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Restaurant name: Afandi Hawa & Family Mee Rebus
Address:14 Haig Rd, #01-21, Singapore 430014 (Haig Road Market & Food Centre)
Hours: 9:30am - 8:30pm
Halal
Origins of Mee Rebus
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| Stulang Laut mee rebus in Johor Bahru, Malaysia |
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| ATAP-OD restaurant in Yong Peng, Malaysia |
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| Image credit: Wikipedia |
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| Map of Fujian province, China. Image credit: Wikipedia |
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| Henghua lor mee |
The Putian version 莆田卤面 looks white in colour. The stock made by boiling seafood like prawns, clams etc., and pork is thicken with flour. In Quanzhou lor mee 泉州卤面, the lor is also white but thicken by reduction i.e. evaporating the liquid by slow stewing.
Fuzhou lor mee 福州卤面 sauce is dark in colour as its gooey sauce is made by thickening bone stock that has dark soy sauce added.
Lor mee in Singapore though not mainstream, come rather well endowed with flavourful dark thicken sauce and topped with braised pork, fried fish, meat roll (ngoh hiang), fried shallot, fried wanton, lots of chopped garlic, chili padi etc. Some stalls have pulled fish meat topping. The usual condiments are sambal chili and black vinegar. I love Singapore style lor mee.
Mee rebus is much more ubiquitous in Singapore and Malaysia, compared to lor mee which is quite niche nowadays.
When I was a child living on the 8th floor of a 1-room rental flat in old Toa Payoh (1960s Singapore), I often passed time watching the world from the kitchen window. I still remember the address - Blk 65, unit #378-G, Lor 5, Toa Payoh. (The 10-storey flat had been demolished and turned into a foot reflexology park.)
In the afternoon, a Malay 2-basket hawker would come and sell mee rebus in the vacant space between Blk 65 and Blk 67. One basket had a charcoal stove with a pot containing boiling water to blanch the yellow noodles. The second pot had mee rebus kuah (lor) simmering in a pot over a small charcoal stove.
From the 8th floor window, I could smell the aroma of spices every time uncle lifted the cover over the pot of kuah. (Nowadays, I rarely smelled anything even with the plate of steamy mee rebus under my nose 😂 )
No, I don't remember eating his mee rebus. We could barely afford the necessary 3 meals at that time in 1960s Singapore.
Like Fujian lor mee, mee rebus uses blanched yellow noodles. There's also bean sprouts.
Like lor mee, mee rebus uses a sauce thicken with mashed potato starch/ puree, cornstarch or flour. The thickened sauce is known as kuah. Every stall have their own secret recipe which is some combination of beef, mutton, chicken, prawn, crab, dried cuttlefish, potato, sweet potato, tomato, peanut, tau cheo (fermented soy bean) etc., and spices such as galangal and turmeric.
Mee rebus is garnished with small cubes of fried tofu (tau kwa), deep fried crackles, dried krill, fried shallot, coriander, half or quarter hard boiled egg, calamansi (lime), raw green chili pepper, etc. For me, it must have that green chili pepper.
Usual condiments are sambal chili and kicap (dark soy sauce).
Like Singapore lor mee, mee rebus has many possible toppings. In Johor Bahru, lamb shank bone cooked in spices is a popular option. Other add-on sides are fried tempeh, bagedil (fried potato cutlet) etc.
Fujian lor mee meet Indian and Indonesian spices. Might it be that in the 15th century or earlier, somewhere in a Fujian settlement in Java or Malacca, someone make a Halal version of lor mee (sans pork), added spices like turmeric thus creating the prototype mee rebus? If we think this happened, then it lends weight to the possibility that mee rebus evolved from a Peranakan dish first.
Khir Johari, Singapore food historian and cookbook author has a different take on the origins of mee rebus.
According to Khor Johari mee rebus is "a dish created in Singapore before WWII".
"While mee has been around in the Nusantara (Malay archipelago) for a long time, Rumah Jawa at 51 Sultan Gate - which served as the central kitchen for satay production - came up with the thick and delicious gravy with its accompanying garnishes.
One critical ingredient was udang geragau or udang pepai (better known to some as sakura ebi) which came fresh off the docks at Clyde Terrace market (where Gateway stands today on Beach Road). Taucheo was added - a symbol of multi-ethnic Singapore. Mee rebus tells us that Singapore was not just a receptacle for Malay food from the archipelago, but it was an active innovator, coming up with other beloved dishes such as mee siam and roti mariam." (Source: Business Times)
What are your thoughts on the origin of mee rebus?
References:
Chinese Diasporas: A Social History of Global Migration
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| Fuzhou Noodle @ Ah Cong in Johor Bahru, Malaysia |
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| Tiong Bahru lor mee |
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| Mee Rebus House in Johor Bahru |
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| Two-basket hawker Singapore 1911. Image credit: National Archives of Singapore |
In the afternoon, a Malay 2-basket hawker would come and sell mee rebus in the vacant space between Blk 65 and Blk 67. One basket had a charcoal stove with a pot containing boiling water to blanch the yellow noodles. The second pot had mee rebus kuah (lor) simmering in a pot over a small charcoal stove.
From the 8th floor window, I could smell the aroma of spices every time uncle lifted the cover over the pot of kuah. (Nowadays, I rarely smelled anything even with the plate of steamy mee rebus under my nose 😂 )
No, I don't remember eating his mee rebus. We could barely afford the necessary 3 meals at that time in 1960s Singapore.
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| Auntie Lily mee rebus, Johor Bahru, Malaysia |
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| Hj Wahid Mee Rebus @ Zainal Place, Johor Bahru |
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| Hj Wahid mee rebus at Larkin, Johor Bahru |
Usual condiments are sambal chili and kicap (dark soy sauce).
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| Restoran ZZ in Johor Bahru |
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| JJ Mee Rebus - Yew Swee lor mee |
According to Khor Johari mee rebus is "a dish created in Singapore before WWII".
"While mee has been around in the Nusantara (Malay archipelago) for a long time, Rumah Jawa at 51 Sultan Gate - which served as the central kitchen for satay production - came up with the thick and delicious gravy with its accompanying garnishes.
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| Clyde Terrace Market 1910. National Archives of Singapore |
References:
Chinese Diasporas: A Social History of Global Migration
Date: 30 Jul 2020
Mee rebus (boiled noodle-typically the Hokkien yellow noodle) was originally brought to Malaysia from the South India. It came with the South Indian Muslims traders often referred to as Mamas (uncles) or Thulukans (a derisive term for Indian Muslims) because they mainly hailed from the township of Thuluk in the Indian state of Karnataka.
ReplyDeleteLike Chendol and Mee Goreng they adapted that dish (Mee Rebus) from what we now know as Rojak to add noodles to the dish for those who preferred noodles to what they originally made which was the vegetarian rojak.
The vegetarian Rojak later came to include prawns and other non vegetarian ingredients in its mix.
Towfu, rice and noodles were introduced to South India and Bengal by Admiral Cheng Ho. Yes the Chinese admiral contributed immensely to the diversity of south Indian cuisine like the Moghuls did with their kebabs which is today Tandoori in north Indian form and in Malaysia and Indonesia as Satay.
Cheng Ho lived in Kerala there till he died after circumnavigating the world (Although the Europeans strongly refute that claim). Cheng Ho was buried at sea off the coast of Cochin in Kerela.
String Hoppers for instance is mee hoon served with sothi (coconut milk curry with fish) is a Sri Lankan and South Indian breakfast staple they call idiappum.
Back to Rojak and (it is actually Rojah not Rokjak and Mama not Mamak as the bastardization of these terms continue).
Rojah / Mee Rebus was brought to Penang first with Chendol by the Thulukans then gradually improved on by the Babas and taken southwards to the Kelang Valley where the Malabaris with their chain of Mama restaurants (or Malabari restaurants) introduced Roja and Mee Rebus into their lunchtime and dinner menus.
Not to be outdone, the Chinese quickly created variants of the dish claiming it to be theirs. It has no history in China especially in the Fujian province.
We can at least deduce by that that the dish originated in India with Chinese ingredients introduced by Cheng Ho's community (the noodle aspect of it).
BTW Cheng Ho also introduced salt fish, the fish culture (which only lower caste Indians would consume in those days), and parts of the Hokkien language to Kerala and Bengal.
But of course we Indians would never admit to all of this. The Dravidian languages and cuisine have little in common with that of of the North of India except where its roots are in Sanskrit and Hinduism.
Nowadays of course with the rise nationalistic tendencies prevalent everywhere, no one wants to admit to the origins of anything they have in their possession as having come from anywhere else but them.