Goodness in a clay pot

I must admit that for someone as crazy about food as myself, I am rather indifferent when it comes to considering what I actually put in my body. I have friends who are continually curious about the origins of their food and what was done to it, and scrutinise every nutrition label thoroughly keeping a sharp lookout for artificial preservatives or other undesirable ingredients. I know people who treat their bodies as temples, and try not to pollute it with artificial colourings, sweeteners, or other flavour enhancers. I know people who insist on organic – even though that label has come to carry less and less meaning these days. In any case, I must say this mentality is highly commendable. Unfortunately I have always been of the “eat first, think later” persuasion, and to me pleasure has always trumped principle – if something is delicious, I’ll eat it regardless of what nasty ingredients are in it or what unspeakable processes took place before it got to my table.

One of the chief reasons I think the way I do is my weakness for Singaporean hawker food. From a purist’s point of view, hawker food is sin visited upon sin. It is unhealthy – meals are unbalanced, and food is typically oily, fatty, and high in calories. It is not organic – there is widespread use of MSG and other artificial flavour enhancers. Very little thought, if any, is given to processing methods when selecting ingredients – cost is the primary criteria. This means that if you are concerned about your chickens being free-range rather than battery-raised, your flour being unbleached rather than bleached, your sugar being natural rather than refined, then you probably should steer clear of hawker food. But, and to me this is a huge but, the good shit just tastes so fucking good.

This was weighing on my mind the other day as I returned to one of my perennial faves – Yew Chuan claypot rice at the Golden Mile hawker centre on Beach Road. To explain – claypot cooking refers to the cooking of food in clay pots (duh) over high heat. The pots are usually doused in water prior to use so that they release steam during the cooking process and create a steam wall around the food that locks in its moisture, ensuring a tender, flavourful dish. It’s basically one-pot cooking, with a clay pot. These clay pots also absorb flavour, so if you go to those hawkers who have been using the same pots for decades, the food is likely to be very tasty.

Claypot rice refers to a one-dish meal where rice is steamed in the clay pot, with the subsequent addition of ingredients like salted fish, chicken slices, sausage, and a few leafy greens to satisfy the Health Promotion Board. When served it is then typically topped with a generous serving of sweet soy sauce and drizzled with sesame oil, then tossed to coat the rice with the condiments.

For some reason I don’t remember eating claypot rice before my teenage years – I must have, but I just don’t remember it. What I do remember is eating at the Food Junction at Junction 8 after school, where my two go-tos were the claypot rice and the beef noodles. This was before food courts became even more corporatised and sanitised than they already were back then, so the food was actually decent. The best part about the claypot rice was the burnt bits of rice at the bottom, which I dutifully scraped off at the end of the meal and ate. Carcinogens be damned!

The version at Yew Chuan was introduced to me by my mother, bless her heart, and quickly became one of my favourites. Different people have different methods of introducing food to others – my dad always started with the basic premise that quality was not subjective, so if you didn’t appreciate anything he recommended then there was nothing wrong with the food, but instead it had everything to do with your standards. As a result he treated everything he shared with his children as an education of sorts. There was nothing high-handed or snobbish about it – far from it, in fact – but food for him was an induction into the possibilities of pleasure, so that was how he couched every recommendation. Everything was an announcement, something to be pointed out in a matter-of-fact way. You should eat this – it is good. End of discussion. My mother had a different tack, and always took on a conspiratorial tone when recommending something, as if each of her recommendations were some precious secret to be passed on only to those who can be trusted to use the information for good. Psst – I found this stall selling X, see if you like it. As for me, I try as much as possible to curb myself, but when I find something that I like I tend to beat people about the head to get them to try it. Some call it being a food Nazi, I prefer to think of it as exuberance. Maybe, just maybe, this exuberance sometimes takes on an almost indignant tone. Why for the love of all that is holy have you not tried this yet? You need to go there. And try it. Now.

The claypot rice at Yew Chuan has tremendous flavour, for several reasons. One, they add a healthy portion of salted fish, an unbelievable source of umami. Two, the pots look like they have been in use for ages, and I am sure that contributes to the flavour. Three, they give you the soy sauce (home-brewed, I assume) and sesame oil so you can add however much of it as you want. In addition to all this, the rice is always perfectly cooked (save for the layer of burnt rice at the bottom), the chicken chunks always succulent and tender (they use thigh meat, which is juicier).

This time, as I ate the claypot rice I thought a little harder about the various processes and ingredients that went into the pot of food before me. So many ingredients – each with their own little story, and each story with their own twists and turns. Take the soy sauce, for example. Was it brewed naturally by fermenting soybeans, or was it made chemically from hydrolyzed soy protein? What levels of sodium did it have? If it was sweetened, how was this accomplished – through the addition of refined sugar, cane sugar, or molasses? The soy sauce at Yew Chuan comes in a nondescript squeezy bottle, which completely belies the number of choices made prior to it appearing – as if magically – on your table together with your claypot rice.

But once the smell of the claypot rice hit my nostrils, with that insistent aroma of salted fish, the steam escaping as the lid was removed – all was forgotten. In that instant I could only think of how quickly I could stuff as much of that claypot rice into my mouth as possible. As I was wolfing it down (much too quickly, I might add) I felt my body temperature rise due to the ingesting of the still-hot rice, and beads of sweat starting to form around my temples. And yet I still kept reaching for more, more of this sweet, salty, savoury goodness in a pot – consumed solely by the desire to eat, blissfully oblivious to everything else. Conversation slowed. I gave monosyllabic answers to any questions I was asked, and ceded conversation-making duties to someone else at the table, I didn’t care who.

This is not to say that the claypot rice at Yew Chuan is artificial in any way. I honestly do not know. All I know is that I am a fool for it.

In short, I am a lost cause. In my line of work I am exposed to many processed foods, and am much more aware of the choices made in their production than ever before. I know what manufacturers do to enhance flavour, improve colour, impart aroma – naturally or artificially. I know that almost everything is a choice, and when you buy a finished product you often cede thousands of choices up to the many individuals who have worked to get you that finished product. Many of these choices are not made with your long-term well being in mind. I know all that. But when shit is that good, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.