Food!

Struggling to find inspiration on something to write about, I began to think about the last few months.  It's really easy to write when you're life is full of excitement; trips, new places and strange experiences.  When you are saving your money for a flight back home and impending unemployment, writing suddenly becomes a lot harder to do.  Without the exuberance of expenditure, one needs to find other things to write about.  Things that might be mundane to me could be interesting to an audience of people on the other side of the world.  So this is how I started looking over my shoulder for something to write about.  It became very clear: food!

More blog posts will follow in the next few weeks; I'll be heading to Bangkok for a few days and then exploring Cambodia for a week (Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Angkor, etc.).  But for now, here's a chronicle of food ranging from Manhattan and Singapore to Borneo and beyond.  *From January 7th, 2012 - June 2nd, 2012.

Korean - Mexican fusion is taking off through food trucks across the U.S.  It sounds strange, but I assure you, it's totally awesome.  Stumbled upon this truck walking around East Village one winter day in January.

The goods: three tacos, ranging from pork and beef to vegetarian, with everything from kimchi to cilantro inside.

After eating strange Korean pizzas for a calender year, I was about ready to give up on the dietary staple.  A trip to Little Italy reopened my eyes.  Goodbye shrimp and sweet potato, hello proper pizza!

Here I am living out of a broom cupboard of a hostel room in Little India, Singapore.  Tired of the glamorous restaurants lining Race Course Road and Serangoon Road, I ducked into the ugliest and busiest spot I could find.  I ordered some Briyani -- the fried rice you see -- and everything was slapped down onto a freshly cut banana leaf.  Hastily looking around, and seeing a room full of Indians gracefully eating with their hands, I clumsily dug in. With both hands.  An unmanageable amount of curry on my hands later, I realize some of the men are unabashedly staring at me.  I then realize everyone is eating with only their right hand.  I would only later realize the left hand is only for "sanitary purposes."  I left the place with, as they say, a veritable "shit-eating grin" on my face.    

A type of Thosai.  Thosai is Indian; a flat, thin and crispy fried bread with some masala inside.  Then, a balanced variety of dips and curries to eat with.

This is Yong Tau Foo from the hawker centre (food court) near my school.  This is what I would consider proper Singaporean food.  It took me a while to work up the courage to try it, since it looked complicated (it's not).  In a nutshell: you pick seven or more ingredients from the shelf, put it in a bowl, give the bowl to the lady, tell her what kind of noodles you want (egg noodles, rice vermicelli, some other things), tell her what sauce you want or if you want soup and then pay.

The finished product of Yong Tau Foo: fried bean curd, broccoli, a spinach variant, stuffed chili pepper, egg noodles and a fiery curry laksa sauce.

Satay being grilled over charcoal on the main street of Brunei's capital, Bandar Seri Begawan.  Satay is found in a variety of forms throughout Malaysia, Borneo, Indonesia (I think) and Singapore.

Still in Brunei.  This is gelatinous goop eaten paired with an equally nasty and pungent chili sauce.  It's called Ambuyat and it only rose to prominence during World War II when the Japanese were occupying and food was scarce.  It's literally made from tree sap (don't be confused - not at all like maple syrup).

This is from a 24 hour Muslim / Indian eatery very near my apartment in Ang Mo Kio.  It's totally awesome, cheap and delicious.  The meal is plain rice with vegetables and beef and turmeric.  The real star is the bread in the background; roti prata.  Prata is a delicious and simple fried bread -- with a choice of filling such as egg or onion -- to be dipped in curry (on the left in the picture).  Prata makes my illustrious list of the top five foods I've ever eaten.

This is barbecued sting ray.  Yes, sting ray.  I kid you not, BBQ stingray is one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted.  Cooked over fire, the white meat easily pulls away from the charred carapace of cartilage and bone.  Smothered with sambal, a chili paste, the meat is both smoky and spicy.

Not much meat left on the stingray's flap after we had gotten ahold of it!

  Proper fried chicken wings in Singapore.

Last, but certainly not least; a proper Cantonese lunch of leftovers from the night before.  White fungus on the left, with pork and egg.  Cucumber and black fungus on the right.  Hidden in the pot in the middle: pork belly.  Don't ask me what white or black fungus is.