Singapore Fried Noodles – A Hong Kong Invention

When I was a student overseas, I cooked practically everyday once term ended. The cafeteria was open during the holidays, but the food was pretty ghastly because most students had gone home. One of the most regular dishes was spaghetti Bolognese. This was typically served on a Monday, with nothing else available. Take it or leave it, I guess, and most people chose the latter.

Come Tuesday, leftover spaghetti would be chopped up, mixed with the leftover sauce, then chucked in the oven with a mashed potato topping. Cottage pie, anyone?

On Wednesday, another transformation would take place. Cottage pie from the previous day was mixed up, once again, and used as the filling for Cornish pasties. These gigantic curry-puffs-without-curry-powder were originally made for miners' lunch, eaten down in the mines. Traditional Cornish pasties, apparently, could be dropped down a mineshaft without breaking! It was a tradition that the cafeteria proudly kept with rock hard pastry that could, according to one legend, stand up to a sledge hammer. These torpedo-like casings filled with sloppy, unrecognizable blobs that started life as spaghetti Bolognese would be served Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. By the weekend, if the cafeteria were open, I swear the students would have revolted and burnt it to the ground!

Faced with the atrocious cafeteria food, I preferred to rustle up something simple and quick, and so did most of the other students. Naturally, we took the chance to learn new dishes from one another when we cooked. I taught a Hong Kong friend how to make Hong Kong Fried Noodles. In turn, he showed me the authentic version of Singapore Fried Noodles. I was astounded to hear that Hong Kong didn't have Hong Kong Fried Noodles. Just as my friend was astounded to learn that I had never heard of Singapore Fried Noodles. Which probably originated in Hong Kong, by the way. But I guess lots of dishes have misleading names, like Indian rojak which isn't from India, and French fries which aren't really French.

I've made Singapore Fried Noodles many times, and find that crisp curry leaves add a nice, Singaporean touch. They're not in the original Hong Kong recipe but what do Hong Kongers know about Singapore Fried Noodles, eh?

Check these out:

Big Black Coke	Minced Pork Omelette	Pork Belly Stew	Black Cod Miso

Curry Leaf Cashews – And a Nutty Lost Finale

Sat down with a bowl of cashews last night and watched the finale for Lost. What a stupid ending! Finale? More like fiasco.

The last episode basically said what happened on the island really happened, and everyone eventually died.

So how did the strange things on the island come about? No answers. They just did.

Did Lost owe the audience some real answers? Hell yes! I wanted to know how an island could be moved by turning a wheel. Couldn't attribute that to inexplicable supernatural forces that somehow moved the island since there was a manmade wheel involved, right? Can we move Singapore to somewhere cooler?

Leaving a gazillion questions in the air was just such a cop-out. A whodunit ending with 'we don't know!' Absolute insult to fans – or fools? – who had been following the series for the past six years.

I felt cheated. Lost was, to quote Sawyer, a 'long con'. I wasn't a happy kitty:



The cashews with curry leaves were good though:



Check these out:

Feeling Crabby?	Black Silkie Chicken Soup	Cheese is Good for You	Steamed Crabs

Tea Eggs – All It's Cracked Up To Be, and More

When I first started doing yoga during lunch break, I noticed my energy levels fluctuated wildly. Some days, I was raring to go like the Duracell bunny. Other days, I felt deflated and tired. After observing the ups and downs for a while, I spotted a pattern. On days when I was 'va-va-vroom', I had an egg for breakfast. On days when I felt tired and listless, I didn't have an egg or skipped breakfast totally (shouldn't do that, I know). An egg, with less than 100 calories, made all the difference. I was quite amazed.

Now, I always have an egg a few hours before I work out. I've chucked away those sugar loaded energy bars which are really not that healthy. An egg keeps me going and going, as the Duracell ad says. In fact, it gives me not just physical energy but also, er, creative energy:

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Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Threescore men and threescore more,
Could not place Humpty as he was before.

Poor Humpty sat in a pot,
Filled with spices I had bought.
Three whole hours and three more,
Till he was tasty to the core.

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.

Check these out:

Braised Duck	Apple Brown Betty	Smoked Soft-Boiled Eggs	Asparagus with Sesame Miso

Sesame Chicken – As My Mother Taught Me

According to my mother, my Sesame Chicken was better than hers. Which was a bit strange since, as far as I could see, we cooked the dish in exactly the same way. 'No! There's something different. Yours is much nicer,' she said.

Flattery gets you everywhere, they say. Well, it certainly got me trotting into the kitchen to stir-fry some chicken with sesame oil. And whilst I was at it, I might as well whip up a couple of side dishes and a soup. All of which I excelled in, according to the woman who gave me life. Oh yes, my mother was a sly one! She knew exactly which buttons to press, so that I would do first one dish, then the entire dinner. All without nagging, only praise and positive encouragement. And I fell for it every single time, happily.

Check these out:

Salmon Teriyaki	Garlic Bread	Garlic Butter Prawns	Deep-Fried Kai Lan (Chinese Kale)

Hand Shredded Sweet Leaves (Manis Cai) – No Sweat

Look what I found yesterday! I wandered over to a market in the neighborhood, a few minutes from the one I usually go to, and saw a huge pile of manis cai (马尼菜). Of course, I had to get some. Aka sweet leaves, Sabah vegetables, Indian gooseberry and a host of other names, these dark green leaves are quite rare. Between the two markets near my place, only one vegetable stall sells it, and it's seldom seen in supermarkets.

'Why don't more people sell this?' I asked the lady as she brutally bent the stalks of manis cai, which were as long as my arms, so that she could stuff 'em in a plastic bag.

'Most people don't know how to cook 马尼菜 lah,' she said gruffly.

Really? Gosh, that's such a shame because stir fried 马尼菜 is really tasty. But it involves an interesting step that some people might not know about. Manis cai has to be torn into little pieces by hand, then salted so that the bitter juices in the leaves are sweated out. Without this treatment, you may think they should be called bitter leaves instead of sweet leaves.

Dark green vegetables usually need to be cooked with lots of oil, and manis cai is no exception. For four portions, I use five tablespoonfuls. That's quite a lot but without so much oil, the leaves would taste dry and pulpy.

I can get away with less fat if I use lard, which is richer and smoother than vegetable oil. But who can be bothered to render pork fat nowadays? Tick tick tick tick . . . . (That's my mind ticking away.) Hmm, maybe I can buy a cup of lard next time I have a plate of char kway teow?

Check these out:

Mushroom Stir-Fry	Tomatoes with Sesame Wasabi Sauce	Roasted Eggplant with Miso	Asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce

Chinese Olive Fried Rice – Home Team is Best

I love exploring foods from other cultures but my own culinary heritage, Teochew cuisine, would always be closest to my heart. I can't help it. Just looking at the Chinese olives in the photo as I write this post makes me smile. These olives are so old-world and so quintessentially Teochew, I'm filled with nostalgia when I see them. Which isn't very often these days. When I was small, a little Chinese black olive with a bowl of steaming Teochew porridge was how I started my day many a morning, as it was for my parents and grandparents. I still do now – once in a blue, blue moon – just for old times' sake. Bread and bee hoon may fill the stomach but they don't feed the heart nor the soul, do they?

Besides enjoying Teochew black olives with porridge, I sometimes use them to flavour fried rice. The olives are delicious as they are but a bit of stir-frying with minced garlic really helps release the aroma hidden within. Honestly, it could easily rival salted fish any day. Actually, isn't fried rice with salted fish a tad too familiar?

On occasions when I don't have Teochew olives, I may use those from Greece or Spain. They make pretty good substitutes but at the end of the day, they're foreign and alien. To me, nothing beats the 'home team' when it comes to olives. I know I'm biased, and I'm proud of it.

Check out these other Teochew classics:

Braised Duck	Teochew Porridge	Chai Poh (Preserved Turnip) Omelette	Sesame Duck

Chinese Five-Spice Almonds – And a Greek Myth

There's a story about almonds in Greek mythology that goes something like this:

Once upon a time, the beautiful Princess Phyllis of Thrace fell in love with Demophon, the Prince of Athens. Demophon was one of the 30 men who hid in the big wooden horse which brought down the city of Troy. Pretty sneaky guy, yes? After the Trojan war ended, Demophon did a stopover in Thrace enroute to Athens for some R and R back home. No sensible girl would marry a stealthy fellow in transit but I guess Phyllis wasn't very sensible. She married Demophon, who then left for Greece, promising his wife that he would return. Phyllis waited . . . and waited . . . but there was no sign of Demophon. She eventually died of a broken heart – some say she hanged herself 'cause she was really pissed off – and the gods turned her into an almond tree.

Demophon finally returned to Thrace to find that his wife had turned into an almond tree without leaves or flowers. Extremely remorseful, he embraced the tree, which suddenly burst into bloom. At this point, the original Greek myth ends, with a moral that says love cannot be conquered by death. But I think that's such a boring ending, so here's a slight twist:

When the almond tree burst into bloom, lots of fruits also appeared. Demophon plucked a few almonds and ate them, not realizing they were bitter almonds. The cyanide, found in bitter but not sweet almonds, killed him instantly. That was Phyllis' way of exacting revenge on the man who kept her waiting. The end.

Moral of the story: do not eat bitter almonds raw (they're fine if they're cooked, I think), and do not keep a lady waiting.

Check these out:

Beetroot Soup	Claypot Fish Head	Black Silkie Chicken Soup	Cold Spinach with Bonito Flakes