Cooking Fish Head Curry

Jimmy
Is the meat in the head different from the meat in the body?

Devagi
It tastes better nearer to the cheek of the fish.

Jimmy
Okay.

Devagi
It tastes better closer to the neck. When you cook it, the gravy tastes much better because there’s so much collagen and bones in the fish head, so all the umami will be released into the gravy.

Jimmy
So there’s actually a reason to eat the head.

Devagi
That’s one of the reasons why, even till today, some people would just buy these cuts of small fish heads and make a fish stock out of them, because the fish stock will be really rich. 

[Music playing]

Jimmy
You’re listening to BiblioAsia+, a podcast produced by the National Library of Singapore. At BiblioAsia, we tell stories about Singapore's past, some familiar, others forgotten, all fascinating. 

Is there a dish in Singapore with more presence? When it arrives at a table, you look into this wide bowl and see a huge fish head floating dreamily in a sea of curry, one beady eye fixing you in a stony gaze. Fish head curry is a popular dish in Singapore that was also invented here, and it’s apparently delicious. I say “apparently” because I’m not a big fan of fish. However, fortunately, my guest today will make up for all my shortcomings. Devagi Sanmugam is known as the Spice Queen of Asia. This veteran chef has authored and co-authored over 20 cookbooks and has conducted countless cooking workshops. She was a guest on the NLB cooking show From Book to Cook, where she made a delicious and highly potent fish head curry. Welcome to the BiblioAsia+ podcast, Devagi. How are you?

Devagi
I’m good, thank you.

Jimmy
Thank you for coming on the show. We’re very happy to have you. Can I ask, you could have made a lot of dishes, but why did you choose to make fish head curry for the show From Book to Cook?

Devagi
Yes, there’s absolutely a lot of dishes I could have shown everyone, but I chose fish head curry because it’s a very popular curry among non-Indians. I thought since Singapore is multiracial and most Chinese restaurants are beginning to sell fish head curry, I might as well talk about [it] from the point of an Indian fish head curry. I remember my grandmother cooking fish head curry, so that means that maybe 50, 60 years ago, someone was already cooking [it]. There must many a lot of Indian families cooking fish head curry, but it was not served the way it is now, as a whole head. It was chopped and served with fish slices in Indian families.

Jimmy
Okay, so you take the fish, chop it up so you can’t see the head and eyes.

Devagi
Yes, and sometimes the head and eyes might be thrown away.

Jimmy
To be honest, I cannot imagine anyone wanting to eat the eyes, but that’s a separate story. Why was it that the traditional Indian fish head curry was all chopped up, and now we see this huge head?

Devagi
I believe the whole head was served in restaurants because of business sense. Mostly, the influence could have come from a Chinese person. Long ago, I heard of [a] Mr Gomez who used to sell fish head curry. He was one of the first people in Singapore to sell fish head curry as a business.

Jimmy
Right.

Devagi
Mr Gomez’s influences were the Chinese businessmen in the Outram area. The Outram area never had many Indian people living there. So, obviously, his customers were mostly Chinese. He probably made a whole fish head curry for the Chinese to try. Eventually, it became a big business, and all the other Indians in Little India started picking that up.

Jimmy
So it was actually a dish by an Indian gentleman who ran a restaurant in Outram for a Chinese customer base. 

Devagi
Clientele. It was a small stall in a coffee shop, and it was called Gomez Curry.

Jimmy
Fish head was not seen as a very prestigious kind of meat, was it?

Devagi
Definitely not among the Indians at that time because many of the Indians actually came from India. I mean, they [came from India and] settled down in Singapore, including my grandmother and her aunties and friends.

In India, fish head curry was something that people looked down upon because fish head was something that is discarded, and wealthy people only ate the body parts of the fish, and the head was discarded. People who couldn’t afford proper fish slices would buy fish head curry just to make the curry taste nice.

Jimmy
Right.

Devagi
And so they said only lower-class people ate fish head at that time.

Jimmy
 And now it’s become very popular.

Devagi
Now it’s high-class because it’s too expensive.

Jimmy
You’re saying it was made by Mr Gomez for a Chinese clientele, and now fish head curry is eaten in Chinese restaurants [as well as] Indian restaurants.

Devagi
Yes.

Jimmy
And Malay restaurants also?

Devagi
Malay restaurants, yes. They do asam pedas with fish heads.

Jimmy
So what is the difference?

Devagi
And then the Peranakan restaurants also sell asam fish head. There are a lot of differences. For example, the Malays would cook asam pedas. Originally, they used to serve asam pedas with fish slices and stingray. Then, when the fish head business became big, it started becoming a fish head asam pedas; asam pedas does not have coconut milk.

They usually use asam keping, which is tamarind slices from the fruit, and it’ll have a fruity smell. Some of them will add a bit of pineapple to it as well. The Peranakans also make fish head curry. Again, there are two types. I’ve been to many Peranakan restaurants. Sometimes they call it asam fish head curry, or some just call it Asam fish head curry.

Some have got curry powder plus tamarind and asam keping, and some of it is almost like the Malay [version, with] no curry powder. It’s all fresh turmeric, and everything is ground together and then made into a curry.

Jimmy
Right.

Devagi
Most Chinese fish head curry has coconut milk in it. I don’t know why, but it will always have lots of coconut milk, maybe because it cuts down the spiciness. It’s something that’s preferred, whereas Indian fish curry is totally different because it uses curry powder that comprises many different types of spices.

Jimmy
Are the spices used for Indian fish head curry the same as the spices used for any kind of fish curry in Indian cooking?

Devagi
The Indians have seafood curry powder, which is the fish curry powder. Then, they have the meat and chicken curry powder, and they have vegetable curry, sambal pudi, as they call it. Fish curry powder and the rest will all have different ingredients at different levels, or different amounts of different spices. The seafood one is the only one which has fenugreek in it. Fenugreek is a spice that imparts a slight bitterness. Even if you add one teaspoon, it has a strong presence [in the dish], and that is the one that differentiates fish head curry from chicken or the other dishes, because no fragrant spices are added. When I say fragrant, [I mean] cinnamon, cardamom, cloves. They are very fragrant spices, star anise and all that. They are never added to a fish head curry.

Jimmy
Why is that? Why is there a distinction between curry for fish and curry for meat?

Devagi
I look at it this way. Meat needs a lot of preserving spices. Cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, star anise and all that help to preserve any food. That’s why you have cinnamon and cloves in, say, pineapple tarts, because you can preserve the pineapple so it will not become mouldy. Preserving spices are usually used for meat dishes, whereas in fish, although you want to preserve it, you can boil it again and re-boil and re-boil and eat it the next day many times, and it will still be preserved. So fenugreek and its company, as I call it, the coriander, cumin and all that, help to preserve the fish as well.

Jimmy
Okay.

Devagi
Yeah.

Jimmy
Whenever I eat roti prata, I always ask for fish curry as opposed to meat curry. I’m not sure why, but I like fish curry. Is it a bit more sour, maybe?

Devagi
Yeah, it is. Because meat curry will never be sour.

Jimmy
Yeah. So it’s a bit tangy, right? So it’s quite nice. Is fish head curry also available in other parts of Asia?

Devagi
Yes, definitely.I mean, I do know, for example, in India, , even though the South Indians, Tamil Nadu and all that, along the coastal areas, people do use fish heads for cooking, they don’t put a whole head inside. There are places like Bengal where they use fish heads as well. Again, they’re chopped up and cooked in a mustard-based sauce.

Jimmy
Oh.

Devagi
Yeah. In Assam, it’s made into a soup. And then, for example, in Malaysia [and] Thailand, they use fish heads for cooking curry as well. So, there are different ways of cooking curry in different parts.

Jimmy
Sure. So in India, people don’t eat the whole head?

Devagi
No, they don’t.

Jimmy
I mean, they don’t present it.

Devagi
They don’t serve the whole head.

Jimmy
They don’t preserve it.

Devagi
Yeah.

Jimmy
I have to ask, because, as I mentioned earlier, I’m not a big fan of fish, so I don’t know a lot about fish, but is the meat in the head different from the meat in the body?

Devagi
It tastes better nearer to the cheek of the fish.

Jimmy
Okay.

Devagi
It tastes better closer to the neck. When you cook it, the gravy tastes much better because there’s so much collagen and there are a lot of bones in the fish head, so all the umami will be released into the gravy.

Jimmy
So there’s actually a reason to eat the head.

Devagi
That’s one of the reasons why, even today, some people just buy these cuts of small fish heads and make a fish stock out of them so it will be really rich.

Jimmy
I have to ask, do you eat the eyeball of the fish? Because I can’t.

Devagi
Not me.

Jimmy
No. Not me. Whenever I see someone eating that, I’m like, “Oh my God, how can you eat that?”

Devagi
Not me. Growing up, I saw my grandmother cutting fish heads at home. These days, the vendor can chop it up for you, but those days you’d buy back this whole head. And I’ve seen my grandmother chopping the fish head into two, like chop, chop, chop, and then the blood [and scales would splatter]. It was such a messy job. And all the time I was standing there next to her watching, I would only focus on the eye, because at some point, it might be looking at me, staring at me.

Jimmy
I know, right? It's so powerful, the eye. That’s why I cannot understand how people can eat the eyeballs of the fish, but I’m sure people eat lots of things.

Devagi
Yeah.

Jimmy
When you made the fish head curry for From Book to Cook, you used a clay pot.

Devagi
Yes.

Jimmy
What is the difference between using a clay pot versus, say, something like a metal or iron pot?

Devagi
Okay, I must tell you this, when I was much younger, when I was not even a chef...

Jimmy
You’re very young, still.

Devagi
Okay, thanks, lah. When I was not even a chef, my mother would take out a clay pot, which was always kept somewhere down [low] so that nobody would touch it, and then she’d bring it out and put it on the stove to start cooking her fish curry. Any type of fish curry is always cooked in a clay pot.

Jimmy
Oh.

Devagi
And when I asked her, she would always say, “It tastes better.” Right? Then, of course, when I became a chef, I never had a clay pot. I was just cooking my curries in a normal stainless steel pot, and I thought my curry tasted nice. I mean, no problem. Why did mother always say that? But then, eventually, I invested in a clay pot, and I realised [that it makes] a world of difference. The Indians use a porous clay pot. It means the inside of the clay pot is not glazed.

Jimmy
Not glazed. Right.

Devagi
So, therefore, air moves in and out. We can’t see it, but it’s moving. And so when you are tempering your spices, there’s oil, and it looks like the clay pot is absorbing the flavour. When you boil your curry with your tamarind, it’s also helping [to] absorb the flavour.

Jimmy
Absorb.

Devagi
So, eventually, when you put your fish head [in] and start cooking it, the flavour gets absorbed by the clay pot.

Jimmy
Right.

Devagi
[When] you start serving fish head curry from [the pot], you’ll have a bit of balance there. Now, because there’s air flow in and out, the balance will reduce automatically because of evaporation and withdrawal from the porous clay pot, so the curry becomes thicker and tastes even better.

Jimmy
Yes, of course.

Devagi
That’s one of the reasons why Indians love to keep their fish head curry in the clay pot overnight. We don’t put it in the fridge.

Jimmy
You don’t put it in the fridge? You just leave it [out]?

Devagi
You don’t have to. You just leave it there.

Jimmy
And then the clay pot presumably will just absorb.

Devagi
Yes. Correct.

Devagi
And then it becomes thicker.

When it's thicker, the intensity of the spices is slightly saltier, and therefore it’s self-preserving, and it tastes better. So, the next day, before they serve [it], they will bring it to [a] boil again. When they have a balance, they will still keep it there. This time, it will become thick like a sambal, and they eat it with, say, yoghurt rice as a side dish.

Jimmy
Is that only for fish curries, or do they use a clay pot for all kinds of curries?

Devagi
Actually, the fish curry tastes best. I’ve tried cooking chicken curry. It’s not that fantastic. But fish curry or any curry that has lots of tamarind tastes good.

Jimmy
So the key ingredients in fish curry are tamarind and fenugreek?

Devagi
Fenugreek, mustard seeds, cumin, chili powder. Yeah. Coriander.

Jimmy
Coriander.

Devagi
Of course, there are curry leaves and all that.

Jimmy
Mm. Quite often we eat fish curry with rice, right?

Devagi
Yes.

Jimmy
But you can also eat it with bread. What do you normally eat fish curry with?

Devagi
I like my fish curry with bread. The bread has to be crusty or toasted, and it has to be hot. For me.

Jimmy
Why? That’s so interesting. When I think of curries, fish head curry at least, I usually see it with rice rather than bread. So why?

Devagi
Well, number one, I don’t like rice.

Jimmy
Really? How can that be? Are you Asian? You look Asian.

Devagi
I’ve never liked rice.

Jimmy
Really?

Devagi
When I eat rice, when I have lunch at home or anywhere else, it’s about two or three tablespoons of rice only. I don’t like rice cookers even though my book is called I Am a Rice Cooker!

Jimmy
A great title, by the way. You’ve also written a book on Indian heritage cooking.

Devagi
Yes.

Jimmy
Right? So I think you’ve written over 20 cookbooks.

Devagi
I’ve done about 21 cookbooks.

Jimmy
21.

Devagi
Of which four of which were co-authored. I authored with Christopher Tan and another guy.

Jimmy
Great guy.

Devagi
Pardon?

Jimmy
Christopher is a great guy.

Devagi
Yes. And another one is Dr. Anne Perera. Dr. Anne Perera lives in New Zealand, so I did functional foods ↗ (opens in new tab) with her.

Jimmy
Oh, what functional foods?

Devagi
Functional foods are, for example, ingredients that we eat specifically for particular problems.

Jimmy
Oh, okay.

Devagi
Like, for example, you eat blueberries because they contain lutein, and lutein is good for your eyes. Tomatoes have lycopene, so they’re good for... You know? So that book was all about that because she was a functional food doctor.

Jimmy
Okay.

Devagi
So I did the recipes for her book.

Jimmy
I have to ask, and I’ve always wondered, how did you get into this business of cooking, teaching, writing? When you first started working, was this what you were doing?

Devagi
I wanted to be a chef, but before I got married... In those days, Indian restaurants were hardly there, and my parents, I guess even me at that age, thought I was going to be an Indian chef cooking Indian food in an Indian restaurant. My father could only think of one shop, and that was a roti prata shop.

Jimmy
Okay.

Devagi
And he told me, “No, I don’t want my daughter to work in a roti prata shop.”

Jimmy
Yeah, all right. Okay.

Devagi
So he said, "No, you can't be a chef." He thought that if I worked as… Not a chef, I never even knew there was a word called “chef” at that age. Cook. If I worked as a cook in an Indian restaurant, nobody would marry me. So I was banned from working and even talking about the idea of working.

Jimmy
Really?

Devagi
Yeah. So he never allowed me to work.

Jimmy
Then what did you work as then?

Devagi
I was a school clerk.

Jimmy
Oh.

Devagi
I was a relief teacher for two years wanting to be a teacher, and then the government came [up] with a new rule that the teachers must be A-Level, and I only had an O Level.

But my O-Level Malay result was so good, a Distinction, that they offered me to teach Malay as a second language.

Jimmy
Oh.

Devagi
And of course, my parents didn’t want me to be teaching Malay in a school. They thought that, it was so different, an Indian woman teaching Malay in a school, so they didn’t want me [to do it]. So in the end, I worked as a school clerk for 10 years, starting from the age of 19. It was an aided school. It was a boys’ school with only 16 classes, and I had a lot of time on my hands. So after 2pm, all classes were dismissed, and from 2pm to 4.30pm I was free in that school. So all I had to do was open up the library and read all the books there. The teachers there kept motivating me a lot. They found me as young as their students. I was only 19, and the schoolboys were still 16 or 17. So they always motivated me and they thought I was very intelligent –

Jimmy
You’re very smart.

Devagi
Working as a school clerk, there were a lot of things that I suggested. They told me, “You should be in some other place, not here.” But I still didn’t know where this place was that I wanted to be. But I knew that every weekend, I would use my money and I would cook something on a Sunday.

Jimmy
For your family? For yourself?

Devagi
No, to bring to school on Monday. I enjoyed the praise I got.

Jimmy
All right.

Devagi
Because in the family everybody just ate and said, “Okay lah. Nice.”

Jimmy
They took you for granted.

Devagi
But when I gave the teachers, they were, like, praising [me]. they would. And then that’s how it all started, because the teachers thought that I was a very good cook, and kept flattering and praising me. I felt very good about it, and then eventually I thought, “I must be really good for them to order for their family functions." Like, birthday parties and all that. And then the school had speech days and sports days, and they started ordering from me as well. By then, I was married. I married a schoolteacher, but not –

Jimmy
Not from your school.

Devagi
I met him when I was a relief teacher in another school.

Jimmy
Oh, okay. Very good. Love marriage, huh?

Devagi
Yes.

Jimmy
Very good for you.

Devagi
So, eventually he asked me, “Why don’t you stop working as a clerk and do what you like?"

Jimmy
Oh, that’s so wonderful.

Devagi
He thought what I liked at that time was catering, cooking.

Jimmy
Cooking.

Devagi
Right? But that’s not actually what I liked. What I liked was to teach. That’s why I wanted to be a teacher.

Jimmy
You wanted to be a relief teacher.

Devagi
Yeah.

Jimmy
That’s right.

Devagi
So, I decided I would be a cooking teacher, and I’d never attended any cooking class or anyone’s class in Singapore before. I didn’t know how a cooking class was conducted.

Jimmy
Really?

Devagi
I decided that I would just cook a few dishes and invite people.

Jimmy
And teach them how to cook.

Devagi
Yes. That’s how it all started. In my three-room flat, I taught about five people, which consisted of my sisters-in-law because they made up the space. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had enough students.

Jimmy
So your first students were your sisters-in-law.

Devagi
Yeah, right. And the first few sessions were slowly picking up. I advertised in the Straits Times.

Jimmy
Oh, really?

Devagi
Yeah. I advertised in the Straits Times. And then, slowly, from five people, it became 16, and then I had no space in my kitchen in my HDB flat. So, I only taught on Saturdays and Sundays. On Friday nights or Saturday mornings, our sofa and everything would be transferred to the other room, and I put stools [out].

Jimmy
Really?

Devagi
Yeah. And then students started coming. But the highlight of this whole thing came in Her World magazine. They did a review of my cooking class, and they said they found it to be one of the best. And from then, a lot of classes. I took a maximum of over 20 people in my three-room flat.

Jimmy
I’m amazed, ’cause I grew up in a three-room flat, and I know it isn’t a big place.

Devagi
Yeah. And the money was cash-in-hand. I felt so good about it, and I never saved. I ate. I spent money eating out at high[-end] restaurants, Peranakan restaurants. Restaurants that I’d never [been to] in my life.

Jimmy
Oh. When you were a kid, you never ate all that?

Devagi
Never.

Jimmy
So you did that because you wanted to expose yourself?

Devagi
Yes. That’s exactly why I wanted it. I ended up cooking kuehs and all that catering, because it was something that my family never ate at home. My mother never made it because she didn’t know how to make it.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Devagi
She’s not a Peranakan or Malay. But I saw others eating, and I wanted that. My first recipe book was bought only after I started teaching.

Jimmy
Right. And what was it, like Indian cooking, or…?

Devagi
No, I bought a Zarina and Roz cookbook.

Jimmy
Oh.

Devagi
One of the oldest.

Jimmy
I am familiar with it. So you bought it because you wanted to –

Devagi
See how the recipes are done and all that. And then eventually, because Her World wrote about me, they also invited me to do “Backyard Edible”, a column every month where one ingredient from the backyard, like pandan or whatever was [featured in] two recipes. And then that’s when I saw my own recipes appearing in a magazine.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Devagi
And then it went on for one year. And then since I was there for one year in Her World, then all the advertisers like Samsung, and the products, Ideal Milk and whatnot, they started giving me projects. So one thing led to another, and then I wrote a book, and then more books, eh? That’s where I am now.

Devagi
Still teaching.

Jimmy
Wow.

Devagi
I keep on learning along the way, so like I said, I don’t save my money at all. I spend it. I spend it on travel. I used to subscribe to magazines from the U.S., from Australia, and everywhere.

Jimmy
Oh, cooking magazines?

Devagi
It costs money. Yes. In those days, I subscribed to Bon Appétit and Gourmet and BBC Good Food.

Jimmy
Wow.

Devagi
I had a pile of magazines in the house. I read. Everywhere I am, I know what’s happening around the world.

Jimmy
I suppose your husband’s very happy because he gets to eat all this. He gets to be your taster.

Devagi
Actually, he’s not a very happy man.

Jimmy
Really? Why not?

Devagi
Because it’s like that, I think. When your wife can cook, you don’t appreciate that as much as when someone else cooks and gives you something.

Jimmy
Okay.

Devagi
It becomes part of a daily routine.

Jimmy
You expect it now.

Devagi
Yeah. So he’ll just say, “Okay, lah, nice.” And I have to ask him, “How is it?” “Nice." He doesn’t have to make any comments because it’s always good.

Jimmy
Yeah. You’ve written over 20 books. What’s the most recent book?

Devagi
The most recent one that I’ve written and published is I Am a Rice Cooker! ↗ (opens in new tab), but recently, on my own, I went digital, so I did a book on festive [dishes]. Forever Festive is the title. It’s a Deepavali recipe book.

Jimmy
Okay.

Devagi
And it has 70 recipes, and these are family recipes. That means year after year, we have been to every Deepavali and we cook the same thing.

Jimmy
Your story is quite amazing. I mean, you’ve written over 20 cookbooks. You’re still teaching, of course.

Devagi
Yes, I teach. I used to teach only from my house before, and then because I do everything myself, I don’t have someone to help me.

Jimmy
It’s a lot of work.

Devagi
The help only comes in when I have a class and they have to wash up. Otherwise, everything is done by myself. So I decided that I would just teach outside, I mean, at some schools or anywhere they invite me, so I no longer do that. And, next year, I already plan to do online classes.

Jimmy
Oh.

Devagi
Okay?

Jimmy
You’ll teach over Zoom or something.

Devagi
Yeah, but I’ve already been doing Zoom classes. I have students from Canada, and so I wake up [at a] different time and do classes. So all this started after COVID.

Jimmy
You were all stuck at home, so everybody learned how to use Zoom.

Devagi
Yes, because I didn’t even know that. I’d not even heard of the word Zoom until one day someone asked me, “Do you do Zoom classes?” I said, “What's that?” She told me, and then I went and Googled and read, and I decided to set up my own Zoom classes.

Jimmy
Oh, nice.

Devagi
So I went and bought a webcam, figured out everything, tested with my niece, and everything was okay. And then I told the lady, “Yes, I’m ready for Zoom.”

Jimmy
You are so amazing. I’m in awe of you.

Devagi
I do Zoom classes perfectly in time for lunch or dinner.

Jimmy
After that, you can eat.

Devagi
Yes, after [classes, what I’ve cooked] is for me, because I don’t have to share the food with anyone.

Jimmy
Okay. Well, it’s great. And you’re not the only person who has benefited from Zoom, or from the COVID period, and being forced to stay at home. But why have you decided not to teach at a school or something?

Devagi
You mean some culinary school?

Jimmy
Some culinary school.

Devagi
Very simple. They won’t take me because I don’t have paper qualifications.

Jimmy
Oh. 

Devagi
Over here it’s all [about] paper qualifications. But I’ve been to Uzbekistan, Montenegro, Sri Lanka, India, Beijing, all these places where they invited me as a celebrity chef, and nobody asked me for my certificate. They went for my experience.

Jimmy
No, you have… What? No paper qualifications? You have 20 books. That’s a lot of paper.

Devagi
I’ve tried it over here. It doesn’t work.

Jimmy
It’s certainly ridiculous.

Devagi
Yeah. 

Jimmy
No, but what I’m hearing from you is that you’re always… I mean, you overcome, right?

Devagi
Yeah.

Jimmy
You’re very determined, and you learn and pick up things on your own.

Devagi
I never say die.

Jimmy
That’s amazing.

Devagi
I only have to prove [it to] myself. I don’t care about others.

Jimmy
You are an inspiration.

Devagi
Thank you.

Jimmy
To be honest, I’m a bit ashamed that my own life is not as challenging.

Devagi
I don’t call it challenging. It’s colourful.

Jimmy
You travel a lot, right?

Devagi
Yeah.

Jimmy
Were you recently in India?

Devagi
I was. I did some pop-ups for 10 days of a food event in one hotel.

Jimmy
Where?

Devagi
In Chennai. Basically, the topic was Indian influence from the Chola Kingdoms. The Chola Kingdoms were in different parts of Asia, so Singapore was one of the destinations as well. And for example, my family was from a place called Mayavaram, and that was a Chola-dominated dynasty. So, most of the Chola dynasty people are Tamils who are mostly working in Singapore, but our food has changed here over the years, so I went there to showcase Singapore Indian influence.

Jimmy
What was the reception? 

Devagi
Very good. For 10 days, a lot of media influencers came down, and then every day there was a full house. It was quite expensive. And I met a lot of interesting personalities who went there to do this kaypoh-ing to see all this was about.

Jimmy
Now, you were saying that Indian food in Singapore has changed from, say, Indian food in India. So what has changed? How is it different?

Devagi
Yeah. Our food has got a lot of influences from other nationalities, the Chinese and the Indians, right? One simple dish that most Singapore Indians make is tauhu sambal. Actually, tofu sambal. There’s no Indianness in that at all.

Jimmy
Oh.

Devagi
First of all, tofu is Chinese.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Devagi
The sambal was a Malay sambal. But every Indian house will have a tofu sambal.

Jimmy
Oh.

Devagi
A tofu sambal.

Jimmy
Oh.

Devagi
So much so that in Indian weddings, they’ll say, “I ordered Indian food”, and then you see a tofu sambal in their buffet, so it has become an Indian food in Singapore.

Jimmy
Oh, that is so interesting.

Devagi
Yeah. And then we have kicap mina. Kicap means black soy sauce.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Devagi
We have soya sauce fish. Looks Chinese, but doesn’t taste Chinese. So it’ll have lots of ginger, lots of green chili and red chili, and it has a bit of curry powder in it as well. The fish is fried, and then it is simmered in the black soya sauce. And then that sauce itself can be used for your rice, and then you eat the fish.

Jimmy
I see. So these are dishes that are almost invented in Singapore?

Devagi
It’s influenced. Like, we have bee hoon.

Of course, we have the Malay bee hoon and Chinese bee hoon. You should try my bee hoon one day.

Jimmy
Okay. I will.

Devagi
You have never tried that. One day I’ll invite you, because my bee hoon, even though we can call it ikan bilis bee hoon, it has mustard seeds. It’s got dried chilis. It has black gram, it has got curry leaves. It has everything. And yet it will taste Chinese, taste Malay, taste Indian.

Jimmy
That’s so interesting. But what about Indian food? What you’re describing is more from Malay influence, Chinese influence and all that. And also Indian. But are there Indian dishes that people in India will [see and] say, “Oh, I eat this, but when I eat it, it’s very different.”

Devagi
Yeah. A lot. For example, Mysore mutton. When people go to an Indian restaurant in Singapore, they’ll ask for Mysore mutton. The word “Mysore” is actually a place in India. But when you go to Mysore, you won’t get this dish. The Mysore mutton will taste like any other mutton dish in Tamil Nadu.

Jimmy
But in Singapore, it’s called Mysore mutton. That is so interesting.

Devagi
Yeah.

Jimmy
My mind is blown. Okay. So we know that in 2026 you're gonna be doing Zoom classes. And, of course that means you can widen your market, right?

Devagi
Yes.

Jimmy
You can teach in any country.

Devagi
In any country.

Jimmy
You’re not restricted.

Devagi
Yeah.

Jimmy
What else are you planning? Are you writing a book?

Devagi
Oh, yes.

Jimmy
That’s printed?

Devagi
On that one, yes, definitely. I’m taking my time slowly, but I plan to have 12 chapters in the book. It’s called Amma's Culinary Legacy.

Jimmy
Now, are you the Amma, or is Amma your grandmother?

Devagi
Amma is my grandmother, sorry, it’s my mother. But the book has a lot of stories about my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt, who is my mother’s sister.

Jimmy
Right.

Devagi
They were very great people who influenced me a lot in my cuisine. They lived in another zone where my, for example, my Periyamma, my mother’s eldest sister, lived in PWD (Public Works Department) quarters, and had a firewood stove. During all my school holidays in my primary and secondary school days, I was mostly in my auntie’s house. The cooking and everything that I experienced there was totally different from what we did back home in my house, because my auntie would cook with [the firewood stove]. We would go and collect firewood sometimes at the back lanes of Upper Serangoon and St. Michael’s Estate, and then we’d give it to her, and then we would have to blow the stove.

Jimmy
Blow the stove.

Devagi
Yeah, all the time. And then the dal curry that she cooked, and whatever she cooked, all tasted different to my mom’s cooking.

Jimmy
Why? Was it cooked differently?

Devagi
It’s cooked differently. The flavour was different because of the firewood as well. Now that I think about it, she’d [also] grind using the grinding stone.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Devagi
Because my auntie had 12 children, and my brothers and I are a total of seven people, when we went there, they didn’t have enough plates. So we used the lids of pots.

Jimmy
Oh, okay. All right.

Devagi
We have different sizes. The whole experience is captured in my book.

Jimmy
It’s wonderful.

Devagi
Yeah. I have little stories. For example, my uncle, my auntie’s husband, was looked upon as the lord of the house, so he ate first, before the children, whereas in my family, children ate first, then my father.

Jimmy
Oh, really?

Devagi
We had to wait until my uncle ate, and my auntie would serve it to him as if he was the big lord. He'd sit down cross-legged [on the floor], and then she served him. And then after he ate, he would not [get up from] the floor. He would wait until he got his first burp. Then we all rushed. We were ready to eat. He wouldn’t get up from the seat until after he burped.

Jimmy
That is so interesting.

Devagi
My mother said that was an Indian thing [in] those days. It was a kind of sign that he was satisfied, and his stomach was okay. Then they got up. After they got up, then the place was clear, then we all sat down, and we ate.

Jimmy
So this whole book is really about your memories growing up with your aunties, your grandmother, your mother.

Devagi
Yes. And then we have recipes in it. And of course, it’s also about me growing up as well. So when we moved to an HDB flat, we had Malay neighbours. The Malay neighbours [taught] us rendang –

And all the steam cake, this kind of influence is also there. So it’s also in my book, their recipes.

Jimmy
So when you learnt how to make rendang and all, you learnt from your neighbour.

Devagi
I didn’t go there and learn. But my neighbor influenced my mother to make a rendang, and then when my mother cooked a rendang, I picked it up from her. My mother never taught me cooking. She was very possessive of the kitchen. She’d only give me chores to do.

Jimmy
Okay, so actually that’s very interesting. Your mother didn’t teach you how to cook.

Devagi
No.

Jimmy
Then when you went to work in that school, everybody was praising your food. So where’d you pick it up?

Devagi
Seeing and wanting to do that, I never got a chance. See, when I got my first salary in my life, it was working during the school holidays. My father took away my money because he said we had to buy textbooks for the next year.

Jimmy
Oh, okay.

Devagi
And he’d give me $10, but this $10 would be invested in flour and all this stuff that I want to invest [in]. And my father would keep an eye on it to see that I didn’t waste that $10.

Jimmy
Okay.

Devagi
So he would say, “Do it properly. Ask your mother. Hey, ask your mother whether it’s correct or not.” No. I would never ask her because she didn’t want to teach me.

Jimmy
So then in learning how to cook, you were just watching your mother cook.

Devagi
Visual. And I wanted an outcome. The smell the taste and everything was formed in my mind, and that’s what I wanted to achieve.

Jimmy
So you work backwards. You have the kind of brain that can translate all these tastes and smells and what needs to go into the dish.

Devagi
Yes, correct. I think that’s what happens when you know basic cooking.

Jimmy
This amazing ability of yours, to reconstruct dishes based on the end product. Can you do that with different types of cuisines?

Devagi
Yes. Mostly I can. I can do Chinese. I can do Malay. I had restaurateurs paying me to spy on other restaurants’ recipes. One example was a shark fin soup in a rival restaurant of another shark fin restaurant. I asked the boss why he had particularly asked me to do that when I’m an Indian. He said, “Because the guys there will trust you, right? You’re not coming there to spy on them.” So I had over six visits to this restaurant to see and hear from the chef. I mean, I feel bad now, but I earned my money at that young age by just spying, talking to the chef there to find out what it is that [made them] different from the other restaurants.

Jimmy
You’re known as the Spice Queen, so see if you can complete this sentence. “Spices are”…?

Devagi
Spices are like magic.

Jimmy
Oh. Why?

Devagi
They can translate any other ingredient into something “Wow”.

Jimmy
Yes. That’s true.

Devagi
For me, yes. Because even just a simple thing like tempering something with mustard seed and curry leaves makes a world of difference to the dish, or if I were to just steam fish, like the way the Chinese do with ginger and everything, and if I were to just temper some oil with, say, fenugreek and mustard seeds and cumin and pour it over the fish, I have a different dimension altogether.

Jimmy
Completely different dimension.

Devagi
Yeah.

Jimmy
Okay, Devagi, I wanna thank you for joining us on the BiblioAsia+ podcast. Please don’t miss watching Devagi make fish head curry on YouTube in From Book to Cook. All links and information can be found in the show notes or on the BiblioAsia website at biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg ↗ (opens in new tab). 

Devagi, I wanna thank you both for cooking for us on From Book to Cook and for coming on this podcast. Your life sounds really exciting. I look forward to this book. Please don’t take forever to write a book, because, you have a very exciting life. You’ve done so many amazing things we want to read about. Please share it.

Devagi
Definitely. Thank you for inviting me. I mean, it’s really a pleasure to share recipes or to talk about it. I mean, I love to talk anyway. So it’s a pleasure to talk and share.

Jimmy
All right.

Devagi
I would say I love to share.

Jimmy
Wonderful. Thank you, Devagi.

Devagi
Thank you. 

[Music playing] 

Jimmy
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter ↗ (opens in new tab). Thanks for joining us on BiblioAsia+.

Devagi Sanmugam, Indian Heritage Cooking ↗ (opens in new tab) (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Cuisine, 2011).

Devagi Sanmugam, I Am a Rice Cooker! Master the Art of Asian Cooking: Techniques & Recipes ↗ (opens in new tab) (Malaysia: Orange Inkk Services, 2016).

This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Nookcha Films. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Devagi for coming on the show.

Produced by the National Library Singapore, the BiblioAsia Podcast tells stories about Singapore history.