No Sleep Club’s Juan Yi Jun I Photo by Star Sabroso
We had so much fun filming the first episode of our “Ingredients” series in Singapore. If you haven’t seen it, be sure to check out this link where Mario La Pietra, bar manager at Neon Pigeon in Singapore, and Stefano Catino, co-owner of Sydney’s Maybe Sammy, craft a Garibaldi riff using a Filipino fruit called “batuan.”
For our second episode, still in Singapore, we now move to No Sleep Club, an all-day venue where you can enjoy craft cocktails, coffee, and tasty food. We tapped its founder, Juan Yi Jun, to help us craft a cocktail using another ingredient from the Philippines, mostly used in the kitchen: bagoong (pronounced as bah-goh-ong).
Bagoong is a fermented seafood paste known for its pungent flavor and umami richness. In the Philippines, there are many types of bagoong, which can be either fermented fish (bagoong isda) or shrimp paste (bagoong alamang). Shrimp paste is widely used in continental Southeast Asia, in Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indonesian, and Malaysian cuisine. Filipinos use bagoong as a dipping sauce combined with calamansi or vinegar for fried food, and depending on the region, it is commonly used as a flavor enhancer in various dishes. You’ll find it in local dishes like pinakbet (mixed vegetables steamed in fish or shrimp sauce), ensalada (salad), binagoongan (sautéed pork dish with shrimp paste), kare-kare (a peanut-based stew made with oxtails or seafood), and bagoong fried rice, among others.
In this episode, Jun created a tom yum-inspired gimlet-style cocktail using the shrimp paste.
Watch the video below for the recipe:
Tom Yum Bagoong Cocktail
Ingredients:
45ml Fat Washed Bagoong and Tom Yum Distillate
15ml Lime Juice
1 bar spoon House Fermented Passion Fruit Vinegar
20ml Fresh Egg White
15ml Charcoal Agave Nectar
A slice of Smoked Honey Pineapple
Dehydrated Bagoong for garnish
How to make the homemade ingredients:
1) To make the tom yum distillate, rest a neutral spirit with lemongrass, coriander, kaffir lime, ginger, and other spices in a vacuum-sealed bag for 4 hours. Then, vacuum distill it in a rotovap.
2) Use leftover binchotan charcoal to smoke and caramelize the agave nectar, then set aside.
3) To fat wash the bagoong, add 1 tablespoon of bagoong to 250 ml of distilled tom yum spirit in a sous vide bag. Seal and cook sous vide at 52 degrees for 2 hours. Put the bag in the freezer to freeze the solids, then strain the infusion through cheesecloth or a coffee filter and funnel the liquid into a bottle.
4) To make the passionfruit vinegar, in a mason jar, add equal parts passionfruit pulp and raw apple cider vinegar. Leave it for 48-72 hours and then strain.
Make the cocktail:
1) Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Add ice and shake until chilled.
2) Strain into a cocktail glass.
3) Garnish with smoked honey pineapple and dehydrated bagoong on the glass rim.
“It tastes like breakfast,” shares Jun. “We usually serve this tom yum-style cocktail at No Sleep Club; the bagoong adds a beautiful umami flavor to it. It is more reminiscent of the actual soup, which is what we were going for,” she adds.
Watch out for the next recipe and episode! Next stop, we have an interesting Singaporean ingredient, and our resident mixologist is making a cocktail with it in Manila.
No Sleep Club is located at 20 Keong Saik Road, Singapore, and is open Tuesday to Saturday from 5pm to 12am. You can contact them at +65 8838 0188 and follow them on Instagram at @nosleepclubsg.
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