Noodles · Curry Broth

Laksa

📷 Closely related photo — Photo via Pexels/Unsplash — free for commercial use

For decades, rival hawkers in one Singapore neighborhood feuded loudly over whose laksa recipe was the 'authentic' one.

Rice vermicelli sits in a spiced coconut curry broth loaded with prawns, fish cake, and tofu puffs, topped with laksa leaf and sambal. In Singapore's Katong style, the noodles are cut short so the whole bowl can be eaten with just a spoon.

Why it's made this way: Laksa grew out of Peranakan cooking, the fusion cuisine that developed when Chinese traders settled in the old Straits Settlements and married local women who blended Chinese noodle-making with Malay coconut-and-spice cooking.