Good morning.
With its first season chalking up nearly 9 million views on Youtube alone, Slumfood Millionaire is back – celebrating the resourcefulness of talented cooks from Asia’s slums.
Using cheap, oft-overlooked ingredients, and techniques to maximise flavour, they prove – on a tight budget – that you don’t need to be a fine-dining chef to make good food.
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This time, we travel out to the provinces and learn how incredibly resourceful residents catch, forage or grow what they can, to create a meal at little-to-no expense.
On Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, Tha makes a feast for her family from what the river provides – mantis shrimp, river hemp and water hyacinth – in a broth rich with the umami of cheap fermented fish.
The entire crew got seasick on the bobbing boats, BUT they did get to try Tha’s and all the other dishes in this 6-part series – a definite perk of the job!
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And it was eye-opening to see how a seemingly challenging ingredient could be turned into an appetising dish.
There’s Juvi in Cebu, who turns fresh pig brains into a bubbling gravy that elevates plain rice cakes. And Hartatik in Yogyakarta takes ‘dirty’ chicken heads and converts them into a mouth-watering grilled dish.
In Sarawak’s Bintulu, Corina takes us into her forest ‘supermarket’ and shows us the Iban way, as she gathers palm oil shoots and torch ginger flowers to add fragrance to bamboo-steamed chicken.
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In Kolkata in West Bengal, Hari and Shamik use mutton fat and asafoetida to amplify simple ingredients such as yellow peas, beetroots and carrots. And in Koh Klang, Krabi, Dum makes a creamy curry of freshly-trapped black mangrove crabs.
This season will whet your appetite – take it from us!
Kelly Lin
Series producer, Slumfood Millionaire
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