Who Needs an Excuse for a Food Bazaar Anyway?

Definitely not the Singaporeans. But hey, the Lunar New Year is as good a reason as any.

The Takashimaya Food Hall is, in my opinion, one of the best departmental store food halls in Singapore – somewhat reminiscent of the Harrods Food Hall of London, and the Saks Food Hall of New York. And each time there is an upcoming festival (which in multi-racial and multi-cultural Singapore, is a very regular occurrence), Takashimaya holds a bazaar in the basement atrium of Ngee Ann City. Each bazaar will have dozens and dozens of food stalls offering food that is related to the upcoming festival, as well as other well-loved Singaporean favorites.

On Sunday night, we decided we would be courageous and brave the weekend hoards in Orchard Road and head on down to the Takashimaya CNY bazaar.

I had finally admitted to myself that the likelihood of me getting much CNY baking done was now very slim. Oh sure, I had ambitious plans to bake at least 8-10 different types of cookies. I had it all worked out (or so I thought)… a batch of 150-200 cookies of each recipe would probably take me maybe 3-4 hours, so 8-10 recipes spread over 8-10 evenings wasn’t going to be difficult. Ah, but you see, I forgot some important elements to the equation… like, running my business (ah yes, work? what’s that? ), family and social obligations, and the zillion other things that need to be done before CNY.

By last weekend, I had only managed two batches of cookies, and only after much distress at that (but that’s another story for another post). Looking at my schedule for the next week and a half, it didn’t look like much baking was going to get done. So, if we were going to have any CNY cookies at all for the celebrations, they were going to have to be bought ready-made. And that’s fine. There are a lot of great tasting cookies out there. It’s just that home-made cookies are just that much more special, and they don’t taste as “homogenous” as store-bought ones.

The Takashimaya CNY bazaar is always a great place to shop for CNY cookies. It brings together, under one roof, a large number of the top quality bakeries in Singapore. I would estimate that of the perhaps 65-75 stalls there, easily over 80% were selling CNY cookies and other CNY food. With each booth offering samplings of their products, we could taste the full range of options before deciding which to buy. And hey, for foodies, this is pretty close to food ecstasy – just wandering from stall to stall, munching on a whole hoard of food samples which every outlet thrusts very eagerly at you. Each stall has probably at least 12-15 different types of items on sale, with many stalls offering a lot more than that. Multiply that by 60+ stalls, and the numbers are staggering!

There were quite a few new flavors and innovations this year, which was exciting. I also spotted a number of new operators/bakeries that I have not seen before. We ended up buying 6-7 different varieties – some new, others old favorites. Pictures and descriptions coming up shortly.

Apart from the cookies, there were of course the usual CNY “musts”, such as bak kwa (BBQ sweet meats).

These are thin slices of pork with a sweet marinade that are grilled over a charcoal fire. Very delicious, but also very unhealthy. Not only do they have high levels of preservatives, nitrites and what have you, but they are also not very artery-friendly. These are available all year round, at yet, during CNY, Singaporeans seem to go into a frenzy for this meaty snack. We are prepared to literally stand in line for 1 - 1½ hours (and even longer as New Year’s Day draws closer) at the really popular and famous stores, just to get our hands on a pack of these delectables. This despite festive prices being at least 30-50% above normal prices.

The really good bak kwas are those that are thinly sliced with tender, moist meat and crispy slightly burnt edges. Shiok!

These also come in beef or chicken varieties. And the other day, I saw an ad in the papers for crocodile meat bak kwa! Uh… okay…

This I enjoyed… crispy bak kwa pastry (on the left). This could have been around before, but this was my first encounter with it, and it tasted really good! A piece of bak kwa sandwiched between 2 pieces of very crispy, flaky and incredibly fragrant pastry, topped liberally with sesame seeds. Sinful, but oh so good!

(The pastry on the right is the normal BBQ pork pastry or char siew sou).

These are the modern versions of the traditional glutinous rice New Year cake I mentioned in my previous posting. They are still made from steamed glutinous rice, but are shaped into the highly auspicious symbols of Koi fish, and colored in red, orange or white, rather than the traditional brown.

They are very pretty indeed, and make great gifts. However, personally, I still prefer the taste and texture of the traditional nian gao. The latter is softer, and has a richer caramel flavor.

This year there seems to be a whole range of new flavors and new textures for the nian gao. I spotted water chestnut nian gao, yam, pumpkin and many more new and fancy flavors. Some of them are not even made from glutinous rice anymore. Some were more pudding-like – lighter in texture than the traditional rice cakes. I liked a couple of them. A very refreshing change, but I wouldn’t really consider them nian gao (although of course the PR machines of all these bakeries are working overtime marketing these as great new nian gao options). To me, nian gao has to be nian gao (if you know what I mean), which means it has to be made from glutinous rice and steamed. All other variations are well, just interpretations, and are new desserts or new CNY goodies, and can’t really be called “nian gao”.

This is one of the new variety of “nian gao” that has been around for a couple of years. It is made from the Japanese Konnyaku jelly.

Each year, I am so tempted to buy this. I like eating Konnyaku. And I think these New Year Konnyaku Koi fishes are so pretty. Each year, I end up not buying them. Why? They require refrigeration. I would spot them in advance of New Year, make a mental note to come back just before New Year to get them so that they would be “fresh”. And each year, as New Year draws close, our fridges inevitably bulge to bursting point with all the other foodstuffs required for preparing the Reunion Dinner and the subsequent New Year parties. I would then think: I really can’t find space to store the Konnyaku Koi. Every year, the same mental process, every year, the same end-result: no Konnyaku Koi. Heh! Maybe this year will be different… I’m going to have my Konnyaku Koi.

Still on the subject of Konnyaku… I spotted these at another stall. Oh, oh, oh… they are exquisite!

Konnyaku jelly made into the daintiest and prettiest designs I’ve seen. Almost too pretty to eat. They were incredibly refined, and looked absolutely scrumptious. The designs ranged from delicate flowers to cute white bunnies.

From auspicious tangerines to cute little birds.

Some came beautifully arranged in gift boxes. Now, these I am definitely getting some of these for the New Year!

At yet another Japanese booth, these caught our eyes. The stall featured a full range of different nuts and crackers brought in directly from Japan. Lots of new and interesting flavors to try out. However, this one, the “Bamboo Charcoal Peanuts” had us chuckling away as we read the accompanying info sheet . Yes, I tried some (not that I needed them, mind you ), and they tasted pretty good. Nothing like what their name suggests they may taste like. Crunchy, slightly salty and with none of the bitterness I was expecting from the charcoal. Looks aside (you have to admit, don’t they look a little like the opposite of the problem they are touted to relief? ), these would make a great snack with beer and wine actually.

I enjoyed these… steamed rice flour puddings with a molten gula melaka (palm sugar) center. Yum! The preparation process is fascinating to watch, and a crowd pleaser, judging from the small huddle that is constantly gathered around the booth.

Small bamboo cylinders (with a small metal plate at the bottom – bottom right hand corner of picture) are filled with what looked like rice flour crumbs (very light, soft, flakey, almost powdery). A “tunnel” is created in the center, and filled with gula melaka.

These are placed on a steamer and cooked for maybe 3-4 minutes. The small holes in the metal plate of the bamboo cylinder facilitate the cooking of the “cake”. The tubular plugs you see are for closing off the steam outlets when there are no “cakes” being cooked, to prevent the loss of steam and the reduction in cooking temperature.

After just a few minutes, the cooked rice cakes are removed from the bamboo cylinders, and served with shredded coconut.

The molten sugar center is fabulous! It’s tongue-burningly hot (yes, I learnt the hard way, at the expense of hundreds of thousands of tongue cells!). The flavors and textures are interesting… the rather bland, soft, fluffy rice cake, with the rich, sweet and delicious molten gula melaka center (gula melaka has a very unique flavor, completely different from any other brown sugars or cane sugars), and accompanied by fragrant, slightly crunchy shredded coconut. It works really well!

Oh! Here’s another close up pic of the “bing tang hulu” or candied hawthorn fruits I mentioned in my previous post. Hawthorn fruits are actually used in Chinese medicine to aid digestion, relieve gastric and heartburn, and to help alleviate high cholesterol.

These traditional Chinese pastries are not very CNY-ish at all, but are my (and my family’s) perennial favorites.

(Top row, from left): Savory Five Spice Century Egg Pastry; Sweet Lotus Seed (lian yong) Pastry; Sweet Red Bean Paste Pastry (tau sar piah); (sorry, can’t remember the last one, and unable to read the signage from the photo).

Traditionally, the pastry is made from lard. However, in health-conscious times, these pastries are now almost always made with vegetable oil. They are still very crispy and flakey, and very yummy!

The traditional fillings of these Chinese pastries are either sweet or savory green bean paste, followed by sweet red bean paste and lotus seed paste fillings. Very recent (last few years) innovations are flavors like Five Spice etc. I personally find the newest “interpretations” rather odd tasting, and still prefer the traditional tastes.

(Top row, from left): Curry Puffs; Traditional Chinese Cakes with or without Red Bean Paste filling.

My parents remember very fondly and always have a soft spot for these traditional “egg cakes”. In the old days, when the migrant community of South East Asia was still very poor, and eggs were a very rare and luxurious indulgence, these cakes were a real treat. Although the egg content was not very high in these cakes, it was considered “high class” food (according to my dad). Back then, they would cost maybe $0.05 - $0.10 cents each, which, in those days, was a large sum of money and it was only on very special occasions that my grandparents would allow these cakes to be bought!

(Top row, from left): Egg Tarts; Curry Puffs again.
(Bottom row, from left): Char Siew Sou (BBQ pork pastry), Baked Char Siew Bun (similar to the char siew sou, just differently shaped).

Egg tarts normally come in two varieties of pastries – crispy shortcrust pastry (pictured above) or flakey puff pastry (also known as Hong Kong-style egg tart).

Curry puffs are deep fried pastry “pockets” which are usually filled with spicy meat and/or potato mixture. The most common filling would be minced beef with potatoes and sometimes carrots and other vegetables. I’m not too partial to these deep fried dumplings, however curry puffs aficionados tell me that the best of curry puffs must have a long list of qualities like a super crispy crust that does not go soft and soggy after a couple of hours and that is not overly greasy; a crust that is both crispy yet flakey at the same time; a filling that has a nice balance of spices and is generous with ingredients… and on and on…

It was a definitely a night for stuffing myself with food. So, what else did I have?

A couple (oh, okay, a few… quite a few) pieces of otak otak.

Spicy fish paste wrapped in banana leaves and grilled. These ones were grilled on a smoke-free electric grill, so the taste was rather different from the usual charcoal-grilled ones. But I can never resist an otak when I see one… Highly addictive!

Apart from the traditional fish paste, they now come made from squid, prawns and other seafood.

These otak otak are great when used as a sandwich filling too!

What a night! Yes, I was a glutton! Yes, we were packed like sardines at the bazaar, with human traffic slowed to almost an inch-by-inch crawl. But it was fun, and it was delicious!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All rights reserved.
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