Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials (38 page)

Read on

Aunty Lee’s Easy Candlenut Chicken Curry

(Because when in a hurry, any curry is better than none.)

Buah Keluak
can be difficult to find, even if you don’t believe it’s deadly. But a good alternative
is the candlenut (the small round nuts also on the cover of this book). Aunty Lee
loves the way candlenuts give a nutty, slightly bitter flavor to a curry mix. If you
can’t buy candlenuts where you live, you can always substitute macadamias.

Ideally the rempah curry mix would be pounded by hand, but for now, use your food
processor. If you use fresh (deseeded) chilies and turmeric instead of chili powder
and turmeric powder, good for you—they go in the blender too.

This will make enough to feed four adults or two ravenous teenagers.

Chicken

1 onion (preferably red), peeled and chopped

1 pound chicken cut into even-sized chunks

2 potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

1 cup chicken broth (or water and a bouillon cube)

Rempah Curry

5 candlenuts (or macadamias)

2 cloves garlic

Half an inch of peeled ginger

2 teaspoons curry powder

2 teaspoons coriander powder

2 teaspoons cumin powder

1 teaspoon chilli powder

2 teaspoons turmeric powder

1 teaspoon vinegar

Add a little oil as you blend the ingredients in a food processor to a smooth paste

Salt (approximately half a teaspoon)

Freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon sugar (the secret ingredient)

1 cup coconut milk

Heat a little oil in a frying pan and fry the chopped onion. Add the blender paste
and fry that, too, until it darkens and becomes fragrant.

Add the chicken and stir fry until the chicken is coated with the curry paste. Add
the potatoes. Stir in the chicken broth, salt, pepper, and sugar. Let simmer on low
heat for 15 to 20 minutes. After the liquid is reduced, stir in enough coconut milk
to the consistency you like (soupy or just saucy) and simmer for about 5 minutes more.
Taste and adjust the seasonings.

Serve with bread or rice and Aunty Lee’s Amazing Achar!

Cherril’s Ginger Lemongrass Doctail

��Why you want to call them duck’s tails? What have they got to do with ducks?”

“Not ducks, Aunty Lee. You know, like cocktails and mock-tails, only these are healthy,
like a doctor would recommend, so we call them doctails. I’m using green tea, barley
water, soy milk, and brown rice tea as bases for the freshly juiced fruits.”

This recipe makes 4 cups. (Two to drink right away, and two to put in the fridge to
be chilled for later.)

5 cups water

An inch of fresh ginger root, peeled and chopped

3 big stalks of lemongrass (or 5 little ones) including the juicy white bulbs, washed
and chopped

Honey to taste

Bring the water to a boil in a pan. Add the chopped ginger and lemongrass and turn
the heat down to simmer for at least 5 minutes. Stir in the honey to taste. Strain
and serve.

Aunty Lee prefers her Ginger Lemongrass drinks served hot, but you’ll find it delightful
either way.

According to both traditional Chinese medicine and traditional Malay jamu, ginger
has many healing and balancing properties, including the ability to warm the blood
and soothe the digestive system.

Aunty Lee’s Guide to All Things Singapore

Her favorite places to check out for food, shopping, and everything in between!

Aunty Lee’s Favorite Food Spots in Singapore

Food courts and hawker centers are the best introduction to Singaporean food because
they offer the widest variety of foods. As a general guideline, food courts are mostly
air-conditioned, whereas hawker centers are not.

BEST PLACE FOR FIRST-TIME VISITORS

The Food Republic on Level 3 of VivoCity
The decor here evokes the good old-fashioned hawker streets with wooden stools and
tables, but with air conditioning, clean toilets, and clearly marked prices. And it
is handy if you’re going across to Sentosa. Aunty Lee recommends their thunder tea
rice, butterfly fritters, and egg pratas . . . and the
kueh tutu
(coconut and peanut).

BEST PLACE FOR BREAKFAST OR LUNCH

Tiong Bahru Market
is the best place for an authentic heartland breakfast or lunch. It’s best not to
risk trying to have dinner there, as most of the stalls close once they are sold out
for the day, usually by mid-afternoon. Aunty Lee likes the
chwee kueh
there—
chwee kueh
s are tiny savory rice cakes served with a topping of preserved radish and eaten with
chili sauce.

BEST SPOT FOR LOCALS

Lau Pa Sat
(meaning “old market”) is what the locals call Telok Ayer Market. Unlike Tiong Bahru
Market, you don’t want to get here too early. The stalls inside the pavilion are open
all day, but every evening around 7
P.M
. the road outside is closed off for the satay stalls to set up. Lau Pa Sat dates
back to the time of Singapore’s founder, Sir Stamford Raffles. Aunty Lee recommends
the barbecued prawns and octopus.

Aunty Lee’s Favorite Shopping and Spots in Singapore

1.
Kampong Buangkok
. Singapore’s last “kampong” or village. This is what Singapore looked like when Aunty
Lee was growing up, with zinc roofs and red mailboxes and open doors. It makes Aunty
Lee nostalgic for the calm and quiet (except for birdsong and insect buzz) of old
Singapore. But she doesn’t visit often because despite their openness, these are people’s
private homes and lives.

2.
Indri Collection in People’s Park Complex
. They have a large collection of ready-made Peranakan embroidered
kebaya
s and batik sarong skirts (and batik shirts for men). Indri is really more a stall
than a shop, and doesn’t have a unit number. It’s on Level 1 of the People’s Park
Complex, just off the central atrium and next to the security guard counter. (And
if you make it there, Aunty Lee suggests you take a quick detour to the basement food
court of People’s Park Complex to try their noodles.)

3.
Arab Street
. One of Singapore’s oldest and most beautiful mosques is found here. Sultan Mosque
was built in 1826 by Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor. If you wish to enter the mosque,
and are not appropriately dressed, robes are provided. Arab Street is a rich bazaar-style
mix of cafés and shops dating from the 1950s selling textiles, carpets, and souvenirs.
Aunty Lee also recommends Haji Lane around the corner, where pre-war shop houses showcase
the latest up-and-coming fashion designers.

4.
The German Girl Shrine and Chek Jawa on Pulau Ubin.
Pulau Ubin is Singapore’s second largest offshore island, but completely different
from Sentosa. The German Girl Shrine, also known as the Barbie Doll Shrine, is a yellow
hut beneath an Assam tree. Legend has it that it commemorates a German girl who fell
to her death in a granite quarry during World War I and some believe she brings good
luck. Chek Jawa is Singapore’s only surviving multiecosystem site—sandy beach, rocky
beach, seagrass lagoon, coral rubble, mangroves, and coastal forest—and protected
from development until 2012. Now, in 2014, its time may be running out.

5.
And finally, the Mustafa Centre in Little India (Syed Alwi Road).
This is a huge department store that sells everything from refrigerators, jewelry,
tea towels, and mobile phones to plasters and painkillers. In operation since 1971,
it is open twenty-four hours a day, every day (including Chinese New Year) and also
has a foreign currency exchange. Aunty Lee suggests you take a look around Little
India while you are there and explore the ayurvedic medicine shops, fortune tellers,
henna tattoo artists . . . and of course sample the roti prata, thosai, dhal, and
kebabs!

Aunty Lee’s Top 5 Food Favorites

1.
Katong laksa
with homemade barley water. Fierce debate rages in Singapore over the most “authentic”
katong laksa
. It consists of rice noodles served in a rich, spicy gravy with fish cake, prawns,
and cockles and garnished with laksa leaf.

2.
Kaya toast
with soft eggs. A delicious sweet coconut jam. Kaya toast and eggs are a standard
breakfast set available all day at most “kopitiams” or corner coffee shops.

3.
Fish head curry
. The head of a red snapper stewed in a sweet and sour tamarind curry with okra and
eggplant and ginger flower buds. This is best eaten with fingers off banana leaves
but also tastes good with cutlery.

4.
Kueh lapis
. Multilayered, multicolored, traditional steamed cakes made of glutinous rice flour,
coconut, and sugar.
Kueh lapis legit
is made of layers of rich batter, each spread over the previous layer and grilled
separately, creating the brown lines in the buttery cake.

5.
Tau suan
. A sweet hot dessert soup made of split mung beans and flavored with
pandan
(screw pine) leaves. Though widely available at dessert stalls, this is a favorite
comfort food . . . and full of protein and soluble fiber. It’s healthy as well as
delicious!

Aunty Lee’s Delights

Cover design and photograph by Laura Klynstra

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments,
organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and
are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn
from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

AUNTY LEE’S DEADLY SPECIALS
. Copyright © 2014 by Ovidia Yu. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the
nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse engineered,
or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any
form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented,
without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-233832-7

EPub Edition August 2014 ISBN 9780062338334

14 15 16 17 18   
OV
/
RRD
   10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada

www.harpercollins.ca

New Zealand