Melding Indian spices, she's in a class by herself

March 04, 2009|Vijaysree Venkatraman, Globe Correspondent

SINGAPORE - The bustling streets of Little India, an ethnic quarter in this city, seem removed from the other orderly neighborhoods. Here, hit Tamil tunes spill out of record stores, which makes passersby want to dance, and sidewalk flower sellers weave ropy garlands of jasmine and orchids. The quarter is also home to many Indian eateries. In the midst of all this activity, the newly opened Spice Queen - with its burnt-orange glass-and-chrome front - stands out.

Chef and owner Devagi Sanmugam is an established figure in the Singapore culinary scene. "I started by giving a cooking class out of my kitchen 27 years ago. Five people showed up, three of them my sisters," she says. Shortly afterward, a rave magazine review (written by a food writer who had attended the class incognito) put Sanmugam on the map. Today, as resident chef of the Asian Food Channel, Sanmugam has a vast audience. "When I ran an upscale spice store, the media labeled me Spice Queen," she says. "That venture folded but I decided to keep the name."

Spice Queen suits her because myriad spices play together in most of her cooking. The menu has standard items from the Indian subcontinent - biryani, naan, and chicken tikka masala - but the specialty here is Singaporean-Indian food. One dish is the fish-head curry in which a whole head of red snapper - with cheeks, eyes, and lips intact - is cooked in a tamarind sauce with okra. "You will not find this dish in restaurants in India; fish heads are typically thrown away as waste," says Sanmugam. Eaten with steamed rice, off broad banana leaves, this poor-man's curry is now sought after by tourists and locals.

Sanmugam, 54, is not a professionally trained chef. But now she runs Epicurean World, a food consulting company, has written 17 cookbooks, and still teaches classes. She learned cooking at home. As the eldest of eight siblings, she was expected to pitch in and help her mother in the kitchen. In the process, she discovered a passion.

In the '60s, Singapore was in the throes of a depression, she recalls. "Our family qualified for food rations from the United Nations: spaghetti, clarified butter, corn, and wheat flour. With these limited ingredients, our creativity reached new heights." Traditionally rice-eaters, mother and daughter rolled out tortillas and made corn bread before they even learned the names of these exotic staples; they also came up with innovative desserts.