Fish head curry is a popular (and expensive) restaurant dish today, but this wasn’t always the case. Spice queen Devagi Sanmugam remembers when only poor people ate it. She delves into how the dish came about, spells out why fish head curry uses different spices from meat curries, and explains how a clay pot makes all the difference.

Devagi Sanmugam, also known as the Spice Queen in Singapore, is a consultant chef, chef educator and author of 24 cookbooks, including Indian Heritage Cooking (2011) and the award-winning I Am a Rice Cooker! (2016). Besides developing recipes and blends for spice companies, she has been a celebrity chef at events and a judge for culinary competitions, such as the locally produced Tamil version of the Master Chef cooking series and Channel 5’s cooking variety show Wok Stars.

What Devagi Talked About

  • 02:00 – Why Devagi chose to demonstrate fish head curry in From Book to Cook
  • 03:13 – The origins of fish head curry in Singapore
  • 05:30 – How fish head curry became a multiracial dish in Singapore
  • 05:34 – Differences between Malay, Peranakan and Indian fish head curries
  • 07:11 – Why fish curry uses different spices from meat curry
  • 09:30 – Fish head curry across Asia
  • 11:13 – Eating fish eyeballs
  • 12:21 – Why fish curry is cooked in a clay pot
  • 15:09 – The key ingredients in fish curry
  • 17:06 – Devagi’s journey into cooking and teaching
  • 32:33 – Devagi’s future plans
  • 38:40 – Spices are…


Transcript and Resources

  • Read the transcript: https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/all-sections/podcast-cooking-fish-head-curry
  • Watch Devagi make fish head curry: https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/all-sections/video-fish-head-curry


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This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Nookcha Films. The background music “Di Tanjong Katong” was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Devagi for coming on the show.

Produced by the National Library Singapore, the BiblioAsia Podcast tells stories about Singapore history.

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