Best Singapore recipes to cook at home | Marion's Kitchen (2024)

Invented in Singapore zi char restaurants, this seafood dish is rather special. Succulent king prawns get a nostalgic coating in and the result is rich, sweet, savoury and crunchy. The cereal used for this dish is called Nestum, which is a much-loved Malaysian brand that has a light, flaky texture. Seek it out at Asian grocers or online.

Sambal sotong, or squid sambal, is a popular Malaysian dish that’s spicy, sweet and delicious, using the chilli-based condiment as its hero. It deserves the freshest squid you can find for the most tender result. It’s a fantastic seafood recipe that’s a great addition to your zi char banquet.

Egg foo young is essentially a flavoured and filled Chinese omelette, smothered in a delicious gravy-like sauce. It’s light, fluffy and comes together very quickly, so is perfect for rustling up when you don’t feel like flexing your cooking muscles too much.

Restaurant-style Asian greens are so easy to achieve at home and they take next to no time to prepare and cook. Slice any greens you can find in store – bok choy, gai larn (Chinese broccoli), broccolini, choy sum – then stir-fry with garlic and oyster sauce in a wok.

Classic Singaporean dishes

Singapore is rich in culture and history, and fish head curry is a great example of this. Apparently, the dish came about when an Indian immigrant, Mr Gomez, wanted to make a typical South Indian fish curry that also appealed to his Chinese customers, as he knew that fish head was a favourite in the Chinese culture. And so fish head curry was born: a unique blend of cuisines and flavours… and one of my favourite recipes to come out of Singapore!

Kueh Dadar are commonly eaten in Singapore and across Southeast Asia as a popular sweet treat snack or dessert. Kueh (also spelled ‘kuih’) is a broad Malay term meaning a snack, or bite-sized dessert. They can be sweet or savoury and the repertoire of them in Singapore is vast, many associated with the Nonya (or Straits Chinese/Peranakan) communities. Generally kueh can be complicated to make but not these; you just make the simplest filling, cook a thin batter (exactly as you would a crepe), fill, then roll.

These vibrant coloured rolled-up crepes get their colour from pandan leaves, and are filled with a sticky coconut filling that’s sweetened by Malaysian palm sugar.

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