The uplifting spell of Easter, with its eggs and bunnies, appeals to everybody. But especially so for Chef Damian D’Silva growing up in a Catholic Eurasian household in the 1960s; because Easter then would have been a day more significant, perhaps, than Christmas itself.
Easter is preceded by a 40-day period known as Lent, when Catholics would fast and abstain from eating meat, and spend time reflecting and preparing themselves spiritually. This made the anticipation, and the celebration when Lent finally gave way to Easter, all the more exultant.
Chef Damian would have felt it too as he looked forward to a very special once-a-year treat. Damian’s granddad – whom he calls “Pop” – would cook and serve this dish for dinner on Good Friday, after the family returned from Mass at the church. It was an egg crepe wrapped around ground beef.
Damian remembers the soft crepe made simply with egg and salt, and the ground beef cooked with aromatics including star anise, cinnamon and nutmeg with curry powder which in Kin’s version would be blended in-house. Kin would also serve this ‘murtabak-like’ dish with house-made chilli sauce and a raita of yoghurt, lime juice, tomatoes, onions and green chilli.
Once again, Chef Damian has taken a vignette of his childhood and made of it a gift – a gift for the diner; as well as for the continuing project of forging a multi-cultural Singapore food identity through story-telling and heritage-keeping, that Damian has made his life’s work at Kin. Pop’s Easter “Beef Murtabak” ($22) is available at Kin from Friday 26 March to Sunday 4 April 2021.
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