Food and Eating in Singapore 1942-1950
WARTIME KITCHEN
Wartime Kitchen: Food and Eating in Singapore 1942–1950 captures the resilience and adaptability of a people faced with limited resources and shortages during the Japanese Occupation and in post-war Singapore, never before examined in detail. Presenting in-depth research alongside anecdotes, personal reminiscences and a collection of wartime recipes and food-related vignettes, the book vividly documents a crucial decade in Singapore’s history with a particular emphasis on eating—an activity famously high in the priorities of Singaporeans. Atmospheric and even nostalgic, the book also examines how hunger and the need for food became an impetus for culinary creativity.
WARTIME KITCHEN
Food and Eating in Singapore 1942-1950
WONG HONG SUEN
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PREFACE
Tapioca and sweet potatoes. Talk of life in wartime Singapore invariably centres on these two vegetables. When I asked my grandmother if I could interview her about what she ate during the Japanese Occupation, she looked askance at me and retorted ‘Eat? What’s there to talk about? There were only tapioca and sweet potatoes!’ When I asked various other people to talk about their eating experiences and food during the war, I received similar responses. Life was hard, there was nothing much to eat, there were only tapioca and sweet potatoes. I was born, mercifully, decades after the war, but textbooks and popular media have etched this association between the war and tubers into my consciousness, and I suspect, the consciousness of others, obscuring the complexity of experiences related to food and eating in this period. It was upon careful probing that layers of experiences were revealed. People
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coped in myriad ways in their search for food to survive. Beyond tubers, there were eels caught from monsoon drains, bread made out of snails and slivers of birds’ nest salvaged from restaurant leftovers. This book is borne out of the National Museum of Singapore’s continual attempt to probe history at many levels and from various angles. In exploring the history of food consumption in wartime Singapore, the museum seeks to delve further into the history of World War II in Singapore, as well as to document and present the food history of the island. Readers will find this book informative and among the comforts and abundance of peacetime, nostalgic. However, today, in an age of record high prices of wheat and other essential foods, and of economic turmoil, the anecdotes on how people economised on meals and created substitutes may hit closer to home.
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CONTENTS Foreword Preface
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Introduction Food Supplies: A Matter of Control A Popular Culture of Scarcity Imagining and Consuming Desires: Shortages and Substitutes Cooking in Wartime Singapore Selected Wartime Recipes and Modern Adaptations Endnotes Bibliography Acknowledgements Picture Credits
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Introduction
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Chapter 1 outlines the main parameters of the food supply problem. It examines the Japanese government’s (and later the British Military Administration’s) policy of controlling food supplies under departments for distribution to the public and its system of rationing. This chapter also looks at the various ways in which the Japanese encouraged people to be self-sufficient, both in terms of food and daily necessities, although food production remained low. Chapter 2 looks at how scarcity led to an all-consuming obsession with food and eating, and the changing patterns of everyday life that resulted from schemes to complement official rations (of food and other essentials) with that from unofficial sources. What were the people’s strategies for survival and how did the shortage of food and other essential items, such as cloth, shape the character and culture of everyday life? Chapter 3 closely examines the details of everyday food and eating. What did people eat every day; how did they get their supplies of rice and vegetables? How did housewives adapt to shortages of certain ingredients and foodstuffs; what were the dishes improvised and created? What became of eating out in wartime Singapore?
THIS PAGE: Women POWs queuing up for food rations at a prison camp, c.1943. OPPOSITE: The Military Administration Department issued notices on controlled food prices at the start of the Occupation (The Syonan Times, 25 February 1942).
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The illustrations and recipes started my submaxilliary glands and lingual glands working and a wild fancy took possession of me. I thought and thought that when war was over, I would make cooking my hobby. I would continue where tachi [elder sister] had left off and improve on it by having the gang here regularly to enjoy the thrills and fuss of cake-making, and maybe under the watchful eyes of our four TT [Topsy Turvey] girls we would be even be eligible for membership into the YWCA! How I wonder why I did not think of this before. Why? 3 At that time, it was almost unheard of for a teenage Chinese Peranakan boy to cook, much less enter the family kitchen, considered the domain of females in the house. It turned out that Lee did not act on this resolve after the war. But these ‘anomalous’ situations were the norm during a time of economic and social dislocation. A World Turned Upside-down: The Black Market Shortage was not just an economic condition; it became a way of life. Survival required adopting values and actions that constituted a new culture in itself. Insufficient rations forced people to seek provisions outside the system. In August 1942, the Japanese promulgated strict
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A Popular Culture of Scarcity
anti-profiteering regulations. As a result, every essential commodity became more difficult to get, and prices soared higher still. Essentially, the military administration’s failure to provide sufficient rations of rice, sugar and salt forced people to seek recourse to the black market. In addition, its inability to arrest illegal big players and to regulate the kumiais and kaishas that abetted the black market brought about great hardship to the people, on top of their disorganised and arbitrary methods of distribution of foodstuffs and other essential items. Fuelled by hunger and a demand for heavily rationed items such as cigarettes and salt, many were driven to buy and sell on the black market. Goods on the black market came from various sources—some were goods hoarded by individuals before the Occupation; some were looted during the immediate aftermath of war; some, such as cigarettes and liquor, were stolen from the military camps; and others were obtained through connections with the Japanese or from illicit sources. Under the BMA, goods sold on the black market also came from the military camps, and included cigarettes, liquor, canned food, corned beef and mutton, that were meant to be supplies for troops. What was hitherto considered junk or worthless, things such as gramophone needles, old nails, bottles, chipped basins, old biscuit tins, cardboard pieces and scrap iron, found their way to the black market. Old newspapers became valuable to shopkeepers for wrapping purchases and to tobacco manufacturers for wrapping tobacco. Teachers, lawyers, doctors who had not dreamt of engaging in such activities found themselves on Sungei Road with a daching (weighing scale), selling their old clothes and shoes or whatever could fetch high prices. The year 1943 is remembered as the time when the black market began to overshadow the formal economy entirely. According to Heng Chiang Ki, who worked in a canteen that served food to the Japanese navy, ‘everybody became a broker’ and everybody had, at one time or another, participated in the black market.4
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THIS PAGE: Hawkers lined a street in Chinatown, 1942. Sellers at the black market would only take either British currency or valuable goods, in kind, in exchange for their items. Banana notes were not accepted. OPPOSITE: At Sungei Road, known as Robinson Petang (Afternoon Robinson), the black marketeers sat by roadside stalls displaying samples of the goods they had to offer, 1942.
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COCONUT LUNCH
Sago Pudding
GIVEN BY COLONIAL OFFICE NUTRITION TEAM. 30th May, 1946. Calories each helping Coconut Soup 167 Fish Custard 242 Indian Curry 250 Abok Abok 234 Total 893 Coconut Candy 238
Calories from coconut 105 176 95 190 566 190
Cost each helping 4 1/2 cents 14 cents 10 cents 4 cents 32 1/2 cents 11 cents (piece)
Coconut Soup (Quantity for 10 people). 10 and two thirds ounces cheku manis. 10 and two thirds ounces sweet potatoes. 1 and one third ounces dried prawns. 20 ounces coconut milk. 3/4 ounce coconut milk. 1 ounce onions. 1/2 ounce garlic. Peel wash and cut sweet potatoes into cubes. Select and wash edible portion of green vegetables. Clean and soak dried prawns in sufficient water for 15 mins. before they are pounded. Grate the coconut and squeeze out the milk with a small quantity of water. Put this aside and add more water to the kernel to obtain the second lot of coconut milk. Boil the sweet potatoes and dried prawns in second lot of coconut milk. Add the vegetables when the potatoes are soft. Boil for 5 minutes when add first lot of coconut milk. Onions and garlic are peeled, cut and fried in oil till brown. These are added to the soup just before serving.
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(Quantity for 10 people). 10 ounces sago. 1 coconut. 4 ounces gula melaka. Scrape off the outer layer of the kernel and grate the coconut. Boil gula melaka in 4 ounces of water till thick, then add 1/2 of the grated coconut. Stir well. Wash the sago and mix with grated coconut adding 1 teaspoon of fine salt. Cut banana leaves into suitable size and soak in hot water to make them soft. Prepare some coconut sticks to use as ‘pins’. Fold top again. Wrap up parcel and fasten the ends of banana leaves with the coconut stick. Then steam for 15–20 mins.
Indian Curry (Quantity for 10 people). 1/2 pound dhall. 1/2 pound Irish potatoes. 1/2 coconut. 4 ounces of onions. 1/2 kati long beans (kachang panjang). 1/2 ounce garlic. 1/4 ounce dried chillies. 1/2 ounce of coriander seeds. 2 ounces of oil. 1 ounce tamarind. 1 1/2 teaspoon of saffron powder. Boil dhall till soft. Prepare tamarind water by squeezing tamarind with 1/2 pint of water. Add one teaspoon saffron powder and sufficient salt to the tamarind water and put it to boil. Peel, wash and cut potatoes into pieces. Skin and wash onions. Add onions and potatoes to the boiled tamarind. Mash dhall and add to the semi-cooked potatoes. Fry grated coconut
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Imagining and Consuming Desires: Shortages and Substitutes
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in a teaspoon of oil till brown, then fry dried chillies and coriander seeds till crisp. The fried coconut, chillies and coriander seeds are ground into a paste, mix with water and add liquid to the dhall and potatoes. Boil curry for 2 minutes and then remove from fire. Heat 2 teaspoon of oil in saucepan. Fry onions and garlic in oil and pour into curry, stir for few minutes cover and let it simmer till dhall is cooked. Wash and cut long beans into pieces. Fry the sliced onions and chillies in 1 ounce of oil. Add long beans and fry till cooked. Add a little saffron powder and sufficient salt. Grated coconut and cooked dhall may be added to the beans at the end.
Fish Custard (Quantity for 10 people). 1/2 kati fresh fish. 1 coconut. 4 ounces curry stuff. Grate the coconut and squeeze out the milk. Grind the curry stuffs. Wash the fish, remove all bones and cut into cubes (about 1” cube). Mix and stir well. Add salt to taste wrap up into packets with banana leaves and steam for 15 minutes.
Candy 1 1 2 4
coconut. kati white sugar. ounces butter. ounces milk (evaporated).
Scrape off the outer layer of the kernel and grate the coconut. Melt sugar and add milk, butter and grated coconut. Stir well till it is stiffened. Spread on a tray and cut into pieces when still warm.
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OPPOSITE: Coconut lunch recipes created by the Colonial Office Nutrition Team published in the Monthly Economic Bulletin, August 1946.
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THIS PAGE: (Clockwise, from left) Gourds—bitter gourd, pumpkin, snake gourd and cucumber.
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Fruits were used extensively—in savouries such as papaya soup, in desserts, and also in condiments and side dishes, such as jams and pickles (page 105). Jams were usually made for immediate consumption as they were made with rationed sugar and did not keep well. These have their parallels in the lowsugar, extra-fruit conserves and jams we buy today and store in refrigerators. Compotes and jams were made of fruits such as blimbing (a small sour green fruit) and rambutan. Chutneys (sweet and spicy condiments) were also popular in Indian, Eurasian and expatriate households. Apart from tomatoes, mangoes and coriander were also commonly used. Vegetables were mainly stir-fried and boiled, but also eaten as a salad such as rojak. The gravy for the recipe (page 107) featured in this book is similar to Indian rojak, but thickened with potatoes. It includes beetroot, grown by Chinese farmers in the cool highlands of Cameron Highlands and Fraser’s Hill. Vegetables such as cabbages, lettuce and carrots which were also grown in the hilly districts were gradually cultivated in the lowlands. The Japanese also took to eating rojak. Oriel Camilia Filmer made a version which is closer to that sold by the Chinese street hawkers, known as Rojak Java, reflecting its Indonesian origin. They ate it as a salad, with cucumber, pineapple, sweet turnip (bangkwang) and bean sprouts dipped in gravy made from a combination of sambal belachan (shrimp chilli paste), sugar and sweet black sauce. The Walnut Vegetable Loaf (page 125) is a good example of a substantial one-dish vegetable meal that is rich in fibre, carbohydrates and protein. Walnuts were not readily available then, but tinned shelled walnuts could be obtained on the black market and were stocked up by Chinese medicine shops as an ingredient in Chinese medicine. The recipes found in this book are thus a combination of traditional, modern and classic, using basic ingredients and recipe styles from the 1940s onwards. In some cases, where certain ingredients were used out of wartime necessity, alternatives have been suggested. The recipes may be used as they are, or adapted to your own tastes.
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SELECTED WARTIME RECIPES and MODERN ADAPTATIONS CHRISTOPHER TAN
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PALM OIL CHOP Heat oil and use the red oil which rises. Place in pot or casserole, jointed chicken (or mutton), oysters, onions, prawns, chili, potatoes, ladies finger, etc. Pour oil over and cook till tender.
Good Food by PCB Newington, page 4
If you would like the red colour of palm oil but prefer to use a less saturated fat, infuse 2 tsp of annatto seeds (look for them in Filipino groceries, labelled ‘achuete’) in a few spoonfuls of canola or olive oil over low heat, until the oil turns red. Strain off the seeds and use the oil as a palm oil substitute. Serves 4–6 people. 1 small chicken, about 1.25 kg 1 large onion, chopped 2 red or green chillies, halved lengthwise 4 whole garlic cloves, peeled 150 ml water 5 tbsp red palm oil 1 tbsp vinegar 1 tbsp light soy sauce 1 tsp salt 1 tsp pepper 2 potatoes, peeled if desired, cut into large chunks 10–12 ladies fingers, washed and trimmed 8–10 small prawns, washed
1. Remove skin and fat from chicken, chop into serving pieces, wash and drain. 2. Combine chicken with onion, chillies, garlic cloves, water, palm oil, vinegar, light soy sauce, salt and pepper in a large pot. Cover and bring to a simmer over medium heat, then reduce heat slightly and cook gently for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the chicken has rendered its juices. 3. Add potatoes and ladies fingers and cook for 15–20 minutes more, until meat and vegetables are tender. 4. Add prawns to the pot, increase heat slightly and simmer for 5 minutes more, until prawns are cooked. Serve piping hot with rice.
Red palm oil
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Selected Wartime Recipes and Modern Adaptations
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GULA MALACCA BLANC MANGE 1 pint coconut milk 8 dessertspoons gula malacca (palm sugar) 4 dessertspoons corn flour 2 dessertspoons white sugar
Mix corn flour with a little cold water. Boil milk. Add sugar. When boiling add corn flour. Stir briskly. Pour into moulds. Chill. Serve with grated coconut and cream.
Prisoner of War Cook Book by ERM, page 45
Coconut milk and gula melaka (palm sugar) deliciously banish the clammy boarding-school vibe of this set custard dessert. Makes 10–12 individual puddings depending on mould size. Use modern silicone moulds for easy turning-out of the blanc manges. 125 g gula melaka, chopped 50 g caster sugar ½ tsp salt 125 ml water 6 tbsp cornstarch OR 4 tbsp mung bean (hoon kuih) flour 750 ml coconut milk freshly grated coconut and cream or evaporated milk, to serve
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1. Combine gula melaka, caster sugar, salt and water in a small pot. Stir over low heat until sugars melt, then strain syrup into a bowl. Add cornstarch to syrup and whisk well to mix, then add 150 ml of the coconut milk and whisk until smooth. 2. Bring remaining 600 ml of coconut milk to just below the boiling point in a saucepan over medium heat, then slowly pour into gula melaka mixture, whisking constantly. 3. Strain hot mixture through a metal sieve back into the pot, then cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly with a whisk or spatula and scraping the bottom and corners of the pot, until custard thickens, which will happen fairly rapidly. Cook for a further 1–2 minutes, until raw starch taste disappears. Immediately pour mixture into moulds. Let cool, then chill for 1 hour. 4. Remove blanc manges from moulds. Serve with freshly grated coconut and a trickle of evaporated milk if desired.
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