Hainanese curry and kaya with complex background

(Originally published in *CUP Media)

Having previously written about the relationship between Teochew people and Hong Kong-style satay beef noodles, a friend sent me a message reminding me that I must mention the contribution of Hainanese when writing about cha chaan teng and restaurants in Hong Kong.

If you have been to Hainan Island, you will find that the island's diet is lackluster Chen, except Wenchang chicken east goat more desirable, other foods are not mediocre. It's not my subjective opinion. You see the ancients were deported to Hainan, and there were poems crying about "no good food" on the island, and living a difficult life.

In Malaysia, it is common to hear locals praising the food of a certain Western-style restaurant. The main reason is that the owner of the restaurant employs a Hainanese chef. This may evoke some impressions in the past. What on earth is going on? Hainan Island as a food desert, why does it produce very good Hainanese masters who cook Western food? And in Hong Kong, why is Western food and Malay curry confused?

The answers to this bunch of strange questions have to do with Hainanese. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, China suffered from war and natural disasters. Many residents of the southeastern coastal areas immigrated to Southeast Asia to earn a living. They opened rice and medicine shops, grew rubber sugarcane, and built ship carpenters. Only the Hainanese came later, many of the profit-making industries were made stable for other Chinese, and the Hainanese arrived in Singapore and could only work as chefs.

At that time, there were many ocean-going mail ships in Malaysia. In order to make a living, Hainanese ran to the ships to work as captains and learn Western cooking. Freighters, like the Portuguese, would sail from Malacca to Macau, then sail to Goa, India and Angola, Africa, and finally reach Lisbon. Hainanese learn to make mixed vegetable soup on board, using spices to cook curry and brew coffee. When he returned to Malaysia, he gradually became popular because of his cooking skills.

The place where they work most often is in a coffee shop (Kopitiam), where they cook eggs, toast with curry sauce and a cup of rich black coffee every morning. Another common thing is to work in the dining room, making borscht, cooking curry satay, and making Hainanese chicken rice at the same time. Due to the matching taste, many owners will offer "Hainan curry" and "authentic Hainanese master" as a temptation, but interestingly, these flavors are completely unavailable in Hainan Island.

Later, many Hainanese masters came to Hong Kong and naturally worked in Malay restaurants, selling Western food and curry, plus Hainanese chicken rice. There are also masters who ran to tea houses as water bars and interviewed many ice cream parlor owners, who coincidentally learned to make tea and cook curry sauce from Hainan masters. I remember that at the old-fashioned ice cream shop Li Xiang Yuen (closed) next to Yau Ma Tei Market, its owner, Mr. Yang, revealed to me the way Hainanese cook kaya sauce - first break the coconut to get the juice, add over a hundred eggs and sugar, three Mix well and simmer for a few hours. The key is clear stew, only stewed out can eat the rich aroma of egg coconut juice and that fluffy texture, if cooked with fire, will lose the taste.

READ MORE: Lui Jiajun: Hainanese curry and curry with complex backgrounds

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