Transforming under shifting tides
By Alicia Teng
Chilli crab has retained its form for decades — but this might all change in light of the dangers surrounding it. Here, private chef Benson Tong reimagines the dish.
Bright red discs of sauce dot the surface, crowned with a white lemon-moutai foam. Green stalks of seaweed can be made out through the crystalline jelly. A delicate, edible fish bowl.
This is “Chilli Crab”, by Benson Tong.
As people’s dining habits shift and the waters close in on traditional seafood kitchens, chilli crab and contemporary cuisine create an evolving estuary between the exciting and the familiar. Here is where the dish might thrive, both now and in the future.
The 44-year-old private dining chef started off as a hawker in Chinatown in 2007, and he has worn many hats in the culinary industry since then. Now, apart from private dining, Benson focuses on freelance food marketing consultancy.
His kitchen is draped in a complex scent — one that runs contrary to the smokey, pungent spice you expect from chilli crab. Notes of bittersweet chocolate and dried fruit fill the air as the moutai-infused kombu dashi bubbles away in a pot. The stove smells like a bakery.
Mr Benson Tong’s chilli crab sauce, which requires no cooking, is bottled and piped out in small amounts, in contrast to the wok full of sauce common in the traditional iteration of the dish.
When Benson gently shakes the stockpot, it is like a cork has been popped — sweet, savoury, umami, bright citrus fruit and dusky liquor, all at once.
Shapeshifting
Benson believes the dish’s flavour needs no improvement. “Chilli crab, I think it’s really at the dian feng (peak) already,'' he says. “If you want to change anything, it would be to change its form.”
Chilli crab is no stranger to change, having undergone recipe tweaks in its early evolution to a switch in the kind of bread served alongside the dish. Its current appearance — one that the dish has been associated with for the past two decades — is that of is a huge mud crab swimming in a spicy-sweet sauce, streamed with glossy ribbons of egg.
That image has remained mostly unchanged. Until now.
With mud crab prices skyrocketing as the population being delivered to suppliers plummet, Benson sees flower crab as a cheaper, more accessible alternative.
The rise of “Mod-Sin” rocked the boat. Short for “Modern Singaporean”, the term was first coined by local chef Willin Low in 2005. The movement aims to present Singapore’s traditional mix of Asian flavours in a modern, Western-influenced format.
Mod-sin is how
I was cooking and eating when I was a student in the UK.
The 47-year-old founder of Mod-Sin himself Mr Willin Low, put his own spin on chilli crab in the early 2010s, serving it at the now-shuttered Wild Rocket at Mount Emily. A crisp crab cake of blue swimmer and spanner crab meat served on a dollop of spicy sauce, with “crab legs” painted on the sides with soy sauce.
My new expression of Singapore cuisine is one that respects tradition and local producers.
At Labyrinth, chef-owner Han Li Guang first re-imagined the dish as a scene on the beach: soft-shell crab laid on a bed of mantou sand, with an orange quenelle of savoury chilli crab ice cream. Now, it has been updated - piled high with flower crab meat from Ah Hua Kelong and glossy egg white ribbons.
Credits: Lennard Yeong
Saying that the market
is not receptive to
remakes on chilli crab is false.
For the past two years, Mr Yeong has been striving to reconcile Japanese techniques with local flavours in his cooking. His experimental “chilli crab chawanmushi” (steamed egg custard)
is topped with a spicy sauce with the meat from locally-sourced mud crab
folded in.
Mod-Sin: Chilli crab through the eyes of artisans
Credits: Shawn Loh (@larvitar)
Credits: Labyrinth
Benson’s “Chilli Crab” can be eaten with a small fork. No mallets, claw crackers or plastic gloves needed.
Two camps exist: one that seeks a mess-free chilli crab experience, and one that champions getting hands-in with the dish. Both sides refuse to budge.
In the office of local food site Eatbook, this battle rages on. Some of its staff believe chilli crab should remain as it is. “Chilli crab will always be chilli crab,” says 28-year-old senior food writer Suphon Liao.
“It’s so highly regarded. I don’t see how it will change from its current version.”
On the other hand, Chiara Ang, 27, believes that it is the flavors — rather than form — that matter most. “I think the taste of chilli crab will not stray away. Instead, it will transcend to many kinds of chilli crab-inspired dishes.”
“Chilli crab is a very fluid dish,” says Miele in-house chef Lennard Yeong. The 31-year-old hosts private dinners and develops new recipes for the kitchen appliance brand, and has dabbled in contemporising the dish himself.
He highlights restaurant Labyrinth’s chilli crab ice cream as an example. In terms of appearance and format, it is entirely unlike the chilli crab most are familiar with — even down to its temperature. But on first taste, diners recognise the dish immediately.
“Changing the dish’s format gives diners an opportunity to try something deeply familiar, yet very different at the same time.”
Crystal Jade’s Chilli Crab Xiao Long Bao is bite-sized — filled with crab meat, pork and spicy-sweet broth.
Chili Crab Xiao Long Bao
Credit: Crystal Jade
Scaled by Ah Hua Kelong’s Chilli Crab Risotto has flame-torched slabs of flower crabmeat to replace the hulking mud crab.
Chili Crab Risotto
Credit: Scaled by Ah Hua Kelong
Bao Maker’s Chilli Crab Bao captures the signature sweet, spicy and sour notes of the dish, neatly stuffed into a deep-fried bun.
Chili Crab Bao
Credit: Eatbook
Perhaps, this is something that keeps the essence of chilli crab alive, regardless of form.
In an age where chilli crab is transformed into everything, from fine dining to fish and chips, food and consumer sciences lecturer Dr Johannah Soo, 45, suggests that the iconic quality of the dish is what drives these constant culinary innovations.
“Once Singapore started chilli crab, the flavour became unique to us,'' she says. “Just like how we need our own sense of self-identity, as a community, we need a community identity.”
By preserving the memory of a beloved dish — even if in a different form — these chilli crab-inspired dishes draw mass appeal for those who grow up recognising the dish as part of their national identity.
“It’s emotional. It’s on a higher level. It makes you feel good.”
Mr Lennard Yeong agrees. “Applying modern culinary techniques to chilli crab creates a new dish that is familiar in flavor, but is divergent in other ways.”
This, he believes, is a necessary step in the food scene’s evolution. And for successful innovation to take place, the chef needs to deeply understand the original dish first.
“Almost every Singaporean, safe to say, has tried chilli crab at least once in their life. It is a dish they hold dear to heart.”
Final Taste
Everyone gathers around the counter. With steady hands, Benson gently plants coral seaweed stalks into the setting kombu dashi agar. The lemon-moutai espuma that goes on top rests in a saucepan — blitzed with a hand blender to create the velvety bubbles, without the need for a fancy siphon bottle.
Mod-sin, for the ambitious home cook.
After the final terrine has been topped, Benson hands out the forks. The best way to dive in is to break up the agar and mix up the components — crab, sauce, foam, jelly.
Unlike the typical more-sweet-than-fiery chilli crab sauce, this sauce is feisty. Even with the kick from the garlic and sambal, the moutai still shines through with its fruity chocolate notes — another surprise.
Umami from the kombu dashi. Salty crunch of the seaweed. Sweet, tender flower crab. A zesty note of lemon cuts through the spice that lingers after the last bite.
Compared to the original dish, this “chilli crab” is much easier to make. No live crabs, no searing wok to handle, no ingredient that costs more than a single red note. But for it to completely replace the original is a stretch, says Benson.
In terms of plating, temperature and base ingredients, Benson’s final product bears little resemblance to the original. However, the first bite immediately evokes the familiar flavours of chilli crab.
When people visit restaurants that do contemporary cuisine, they expect something more out of a dish. Something beyond the ordinary. “If you order chilli crab at a Michelin-starred restaurant, you won’t expect to see the classic sauce-covered crab on a plate,'' he says.
“You expect something crazy. Something worth the experience.”
Lennard Yeong believes that if chefs and diners refuse to budge from tradition, then the nation’s culinary scene will never truly move forward.
“We have to acknowledge that tradition and innovation will be two different sides of the same coin that will always coexist,” he says. “And each is equally important as the other.”
Benson’s chilli crab will likely never replace the iconic dish. However, it does, in a way, represent the future. Flavours from all around Asia built with modern techniques, layered upon the backbone of a local signature and captured in a format that pushes the envelope of what is familiar.
A vision in a dish.
