Gudec

Following the trip in Solo where we were fed systematically - ie. arranged -,

it's finally free & easy at neighbouring Yogyakarta (or Jogjakarta). Though I didn't get to taste the seductively sweet Es Dawet (dessert with fruits), the famed gudec that locals talk about didn't elude me anymore.

Eaten with the fragrant coconut milk-flavoured rice, gudec is a strangely indefinable taste of short young jackfruit strips cooked in a sweet paste. You can choose to eat it with servings of chicken or cow skin - yes, you heard me right.... the skin of a cow tempered to a sparse sponge-like texture hardened slightly to hint of a crispiness on the surface...

Recommended , even for Europeans, if only to get a taste of how different tastes in servings of different foods can be blended into a nice whole...

Seafood at Sidoarjo

After a 1-hour bemo adventure of maneourving 8 people to Sidoarjo and not getting anyone lost on public transport, we finally arrived at Resto Ganjaran at Jl Pahlawan to fill our hungry stomachs with a well-deserved of scrumptious seafood, such as gurame....

... and the highly delectable cumi bakar (grilled squid) ..

and the mother of all cumi dishes here.... the cumi pedas saos (deep fried squid with chilli sauce)

Pangsit Noodles

There's nothing like food from home and nothing resonates with the stomach more than something that seems to hail from home and yet has a tangy twist that's entirely its own.

The pangsit (chicken dumpling) noodles stall opposite my school is just that. Scoring both in terms of its looks and taste, it is a steal at Rp5,000 (just under S$1). The noodles sit attractively under the chicken floss in an attractive light brown, lubricated to a smooth finish with the oil. The veggies reminds you of those back home that we use for fishball noodles; so do the onions that are fried to give off the maximum fragrance without burning. All these strangely makes you overlook what should have been the main actor here - the dumplings... a disappointment which makes you wonder if pangsit means 'skin only'.

I usually judge a dish by its main component and not the frills, but of course there always have to be an exception to make life interesting .....

Rawon

Lest you think that I eat bakso everyday in Surabaya, let me assure you I try to balance my diet... with more beef....

But the sapi (beef) rawon is simply too good to miss. It reminds me of the beef tripe soup I always enjoy back in Singapore, like the one formerly in Bugis Street now displaced to Jurong West. Of course the taste is entirely different - the Indonesian counterpart packing a delectable oomph with its spices. The oil ensures the soup is sinfully smooth but you must eat it while it's hot so that it doesn't form a deterrent cover of guilt-inducing lard over your soup...

VY packed it for me the first time round and it came separate from the rice. The flavour is somewhat more enticing the second time I ate it - at my favourite pecel stall (review coming up soon, hopefully). The soup is a thicker concoction which envelops the rice in it and delivers its flavour straight into the gaps between the rice grains. What else can I say but 'Yummy"!

Super Jumbo Bakso of Sidoarjo, Surabaya

Some things should never be written too soon, otherwise they will return to haunt you.... I have gone gaga over the big bakso in my previous entry too soon, for my colleague introduced me to arguably (put in a qualifier just in case I discover a better one) the best bakso in Surabaya (found in Mada).....

... the Super Jumbo Bakso (applause please!) .....

It is certainly superior in size to all others I've seen so far, its girth stretching across the diameter of the bowl. If the earlier one is big, then this is truly ENORMOUS, HUMONGOUS , COLOSSAL, GARGANTUAN, GIGANTIC, MAMMOTH, ELEPHANTINE and whatever superlative adjectives you can think of.

Its thickness, or more like its height, towers above the horizon of the bowl and would certainly displace all the other contents if you attempt to fit its length and breadth in it exactly. I am still undecided as to which is the better one (vis-a-vis the one in Alun Alun). Its texture certainly betrays a higher proportion of flour and other additives but its sheer size guarantees that you will get your stomach's fill of the chewy meat. Anyway, I never have such fun with a fork and spoon before, because there's just so many permutations you can experiment with to cut meat of this size....

The sweet taste of the soup leaves a sublime aftertaste that is just right after your mouth has exhausted itself coping with the mouth-fulls (litarally!) of beef. The only gripe is that there is no more space for items other than the space-saving vermicelli, unlike the Alun one which has space for one taupok....

(picture coming up soon!)

Surabaya Food

Greetings from Surabaya! Haven't been to a country where I haven't fallen in love with some of their food, so Sura shouldn't be an exception.... After 2 days after eating buffet breakfast/lunch at the Tretes Resort, it's finally back to the earthly pleasures of roadside stalls...

Having pride of place on the menu in Waru (a place) warungs ( foodstalls) is the bakso... meatballs in soup. Most are of the supermarket frozen variety but there is a jumbo-sized one which is the best I've eaten so far. A gem of a find, and coming in a monster size of diammeter 10cm, I'll be returning soon to Alun Alun to find the pak who whips this up.

Anyway, it was a surrendpitous find as I was originally occupied with the cumi-cumi (squid), udang (prawns- which proved too hot for Xu Li ), bebek (duck meat), crabs , gurami (a freshwater fish) in asam manis (sweet and sour sauce) . A sumptuous meal for only 75,000 rp..... Add to that the chips we bought.... We'll all return home fatsos....

Turkish... Sofra finally

Finally set food (oops...foot... Freudian slip of the tongue) in Sofra - the Turkish restaurant @ Shaw Towers opp Suntec. Finally because I'll look longingly at the long queues everytime I passed by...Luckily E and I were there to look at our would-be new toys for birdwatching - bino & fieldscope - otherwise, we would never be there on a weekday and be first in the Q to wait for the restaurant to open. Anticipation was certainly high since I've fallen in love with Turkish food since the intermittent visits to Cappadocia @ Rail Mall, which closed...the Robertson Quay branch too...sad... anyone knows if they are still in Singapore?

We shared a more-than-generous-portion-even-for-two-food-lovers of swish, donor (chicken) and eggplant kebabs. I have no complaints except the eggplants do not look too healthy nor appetizing with the burns (4th degree??) on their skins...

Otherwise, Sofra certainly lives up to all that hype that I created in my mind.. the decor is so soothing with a large waiting area adorned with candle lamps and romantic screens.... plus a 'dessert corner' with a cushy feel totally suitable for an afternoon laze with your favourite desserts. Though limited to only 6 varieties, I have no doubt about how titillating all of them will be after savouring the Bakavia and Turkish chocolate pudding. The Bakavia has an endearing look, like a cute-looking squarish offspring of our local favourite roti-prata. From the same flour family, maybe, but totally and sinfully soaked in syrup instead of oil and lightly embellished with pistachio on top for the de-rigueur decorative look most desserts have.

The chocolate pales in comparison to the Bakavia only because of the novelty factor, but held its own by providing its 'devourer' with a delight in penetrating its soft cover into an even softer sponges of chocolatey heaven mixed with pound-to-a-mesh marshmallows..... Hmmm.... wonder how the others, Turkish rice pudding, asure, stuffed fig, sweet pumpkin, taste like?

Go check it out ;)

Macau ....

Have been thinking of going to the 3 M's this year - not the Fortune 500 company but Madagascar, Myanmar and Macau. Unfortunately due to a lack of income from a hiatus and the fact that I'll soon be working (work is both a boon and a curse), I have not been able to realise the 3.


Well, maybe not... anything's possible in Singapore. That's why we were recently voted 1 of the top 20 most desirable places to live in :)


So of course there's no difficulty at all in finding the local delights of any country (or so I think, so far) and top of the to-get-my-hands-on list is the Macau Pork Chop Bun (zhu pa bao) which I saw in a Taiwanese food-travel show before...

What!? Another pork chop? Am I a pig-exterminator?

Well never thought I'll like the pigs so much, but I do seem to have an affinity with them, with 2 of the horoscope in my family. But there's something about the texture of the meat that once it's burnt, it lends itself pretty well to whatever the chef wants to marinate it in.... certainly a chef-friendly dish for its versatility.

I haven't eaten the real McCoys in Macau, but my appetite is certainly whetted by the one in Hong Kong KimGary Restuarant in Vivocity, one of the many ones which sprouted up in a mass infiltration into the local food scene. From its name, it should originate in HongKong but have more outlets in Malaysia. Anyway, it looks like an 'authentic' HongKong 'cha-can-tang' (cafe) which touts a posse of international cuisines from Japanese ramen to HK-invented-and-improvised Nissin noodles to Korea delights. Certainly reflective of a cosmopolitan society that welcomes its arms to expats.

Mum tried the beef ramen and seems positively delighted as my Mother's Day gift to her (+ sometimes else of course) butI think it is overrated. I must say, though, the thin 'meee-pok' -like strands of ramen are a delightful chewy bunch to munch on....

If we've eaten from a cafe in Macau or HK before, I'll love to hear your comments!

Meanwhile, one down, will be dreaming of food from the other 2 Ms...

Vietnam Hangover 1

For those of you who read my other blog (http://happy-traveller.blogspot.com/), you'll know that I'm big on Vietnam...

Especially the F.O.O.D !!!

Now that I'm back from the baguette-feeding-frenzy, I'm finally calm enough to think about why my most vivid memory of Vietnam is actually the times I spent eating at the roadsides.

I'm no arty-farty food/taste-analyser but my objective view is that by right, Vietnamese food should not cut it on the international stage. It does not seem to have a unique taste of its own, and come to think of it, all that I ate is actually a genetically modified version of other cultures' cuisine that I have tasted before in food-haven Singapore.

Like the pork-chop rice (top), which undoubtedly reeks of influence from their previous ruler for 1000 years, the Chinese. Or the bobo chacha which I enjoyed together with the rice at Orange Lantern, a relatively new Vietnamese restaurant in Singapore. This sweet all-time favourite dessert with various versions in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand has manifested itself in a coconut-thick concoction swimming with fragrant mango strips (think Thai-style salads...yummy!) topped with chunky-crunchy peanut bits... Simply sedap!

Both are tasty but does not quite capture the authentic taste of Vietnamese roadside legends.

Maybe that's the essence of the Vietnamese food allure - empowerment to the itinerant hawkers who are able to dish up improvised and improved versions of the real thing.

For example, the pork chop I ate in Vietnam's Ho Chih Min city surpasses any equivalent I've eaten Chinese-style in terms of marination and succulence-packed in a slice of such 'thinness'.

The bobo chacha I ate in Bian Than Market is also packed with colourful bits of fruits showcased in slim (everything is slimmer in Vietnam) transparent glasses stacked in a free advertisement of tempting tastes that no one can possibly walk away once your sight crosses its path in the most minute of seconds...

And of course, there is the baguette... but my greatest love in Vietnamese food of course deserves a separate entry of its own, and the post derived from a careful stew of drafting and redrafting so that the words are at least one-tenth worthy of the taste of the mind-boggling baguettes ....

Welcome to the world of Eating !

I once read somewhere that the time an animal spends on food affects its development - the less time spent looking for sustenance, the more time for enriching activities like play or inventing complicated social systems.

So the equation goes something like this:

Primitive animals = animals that spend Most of their time eating

Hmmm... so that's what I really am, a primitive animal always looking for good, glorious food and avoiding the shit-hole of less-than-savoury ones.

But who cares? For a wit once said "There is no sincerer form of love than that of eating..."

So, let my true, unadulterated love show....