Kaya toast
Dear newsletter friends, I hope the first half of 2021 has treated you well and that you are coping well with the restrictions in Singapore (or wherever else in the world you may be). Here in Melbourne, we are in lockdown and aren’t able to travel beyond 5km of where we live. You know the funny thing is that during our first lockdown, I was secretly thriving. It is truly an introvert’s dream to be able to work from home and to have all the mental space to live, breathe, and create. Someone asked if I felt lonely being isolated back then, and my answer was that I was struggling with homesickness more than loneliness. But the culmination of a full year living in rural Victoria, not being home for two years, and going through this second lockdown has me feeling pretty wretched.
Moving to a new country means that your social circle is greatly reduced and that you have to forge new friendships from ground zero, and now that we have moved out to Daylesford, we are far away from any friends that we might have had in the city. I think it is also the fact that I can’t drive and there aren’t any buses, trams, Grab services, or trains where I live that has created this itchy feeling of cabin fever. Wex has his work and colleagues to socialize with, but for someone like me who works almost exclusively from home right now, the solitude and isolation is starting to grate.
In my mind is a romanticized notion of Singapore. One where you bump into friends whenever you’re out. One where good food is able to come to your doorstep from any part of the island with the click of a button. But above all, what I really miss is the level of human interaction I used to have - blackjack games or rounds of mahjong with the cousins, breaking apart durians while watching TV with the in-laws, chatting with the aunties or uncles at the wet markets/ hawker centres, and spontaneous zichar dinners or prata suppers with friends in the same neighbourhood.
I always found it unnerving whenever I returned to Singapore that so much has changed/ is changing. I remember the first time I saw the fountain at Jewel, it was both a sense of marvel and pride, and a feeling that I couldn’t quite articulate… Possibly a slight sense of disbelief that in the span of time I’d been gone, something like this could have been built? Sometimes I feel like I can’t keep up with the pace of Singapore’s development.
While reading up on Singapore’s kopitiam history for a sharing, I stumbled upon a quote that summed up my feelings rather well, “Singapore is constantly in the process of construction, developing and making progress. But in the midst of that, a side effect or the cost of this rapid change and the loss of places is a sense of impermanence, the feeling that we are nomads clinging onto the ghosts of our memories. Our desire for nostalgia or the authentic kopitiam experience stems from a desire to belong, to have some form of heritage or history that we can tangibly hold onto.”
This COVID pandemic further compounds the rate at which things are changing in Singapore, this feeling of impermanence. My favourite Waffletown haunt has closed. There’s so much talk of hawkers hanging up their aprons. It makes me so sad that what we take for granted to be there forever - like hawker food as we know it today - might have a shelf life of less than a decade. And the worst part is I’m not there to enjoy it while it lasts, or to be on the ground to do something about it - that’s one of the most frustrating parts of being abroad.
But what to do? Can’t do anything but quell this feeling of homesickness, loneliness, and helplessness with food. And so I made myself our national breakfast yesterday morning - soft-boiled eggs, kaya toast, and kopi.
I don’t drink coffee and, truth be told, I don’t even enjoy runny yolks. But there’s a nursery quality about this breakfast, particularly when you’re abroad. I’ve not had soft-boiled eggs in decades, but eating it reminded me afresh of mornings with my grandparents at the now-demolished Lakeview market - the feeling of sliding the soy-egg mix from my saucer down my throat, swallowing to get over the odour of half-cooked yolks - and of hurried pre-dawn soft-boiled eggs breakfasts before catching the school bus.
It made me feel, for a moment, that I was home.
Kopitiam Bread
I’ve always loved the crustless fluffy loaves of bread that are often wrapped in plastic bags and sold at provision shops. They are a staple at our traditional coffeeshops (kopitiams) where they are eaten with kaya and thick slices of butter. They are the perfect vehicle for kaya - I can’t imagine eating kaya on sourdough! The origins of this particular type of bread are murky and it goes by several names in Singapore. Some call it Hailam bread, attributing its origins to the Hainanese who dominated the kopitiam trade back in the 1950s. Others credit the Indian Muslims for bringing roti bengali to Singapore. Another name this bread goes by is Nanyang bread. Either way, the beauty of this loaf is that it is not enriched, made only with basic ingredients. Yet, the tenderness and fluffiness of this loaf is unparalleled. In Singapore, you would be able to find both white and brown variants of this bread. You can substitute white sugar for the black sugar to get a pure white loaf.