A Tiger in the Kitchen (20 page)

Summoning my uncle Soo Kiat to her bedside, she said, “I’ve made the chili paste for
otah,
” referring to a creamy and spicy fish paste wrapped in banana leaves that was one of her many signature dishes. “The fish has been bought; the
otah
must be made.”

She whispered the recipe to my uncle. Her mind, then, was at rest.

Now,
otah,
a Malay dish, would not be an expected notch in a traditional Chinese home cook’s kitchen post. The paste—also known as
otak
or
otak-otak
—is a spicy mousse, usually made with mackerel, that is wrapped in banana leaves and then steamed or grilled. It can be eaten on its own, mashed into rice, or slathered on bread for a savory lunch or breakfast.

Simply thinking about it is often all it takes to get my mouth watering. I’d never known where my grandmother got her recipe, but after some digging, it became obvious—the ailing Indonesian cook she had taken in later in life. In addition to sharing her
mee siam
recipe, this cook had given Tanglin Ah-Ma her
otah
recipe. Now, decades later, this would be passed to me—a product of my grandmother’s selfless generosity.

The
otah
process takes two days. On the first, Auntie Khar Imm and I began by chopping up lemongrass, shallots, galangal, turmeric, and lightly toasted, crumbled belacan (fermented, ground dried shrimp), and blending them in a food processor with candlenuts and a little water to make a paste. By now, Auntie Khar Imm was letting me chop along with her or take over some basic slicing tasks as she moved on to other steps. When it came to fresh turmeric, however, she protested. “No need lah!” she said, gesturing to my pale pink nails, which I’d had manicured just the day before. “You’ll stain your nails!” I had come this far, however; I was determined not to be pampered. So, fifteen-dollar manicure or not, I waved off her protests and jumped in. She was right, of course. Before long, the juices spurting out of the bright orange turmeric were turning my fingers, my nails, bits of my wrist an alarming, electric yellow. Hoping it would wash off—but not really caring—I kept chopping.

Next, we started frying this paste over medium heat in a large wok. While it was frying, we tossed sun-dried chilis that had been softened in boiling water and tiny, flaming-hot bird’s-eye chilis into the processor and blended them together. We then added this paste to the wok, mixing it all up well.

We wanted the chili paste to get really dry. The best way to tell whether there’s still water in the paste is to add oil (which we did periodically during the frying) and then inspect the oil to see if white, wispy strands appear. If we saw the wisps, there was still water in the mixture.

About an hour and a half later, the paste was dry enough. We scooped it out into a bowl to cool overnight on the kitchen table.

When I showed up at Auntie Khar Imm’s the next day, I was presented with a massive gray fish.
Beh gah he,
she called it, as I tried to jot down what those Teochew words sounded like. With my grasp of Teochew being tenuous at best, I quickly took a picture of the fish, desperately hoping that its face or sheen had enough identifying characteristics that I might be able to find it back in New York.

As we chopped, squeezed shredded coconut for its thick milk, and added that together with eggs, sugar, coriander, tapioca flour, salt, and a dash of monosodium glutamate to the fish-and-cooled-chili-paste mixture, Auntie Khar Imm began to share the story of my Tanglin ah-ma and the cook who had taught her this dish. “She had one eye!” she said of the cook. “And she cooked for this really rich family.” I began to think: Every family history really is enhanced by the appearance of a one-eyed Indonesian cook. This was pretty cool.

And now, decades later, there I sat in Auntie Khar Imm’s kitchen, carefully scooping fish paste into banana leaves, sealing them up, and steaming them while marveling at the generosity of my Tanglin ah-ma, and the
otah
recipe that it had earned.

On the way home, I noticed massive neon-yellow splotches still covering my very newly manicured nails. The marks of my grandmother’s recipe, however, felt oddly satisfying.

A few days later, I bundled up a few sticks of
otah
and brought them to Gunther, the head chef of one of Singapore’s most expensive French restaurants, who had heard about my
otah
lesson and asked for a taste. With no small amount of anxiety, I wondered what this Belgian import who adored spicy Singaporean food and had spent years mastering local techniques would think.

“You don’t have to try it right now,” I said in the coolness of his restaurant, just before dinner service started, hoping that I wouldn’t have to watch him eat it, possibly loathe it, and then say something polite. Instead, he opened the Tupperware container right away, picking up an
otah
with his fingers and popping it into his mouth. Carefully, I watched his face. His eyes widened. He smiled. “It’s spicy—
very
good!” he said, reaching back in to grab another
otah
. His face had brightened visibly. He didn’t seem to be lying.

“What’s in it? How did you make it?” he asked. I was so taken aback, I wasn’t sure what to say. I’d always thought my Tanglin ah-ma’s cooking was amazing, of course. But to hear one of Singapore’s top chefs marvel over something she had passed down, something I had made with my bare, yellow-splotched hands, made me momentarily speechless. After a few seconds, I sputtered out the steps that we’d taken just the day before in my auntie Khar Imm’s little kitchen. Gunther nodded and thanked me, while calling over his waiters to “try this—it’s excellent.”

Gunther broke out some gin, and we had a toast. As I sat there sipping expensive gin in a posh French restaurant that my Tanglin ah-ma never would have even thought to enter, where the chef had devoured her
otah
and been incredibly impressed, I couldn’t help but think, just perhaps, she would have been so, so proud.

Long before I had my uncles Willin and Simpson, I had another set of intrepid-eating
kaki
(people).

There was Kevin, who attacked his food with such vengeance that he once had a girlfriend who barely ate at meals with him because—she confessed when they broke up—watching him eat literally made her feel ill. There was Regina, the skinny captain of our high school girls’ tennis team, who had a bottomless pit of a stomach. And Jeanette, who was as constantly hungry as she was pretty, with not a spare ounce of fat on her body to reflect the seemingly endless snacking that we saw her do. We had met in Catholic Junior College, where we plowed through the Singapore equivalent of American eleventh and twelfth grades under the somewhat watchful eyes of nuns and Catholic teachers. Together, we were united in our love for food. The eating of it, that is. Being a man, Kevin never had to worry about cooking. And Regina and I only started dabbling in it when we came to the United States for college and suddenly had to fend for ourselves. As for Jeanette, she was lucky to have married Eudon, a man whose father was a chef and had instilled in him a love for the kitchen. With a husband who would go on fishing trips to net squid and then come back home to make squid-ink risotto from scratch, all Jeanette had to worry about in the kitchen was cleaning up. For years, the rest of us wanted to kill her.

Kitchen pangs struck her as they did me, however. I had been sharing my stories of cooking with my aunties—as well as the spoils of those lessons—with Nette, as we call her. Her curiosity was piqued; soon we began plotting the adventures we could concoct together. One evening over cocktails, Nette spent several minutes spinning a long, mouthwatering tale of the
ayam masak merah
that our friend Aisah’s mother makes for the annual feast she prepares to mark the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting. The dish, one that I often seek out at Malay restaurants and food stalls, consists of fried chicken that’s cooked in a dense, crimson chili gravy, which is both spicy and sweet. It’s often served as part of
nasi padang
, a meal of rice accompanied with a variety of dishes that first originated in Indonesia. (In Bahasa Indonesia, the Indonesian language,
nasi padang
literally means “rice from Padang,” a city in Sumatra.) The dishes you’ll typically find in a
nasi padang
restaurant include fried or grilled fish in curried sauces,
achar
(super-sour Indian-style pickles), and spicy beef
rendang
, a delicious dish of beef slow-cooked in a rich, coconut milk–based curry. The Dutch also have a version of this meal, transported back from their days as colonialists in Southeast Asia, known as
rijsttafel
, or “rice table.”

I’d never considered trying to make
ayam masak merah
before, having relegated it to the category of foods you have to buy. It seemed like such a difficult dish that I could never have even fathomed knowing anyone who would know how to make it and could teach me. “Aisah’s mum’s
ayam masak merah
is so good,” Nette said over and over. After some thought, I began texting Nette to ask, “When are we learning?” A few weeks later, Nette and I found ourselves hauling a gift of chocolates up the steps to an airy apartment in Ang Mo Kio—a neighborhood in central Singapore whose name means “red hair bridge” in Hokkien and was either named after a British Royal Army engineer, who built a bridge in the area when Singapore was still a colony, or a British expatriate, Lady Jennifer Windsor, who owned an estate there in the 1920s, depending on which story you believe.

“Hello, hello!” Aisah said brightly, welcoming us into her mother’s home and looking stylish as usual, even in basic shorts and a casual blouse. In the years after our Catholic Junior College days, Aisah had gone on to earn a coveted job as a Singapore Airlines flight attendant. She spent several years jetting to Europe and all over Asia before settling down to run a clothing boutique on Haji Lane, a recently fashionable shopping spot in Singapore. Even though she no longer flies with SIA, Aisah still carries herself with the grace and fluid elegance of the airline’s flight attendants—and is always as put together.

At lunchtime, Aisah’s mother’s apartment, on a high floor in a tall building, was sunny and had a lovely breeze drifting through it. We peeked into the kitchen to greet Aisah’s mum, Auntie Jianab, who was already hard at work at the stove. Standing by a big wok filled with bubbling hot oil, she was methodically frying up pieces of chicken that she had lightly salted before carefully sliding them into the oil. As soon as they turned golden, she fished them out and set them aside on paper towels. “She doesn’t speak English,” Aisah whispered to me. While I spoke Malay excellently enough to order “
mee siam,
one” I could hardly be relied on to learn how to cook in Malay. Aisah had that taken care of, though. “I’ll translate as she cooks,” she said.

As Auntie Jianab fried her chicken, she instructed Aisah to ready the
rempah
(spice paste). Using a blender, Aisah chopped up shallots, dried chilies, and garlic to form the paste. Next, Auntie Jianab stir-fried the spice paste together with tomato puree, liquid
gula melaka
(palm sugar), salt, a chicken bouillon cube, and
kecap manis
(an Indonesian sweet soy sauce), and then added the chicken to the mix and stirred. “You have to make sure to strain the
gula melaka
,” Aisah cautioned, wrinkling her slender nose. “Sometimes you’ll find bugs in them.” There apparently was no escaping insects in Southeast Asian cooking.

Auntie Jianab made the whole process look terribly simple, gliding with lightning-quick ease through the motions while Aisah, Nette, and I watched nervously, trying to keep up and make sure every step was carefully committed to both notepad and memory, while also jumping in to measure a liquid or open a can wherever we could. Before long, the chicken was done and we were sitting down to eat. Auntie Jianab’s
ayam masak merah
was a little darker—and sweeter—than versions you’ll typically find in
nasi padang
stalls. And it was far superior, I thought—many versions I’ve tried are too heavy on the spiciness or so bland that the sweet notes are barely detectable.

As we dug into the chicken, also padding up our rice plates with gobs of stir-fried garlicky green beans, Auntie Jianab emerged from the kitchen with a tiny bowl of crackling deep-fried
ikan bilis
(anchovies). I loved this inch-long, slender salty fish that is delicious mixed with some chili sauce and hot rice but also a lovely counterpoint to an ice-cold beer on a summery evening. But I’d never once fried it at home. “Is there anything special to frying it up?” I asked. Aisah, after conferring with her mother, said, “You just have to look for the lighter-colored
ikan bilis
. Those taste better. Then you just deep-fry it in oil until it becomes crispy.”

Watching us eat, Auntie Jianab began to share her kitchen tales. She had learned to cook when she was a girl, she said, growing up in Singapore. For years, she made mostly basics like simple Malay curries and soups—it wasn’t until Aisah turned four that she had more time to learn more complex dishes. Her
ayam masak merah
recipe was gleaned from watching women cook at Malay wedding festivities over the years, she explained. “Wow,” Aisah said. “I never knew all this about my mum!”

As our eating slowed and we finally, regretfully, put down our forks, Auntie Jianab shared one more story. One day, in the village where she grew up, Auntie Jianab spotted a handsome man who instantly caught her attention. Since he was new to the village, her family began inviting him over for dinner—and this turned out to be a chance for the shy, young Jianab to impress him with her cooking skills. Over the course of several dinners, she plied him with delicious curries and rice dishes.

Her cooking worked its magic. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Back in her own kitchen, Nette had become inspired. “
Allo allo
,” an e-mail from her one day read. “to baptize our pizza stone . . . we have decided to throw a pizza party next Sat. you guys will prob be the guinea pigs.” While I’d cooked for Nette before, making a simple breakfast and a steak dinner for her once when she’d visited me in New York, I’d never actually cooked
with
her. (I didn’t think we could count our watching of Auntie Jianab in the kitchen as “cooking.”) Instantly, I volunteered to come up with the toppings for one of the pizzas.