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2013-05-27
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I was happy to make it here at Lek Lim Nonya Cake Confectionery together with my four friends, by invitation of the owner, Gavan. Although I grew up around this area, little did I know that there was a hidden gem here, selling all my favourite kuehs! The shop is located near the famous Bedok North Blk 85 Fengshan's Bak Chor Mee, just opposite a carpark behind the food centre.All items here are Halal-certified and mostly vegetarian (no egg too), so to our Muslim friends also, please come and tr
All items here are Halal-certified and mostly vegetarian (no egg too), so to our Muslim friends also, please come and try out the traditional kuehs here!
Gavan conducted a special learning journey for us at his shop.
Firstly, he gave us some background about the shop. They are actually a Teochew family and his grandparents learnt how to make nonya kuehs from a peranakan lady. They started off as a home kitchen in the kampong during the late 1968 and set up the current shop here in 1987.
Lek Lim's kueh and many other food items are all hand-made from scratch. Gavan does not believe in mass-production through the use of machines. They had tried both hand-made and machine-made kueh, and there was a distinctive difference in the taste. He added that for machine-made, the ingredients such as bamboo shoots, turnip etc will become quite mashed up, and the texture will be different.
This is indeed a laborious task and the shop has to open by 4am everyday, ready to serve the customers and also for distribution to hawker stalls, hotels etc. As such, by 3+am, they need to start preparing the ingredients! The only rest days they have are the Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival.
They have 2 versions of the yam cakes, steamed and fried yam cakes. Gavan said that by "accident", they realized that deep-fried yam cakes tasted good so they decided to introduce them into the shop. Both have their own merits and I seriously think these were the best yam cakes that I ever had so far, with generous servings of yam chunks, mushrooms and shrimps inside to give them more flavour. Each piece is only 80 cents, very value-for-money too!
Their spring rolls! Die-Die must try! It was really good, with generous fillings of turnip, carrot, beansprouts etc. At Lek Lim's, they definitely don't skimp on the ingredients!
To read up more about this invitied learning journey at Lek Lim, please visit my blog post at:http://www.ylyn-journal.blogspot.sg/2013/01/lek-lim-nonya-cake-confectionery-bedok.html
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