Week 9 - Kopitiam - Singapore

KAYA TOAST

Our breakfast voyage this week-end took us to South-Asia where we delighted in trying two breakfasts both "out of the box" and yet strangely familiar.

Kaya Toast is the ubiquitous breakfast snack of the city-state of Singapore (it is also commonly enjoyed in Malaysia).  In the morning, residents find their way to a Kopitiam (coffee shop) where they enjoy this simple meal:  coffee, a toasted sandwich of kaya and butter, and a soft-boiled egg mixed with soy sauce for dipping.

Kaya is one of those new food discoveries we'll be eating long after our breakfast experiment is over.  Basically it's a curd made from coconut and flavoured with pandan leaf.  You can quite easily make it at home, but we cheated and bought a jar from our local T & T Supermarket.


For some reason I was extremely wary of trying kaya, (perhaps it was the slight greenish hue caused by the pandan leaf juice).  However I was relieved to discover that it is extremely tasty.  Think of a smooth coconut jam and you can start to imagine it (but I do encourage you to try this one for yourself!)

At first this breakfast seemed deceptively simple.  Get some bread, slap on some kaya and butter and you're ready to go.  But once we dug a little deeper we discovered a few surprising details.  For starters, the toast used for Kaya Toast should be thin.  In fact, following a video we saw online of a Kopitiam in action we used just one (quite thick) slice of bread for each sandwich.  We toasted it whole and then cut it into two very thin pieces.  This created a nice soft surface for spreading the kaya and butter while retaining the crunchy toast exterior.   Another thing I found very surprising is that Kaya Toast appears to always be eaten with the crusts cut off.  I can only speculate that perhaps this preference dates back to the British period of Singapore's history. (cucumber sandwiches anyone?)

Generally, the thought of sopping your toast in runny egg yolk makes me want to head back to bed, but for the sake of this blog project I persevered and you know what?  It wasn't that bad.  (I feel like the character at the end of Green Eggs and Ham)  Despite a copious amount of salted butter, the Kaya Toast on it's own was too sweet and the egg/soy sauce mixture really helped to add balance to this breakfast.

The Verdict:

For Ease of Preparation:







It's toast, what could be easier?

For Degrees of Separation:

Eggs and toast - familiar, coconut jam and soy sauce - not so much.

For Guestability:







I'm on the fence, would you like this served at your next trip to our apartment?  Let us know.

For Sustainability:

This was a pretty sugary breakfast but the butter and eggs got me through to lunch.

Overall Appeal:






A surprising total for a surprising dish.  While this one wasn't groundbreakingly delicious, it is the only breakfast from this project we've had repeatedly since.  It was sweet, tropical, salty and used items just familiar enough to make it seem like breakfast.  We left the table satisfied.

Don't miss the next post as we finally get to try a typical Filipino breakfast!