Best eats: Peranakan nasi ulam and Melaka chendol at Siglap
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All-time eats: Peranakan nasi ulam and Melaka chendol at Siglap
In this week's Makan Kakis, GOLD 905 DJ Denise Tan discovers Chendol Melaka'due south special herb rice salad and finishes off with a refreshing dessert.
Golden 905 DJ Denise Tan with a plate of Chendol Melaka's special nasi ulam. (Photograph: Denise Tan)
12 Dec 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 10 Jul 2022 08:40PM)
Babas and Nyonyas, terminate me if you know this ane: What do yous get when yous cross a herb salad with rice? Any true-blue Peranakan will tell y'all the answer is nasi ulam.
The combination of aromatic Asian herbs, rice and, sometimes, seafood, is what makes nasi ulam such a wonderful, cool dish for our Southeast Asian climate.
Constitute all over southern Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and here in Singapore, recipes for nasi ulam differ from location to location, family to family, just this Peranakan version was recommended to me by KF Seetoh, the founder of renowned food guide Makansutra.
Ask any Straits Chinese melt and they volition tell y'all this traditional dish is then laborious to make, nasi ulam oft ends upward as a "special-occasion-only" dish. Indeed, information technology's and then much piece of work that in my ain Peranakan household, my mother has made it for the family only four to v times in my entire lifetime.
That'due south why I was delighted to discover that someone else was willing to do all the hard piece of work and we can now taste this delicacy at a trivial stall in the East.
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Chendol Melaka at Soy Eu Tua Coffeeshop along Upper East Coast Route is run past the irrepressible Daisy Tan and her husband Colin Yam. Once the regional director of a shipping house, this cocky-confessed "200 per cent" bibik is now wholly dedicated to preserving her Peranakan culture through her culinary delights, similar delicious chendol, kueh-kueh and her signature dish, nasi ulam.
The husband-and-wife team has been in the food business organization for a decade and Tan's nasi ulam was a family unit recipe – heirloom, if you will – inherited from her grandmother. Daisy recalled sitting in the kitchen, prepping the herbs with her cousins as a child, and said with a express joy: "If we didn't cut the herbs fine enough, we'd get knocked on the caput by grandma!"
Watching Tan in action, it looked similar those years of hardcore grooming in grandma's kitchen paid off. As she deftly chiffonaded herb afterward herb, she told me that many of them have to be prepared 2 to three days in advance, as they needed to be thoroughly washed and dried, then shredded past manus or painstakingly chopped as finely as possible. These herbs included daun kesom (laksa leaves), torch ginger flower (rojak flower), kaffir lime leaves, daun kunyit (turmeric leaves), galangal and lemon grass.
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Obviously at that place were more than, but all she would reveal was that her nasi ulam required a whopping 17 ingredients in total. No wonder it took a further few hours to set, especially when yous factored in other raw greens such equally delicately diced kacang botol (iv-angled wing beans), long beans and cucumber. These were added for extra crunch and freshness, but only at the last minute to retain the pleasantly raw, exquisite herb and vegetable flavours.
In fact, Tan stressed that the steamed rice had to exist completely cooled, otherwise the herbs concluded up being cooked, or worse, burnt by the heat, turning unpleasantly bitter. That's why the herbs were added concluding of all and likewise why it's a rice salad that must be served chilled or at room temperature.
At that place was a definite sequence to which the many ingredients of nasi ulam were tossed. "Just like lo hei, Peranakan-manner," joked Tan. Fish stock and flaked, fried ikan tenggiri (mackerel) marinated in turmeric were added to the cooled rice, then mixed with a fragrant rempah (a paste fabricated from different herbs and spices) similar to the one used in her buah paya masak titek (peppery Peranakan papaya soup) recipe. The rempah included aromatic ingredients such as candlenut, ruddy chilli and shallots.
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She then added the fresh herbs and veggies to create a dish that's an accented labour of love. "If done systematically, the flavour of the nasi ulam will be well-balanced and you'll be able to taste and olfactory property each individual ingredient," Tan explained
She was right. The ingredients were chopped into small, fifty-fifty pieces and so yous got a bite of everything in 1 mouthful – zilch stood out or over-asserted itself. Each spoonful of herby nasi ulam was absurd and light, with an undercurrent of umami from the spiced fish flakes.
For extra oomph, the dish was garnished liberally with crisp grago (baby krill) and fragrant kerisik (toasted grated coconut), for a flossy-chewy nuttiness, crunchy crustacean texture and a cloak of robust shrimp season.
But the nasi ulam wasn't complete without a dollop of Tan's pungent, peppery, homemade sambal belacan. The rice salad popped powerfully on the palate – fresh and fragrant, spicy and mouthwateringly savoury – as you got layer upon layer of piquant flavour.
Only limited portions of nasi ulam (S$5.30 for dine-in, Southward$five.l for takeaway) are made daily then you have to get there early to indulge, especially on weekends. Best advice is to call them ahead of fourth dimension and "chope" your portion. While you're at that place, terminate off your savoury with sweet – assorted kueh-kueh like ondeh-ondeh (rice cake filled with liquid palm carbohydrate and coated in grated coconut) and kueh salat (pressed sticky rice layered with coconut egg custard) become for S$2 a box and the Melaka-way chendol (S$2.30), in particular, was light and refreshing, with a cute balance between the rich, treacly gula Melaka and slightly savoury hand-squeezed coconut milk.
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And it turned out that the chendol recipe came from Tan's late business partner, veteran Malaysian actor and Melaka chef Datuk Kenny Chan, which explained the name of the stall, Chendol Melaka. Simply don't permit the proper noun mislead you, as first-class as their icy dessert was, it's their nasi ulam that gets my vote and deserves equal billing!
Chendol Melaka is located at Soy Eu Tua Coffeeshop, 15 Upper East Coast Road, Singapore 455207. It'due south open up 10am-5pm (Tuesdays to Fridays) and 9am-5pm (Saturdays and Sundays). Closed Mondays. Take hold of Makan Kakis with Denise Tan every Th from 11am on Golden 905. To "reserve" your nasi ulam, call Colin Yam at 9777 6471.
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/dining/best-local-food-singapore-nasi-ulam-chendol-east-coast-road-256551
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