Blog

One of the great things about the KKC team is that we’ve got very different tastes and approaches to cooking. For example, Alex, as you may have picked up, likes his chilli. In fact, he really likes it. It’s not a huge exaggeration to say that there’s very little food of any kind he wouldn’t put chilli with.

I’m considerably more moderate in my chilli usage. Sure, I’ll use it in some things – I love me a good noodle soup, a great chilli con carne or some seriously Szechuan stuff – but it’s always had rather a specific place for me.

And that goes for hot food as a whole. Curry? Sure. It’s a sauce and you stick bits of meat in it, then serve it with rice or naan. Cayenne pepper? Let me go get my gumbo pot.

In fact, hot food has been a bit of a blind spot for me – I didn’t even realise my thinking was as restricted as it was. Until last week, and my trip to Singapore, which totally destroyed and rebuilt my notion of “hot”.

Singaporeans are obsessed with food. Absolutely bloody obsessed. There are more restaurants, food stalls, vendors, snack bars, and other sellers of stuff wot is edible in the average Singaporean mall than in many British towns. And believe me, they have a whole shitload of malls. Twenty of them on one street, for starters. They don’t say “how are you?” to greet each other. They say “have you eaten?”. Obsessed.

And they put something laden with capaiscin in just about everything.

Take omelette, for example. A fairly standard chicken omelette, maybe a bit more like a frittata. Except that the Singaporeans serve it with a bowl of curry sauce. Cut up omelette, dip in curry sauce, eat.

Or lobster. A delicate, almost ethereal taste, so expensive and understated that it has to be treated with immense care? Balls to that. Smother it in chilli. Seriously, just pile that shit on there.

Or fresh crab. They call it “Singaporean pepper crab” for a very good reason – it’s about 50% crab and 50% pepper.

And here’s the thing: it’s all absolutely bloody gorgeous. The omelette and curry sauce goes together so well you’re amazed that you’ve not thought of it before – peps up the egg flavour, adds another thick, warm, piquant, deep layer to the otherwise slightly thin frittata. You don’t even realise you need it until you try it, and feel the sauce lubricate the dryness of the cooked egg. Lobster? The lobster flavour still comes through loud and clear past the chilli – they don’t fight at all – but now you’ve got this incredible fresh, sweet, delicate lobster flesh (and I’d met mine alive and wriggling 5 minutes before I ate it), with the lobster taste complimented by a light, high, hard fire, blasting into your mouth and giving the rather subdued lobster a “fuck you, I’m fucking chillied” attitude. This isn’t lobster you’re all up yourself about in a French restaurant, this lobster’s down with the kids on the street, and suddenly it’s the most natural thing in the world to be sitting there on the dockfront with lobster tail in one hand, beer in the other, arguing about filmmaking and how hot the girls on the waterfront are. It’s still delicate and complex, but now it stands up, too.

The crab is just stunning. Like the lobster, but with more body, less fire but more peppery, smoky oomph, again not competing with the robust, sweet, sea taste of the crab, and the delicious hands-on thing of tearing your food apart before chowing down on its delicate flesh.

And now I’m just totally rethinking my entire approach to hot stuff. I’ve always thought that care and attention were key, that you had to pair heat with strong, meaty tastes – even seafood gumbo’s pretty flavourful in a hundred ways. But now I’m thinking about delicate flavours – what about chilli scallops? We already know chilli prawns work. What about lemon sole, or plaice? Rather than delicately poaching the sole, why not hack it up into pieces, then stir-fry it for seconds with a bunch of pepper? What about roast potatoes served with a curry dip, or liberally coated with as many chillis as I can find in the cupboard? What about chilli stocks? Chilli and pea veloute?

I’m on a chilli mission.

Have you had any experiences like this? Ever suddenly had your culinary world taken apart and put back together again in a different order?