SPICEGASM.COM My travel tales and food hunting

September 10th 2010 marked the first day of Hari Raya Aidil Fitri. Some parts of the world especially in the western world call it Eid. It is a joyous occasion for the Moslem community everywhere in the world. I am however very familiar with the celebration in Singapore.

As a non Moslem, I get to participate too on this special day. My Moslem friend would normally have “open house” where everybody is invited to visit and enjoy special Hari Raya food. The time of visit is normally from 11am – 7pm. It is not written as a rule but everybody kind of know the right time to visit.

This year  I visited my dear friend Marsha and they prepared quite a number of dishes for the guests. Rendang and ketupat is a must for this special day and they are usually known as the Raya food. Back in the days, rendang and ketupat could only be found once a year during the Aidil Fitri. Nowadays you don’t have to wait once a year as they are vendors selling this dishes whole year round.

Since I am old school, eating dishes prepared by your friends is way better than buying it from the shop. Is not because it is free but is that special day that makes eating rendang and ketupat really awesome.

I’ve been slacking with providing more info or recipe and the food that  I’ve been eating in Singapore but I hope to provide all these information one day. However I can provide you some pictures of rendang and ketupat to make you envy.

Ketupat is the square rice cube. The leafy thing is being used to store the rice and cooked in boiling water. At the side is the beef rendang. The big bowl is peanut sauce and it can be eaten with ketupat when beef rendang is not available. I prefer to eat ketupat with rendang when I am really hungry but when mouth is itchy, I’ll just eat it with the peanut sauce. This is something Filipino would really enjoy as ketupat is made of rice.

Thank you Marsha and Joey for inviting me and wish you guys a Happy Hari Raya Aidil Fitri Day.

One of the favorite past time in Singapore is having supper with your friends. A meal between 9.30pm – 3am can be considered supper. It is a meal after dinner and when the mouth is itchy, you go for supper. It is not meant for filling up your tummy but more of food tasting kinda meal.

So here are some typical supper food where it is commonly found in food courts all over Singapore. My friends invited me to go for supper as they know I am into food blogging nowadays. I still feel very awkward taking pictures of food and thanks to my buddies who reminded me to snap the pictures of the food before being devoured.

BBQ chicken wings that is best eaten with special chili sauce that came with the wings. These wings are normally marinated with soya sauce and occasionally honey to make it taste a little bit sweet.

I have  no idea what you call this shell in English. We just call this Gong Gong and the texture of this creature is kinda rubbery. It is normally boiled with ginger and then you pluck them out and dip it with the chili sauce. It has some fishy smell to it and basically tasteless. I have no idea why people liked it and my guess is maybe more of wanting to bite on something rubbery like a chewing gum.

This is how gong gong looks like after pulling it off it’s shell.

All time favorite kangkung belacan. In English is known as Morning Glory With Shrimp Paste. Very tasty.

Grilled Mackerel or “Ikan Kembung panggang” in Malay. It is normally cooked with some special mixed of chili paste on a banana leaf to give a fragrant smell to the fish. We actually wanted the grilled stingray instead of this but they ran out of stingray. Sting ray wold be a better choice for this type of cooking as the flesh of sting ray is much softer and smoother. The dipping for this grilled dish is the cencaluk.

Chicken and beef satay. I’m sure by now everybody knows what satay is.

The food court that we went to for this supper excursion was in Pasir Panjang. Not really a big food court but they are quite a bit of selection of noodles, seafood and other types of food as well. Since there’s only the 3 of us, we can only manage to order these few items. Dining in Singapore is best to go in one big group of 10 people. That way you can order more food and share among friends and sample everything. Sometimes foreign friends do get confused with all the sauces that accompany the dishes. To get a good dining experience, you need to use the right sauce for the right dish.

I can’t wait to make another post as I didn’t want my previous post about bad experience of mine to stay as the first post of my blog. When two friends of mine called me up and asked me to meet for dinner, I suggested that we go to Chinatown  for some really good hot pot.

In recent years, Chinatown Singapore has really become the “real” Chinatown as they are great influx of Chinese People from Mainland China coming to Singapore to set up businesses. So many new restaurant serving authentic Chinese food can be found in Chinatown.

I arrived earlier than my friends so I decided to go snap some pictures and here are some pictures I would like to share it with you guys.

The famous People’s Park Complex, is a popular destination for housewives to go look for great bargains on household items. My mom used to frequent this place long time ago.

The Chinatown main road. You can also see a flyover or bridge in this picture. People like to hang out on the bridge with their friends.

Some really old buildings and the road is pretty busy

Lanterns being displayed and Chinatown is getting ready for the Mooncake Festival. When the decoration is fully done, Chinatown will be transform into a really beautiful and colorful place. It’s actually a yearly tourist attraction where people all over the world would visit.

Restaurant are everywhere in Singapore. Most people prefer to patronize the non high class restaurant as the food is way better and is really cheap. The restaurant are normally set up in an open air environment and just next to the road. Many Westerner felt it is unhealthy but I can assure you it is 100% safe. You need to experience it for yourself and then you will enjoy dining outdoors Singapore style.

A very busy restaurant specializing in selling all sort of porridge. On weekends is really hard to get a seat. No reservations normally and it is first come first serve basis.

Rows of restaurant alongside the road. Almost every restaurants are packed with customers. I don’t think I will be bragging when I said these stretch of restaurants are around one kilometers long.

An old building built in 1879 which is still standing tall next to the hot pot restaurant where I will meet my friends.

Entrance of the hot pot joint that I’ve chosen among many in Chinatown.

I just walked in and informed the waitress that they will be 3 of us and she gave me a table.  Once we have our table and decided on the soup or broth of choice, is time to go get your meat, vegetables and seafood to your table and ready to cook it by ourselves.

Big selections of sea food here and it’s all very fresh.

Our choice of soup. Chinese herbal soup that is tasty but mild and the red colored soup is known as “Ma Lat” which is a famous Szechuan soup that is spicy. Is a kind of special peppercorn and chili mixed.

When the soup is boiling, is time to put the seafood in. I’ve always put the seafood in first and followed by the meat. This is to sweeten the soup with great flavor. Then you can put in the meatballs and vegetables that are cook really fast.

On top of all the raw food that you need to cook yourself, the restaurant also prepared some cold dishes, fried chicken wings and dumplings.

Our messy table with all sorts of food ready to be cook. Tsingtao beer from China to go along with our hot pot – heaven!

Hot pot or commonly known as steamboat in Singapore is really one of my favorite dish and it’s best to eat with a company of 3-5. While waiting for your meat to be cook, you get to catch up with your friends. Hot pot normally takes around 2 hours to complete as you really eat it slow. It’s really ideal for a get together type of occasion as it is cheap and not noisy like in a club where you can’t even talk to your friends. It cost us SGD15 per person for all you can eat exclusive the drinks.  With the amount of quality seafood, meat, meatballs, vegetables, dumplings, salad and so many more, I think the price is just amazingly good. Oh, they have watermelons  too for desserts.