- 3 hours ago
Bon Appétit meets chef Lucas Sin at Samy’s Curry in Singapore to try the country’s legendary fish head curry. Watch chefs prepare this famous Singaporean dish with fresh spices, curry leaves, tamarind, coconut milk and white snapper and discover the history and culture behind one of Singapore's most beloved culinary traditions.
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00:04Oh nice. Welcome to the jungle. I'm in Singapore, in Dempsey, outside of Sammy's Curry. They've
00:11been open since 1963 and they specialize in sapadu, this is banana leaf meals. So we should come see
00:17them. This way. This is how the restaurant works. You get your banana leaf, you get your rice, you
00:22get all your curries, your dalas, all your textures, all of that opulence is on display here at the
00:27buffet line. This cooking starts very early in the morning, but there is one thing that they make
00:32to order and that's why we're here to see the fish head curry. A unique Singaporean delicacy that has
00:38to be cooked inside of the kitchen. Come with me. Welcome to the kitchen on the left. The biggest
00:44pots I've ever seen in my life. Gigantic. Flavors slowly simmering away. But to start this curry,
00:50you have to start with the fish. The fish head itself is angoli, which is what's known as white
00:55snapper or sea bream. The shape of the head means that you can get all these different textures out
01:00of the fish head. The upper lip, the bottom jaw, the cheek, even these bottom parts down here all
01:06provide different types of textures after they're cooked. Fish head curry is an interesting story
01:11because it's a delicacy among Chinese people. In the context of Singapore, Indian chefs invented this
01:18dish in the beginning for Chinese consumers, but then ended up proliferating all over Singapore.
01:22So chefs preparing a new fish head curry. The first step is actually to build a delicious base.
01:28That delicious curry base starts with fresh ingredients, the dried chilies, onions, and tomatoes.
01:34Whoa. This is stone? Yeah. And this is also stone. Oh, cool. Two pieces of stone. One at an angle.
01:42Fresh ingredients go in. A little bit of water goes in.
01:47Oh, cool. Oh, I understand. It's an industrially sized mortar and pestle. The slow grinding process,
01:55slow extraction of that water means that you can get it as fine as possible. It's pretty similar to
02:00doing it by hand, but it's going to get it finer than, for example, a food processor. You see all
02:05of
02:05those juices being extracted out of the onions and the tomatoes. I bet if you got very, very close,
02:10it's actually quite smooth, the two stones. So the extraction is a little bit gentler. You're
02:15breaking open all those cell walls, getting everything ready for the cook. This is the starting
02:20point for a lot of the curry is the starting point for a lot of the cooking. The aromatic base
02:24of every
02:25single curry is different, which means this one is specifically calibrated for the fish head curry.
02:30This step is the tempering of the spices, the activation of the aromatics. First thing that
02:35goes in is dried spices, fenugreek. Without activating it in spices, it's not going to have that
02:41depth of flavor. And then fennel seeds and then cumin. And you're going to start smelling it in the air.
02:47Then come the fresh aromatics that are higher in moisture, which means that everything's going to
02:52slow down in cooking. Temperature is being brought down just a little bit, but now you can start to smell
02:58the red onions, the chili peppers, and the garlic happen. The fresh curry leaves, oftentimes an
03:04underrated and forgotten component in a lot of more East Asian-style curries, goes in next.
03:13They're called aromatics because they are aromatic. You should be able to smell them.
03:17When I say the aromatics are activated, it means that they are elevated, they're levitating in the air,
03:23and you'll be able to smell them. It's a good cue for when the next ingredient needs to go in.
03:28Now the base aromatic paste. Chef has already developed a deep brown color. The addition of
03:36the water crashing into the oil means that it's going to start to emultify and bubble away.
03:41Chili powder for spice, coriander for warmth, turmeric for color, and for earthiness.
03:49That base combination is very classic. All of this is mind-blowingly exciting to me because for a lot
03:58of Western chefs and even Chinese cooking, our first step is something like salt and pepper
04:01or light soy, dark soy. Whenever I think about South Asian cooking, the first step is a hundred
04:08different dimensions, and those precise ratios built off of experience and generations of thought
04:13and expertise. That's good stuff. Oh, it's starting to split a little bit, which is a good indication
04:19that your paste has achieved sufficient texture. Cool. You see those oil droplets on the top?
04:29That means that the paste is hot enough. It's pushing the oil out and the oil and the water is
04:35starting to separate. That oil extracting from the water means that you can start to extract different
04:40types of compounds, different types of flavor compounds. Tamarind paste squeezed into the water.
04:46So tamarind is a fruit. It's also a source of acidity and often a marker for the more South Indian
04:53style fish head curries that are out there. Tamarind is interesting because it is high in tartaric acid,
05:00which is different from acetic acid and citric acid. Citric acid from limes, for example, acetic acid from
05:06vinegar. Tartaric acid is a little bit more aggressive. It comes at you very, very quickly
05:10and gives you that distinct flavor profile that people know of fish head curry from South Indian
05:16restaurants. And the fish is going to go in directly into the curry and not into the water.
05:22You don't want it. You want it to cook fully concentrated, full of flavor.
05:30Chef ladles a little bit more of the gravy, more of the sauce over the fish
05:34dish to make sure that it cooks evenly. The time that the fish takes to cook is based on its
05:39size,
05:39about 10 to 15 minutes for this medium sized head. It's gorgeous. Chef really wanted to show us how the
05:45curry paste was made from scratch. But typically in the restaurant, when an order comes in, this is what
05:50happens. This is the gigantic vat, the biggest pot I've ever seen in my life, is simmering away and fish
05:56head is
05:56dropped into order. He'll take the fish head out and put it inside of the clay pot. These clay pots
06:02look like
06:03those Chinese clay pots and they will heat up, hold onto that heat for the fire. They go onto a
06:12smaller
06:12burner, ridiculously hot, and chef scoops in a little bit of that curry, which has been absorbing
06:19all of the flavor from all the fish head that's been cooking all day over the top of the fish
06:24head.
06:25That curry is full of fish and seafood flavor, as well as all of those base aromatic that he's developed
06:31over time. Come over here, look at the flame. What's awesome about this is, first there's a Chinese
06:37clay pot, the fish head is inside of that pot with the curry. As the flame licks up on the
06:42side, that
06:42gravy is going to start to bubble, the sugars are going to start to caramelize against the edges,
06:47a little bit of those fat and all those things are going to hit the side of the flame and
06:51they're going
06:51to ignite. As they ignite, you get another layer of flavor. You get smokiness, you get a lot of that
06:56depth. And finally, because it's so, so, so hot, as the gravy begins to reduce, flavors start to
07:02concentrate. Oh, nice. All right, that's enough cooking. I'm going to go find myself a table,
07:08sit down, try this fish head curry. Sammy's, since 1963, has been known for sap badu, which is the
07:15banana leaf meal. When you order your banana leaf meal, you are guaranteed rice. You're also guaranteed
07:21an assortment of textures, pickles, and dal to add to each bite. What you do get to choose, though,
07:28is the proteins that come along with the meal. For today, I'm going to do the small fish head curry.
07:35I'll do one piece of masala chicken and then just one piece of the sambal pan.
07:40The fish head curry at Sammy's has become a staple and it's become an iconic dish within Singapore.
07:46They serve average of at least 100 a day and almost up to 200 on the weekends. Here it comes.
07:52Oh,
07:52fish head curry first. Thank you. Look at this. With the classic useless vegetable garnish, very good.
08:01Fish curry. You can smell it. You can see the caramelization along the edges. It's still bubbling
08:05because clay pots are so good at holding onto that heat. Oh, yes. Yes, please. So what rice is this?
08:11It's up to you anyways. Amazing. So nice. There's this wonderful thing that happens whenever you're
08:17eating warm food on top of banana leaf and there's reason for this. The banana leaf, one side is waxy,
08:24the other side is matte. The waxy side actually has a wax on it. When it heats up just a
08:31little bit,
08:32it produces a little bit of aroma. So all over Southeast Asia, Malaysia, for example, Indonesia,
08:38nasi lemak, you'll see banana leaf being employed in warm rice context so that the banana leaf ends up
08:45perfuming the rice. Yeah, some vegetable. Perfect. Today vegetable is the bottled bud. Oh.
08:51It's like a white pumpkin. It's Indian vegetable. Water gourd cooked inside of a dal. Lentils,
08:57bright yellow, some mustard seeds. You see a little bit of that cumin. This is a masala chicken.
09:01Oh, gorgeous. It's a sambal prawn. Awesome. You want to try this one, Bruce? Yes, sure. It's a maizu
09:08mutton. Oh, amazing. Yeah. Great. Thank you. This is a lot of food for one person, huh?
09:16Amazing. So cool. Look at all the different types of textures with the curry. First of all, from wet to
09:21dry, right? Sambal, prawns. One of the most exciting things you can see as a chef when it comes to
09:28curry is
09:28the splitting of the oil, which is to say that once it splits, the oil is going to carry different
09:36types of flavor compounds than the liquid, the water, and a little bit of mutton from the kitchen.
09:41But the fish head curry is the main thing here. Chef describes this gravy as relatively thin compared
09:48to a lot of the other Indian gravies. I mean, this you can almost drink like a soup. And now
09:54that we're
09:55coming towards the end of the day, we know that we have one of the most delicious versions possible
10:00that's soaked up all of that fish flavor from the other fish headsmen have been cooking all day.
10:05We should try to explore the different aspects of the fish head. First is a little bit of neck
10:10that is attached to it. That's this part in the end. So as you can imagine, this is the part
10:15that extends
10:16into the fillet. So you'll get a little bit of meatiness at the back. This is probably the tensest
10:22and flakiest part of that fish. Maybe a little bit of bones on the side, but that is the most
10:28recognizable every day. This is, I think, what white fish looks like texture. A little bit of flakiness.
10:33This type of snapper is flakiest, but it is also a little bit stringy. And note that because of the
10:38curry, because you want that flavor, it is braised for a longer period of time. So it might be more
10:43cooked than another application. Should we go for that first?
10:50Yum. Oh, that curry is so good. The first taste for me is like a pepper, tomato, eggplant type of
10:57situation. And then it slowly builds in terms of heat, but also the grounding spices. Definitely
11:03tastes coriander powder. The turmeric is just in the background. The spice for me, three out of five,
11:08maybe even two out of five. Not the most aggressive thing in the world. Most Asian kids know this. The
11:14most prized part of the fish oftentimes is the cheek because it's very, very tender. But on a gigantic
11:21head like the snapper, this cheek is huge. You see this triangle? That's all cheek. This is a piece
11:30that you often reserve for grandma. And yes, it's tender, but it's also cohesive. It's also one piece.
11:36It's a little bit of fenugreek there. Wow. Slippery. Yum. White salmon does a really good job. And it
11:46survives the amount of cooking that happens in the clay pot, the temperature. But apart from the belly,
11:51this jowl area is going to be the fattiest part of the fish. So all of this is going to
11:55come off in
11:55one piece. If I manipulate it correctly underneath this bone. This yu gao in Hong Kong. This is the
12:09neck. I mean, a lot of people who've been to Japanese izakayas will know this cut out of hamachi,
12:16out of salmon. This is the fattiness. I mean, you can see the gelatinousness of it. I'm going to break
12:23off the part behind the, near the gill here. This is my dad's favorite cut. You see it? You can
12:30get a
12:31sense of the texture here at the end. Gelatin, collagen, all of that slippery deliciousness stuff.
12:37This is why fish head is a Chinese delicacy. Because from the back all the way to the front,
12:43you get so many different textures of fish. You would be doing the fish a disservice if you were to
12:49just break all of this up, put everything in your mouth and just spit out the bones. I think
12:53dissecting it a little bit, experiencing the different textures is part of the game. Okay.
13:04Best bite so far. You see when you pull open the bottom, you see all of that fattiness,
13:11all of that gelatin, all of that collagen. That's melt in your mouth goodness, right? Not to use a
13:16cliche, but this is good for you. And it's ridiculous that this is part of a fish. If
13:23you were to only eat the filet, you'd only get the lean parts. Yum. I wouldn't say this is for
13:29beginners,
13:30but it is for the curious and it definitely is for the adventurous. The last but not least,
13:36many people, including my sister, are huge fans of the eye. I gotta say, I didn't grow up thinking
13:44this was the best thing in the world. But when in Singapore, fish head curry, that's a grand prize
13:49for a lot of people. There are some meals that you eat that you just don't stop thinking about them
13:55because as full as you are, you just want to continue to navigate the adventure of deliciousness.
14:01And I cannot think of very many other ways to eat other than banana leaf that would be this opulent,
14:07especially in the middle of the day. The fact that there are so many things in front of you that
14:12have
14:12all been cooked with so much attention to detail from scratch is ridiculous. You can't go to Singapore
14:19and not eat Indian food. It's one of the core arteries of the culture and the cuisine that makes
14:24up all the good things that have come to Singapore.
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