Modern Nyonya woman
A conversation with the Julia Child of Singapore
A conversation with the Julia Child of Singapore
It’s funny how the most important things I learned from Singapore food guru Violet Oon were not about Singaporean food. The first was about the way I looked at Filipino food, and the second was about being a good writer.
Chef, teacher, cookbook author, food columnist, restaurateur, food consultant, Singapore’s food ambassador, television presenter—Violet Oon has covered all aspects of the food industry. She currently has three eponymous and highly regarded restaurants in Singapore—National Kitchen by Violet Oon at the National Gallery of Singapore, Violet Oon Singapore, and Violet Oon Satay Bar and Grill. The core of what she cooks is Nyonya, the traditional cuisine of Singapore that represents the marriage of Chinese and Malay cuisine in an East meets East fusion, but she overlays it with other Singapore cuisines like Chinese, Indian, and Malay.
In the past, Nyonya women cooked at home, but it was the men who opened or worked in restaurants. So in many ways, she is a trailblazer. “I’m really a journalist,” she explains. “I’m not a professional chef in the sense that I didn’t work in restaurants and kitchens. I cook a lot, and I teach. I love to teach. It’s important because you capture the culture. I actually did sociology, so I capture food more from a sociological point of view.” As Singapore’s Food Ambassador, she relates that she always tries to showcase what is Singapore in a correct and authentic way, or in an artistic way that is still very true to the culture.
During her cooking class at Discovery Primea’s Flame restaurant, it was her succinct, off-the-cuff remarks about food that made the afternoon so enjoyable and informative. Violet Oon, I later find out, has never been shy about expressing her opinions on food. During her class, she taught three dishes— black pepper prawns, lemongrass steamed fish, and Singapore’s famed chili crab—selected because the ingredients were available here in Manila. That was our first lesson, use what you have on hand. Since Maggi ketchup wasn’t available, she used another brand and adjusted the sugar and vinegar quantities in the chili crab sauce to get the correct flavor. An old hand at teaching, her style was very relaxed, she did most of the work herself, relying on her assistant only a few times, and making sure to taste everything. That was our second lesson, taste everything, as she related the story of an aunt who used MSG instead of sugar to bake a cake. And because it was during the Second World War, the awful-tasting cake couldn’t be wasted. It was eaten, and when that became impossible, it was recycled, crumbled and used again as MSG.
As she deep-fried the prawns for black pepper prawns until they were half-cooked, she revealed that everything in Chinese cooking is deep-fried. How else, she said, could all the vegetables be so vibrantly colored, yet not overcooked? And as she added a deliciously indecent amount of butter to the wok, and again added more to finish the dish, she said gleefully, “When you’re cooking for people, whether you kill them is not the point. The point is for them to think that you’re a great cook.” And with that, I understood why writer Justin Bergman, in a 2013 article for the New York Times, referred to her as the Julia Child of Singapore.
It wasn’t just Julia Child that she reminded me of, it was all of our glamorous grandmothers—the ones who cooked wonderful food but were always beautifully coiffed. The ones who cooked by training their cooks to their exacting culinary standards, and stood looking over their shoulders to make sure things were done properly. She reminded me of my own grandmother, who ran her kitchen with precision and who attributed her youthful looking skin to Pond’s cold cream and Oil of Olay. Violet Oon remarked that her unlined face and beautiful skin are because of the steam from an Asian kitchen, as she shared that when steaming we had to occasionally open and close the lid to release the steam, otherwise pressure would build up and cause an explosion.
She kept up her stream of information and nuggets of wisdom throughout the class, sharing her life and philosophies with us. She taught us about authenticity, tradition, how to learn. “The most important thing when you are learning how to cook is that you must forget everything you know. When you go into someone else’s kitchen, take in whatever they have to show you. Don’t bring your own knowledge into it, because then you will never get new knowledge, or you will get knowledge that is mixed up.”
At her restaurants in Singapore, she serves food that is authentic and traditional because she feels that there is not enough of that in Singapore, where things are very modern. “You have a deep-rooted rural culture in the Philippines,” she reminds us. “We don’t have that in Singapore, we lost it. With information and the internet, I feel that in the last 30 to 40 years we have continued to be colonized. A young person now in the Philippines will know everything about balsamic vinegar, but how much does he know about his own vinegar? How much do you know? I was fascinated that you have coco vinegar, and cashew vinegar, and many more. That knowledge that you have on balsamic vinegar, you should have that same knowledge about your own food. You’re not going to impress a French chef by making French food, you’re going to impress him by cooking your own food and understanding it! Look at your Filipino cakes. Today it’s like everything is a chocolate cake, but where is your cake? Where is the space for your food?”And there it was. She reminded us that we had to learn about our own food, and make space for it.
“As a writer, as a journalist, windows and doors are open to you which nobody else has access to,” she later told me. “So instead of keeping it to myself, I wanted to share what I knew with my readers, and that’s how I started sharing recipes. You have to have that sense of admiration and not think that you know everything, and that comes from being a writer, especially a journalist. The whole job is chronicling someone else’s story, not your own. If you’re a good feature writer, it’s not yourself that comes forward, you’re trying to capture the other person.”
As I end, I’d like to revise what I said in the beginning. The most important thing that I learned from Violet Oon, was that knowledge should be shared. I hope I managed to tell her story well.
The Hub Series at Flame is a collection of culinary experiences that brings chefs out of the kitchen for intimate and engaging gatherings. After Violet Oon’s one-day only cooking class, other classes in the works include a knife skills class, and wine and cocktail pairings. For more information on future classes, email discoveryprimeasocial@gmail.com.
‘The whole job is chronicling someone else’s story, not your own. If you’re a good feature writer, it’s not yourself that comes forward, you’re trying to capture the other person.’