Thank you ever so much for your patience as I scurried about Southeast Asia photographing (and let's be honest, eating) quite a bit of food. The good news I have more SE Asia material waiting to be posted than I know what to do with, not to mention the backlog from the holiday season. The bad news is, well, I have more material than I know what to do with. But food photos tend to be more interesting than all this talk, talk, talk, so let's make a deal to help us both: I'll keep things a little more photo-essay, a little less essay-essay and you just enjoy mountains of photos. Of course, I'll still include recipes when I can so you can enjoy mountains of food as well.
Sound good? Then shall we begin?
First stop: Singapore, land of hawker centers and self-proclaimed "Food Capital of the World".
Taste & See: The Lonely Planet makes hawker centers look like raucous snacking Bacchanalia, full of rowdy people stuffing faces in crowded, hectic fashion. Not so. The centers I visited were all spacious and organized, with English menus and numbered tables.
One contained an enormous sign boasting in both English and Chinese the top 10 Singaporean dishes one must try: chili crab, char kway teow, carrot cake, chicken rice.The "must try" chili crab: there's no way you're staying neat and clean when you eat it.
The always reliable dim sum: from left to right, cha siew bao (red pork bun), shu mai (pork and shrimp stuffed egg wrappers) ha gao (shrimp wrapped in translucent wheat starch). If you can't make it to a hawker center you can always buy these at 7-11 . . .
The best food I had in Singapore, however, was not on this marketing-savvy list, but in far more colorful Little India.
Drinking 'pulled tea,' chai, made frothy by pouring between the tin cup and accompanying bowl, and eating a dosa, a big crepe-like roll from South India filled with potatoes. Sources say it tastes best if you eat with your hands (right hand only!) . . .
And from a banana leaf . . . I believe the white sauce is coconut based, though I'm not certain exactly what the other accompanying sauces are. It is lovely to watch them ladled with a splash from giant messy tins.
Not everything was roses, however. On one of my last nights my traveling partner and I were stuck in the rain, desperate for (and not finding) a place to eat. We chanced upon a Malay cafe with lovely pictures of roti, and thought we'd hit gold.
Not so. This was the "roti" we got: eggs in a baguette with chili-katsup on the side. Its like Malay food goes to McDonalds- not a happy instance of fusion. (I should take this opportunity to not only credit A for not complaining when faced with McRoti, but suffering through my constant food-photography.)
Generally things in Singapore tended to be a big. Unlike Thai street food, which comes in tiny bites, the centers serve mostly meal-sized portions (dim sum, above, is one exception), preventing solo or short-term travelers from experiencing more than a few on the list.
More endearing were the mangoes as big as my head:
If I were a Western wedding, my ego would be smashed by the larger-than-life Chinese banquets served at the weddings I attended, one of which was choreographed to a light-and-music show.
The appetizer plate: Prawns with fruit salad, Fried seafood toast, BBQ pork coins, Marinated jelly fish with chili sauce and sesame seeds, Smoked Chicken
The rest of the menu consisted of Braised shark's fin soup with crab meat, bamboo fungus and fish; with vegetable crackers, Roast duck with vegetable crackers, Steamed red pearl garoupa with Superior sauce, Boiled "Live" Prawns with Chinese "Hua Tiao" wine; Fresh scallops with nameko mushrooms, Thai asparagus and Oyster sauce; & Fragrant rice with chicken and Chinese sausage wrapped in Lotus Leaf. The pile of shrimp heads left over after we'd all had our fill of "drunken-shrimp":
Such a banquet calls for a magnificent wedding cake:
We, however, were served double boiled white fungus with hashima and red dates. The cake was from a 'wedding exposition' onto which I stumbled in the Bugis area. I think I would have preferred the cake, culturally insensitive though it may be.
I did try some tastier sweets in Singapore, however. First, at hawker stands- Ice dessert: piles of ice on doused with flavored syrups on top of various jellied bits, topped with beans. Not my cup of tea, but people love it. See also, a quirky Singaporean beverage in the back with Whatever? you never know what flavor you're going to get, kind of like the mystery Airheads we used to eat at the roller rink. Anyone feel me?
Even better (call me a Western snob) was the red-velvet cake at a local cafe, Food for Thought:
This cake and other goodies are made by local women- "Aunties"- in a bid to promote their independence via cottage industries.
Food For Thought also lives out the values like "Help End Poverty" and "Build Community" proclaimed on giant posters on the wall opposite the kitchen by providing free drinking water in exchange for donations to build wells for the poor world wide, providing free tutoring classes to underprivileged kids.
The coffee was good and the milk was nicely foamed, something I'm picky about in Asia (not a fan of sweetened condensed milk, as used in typical Asian coffees).
Food for Thought is located at 420 North Bridge Road.
Singapore has no shortage of good food and interesting culinary moments, and they're not limited to Hawker centers. Try as I might, I barely scratched the surface in the few days I spent there. Thankfully I had a second chance in neighboring Malaysia (see the next few entries), both a huge influence on Singaporean cuisine and a similar a mix of many different cultures. Ultimately, delicious though Singapore was, my love of Thai street food remains unchallenged.
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