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S P Jain in News
Events at S P Jain
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Singapore, May 22nd, 2012 – Two cohorts of S P Jain Global MBA (GMBA) were treated to a culinary feast last Tuesday in an introduction to local cuisine, as part of a series of activities designed to immerse them in Singapore Culture.
Led by Head of Student Life, Thanneermalai Lakshmanan and Assistant Manager, Frida Meng, over 40 foreign students including a few visiting professors trooped down the famous Lau Pa Sat Food Court located at Raffles Place in the Central Business District. Lau Pa Sat is Singapore’s largest food court as well as a national monument. It has over 150 stalls serving Chinese, Indian, Malay and Asian-Western fusion cuisine.
Surrounded by plenty of al-fresco seating, the group sat next to the traditional satay stalls, and everyone started to explore the place taking in the multitude of cuisines offered. The students were introduced to a variety of dishes that included:
- Satay – a popular Malay dish of skewered meat barbequed over open fire and served with a peanut-based secret sauce. The meat is usually chicken, lamb or beef but this time, there was a vegetarian option as well with mushroom.
- Char Koay Teow – a very popular Chinese dish that means fried flat rice noodles. The Koay Teow is fried with fresh fiery chilli paste, soy sauce, cockles, fish cake, prawns and bean sprouts.
- Carrot Cake – a dish that is more popular in Singapore than in other Chinese communities elsewhere. ‘Carrot’ in this sense means shredded radish and rice flour paste. So, the dish involves frying the shredded radish and rice flour paste with egg and chilli paste and spices with a generous portion of sweet dark soy sauce that gives the dish its caramel-brown colour. For patrons who prefer a less intense flavour and more natural colouring, the dish can be cooked without the dark sweetened soy sauce.
- Chendol – a popular dessert around the Malay Archipelago made with fine ice shavings that look like a mound of snow in a bowl adorned with green rice flour jelly, red beans, palm sugar and coconut milk. Singaporeans normally end their meals with a dessert like chendol, ice-kachang, cheng thng, tau suan, bubur pulut hitam, bubur cha cha and these are just a few and nowhere near the entire gamut of dessert available.
- Ice-kachang – another popular local dessert made with ice snow, multi-coloured syrup, red beans, sweet corn and grass jelly.
- Teh Tarik – and finally to top it all off, students had Teh Tarik (literally stretched and pulled tea)! Teh Tarik is a unique twist to the original sweet milk tea from South India but was adapted by the early immigrants who settled in Singapore in the 18th century. Essentially it is Indian style chai made with condensed milk and the ‘pulled’ between two large steel cups and then served in a glass with the extra sweet milky froth on top.
Since eating Chinese food requires the use of chopsticks, students were game to learn the dining table sport new to them. As first timer using the chopsticks, they struggled to grasp the sticks properly. More practice required. Once everyone had finished their local dining experience, the group dispersed to wander around a little more in the area before returning to campus.
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