Pork Bone Tea Soup (Bak Kut Teh)
How this Singapore soup matched me to my soul mate
When I was a graduate student in Singapore, I lived next door to 933 Roast Duck on Balestier Road, which served the best version of what came to be my favorite Singaporean dish.
Bak Kut Teh or Pork Bone Tea Soup is a dish of meaty pork ribs simmering in pork bone broth infused with lots of whole garlic and a complex of Chinese herbs and spices: the usual star anise, cloves, fennel seeds, and peppercorn, plus a few rather obscure roots and rhizomes, and the medicinal dong quai (angelica sinensis or ginseng) which gives the soup its warming, soothing properties.
There are two versions: the peppery, garlicky, clear and light colored soup, and the darker, sweeter, soy-based soup. My Bak Kut Teh, the one served at 933 Roast Duck, is the clear and lighter one, and the standard to which I lovingly and delightfully measure all the other Bak Kut Tehs I ever had, and will ever have, in my life.
The magic is in the soup — it goes down your throat like soothing cough medicine, like savory herbal tea. Bak Kut Teh is comfort food for the late nights, early mornings, and cold weather. The pork rib is to be dipped in thick soy sauce with chopped chilies, and eaten with a spoonful of steaming hot, fluffy white rice.
