mmm... i made a lamb stew!
i'm dancing with delight over it, as well as joyfully eating it.
it was fast, easy, foolproof, and to me it really signals the turn, my return to being a food loving cooking type.
it's: lamb chops (forequarter), and a red and a brown onion, cut up and browned in olive oil and butter. then, many cloves of home grown garlic!, bay leaves, black pepper, fresh home grown rosemary (and sage if you have it). a big tin of tomatoes OR a bottle of pasta sauce with red wine (it was on special and cheaper than tinned tomatoes, yummier too), and 2 cans of rinsed and drained butter beans (my favourite bean). and into a 180deg oven for 2 hours, while i had a long delicious nap.
i actually woke up so disoriented i had to really think about what plane i was on, much less what country (it's been a weird globetrotting week).
i'm eating it now with my favourite instant mash (plain dehydrated potato, nothing added, cook with milk and butter and anything else) which is a US brand i carried back from singapore. very non-locavore...
going to singapore was a nice way to really establish the shaking up of my eating attitude which has taken hold in the last 2 years. i think i've shaken it up really nicely. the eating was a blast, a dedicated holiday goal in itself. and so cheap, so the joy of the eating out is felt twice.
i'm listing it all here as a way of reliving the sweetness.
night 1:
lamb soup, a clear chinese herby version, $4.
a bit of andrew's chicken rice (the famous chicken rice.. white rice cooked in chicken stock, garlic, coriander, and some margarine. ultra tender barely poached chicken cooked in clear garlicy stock, and presented in neat little slices. eaten with minced garlic and special chilli sauce).
day 1:
morning: the local food centre:
- char kuay teow (fried rice noodles with clams, cubes of crispy pork lard, eggs and dark soy), $3. nothing like the insipid versions available here.
- big cup of watermelon juice blended to order, $2.
- freshly made soy milk, $1.
(a pau for dandan, steamed rice flour bun with roast pork filling)
dandan was so cute here, running up and down the wide shallow steps beside our table, talking to himself and delighting passers-by. the sparkiest child around for miles.
what was interesting to me too was spotting so many kids that looked just like dandan. he's a very rare bod here in melbourne, even amongst other asians, with his big round eyes and browny skin; and i figured out why in singapore.
he's of a particular stock, hokkien peranakan, which is hokkien chinese mixed with some malay. lots of this heritage in this area of singapore, they tend to all live in this eastern suburb (they call it the "katong look" after the suburb), but a minority anywhere else in the island/world.
dandan falls asleep in the ergo on me, and as we have an arrangement for andrew to be ergoing him here in the long hot days instead of trying to make the pram work out, we do a complicated transfer of a deeply sleeping toddler in an ergo from one parent to another. it proves very hilarious and slightly concerning to the friendly passers-by. but is successful!
then we walk around the local shops taking in the real local-ness of the place, marvelling at all the cool stuff we don't get back home, and changed currency. we buy:
- bubblegummers shoes for dandan - look like normal shoes but have very flexible soles, and only $20.
- large pack of mini tissue packs, like 20c each.
- hand held shower things for back home, $11
then hung out at a cool pet shop which had miles of fish tanks with tonnes of very cool fish. and a room of uber cute and miniature poor animals in glass tanks, like rabbits, gerbils, mice, all super tiny and adorable. normal sized smallish dogs and cats too. poor babies.
then at the local supermarket, marvelling at all the imported US stuff. and the aussie stuff, and how expensive it is!:
- magazines
- my US instant mash
- some US product called bac-o bits which i thought were dried bacon bits, but turns out to be bacon-flavoured manufactured soy bits. ick.
- stuff for dan's special standard rice dish, beef and chicken meat, pork bones, carrots and broccoli. i later spend an hour making it, and he eats 5 bites of it over the next 10 days, and i have to throw it out when we leave. it was worth a try.
- cool cheap toys, like play teach-time clocks. and i really wanted this music jewellery box that dandan was entranced by (open the lid, has a mirror and spinning bear inside and a music box plays), but it was too much at $17.
then we hung out for ages at the fresh food section at the supermarket, where there were entire tanks full of live seafood, big and little fish, crabs, prawns, where you could just reach in and grab what you wanted! and an entire spread of their deceased compatriots on ice.
andrew's childhood friend ronald (who acts as our guide and driver for the entire trip) then brings us to a big mall, where we get local prepaid phone cards, which we use on delightful retro pixelated no-colour-screen mobiles which we had ferreted out at home.
we have lunch at the glitzy food court, where i foolishly order their chicken rice and pay for the MSG load with unnatural thirst and a headache for the rest of the day. the worst thing is, i wasted a meal on them! i also am forced to order a tetra pack drink, so i also waste a drink that could've been a $2 blended fruit one (they didn't have it).
and i buy a fried banana fritter that turns out to be cold and long precooked. i don't even bother eating it..
but i did get popiah - thin pancakes wrapped around a cooked shredded vegetable mix (turnip, white cabbage, bean sprouts), chopped peanuts, dark sweet soy, and chilli. luvvvly.
then while i do the shopping thing, they take dan off to play on the cool kiddie rides, and then go off to walk around a cool old-singapore area (singapore's divided into the new and the old stuff. of course the old stuff is much cooler, and nostalgic, and actually real. the new stuff is air-conditioned, shiny, manufactured, commercial... but air-conditioned).
dan proceeds to very quickly fall in love with uncle ronald, precipitated at first by his very cool car - a red mini (the original), at which dan exclaimed "big red car!" aka in the Wiggles (his favouritest people in the whole world, which made this his favouritest object in the whole world, propelling ronald very quickly to favouritest person ever).
it really helped that ronald's car was also:
1. red inside
2. had a smogasbord of switches, dials, levers, knobs, etc etc inside. think light aircraft.
3. and this is the winner - no seat belts at all inside, to speak nothing of a baby carseat. dan has never loved riding in a car so much. sigh
i buy for myself:
- clothes from zara, that UK high street brand. considered slightly expensive in singapore but significantly cheaper than most australian mall lines. and some shoes from topshop.
- super comfy shoes (made by crocs and is basically a fabric sandshoe but have that thick rubber sole, so is literally the most comfortable shoe i've ever walked in. i later get another pair in a different colour. i walk alot, so the difference is loudly apparent very quickly. it's heavenly..).
and i look around in a big bookshop for chinese books for dandan. but i quickly realise that despite having studied chinese for my entire school life, i'm now at about a kindergarten reading level. also, all of their books are shrink wrapped, so i can't even check out whether it suits us. geez.
i heave myself around all the kid shops, and after an hour or 2 realise that there's no possible way i could finish shopping singapore in our 10 days, not even remotely close. it fills me with relief and weariness. i call the guys, and we arrange for me to take a train and meet them down the road.
but in the meantime, i go to a french cafe and get a creme brulee, freshly blowtorched, $5, creamy and lush and yummy. i consider ordering snails to takeaway ($8), but realise even i would probably not eat cold leftover snails.
i do the train thing (tickets are from 70c with my prepaid card from years before), grab a fresh blended red apple juice (yay) on the way, and find them standing beside the mini with dan and andrew wrapping up from a poo nappy change. i have arrived not a minute too soon.
ronald brings us to get satay... amazingly delicious, and so cool in that setting- outdoors besides a revamped historical market building, a semi circle of gigantic trees all draped with blue fairy lights, small charcoal grills everywhere being fanned by sweaty men. we get chicken, pork, beef satays, each person gets their own peanut sauce, and dan eats the rice cakes.
we also get a grilled sting ray - smothered in sambal sauce and grilled on a banana leaf on open charcoal flame. you scrape the thin layer of meat off the dense layer of fixed bones. it's magical.
i really wanted to go back again, but it never eventuated. but i'm so delighted we had it this time at all.
this was a long first day, more like 3 days in 1! the other days go by quicker. i'll leave this here for now.
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