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SINGAPORE – It was the 1970s. As night fell in prisons and drug rehab centers across Singapore, inmates got to work beating carefully stored razor blades against smuggled pieces of flint to light fires in their cells. .
In the two-hour window between 7:00 p.m. M. And the lights off at 9:00 p.m. M., When guard patrols were not scheduled, men reused cups and urinals to cook hot dinners themselves with lean ingredients such as canned food, tau kwa (tofu squares) and water taken from the toilet bowl.
The little-known practice of cooking illegally in prison or “masak”, which means cooking in Malay, is documented in a book published late last year, When Cooking Was A Crime: Masak In The Singapore Prisons, 1970s-1980s.
Based on the experiences of eight former prisoners interviewed by 34-year-old food writer and author Sheere Ng, the book describes how far prisoners would go to regain a sense of autonomy behind bars, or simply to break the monotony of life in prison.
In an interview with The Straits Times, the former editor of the Makansutra food guide said she was interested in writing about prison food in 2011. She reached out to Benny Se Teo, a chef and former drug offender who founded the chain of social business restaurants Eighteen Chefs, which hires ex-criminals.
Ms Ng said: “I told him I was interested in knowing about the prison food and he said, ‘I’ll tell you something even better. I’ll tell you about masak.’
“He asked me to come to his restaurant and we talked for two hours, but at the time it was very difficult to understand because there was a lot of jargon and prison language.”
Intrigued by the practice, Ms. Ng contacted other former inmates and a former superintendent of a drug rehabilitation center through church networks and personal connections.
The former inmates revealed how almost anything could be used as cooking fuel for masak, from scraps of cloth and plastic bags to makeshift candles formed from melted pieces of plastic food trays stolen during official meals.
The ingredients could be obtained from other inmates who served as cooks in the prison kitchens, purchased with prison salary from the police station, or simply portions of lunch or dinner food reserved for later use.
With a healthy helping of creativity and a touch of imagination, dishes like “laksa”, “ban mian” and even the dessert “bubur cha cha” could be recreated in the cell.
The prison versions of these local favorites hardly resembled their original forms, but they were a comforting escape for inmates, especially compared to the meals they provided, which were invariably bland, repetitive, and always served cold, Ms. Ng said. .
“You close your eyes, you eat that hot food and you feel like you are not in prison, you are in Singapore,” he added, noting that “Singapore” meant the world outside the prison walls.
Ms Ng said she decided to publish her findings as a book to show different sides of the inmates, who are often seen simply as breaking the law.
He also wanted to show how food can take on different meanings in Singapore, such as punishment, freedom, control or play, beyond its more common associations with national identity or family ties.
“When you are deprived, you would be surprised at how far you would go or how creative you could be with the things that are available, just to make your life a little more enjoyable,” he said.
Ms. Ng collaborated with a friend of her husband, freelance photojournalist Don Wong, whose photographs of dishes described by inmates appear in the book.
Mr. Wong recreated the dishes at home during the circuit breaker period last year.
The book was published by the writing studio In Plain Words led by Ms. Ng and her husband Justin Zhuang. It is available on the studio’s website and at the Kinokuniya bookstore.
Prison cooking recipes
“Peanut butter”
• Package of peanuts
• Sugar
• Margarine
“Nutella”
• Chocolate bar
• Margarine
“Porridge”
• Cooked rice
• Milk for lunch
• Fried vegetables
• Water from the toilet bowl
“Laksa”
• Tau a
• Fried noodles
• Hae bee hiam canned
• Reconstituted milk
“Ban Mian”
• Fried noodles
• Fried vegetables
• Cut chili peppers
• Canned anchovies
• Hae bee hiam canned
• Water from the toilet bowl
“Bubur Cha Cha”
• Green bean soup
• Kaya
• Sugar
Birthday cake
• Chocolate bar
• Margarine
• Soda cookies
• Cake pan made with magazine covers and rice glue
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