The foragers of Singapore: how to find edible plants growing wild and the foods and drinks to make from them
From the roadside berries that make a delicious jam to leaves you can infuse and the noni fruit which, fermented, can make a blue cheese, there’s a feast of foods to be had for free. Juliana Loh takes a walk on the Lion City’s wild side
Our tour begins with a cool, fizzy welcome drink. We are asked to identify the herbs it is flavoured with; we taste pandan, lemongrass and blue pea flower. Then begins a two-hour walk through a city neighbourhood during which we are introduced to weeds and plants producing edible flowers, roots or fruit – jackfruit, mango, lychee, several varieties of ginger, banana and papaya trees, the blue pea flowers we tasted earlier, and breadfruit, which actually looks and tastes like bread.
There is a pit stop outdoors for crackers and snacks over locally made pesto, comprising laksa leaves instead of basil leaves, candle nuts in place of pine nuts, groundnut oil and galangal – a root that’s a relative of ginger.
The tour ends where it started, at an art gallery on Singapore’s Niven Road, where we taste artist Laletha Nithiyanandan’s torch pops – crispy rice bran, yellow turmeric, red chilli, green sawtooth coriander, pink torch ginger flower and Himalayan rock salt – then move on to laksa truffles, wonderful aromatic balls of coconut sugar and laksa leaves, coated with grated coconut. We sample jars of infusions, from leaves to ginger to chillies in rum and vodka – an intoxicating mix of flavours that would spice up any cocktail cart.
