when i was heading over to hongkong for an unplanned weekend, i knew instinctively (in my belly no less) i needed to visit some of the places anthony bourdain covered. while i was a big fan of the celebrity author slash chef slash ex junkie, i knew his take on asian cuisine is sort of hit-and-miss. i mean this guy did not know about singapore hainan chicken rice till his third trip here.
nonetheless, taking cue from this episode of no reservations, i did some research and found myself riding the mtr to yau ma tei.
i was looking for four season pot rice (四季煲仔飯). it is always encouraging to see a decent queue at the entrance of a chowhouse, it is more reassuring that a majority of them were locals.
taking cue from the gentleman in front of me, i ordered the classic waxed meat pot and the popular chicken and salted fish pot. the waxed meat pot featured one fat laden chinese sausage, one liver sausage and one hunk of waxed fatty pork. all three preserved meat oozed a lingering aftertaste of chinese wine - funky. the chicken and salted fish pot is closer to familiar grounds, though the salted fish used is a lot fishier than what i am used to.
maybe i am biased, the claypots in singapore are way better. having said that, i cannot get the really tasty tung choi with foo yu sauce.
oh, the stewed beef parts across four season is good. very good. more about that later.
10 years is a very long time, and in 3 weeks time, i will be with a firm for 10 years. i am thankful for my boss and good colleagues (though most are not from my department), i am troubled by the undercurrent of politics sweeping around. what troubled me this week is a realisation is that the senior cohort of the organisation thinks it is ok and healthy.
i am not exactly sure if i want to invest another 2 years for a title no one can guarantee to give.
i will seek God's wisdom and guidance on where He shall lead me.
i arrived at chunxi road (春熙路) eight hours earlier than the scheduled team meeting time. the cool morning air, coupled with the serious lack of sleep on the plane, teased me to take a nap at an empty bench. damn, i am becoming a junkie.
surprisingly, i was able to doze off despite being paranoid of being mugged or arrested. i was jolted awake when my backpack, that weighed almost a small elephant, tumbled to the ground. satisfied with the almost 45 minutes powernap, i went hunting for chows.
my aimless wandering first brought me to a convenience store called wowo which only featured spicy beef jerkies and dried beancurd. i loaded on a coke to extract the much needed caffeine, before heading off to search for fuel. some 50 yards away from wowo was a stall called 乐来锅魁 and small locals were already gathering around the stall, wolfing down their purchases. this is a good start, my only alternative at that moment was macdonalds, and there is no way i will consume hash browns and mcmuffin in china. i rather gnaw on rabbit's heads - which i did later.
since this is new territory for me, i decided to just repeat the order of the guy in front of me - and i was hoping he wasn't going to order something that featured coagulated duck's blood or something. good thing he ordered a 卤肉锅魁 along with soyabean milk. happily, i held my order and hurried off to a nearby bench. now i am behaving like a junkie.
i have never had a 锅魁 before, i would describe it as a chinese pita bread. it is odd that the version served at 乐来锅魁 is sort of steamed, instead of toasted or panfried. either way, the concept of 锅魁 is simple, fill meat and vegetables in a dough-holder shaped like a flattened pac-man. i had stewed pork as my filling cos the guy in front had it. what i really wanted was pig ears along with chinese fungus.
but heck, the 卤肉锅魁 was good, packing in flavours of saltiness, sweetness, spiciness and an almost pervasive numbness from the sichuan peppercorns. the meat was fatty, moist and delicious. darn, my tongue was in overdrive. all these sensations for just 5 yuan. this is a good start to the trip
i have heard about big d's from the usual sources of gastroblogs. damn, this place even have a facebook fansite. this kitchen serves chichi-fare to the likes of krobuta pork loin, crab linguine, blackmore full blood wagyu ribeye. i am not sure if the description of "full blood" was to boast the quality of the meat or to describe the messy death of the cow. either way, it was a lousy marketing term.
i came here for one thing - anchovy pasta. at sgd18 a pop, this carbomeal is pricey. for the same fare, i could do a bowl of xo fish head bee hoon and a plate of har cheong kai (prawn paste chicken) from the famed stall located in the same coffeeshop.
the anchovy pasta was fantastic - the al-dente noodles were coated with a delightful blend of saltiness and spiciness. i tasted tiny chunks of salty anchovies, fiery peppers and olive-oil fried garlic pieces. my mouth is having a ball. i only wished the portion was not that frugal.
one interesting thing is that this western-based eatery featured soul food - babi assam, bang bang chicken and buah keluak. who could say no to peranakan food? so an order of the buah keluak was locked in. unfortunately, the black gold of the seeds from the buah keluak fruit did not hit the spot. while the paste was meaty and nutty, it had one flaw - the lack of fatty pork to balance the flavours.
will i head back to big d's? likely, but not purposefully.
my trip to yaowarat is punctuated with occasions of checking out and sampling the local grub. many of chows featured there in bangkok's chinatown were familiar fare back home in singapore. inevitably, i drew a comparison of which state conjured a more gratifying experience for the same dish.
first up was singapore's national dish - chicken rice. the equivalent version is called khao mun gai (ข้าวมันไก่). both versions are characterised by chunks of poached chicken parts served on top of a generous serving of chicken stock infused rice, served alongside cucumber. the thai version pimped its version with several sprigs of fresh coriander and accompanied by a cake of wiggly chicken blood tofu.
national pride aside, singapore's version packed in a lot more flavour and taste per bite than the thai version. after all, this is our national dish. however, what made the thai version score was the sauce. a bowl of dark, fragrant concoction accompanied each plate of khao mun gai. the sauce was a cpompound of tauchu (fermented yellow bean paste), thick soy sauce, chilli, ginger, garlic and vinegar. it was so good, i downed a bowl with half my plate of rice.
thailand 1 - singapore 1
khao mun gai (ข้าวมันไก่)
next up is a quintessential south-east asia snack - satay. pieces of pork are skewered into thin spears and slowly grilled over an open fire. i chanced open this while scouting the back alleys of yaowarat for photo opportunities. i think stay is called moo sate in thailand.
i ordered 10 sticks and was served within 5 minutes, all prepared from scratch. served alongside the pork that were grilled in its own fat, was a salad of pickled chillis, cucumbers and onions, a bowl of spicy, chunky peanut sauce and a plate of toasted bread.
it was some of the best satays i had ever consumed for a long time.
thailand 2 - singapore 1
thai satay
the next dish had me going back three times within 2 days. the kway chap in thailand re-defined what i understood about the dish. singapore's take on kway chap is a teochew dish of flat, broad rice sheets in a soup made with dark soy sauce, served with pig offal, braised duck meat, various kinds of beancurd, preserved salted vegetables, and braised hard-boiled eggs. the thai kway chap featured a clear peppery broth drenching a curled up version of the same broad rice sheets, and a medley of poached pork, moo grob (crispy pork), tripe, liver and heart. the base broth is already packed with heat to start with, and i was encouraged to pimp it to a hell-broth status by drenching in tablespoons of a fiery sauce of ginger, chilli, vinegar and fish sauce.
this dish had instantly became my favourite food in thailand. the sad part is that i could not get this version here in singapore.
thailand 3 - singapore 1
for approximate locations, head over to my flickr and check out the geo-tagged maps
some of the other shots which i liked but did not submit for critique
an out-of-focus shot which steve did not like
juxtaposition of indian coffeeshop patrons and mr steve "i am pretending to make pictures and ignoring the participants because the biography channel people are filming me" mccury
gangster tattoo of a stall owner in thieves market
yut, derek: this is the ghost commercial i was telling you both about. still brings a chuckle even when i have watched it a hundred times. btw, please help me find the chang beer advertisement.
one can practically get anyway within bangkok metropolitan with its bus system. the bus rides are cheap, crowded and absolutely ignorant of its timetabled schedules. i am always intrigued by the green small buses, or called the unloved buses by the locals. the buses puffed thick heavy smoke, the interior is marginally maintained, the service routes alter in accordance to the drivers' mood, the bus drivers crusie these bad machines at a speed twice what the metal tin vehicle is supposed to go and service is non-existent. however, it is cheap. 2.5 baht flat fee.
speaking about service, this bus scurried off because the man on clutches was too slow in boarding the bus. as**ole.
the mother of all comfort food. claypot rice is the way to cook rice before modern technology came and conquered the kitchen. the result, especially cooked over wood fire, is a pot filled with soft and moist grains encrusted by a layer of slightly burnt rice grains. the latter has a texture similar to japanese rice crackers, and happened to the best part, according to claypot rice connoisseurs. i suspect it has to do with the nostalgia and the lack. i remember my elders telling me stories that hot water is added to the claypot, so that the charred scrappings at the side were not wasted. either life was that harsh back in the 1950s, or they were going to the extreme in teaching me the chinese principle of frugality.
early versions of claypot rice in singapore did not feature chicken. just rice, a dash of kitchen oil or sesame oil and plenty of black soya sauce. the richer families may add chinese sausages and salted fish. and that's about it. a family probably had it once a month, or longer.
fast forward 50 years, i could have it almost everyday. i should count my blessings.
some of my favourite bowls while in japan last month
matsuya gyūmeshi (牛めし), osaka, 2009
tako wasa (raw octopus with wasabi), kyoto, 2009
nattō breakfast kyoto, 2009
the best of the lot had to be the nattō breakfast set. i love these fermented soybeans blended with wasabi, soya sauce, daikon and a cracked quail egg. damn, i am missing these sticky babies so much i will have to hunt them down in singapore tomorrow.
at the west end of nishiki market in kyoto sits a shell griller. this 8 person bar is located next to a seafood vendor, with an elderly man shackling shells and handing them over to a lad who grills the array of bivalve mollusks over a small 6 by 3 feet griller.
i used to avoid shells till the last year or so when i started reading bourdain's novels. i started with clams and slowly progressed to oysters. how could i resist when i saw fresh shells being roasted in its own natural brine?
i locked in an order of kaki (oyster) and hotate (scallop). they were great though i was a little terrified attempting the innards of the clam, especially the orange roe and the god-knows-what dark part.
WIDGETIZE