22.4.2010Memories of RRF - Food for thought (Thoughts of food)
Even though we were brought up not to emphasise food but rather eat to live (c.f. live to eat), we all had our chance to indulge and savour various delicacies and cuisines. Thanks to Amma’s culinary skills, she learned from Sultan Ammah in Caunter Hall and thanks to Appa for his preoccupation with rich food. In fact, my 2-cents worth of theory of aetiology of the Shams’ fall from grace after the financial tsunami in 1970 is probably due to his undying desire to fulfil his insatiable palatal gratifications. He must have been regularly eating and spending his friends at regular outlets on credit. When the time came for payments, he must have discovered that he had overshot his budget. With burgeoning family expenses due to the expanding family, he would not have been able to pay the outstanding bill. That would start the first signing of the blank I.O.U. Chits with the friendly money lenders. To pay interest on the loans, more loans must have been taken so much that what appeared as an initially measly sum had later snowballed into avalanche proportions and glaciered the collapse of the happy young Sham family originally lived in 15, Road 5 of Brown Gardens. Very wise indeed…and the hijrah to RRF commenced…and finally returned 12 long years later! (Like Santhi Nilayam in a Sivaji movie).
One of the most important lessons that we learned in childhood was never to live on credit and never lend money to others. This invaluable life lesson was taught to us by Amma’s debtors through their antics when we were assigned to retrieve the monthly collections. Coming back to food and RRF…
With the tragic story of boiled rice and canned sardines prepared after selling off a table fan, the financial climate improved after the shrewd and hawkish financial management by Amma. After the mandatory bimonthly deductions, Amma was given the salary packet to prepare a thrifty budget that helped the family sail through the choppy weather. Despite the modest income, she managed to save some money for a rainy day. Her sewing and embroidery skills helped her in this end. We even once were part of a cottage industry earning money by cutting 'papadum' into pre-designated sizes, thanks to the introduction by Mr Jeevah of Jalan Boundary.
The preparation of daily meals was not an essential agenda in our household. One of Amma’s famous quotations was, “When you go for an interview, they would not ask you which food you have eaten before but rather on your academic achievement.” There was no place to order our menu for the following day, like what my children are doing today. No way, Jose! Meals were balanced with rice, a protein dish and roughage. Every third or fourth day, there would be leftovers for lunch, followed by noodles or wheat flour thosai for dinner. During the tail end of the month, when the coffers were low, and lunch was leftovers, we would all be waiting eagerly for Appa to return with the salary packet. We would have a self-indulging meal of Char Koay Teow bought from the seller at A Block. For 80 cents, one can indulge in a lard filled flat rice noodle, giant prawns, cockles, thinly sliced dried pork meat sprinkled liberally with Chinese chives (kucai). Sometimes when Appa has to work overtime in the bank at the end of the month, he would buy home a big packet of Beehoon Singapura from Craven ‘A’ Restaurant in town. Memories of the taste of that glass rice noodles instantaneously stimulate my salivary glands, making me salivate like Pavlov’s dogs. I suppose in needy times, everything and anything would taste heavenly.
Breakfast was just another meal without much fanfare. Every day without fail, it was bread, Daisy margarine and coffee. On Sundays, we had thosai for breakfast. The bread (Vanggali Rotti – aerated bread) is bought from the Mamak bread vendor (from Ismalia Bakery in Transfer Road) who would come on his motorcycle (earlier it used to be a bicycle, but he never actually got a full driving licence, only learning licence till we left RRF!) in the evenings (at Block A). This bread vendor had a great following; many people would be waiting for his arrival. Some Malay ladies were openly seen flirting with him despite his shabby appearance and sweaty putrefying body odour. Scientists say that the axillae's apocrine gland is one of the rudimentary glands that supposedly lost its aphrodisiac properties when man climbed the evolutionary ladder. I wonder if that is true.
So it was bread, margarine and sometimes jams almost every day for breakfast. Appa would prepare this, and he would pack a slice of margarine spread bread to take to school. I religiously eat it during recess as it helped me save the 5 sen or later 10 sen that was given to me. On the other hand, my siblings hated this preparation. They would bring it back home untouched and throw it off the balcony before anybody found out! Of course, Amma once found fungus grown bread in Sheila's bag. Unlike Alexander Fleming, who got the Nobel Prize after discovering Penicillin from a leftover sandwich, Sheila got a bashing (kasta kaalam). This routine of breakfast has remained with me till today (minus kaya and jams).
The Hindu scriptures mentioned that the taste bud is one of the senses that need to be controlled to attain salvation and improve our karma standings. Being the human, we all are, tempted by temptations, but we can always blame it on Satan's devilish work! Thanks to the excellent management of the household, the family dining menu became varied and more sophisticated. Of course, this was far in between as the main priority was to regain family pride via academic excellence. As I tell my kids now, the untold secret of life, “Set your priorities straight; do not let other teeny weenie hindrances in life sway you away from your priorities!” echoing what Amma told me decades ago.
On rare occasions, twice or thrice a month, we would have the luxury of indulging in chicken or mutton. Being the excellent cook that Amma is, all these dishes taste good to the last drop, so much so we would stir rice on the remaining gravy of chicken or mutton varrukal to literally taste every minute bit of its goodness. There I go salivating again! She once prepared “mutton cukka” with liberal use of vinegar, onion and spring onion. All the “mutton chukka” that they are selling in the Indian restaurants today are a shame to the dish's name.
By the mid to late 70s, goat tripe was introduced to us. Only Appa and I particularly enjoyed this delicacy. The meticulous preparation of tripe from a stinking, slimy raw material from the butcher’s to the dinner table was indeed a Herculean task. Thanks to Amma, who had mastered the art of clearing the green chlorophyll filled inner lining of the stomach and clearing off the mucus from the intestines by inverting it with the aid of a long thin stick, boiling off the stench, making a spicy dish and curry out of it with mixed with horse gram dhal or dhalcha. Both Appa and I had a field day, but the not the weak-hearted ones like both my sisters. I remember Amma once cooked the sinful cholesterol-laden heart vessel clogging omelette of goat brain mixed with chicken egg. Another was spicy mutton liver preparation and goat hooves’ soup. (Of course not all on the same day).
On most days, the menu is predictable. Invariably we will have leftovers on Mondays for lunch followed by light dinner. Tuesdays and Fridays will see sambar/ rasam/ tomato soup/ thanisaar (either sayur manis, murunka keerai or taugeh) with fried tauhu/ fried fish sambal or fried fish with belacan sambal/ ikan bilis sambal ± leafy green vegetable (spinach with coconut gratings, sawi or kangkong). Cabbage is considered high class and is usually prepared with chicken or mutton. Cockles were affordable; hence, they were often cooked with cloves spicy as a protein source. I still enjoy these, much to the others' amazement, due to its infamous unenviable ability to disseminate many communicable foodborne diseases!
Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays were the time for fish curry (the small varieties – sardines, kembung), canned sardines’ curry or salted fish curry (including anchovies and the dreaded ikan gelama). Somehow salted fish curry will go with taugeh and tauhu. I really hated this salted ikan gelama curry as the delicate bones have got stuck in my throat more than once. I cursed the person who had first thought of the idea to prepare such a curry. We all look forward to Sundays when black pomfret, dhalca or chicken is on the menu.
Sheila and Lats also picked up cooking from Amma and perfected Sultan Ammah’s secret chicken sambal. Talking about Sheila’s cooking, I remember once when a piece of roti canai accidentally slipped into the tiny crack between the kitchen table-top and the kitchen wall. All our ingenious manoeuvres in trying to retrieve the bread proved futile, much to the joy of the colony of cockroaches residing with us in the unit! Their party must have gone on for months. Roaches were indeed a real menace in RRF, and they thrive in the gutters and rubbish chutes. I particularly enjoyed squashing them with my feet after a traumatising childhood with multiple unpleasant encounters with the flying variety (female) and creepy crawlies in the shadows of the night whilst sleeping.
From food, I ventured to roaches… It will not be complete if I do not harp on the farmer who collects food remains from each flat daily (363 days a year – off for the 1st and 2nd day of CNY). Like all the characters in our childhood, he had no name. We call him ‘Pandi Tomb Man’ – the man who collected in barrels for pigs- and that is precisely what he was doing- to feed the organic waste to his poultry and pigs. Once a day, between 12 and 1pm, the brigade (he and his assistants) will make a clean sweep of all the leftovers left for them, leaving a trail of stench enough to leave a pregnant mother retching all her guts out! Nobody complains just before CNY when he actually distributes 20 large ‘grade A’ farm eggs to each house!
Eating out was unheard of in those days. The most we did was to take away food from the stalls. Besides the A Block Char Koay Teow man, a lady used to plain simple beehoon and noodles (mee) in the mornings between Blocks D and E. A Mamak man used to Mee Goreng and Mee Rebus at this same site but later relocated to the market site behind H block.
All these discussions on food have made me crave something to eat. When we were young, we did not have the means to eat what and when we wanted, but now we have the means but not the heart for it, got to watch the abdominal girth! That is life for you and me…
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