One last Singapore food post! If you've been reading recent comments, you've probably gathered that my foodie friend and loyal blog reader David once came to Singapore for a visit. It was my distinct pleasure to introduce to him the wonders of the Singaporean hawker centre.

Singapore is dotted with hawker centres, which are basically giant covered, open-air food courts where local vendors have individual stands, usually specializing in a handful of dishes. I would guess the average hawker centre has around 30-40 vendors, usually covering popular Singaporean foods and drinks from Chinese, Malay, Indian and Indonesian cuisines. The diversity of cuisines reflects the country's ethnic makeup, but by now they're all considered Singaporean dishes.

You can get five kinds of fish ball soup at one vendor, handmade noodles at three others, chicken rice in the other corner, 18 kinds of juice squeezed in front of you, etc. I love it. The only place I've ever come across in the US that gave me remotely the same feeling was the second floor of this building in Boston's Chinatown. It only had about 6 vendors, but the dumplings were delicious, one of the vendors made bubble tea, and the atmosphere was fantastic. I still miss that place.

Anyway, the (first) hawker centre I took David to was on the ground floor of an old public housing apartment block, and I suspect that as we approached he was a little wary of what kind of cheap food I was touting that would be found in such a place. Then we stepped into the first aisle, and David stopped in his tracks, jaw open with what I can only describe as a sense of awe. I left him looking around and wandered off to get a plate of dumplings; when I returned with my goodies, I was met by a look of confusion mixed with disappointment. "You got dumplings? But you could get dumplings in the US!"  "Umm...nope. Not like these."  David dutifully tried one of my dumplings (I'd gotten well over a dozen for less than US$2) and was made a believer. "Ohmygod... these are really good! They're crispy but soft at the same time... and they're just... really good. Wait, how much did you pay for these? Oh my god." He then went off to do some more surveying and sample some more adventurous dishes, but I was pleased to have had my dumpling choice validated.  :)

I told you there would be a part two.

So while I have much love for the poh piah, there are two Singapore dishes that I generally rank above it for their combination of tastiness and comfort-food qualities. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the roti prata that I always have to have when I'm back, but here's one for you. Derived from an Indian form, Singapore has developed its own variations. It's a kind of griddle-cooked wheat bread that gets dipped in curry, and it's more special than it sounds. I will admit that it's possibly the curry that gives it that extra boost, but the bread itself is somewhat of a marvel of textures. It's a not-quite flat pancake, crispy on the surface, but which pulls apart to reveal soft, warm, slightly chewy innards. Which you then dip in the luscious curry and savor. It's really more of a snack food than a full meal, but when you can only get the real thing every so often, what's the point of rationing?

My other must-have food when I'm in town is chicken rice. One of my cousins once described this as Singapore's equivalent of mac-n-cheese. It's ridiculously simple, but impossible not to love. It's also an excellent comfort food.

Basically, you boil a chicken. Then you dunk it in ice water. While it cools, you cook the rice in the chicken broth/stock you've just created. Serve rice hot, chicken cold. Too easy, right? Sure, there's some seasoning involved (usually garlic, ginger, scallions), but it really is pretty basic. And surprisingly addictive.

Minced ginger, chili sauce, and soy sauce make up the standard dipping combination for this dish. Most people like to mix theirs together, but I kind of like keeping some boundaries -- I find soy sauce by nature to be just insidious and a little bit domineering, so I make it stand in the corner.

Yep, it's time for a little more time travel (aka catching up on old news) as I go back to talking about Singapore for a while. I've been back in Shanghai for a couple weeks, but I promised a post on food heaven... I just didn't say when!

Singapore tends to be known for a handful of things -- to people who don't travel much, laws about chewing gum and caning come to mind. Otherwise, the two words most frequently mentioned are "food" and "shopping."

I don't care that much about the shopping (suffice it to say there's plenty), so let's talk a little about the food. There's another post about food variety and quality in the works, but right now I'm going to focus on a couple local favorites. They're two of the dishes most closely identified with Singapore, and they're mmm, mmm, good.

First up is poh piah. It resembles a fresh spring roll, but the ingredients are usually somewhat different than what you'd find in the Vietnamese version. My aunt decided to do a poh piah night for the family, which was very self-sacrificing of her, as it basically meant that she spent an entire day preparing the ingredients.

Pretty much everything has to be sliced or shredded, and the main filling has to be cooked. Everyone can choose the ingredients they prefer, but these were the (pretty standard) ones on offer at our dinner: from bottom right, cooked shrimp, cooked fish meat, bean sprouts, egg, a kind of dried sliced sausage, spring onions, and shredded lettuce. If you look closely on the left side, you can see a jar of chili paste (red), minced garlic (yellow), and a dark sweet sauce, similar to plum sauce, though I don't know what it's actually made of. The big white bowl behind the lettuce contains the main poh piah filling, made primarily of shredded cooked white radish/turnip and carrots.

The rest is pretty simple: you take a wrapper -- kind of like a tortilla, but about as thin as a crepe, and it's not heated -- and arrange the ingredients of your choosing as you please. This particular assembly (not mine) was derided somewhat by other family members for being ridiculously skimpy. On the opposite end of the spectrum, one of my uncles likes to pile his filling so high that he actually needs two wrappers to contain it; it comes out about the diameter of a Chipotle burrito (but shorter). To each his or her own. Roll it up like a burrito, and voila, fresh crunchy cool sweet goodness. You can slice them if you like, for sharing (or as in the top photo, how it would be served in a restaurant), but since we were all having them, we chowed down two-handed. I don't mind saying that I had three (think of all the vegetable servings!). In fact, I could kinda go for one right now...

Part two coming some other day, since this post is ridiculously long already.

No, it's not exclusive to DC. Or even the US. Sadly, much of the local Shanghainese food is disappointing (some of the dumplings and buns are decent). This guy has eaten way more of it than I probably ever will, so I'll let you read his description/explanation on the first half of that link. [Word to the wise: I think his site's really interesting, but if you go surfing around for very long -- perhaps just the lower half of that page -- you'll probably find something that will gross you out. I like to try new things, but the fact that he named his site Weird Meat should tell you something. Just from checking out the master list, I can guarantee that I will not be as adventurous an eater.]

By the way, I've already pointed some of you to this video, but for the rest of you -- eating things that are still moving is apparently also popular among some Koreans.

Due to circumstances into which I will not delve here, I did not actually end up eating all that much Thai food in Thailand (more's the pity). But I did manage to sneak in some food on sticks, Thai remix.

First up was lime ice cream on a stick -- looks like a popsicle, only creamier. Hits the spot on a hot sunny day, but I didn't have time to take a picture for fear of it melting before I got to consume it. Second was, naturally, satay. The ones in the photo are barbeque chicken and pork, respectively. I had the pig on a stick from a different vendor, with slightly less viscous sauce. It was sweet n' tasty, and I didn't have to fight with the stick to claim the meat -- just bit right in and off it came. That's a good satay, and something I find a lot of Thai restaurants in the States just don't do as well as they should.

I also wanted to try something a little further afield, so after perusing some vendor selections, I went with quail-egg-fishball on a stick. Each sphere there is made up of a hard-boiled quail egg wrapped inside fishball (the larger ones are regular chicken egg; there were also salted-egg and century-egg options).

Fishball, for those of you not familiar, is sort of like fish sausage -- a dense ball of processed fish parts, somewhat fishy and a little rubbery-chewy-squishy (imagine the consistency of a Nerf football, but a little less spongy). It's really popular in Asia, particularly added into soup. About once a year I'll be struck by the thought that, "yeah, fishball sounds good right now," and I have some and it is, and then I'm good for another year or so.

Anyway, I've never had fishball with egg in it, so I gave it a whirl. And what do you know, it was pretty good. The outer coating tasted like tofu skin, there was an inner layer of regular fishball a couple centimetres thick, and then the yummy egg adding a whole different texture. It came with a lemongrass-chili dipping sauce that made it a little tangy and tingly, too. And even though I've now had my fishball helping for the year, I could see having them again if the opportunity presented itself.

There's a Japanese fast-food chain that's very popular here in Singapore. It's called Mos Burger, so you can guess what they traffic in. You can get a regular hamburger or cheeseburger there, and I think even a version of Fillet-O-Fish, but there are some differences.

For one, the burgers are a little smaller in circumference, but the patties are thicker (I don't know whether the beef is better, since I had a different sandwich). The traditional ones are also topped with a thick slice of beefsteak tomato, which I think is a nice touch. You can have ketchup or chili sauce with your burger.

Also, they have a large line of non-Western burger-ish items. I chose a burger that was essentially Korean bulgogi in handheld form -- strips of slightly sweet (barbecued? not sure) beef, with compressed rice patties forming the bun, and a leaf of lettuce to top things off. It was pretty tasty, especially for fast food, but it turns out that bulgogi-style beef is a little hard to handle without utensils of some kind, so I had a bit of trouble keeping the whole thing contained without the rice patties falling apart.  All in all, though, I'd try it again, maybe with a different choice of filling.

A few days before I left Shanghai, China celebrated Tomb Sweeping Day. As you might guess, it's a day where everyone visits their ancestors' gravesites and does some cleaning, weeding, yes, sweeping, and other general upkeep. They also offer up gifts -- usually food, or objects made of paper, which they then set on fire (there's more symbolism to it than I can properly explain).

There are also special snacks.  These here green things are qingtuan (CHING-twan), little green glutinous rice balls stuffed with red bean paste. They only come out for Tomb Sweeping Day, although I'm sure that once the US has wormed enough multinationals into China, they'll be sold four weeks in advance and shaped into little chicks or brooms or something.  Anyway, the green balls start out looking somewhat paler, and end up looking nice and shiny. These are also covered in plastic wrap, I guess to keep their shape for later eating (they were given to me, whereas I think most are bought to be eaten on the spot). I'm not entirely clear on how they get the green color -- I've heard alternately that it's from an herb or a vegetable crushed into the rice flour. It's not artificial food coloring, anyway.

They're very sticky, at least the one I ate was. (Unfortunately, that and the not-holding-shape thing also lead to not photographing well.) Tastewise, they were decent -- red bean paste has started to grow on me since I've been here, but I still prefer it in smaller doses.  But they were just too sticky. (I'd have liked to try one warm, to see if it still had that problem.)  You know how when you eat -- what are they, Jujubees? -- and the remnants are stuck in your teeth for ages afterwards? These are kind of like that, except that Jujubees don't also stick to your fingers.

My cousin, who lives near me, recently took a five-day vacation to Japan to check out the cherry blossoms. Before he left, he offered me some dairy products that wouldn't keep until he got back, prime among them fresh yogurt (or here, yoghurt).

As you have probably figured out by now, I am usually up for trying out new snacks, so I said sure. I'd heard about this yogurt before, but  hadn't yet noticed it at any of the supermarkets I've been in, so my cousin's offer was particularly convenient.

This isn't your ordinary supermarket yogurt. It's made by some couple who started out producing it just for themselves, in their kitchen, and you can have little glass jars of it delivered to your door once a week if you order the requisite minimum amount. In addition to being "fresh"and "natural," it's also sour, having no added sugar, sweetener, preservatives, or chemicals.

Which isn't a bad thing. It was, however, too sour for me to eat a whole jar without adding a little something, so I decided to fiddle with it a bit. First I tried diced kumquat, and that went pretty well. The kumquat was especially good because since you eat the rind, I didn't have to throw in the citrus flesh, which is juicier and might have made the yogurt runnier than I like.

Then I froze a jar... after all, frozen yogurt is a dessert, right?  Um, yeah, that idea wasn't completely thought out, and as you can guess, didn't go quite as planned. The yogurt froze solid, so that it was impossible to get out of the jar. I sort of knew at that point what was going to happen, but was unable to halt the urge to watch anyway. I let it thaw, at which point it turned into yogurt with ice chips -- little cottage-cheese like bits of yogurt suspended in a slush of melting ice. It actually tasted somewhat OK, if watered-down, but the curdled look was too aesthetically unappealing to keep going. I had another jar to get through, after all.

My next attempt was to mix in some honey, which didn't have as much effect as I expected, but maybe I just didn't use enough honey. On the other hand, I don't really like the honey I bought here that much (there are oodles of honeys available at the supermarket, none involving a bear with a cone hat, and I chose something that evidently wasn't clover honey, and it has an aftertaste that I still haven't gotten used to), so I didn't want to overdo it. It was OK.

My plan for the last serving was to mix in raisins and diced apple, but I had some leftover kumquat that was in more dire straits than the apple, so I abandoned the experiment and used my fruit responsibly instead. It's a winning combination. I bet the apple and raisins would be good too, maybe with a dash of cinnamon, even...mmm. Anyway, the yogurt was tasty, but I don't think I'll be signing up for delivery anytime soon -- I like it, but wouldn't want to eat it every day on end. Maybe I'll look more closely at the supermarket....or encourage my cousin to take another vacation.

Actually, that's a lie; I'm about to go nibble on some chocolate. I've been updating the food pages -- as you'll see, I did a lot of eating out during the middle half of the month! Hopefully there's enough there to keep you guys busy for a couple days while I try to think of something new and interesting to write about...

I have a winner. You don't think I'm going to tell you right away, though, do you?

The good news is that the crackers tasted waaaay better than the potato chips. I could definitely see buying (and eating!) these again.  Phew.  I don't know if there's really any bad news, so I'll just move into the reviewing. For those who don't want the details, just the verdict: I didn't have a singular favorite. They're all reasonably edible, though I probably won't buy Shrimp Salad again. You'll have to scroll to the end for more info.

There were a lot of crackers here, so sampling took place in spurts. I ended up getting Black Pepper as well as the Ma La Tang since it got multiple votes, and I figured it was pretty innocuous, so in all I had eight flavors to get through. The leftovers should take care of any salt cravings I may have for the next, oh, two months.

To set the stage, the crackers are basically a half-size, wheatier version of a Ritz cracker -- crunchier and less buttery (and obviously more flavorful), but not being as familiar as I used to be with the cracker aisle, that's the best comparison I can think of at the moment.

Anyway, the nitty gritty: I was pretty intrigued to see what kind of differences could be manufactured between Tomato, Cherry Tomato, and Pizza flavors, so that's where I started. As it turns out, they're quite distinct.

Tomato -- Pretty mild, in both taste and smell. Salty, but not excessively so. I couldn't truly discern any particular "tomato-y" flavor; if the bag hadn't been labelled as such, I probably would have guessed it was some blend of generic western-spices -- garlic, onion, etc. Remember those veggie crackers (Vegetable Thins, maybe? I don't remember) that came out in the 1980s? That's kinda like what these taste like.

Cherry Tomato -- At first, I thought these just tasted like ketchup.   But then I noticed that the sweet flavor (as I would expect from a cherry tomato) was very familiar, even nostalgic. It took me a minute or so (and another 4 crackers) to place it, but I did: they taste like Campbell's tomato soup, which my dad used to serve me with Ritz crackers or saltines on winter weekends when I was little, which made the flavor on a cracker that much more entertaining to me. They even smell like the Campbell's.   

Pizza -- The pizza flavor was definitely stronger than the Tomato, and discernible as pizza insofar as there were hints of cheese and oregano. Again, though, I didn't really get much of a tomato taste -- but maybe they don't put a lot of sauce on their pizzas here (I haven't had one yet, so I don't know).

Cumin -- My first thought upon opening the bag was "mmm, samosa!"  These chips seemed somehow more wheaty than the others, although I'm sure the base for all of them is the same (all have wheat flour as the first ingredient, too).  They do taste like cumin, I suppose -- not that I've had cumin outside of Indian dishes to really be able to single it out as an ingredient -- but the smell was extremely nutty. Maybe that's just how cumin smells (see: standard Indian ingredient, often overwhelmed by curry and turmeric), but what with my nut allergy, that was a little off-putting to me. I knew it wouldn't be a problem allergy-wise, but it's hard for me to break the Pavlovian response to not eat something that smells strongly of nuts. I kept forcing myself to stick my hand in the bag in a surreal battle of brain-vs-itself.

Ma La Tang smelled like really good barbeque -- not barbecue-flavored chips, but like ribs slathered in thick brown sauce, with baked beans on the side.  Sorry to disappoint, but these chips did not burn my tongue off.  They were indeed spicy, enough so that my tongue was a little tingly after 5 or 10, and if I'd eaten the whole bag, I might have cleared my sinuses, but no numbness from the tasting. They didn't taste particularly like barbeque -- they were, as anticipated, mostly peppery, a 'darker' sort of spice taste, but with an extra something that I couldn't identify. These also had an aftertaste that reminded me of hot and sour soup. I liked the tingling, but not the sourness, it just tasted wrong on the cracker, as if it had gone a little off.

Shrimp Salad -- I was the most wary of this flavor, but it actually turned out to be decent. The bag really does smell like shrimp salad (how do they DO that??), which was a little disconcerting (eau de mayonnaise?), but the chips themselves tasted mostly like buttery shrimp crackers -- these were the least wheat-tasting of the range -- with some onion and garlic thrown in.  They were OK, but a touch too oily and sharp. I don't know that I'd ever have a craving for them.

Hot Welsh Onion -- This bag smelled like Tabasco sauce, and the chips had the orange-red color to match (at right, some Hot Welsh Onions gang up on a Shrimp Salad, which is just slightly lighter than a Ritz). As if I couldn't have guessed from the picture on the front of the bag, this was more of a chili-pepper spicy than the Ma La Tang. While I felt the Ma La Tang in my tongue, I felt this more in my throat -- personally, I think this would be harder to down an entire bag of, but the Ma La Tang is probably a bit spicier chip for chip. If you like spice, I'd recommend you try both, but if your idea of spice is salt, you should probably stick to the tomato flavors. I was wondering where the onion flavor was amid the Tabasco, but then noted it in the aftertaste... more like onion powder than the spring onion advertised on the bag, but hey, it's a bag of chips. At least there's no lime.

Black Pepper -- Alas for its supporters, it wasn't that exciting, which is probably for the best since I hadn't decided whether it should be allowed to win or not.  The pepper isn't even all that notable; I tasted wheat and salt first.  They had a slight hint of vegetable and were pleasant enough, but overall pretty unremarkable.

So what came out on top? I don't have a definitive answer, because I could see choosing different varieties depending on my mood and degree of salt cravings on a given day. I think I'm most likely to go back for the Tomato flavor precisely because it's not overpowering and thus conducive to more situations, but given a serious salt or spice craving, would probably reach for the Pizza or the Hot Welsh Onion. That orange is really disturbing, though. If it were still winter -- and maybe I'll make tomato soup at some point anyway -- I'd totally buy the Cherry Tomato and dunk them in the bowl for old time's sake. Maybe even make myself a grilled cheese sandwich to go with it. I'm probably old enough to eat the crusts, though. Honest.