Chik's Crib

02 November 2025

Sungei Buloh, Singapore

Singapore November 02, 2025 0

We came to the mangroves of Sungei Buloh early morning one weekend. It’s been a long time coming! My wife enjoys nature and is a frequent visitor to these parts, and she’d been wanting to show me around this area for at least a couple of years.

Well, we finally came. It turned out to be a rather pleasant, peaceful walk. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and much to my own surprise. We talked about the neighbouring region of farmland before, but it’ll be my first time stepping foot into the mangroves here.

It’s a pretty chill excursion, and we didn’t have to pull a Yogyakarta (ie wake up at 3am) for this. Thankfully. The crowd’s pretty manageable when we arrived around half past eight in the morning, and for the most sun-adverse of us, rest assured that it isn’t that warm. The park was free to enter, and ditto for the parking. I celebrate all little joys.

We saw a cheeky squirrel furtively raiding a bird’s nest. I have photo evidence.

Picture by N. A second, more benign squirrel feeding while hanging upside-down.

The first sign that I’ve spent too much time in resorts and not enough time communing with nature was when I misread a post stating “Wetland Centre” for “Wellness Centre”. I had wholeheartedly believed there was a gym and sauna in the mangroves for a hot minute.

I’ve heard of crocodile sightings along Sungei Buloh, but I didn’t think it was common. Well, we spotted four different crocodiles during our walk. Three of them were drifting in the waters, and one of them was lying on land right next to the boardwalk. They're a common sight around these parts, as it turns out. My wife estimates seeing crocodiles in about 70% of her visits here.

Took us a minute to realise it's a crocodile amongst the tree roots, and it was sizing us up.

There were also plenty of monitor lizards around the mangroves, swimming in the brackish waters, or trudging on the boardwalk. The largest one we’ve seen was lying prone along the pavement, which just about everybody gave a wide berth.

We also spotted a wee green snake in the bushes.

At the bridge overlooking a broad stretch of water, we saw schools of fishes circling the mangroves, with constant splashes from the fishes as they jump out of the waters.

At low tide, it’s mealtime for the birds, and they hunt for food along the shallow waters of the mangroves. A heron spreads its wing to entice fishes with shade, and then snatches up the fishes that come near it.

Not far away, a flock of squat little puffs of birds (if I’m a better blogger I’ll know what they’re called) gather on another bank, pecking at the soil.

It was low tide as we came, and we saw plenty of mudskippers amongst the mangroves. These are amphibious fishes that have evolved to walk and breathe on land. It’s pretty incredible to see them hoist themselves over soil and roots.

Sungei Buloh is a pretty sleepy destination, but popular amongst certain interest groups. There were two tour buses pulled up to the entrance as we came, and there were small roving groups of guided photography tours carrying heavy telephoto lens. These photography groups are also the nature buffs too, and I shamelessly eavesdropped on them to learn what they know about this place.

Mangroves used to comprise of 13% of Singapore’s landmass, but prawn farming and the subsequent land reclamation efforts have transformed most of the land into what we see today. Most of the remaining wetlands are now located in the North-western part of Singapore. We could see Johor Bahru just a short distance across the waters. You might want to turn off roaming on your phone plan as you walk along the trails, because you might incur international roaming charges along some parts. We overheard this from one of the photographers, and it turned out to be true.

A complete walk might take about three hours at a gentle pace with plenty of stops, and is just the right amount of early morning sun and fresh air. Much recommended, even if you, like me, can’t distinguish between a heron from a stork, or a monitor lizard from a Komodo dragon, or call every squat cute little bird a puffin (none of these birds in any way resemble actual puffins). It was a good time nonetheless.

26 October 2025

Ayam Buah Keluak (Chicken in Black Nut Stew) Recipe

Recipe October 26, 2025 0

Few ingredients in Peranakan cuisine have fascinated the public as much as the buah keluak (black nut), and it's easy to see why. Its lore is rather interesting: each buah keluak nut contain hydrocyanic acid and eating untreated nuts is fatal. The process to leech the toxins from the nuts requires weeks of treatment, including a lengthy process of burying the nuts in volcanic ash. After purchasing these nuts, shells and all, you continue the process of purging residual toxins from the nuts by scrubbing the shells and soaking them in water for three to five days, while making sure to change the water daily. For those interested on this topic, this primer is one of the most detailed, well-researched article that I'd come across.

Another reason for its appeal is their distinctively earthy notes which can be a little polarising. The nuts themselves can also be rather elusive to find. Not every Peranakan restaurant serves this dish, and only a couple of food stalls in Singapore sells these nuts. All of these (well, probably the poisonous part most of all) captured the attention of Peranakan-food enthusiasts.

I found out that I liked it during my visit to Malacca a couple of years ago. Recently, I took some classes on Peranakan cooking, and finally, went to Tekka Centre to get my hands on buah keluak. But despite the nut's fearsome reputation, you don't need cooking classes before using them, no more than you have to take lessons on Italian cooking before using tomato paste. Really.

There are two versions of buah keluak available for purchase, one shelled (which requires soaking for several days), and an deshelled version that contains just the pulp (which is also called buah keluak paste). I got the deshelled version for easier handling, which goes for $30 per kilo in Tekka Centre.

The typical Peranakan braise starts off with making a rempah (spice paste), which is then sautéed over low heat to bring out the aroma, and then combining with the protein and adding liquid to form a stew. Sounds familiar? Well, it's the exact same principles as making continental-style stews. The Spanish and Italians have their sofrito/soffritto, the French their mirepoix, the Germans the suppengrün, and Cajun cuisine has the 'holy trinity'. Across all cuisines, the building blocks for a good stew is mostly the same: onions, carrots and celery, though variations such as peppers, garlic and tomatoes are often used as well. It's no different from Peranakan cuisine, which uses a few other local vegetations. You’ll no doubt become familiar with the ingredients if you even just attempt a couple of recipes - while initially foreign, these ingredients are just their usual suspects and you'll see the same ingredients over and over again in the recipes.

Buah Keluak pulp. The consistency is almost like playdoh, and mashing it after doing the rempah almost cleans up the mortar.

A difference between Peranakan stews and continental stews is that instead of mincing the vegetables, Peranakan recipes pulverise the vegetables into a paste before cooking. The traditional approach is with a mortar and pestle, though I believe just about everybody uses a food processor these days. I don't believe using a mortar and pestle gives a discernibly superior product, and you should just use whatever is convenient for you.

But under the plus-point column for mortars and pestles: when you're working with ingredients like turmeric that stains everything and anything that comes in contact with it, you might not want to blitz the turmeric in your food processor. A dark stone mortar and pestle? You won't even notice the difference.

Another plus point for mortars and pestles: they're indestructible and endlessly reliable. You'll never experience equipment failure with them, unlike when a certain food processor decided to stop working for me one day...

It is tedious to pound everything with a mortar and pestle, no doubt. Use either. Whichever you find more convenient. Maybe, like what restauranteur Violet Oon had suggested, even both. She recommends to use the food processor for 90% of the way through, then finish it off by hand. And perhaps, grind the turmeric the old-fashioned way?

Ayam Buah Keluak

Adapted from Violet Oon's recipe

When choosing buah keluak, use the ones that are jet-black and shiny, and never dry. You'll notice that I've given a range of buah keluak to be used. The original recipe calls for 20, which can make the stew too earthy for the newly-initiated. It is a bit of an acquired taste. Start with perhaps 8-10 buah keluak (10 is my sweet spot), and you can adjust the amount as you get more acquainted with this ingredient.

Ingredients

2 kg chicken pieces

6 candlenuts (buah keras)

20g galangal (blue ginger / lengkuas)

4cm turmeric root (kunyit)

10 fresh red chillies

20g belacan (fermented shrimp paste)

200g shallots

8-20 buah keluak

1 stalk lemongrass (serai)

½ cup vegetable oil

4+2 rounded Tbsp tamarind paste

1 litre water

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp table salt, plus more for seasoning the chicken pieces

Steps

1. Lightly season the chicken pieces with salt, preferably overnight before cooking.

Prepare the Rempah (Steps 2, 3)

2. Wash the candlenuts. Wash and peel galangal and turmeric, and slice into 1cm pieces. Slice red chillies into 1-inch pieces. Peel shallots and cut into halves or thirds.

3. In a mortar and pestle, pulverise first the candlenuts, then add galangal and crush. Then add turmeric root, followed by chillies and then the belacan. Finally, add the shallots and crush it, combining the liquid. (The ingredients are pounded starting from the hardest and moving along to the softest, in order to ensure everything gets evenly-grounded). You can also use a food processor for this part, in which case I'll just dump everything in. Set the rempah aside.

4. Clean out the mortar and pestle as best as you can, and add the buah keluak pulp. Beat it until they form a cohesive paste. Set aside.

5. Using the pestle, strike the stalk of lemongrass until it splinters and releases its fragrance. Set aside.

6. In a large wok or pot set over medium-high heat, add a thin layer of oil. When the oil heats up, add the rempah (spice paste). Gently cook it, stirring constantly, until the rempah darkens and breaks apart to release oil, about 7-8 minutes.

7. Slowly drizzle in about half a litre of water to deglaze the pot, then add 4 tablespoons of tamarind paste, the raw chicken, the buah keluak and the bruised lemongrass. Add the remaining the water in, or at least until the braising liquid almost completely covers the chicken pieces. Add in the sugar and salt.

8. Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat, then lower the heat and simmer uncovered for about ½ hour or so, till the stew thickens up and the chicken is cooked thoroughly. Taste, and adjust with additional 1-2 tablespoons of tamarind paste or sugar if needed.

9. Serve immediately with rice.

19 October 2025

Nasi Ulam (Herbed Rice) Recipe

Recipe October 19, 2025 0

As we're starting off our Peranakan cooking journey, we're going to need carbohydrates to go along with the aromatic Peranakan braises. There's nothing quite as lovely as pairing them with nasi ulam, which are cooled white rice combined with chopped herbs.

The wet markets stall owners would sort you right out on what herbs to get. Over at Chia's Vegetables Supply (#01-93) in Tekka Centre, the owner helpfully pointed out several herbs that he uses for this dish.

It may be heretic to say, and at the risk of having to face the wrath of a legion of opinionated Peranakan makcik, greens are greens. So no stress if you can't locate a herb listed here, or the store owner points you towards a plant that's not on this recipe. I would just listen and get whatever is fresh on that day. It's traditionally a foraged dish, based on what can be found on a day-to-day basis. I treat nasi ulam recipes as a guide to exploring Peranakan herbs, and try to tick something new off at every iteration. You can add whatever greens you want, in whatever amounts you like. Don't let anyone tell you differently!

What I find really indispensable are the dried shrimps and the fried shallots, which provides all the umami that the dish needs. And the ginger torch flower, which adds a wonderful unmistakable aroma and bright splash of pink. Stock up on these before giving nasi ulam a go.

Nasi Ulam (Herbed Rice) Recipe
The traditional approach is to serve this dish cold, but I prefer it near room temperature, especially since I pair it with hot braises. If you like to serve it cold, put the cooked rice in the fridge while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Ingredients
800g white rice, cooked and let cool to near room temperature
10 kaffir lime leaves
4 tumeric leaves
4 sprigs of mint leaves
4 sprigs of thai basil
4 sprigs of laksa leaves
4 sprigs of ulam raja
1 bulb of ginger torch flower
2 stalks of lemongrass
100g dried shrimp
120g grated coconut
50g fried shallot, to top the nasi ulam

Steps
1. Remove and discard the central stems of the kaffir lime and tumeric leaves. Starting from the largest leaves (tumeric leaves), layer the smaller leaves (such as kaffir lime, mint, Thai basil, laksa, ulam raja) and roll them up into a cigar. This makes it easier to finely chiffonade the greens into long thin slivers. Set aside.

2. Cut the ginger torch flower into halves, then sliver. Add it to the slivered leaves.

3. Cut and discard the deep green portion of the lemongrass. We’ll only be using the flavourful pale to light green portion of the lemongrass. Discard the bottom portion of the lemongrass that has roots. Using a pestle or a meat tenderiser, pound the lemongrass to release its fragrance. Cut the section into short batons, about 1-2 inches, then cut into slivers. Add it to the slivered leaves.

4. In a frying pan set over low heat, gently warm up the dried shrimp until fragrant. No oil is needed. Set aside. Cook the grated coconut in the same way until golden.

5. Assemble by combining all the ingredients and herbs with the cooled rice.

6. Top with fried shallots and serve immediately.

13 October 2025

Ayam Sioh (Chicken with Tamarind-Coriander) Recipe

Recipe October 13, 2025 0

Ayam Sioh was the first recipe that we were taught in our Peranakan cooking course.

This style of cooking can be daunting to the uninitiated. The steps and ingredients are unfamiliar to me. So a simpler recipe like this - where the rempah (spice paste) is solely made up of shallots - is the perfect introduction. It leaves me free to just focus on the workflow of a typical Peranakan recipe. There are many things to figure out.

For example, perhaps, where you're going to find a mortar and pestle.

Can you get away with blitzing the spices in a food processor? Go for it. Romantics insist food processors are inferior to a mortar and pestle, but they aren't the one doing the hard labour now, are they? Violet Oon, a Singaporean Peranakan restauranteur, recommends using a food processor. Pearly Kee, a Peranakan cookbook author based in Penang who also runs a cooking school, similarly reassured readers that she can't tell the difference. For what it's worth, our cooking school instructor also encouraged us to use the food processors on our benches. It makes sense. Stews are so forgiving. The typical Peranakan recipe also has so many ingredients, I'd imagine that the proportion and quantity of ingredients would affect the end-results much more than whether a food processor was involved. So go ahead and blitz the ingredients. If anyone gives you grief for using a food processor, you can invite them to come over half a day earlier next time to help with a mortar and pestle.

There's so much work involved in a Peranakan recipe. I turned on an episode of Abbott Elementary (anyone watching this?) and got to peeling the small mountain of shallots sitting in front of me. Those things are tiny, and it's no mean feat to get them peeled and chopped roughly even in preparation for a food processor. In fact, I was half-considering buying bags of peeled shallots the next time I go to Tekka Centre, because it was time-consuming. Do you really want to reach for the mortar and pestle after all that peeling and chopping? Half the day would have gone by, and you haven't even reached for the stove yet.

Feel free to use a food processor. Really. Or even pre-peeled shallots. And if anyone tries to shame you, well, you know what you can tell them.

Ayam Sioh (Chicken with Tamarind-Coriander) Recipe

Ingredients
240g shallots
3 tbsp coriander seed (you can use coriander powder as well)
1 tsp black peppercorn
4 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
4 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp tamarind (assam) paste
1-1.5kg chicken thighs
500ml of water, or enough to come halfway up to the chicken in the pot
2 tbsp plum sauce (or 1-2 preserved sour plum, chopped roughly)
1 tsp white pepper (optional)
Additional salt and sugar, to taste

Steps

1. Peel the shallots, and chop each shallot into 3-4 smaller pieces. Using a food processor, or a mortar and pestle, break up the shallot into a paste. Set aside.

2. In a small saucepan or frying pan set over low heat, gently warm coriander seeds and black peppercorns until fragrant. No oil is required for this. Remove from heat, let cool and then grind finely.

3. In a large bowl, combine the chopped shallots, coriander seeds, black peppercorns, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, salt and assam paste with chicken. Set aside to marinate for at least 1 hour, or preferably overnight.

4. In a large pot, heat a thin layer of cooking oil over medium-high heat. Scrape the marinade off the chicken pieces (no need to be too thorough on this), then sear the chicken pieces skin-side down, a couple of minutes on each side until browned.

5. Add the rest of the marinade into the pot, and scrape up any fond on the surface of the pot as you do. Add water to the pot until the water level reaches halfway up the chicken. When the water starts to boil, reduce the heat to low just until it is just a low simmer.

6. Continue cooking for about 30 minutes, until the gravy reduced and thickened up. Remove from heat.

7. Add the plum sauce (or plum) and mix well. Add more salt, sugar or white pepper to taste. (If you’ve added too much white pepper and it became too spicy for example, you can balance out the spiciness with sugar, or add a bit of acid from the tamarind or the sour plum.)

8. Serve immediately with rice.

06 October 2025

Peranakan Cooking

Peranakan October 06, 2025 0

I’m a fan of Peranakan cuisine, and I remember that at every occasion, our family gatherings would often be supplemented with several wonderfully spiced dishes made by my Peranakan aunt. I became especially hooked ever since our visit to Malacca in 2023. The cuisine draws me in: the earthy buah keluak gravy, the hearty lemak (coconut stew) and delectable kueh pie tie.

I would love nothing more than to recreate these dishes at home. Stews are generally quite manageable to make, but my difficulty comes from the unfamiliarity with the ingredients. The buah keluah nut, for example, is poisonous and would require sourcing for treated nuts or doing some of the treatment steps at home. I’d really much rather first attend classes and have the instructors introduce me to these unfamiliar ingredients and guide me through the recipes. And most importantly, tell me where to find good quality ingredients.

Having time to take lessons is truly luxurious. I took a wine appreciation course last year, and this year, learning about Peranakan cooking seemed right up my alley. It wasn’t that long ago for me when work entailed long hours and was all-consuming. Everybody in the industry that I knew of was working 6-7 days every week, and having an entire weekend off was so rare, we called those occurrences a Golden Weekend. (More often than not, we had to make up for a Golden Weekend by working a consecutive stretch of 14 or 21 days.) It was also the norm to stay overnight in the workplace once or twice every week and continue working throughout the night. And yes, when morning comes around the next day, we’ll be expected to continue working alongside the rest of our colleagues. A stretch of one week without being on call overnight was a true luxury - we got to sleep seven nights that week! The demands of work was intense, to say the least, and the schedule was murder on my sleep cycle. More than that, when I was going through those 6, 7 years in a constant sleep-deprived state, I had little bandwidth (and off-days!) to learn much about any other interests. Now that I’m in a better work situation, I’ve been making up for lost time, and attending some classes on topics which I wanted to learn more about.

And here we did learn. Chef Susan guided us through the steps of the recipes, where to find good quality ingredients in our area, when it is not worth it to make prawn stock, and when we can use dried shrimps instead of using store-bought prawn stock. Another time saving tip, which would have saved me a bunch of grief when I was making these Thai-style pork ribs, was to use tamarind paste (this one labelled Adabi Asam Jawa Xtra, in particular) and not spend ages handling those packages of raw tamarind pulp and seeds.

I’ve attended classes by different instructors over the last few months, and let me tell you: there’s a big difference when you’re being taught by an instructor who’s shopping for and cooking with these ingredients for all of their lives, versus another who’s just reading out the recipe steps and wasn’t really sure where to find these ingredients. Try to attend classes led by the former - there’s just no comparison. Chef Susan gave us heavily-edited versions of the textbook recipes, advised us on where she shops and where shortcuts should be taken. She also had her own rice grains brought in for the classes because she didn’t like the rice provided by the school.

We went down to Tekka Centre's wet market one weekend to buy the ingredients. Either this market or the one in Geylang Serai would net you everything you need to whip up a Peranakan feast. Even if you, like us, are not a 100% sure what to get, just speak to the shopkeepers who'll point you in the right direction. In most cases, they're friendly and happy to answer any questions you may have. While picking up herbs for nasi ulam (herbed rice salad), we were introduced to the ulam raja plant, which wasn't in the recipe that we obtained from school but was recommended by the shopkeeper (Chia's Vegetables Supply, #01-93). At a nearby shop ran by two lovely ladies, we bought dried shrimps and chilli, and learned all about balachan (Southeast Asian fermented shrimp paste) from them. And yes, we bought buah keluak from the stall ran by Mr Seah at #01-210. He sells both whole nuts (which requires several days of soaking and processing in your home kitchen before they're safe to consume), and deshelled nuts (called buah keluak paste) which you can use straightaway. We went with the latter for posterity's sake.

I'll be posting simple Peranakan recipes over the next few weeks, including tips from the culinary school's instructors and clarifications that I made with my aunt. I hope you will have as much fun as I did learning about this wonderful cuisine.