Explore Culinary Asia

This woman is Singapore’s #1 Foodie

Violet Oon, the official global food ambassador for Singapore, consummate professional, warm unassuming passionate foodie, is even better in person than her reputation. She demonstrates the best of entrepreuenrship, finding multiple divisions for her thriving businesses. Her cooking school quarters (across the hall from her lovely apartment are perfect for those who want to truly experience Singapore food in all its glorious diversity.

And Violet is doing more than lamenting the demise of Singapore’s legendary “hawker centers”, now being pushed aside for the airconditioned, overly santized shopping center approach. She has purchased a hawker stall for serving her signature dishes but also as an additonal cooking venue for students where they get to try their hand at oversized woks in a vintage Singapore atmosphere.

Here’s a sample of Violet’s comments on cooking a nature that exemplifies who she is.
I had started on my quest for earth’s gifts to us as an emotional exercise triggered off by an interview on why foods served ON and wrapped IN leaves taste so much better than foods served on metal, porcelain or plastic.

Close encounters with nature have always been a part of my life – after all as a food critic, as someone who loves to entertain and as a cook I work with the fruits of nature constantlyI love working with leaves – the pandan, bamboo, lotus, banana, coconut all make wonderful food receptacles, wrappers and plates.They are the original disposable tableware of nature, biodegradable, eco-friendly and best of all, imparting a natural fragrance to food.

Big thumbs up for Violet! I can’t wait to introduce her to foodies traveling with me on a tour I am plotting. It’s the Double “S” — two foodie heavens Singapore and Seoul where you will be immersed in distrinctly different Asian food cultures. Bring it on!

One of the joys of being in Singapore is that everyone wants to take me to experience their favorite food, assuring me we are headed for the best, always with the exclamation “die, die, must try”. So when my friend Lai Fun insisted that I absolutely must try Thunder Tea Rice, I jumped at a new for me food adventure.

Even with Saturday evening traffic jams and crowds at the food court, it was worth it. This fresh, gently aromatic dish goes down oh, so easily and makes the tummy applaud. And who knew until later that it is a cold herbal soup that is poured like over the heaping rice and vegetables?

Turns out it is a Hakka dish usually eaten on the 7th day of Lunar New Year. I can’t imagine limiting this dish to one day a year! When I get back to my own kitchen, I intend to create my own version and keep it on hand, perfect for a light meal after yoga or a late night snack.

The rice salad is made with finely-diced ingredients such as tofu, long beans, ground nuts, pickled radish, dried anchoves or shrimp mixed into cooked brown rice and served with tea made from tea leaves, basil and mint (plus a fist full of other herbal goodies) all steeped in hot water.

Originally the process was more complicated (and probably tasted even better) when the tea leaves and herbs were ground in a handmade earthen vessel with scored markings on the inside. A guava tree branch, chosen because it is hard and non-poisonous, was used as a pestle.

From checking out blogs and the reaction of Lai Fun’s husband Tom, the dish isn’t always top of the list for males. One Singapore blog referred to it as a “chick dish”.

Stay tuned and I’ll share with you my kind of recipe – one I create by experimentation. Here’s to Thunder Tea Rice and to your very good health!.

Not so surprising that I have been in Singapore, the foodie haven of Asia, for a week with no time to blog until today. It’s been business lunches {gratefully, Singaporeans, unlike we Americans, have the good sense to honor relationship building and better digestion by not talking about business.} and those glorious evenings of food under tropical velvet blue skies.

At one of those lunches, we journeyed to a non descript row of shop houses and entered a plain little restaurant called Bistro One Zero Three. And then the real surprise. The Mediterranean-themed menu looked great and tasted superb. I had Spinach & Ricotta Sorrentino with prawns and sun dried tomatoes. It is competiting very successfully with all the Asian goodies I have consummed since (more on that later)

So if you find yourself in Singapore with a yin for some other world food, this little bistro is highly recommended.