Pork ribs tea is a dish with history. It was the food of young men who left China for Nanyang with nothing more than the shirts on their backs and determination in their pockets. Pauline D Loh has the story

In a dank, dark museum in Singapore's Chinatown, columns of fly-spotted, sepia-stained photos document the first hard days of the Chinese immigrants. They appear to be a sun-scorched, skinny, penniless lot - part of the continuing diaspora forced overseas by poor harvests, floods and famine along the southern coasts of China.

Mostly men, they worked as "coolies", or laborers for hire, but many were indentured and sold like livestock to the tycoon bosses along the riverside warehouses. In fact, they were called "piglets" in the local patois.

As they labored hard and long, there were few home comforts. They slept in bunk beds piled three high in windowless rooms, and ate from communal kitchens manned by a roster of tenants. But the daily toil continually sapped their strength, and they had to have good food.

Some of these laborers, talented in the kitchen arts, soon saw opportunity in the need and started little mobile hawker stalls along the warehouse strips along the river. They sold a hearty soup made with pork ribs, served with rice and a bowl of tea.

It was a fast food combination that suited them. It had soup, it had rice, it had meat and it had tea. It was called bak kut teh, or pork ribs tea.

My grandfather started out in life as one of those second-generation laborers along the Singapore River. With his bare hands and nothing more than mulish determination to succeed, he built an empire of bumboats that would service the entrepot trade of Singapore in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. He was also an old Fujianese who loved his pork ribs tea.

Pork ribs tea has no actual tea leaves in the dish. Instead, it is a soup that is served with a pot of tea by the side. And considering that Fujian grew some of the best tea in China, it was a tribute to home with every sip.

The dish is also a classic example of how Chinese exercise balance in food and cooking.

Pork ribs were the off-cuts, bones with just a thin layer of meat. It was cheap meat. Cooked with plenty of garlic and white peppercorns, it provided sustenance.

Garlic helped the laborers fend off infections, and the heat of the white peppercorns helped them perspire and sweat off the heat and humidity 10 degrees north of the Equator.

The meat, what little there was on the bone, was satisfying, the soup was tasty and helped chase down the two or three bowls of rice they polished off at each meal. And after the soup was drunk and rice was eaten, a little pot of tea cleansed the palate and helped the digestion.

It's been almost a century since, and the laborers, bumboats ferrying supplies to ships, and warehouses, are fading memories, nudged aside by the inexorable progress of modernity.

These days, well-heeled senior executives and their well-fed families still enjoy what was previously poor man's food. The dish, too, has undergone a metamorphosis, with bigger chunks of prime ribs, liver and kidneys, mushrooms, vegetables and herbal variations to the soup.

It is also one of the 10 best-loved dishes of food-centric Singapore. But this dish, and this dish alone, recalls the early days when the city was built from the ground by the blood, sweat and tears of its pioneer citizens - the old immigrants from China.
Iron strength comes in small doses

Fujian province is well known for its tea varieties, the most famous being the Big Red Robe and Little Red Robe of the Mount Wuyi estates. Other famous teas are the Shui Xian or Narcissus tea, and the tieguanyin or Iron Buddha tea.

Tea drinking is now considered an art, but to the tea-drinkers of old, it was part of everyday life. Everyone understood how and why tea should be drunk a certain way, and there was no mystery to the ritual.

Tieguanyin is a semi-fermented tea harvested in the spring and autumn. It is an extremely fragrant tea that has enough tannin to color it a deep amber if it is left to brew too long. The tannin renders the tea extremely alkaline and if drunk too often, will unsettle the gastric system.

That is the reason why tieguanyin is drunk in small doses, poured from little teapots.

The best tieguanyin is sold vacuum-packed in small individual packages, just enough to fill one tea pot. It can retail for up to 1,200 yuan ($176) a kg.

Here is a quick guide on how to enjoy your Iron Buddha tea.

Chew on a bowl of tea

Step 1:

Tip the packet of tieguanyin into a small teapot. Pour hot water over the tealeaves. Swirl the pot, and immediately pour away this first brew. You can pour the hot tea over the little tea cups to cleanse them. This first swirl tempers the tea leaves and washes away surface dirt.

Step 2:

Pour hot water into the tea pot once more. Add just enough water for tea to serve 2 to 4 people. No tea should be allowed to remain in the pot to soak up the tannin.

Step 3:

Once the first serving is drunk, pour more hot water into the teapot and serve again. You can repeat this eight times without losing flavor. The tea leaves should be discarded after that and a new packet used.

TEA NOTES:

The first serving of tea is always a very pale gold. This primes the taste buds, allowing the faint fragrance to fill the mouth.

As the tea drinking progresses, the color and flavor of the tea darken and intensify as the leaves brew and more tannin is released. The aroma peaks at the third, fourth and fifth servings and then slowly fades as the infusion weakens.

When my grandfather finished with his tea, he would give it a final swirl with water and empty the pot over his jasmine and gardenia plants. They were the best-smelling flowers in our garden.

Pork ribs tea (Bak kut teh)

INGREDIENTS (serves 4):

600g pork spare ribs

4 whole bulbs of garlic

1 tbsp whole white peppercorns, trimmed

4-6 fresh shiitake mushrooms

1 bunch enoki mushrooms

1 cup (4 tbsp) light soya sauce

2 slices dried liquorice root (gan cao)

1 liter water

Coriander leaves for garnish

1 red chili, sliced

Dark soya sauce for dipping

Method:

1. Place white peppercorns in a muslin bag and fasten the opening.

2. Peel off the dried skin from each garlic bulb, but keep the bulbs whole. Trim off the dried tips. Trim the hard stems of the mushrooms.

3. Clean the pork ribs and blanche in boiling water to remove surface fat. Drain and reserve.

3. Bring water to a boil. Lower bag of peppercorns, garlic bulbs, liquorice root and pork ribs into water and bring to a boil. Turn down heat to a simmer and cook for an hour or so.

4. When the pork is tender and the garlic is very soft, add the light soya sauce and mushrooms. Simmer another 10 minutes and add salt to taste.

5. Ladle into bowls and garnish with coriander leaves. Serve with hot rice and a dip of dark soya sauce and cut red chili.

FOOD NOTES:

This soup should be very clear, and a light golden brown. To keep the soup from turning murky, you need to blanch the pork ribs to seal the juices.

This way, the marrow from the ribs will not leak while cooking and turn the soup cloudy.

It is also very important to add the light soya sauce last. If it is added too soon, the soya sauce will sour.

Source: By Pauline D Loh, China Daily