I was excited (and a little apprehensive) to order our first 'farmer's box' from Talula Farms last week.
To be honest, I was a bit apprehensive that I would receive a box full of half-wilted kangkong, watercress, local lettuce and bananas that would proceed to die after clogging up my fridge for three days.
So I was pretty thrilled to find beautifully fresh spinach, cauliflower, mushrooms, carrots, potatoes...
As well as (surprising to me) apples, avocadoes, tangerines, zucchini and cucumbers!
I honestly hadn't realised peaches, apples, tangerines and avocadoes could grow in our climate!
Which made me think about how I'm probably still living with a whole other lot of assumptions about what's 'local' here.
But at the moment, the practical challenge takes priority: how can I best use the $55 worth of vegetables that came in my Farmer's Box?
The creed here for now is Nemo Resideo: No Vegetable left behind.
We've been having box veggies with all our meals:
and I think we've already got our money's worth--though it's barely dented the hoard in the crisper!
But the big step for me was using fresh carrots to make carrot cake cupcakes which turned out surprisingly well, given I'm not a baker and we didn't have any baking powder.
I substituted yoghurt and baking soda (which we keep for coffee stains--yes, studying Chemistry came in useful after all) and three got eaten while they were cooling, before I could take a photograph!
They were Delicious!
But the issue is, when you say 'I made carrot cake', here, it's automatically assumed that you've got chai tow kway on offer.
Singaporean Chai tow kway literally 'fried carrot cake' is made of rice flour paste and steamed radishes and contains no carrots. It's a (delicious) savoury dish that comes in black and white versions.
The confusion arises because in Hokkien both radishes and carrots are chai tow (菜头).
There's also Lo Pak Go, a Cantonese version of the dish, which is commonly and less confusingly translated as 'Cantonese Radish Cake'.
Maybe the most famous Chai Tow Kway hawker in the old days was Madam Ng of Serangoon Gardens. Not only because she added 'real' red carrots (more expensive at the time) to the dish, or because her carrot cake pieces were crisp outside, soft inside and bound together omelette style... but most of all because during the terrible floods of 1954, Madam Ng continued cooking at her Potong Pasir stall and offered her carrot cake free to flood victims there.
Over 10,000 people were affected by the floods that hit some of our poorest kampong communities. Singapore was still a British Crown Colony then, and the British government declared an ongoing state of 'emergency' in response to calls for aid and Independence which were perceived as part of a communist threat. 1954 also witnessed the formation of the People’s Action Party. Thanks to the PAP, those slums are barely a memory now, but I really hope we'll remember Madam Ng and her chai tow kway.
Singapore has always accepted and embraced disparities and dualities. It's part of our mixed heritage what keeps our identity evolving.
So yes, there's room for more than one kind of carrot cake.
And I suspect that's true of writing too. After all, what's 'local material' on a granite island where almost everything is imported?
As Aunty Lee would say, 'I am Peranakan, so what I cook must be Peranakan food right?'
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