Old Tastes: Singapore Hawkers Serving Up Traditional Asian Recipes | Belly Of A Nation 2 | Part 2/4

hawker dishes with mystery and history how old are some of their recipes all old recipes originated from indiala oh from my grandfather's time of night at least 90 over years how long can they hang on to their secrets [Music] food from the streets that became a country's pride through times good and bad the cooks fed the country here at the table are their stories of generations and aspirations voices from our hawker culture inside the belly of a nation even before the lights have had time to warm up madame lakshmi arrives [Music] my friends pulled me through so far [Applause] my name is muthulechmi i'm 58 years old my name is surendran and i'm 33. you eat it with either brown sugar or coconut milk the dosa is totally savory it's not sweet it goes with dal and chutney she's one of the first to light the fires at the hawker center single-handedly she gets straight to work quietly she transforms into a superhuman with lightning speed she chops grinds fries and cooks the masalas and chutneys all at one time i have to do i sometimes cannot concentrate in one i have to stop halfway do this then stop halfway do that if not things will get burnt [Music] one of the dishes first up is the vaday simply put a kind of savory donut this is a dal a little bit of raw rice then you have to grind it with a grinder another stone grinder and then leave it overnight in the fridge then morning you add in onion and chili and all these are of course originated from indiana all old recipe this is a one of my good sellers by one two hours it will finish always at about the same time mr lee makes his rounds first stop is to pick up his homemade satay paste then a drive towards a long um [Music] a dish that's unique to singapore the bihun is blanched and garnished with gangkong slices of pork liver meat bean sprouts fresh cockles cuttlefish and doused with a satay sauce which is the highlight of the dish mr lee strictly follows his father's sauce recipe with the paste prepared by his family owned factory in hao kang the dish may be teochew in origin but the sauce is an inspiration from the malay satay with its strong aromatic peanut base a creation that was possibly a result of singapore's multicultural influences red hill food center built in the early 70s is located in one of singapore's oldest public housing estates hawkers who sold in the streets moved into the center as did the lease while i saw a dish that spells out its two key ingredients juju and engtai or gangkong the english translation of cuttlefish and water convulse just doesn't cut it you know assumed to be a cooked seafood but it's actually reconstituted from dried cuttlefish the advertised business hours for the stall are 9 30 a.m to 5 p.m but some customers just can't wait the breakfast crowd builds in waves the earliest ones arriving from 6 30 those offering breakfast fare must be ready a few hours after her arrival madame lakshmi is ready to face the hungry early risers in the beginning i was a single mom with four kids so it was a bit tough for me with the children all for going to school and all this but when i had an opportunity to start a business so i thought it is just same like doing at home but it's not the same i then i thought almost after i started i almost wanted to give up so i struggled a lot then i start learn learn from scratch because the quantity is large and everything is so different the hot plate is different what how you do is different so you have to do it from scratch and i struggled a lot it was a big challenge for me i learned slowly so i i cried at one point i cried i said i don't want i don't want to do this then i took it as a challenge just for my children say no i started this so i must why why cannot show can i ladies are strong so i started with god's grace i managed to pull through for the last few years her son suren has been helping her at the stall he comes just before sunrise in time for the first service the apam and tose are made to order up pam is made with fermented rice batter and cooked like a pancake with a fluffy center and crispy edges [Music] apam is the most difficult thing to do your swirling and the right texture is so so important although indian in origin the singapore apam has been modified due to customer demands singapore is what like everything crispy and toast was so crispy apple so crispy pranked how so crispy i think the singaporeans like the crispy i don't know why they like it crispy originally tossing apple is not so crispy it's actually soft you need more flour fluffy and soft but singaporean style is thin and crispy that is singaporean style if you ask me yeah so one place no singapore is unique taste it's very different from elsewhere if you go to little india or if you go to india itself even malaysia the toast is usually more tangy more sour that's a very uh traditional indian taste but to the singapore tongue it can't be too sour you know chutney has a bit more more punch to it no more spicy coconut has been thicker you know uh dossier has to be more crispy on outside soft and inside so it has become that sort of thing even the masala potatoes that we have it usually has more punch than what you would get elsewhere because that is just singaporean palette really there's a break and suran runs an errand ah just buy things that we need for order plastic aluminium tray costco people order food yeah i think one of our neighbors got funeral so whenever here got any indian funeral or even chinese funeral so they will take vegetarian food so they will order from us all neighbors members so they will call us or they will tell us early and then we will just pack for them my mother won't take manila like this one this also my mother says no no this is like hello auntie morning you see who follow me camera follow me i need to take plastic i think this one is our almost it's the same like all like family la la oh auntie auntie i've been seeing since primary school [Applause] auntie during the 10-minute absence the queue reforms [Music] the most scolding again my mom is like sometimes being a bit too rude maybe sometimes even though i don't think i am because her ways are more really really like customizing you know and i learned i have to learn it from her life everything feedback is a customer say something she said just listen never mind she said if some customers you know they cannot afford to queue too long because they're late for work never mind you know try your best to squeeze and squeeze some and give it here give it there you know so eventually you know i grew to understand that she always put customer first which reflects in her food gimmo food centre caters to daytime diners and madame lakshmi's stall is one of the few that offers indian fare indian customers they do come but they get shocked not by my apartment to say buy so many chinese how come you have so much of chinese cubing in the line to eat your apartment to say they're very curious about it red hill is also a daytime hawk center the mid-morning crowd keeps hawkers like mr lee very busy until past lunch time the stall is man powered by an assistant and a childhood friend who gives aid during times of service it's a business that mr lee can't let go of for the moment of thing is a little more lucky now i leave it to my son since i'm going to hand over to him yeah i'm quite long in this i'm i'm actually wanted to retire yeah she just needs good less exercise because once she's free then she'll be able to go for walking you know maybe go to the gym a bit she can sleep better it's just hawker life like it's really nothing else poker life is like that you cannot expect to just work for eight hours poker life is within that confined space and you standing for minimum of 12 hours 10 to 12 hours and then she as a woman knows she's carrying the pots and pans that are really too heavy because someone is really even heavy for me i always tell my mother are you you are really a woman now from first of april he's going to be on his own yeah he's confident he can do it i'm confident too because he's a clever boy by one o'clock the food is sold out 6 am to 1 pm 6 days a week tomorrow will be an exception tomorrow will be closed because we got a family wedding too close is a big deal yeah a lot of customers will complain complaining customers might be a welcome for some hawkers in the cbd because for them there's practically none [Music] earlier in the year shafiq had set up a pop-up booth to promote his new brand of burgers he used to be one third of the popular burger brand burgs but after falling out with the other owners he set up his own brand ashes burnet after two weeks at the bazaar he and his team are back to dismantle their booth the expectation didn't eat what i actually expected and but i think it has an experience a good experience because it's our first pop-up actually i'm feeling very very tired but we have to hustle in order for us to succeed undeterred he continues with his plans of branching out so i'm at toyomaru market now we are actually looking for some stalls so according to the lease there's a few stores that are available today so i'm just here to actually look at the stores which one is actually available we actually have to go to the nea hawker division center which is in uh hdb koko then from there we actually collect this form one bidding form is actually ten dollars so basically one was available here one corner here is available fill up your particulars and everything looking at the stall is actually quite big as well it's bigger than my current stall in golden amount to what we experienced in the past the highest bidder always gets it it doesn't mean that you sell the best for in singapore you'll get it looking a bit here 1000 to 2000 range so they already have an exhaust here it's quite open that the back is open here it's open actually it's quite a good lot here i really love the corner lot in terms of ventilation wise and everything the corner lot is actually much better for the kind of baby cooking that we want to do it's a good crop you know everybody loves gonna look you got that extra space at the side hopefully the one bit's higher than me yeah fingers crossed so yeah like many millennial hockey preneurs shafik's ambitions make him very busy his non-cooking duties involve meeting with others in the industry this nea work group comprises hawkers and local food champions they meet regularly to discuss key issues like manpower and training the future of the industry is of concern with the majority of local hawkers in the early to late middle ages many quit or retire very few have the verve or strength like her demand she takes life with an even stride a routine that begins early in the morning with marketing she's singapore's oldest hawker aged 91. the old school style noodles garnish with slices of chaas you or barbecued pork and one tonnes or boiled dumplings in a clear soup her menu includes a range of other dishes like chao fun fried rice and seau gai soy sauce chicken although she has a small team of helpers she's still very much hands-on young foreign foreign has two kinds of looks one is darker fatter and the other is red and leaner slices of these garnish the wantan mean the other component is boiled one tan filled with seasoned minced pork soy the heart of the dish is the noodles several young hawkers around singapore have continued the artisanal craft of noodle making from scratch starting with only flour and eggs and then followed by a long series of building and working the dough it's needy work a machine helps to flatten the dough to desired thickness and also does the cutting at the end although one tan mean is cantonese in origin something happened along the way and it took on singaporean characteristics were ketchup chili sauce and pickled green chili today these have become optional the much-loved wantan mean lady who fed many students during the years of the old now torn down national library she was offered a spot at her present location at current rental rates she's been here for more than 25 years her customers are mostly office workers from the cbd area though styled as a takeaway stall the side lane serves as a dine-in area is okay but there's one activity she will prioritize over resting anytime soon here you late in the afternoon her grandson visits leong has three sons the eldest lives in australia grandson brian has returned for work there is interest in continuing the business i thought about it before and i think there was a lot of protests from grandma the idea is she thinks it's a very tough job for us but for us like my sister and i we think that we should continue her legacy so it takes some time to i guess allow her to allow us to take over time to wind things down it's a routine that hasn't changed son michael will pick her up at 6 30 pm she's been on her feet for more than 12 hours is right smack in the heart of the cbd as the virus threatens hawkers in this choice location have to bear a heavier burden we actually put some masking tape on the floor to ensure social distancing in the hawker center [Music] [Music] the virus that's been going around is given a name covet 19. singapore announces an orange alert people are encouraged to work from home and hawkers in the cbd are starting to feel the heat debbie who went for a holiday during chinese new year came back to bad news when i came back i saw that the business was very very affected it did scare me a little bit for the past two weeks i see people slowly coming back but i'm not very sure if the numbers keep fluctuating i think our business will follow suit as well i came back from japan and i had the flu my friends they came back together with me had the flu so we were all a bit troubled we were very paranoid so we tried to do self quarantine we tried to avoid the crowded places yeah when you see a doctor and doctor was like yeah you guys are fine if any of the pneumonia symptoms appear just just head to the hospital yeah i did not turn up for work actually for a few days to avoid because generally chinatown is very uh it has a lot of elderly so i try to avoid uh infecting anybody just in case i really did get like the flu the cockpit yeah there was no lunch at all yeah debbie runs a lunchtime total or cook and fry concept at a stall in chinatown by night the elderly staff take over she's the new blood in a business that's now in its fourth generation so right now i'm setting up i have a few new things today uh first i want to offer a free delivery to all those that's being affected by conflict knighted and in line with the new covet social distancing thing we actually put some masking tape on the floor to ensure social distancing in the hawker center now on top of that i have a new system over here that will be set up in a while aiding her today is cousin caiman his mother is debbie's right hand woman she's the one who takes down the orders oh no no no no we'll see if it works then i can just get there and change to chinese yeah we just found out that it's probably going to be reflected in english so this might pose a small little problem because my auntie cannot read english debbie is the cook behind the lunchtime menus besides going behind the walk her tasks involve marketing the business which for millennial hawkers means social media i've always wanted to try to portray a point of view of a hawker's daily life so with a gopro and a harness on hopefully i can do i set out to achieve today lunch approaches it's launch time for the gopro and the new ordering system [Music] two signature dishes of the stall are fishhead bihun and beefhofan with two woks these can be cooked simultaneously [Music] beef coordinating orders is essential so that similar dishes can be cooked in bulk at the same time [Music] the lunch crowd piles in younger customers are directed to the new ordering system oh firstly watch carefully and you'll understand why the majority of us have done fried rice wrongly at home rice with all its ingredients is prepared and given a quick dash of seasonings then into the wok it goes more seasoning and lots of tossing [Music] and it's done okay i don't really go for two tasks with my friends anymore after i started uh helping out because i am so sick and tired of the dishes i see every single day so that's the only criteria whenever i go with my friends like please please no chinese food no sitter it's the weekend madame leong has a day off and is having lunch with her family and it's time for one of her favorite activities her home is adorned with photos of her family and of her husband who passed away 20 years ago [Music] today it's an area that's been cleaned up and gentrified from its colorful past it used to be a place of trade its residents were mainly hokkien interweaving among the throng were street hawkers one of whose descendants continues his legacy at a food center nearby at maxwell market the stall pays homage to its china street heritage and it's helmed by a familiar face with a distinctive air how come language so good learned from my customers yeah i'm from uh english educator my name is tio ho soon i'm 63 i'm selling no hyun kwan chiang in measure hawker center some say the dish is named after five spices others say it's because of five flavors whatever usiang or ngo hyung in hokkien or ngo hyung in kyoto is an assortment of fried rolls mr chio's traditional offerings are liver rolls called gua hue a water chestnut egg slice nangkwai a mince pork and prawn roll called ngo hyung for which the dish is named there is also the hokkien style non-crispy prawn fritter and the pork sausage called guanchang and you would do it in justice if you missed the dipping sauces the dish is usually accompanied by bihun on the side at the stall this is cooked by mrs teal with fried garlic bean sprouts and black soy sauce most ngo hyung sold today by hawkers are made in a central kitchen but not mr chio he still does his from scratch there are all kinds of customers for me they are regular you know the oh and the young they of those younger generation you know they don't recommend or introduce you know they don't know what's going on also the is the role that gives his name to the dish minced pork is mixed with spring onions sugar some basic spices that's the coloring of the onion so this one we have to you know make sure that everything mixed up properly around six morning then that time we'll be doing this behind closed doors this recipe from my grandfather's time of dinner at least 90 over years my grandfather didn't teach me personally i learned from my dad because actually my dad take old mom my grandfather when he is 13 or 14. after marinating it's a matter of rolling the meat into softened sheets of bean curd skin of all the rolls the most difficult is you start with chunks of lean pork add sugar salt oil and dye like most sausages a casing is used these are pork intestines which i like more or less you have to be quite stiffer you know quite tough but if you loosen uh after that when you steam it or whatsoever you're all very soft that means cannot more or less you know you know it must be quite uh fill up let the air up let the air out exactly so you have to let the air out sometimes they don't cooperate with you in the corporation if they don't cooperate with you yourself the guanchang is cooked in hot water but not boiling hot because the casing is recorded cannot hunt too much around 15 or so then but afterwards i know i have to turn over and then i have to try whether it's already hard enough to be cooked because you have to take care really well sometimes if you don't take it properly you'll get bus so you have to be very careful with this we more or less have to stand by here and now i have to take care of it i had the book to lay out all the air you know here and there to lick out the air their worst fears are realized already do you think it first until like that that means although although you can eat but you know if you want to sell it it is ugly you know not nice presentation all the rolls except the guanchang are fried before serving the guanchang is sliced and is best enjoyed with its special sweet sauce my personal daily routine workout work go back and sleep that's finally routine i like a robot no need schedule assisting the couple is their son but this is just an interim measure until he finds a job elsewhere my son don't want to take up don't take over i think it's a dying trait soon so maybe you know it depends on how many years ago we'll still work maybe a few years and then who knows for other hawkers with torch bearers the next generation seems to be doing some pretty odd things [Music] higher [Music] unlike the older generation young hawkers use their break time more proactively cauliflower [Music] so today i've got a new dish that i want to try out it's a tandoori spiced fried rice and i'm gonna make it vegetarian actually the color isn't very bright i think it's not appetizing enough this is fantastic it doesn't look good enough so maybe we should do one more portion huh [Music] better display [Music] yeah i think a bear egg will look better okay i think we are good to take some pictures this way oh no okay i'll bring you to my usual photo shoot shop i actually like this space a lot because there's natural sunlight from this place and then i think the background is very rustic very raw [Music] this is where a lot of my photos are being picked on actually [Music] all right and then because i made a mess out of this place i have to come and clean up this place so these are the some of the new bowls that i have uh just like the hot chong kai rice is relatively new every now and then i like to tweak things a little bit and have new stuff coming in i mean people cannot eat the same thing every other day so just have a few new options for them to try if i want to get it printed in cardstock this is the nearest to mila hello for you lila kaipang prima sound like a printer folder fast and easy debbie helms the lunch session of this zutas stall but the boss is still her grand aunt new york fans okay in the same neighborhood someone familiar has moved in suffix team are at it again they are setting up a new branch but not the stall that he had been eyeing at tyong baru unfortunately we weren't successful in actually getting the shock that we wanted the shock we actually beat was in tiombaroo the saddest part of losing out that bit was we actually lose out by seven dollars life still move on hopefully the next bit will have a good location for us then we'll try to continue to beat again since we actually didn't got the tongbaru market we actually got a stall in reference place which is in the cbd area so right now we are actually doing the fitting in the drilling parts and everything and hopefully to actually launch it by next week and we have two new dishes as well a fish burger and cold beef burger it's opening day lee stocks up with a full breakfast i feel like very intimidated like you know someone new and you know they are really seasoned people here today is actually our first day so we just do actually a soft launch first uh we wouldn't do until the opening will be next next week so we want to see how the crowd is come up with the proper workflows and everything so from there we'll slowly we give ourselves one week to improve then next week we'll do the official launch nervous anxious wanting also and afraid because don't know how the crowd will be like the stall is set in a coffee shop where food is quick and filling the key tenant is the economy rice also known as taipan a selection of meats and veg with rice foreign indeed people do know what they want business is brisk the ashes team looks on when we first started our business last time it was that face as well you know all the regulars for every time go to the the food stores that they already won and we were new so it's gonna take time after three hours the next three months however bring unforeseen circumstances how will they pull through our story continues in a belly of a [Music] nation [Music] you

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 703,509

Keywords: CNA Insider, Channel NewsAsia, People stories, Asian perspectives, Belly of a Nation, Singapore, hawker, Asian food, street food, Asian culture, Singapore food, documentary, Indian food, hawker centre, COVID-19, coronavirus, beehoon, vermicelli, rice, Chinese food, food supply, lockdown, circuit breaker, Ramadan, Hari Raya, appam, CNA, CNA documentary

Id: bYkm7jBNDZI

Length: 46min 24sec (2784 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020