Dreamy is a final year graduate based in Singapore. A committed vegetarian, she will be writing about vegetarian cuisine and living in Singapore. Singapore is a sunny island-country located 1 degree north of the equator is south east Asia. The temperature is a pleasant 27 to 32 degrees all year round.
Here in Singapore, it's usually rainy or sunny. When it is sunny, it can get really hot, so cold desserts are a good choice for the locals.
Today I will introduce you to Ice Kacang, a kind of cold, sweet dessert made of shaved ice. There are plenty of ingredients you can choose to use with the shaved ice. The commonly used ingredients are red beans, sweet corn, agar jelly, and chendol, but nowadays, Ice Kachang has evolved into many versions. For vegans, the main ingredient you have to look out for in this dessert is the use of evaporated milk, colorings and the possible use of animal-based jelly. To make your own simple Ice Kachang, simply get some shaved ice and drench it with some gula melaka syrup.
Today, I will introduce you to fried carrot cake which is something that's commonly sold in hawker centres in Singapore. The fried carrot cake is made of white radish and rice flour, cut into pieces. It is then fried in a wok with seasonings. You can choose it "black" or "white" style. "Black" ones uses black soy sauce (sweet type) while the "white" ones omit that. Be careful though, many of the non-vegetarian stalls serves fried carrot cake that isn't vegetarian because they use lard, and if you don't take eggs some people opt to have eggs in their chai tow kway, so the stall owner will just prepare the next order without washing the wok. You can find the vegetarian stall at the Causeway point foodcourt serving vegetarian Chai tow kway. If you don't visit Singapore, here's a non-vegetarian recipe from makantime.com (which I edit to a vegetarian one) to make your own.
Ingredientds
500g rice flour
2 spoonful tapioca flour
8 full small rice bowl water
dried mushroom - soak and shredded
Shallots - chopped and fried in oil
shredded radish
sugar
salt
msg (optional)
pepper
Method:
Fry shallots in oil, add in mushroom. Season and set aside.
Mix 3 bowls of water with flour, boil the rest of water, add and mix.
Season to taste with salt, msg and sugar. Mix in the fried
ingredients, put in steamer and steam till ready, about half an
hour. Let cool and cut.
(If you want to omit the shallots and mushroom it's ok, my mum's version of carrot cake is made without the extra ingredients. But again, if you want these flavours in final product, it will be better to include it. Note: you can also buy pre-made chai tow kway ready for stir-frying)
Dark chai tow kway
Ingredients:
sweet dark soy sauce (my mum uses dark soy sauce and sugar)
chilli paste
garlic
vegetable oil
Method:
Heat oil, fry garlic, add chilli paste, add Chai tow kway, sauce and fry till it's done.
Light Chai Tow Kway
Ingredients:
Chai Poh (I believe this is available in Chinese food shops)
garlic
spring onion
chilli paste
pepper
Method:
Heat oil, fry garlic and spring onion, add chai poh and fry till fragrant, add chili paste, and finally, add Chai tow kway and fry till it's done.
Investing in a wok instead of a pan for stir-frying is a good idea. This is unhealthy food, and requires more oil for stir-frying (otherwise the Chai tow kway will tend to stick to the wok).
This week is Singapore's meatout week, and several vegetarian stores are having a promotion of a dish known as rojak. Rojak is a dish uniquely found only in a few countries in South East Asia. The term means "mixture", so you could guess from it that this dish is a mix of a variety of things. One of the more common rojak I have eaten is fruit rojak. It contains several types of fruits, such as chopped cucumbers, pineapples, apples etc. as well as non-fruit items such as puffed soy bean cake. Pour some vegetarian rojak sauce over this mixture and mix well, and the dish is ready, it is pretty good eaten chilled too. The rojak that are made with other kinds of food are more likely to be non-vegetarian, but that aside, the fruit rojak can also be non-vegetarian due to it's sauce. The sauce ingredients are tricky to guess, because that's one of the keys to good tasting rojak. The best thing to do would be to ask the food vendor if it is vegetarian as some of them use shrimp paste or other animal products in their special sauce. The sweet and spicy taste of the sauce gives rojak a unique taste as a dish.
The hawker centre that is a must go for all vegetarians living here is located at circuit road. There are many vegetarian stalls for you to choose from here. And it's a great place to try local food. Another hawker centre with lots of vegetarian stalls to choose from is located between Serangoon Road and Bendemeer Road. It has around 7 to 8 vegetarian stalls for you choose from and there's another café – Pine tree café that's located nearby along Bendemeer Road. Singapore's water is safe to drink even directly from the tap, so don't worry about the safety of hawker fare. Besides the few restaurants which I mentioned in my previous post. You can also visit veg restaurants such as Lotus vegetarian, Ling Zhi vegetarian restaurant, Whole earth vegetarian restaurant, Annalakshmi Restaurant (Indian cuisine). At Little India, there are also lots of vegetarian places for you to eat out and many other non-vegetarian places serving veg options.
One of the more familiar non-Chinese cuisine would be Indian Cuisine. In some non-vegetarian Indian outlets, you can also find roti prata served with vegetarian curries. If you are vegan do ask if the prata and curry contain ghee, egg or dairy. Indian cuisines, especially North Indian ones, uses dairy products in many of their dishes. South Indian cuisine is more vegan friendly, some of the dishes include Dosa (Dosa batter spread thinly on a skillet and fried and eaten with curry) and Putu mayam (a sweet dish of rice noodles served with brown sugar and grated coconut). Malay cuisine is less veg friendly, but many of the malay cakes, we call them kueh (koo-eh), are vegan friendly. Singapore also has a place which serves Mediterranean vegetarian cuisine. Called Original Sin it is located at Holland Village. This high end restaurant is vegan friendly. My friends told me that the dishes at Yogi Hub are special, so do give it a try if you come to Singapore for a visit.
Indinine cafe at Suntec City is also a good try for special dishes. All these places are vegan friendly. Hawker centres can be a great haunt for vegetarians, I shall give more details next time.
There are a number of vegetarian Chinese restaurants in Singapore. These restaurants will usually serve Chinese dishes although they may also serve dishes that are special and not found in the local hawker centres or coffee shops. Individual eateries will also serve some special dishes. You can find food that is not local to Singapore, such as burgers. You are also more likely to find organic food in restaurants and individual eateries. Chinese dishes are mostly vegan, but when in doubt, do clarify. If you are looking for non-chinese cuisine at non-chinese eateries, Singapore also caters to your preference. I will let you know more about these in the next post.
Places selling vegetarian food are aplenty in Singapore, as I mentioned in the previous post. Almost everywhere you go, you can find Chinese vegetarian eateries within walking distance. Chinese vegetarian food stalls (those at coffee shops* and hawker centres**) will usually have the option of rice/rice vermicelli/noodles and the choice of 3 different dishes (mix vegetables rice) to go with it. I usually like to try out their other local Chinese dishes, such as fried rice, fried hor fun (flat Chinese rice noodle), and won ton mee (noodles served usually with mock pork and mock meat dumplings).
Besides the local Chinese food, these stalls sometimes sell other traditional dishes inspired by the other ethnic groups. Some of these dishes include tom yam and mee siam (inspired by Thailand), mee rebus (Malay inspired), laksa peranakan (Chinese and Malay inspired)and curry (Indian inspired).
Unlike cuisines found in many non-Asian countries, many of the Chinese vegetarian outlets here do not use 5 kinds of plants in their cooking. These are mainly onions, garlic, leeks, chives, and scallions (spring onions). This, I think, is due to religious influence. Hence, you might find the food bland if you are a big fan of these five plants. However, some of the food does taste nice despite not using these plants in the dishes. I will talk more about vegetarian Chinese restaurants and individual eateries in my next post.
*Coffee shop does not refer to the usual coffee house or café - it refers to a shop which houses several food stalls and one drinks stall.
**Hawker centre is like a big coffee shop – it’s usually found near markets in an open, sheltered area. There are a lot more food stalls and more than one drinks stall
I am a final year graduate student, based in Singapore, soon to be searching for a job.
I like to promote vegetarianism to the world and hope to start my own business in the future. My blog will be about my thoughts and experiences, and how it is like being a vegetarian in Singapore.
Singapore is a sunny island-country located 1 degree north of the equator in South East Asia. The temperature is about 27C to 32C all year round. If you come here to visit, you will be thrilled to find vegetarian eateries almost everywhere (the important thing is whether you know where they are). Singapore is a multi-racial and multi-religion country, and the major languages spoken are English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. A large number of the people here are of Chinese ethnicity, so you will see a lot of the vegetarian outlets selling Chinese food. Some of these eateries, however, also serve vegetarian versions of non-Chinese cuisines. I will let you know
more about the vegetarian food in Singapore in my next post, stay tuned!
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