) woeful. But now I have a refutation for that too. It involves taking the critic to Brighton, and then taking them into one of the small back-alleys near the city centre. I’m not advocating violence. I’m saying you take them to Riddle and Finns.

Sikpou Saturday: Minced Chicken with Thai Basil

Thai food, strangely enough, is a larger part of my life in London than it ever was in Singapore. I’m not sure why – unfair as it sounds (and is), there might be just enough variety in the local cuisine to ‘crowd out’ Thai influences.

London was different, though. One of the first cook-offs we had, in the student halls, involved a massive and very delicious green curry; and this was in late November, the first actual winter I had experienced. (That it was nearing the end of term, and essays were coming due, helped not a bit.) So that was what got me hooked.

On going back to Singapore during the summer and winter breaks since then, I began to actively seek out Thai places in Singapore, and two dishes have caught me, besides the usual and excellent list of multicoloured curries. The first was Thai honey chicken, which remains a big and mysterious gap in my repertoire. (Will work on that, I swear.)

The second, and far more accessible, is Gai Pad Gapow – minced chicken with chilli and Thai basil. Now there is the question of what exactly is Thai basil, and I have to admit imperfect knowledge here. I would say that Thai basil leaves are… more sharply tapered, and more matte if that makes any sense. Apparently Thai and other Asian basils, being commonly used in frying and cooking, are meant to be more stable under heat; but as the preparation will show, this is not such a concern for this dish.

Simple to make, it is also such an excellent balance of sharp and rounded flavours – you have chilli and lime juice on the one hand, and the deep savouriness of fish sauce, oyster sauce and sugar. Normally, to cut down on the amount of sugar necessary, I throw a tomato in as well – it’s not authentic, admittedly, so it’s up to you. But I’d say this dish is the kind of one-saucepan wonder that everyone (watch the chillies though) can agree on.

Translation Thursday: 无题 – Untitled, by Lu Xun

(Argh! Just a little late.)

We’ve had poems from the heyday of Imperial China, and we’ve had poems from the crises of Imperial China. But today, I’d like to do an example of ancient poetry from right after the end of Imperial China, from one of the greatest Chinese writers of the 20th century.

Chinese was once a highly diglossic language. Diglossia refers to a situation where the written form of the language – which is pretty much all I’ve been translating so far, in the poems – is different, often dramatically, from the way the language actually is spoken.

Lu Xun (1881 – 1936), born Zhou Shuren, was one of the pioneering figures in forcing the two to come together, and in promoting the use of Vernacular rather than Classical Chinese as the written standard (which it is today). One of the first short stories written fully in the vernacular was his 1918 Diary of a Madman. He was also an ardent liberal and nationalist, which shows through most of his works, including the below.

We’ve been living in an interesting time of revolutions, to put it mildly – and this poem comes to mind every time I read about another uprising or round of protests. It was also what came to the mind of a lot of the protestors in a certain city square in June, 1989; the final line was a common refrain in the post-Tiananmen crackdown.

Supplementary Sikpou Sundays: Chilli-Ketchup Sauce

Bless my mum: when, over Skype, I told her about the Roti John recipe and regretted the lack of a good substitute for the sauce we normally use, she immediately told me how to make it. 

So here’s how. (Come think of it, the hint was in the name, wasn’t it?) This sauce is not just for Roti John; it’s excellent on fried noodles, fried rice and grilled chicken, and no doubt on lots of other dishes as well. 

 

Chilli-Ketchup Sauce

Thai Chilli Sauce and Ketchup, in a 1:1 ratio

Lime at discretion

Sugar or honey, at discretion

 

Yeah, well, you… mix them up. I guess you’d do the chilli and ketchup first, then the sugar, then the lime, but there honestly isn’t much difference. Drizzle on top of the Roti John. 

Sikpou Saturday 2 – Roti John, or Pain Perdu de la Mer du Sud

Sometimes the temptation is there to group Singaporean dishes along communal lines, given the vast range of culinary influences. It’s harder than it sounds, though, especially for a dish like Roti John.

Roti is a Malay and Indian word for bread, but the bread in question here is Western, a baguette. As for John, every westerner must have been called John those days, runs the assumption. So was it something Malays cooked for sale to the Brits? Was it a habit passed on from the Brits (Brits eating baguette?) to the Indians, and then to Singapore?

Goodness knows. But there is firm, historical evidence for the following assertion. This is a favourite dish for hot, humid late afternoons in an open air food court, freshly off the griddle and sliced, the aroma of onions and egg and a hint of heat. The sun is finally beating a retreat, and you celebrate with a swig of freshly mashed sugar cane juice. (Or beer, because why not.)

So here’s to some pain perdu, in the style of those from the Southern Seas.

The filling for Roti John is flexible; anything goes, from chicken chunks to beef or lamb mince, or even canned tuna. Here I’m using turkey mince and some mushrooms.

Translation Thursday: 赋得古原草送别 Bidding Farewell on the Plain, by 白居易 Bai Juyi

I actually drew a blank for this week’s translation and had to ask a friend, who immediately suggested Bai Juyi. The only surprise is that I didn’t think of that myself, honestly. 

Bai Juyi (772 – 846) belonged to a later generation than many of the writers previously featured, such as Du Fu and Li Bai, and his life was also… different, if not necessarily more comfortable. While there might not have been a civil war on, the way Du Fu suffered from the An-Shi Rebellion, Bai’s Tang Dynasty was a pretty fragmented place, with warlords (many of whom had helped the imperial side during the rebellion) and short-reigning emperors. In his 75 years, Bai Juyi lived through nine reigns. 

Coming from a family with some political background – his grandfather was a county magistrate, his father a general and inspector – he too made it quite smoothly through the imperial examinations, becoming a jinshi (imperial degree holder) on his first try in 800. His career would become quite rocky in later decades, but that’s not the period covered in the poems to come. (He had some seriously, seriously long poems in his later, bitterer years.)

The first of these poems is one of the pieces many kids learn when they dip their toes into Chinese literature; it is also a good expression of how Tang poetry had evolved by Bai’s time: still strongly impressionist, but with a stronger narrative thread running through it.