Unsaid Ingredients: Never Leave Home Without Your Chilli Sauce by Constance Singam
by Marc Nair
The first thing that leaps out in Constance Singam’s book is a recipe for chili sauce, because chili is that most portable and powerful of condiments; a faithful and scintillating accompaniment through life. But there are many varieties and recipes for chili, so what makes Constance Singam’s recipe special? Chili, for her, is not just chili, it is bringing a taste of home wherever she goes, tingling and raising the flavour of each journey she makes, whether it is across the city or traversing an ocean to another continent.
Singam’s recipe for Chilli Sauce
But this book is far more than chilli. Singam’s introduction rambles over various origin stories, from coffee to tea and suckling pig, picking out little learnings from lore and fact. She winds her way towards the point of her book: that it is not just about cooking. Cookbooks are one-dish wonders containing the larger ingredients of the politics of place; of history, memory and family. All of this is seasoned, naturally, with stories from the chef’s own life and travels.
Singam’s book is, as she calls it, a ‘food memoir,’ in which food is central to her family. She catalogues how her family’s cuisine has been influenced by various cultures, such as “my parents’ Keralan culture, my marriage which led me to Jaffna Tamil food, our Singaporean Chinese and Malay cuisine.“
She begins, as all good family stories inevitably do, around the person and presence of her mother, who was a firm advocate of clay pots and could not abide frozen meats.
Singam’s mother at the wet market (Image from Never Leave Home Without Your Chilli Sauce, p. 20.
The evocation of the past, paired with recipes, makes for some of the most poignant passages in the book:
“Once upon a brief time we lived in a pre-war house, which even had a bomb shelter underneath it. The house was surrounded by an expanse of land (referred to in those days as “the compound” to house a large chicken coop, where fruit trees such as rambutan, duku, langsat, jambu (both the pink version and the now forgotten white ones) and chiku trees supplies us with abundant fruits. I remember a couple of belimbing trees loaded with fruits that Mumma would use for her curries and for pickling. I remember chickens being chased, caught and slaughtered, their necks cut in one slash before being dunked in boiling water, then plucked, cleaned and curried for Sunday lunches.”
A kitchen that’s alive, robust and constantly in motion is also reflective of a healthy family. After all, the kitchen is the heart of the house and as she notes, “What we cook now reflects our personal histories and circumstances rather than those based on our ethnic identity.’ And Singam has had a bevy of experiences, running a cafe in Seletar Hills, moving between Singapore and Perth, where most of her family is, and her varied travels around the globe.
She covers a wide range of recipes, reflecting her eclectic palate, but does devote an entire chapter to fish and fish heads, including a mouthwatering recipe for Kerala fish curry, inspired, no doubt by this tidbit:
“Fish head curry originated in a shack located at Sophia Road in the mid 1950s. Back then, this was a predominantly Jewish area. The fact that Gomez, an immigrant from Kerala, decided to set up this Indian curry shop there says so much about how tolerant Singaporeans were back then. People were more egalitarian and unpretentious in those days. I used to walk past Gomez’s curry shop on my weekly walk up Sophia Road to violin classes. It was more of a shack that extended out of a two-storey bungalow and was always crowded. The seating comprised wooden benches at rickety tables, but the diners didn’t seem to mind. Singaporeans were and are known to tolerate discomfort for the enjoyment of good food.”
What’s a cooking book without a recipe? This is Constance Singam’s recipe for Kerala Fish Curry.