Chinese cuisine can be said to be one of the most varied cuisines in the world. True that the Cantonese may have made their mark with roast goose and roast duck and Cantonese-style dim sum, but the flavors of all the different dialects found in South China alone each have their distinguishing charms.
Now, I don't profess to be very familiar with Teochew cuisine. In fact I can safely say that I don't know anything about it at all. But if you were to ask me to describe their cuisine in three words, I would say that their foods seem to be focused on the healthy, light and clean.
That is precisely what I thought, standing at the counter of the Teochew porridge stall, trying to choose a couple of dishes to go with bowls of sweet potato porridge for my late night supper.
Because at elsewhere I would have gone straight for the sweet sour pork, salted egg fried chicken, sambal kangkong and sambal brinjal, here I decided on a slab of steamed egg, a portion of steamed pork, a portion of stewed chicken and a whole dish of stewed brinjal.