'That’s drain water': New York Times’ Singaporean Chicken Curry recipe gets slammed
One commenter wrote, “As a Singaporean, this in no way resembles anything close to the chicken curry we eat in Singapore."
The Singaporean Chicken Curry recipe posted by the New York Times has been slammed by Singaporeans. (Photo: Instagram/NYTCooking)
While the topic of food can get pretty divisive among Singaporeans, one event has brought people together like never before – The New York Times’ Singaporean Chicken Curry recipe, which was uploaded on its recipes site, NYT Cooking, and on Instagram on Tuesday (Feb 1).
The IG post was captioned “What we’re making for Lunar New Year” and came with a video of the dish being cooked by journalist Clarissa Wei, who adapted the recipe from Shila Das, described on the NYT Cooking site as a “second-generation Singaporean of Indian and Vietnamese descent”.
Ignoring the whole other issue of presenting a “Singaporean chicken curry” as if there’s a definitive version in the country, commenters did not take kindly to the end result of the recipe, which looked pale and included steps that showed the chicken pieces being marinated with lime juice and pandan leaves thrown into the saute mix – ingredients not normally associated with curry.
The verdict is a unanimous no. Just no.
Comments included, “That’s not curry. That’s drain water”, “This is an insult to curry” and "That's just spice water".
One commenter nisalx wrote, “Is this satire?” while another, charsiew, wrote, “As a Singaporean, this in no way resembles anything close to the chicken curry we eat in Singapore”.
Many commenters simply went with “hahahahaha”.
Local blogger Lee Kin Mun, with his persona Kim Huat, has come up with a video takedown of the recipe where he noted that he’d eaten lots of curry in Singapore but he’d never before seen “a brown brown one”. He said the recipe on the actual NYT Cooking site looked fine but the cooking video didn’t. “I think you never follow your own recipe properly issit?” he joked.
There were also calls for comedian Nigel Ng, also known as Uncle Roger, who got famous for skewering a BBC Food recipe for egg fried rice, to weigh in on this perceived travesty.
PS: No shortage of ideas here if you want to cook your own curry. Check out our Curry Favours series:
