Thursday 20 February 2014

Sin Huat Eating House - A Meal That Left Me Crabby


Do I trust a foreign food personality to tell me what’s good on our local streets? Apparently not! Sin Huat Eating House won Mr. Anthony Bourdain’s heart and he sang praises (loads of it) on his TV series.



I had heard things about this restaurant. Its owner Chef Danny was known as the Food Nazi of Singapore and diners gladly paid through their noses for his superb, fresh seafood. You didn’t order your meals, so much as have the orders dictated to you by the chef, who would then cook your meal personally. And you wouldn’t know the size of your portion, or its price until the receipt arrived.

Because of this, I took a long time to convince myself -- and save enough money -- to have a first-hand encounter with this much talked about chef.

The restaurant was pretty quiet on the day of my visit, save for two tables of eight and five, and ours. One of my eating companions was a regular and the chef knew him well. Chef Danny offered a rather limited menu, and it seemed 90% of his dishes were de-rigueur with the regulars. We were no different.

Chef Danny delivers his food packed full of very strong flavours, especially garlic. A Singapore celebrity chef once told me, “If I boost my stock and flavours to the maximum, customers would be so overwhelmed that few would be able to tell the difference between good and mediocre cooking”. Chef Danny seems to subscribe to this philosophy.

A case in point was the Steamed Frog’s Legs with Essence of Chicken. Eight bottles of Chicken Essence were poured into a plate of eight perfectly steamed frogs, with garlic. With such an avalanche of robust chicken flavour, little culinary skill was needed for the dish to pack a wallop.

There were other instances. The dish of steamed scallops was overdone but the heavy bath of bean paste sauce was enough to mask its faults, along with much of the intrinsic flavour of the scallop. A similar sauce was used on the fried/braised crayfish. Again, I had to rely largely on my sight to discern what meat I was eating.

A few dishes stood out though. The stir-fried kai lan – usually a simple, supporting dish -- was delicious. It had the right amount of garlic, and the vegetable was crisp and flavoursome. Though it wasn’t cheap, I would gladly pay for it. On the other hand, the MOST cut-throat dish of the evening was the blanched dog conch or simply gong gong to the locals, served with a very tasty dip that was most likely a concoction of oyster sauce, garlic, chilli and buckets of processed flavouring. At $25 per kg, the owner of this restaurant could easily have bought a bungalow in a prime district in no time – if he hasn’t already done so.

The steamed squid was well executed and it was my 2nd favourite dish of the evening. Again the garlic was slightly heavy handed. To his credit, Chef Danny’s handling of the steaming times for the seafood in most of his dishes was near impeccable. However, his main seafood ingredients lacked the flavor of what they were -- they didn't stand out but were buried under his overly strong sauces and dips.  I suspect this is Chef Danny’s trick: to mask and/or distract from his inability to balance his spices and sauces with finesse.

The final dish of braised crab mee hoon was my main purpose for coming to this restaurant; after all this dish made Chef Danny famous in this infamous red-light district. It consisted of two medium crabs and a handful of mee hoon. The mee hoon was very tasty, but lacked the flavour that mattered the most – that of the crab itself. How come? I wondered. Crab imparts a distinctly robust and sweet flavour; and two crabs’ worth of it would certainly have made its presence felt in the dish. Was it buried under heavy MSG or chicken flavouring? I wasn’t sure. But it led to my companions and I consuming ¼ of our national water reserves during the meal and after we got home that night.

Here is my concluding shot: when a foreign food personality or two visits some eatery in Singapore and delivers an encomium, we fall for it hook, line and sinker. Are we so insecure in our own judgments? After all, we, of all people, should know our own food better than anyone. This thought came to me strongly on this occasion. To whip up a tasty dish is not difficult: just load it with MSG and off-the-shelf broths. It's the mastery of precise cooking times that, in my opinion, is Chef Danny's ONLY true achievement. The textures were unfailingly right -- but where were the delicate flavors of seafood? I couldn't detect any of it in all the dishes that I ate. And to me, that's a major letdown.

P.S. I doubted the eight of us could have eaten 3 kg of dog conchs and 3 kg of scallops; but that was what the receipt said.


Sin Huat Seafood Restaurant
659/661 Geylang Road
Singapore
Telephone: 6744 9755

Thursday 6 February 2014

Make a Date


For us Chinese, Chinese New Year was something to anticipate and look forward to. The preparations would commence months before the actual festival, which usually falls in January or February. Worn out furniture would be replaced, new bed linens and curtains procured, and walls would receive a fresh coat of paint.

As kids, we would be pampered with new clothes and a haircut. There was another activity that I was especially eager to participate in. In those days, most festive snacks were prepared by family, friends, or neighbours. The cooks and their assistants would gather at a common area; ingredients would be laid out and duties assigned. Every participant seemed to know his or her role in some unspoken way.

Some peeled, others sliced, and the more experienced would cook. There were no recipes and no instructions, yet everyone knew what to do. The novices would help in the more menial tasks, and watch the others to study the steps of preparation and cooking.

Festive snacks were not taken lightly. Each snack had its own auspicious significance and even the sequence of cooking mattered. This particular snack is known as “Smiling Dates” or  笑口枣. Traditionally, dough was rolled into a ball and smothered in sesame seeds. During deep-frying, the ball would burst open and resemble a smiling face.

It was believed that this snack would bring happiness and smiles to the family for the next 12 months!




Smiling Dates (笑口枣)

Sugar                                       60 g
Water                                      20 g
Cake flour                               180 g
Custard powder                     10 g
Baking soda                            3 g
Bicarbonate of soda                ¼ tsp
Salt                                          ¼ tsp
Egg yolk                                 40 
Butter                                      30 g, room temperature
White sesame                         ½ cup

Method:
1.    Melt sugar in water. Set aside and let it cool.
2.    Mix flour, custard powder, baking soda, bicarbonate of soda and salt, sieve well.
3.    Mix all ingredients, except white sesame, and form a dough. Cover and let it rest for 30 minutes.
4.    Roll dough into a long rod. Cut into small pieces.
Take a small piece and roll it into a ball. Dip in water and roll the ball onto the sesame seeds.