Grilling
seafood satay on a kelong
Madam Zainab reminisces about her father's life as a fisherman in a kelong.
My name is Zainab, and I was born in 1947, just after the war had ended. I turn 76 this year, and the memories I'm about to share are a collection of stories passed down to me by my parents and relatives.
My father was a fisherman in Singapore during the war, and our home was in a kampong near what is now Bayshore Park (located in current day East Coast area by the sea). It went by the name Kampong Jalan Hajijah. There were a total of 11 of us family members living together back then.
'Kampung' (village) by the sea
1940s
Courtesy of Roots.gov.sg (link)
My mother would cook the fish which my father caught. But my father would also exchange fish for rice with the Japanese when they came to our village. So we were lucky enough to have rice to eat. My unmarried auntie (my father’s sister) was very fair, like a Chinese, so my family would hide her in the basement when the Japanese came so they wouldn’t take her away. She was around 17 years old at that time.
The fish my father caught varied, from tiny ikan bilis (anchovies) to ikan tamban (silver striped round herring) and ikan kembong (Indian mackerel). When the Japanese made their visits, they often claimed the larger fishes in exchange for rice, a transaction we couldn't refuse.
Cooking seafood on a zinc sheet. The scoop is made from a coconut shell.
Illustrated by Julia Tay
My father would fish at a kelong, and he would take a boat out. The kelong was built jointly by a few Malay and Chinese kampongs. (A kelong is a wooden, off-shore platform built primarily for fishing). My father cooked for the other fishermen on the kelong, so he was respected by the other fishermen as a sort of boss . He would put a zinc sheet down, then light up a few pieces of wood to make a sort of BBQ where he would cook bakar satay (grilled slices of seafood, sometimes on a skewer).
The tools at their disposal were both simple and ingenious. They would take pieces of coconut husks and use them as spoons, or insert sticks into coconut husks to make a large scoop. This was especially useful for stirring food. It also gave the food a nice flavour. They would also use bamboo sticks (cut them into half) and tie them together at the top to make chopsticks.
Mung beans cooked in coconut juice
Illustrated by Julia Tay
Beans were a wartime staple in our household. Green beans, cooked until they were soft, would be sweetened with a bit of sugar and enhanced with coconut juice. Muslin cloth, an exceptionally thin fabric, served as a strainer to extract the coconut juice. My family would wrap coconut pieces in the cloth and twist it until all the juice was extracted.
Using charcoal ashes to brush teeth
Illustrated by Julia Tay
When my family finished cooking, they would use the charcoal ashes to scrub the pot. Back then soap was very difficult to get and very expensive. They also used charcoal to clean their teeth - it made their teeth very white! When they did buy soap, it was one long bar. The whole kampong would share it - they would cut slivers and use it very sparingly.
When they bathed, they would use a big clay pot which collected rainwater to bathe. It was very cold! They also collected water from a well in the kampong. So when there wasn’t enough rainwater and not enough water in the well, someone would go into the well to dig for more water. Sometimes the water that was meant for cooking would have soil in it, so my family would filter it with a cloth. The source of water in the well was called “mata air” or eye of the water.