Cooking Lessons

Work featured a cooking lesson!! Anwar taught me to make Malay Raja. This is a dish where crushed peanuts, prawn paste, green chili, red sugar, and tamarind juice is mixed together and then poured over pineapple, cucumbers, and fired bean curd. It is a unique meal with a sweet and spicy taste.

Anwar then took me to Woodlands Block 15 a government owned facility where many Food Manufacturing Plants are held in a 4-story building. The government offers lower rents and is able to control the food manufacturing process through this consolidated building. We toured the oil processing plant, which supplies our cooking oil. Rice Cake factory boils rice and compressed it into cylinders. The boiling takes about 3 hours and 1000 units are made each day. The customers can order vacuum-sealed or fresh rice cake bars. They also make fermented soybeans in the same plant.

Anwar also went through the order sheets with me and translated the list from Malay to English for me. I am now learning a little bit of Malay to communicate with our workers in the factory and restaurant.
Today in the factory I observed the process of making Chicken Satay. The company has engineered a machine that runs on air pressure that will compact the meat into a mold and then push the bamboo sticks into the meat. Approximately 7500 sticks can be made in one day. It is interesting to see the difference in a meat-processing factory. Last summer I worked at Tyson Foods in a Chicken Processing plant in Monroe North Carolina. Even thought Singapore is strict on sanitation it is a far cry from what the USDA demands. This could be due to the lack of HACCP Certification in the factory that I am working in this summer.