Singapore Moments

First morning in Singapore and it was a bit of a late start, in fact it may be more truthful to suggest that by the time I emerged from my hotel it wasn’t even the morning…

There was a small park beside my hotel and before I embraced the city, I took a stroll through the park. They had a fitness area there, so I looked around and made sure that no-one would see me, then I started to “work-out”

The less said about that particular experience the better, it was not one of the proudest moments of my life, let’s just say that I lack a certain amount of upper body strength…

My ego in tatters and all notions of being able to lift my own body-weight dismissed, I staggered into Chinatown in search of something to eat.

I chose curry puffs.

As you travel around, you take risks when it comes to food, you never know what you’re going to get. I tend to expect the worst. Not because if you expect the worst then you’ll always be pleasantly surprised with the result but simply because I’m a bit of a pessimist.

That first bite was a revelation, ohhhhhh, I was in heaven, I was drooling in anticipation of that second bite which was every bit as good as the first. I ate slowly, savouring every accent of the flavour. This is what travelling is for, walking down a street in Chinatown, a curry-puff in hand and your taste-buds dancing in celebration…

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Hi Tee

I’m still out meeting new people, asking them if they’ll be my friend and yesterday it was Brunch, though it was at lunchtime and it wasn’t brunch, it was High Tea, though it was at lunchtime.

High Tea.

I don’t think I’ve ever had High Tea, tea and scons (when one has hiii tee, one never uses the eee) are the order of the day, and while we narrowly avoided the cucumber sandwiches, there were some fiddly little lettuce-filled yokes pretending to be food. Even the scons were different, they didn’t have any raisins and it felt strange putting cream on them instead of butter, perhaps I’m just not classy enough for Hi Tee.

At the start I found myself chatting with a Canadian-Russian guy who I found out later has strong interest in discussing world politics, and while I’m not sure if he was playing devil’s advocate he seems to have a very simple attitude to the problems of the world and was quite capable of dismissing hundreds of years of history with the attitude “Why can’t we all, just, get along?”

It was exhausting, you go to meet up with new people, you want to talk about serious things like Jon Bon Jovi, Brad Pitt and shopping, you don’t really want to be discussing why Irish people don’t speak Irish, trying to explain my limited understanding of the problems in Northern Ireland (if you don’t live there, you don’t really know) and why in 20 years time people won’t have given up their nationality and proclaim themselves Europeans instead!

But we did manage to swing the conversation around to something a little less scarily intense, no, not Jon Bon Jovi unfortunately and I could relax with my hot water, cream scons, drab sandwiches and strange little bite-sized cakes…

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Teetering

The table teetered at a precarious angle, the chair was far from horizontal, it’s the thing to do!

The Oudegracht is a canal that weaves it’s way though the heart of Utrecht, high above the canal it’s lined with shops, restaurants and bars. It’s a nice lively route, filled with laughter and chatter and ideal for an evening stroll but the Oudegracht has a lower level, down on the waterside where once there were warehouses now there are restaurants with tables edging onto the canal.

It was at one of these restaurants that we discovered that the world is not entirely flat. I carefully balanced on my chair knowing that one false move could have me hurtling into the canal, it added a certain frisson of excitement to the eating experience as I tried to predict how far into the meal it would be before a plate filled with food would slide off the edge of the table and whether it would be me or the plate which would embrace the water first…

It was not the precarious table that had drawn us down the steps to the canal bank, or even the canal, it was the menu, when a menu offers you the chance to eat crocodile, ostrich, springbok and zebra then it has to be tried…

I haven’t been eating out here in Utrecht, it’s not as much fun on your own (and you only get to try one set of dishes) so when my friend came to visit, it was the perfect excuse to start my exploration of the local cuisine. We tried a nearby Indonesian restaurant but as it’s trendy and overbooked, we set to rambling…

It was an African restaurant with a variety of delicacies from all over the continent, it sounded good and it was. All my fears of plates sliding into canals were gone, there was no way I was going to let that food slip through my fingers! We started off with some delectable spicy curry pastries from Zanibar, they disappeared too quickly but we weren’t waiting too long for the main course. For my dining companion, ostrich pie, which was very nice indeed and for me I declined a vegetarian option and went for the meat plate – zebra, springbok and ostrich, all lovely though it was hard to tell between the springbok and the zebra. I’ve been wondering how to describe the tastes, and it’s difficult, the zebra and springbok are not gamey like venison is, it’s a milder taste, probably a more bit like reindeer. The ostrich does not “taste like chicken”, it’s got its own flavour and texture, the texture was more like an animal than a bird.

Our entertainment was on the water itself, in the evening (and all through the weekend) the Dutch take to the water, rowing, kayaking, taking a cruise, it’s all natural and done in that easy relaxed manner the Dutch have when work is but a distant memory. There was a constant flow of boats making their way up and down the canal, people sipping their wine or beer, laying back and enjoying the chat…

The evening was rounded off by desert – ice cream and African fruits, not what you’d imagine as a typical African desert nor did the fruits seem all that African – apples, grapes, pineapples though that’s just a minor quibble.

Nothing and nobody ended up in the canal.

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Eating The Apple

Anytime I travel I always like to sample the local cuisine and New York was no exception, I sampled the best of what New York had on offer – Japanese, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese and Chinese but what I really wanted was good New York food:

Pizza – call me unsophisticated if you will but I have to say that I don’t get too excited by “real” pizza, give me a greasy deep-pan pizza from Dominos or Pizza Hut anyday!

Hot dog – I bought it off a street vendor, the simplest of foods, a sausage, a bit of bread, a splodge of ketchup and mustard, it was amazing, far more than the sum of its parts, I was on a high for hours afterwards.

Chilli dog  – essentially a hot dog with chilli con carne poured all over it, it was nice but didn’t compare with the beautiful simplicity of a hot dog.

Cheese Burger – I’m not sure if I had what she was having but it tasted divine. No frilly bits like lettuce and gerkins just a burger, melted cheese in a bun, lovely.

My friend was telling me that while I was in New York I should try soulfood. After explaining to me exactly what soulfood was I commented that it sounded like normal food but she replied, ” no, it’s soooooouuull food”. I stood corrected.

Wait til I tell my mother that she’s been making sooooouuuuuulllll food all these years….

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Playing With My Food – Part 2

When I was young there was an art show hosted by an Australian guy called Rolf Harris and as he sploshed his paints across the canvas he used to turn to the camera in mid-splosh and ask “Ken ye tell what it is yet?”

Of course being intelligent children we knew what it was, we just weren’t sure if he did.

And so with this particular food picture, I must quote the man himself – ken ye tell what it is yet?

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Crock Messers

I always liked baking, you got your recipe, measured out your ingredients, mixed them all up, threw it into the oven and minutes or hours later a thing of beauty emerges all warm and toasty. It’s a wonderful thing.

Cooking on the other hand is ever elusive. The recipes are the works of cackling madmen, designed to lure you into their corrupted world, following their recipes and expecting it to turn out just like the pretty pictures in the cookbook? That way madness lies….

Sometimes it’s the simple things that bring the most pleasure, consider the humble toasted cheese-sandwich. You’ve got toast – and cheese! Together! What more could a sane person want? That perfect combination of crunch and gooeyness. I still remember the excitement in the house when we got our sandwich toaster, it was just the greatest invention since, well, sliced bread, it’s probably why they invented sliced bread!

And while the sandwich maker excelled in delivering perfectly toasted-cheese sandwiches, the wonder of it was that it could make other toasted sandwiches and some of them didn’t even contain cheese! I know, I was blown away too. We bought a book of recipes and set about experimenting.

Two of the most memorable of these non-cheese options were the chocolate rice-krispie sandwich and the ice-cream sandwich. Yes, really. From the moment I saw those two in the book, there was no escaping it, they had to be tried. The chocolate rice-krispies sandwich was strange, it was the odd combination of tastes and textures, neither chocolate or rice-krispies were meant to go with bread, it wasn’t made again.

The ice-cream sandwich on the other hand was divine. Putting a slice of ice-cream and a dollop of raspberry jam between two slices of bread and toasting it was a pure genius. The jam piping hot, the ice-cream melted yet still holding a hint of chill, the ice-cream dripping everywhere, it was a mess but gorgeous.

While a grilled toasted cheese sandwich is acceptable it just can’t reach the places a proper toasted cheese sandwich can reach, so in a effort to end this depravity I called a household meeting, important matters had to be discussed, I needed to impress upon the household the essentiality of a sandwich maker, the eloquence of my argument swayed the day, the vote was unanimous (it’s great living on your own) and a sandwich toaster was acquired.

The excitement was palpable as I fired up the toaster, it brought back those heady days of childhood, the sizzling of the butter on the hot plates, the scent of toasting bread and the anticipation of the glorious gooeyness…

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More momos

We had momos, we three and more. Gathered around the table we savoured the flavours as they melted in our mouths and we wanted more…

Back then, it was yak momos dipped in a curry sauce, the winding streets and lanes around Jokhang, prayer drums, monks and pilgrims and the best food in town was to be found in a welcoming Nepalese restaurant.

Friday on the straight streets of Berlin, in a Tibetan-Nepalese restaurant we discovered that there was something better than yak momos – spinach and cheese momos and lamb momos. It was the perfect way to begin the regathering of us Tibetan souls.

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Do you like scary movies?

Think of a movie, the baddie breaks into your house, you run to the kitchen, desperate for a weapon, pulling drawers open, scrabbling through the cutlery and implements until there it is, the biggest knife in the house…

They always go for the knife, the sharp and pointy solution to the problem. Let’s consider this, the baddie is bound to be bigger, stronger and faster than you, he’s well able to defend himself against one knife, after all he’s a baddie, he’s probably done courses..

You need something to even the odds, something to make quite a dint and make the baddie reconsider the whole endeavour. May I introduce you to my wok? Unlike those flimsy light woks you see from time to time, this is cast iron and packs a whallop, capable of breaking limbs and cracking skulls open, it’s the only form of defence you need!

Oh and you can cook with it too…..

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Grapes and Lychees

For many a year there was this run-down dodgy-looking Indian restaurant on the street, called one of the usual stereotypical names, The Raj, The Something Palace, instantly forgettable, never went, never wanted to.

A few months ago when walking up the street I noticed something different, the Indian restaurant was gone, instead there was a shiny new restaurant where once there was an old worn eatery. Upon further investigation I discovered that the sexy, sophisticated restaurant was Thai and Vietnamese. I needed to check it out.

It took longer than expected to find a willing volunteer/victim but go we did. It was like being a kid in a sweetshop, there was too much to choose from and only so much you could eat. Selecting a course was like UN Ceasefire Negotiation, too many people trying to speak and get their point across. There were some interesting noodle dishes, a selection of stir-fries and of course curries.

I didn’t want to have a curry as that’s what I usually order when I have Thai, so I wanted to try something different, despite inner arguments I was leaning towards a highly spicy stir-fry but then my good intentions failed me, out of the corner of my eye I spotted a curry, a duck curry with some very unusual ingredients – pineapple, grapes and lychees, I had to try it…

I wasn’t hopeful, the combinations were just too weird, I couldn’t expect much out of it but when it arrived very promptly and had my first spoonful, I was a convert, the sauce was lovely and creamy, the duck, soft and tender and fruit was a mixture of flavours, having not only the fruit flavour but also the taste of the curry. Bliss…..

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Paris – Pleasuring Yourself

Moans of ectasy, sighs of pleasure, possibly even giggles of delight could be heard emanating from my hotel room this weekend, no doubt any passers-by drew their own conclusions about what was occurring within…..

And was happening in that sanctum of pleasure?

I’m not sure if I should say, you might think of me as depraved or possibly just a bit strange but it was all down to a four-syllable word that sounds magical and conjures up possibilities of pure sensual pleasure….

Boulangerie….

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