Chik's Crib: October 2025

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.