Breakfasts are the most important meals of the day, like the battery power in us. The best breakfast to us, is not to dine at the finest restaurant or savour the most expensive sharks fin soup. We enjoy simplicity. The best breakfast ever is the humble beginnings of our ancestors, toast.
The Kaya Toast. It is one of the most loved breakfast dishes of Singapore. Many Singaporeans refuse to eat other breakfast dishes other than Kaya Toast. It has been introduced for over 40 years ago, yet still remains as a favourite by many, young or old, proving that it has stood the test of time.
Kaya is spread on top of bread, traditionally toasted over charcoal to give a crunchy and crispy, thin texture. Kaya, is a traditional spread made of egg, sugar, coconut milk and is flavoured with pandan. There is also a slice of butter accompanied with the Kaya, instead of spreaded butter.
It is normally eaten along with 2 half-boiled eggs and either a cup of coffee or milk tea.
Kaya Toast is important to many Singaporeans, espeically the elderly. This dish helped to portray and reminisce about their own childhood and life experiences. Through this, that we are able to see the sentimental value of this long lost tradition to these elderly.
How the Kaya Toast came about is due to the Hainanese. In the past, many Hainanese worked on British ships at cooks. When they settled in Malaysia, they sold the food they made to the locals. They soon recreated the meal, replacing the western jams with local coconut jams.
This shows that the community back then was poor and were not wealthy, which explains the reason that they had substitute western jams with local jams.
Our lives have since then changed for the better. The western jams that were expensive back in the day could be easily picked off the shelf of our supermarkets at a affordable price now. It shows Singapore’s evolution from a small and underdeveloped island to a cosmopolitan and prosperous city.
Kaya Toast, is like a mirror, reflecting Singapore’s long history and hardships we had to go through. Only if we were able to appreciate the simplicity, would we learn how to better cherish the things we always take forgranted in life.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaya_toast
www.kaya.sg/kaya.htm
http://sixthseal.com/2006/03/kaya-toast-house-of-coffee-and-toast
http://ieatishootipost.sg/2007/08/tong-ya-coffee-super-crispy-kaya-toast.html
do you mean "as cooks" instead of "at cooks"?
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