Category: Food

Entries about food, because who doesn’t love to share pictures and stories about the food they’re eating?

Hari Raya Sweets For Sale

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Two days ago I wrote a post about being surprised to see “Christmas” lights up already, in September.  When I asked about it and found out that it was for Hari Raya, a holiday I’d never heard of, I was surprised.  I don’t remember seeing any lights up around this time last year.  I also don’t remember seeing any candies or sweets set out for sale either, but this year there are stacks of them!

I’m not planning on “switching over” any time soon, or celebrating Hari Raya myself, but I’ve never been one to let a thing like that stop me from enjoying holiday celebration goodies.  So, we picked up a container of these called “dumai chipmore”.  I’m not sure if there’s any special significance behind the names, or types, but they looked like a safe bet as far as taste would go.  They’re not bad.

Durian Is Just Disgusting!

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Before moving to Singapore I’d never heard of a particularly vulgar fruit called “durian”.  It is sometimes referred to as the “king of fruits”, though how it can even be considered a fruit, let alone the king, is far beyond me.

The first time I encountered durian was when I was still around the corner from it.  The most odious smell assaulted my nose and I stopped, near gagging.  It smelled like a whole truck load of rotting eggs had been left to sit in the sun.  I later found out that this more than unpleasant odor is typical of this offensive fruit.  In fact, the smell is so bad that it’s actually illegal to bring them onto public transportation in Singapore.

The above sign is found on public transportation in Singapore.  (Image courtesy of Ich bin ein Ausländer).

The taste of these things isn’t much better than the smell.  The smell alone had kept me from even thinking of trying them.  I mean, how do you put something in your mouth if just the smell of it makes your stomach clench?  So, I’d kept an eye on them from afar, typically afar enough way so that I didn’t have to smell them either.

One fortunate but also unfortunate night (I say that because it was my wedding night), I gleefully grabbed desserts from a buffet and sat down to stuff my face.  I bit half of a little pastry into my mouth and thought I’d eaten something that had gone bad.  Just as quickly as I had bit into the pastry, I spit out a wad of horrid stuff into a napkin and, as discretely as I could, folded it up and placed it on an empty plate that was ready to be cleared.  I had accidentally bitten into a durian puff pastry.

Ever since then I’ve faithfully steered clear of durian.  Until last night that is.  We were in the kitchen cooking dinner when the maid dropped in and handed us two wrapped candies.  She invited us to try them.  I poked it and pondered it for a bit and then asked her what it was.  It didn’t have any real name on the label, or any list of ingredients.

“Just try it,” she says. “It’s good!”

So, we carefully unwrapped them and looked them over once more.  My wife sniffed at it and she made a weird face.

“Is this durian?” she asked.  But the maid simply assured her that it was good and urged her to try it.

And, try it we did.  She said, “I think this is durian!”  I might have said something too if I weren’t trying to keep from puking in my mouth.  I quickly spit my “candy” back into the wrapper and dropped it in the trash.

The candy was gone, but the taste remained.  It was so much stronger and more unpleasant than the taste of the durian puff I had accidentally bitten into.  I had to rinse my mouth and drink Coke to get the taste out of my mouth, and even after that I could still taste it faintly.  It lingered there, on our tongues and cheeks, like a hot fart lingers in damp underwear.

I hope I never have to taste that wretched fruit again!

The Food in Phuket (Part 2)

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Nicky’s Handlebar

Pretty close to where we were staying there was a restaurant called Nicky’s Handlebar.  As you can probably guess, it was a biker type bar.  It was decorated with a ton of Harley Davidson paraphernalia.

This was my favorite item in the place:

Anyhow, the atmosphere was great.  It had the right look.  It was even playing classic rock songs and the TVs were playing sports and some Harley convention show.

The food is where the authenticity failed to deliver though.  Half of the menu was European food and half was Thai.  I figured I’d try the burger.  I’ve sort of been in search of a great burger since I left the US, along with my search for a great pizza.

I’m not sure what my wife ordered, but it looks good and tasted good too.

This is the burger I got.  It wasn’t quite up to par.  First off, they served it with the bun put together, with the veggies inside already, but with the meat pattie sitting off to the side.  So, I had to take the whole damn thing apart and put it back together.  Presentation is only important if it doesn’t create hassle for the customer.  Also, the meat looks a little pale to really be beef so I wonder if it was mixed with pork.  The taste was decent, but not great.

The search continues.

The following morning we dropped by there again, because it was convenient, and we had the Thai omelets.  They were actually pretty good.  The filling was mostly ground pork and it had a sweet taste to it.

The above image is a glass of sweet tea that I ordered.  The orchid along the rim was a nice touch and it tasted good.

Overall, Nicky’s Handlebar is a 7/10.  The atmosphere is nice, most of the food we ate is nice, and the drinks are nice.  I would just recommend sticking with the Thai menu though.

Street Vendor Crepes

We found this guy along the road that fronts the beach.  In the top right of the shot you can see the ocean.

He was selling crepes for 30 baht.  Some might have been a little less or more.  I don’t recall.

This was a great snack to munch on while walking down the road … looking for dinner!

Mama Mia’s

I can’t really say much for this place.  We totally weren’t impressed.  We both decided to try local dishes and got yellow curry.  I had the chicken and my wife had the shrimp.  The overall taste was bland.  If bland were a real ingredient, I would say they used too much.  Isn’t curry supposed to be spicy?  Plus, the food had no texture to speak of and you couldn’t taste anything except the bland curry.

The only thing good about this place is that the beer was cheap:

San Mig Light is a popular beer both in Thailand and in the Philippines.  I think in Thailand it’s #3 and in the Philippines, where it originated, it’s #1.

Pizzaria Fresca

This is another restaurant that was on the road fronting the beach.

This place was great!

This is the dish my wife ordered.  It’s a traditional pasta from Italy called Putanesca (Whore’s Pasta).  The story behind it is that Putanesca was a cheap dish prepared in Italy by prostitutes.  It was served to ‘clients’ after the deed.  Now that’s customer service!  Over time, the dish became a national favorite and is now served in many restaurants.

Ham, mushroom and green pepper.  It cost about 13 SGD I think and was the best pizza I’ve had since leaving the US.  It still doesn’t hold a candle to New York City pizza, or even to fast food pizzas like Papa John’s, but it beats out anything I’ve had in Singapore so far.  I think the cheese was a bit off though, or maybe something in the sauce?  My stomach was going nuts later that night.

Goodies!

The last two items aren’t anything special or specific to Thailand.  They’re just things that we really enjoyed eating.

We found an Au Bon Pain at the mall in Phuket.  Imagine that!  I’ve only ever seen one and that was in New York City.  I got a poppyseed bagel with Philadelphia Cream Cheese and my wife went nuts over it.  Apparently she’d never had a bagel before.  It’s interesting how we keep introducing each other to new foods.

Muay Thai, not just a boxing event!  I’d never had one before and decided to try it for the first time while sitting at the bar at the Simon Cabaret while waiting for the show to start.

Dunkin’ Donuts!  Until a week or so before we left on our vacation to Thailand, Singapore didn’t have a Dunkin’ Donuts.  So, we really enjoyed this chance to buy and eat a few.  We bought some a few hours before our flight to take back to Singapore with us.  The only Dunkin’ Donuts in Singapore is located in the downtown area and I have a feeling it’d be a lot more expensive.

The Food in Phuket (Part 1)

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One of the best parts about this trip was running around town finding different foods to eat.  While we were there we ate at quite a few different restaurants, not all of them Thai.  I think we probably could have found better food if we’d gone to a less touristy part of Thailand, but we made do with what we had available to us.

We weren’t sure where to go on the first day we were there so we wound up walking around quite a while.  We finally wound up eating in the restaurant where we took the cat photos in the previous post.  I still don’t know the name of the place.  We couldn’t find it again.  It was nice though:

The sad thing is that the food from this place was great, and I’d liked to have gone back.  Here are some pictures of the dishes:

This one is yellow curry chicken. It was a lot better than I expected. In the photo, the chicken somehow came out looking crisp, but it was actually tender. There was no coating, other than the curry sauce. I think it looks like that because it was torn by hand before being cooked. The noodles were al dente. I liked that. I can’t stand mushy noodles. Oh, and she let me choose how spicy I wanted it, so I went with ‘medium’ to be on the safe side!

This dish is called sukiyaki.  My wife says it’s actually a Japanese dish, but she wanted to try out the Thai version of it.  She didn’t have any complaints.

Later that evening we were looking for a snack when we saw something familiar.  It was a hawker style eating area.  There were only two stalls and a seating area, but they were serving chicken & rice and roast pork & rice.  We decided to give it a try to see how it compared with what we were used to eating in Singapore (those are very common dishes in Singapore but in Singapore the names exclude the ‘&’).

It seems to be pretty much the same, except there are two choices (though extra small portions) of vegetable and a quail egg.  Instead of a broth soup, there was a dip for the meat.  The table also had other sauces, chilis, and dips to choose from.  It was significantly cheaper though at 40 baht (1.17 USD / .82 EUR / 1.69 SGD).  The same meal is about twice as much in Singapore, probably due to import fees placed by companies and the government.

Even later that same night, we decided to go out for a late dinner (at midnight) and some beers!  So, we stopped at one of the street restaurants.  These places set up every evening and pack up everything when they close, including tables, chairs, and cooking equipment.  The food was better than I expected it to be.

This is chicken, pork, and beef satay with peanut sauce.  It was hard to tell the difference between the three meats, and I teased my wife that maybe it was all cat.

This was grilled squid and was really really good!  It came with a spicy dip that I wish I knew the recipe for.  I would go back to this place just for this dish.

We topped our meal off with two Heinekens and then called it a night.

I would say our first day, as far as meals go, was a success.

Livita Energy Drink in Singapore

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Livita Energy Drink
Livita Energy Drink

I saw this Livita on the shelf in the drink section of the grocery store at Whitesands (Fairprice I think) and at first thought it was medicine that had been misshelved. My wife glanced at it and told me that it’s an energy drink that’s also sold in the Philippines under another name. A quick look at the label and ingredients told me she was right.  I asked her how it tasted and she said it was good.  The packaging just seemed a bit off to me, though.

So, instead, I bought a can of Red Bull. I drank that a lot when I was in the Army and it seemed to work well, except when I was doing that leadership training (aka PLDC, aka WLC) anyway. I was only getting 4.5 hours of sleep per day for weeks back then.  I could have slept standing up!

Another reason I bought the Red Bull is that when I pointed it out, my wife said she’s never had it before so I’ll let her have a taste.  She asked me if it’s good and I had to admit that it’s something of an acquired taste.  I hated the stuff when I first started drinking it, but it sort of grows on you.

Do You Know What You’re Eating?

Bradley Farless6 Comments

Sometimes I sure don’t.  There’s a buffet looking hawker stall near where we live.  I’m sure there’s one in almost every hawker center.  Anyhow, there is a wide range of choices, but there aren’t any labels telling you what the foods actually are.

You just have to look, guess, hope and point.  Sometimes you make good choices, sometimes you don’t, but maybe that’s half the fun of eating the stuff?

What prompted this is that a few nights ago my wife and I were eating and I chose food from that particular hawker stall.  When I sat down, my wife said, “Oh!  What’s that!” And, I had to admit that I had no clue!

Luckily, most of it tasted good.

Looking For Eggs in Singapore?

Bradley Farless4 Comments

I’ve moved around the world a lot, but in most places I’ve been I was on a military installation, so things were more or less the same.  Well, the same in that one military installation is pretty similar to the others, especially when it comes to the stores.

There were times when I lived off of a military installation, or traveled off of a military installation, but I wasn’t exactly looking for eggs, or groceries.

So, coming to Singapore to live, and live in Singapore itself, rather than on a base somewhere, was a whole new experience for me.  Part of that ‘new experience’ was shopping from local stores.

For the most part, shopping in Singapore is just like shopping in the US.  Some of the brands are different, and sometimes you can tell that the item you’re holding is made by the same people that make it in the US, but is just under a different name. One example I can think of is Axe deodorant.  I can’t remember what it’s called here, but the package design is exactly the same, but with a different name.  Unless it’s a Chinese knock-off anyway.  I didn’t look too closely at it.  Also, there is a different variety of vegetables that are more commonly found in the produce section here.  Some of the fish are different too.

One thing you expect to be the same though, is that you will find the items you’re looking for in the same parts of the store.  You want meat?  Go to the coolers along the wall.  Same for dairy products.  Want veggies?  Look in the bins in the produce section.  So… I remember how surprised I was when I couldn’t find any eggs the first time I wanted to buy some here.  I checked every single cooler in the store.  Not to be found.

Where did they end up being?  On a shelf.  Not being chilled.  I was kinda shocked because that was completely foreign to me.  I was actually under the impression that if eggs weren’t chilled, they would go bad.  In the US there are even egg trays built into the doors of the refrigerators.  Thinking about it now, I suppose that chilling them just slows down the spoiling process, or hatching process, though I don’t know if they would actually hatch.

Anyhow, here’s a photo of eggs on a shelf, from Shop N Save:

How are eggs typically stored at the store and in the house where you are?

Seoul Food!

Bradley Farless7 Comments

Yup. That is in fact spelled right. I’m not talking about traditional black American food.  I’m talking about a restaurant chain in Singapore named Seoul Garden!

On Sunday afternoon we went out for a movie, and then afterwards we decided to have dinner at Seoul Food.  It was a group decision.  My wife and I had often seen the place but had decided not to eat there.  We just didn’t care much for the way it looked, and this picture of the goat in the window deterred me:

Some of you may remember me posting this photo before.  Well, I guess I gave in.  I ate the poor goat.

So anyhow, the place was pretty surprising as far as quality of food goes.  When you first walk in your put at a table that has a griddle and bowl of broth in the middle.

It’s up to you to decide your fate:

Some of the items are raw, like the meats in the second photo, and some are precooked and just need to be heated up, like the items just past the person barely visible in the first photo.  There’s also an array of veggies that you can either turn into a plain salad (no dressing) or dump into the pot or onto the hot plate.

It’s all really good, and it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet, so you can sit down, take your time, relax, and chat with your family and friends (and eat more because you’re eating slowly and get more for your money).

The photo above is mainly about that small yellow bowl and what’s in it.  One of the people with us prepared it from the dessert buffet area.  I’m not sure what all of the ingredients are, and either I really misheard what she called it or I just can’t find it on the internet.  She seemed to enjoy it, but I passed on that for ice cream and little pieces of cakes.

The place is a pretty good value for your money and it’s located (the one we went to anyway) on the same floor as the movie theater in Tampines Mall, right in front of you when you come off the escalator.

Last, but not least… a random shot of the table:

If you make it over there, enjoy!  Oh, and from what I saw in the Google search suggestions, there are Seoul Gardens located all over the US as well, including New York City.

Beans, Beans, The Musical Fruit

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Ya, ya, that’s a fun song right?  And, much to my wife’s great displeasure, it’s true more often than not.

Well, it’s not often I have decent beans here in Singapore.  I’ve started to become accustomed to eating more Asian dishes.  I still miss Western food though, so when I saw a bag of Hambeen’s 15 Bean soup mix at Cold Storage at Tampines 1, I was quick to grab it up and drop it into my basket.  I hadn’t actually had that soup since 2001, so it’d been about 8 years, but I remembered how good it was and was excited to try it again.

Looks interesting right?  The bowl picture on the bottom right looks a little weird, but this stuff is actually good.  I promise.

Here on the back of the packaging is the recipe.  You can either do the quick cooking, or you can pre-soak the beans.  We wound up mixing the directions a bit and doing it our own way.

The recipe calls for smoked sausage, but we couldn’t find any of that so we substituted this sliced back bacon and it worked out fairly well.  We probably could’ve used twice as much and it would have been a bit better, but it was still good anyway.

The other ingredients on this were: juice of 1 lemon, 1 15 oz can of diced or stewed tomato, 2 table spoons of minced garlic, 1 cup of chopped onion, and 1 table spoon of chili powder.  We cut up two red chilis and added that in as well.  It could’ve used a bit more.  I think when I made this the last time I put jalapeno peppers in it, but those aren’t too common here.

What you’re supposed to do is soak the beans overnight, or for at least 8 hours.  Then you dump them in a pot with fresh water:

After that you bring it to a quick bowl and simmer for an hour.  In the meantime you can get everything else ready by doing your chopping and whatnot.

When simmering, this stuff looks like a witches brew.  Oh, and when I was first boiling it there was some white froth on top that I had to skim off.  I honestly have no clue what that was all about but hey, everything turned out ok!

Well, once an hour has passed and you get everything ready you dump it all in the pot and let it simmer for, depending on whether you’re doing the fast or short cooking instructions, 2.5 hours, or 45 minutes.  Then, 1 to 2 minutes before you’re done you empty the spice packet that comes with the beans into the pot.

This is where we sort of varied from the instructions a bit.  We did let it boil and simmer for an hour, and then we dumped everything in, but after that we just turned up the heat about and let it go for another 30 minutes.  Honestly, we should’ve left it going for that extra 30 minutes, because some of the beans were still a bit firmer than they should have been, but it didn’t matter.  The stuff was good, and it helped us with leftovers not tasting overcooked when reheated.

So, this was the finished product.  It cooks down pretty thick, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.  My wife is used to watery soups, because that’s just how it normally is here in Asia, but this felt like home to me.  It goes great over rice and it’s good by itself too.

That little bag made 14 to 16 servings.  Nearly everyone had at least one bowl and then we had leftovers for 4 days!  Ya… a stinky four days!  Ha ha ha!