nikkib

After lunch i felt like a bit of a walk so ambled down to the Tekka wet market and hawker centre, mainly to get some photos as i had already eaten and i think we have established i won't be buying groceries this week. Initially known in Hokkien as Tek kia Kha "foot of the small bamboos" due to its proximity to the nearby Rocher Canal where bamboo was plentiful. The wet market sells everything from fresh seafood to eggs, mutton and meat ( no pork - all halal here) as well as vegetables and homewares. The food stalls are predominantly Indian, Malay and vegetarian.

Grouse looks wonderful. Here is a partridge breast I cooked recently. It's sitting on some glazed chestnuts, a porcini and pear ragout, sauteed foie gras, and a sauce made from partridge stock, a little white port, madeira and a compound butter of foie gras. Next up is wood pigeon. That partridge looks amazing!!

Also feel i should show you the rest of my fridge/cupboard photos so you can see i do have some food (although i just checked and the eggs went off on the 9th - all 5 of them and the apples have seen better days too..)

Some photos i snapped at the Mustafa centre supermarket, i will show you some markets/smaller shops later in the week too. Chicken Ham - i forget who was asking about this in Percyns blog but here it is A selection of the fresh fish on offer Fresh Tumeric, vegetables and herbs Local Juice selection and spice packets

Lunch was at the Hong Lim Hawker Centre, located just around the corner from China Town and i chose a strong competitor for Singapores favourite dish - Hainanese chicken rice. Chicken is boiled whole in a pork/chicken stock with maybe a little garlic or ginger and then, when cooked it is plunged into icy water to allow the layer of fat between the meat and the skin to firm up and solidify. These birds are then hung up and portioned up when ready. Served with boiled rice (often cooked in the same stock as the chicken for a richer flavour)a chicken broth and several sauces. These can differ from place to place but there is usually a thick ginger sauce, a spicy chilli sauce and some dark soy sauce. Everyone will have their own preferred way of eating this, i tend to throw all the sauces into the rice, mix well and eat with the chicken (which is served at room temperature)It's not one of my favourite dishes to be honest, not that there is anything wrong with it, i just think there are a lot more interesting dishes on offer but it was what i felt like eating today so why not....

Hi Kent - wine is expensive here, I haven't seen any in the supermarkets for less than $25 or so and it's hardly appealing stuff at that. Restaurants tend to start at around $12 and up for a glass, anywhere "international" you can almost double that. There are bargains to be found and happy hours run in most bars for several hours (a beer in a central bar will cost around $10...) my meals at mozza and Db moderne came in at around $100 for a glass of wine, main course ( pizza or charcuterie) coffee and a scoop of ice cream - not sure how that compares to the States though...

Haresfur I manage an upscale restaurant in one of the larger hotel chains. I won't name it here as this is a personal blog and all opinions expressed are my own and not those of the company blah blah blah but needless to say if anyone finds themselves in Singapore PM me as i can treat you to some amazing views of Singapore and a little drink perhaps... The operation is large - around 150 people can sit at any one time and very busy. We don't serve "local cuisine" rather a Modern European menu and our clientele is very evenly split between locals and tourists. In terms of other dining options, Singapore literally has it all - Marina Bay Sands that opened fairly recently has everything from Mozza (by Mario Batali) to DB Moderne, Guy Savoy and santi as well as the more local Waku Ghin.Singaporeans eat out the whole time so i assume there are many empty fridges across singapore and not just mine - many appartments even state in the rental adverts - no cooking. There are some great Mexican places, fish and chip shops, tapas bars, Arabic restaurants, high end sushi/teppanyaki/robata etc Australian, German, Russian - you name it, you can eat it here. The Hawker Centres have everything from Indian,Thai,Chinese,Malay and Korean to more Western items too - i will post some photos for you to get an idea later in the week. @Jenni - there is occasionally a piece of okra in the sambar but not much apart from that, and i eat it in many places Also - apologies for the embarrassing amount of typos in my posts - i do know how to spell/punctuate etc but for some reason these posts seem to be error strewn "stream of conciousness" for reasons unbeknownst to me.....

Ok i better dash to work, will be grabbing a Kopi and Kaya Toast en route and hope to have something good for lunch as i only need to work until 2:30pm today.

Dinner was at another hawker centre near my house, this time for a local Singaporean dish known as Prawn Hokkien Mee. It is a dish of thin vermicelli noodles, with thicker wheat noodles, prawns and strips of calamari. It is served with a spicy chilli sauce and a lime to add freshness. The photo i took doesnt want to upload for some reason so please accept this "library image" i took last week when i had it for lunch! Washed down with a Tiger Beer, our local brew. This came to something like $10 (6 of whhich was for the beer!)

Lunch yesterday was a banana i grabbed after our Lunch period had subsided afterwhich i attended a wine tasting of German wines which we might add to our winelist. We tasted 8 all in 8 and i was really impressed - we ended up drinking the 8 bottles of wine between the 8 of us (oops) These were my favourites They are a Pinot Gris that i would never have believed to be German - it had a great fruit flavour, nothing like some of the insipid pinot grigios around. The Riesling that followed was incredibly crisp and minerally with a nice tropical fruit undertone And the last bottle pictured in Trollinge a red wine, served chilled with the appearence of a Rose wine. It was very light indeed but the cherry and strawberry flavours were undeniable. Our host described it as a beer replacement for those in the know in the region of Germany it is produced. We tried another couple of rieslings, a pinot noir that was simply outstanding and a Cabernet blended with a German grape whos name i forget that was also very impressive - not leats when i was told it retailed at around 7 Euros.

Heidi - the more liquidy accompaniment is a sambar, a medium spiced vegetable stew/ curry. It has the occasional piece of vegetable in it but more often than not it is just things like curry leaves and tomato skin that give it texture. I believe there are also lentils in there too as the texture is a little "grainy" if that makes sense. As for the other sauces- the white one is a coconut chutney with mustard seeds which us used to temper the heat of the other sauce which is somewhat spicer - I believe it is a tomato chutney but could be wrong...

You really should read Shantaram - my sister who was never a big reader literally sat me down and forced me to read it and I'm glad she did. Regardless of how true to life it is, he writes about India beautifully and I'm sure you'd really enjoy it!

Jenni posted about Idlis a while ago so as soon as i saw them i knew i had to try them and they have become a favourite breakfast of mine if i wake up feeling hungry – today i decided to add vadas(mentioned in percyns brilliant blog - finding them became somewhat of an obsession for me) along with a Diet coke all for the grand sum of $2.90SGD which works out at about $2.40 or £1.50 depending on where you are from. This was in the Mon Ami Cafe a mini hawker centre near my house with about 4 different Indian stalls open the best part of 24 hours a day, i have become somewhat of a regular there and as a lone blonde woman amongst the predominantly male Indian crowd (certainly late at night if i go for a snack and a beer when i get home) i get very well looked after indeed The breakfast/lunch crowd is much more mixed.I should point out i tend to eat "breakfast" anywhere between 8 and 11am depending on what time i am due at work - if you see a breakfast like this you can assume its later in the day rather than earlier so i will alreday have had a coffee (Arabic cofee probably one of the few times i use my stove or if i am running late an instant Local coffe)and it will double up as lunch too. If like in my teaser photos its coffee or Kopi as it is called here in Singapore and Kaya (a local speciality which is a type of coconut and egg jam - weird sounding but delicious)then it will be an earlier breakfast and i may try to sneak a late lunch in too.

I was told to me obscure in my teaser photos - glad it worked, subtlety is not one of my strong points.... Jenni i have actually swapped companys a few times, i look for an interesting project and location first and foremost and decided that i should be as mobile as possible until i settle down and start having kids (inshallah!) when moving around like this will get more difficult, i can't stand the idea of looking back and thinking what might have been....LindaK - Thanks! I am a bit of a glutton really (in a good sense of the word!) and so finding good food wherever i go is a must. I actually joined Egullet initially to suss out great food when i first visited New York and people like Chefcrash's posts on Lebanon gave me a head start on where to go when i got there. I eat out a lot simply because it suits my lifestyle more than eating at home - whilst i LOVE cooking, cooking for one is depressing to me and due to the shift nature of my work can lead to either a lot of waste or eating the same thing for days on end which drives me nuts. I literally didnt pay for groceries in lebanon for weeks at a time due to the small quantities i was buying - my local shop keeper would laugh at me when i went up to the counter with one or two individual eggs, a pepper or an onion and a potato for example and refuse to take any money as the total sum of what i was buying barely came up to a chargable amount. If i buy 6 eggs i will undoubtedly throw at least 3 in the bin for example. Also cooking areas/kitchens in Singapore appartments that i looked at where tiny which makes things harder too (i will post more on this but am having trouble uploading pictures today for some reason)Eating out locally here in Singapore is extremely cheap as well - often cheaper than eating at home, especially if you take wastage into account so thats another consideration. It also opens your eyes to the culture you are living in and is a real experience in every sense of the word. In terms of what i eat, i do tend to adapt as much as possible to the local culture and don't crave much "home food" When i went home to the Uk from lebanon for the first time my Mum cooked a few of her world class roast dinners ( i had partridge the first night i was back with about 6 different vegetables) as well as sosme great desserts like Bread and butter pudding or Treacle tart that i would never make myself (or order in a restaurant because they won't be as good as i can get at home)but enjoy immensely. When i came back briefly from Kuait i gourged myself on charcuterie for example, i suppose as a reaction to being denied pork for 3 months.

Welcome to my Singapore food blog for e gullet! The blogs are one of my favourite things about egullet and the standard of writing/photography not to mention eating and drinking has been incredibly high so i hope i don’t let the side down! I suppose I should start with a bit about me really, My name is, as you had probably guessed Nikki and after spending the first 10 years of my working life in London managing restaurants i realised somewhat belatedly that the hospitality industry is the same the world over and if i was going to continue working anything up to 16 hours a day i might as well do it somewhere interesting. My first port of call was Lebanon, and i fell head over heels in love with the country, its food, its wine (and arak) and of course its people (especially my boyfriend who i am enjoying early morning skyping with as we try to settle into this long distance/6 hour time difference phase of our relationship) I wish I’d got round to blogging more when I was there – i am kicking myself for not doing a food blog then. To sum up, if you haven’t been, add it to your list – it truly is one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been, am hopefully heading back to see the boy in January so maybe i’ll do another one then if i’m allowed.... Kuwait followed (very briefly for many many reasons i won’t go into here lets just say i HATED every second of it and flew back to Beirut almost every other weekend so i didn’t lose my mind) and now i find myself on the other side of the world in Singapore. I live in an area called Little India so a lot of what i typically consume is Indian – I’ll try to mix it up this week though- besides, Percyn covered India beautifully and i am hoping we will see Jenni blogging sooner rather than later as well.....I love living in this area, Singapore can feel very sanitized & organised but there is a “realness” about Little India that i warmed to immediately. The smells of Jothi flowers for prayer offerings mix beautifully with incense and spices not to mention all the street food and there is a great sense of energy surrounding the place. I also love hanging out in Arab Street where i can go to smoke arguileh/drink coffee at any time of day or night – I’m struggling to find good Arabic food so far but i am having so much fun with everything else it doesn’t really matter. Apart from the strong Indian influences here in Singapore, there are also Malay, Chinese, Indonesian and Peranaken ( descended from the early Chinese settlers in Penang, Malacca, Indonesia and Singapore who intermarried with Malays and thus created a whole new culture and foods with it) not to mention Thailand, the Middle East, The Philippines and Sri Lanka. You also see “Chindian” food too where local chefs will take Indian ingredients and use them in their recipes as well which is interesting. Having seen a shot of my fridge in my teaser photos, you will not be at all surprised to learn that this week my intention is to show you what Singapore is possibly most famous for – Hawker Centres and its rich multi cultural culinary influences from the myriad of different nationalities who now call Singapore home. PLease feek free to ask any questions, request any food and enjoy the ride!!

Leopalds as mentioned in shantaram right?! Sooo glad you are keeping this blog up percyn!

That pork looks amazing! When I visited friends in Greensboro they were highly entertained by my insistence on ordering pulled pork and hush puppies everywhere I saw them listed!

With regards to pureed potatoes - you should look at getting a potato ricer, like a big garlic press which you put the boiled potatoes into and then mix with the butter and a bit of hot milk, they come out perfect everytime...

amazing week Beth - really eye opening, informative and mouth wateringly delicious!

That is a work of art!

Agree on that. I imagine what will be the table look like when they're done cooking. I bet it will be awesome! Who do I make my booking with?!!

Poached egg with Cholula sauce on toast and a cup of masala chai. No money shot as i overcooked it

Excellent!

C.sapidius? Not sure where he's based though...

Mjx that venison looks like a great big hug on a plate - comfort food at it's finest! Wow