pepperknit

Meet Dhoby Ghaut!

Dhoby Ghaut is named for the MRT (mass rapid transit) station on Orchard Road. This is an interchange where two subway lines cross, and practically every bus line comes by, too. Right next door is Plaza Singapura, a mall with a grocery store and movie theater, so it’s a busy place.

We often take the 190 bus from home to Dhoby Ghaut in order to get elsewhere in the city. Buses are always a wild ride (worse than New York City, I swear!), so he grabbed onto the strap and held on for dear life. A small Chinese boy looked up and cried out, in English, “Monkey!”

Dhoby had a very Singaporean day today. For lunch we ate at the food court in the basement of Takashimaya, then we window shopped a bit—truly the Singaporean pasttime. Always intrigued by the foreign foods available, Dhoby took a look at some Japanese snacky snacks, including Pucca, which seemed to be like pocky only they were goldfish shaped (and cocoa flavored). You could find pretty much any kind of cracker or pocky stick or sweet you might want in these places.

Then he picked up a sixpack of beer and headed home for some relaxation. Tiger Beer is Singapore’s beer; I personally don’t like it, as I don’t like light beers. It claims it’s a “lager,” but it’s no Yuengling—it is, to my palate, the same as a Heineken. Too much hops for me.

Once home, he took care of the local koi, who are greedy, greedy bastards and very nearly ate Dhoby’s foot. I feared for his life, because I used unpopped popcorn kernels instead of craft beads or dried beans to stabilize Dhoby, and I figured these koi, who are larger than Dhoby (heck, they’re practically bigger than me) would tear him limb from limb. Luckily I got him away in time, and then he could relax.

The pool was calling his name after this full day. It was really hot out—he soaked in the rays while I frolicked in the water.

Dhoby Ghaut (rav page)
Pattern: Crocheted Monkey by ChimuChimu
Yarn: Harvest Pure Wool, dark brown; Cleckheaton 8-ply Crepe, beige
Skeins: 1.25 of dark brown; less than half of beige
Hook: US size D
Started: Saturday, July 26
Finished: Thursday, July 31
Notes: I was definitely influenced by Pam’s Ramona Bananapants, which made me want to re-learn how to crochet. Amigurumi is, of course, just composed of single crochets, so it was really no big deal. As my first time following a crochet pattern, I learned some things—like how I have to place a marker at the beginning of each round or I will never, ever find the beginning again. I am also not super skilled at “reading” the crochet, but with such a well-written pattern it wasn’t a big deal. As I said, I used popcorn kernels in his hands and feet and body as a stabilizer. The neck is a bit shorter than the pattern called for—it looked too tall to me. But now I don’t know how tall he is. The cock to his head was just a happy accident. I love! Will make loads more.

orchids @ the Singapore Botanic Gardens

If you recall my last skirt, the Snapping Turtle, well, it was hugging my then-minimal curves. My curves have gotten a bit bigger now that I’m in Singapore—you have been reading about all my food adventures, after all. Yes, in Singapore I need a swishy, hide-all-evils skirt.

Skirt #12 (they can’t come up with real names for the patterns in that magazine?)
Knit.1 Magazine
Size: Medium (36 1/2″ hip; I wanted it to sit on my hips so I went with that measurement)
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Wool Cotton
Skeins: 10
Needles: Addi Turbo US 5 (and 3)
Started: Sunday, June 29
Finished: Blocked and dry Sunday, July 13

I cast on all 455 stitches for this skirt the day before I left to come to Singapore, and worked on the bulk of it on my 30-hour trip (and during lots of in-flight movies). The Friday before, my friend Julia and I had been poking through a pile of old Vogue company knitting magazines I have. This skirt from knit.1 caught my eye. I trust Norah Gaughan, so another knitted skirt made me intrigued rather than nervous. Plus I could see that the stitches were going in different directions due to the bias; I figured that would combat any butt sag.

So I went stash-diving and found the burgundy Debbie Bliss Wool Cotton. I knit Pam out of it, in blue, years back, and I’d bought the yarn in bulk at Stitches back when Stitches was still in King of Prussia, PA.

The skirt is held up with a long twisted cord woven into a ribbed waistband. I have plenty of room to make this bigger or smaller. And the drape of the skirt allows for any amount of gathering—I think it would hang nicely no matter what!

The eyelet feature is dead-easy to remember (it’s only 2 rows of eyelet—though the pattern is written in such a way that you might think it was more complicated). The pattern itself is also so straightforward, it made for excellent plane knitting. I’ll admit to major impatience to have it DONE already. It felt like it was taking forever, and I was also afraid I was going to run out of yarn. I have more at home, so it was going to irritate me greatly if I’d not brought enough. But I had just enough, so this was blocked and dried last weekend! The skirt barely touches your skin, so the 50% wool wasn’t too hot in the Singapore humidity. I swear! I’ve also grown really used to the heat here, so maybe I’m delusional. But if you get too hot, you can swish around and create your own breeze!

We’re not afraid.

Downtown Singapore is, let’s face it, like almost any other cosmopolitan city (with exceptions, of course). It’s modern, it’s clean, and it’s easy to navigate. But head out of downtown, and it gets decidedly more provincial, with open-air restaurants with plastic chairs, fewer English speakers, and—we hoped—more authentic food. Driving north out of downtown, my mom had spotted The Roti Prata House and was dying to try it. So dad did some city bus research, and mom and I set off on the bus—in a direction opposite every other trip from home we’ve ever taken—and traveled half an hour to sample the roti prata.

Roti prata is another of those “top 10″ Singaporean foods—a flat bread (”roti” means bread and “prata” means flat) quite like a crepe. And just like a crepe, savory foods can be wrapped up in them or they can be eaten plain with sugar. Curry is their best friend. We got the chicken murtabak, which is a large prata with chicken, carrots, onion, and spices stuffed inside (bottom of the photo below). It’s served with a bowl of pale curry sauce (top left). The filling was light, with the shredded carrot giving it a sweetness, and the curry was nice and spicy. We also got the mutton briyani (middle and right), which was excellent. The curry it was in was my favorite—I pretty much scooped some in every bite.

A glance into the back of the restaurant revealed a small cart with an “Indian Rojak” sign. Rojak is another Singaporean staple—it’s a salad—but this? This was not normal rojak. We asked our sweet waiter, who was amused by us and our picture-taking and patiently did his best to explain things to us in his limited English, if we could have some. He made it clear that we were to go up and choose it ourselves. Huh? OK, I’ll go.

What we’d thought was fruit from afar turned out to be a whole assortment of fritter-like objects. I finally got him to tell me what they were. There was a whole range, from prawn fritters (top right) to coconut-onion (middle top—YUM), to fish cake (bottom left—I put that one back) to tofu squares (bottom right). I also picked a veggie fritter (top left). I started to walk back to the table with the plate but he stopped me—no, you give it to them and they re-fry the fritters and bring them to us. OK!

In fact they then chopped it up, mixed it all together with raw cukes, green chiles, and onions, and served it with a heated sweet sauce. A mixture of different fried fritters in a salad? That’s my kinda salad. It was really tasty (I didn’t like the sweet sauce, though).

Our only major “miss” in this meal was the drink we saw someone else drinking and decided to try, on a whim. Rose bandung. Um. I did no color correcting to this photo. And it tastes EXACTLY how it looks, only MORE perfumey and nasty.

In all, the meal for the both of us (which probably qualified as a meal for 3 people) cost $14 Sing! That’s probably about $10. We were stuffed full and happy. YUM.

I keep starting to write about more of our eating adventures but I quickly lose my focus and end up scrapping the post. But what exactly am I trying to say other than that the food here is amazing?

Singapore’s most famous dish is chili crab. I didn’t have any last time I was here, which is a sad, sad thing.

It’s a large crab—different sites seem to indicate different kinds of crab. It looks kinda dungenessy . . . one of the tanks in the restaurant said “Canadian Dungeness” . . . one site says “mud crab” . . . another specifies “Sri Lankan crab.” Basically, it’s a crab. It’s not—and I can say this with absolute certainty—a blue, the crabs of the American East Coast (and my most favorite). The meat is still pretty sweet, but like most larger crabs, it isn’t as delicate and melting as a blue. But a blue’s meat probably couldn’t hold up to the super sweet/spicy chili sauce. You dig right in, eating with your hands, and it’s a big sticky mess. So it’s a good thing that Singapore is practically devoid of paper napkins, instead opting for wet-nap–like wipes. (It’s very disconcerting to sit down to eat and not have something covering your lap. But apparently they’re neater eaters here.)

It’s common to get man tou, a sweet donut-like bread, to sop up the sauce (I didn’t get a photo of that—fingers and hands were coated in chili sauce!). They were tasty.

My friend Des, a Singaporean, argues that black pepper crab is now the dish that has captured Singaporeans’ hearts. So I tried that too.

I liked it better than the chili crab, actually. There’s not much to say about it—nice and peppery. The crab is the same, and the eating process is just as messy.

Another seafood staple that’s popular here (my dad thinks it’s a distinctly Singaporean dish) is the cereal prawn.

The “cereal” is a kind of oat and the shrimp is peel ‘n’ eat. I really liked the oaty coating—it’s great mixed with rice.

And just because we had these three things at the same meal, I have to mention these amazing honey ribs we got that night, too. They would hold their own against any of the offerings at the Big Apple BBQ!

The meat fell off the bone, the glaze was sticky and sweet and dark, like soy.

All these food adventures are lining up nicely with the Singapore Food Festival. They’ve listed 10 Must Eat foods—I’ve had 6 already. The dinner above let me only cross the chili crab off the list. Others I’ve already eaten include char kway teow (which I had last Sunday but my photograph is decidedly unpalatable), satay (which is the same here as it is in the States), laksa (i’ve had it twice now, and: LOVE), Hainanese chicken rice (haven’t had it yet on this visit, but I’m sure I will), and fried carrot cake (not what you think—hard to describe). Others left to sample include fish head curry, roti prata, rojak, and bak kut teh. Stay tuned for these and more culinary adventures!

@ the Singapore Botanic Gardens

A year ago, Stacey over at Earthchick Knits almost lost one of her sons in a scary accident—one that could happen to anyone—at the beach. She’s celebrating the fact that he survived with a raffle that benefits a great group and could yield you all sorts of delicious goodies! Go here to participate. But you’d better not win the prize I want!!

Eat! And eat at hole-in-the-wall joints, no less. So of course that’s what we did when we took a short overnight trip to Melaka, Malaysia.

Melaka (Malacca) is a state of Malaysia on the western coast, and it’s been occupied by nearly everyone (now it’s just part of Malaysia)—the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Japanese, and the British. The Portuguese came in the 1500s, so the historical sites go back really far.

And others just feel like anachronisms, like this windmill in honor of the Dutch occupation, which is opposite an old Dutch church (still extant) and the former home of the Dutch Governors (now a museum full of creepy human figurines).

The area is dominated by Peranakan people, the Chinese Malay, with their own particular cuisine. Laksa has been top of my list ever since that episode of Top Chef when Anthony Bourdain was the guest judge and Lisa made a too-smoky laksa hated by everyone. If Tony Bourdain says real laksa is one of his favorites, well, I had to give it a go.

I was not disappointed. This tiny Peranakan restaurant, Restoran Nancy’s Kitchen, with its unflattering fluorescent lights and dated Christmas decorations on the walls, seemed the perfect place to try laksa. It’s essentially a curry soup—great coconut flavor but a smoky spicy kick that had my nose running (I love spicy food). It has noodles, small shimp, some cucumber, and other vegetables. It also had a mystery substance (thin, kinda spongy sheets), which I hope is a vegetable (it’s always weird to me when I can’t identify a food, as I am pretty knowledgeable), and rice balls, which are like pounded rice formed into a rubbery little ball. They don’t absorb the flavor so they serve to put out the fire in your mouth a bit. I plan on trying more laksa—I hear it’s one of those local foods where there are a zillion variations—and there are plenty of places to get it in Singapore, too.

The Portuguese influence has created a “local Portuguese cuisine,” but it seemed to be the same as the food everywhere else. In the Portuguese Square (nothing more than a structure with restaurants), Restoran Lisbon, essentially a kitchen with some tables and plastic chairs outside, was advertised as, you know, Portuguese food, but it really seemed just like other Peranakan spots.

This fish dish, ikan bakar, was noted as a traditional food, and it was amazing. Those two green things on top are limes—the tiny kinds are common here. The red sauce was spicy and smoky—”warm” was the first word that came to mind when I took a bite—and it mushed up nicely with the perfectly cooked fish. In the lower left-hand corner are lightly pickled onions, which contrasted with the warmth of the fish. This was my favorite entree of our meal.

Chicken curry debal and ginger squid were our other two meat dishes from Restoran Lisbon (we also got greens). The chicken was a bit dry, but the sauce was tasty over rice. The squid was tender and flavorful—I didn’t think the ginger flavor was strong enough, though.

Another curry soup I got, at the Geographer Cafe (not as fancy as the name might imply), featured lontong, compressed rice cut into small pieces.

Not as spicy as laksa, but gosh-darn tasty.

The rest of Melaka was okay—there’s some pretty temples, which I’ll show some pictures of soon. There was shopping, but there’s only so much plastic crap I need, and the antiques aren’t my style. The night market was pretty good—with food and shopping and karaoke and line dancing!–but jet lag hit me so hard before we headed out that I was in a total fog and didn’t take a single picture; I actually hit a point where I just stopped and stood to the side while my parents are our family friend walked the rest of it. I’m sure my mom will blog about that, so I’ll link to her post.

The Singapore Food Festival is going on all month (yay!) so we have plans to check it out this afternoon.

When my parents lived in Columbia, the Chicken #1 sandwich at Clyde’s was one of those things I just had to have upon returning for a visit. Now that they live in Singapore, my tastes are a bit different—Din Tai Fung, for soup dumplings, is requirement #1.

Din Tai Fung is actually a chain, with several restaurants in Singapore and others around the world (Australia, and even LA!). I first had it in Taipei about 4 years ago. The dumplings are hand-made behind a glass wall, so you can see the guys hard at work (I was waved off from taking photos the last time I was there, so I didn’t try this time. I have shots of the guys in Taipei, but those are on my external hard drive, back in NYC). There the wait is always so long, they give you a tiny clipboard with the menu printed on it, and you indicate how many of each item you want. When you’re eventually led to a table, you hand over your order on the walk over. Here, if there’s a wait, they employ the same system, but I have had it be empty enough that we were seated before asked to order (I think you always fill it out yourself).

Soup dumplings exist in the States—Joe’s Shanghai is the place to go in NYC. But there’s something much better about them here. Joe’s Shanghai’s dumplings have a really strong pork flavor—the soup is almost gamey, it’s so porky. Here, the liquid housed in each dumpling, along with the meatball, are impeccably subtle. The wrappers are supple but don’t break open and spill soup everywhere when you lift them out of the steamer, like they do at Joe’s. In other words, they’re perfect.

Shao loong bao, what these are called, actually means “little steamer dumpling,” but the “soup” quality is what makes them unique. I’ve read that the stock is frozen and placed in the dumpling along with the meatball, so that when steamed the ice melts and you end up with soup encased in a wrapper. It means that eating them requires some careful work—and definitely needs a spoon. You set it down in the spoon and tear it open slightly, either with your teeth or a chopstick, and let the bowl of the spoon fill up. I slurp it out separately, because the next step is dunking the dumpling into the bowl of soy sauce, black vinegar, and shreds of fresh ginger that you’ve mixed up. The fresh ginger is key—we always ask for extra.

Other dumplings, such as these, aren’t shao loong bao, they’re just dumplings (bao), but they’re so pretty I can’t resist them. I love the way the little shrimp is poised atop the wrapper like that!

My favorite greens are these, dou miao. They’re pea shoots (shoots of the snowpea plant), and they’re consistently tender and tasty. Sauteed with plenty of garlic and oil, they are only beat by kung xin cai (water spinach), a hollow-stalked green that isn’t super common but is super tender and tasty.

The other dish we got surprised me. My mom asked me if I remembered the shiao tsai we used to get before meals when we lived in Taiwan—little plates of snacky things, like a seaweed salad or a tofu “noodle” salad. It turns out they combine it all into one dish here! There was also some cellophane noodle in there, too.

Day 1’s main meal was a success. Not sure what’s on tap for tomorrow!