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The Singaporean Chicken Curry video that annoyed many people in Singapore and caused them to scratch their heads has been removed from the New York Times Cooking Instagram page.
The video was taken down on Feb. 11.
It was put up on Feb. 2.
The quick-cut video showed Clarissa Wei, a Taipei-based American freelance journalist, cooking "Singaporean Chicken Curry".
Post put up saying video removed
A new post put up on the @nytcooking Instagram page on Feb. 11 informed its 3.4 million followers and the public at large about the removal of the video featuring Wei.
However, NYT Cooking stopped short of apologising and did not explain how the recipe came about.
The post read:
Last week we shared a video of a chicken recipe adapted from a home cook from Singapore. The video demonstration didn’t faithfully follow the recipe, which was adapted by Clarissa Wei from Shila Das, and it also should have been prepared as part of Ms. Das’s Nasi Biryani recipe. As a result, the video didn’t do justice to Ms. Das’s family dish or to her Lunar New Year tradition. After hearing your feedback, we’ve removed the video, and we have clarified the recipe. We’re appreciative of your response.
In the wake of the backlash, Wei had set her Instagram account to private before turning it back on to public, only to revert back to private again.
Why were there two curry chicken recipes?
Shila Das, 51, a Singaporean woman, gave The New York Times her late father's recipe for chicken briyani.
The recipe was passed to Wei.
Wei interviewed Das for her Jan. 21 feature on NYT Cooking about how multicultural Singapore celebrates Chinese New Year.
Wei and Das were introduced to each other by a mutual friend in Taiwan, according to The Straits Times.
Despite only passing one recipe to Wei, it somehow then became two -- a nasi briyani recipe and a Singaporean chicken curry recipe.
via NYT Cooking
Both Das and Wei were then bombarded with criticisms online.
Das also told ST she was not told her recipe would be split into two, but knew "there would be trouble" when she first saw the written recipes before the video came out
Das then got in touch with Wei after the video blew up and asked if it could be taken down, but was told NYT would not take it down, and to "not respond" to the hate mail, ST reported.
Mothership.sg reached out to Wei but was told to contact NYT instead.
NYT Cooking has since tweaked the Singaporean Chicken Curry recipe to reflect a chicken biryani dish.
Why the furore over chicken curry?
There is no such thing as a generic "Singaporean Chicken Curry" in the first place.
Chicken curry in Singapore comes in many forms, all done differently by the Peranakans, Chinese, Indians, Malays, and Eurasians.
The NYT Cooking recipe by Wei failed to demonstrate how a curry is done, and did not capture any of the nuances and differences, nor did it represent any single group's curry accurately, and ended up misrepresenting to the rest of the world how curry is done in Singapore -- an affront to food-mad Singaporeans' sensibilities.
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