retroactive postscript

By the way, the last day in Singapore wasn't great for food but I did track down the elusive Bobo Chacha (no relation to Chichi Dango. Really.) It turned out to be a bowl of sweetened milk and shaved ice contaning cubes of taro, sweet potato, and multicolored, chewy, sweet gelatinous chunks. Not bad, but the Viennese don't have anything to worry about, dessert-wise (sorry, Chun).

passion

The last time I was in Maui, a few years ago with Julie, we had passionfruit-flavored mochi made by a bakery here on the island and distributed, it seemed, just about everywhere we went (along with other flavors which weren't as great). This is not filled, it's just a little log of mochi with the passionfruit flavor part of the flesh of it. I was very eager to try it again and introduce my parents to it, so I dragged them into every grocery and convenience store we passed for two days, to no avail. We looked up "bakeries" in the yellow pages and called the one I thought might be right. I asked if they made passionfruit mochi, she told me "no", and hung up before I could ask if they make any mochi at all (it did say in their yellow pages ad that they did).

So after all this failure, I decided to see if I could make it myself. There are lots of recipies for mochi on the web, including some specifically for "chichi dango", which is coconut flavored, and which Julie told me to look out for on this trip. Haven't found that yet either. But today we went to Safeway and got sweet rice flour, sugar, baking soda, a sixpack of passionfruit-flavored beverage product, and two cans of coconut juice. Tonight I made the passionfruit-flavored one, which was disappointing because the beverage product was only 5% juice, and you could barely taste the aroma of the fruit or any acid. On Friday, when we get back from Hana, I'll try the coconut.

DISPASSIONFRUIT MOCHI (adapted from several mochi recipes from the Web)

1 1-lb box sweet rice flour (mochiko)
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cans (24 oz) passionfruit-flavored drink

Mix the dry ingredients, reserving about a handful of the rice flour. Blend in the liquid. Bake 1 hour at 350 degrees, covering the pan with foil (9x13" or equivalent). Let cool for about 2 hours or overnight, cut into squares and dredge in the remaining flour.

Ways to improve it next time:

Grease the pan (all the recipes called for it, but I forgot to get the wherewithwhat to grease with; not much in the way of supplies in the rental condo). It actually wasn't that bad getting it out, but perhaps it could have been easier.

Use something better than a 5% juice beverage product. I should have gone with my gut and skipped the passionfruit this time for Goya pear nectar instead, at least that has a more intense flavor. Probably so thick that you'd have to add a bit of water, though.

Dredge in potato starch instead of the rice flour -- it would be smoother and not quite so raw-flour-y tasting; some of the web recipes call for it.

Now here's an idea I should have had back when I had a meyer lemon tree: meyer lemon mochi, nice fragrance, nice acid, and the California touch. Stay tuned.

sfl, day 6

The conference was over, so today I set out for the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, a somewhat tamed tropical forest in the middle of the island. On my way to the bus I stopped in a fast-food-ish place and had more otak-otak (this time called Otah), some rice rolls with a sweet brown sauce, and a couple of big rice-flour dumplings with noodles and other stuff inside -- and the best kalamansi (sweet lime) juice I've had so far.

The forest was not quite the movie jungle I'd expected -- not *that* different from walking the Nipmuck Trail in Storrs ... (short pause) but with vines ... (longer pause) ... and monkeys. I had seen signs about the monkeys but somehow wasn't really expecting them, and I was just floored when one walked around from behind a tree....and then I realized I was in the middle of a troop, and they were in the trees all around me. Wow. On the one hand, the macaques are social primates and our cousins; on the other hand, they are sort of Deluxe squirrels; they have grey fur and long tails, they chase each other around in trees......I also saw a monitor lizard, about 2 feet long, pawing around in the leaves looking for bugs to eat (had to mention eating in this paragraph, since this is a food blog; even the monitor lizards eat well in Singapore).

For dinner, went on a quest to find the one food stall, in a city of uncountable thousands of food stalls, personally recommended by Chun. Took the subway to Chinatown, walked to the Hong Lim shopping complex, and started searching through two stories of stalls, probably over 100, for the one specializing in Big Prawn Mee (noodles) that was Chun's favorite. I was starting to despair because 3/4 of the places were closed or closing, but I found it, and it was open, and MAN! That may indeed have been the best bowl of noodle soup I've ever had. Nice prawns, but really amazing noodles (slightly wide, yellow, chewy) and super-savory broth, with lots of the little fried shallot thingies (sorry, Chun, I couldn't bring myself to order it with the pig tail). If Chun ever recommends food to you, listen. I was still a little hungry (long day), so I picked up two steamed bao at another stand, pork & cabbage and purple yam (both very good).

sfl, day 5

Lunch at the conference center cafeteria, but still good; laksa (noodles, shrimp, bean sprouts, and tofu in a coconut-curry soup) and roti. The laksa was just like the lunch special noodle soup at Berkeley Thai House, and I've never seen it at any other Thai restaurant. I wonder if the Berkeley Thai House is run by Malaysians....? For dessert, two scoops of ice cream: black sesame (yum...) and durian (umm....) (yes, I know better, but I did anyway).

For dinner I went to a place called Straits Chinese because it had several of Chun's recommended dishes on the menu. I had Nasi Goreng (fried rice) and Otak-Otak, which is a sort of Singapore Gefilte Fish, steamed in a banana leaf, with all sorts of intense flavors mixed in. Incredibly delicious (thanks, Chun!). I tried to get Bobo Cha-Cha, which is neither a Star Wars character nor a dance but rather a dessert, which was on the menu but unavailable. As always seems to be the case when a restaurant doesn't have something that's on their menu, they seemed confused and amused that I would even ask for such a thing. They brought me the next thing down on the dessert list which was a cup of cream and a molasses-tasting syrup with bits of green jelly and a ball of ice. The quest for bobo cha-cha, whatever it turns out to be, continues.

Singapore food log, day 4

Lunch was at a Turkish restaurant, where I had something that turned out to be a lot more like a pizza roll than I expected, but was the house special. It had chicken and eggplant and something very much like mozzarella baked in a crust. Sour cherry juice to drink. The dessert plate was little baklava-like things and slices of slightly sweeted yellow squash (sorry, Rich). Turkish coffee.

Dinner with a Japanese colleague and his traveling administrative staff (they put up a booth, that's why he had a staff of three). We wandered Singapore's Chinatown, which was beautifully maintained, and ended up in a nice, modern, airconditioned restuarant, but clearly unique and very inexpensive. The food was "Teochow", which I had to look up when I got back to the hotel, and turns out to be cuisine from Shantou, a port city in Guangdong province, China. The specialties we had were some deep-fried shrimp balls (with some stronger flavors and more different textures inside than the typical Hong Kong Dim Sum ones) and a really nice dish which was a slab of soft tofu fried so that it developed a crisp skin while remaining silky inside, then covered with ground-meat-and-bean sauce. We also had three noodle dishes, in Hong Kong, Malaysian, and Hokkien styles, but they were not as interesting.

Took the subway home after dinner. At the bus stop outside the subway station, as I emerged, was a newsstand with a guy in the back who had a big cooler full of baby coconuts (just a thin shell around the flesh, no hairy bit). They were so small and uniform-looking I thought they were artificial at first, but they were real. You give him S$1.20 (about 75 cents), he makes a hole in the top and gives you a straw, you drink out the milk, then hand it back to him and he cuts it in half (several small expert taps around the perimeter, not the Marie Antoinette routine) and then you pull the soft meat out in strips and eat it. Very different from the thick hard coconuts I've had.

By the way, did you know Singapore has exactly the same letter grades for restaurant sanitation as LA does? Have I mentioned that I want my restaurants graded pass/fail? Beyond that I just don't want to know.

[Links are photos].

Singapore food log, day 3: photo catchup

The taro bun I had yesterday actually had something rather interesting to say:



which I actually find rather depressing, instead.

Nor do I think the turtles would feel that lucky:



I saw this add for a drink which I didn't dare try:



It made me think. Not only doesn't grapefruit "go" with coffee and chocolate, it doesn't really go with anything. Grapefruit is The Flavor That Walks Alone. Think about it. Grapefruit 'n' cream. Ribs in grapefruit BBQ sauce. Grapefruit/strawberry souffle. Not happening.

Here's a small picture of the first (Indonesian) lunch I had; it's tiny because I took a movie instead of a picture by accident. The plot left a lot to be desired.




For lunch today, we had dimsum at a place inside the convention center. It was all-you-can-eat but you ordered from a menu (except for dessert, which was actually on a buffet). This made it all very fresh and it was quite good. I don't think these guys were on the menu, but they were shilling on a table outside:



They weren't labeled but I bet they were called Lucky Ducks.

Went back to the Egyptian street place near the hotel for a late dinner. I wanted to try something called Harissa, which I thought was a sort of relish but they told me was a ground-meat dish with honey and cinammon on it. Those who know me know I would gladly put honey and cinammon on a hamburger if I had an ethnic authority for it. But this stuff turned out to have not so much hamburger consistency, but was kind of.....gooey. And greasy. I wanted to get through half of it to stand up to the waitress's initial skepticism, but I couldn't do it.

Singapore food log, day 2

You can't go wrong in this city. Perhaps there are draconian penalties for serving non-delicious food.

I slept in, so I started with lunch at a very casual Indonesian place in the area I was wandering at that time (steam table, most tables out on the sidewalk). The owner (or someone who acted like the owner) took me in hand and selected things for me. There was fish with okra
in a hot red sauce, string beans and (tofu? kind of firm, hard to tell -- I might have guessed chicken if he hadn't said it was a vegetable dish), a fried potato ball, and a couple of kinds of sauce and relish. Fresh limeade to drink. These little limes have very little acidity so it was startlingly mellow.

Then wandering through Little India, I stopped at a market and got a small bag of the largest lychees I'd ever seen. I ate those as I walked along, and realized that it was a good thing I was still a little hungry, because I'd have to stop somewhere to wash my hands. I stopped in a vegetarian Indian restaurant and had a yummy roti (grilled bread) with yellow dal and the sweetest, milkiest cup of coffee I've ever had. Handwashing facilities were prominent here because everyone ate with their (right) hand.

In the afternoon I wandered the botanical garden and learned that turmeric, galanga, cardamom, and bananas are all part of the ginger family. Since this is a food blog I won't say much about the orchid garden except that it was beautiful and there were a lot of orchids.

I walked back past an Indian Catholic church while hearing, for the first time in my life, the Muslim call to evening prayer on the breeze. At the hotel, I met John for dinner. We wandered into a promising restaurant row that was hopping even on a Sunday night. The place we went was open to the air, although our table was not out on the sidewalk this time. It advertised itself as Chinese/Thai, but the Thai part of the menu was just pro forma, and the Chinese part seemed pretty local (not a complaint). We had a noodle dish I hadn't heard of before, and it was one of the few things on the menu with no English translation, but it was recommended as a house special. It was wide rice noodles (fun) with sliced fish and mushrooms in a bit of simple fish broth. We also had asparagus in sambal (spicy and full of fish-sauce) and "crayfish" in black pepper sauce. The crayfish was a smallish lobster cut up in pieces, and with the sauce it went great with beer.

Then, as a sacred obligation, we went to the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel to have Singapore Slings. We did this so you don't have to. It turns out there is a larger and more elegant looking bar near the hotel which was entirely deserted; it's good we asked directions at the desk, or we might have ended up there nearly by ourselves wondering where all the other tourists are. The Long Bar itself was much livelier, and almost as elegant except for the peanut shells all over the floor (by policy). If you would like the experience of the Singapore Sling, mix Hawaiian Punch with a little gin in a tall glass with just a little ice, put a small wedge of pineapple and a Maraschino cherry on top, and drink it while ripping up a $10 bill and two $1s.

Singapore food log, day 1

My taxi from the airport to the hotel at 12:30am went along Arab
Street, and a couple of blocks before the hotel I saw some crowded
tables out on the street, so I walked back there once I had
established myself in my room. It was a Middle-Eastern restaurant
whose tables were set up on both sides of the street in front of
shuttered silk shops and money changers. Only a few other people were
having food at that hour; most were having drinks and hookahs in a
variety of cloying fruit flavors. Honestly, you see a big, scary,
authentic-looking tobacco-delivery vehicle like that and you expect
some raw, tarry, biting smell, not the smell of hot strawberry lip
gloss.

I had a dish of Foul with Sausage, which came with soft pita bread,
and some grilled mushrooms. The Foul (mashed fava beans), was much
wetter than mine, which are more like a sort of Levantine refried
beans in consistency. They were also less gimicky and better. The
sausage was thinly sliced in the beans. It was not the conspicuously
lamby kind I've had in Moroccan restaurants; it tasted more like
Spanish chorizo, although I'm sure it had no pork in it. There were
shredded, fried shallots sprinkled on top; I suspect this is the local
touch. The grilled mushrooms came over so much parsley that I had to
eat some. They had a strong charcoal-grill character but no other
sauce or spicing. I wish I knew how to make their Foul, but instead I
will insert

David's Levantine Refritos

3 cans fava beans (Foul)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon dried mint (or 2 teabags full)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
4 large cloves garlic
drizzle olive oil

Pour off about 1/2 of the liquid in the cans of beans; put the beans,
the rest of their liquid, and the lemon juice, cumin and mint in, and
simmer for a while (maybe 1/2 hour?) until the beans start to fall
apart. Then use a garlic press to squeeze the garlic in, mix it in
thoroughly, put into a shallow dish and drizzle olive oil on top.

consistency is everything

On the lunch menu at the University Center today was a sandwich that came with: "sliced tomatoe and a lettuce leave."

"Lettuce leave!" I said to my colleagues but we stayed and ate anyway. The food is much better than the spelling and every plate comes sprinkled with tiny multicolored flower petals.

The Pot Roast

OK, let's start off big. For Passover and Hanukkah, every year, it's The Pot Roast. This starts from my grandmother's base of tomatoes and onions, and adds touches from my mother and the annual experimentation at IRK's. The idea is a sort of flavor-explosion of a pot roast, no subtle carrots or celery or anything like that. Beef can take it.

1 large brisket, from a grass-fed, free-range, contented former cow. Ask the butcher to trim off all the external fat. If s/he complains, say you know what you're doing.
6 large to 10 small yellow onions
12 roma or 8 medium tomatoes
1 head of garlic
1/2 bottle red wine
A small handful of mulling spices, or else DIY out of peppercorns, star anise, orange peel and a cinnamon stick (and cloves or allspice if you like 'em; I don't much).
Salt to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Leave room for the cookie sheet with the potatoes on it (below).

Dice the onions, tomatoes, and garlic. Brown the brisket in a large pot/dutch oven thingy (whatever will go on both the stovetop and in the oven and will hold all this stuff) on both sides over high heat in a little vegetable oil. Put the browned roast aside, pour off the oil, and put in a layer of diced vegetables and spices. Put the meat back in, put in the wine, add the rest of the vegetables and spices, and put in the oven. Cook for about 3.5 to 4 hours, turning the meat over once or twice and making sure it doesn't poke out of the liquid and dry out. Take it out of the oven, remove the meat to a cutting board, slice across the grain as thinly as you can (not very thin for me, unfortunately). Salt the liquid to taste. Return the meat to the liquid and let it sit for about 1/2 hour and serve.

The Roasted Potatoes that go with The Pot Roast (my imitation of my grandmother's):

Peel russet potatoes and cut into about 8 pieces each (more or less). Toss the pieces in a little salad oil or olive oil (or use a spray) and salt. Roast in the 375 degree oven on a cookie sheet above or beside the pot roast for about 1 hour. I've never cooked these too much for my taste; a very soft middle and crusty crust is nice.

Ess gezunterhait

As Grams would say, may she rest in peace.

Since life is too short not to take up another hobby that involves sitting alone in front of a computer, I'll write here about what I eat, drink, and (too rarely) cook. Maybe my friends and family will send me things to post as well (not just comments). Hint hint.

I'm starting off with a jelly glass beside me containing Vov cut with sherry. It's repulsive-looking but I like it. I'll mention drinks now and then, but don't worry, whatever it is you can be sure I'm only having one of it.

D