Food Less Travelled

By Herb Pilles

We all know that the fresher our fruits and vegetables are, the better they taste.   There is nothing like the aroma, the full flavour, the bursting goodness of a big red tomato fresh off the vine.   How many of us are fortunate enough to have tasted a peach right off the bough of a tree in summer?   There is scant resemblance to the peaches we buy at the grocery store!  But here we are on an island of four million people in South East Asia.   The “Hundred Mile Diet” might make sense in Vancouver, but how does one eat locally in Singapore?  Well, the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia are 400 kilometres away, and while that is not exactly “local”, it’s a lot closer that Peru!  Produce that is unpacked from crates at the wet markets in Singapore in the dark, wee hours of the morning was probably picked the day before.  The operators of the stalls at your local wet market can tell you exactly where every item came from, and when it arrived.

One of my family’s all-time, all-Canadian favourites is Ontario peaches’n’cream corn, from the back of a pick-up truck in the Canadian Tire parking lot in August.  I have steadfastly avoided the naked cobs in shrink-wrapped pairs at the grocery store here in Singapore, but the other day the lovely woman who always waves me over at my neighbourhood wet market was more persistent than usual, pointing to a pile of fresh green cobs, with “Must try! Must try!  Two colour corn! Cameron Highland.”  It looked like peaches’n’cream, broken stalks still white and fresh moist silk at the top, so I took a dozen home for my Canadian guests that evening.  It was amazing!  Sweet, crunchy, and fragrant, and tasting of home!

Now, if you really want to intercept freshness, even before the produce gets to your local wet market, make your way to the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Market!  It is located on the West Coast Highway, near Haw Par Villa MRT station.  Bring BIG bags.  You will find an endless variety of not only fruits and vegetables, but frozen and dried foods, such as nuts, as well.  Anyone can shop there, at astonishingly low prices.  It is an enormous area, taking up several city blocks, very busy, and not set up as a shopper-friendly retail store, so watch you don’t get your ankles nipped by a fork-lift truck.

Is it possible to “eat locally” in Singapore?  Can we get “food less travelled”?  Well, you can certainly get closer to the source of your food at your local markets than at the supermarket.  Give it a go.