Reflections | Chicken, the ‘fowl of five virtues’ in Chinese lore, and why Singapore got into a flap over a shortage of the birds
- In Singapore, where chicken rice is almost a national dish thanks to 20th century immigrants from China, the suspension of live poultry imports caused a shock
- The chicken was domesticated thousands of years ago in China, where it was hailed for its benevolence, faithfulness, courage, fighting spirit and literary flair
Following Malaysia’s ban on chicken exports that began on June 1, yet another example of the worrying rise in food protectionism around the world, the people of Singapore were for a time starved of fresh chickens because the island nation imports almost all its live chickens from its northern neighbour.
The dearth of freshly slaughtered birds is more than amply compensated for in the abundance of frozen chickens from sources as varied as Australia, Brazil and Thailand. However, chicken aficionados – of whom I am not one, preferring bland breast meat to other, allegedly more flavoursome parts – insist that frozen chickens are inferior to fresh ones in taste and texture. Many purveyors of Hainanese chicken rice in Singapore refused to use frozen birds out of professional pride.
With people from different parts of China living in very close quarters in port cities like Singapore in the early 20th century, Hainanese immigrants quickly learned the Cantonese method of immersing freshly poached chicken in chilled water to give more bite to the flesh. Of the several ingredients that give the boiled rice its distinctive flavour, one is ubiquitous in the region but not found or used in China: the fragrant leaves of the pandanus plant. To me, the rice is the most important aspect of Hainanese chicken rice, more so than its Hainanese provenance or the chicken itself.
