Sambal Kang Kong (马来风光)

I did not bother to post any of my stir fried vegetables dishes initially. Afterall, we eat this thing every meal and there’s really nothing to it. But I realized, maybe my children want to know how I did it. So here it is. One of Singapore’s most famous dishes, the sambal kang kong.

kangkong

My first taste of this sambal kang kong was in the late 1980s or so. I am not sure if that was the time this dish appeared on the Zi Char (煮炒 or stir fry）stall menus around Singapore, or I dared eat it only then because I had ‘grown up enough’ to eat spicy food. I am not very good with very hot and spicy food especially as a child, because I have a weak stomach. But I do like medium spicy food. Yet, I guess medium spicy to a Singaporean is super spicy to a Westerner.

We used to order this dish at the Seafood centers along East Coast Parkway, as the local Zi Char stalls did not have this yet. In the 1980s and early 90s, we could get good seafood only if we traveled all the way to East Coast. There are perhaps one or two stalls around Punggol with good seafood, while the rest provided inferior (but not bad) quality seafood.

Therefore, it was a treat and a date to go to these specialized seafood places along that stretch, and a place to bring overseas business partners to show off our fresh seafood.  These days, we can get really fresh and good seafood in any restaurant or at any Zi Char stall, and some of the restaurants that had their humble beginnings at East Coast have spread their wings and opened up branches at the swanky and expensive areas around Singapore.

While I like the taste of this dish, I don’t like the way most stalls drench their vegetables in the sambal which is covered in oil, making the dish incredibly oily. I like mine with less oil, the vegetables still bright green, and without water added.