nikkib

Thanks! Sounds like an interesting read I should check out! Glad you enjoyed it!

Couldn't agree more - the standard of eating is very high indeed, certain places seem to excel at certain dishes but I have yet to gave a really "duff" meal anywhere! That's what makes it so fun in my opinion! Glad you enjoyed it!

I have those exact same coffee cups! A dozen for 3000LL.... Couldnt leave Lebanon without them!

Ok so i am now relaxing at home, G&T in hand. I hope you have enjoyed my foodblog - if anyone has any questions or comments i will do my best to reply - Thanks for reading!!

Sorry i didnt get to do more supermarket/market shots. I had all these amazing plans for the week that were abandoned when i realised my shedule wouldn't accomodate it all - really wish i could have shown you more hawker centres,curry puffs, mee siam, laksa, mee rebus, stingray aarrggghhhh the list goes on and on! Will aim to keep the singapore eating page updated with some better info/more pictures in the weeks/months to come and like i said before, if any of you do head over here, look me up for a drink!

Looks like it blether doesnt it! Places sell both bee hoon and mee hoon here and i cannot seem to find a difference in those either!

Thought you may like to see some photos of some of the produce at the night market in Little India on Sundays, it is absolutely packed!

In place of a proper dinner after such a heavy lunch, i settled for a couple of kueh pie tee another popular peranaken dish. It is a thin, crispy pastry cup which is filled with stewed spicy, sweet vegetables such as white radish and mushroom, a couple of small prawns and fresh coriander complete the dish.

I had a couple of coffees at work and then was able to get out for a bite to eat this afternoon - Mee Hoon or Bee Hoon is a fried noodle dish, i wasnt really sure which version i was going to get - in the end it was bee hoon goreng, a fried version with mutton stirred through it, the large pieces were a little chewy so i left those. It also had egg, dried peas, shallots and chilli and was served with fresh cucumber slices to temper the heat.

Breakfast today was another roti prata, this time an egg version with vegetarian curry sauce - i also have re posted the roti from the other day as that appears to have vanished from my previous post. I prefer the plain rotis on reflection this one is a bit too like an omelette and less like a bread (they crack the egg on top of the bread and then flip it over/fold it so the egg is inside the bread almost fully fried - very clever!)

Ahh thank you! Rojak was one of the dishes I fondly remember. I need to acquire some belacan in order to replicate it. Without wishing to spark an international incident with the US post office, I can post some if it's hard to find stateside...

So i think i have another 24 hours to go before i finish to factor in my working hours and inability to post then, will do my best to get some good food in before this time tomorrow!

Dinner was another Indian meal - a southern Indian Thali at Anjappar restaurant in Farrer park - chapatti, papad, white rice, 3 types of vegetables, sambar, kara kuzhambu (not sure what cocolcasia is - jenni/Percyn?) rassam and curd. I dont really bother with much of the rice -rather using the chapatti to scoop up the thicker vegetables and then using the papad dipped in the sambar. Very tasty indeed and at $7 not bad value at all!

I admit it - breakfast this morning was a can of redbull and 3 large espressos in quick succession and a banana (worst eG foodblog breakfast ever?!) At lunch i managed to pop out and went for another classic Hawker dish - Rojak, a traditional Indonesian fruit/root vegetable salad with pineapple, bean sprouts, jicama, cucumber and woo kok crispy tofu in a chilli, belacan, lime, tamarind and palm sugar and toped with crushed peanuts. This was at the Maxwell Court food centre - one of the most central and well known hawker centres - queues for more popular dishes and stalls can be up to one hour at lunch time (Anthony Bourdain for example raves about a Hainanese chicken stall here)

Of course by dinner time some 10 hours later or so i was STARVING so made a trip to the Banana Apollo Leaf which is reknowned for its fish head curry. Pictured is the small portion at $18 which could easily serve 3 people ( i should note i made very little impact on it!) Now Banana leaf Apollo is an Indian restaurant where they make it spicer than teh chinese version. The head of a fish (google says red snapper but mine certainly was not red snapper)is stewed in a curry base with a few vegetables such as Okra and then is served with rice and accompniments - someone will have to help out on this, one was, i believe potato based but i wouldnt like to say for sure...The sauce is quite a thin gravy with definite tamarind flavours but it is hotter and not as sour as the assam pedas from the night before. The dish apparently originated in Singapore with an Indian chef trying to make his food more "Chindian" to appeal to the large Chinese population who consider fish (and shark) heads a delicacy. This was great - i have eaten this before and it is a lot less scary than it sounds. There is a huge amount of meat on the fish head and there are relatively few bones - i heartily recommend tryng this on a trip to singapore... I didnt even try to eat this with my hands (which i am getting better at) as it is just too soupy (not to mention hot) but suire enough i was the only one using a fork and spoon I will master this art before i leave singapore if its the last thing i do damn it!!!

Naturally the next morning i was not hungry but ordered a Kopi Peng (iced coffee) on my way to work and mid afternoon had some fish congee. A rice based porridge almost - i added rousong (pork floss made from reducing pork and sweet soy sauce and then dried in a number of ways)Also some tofu or Koo Wok and pickles and spring onions - delicious and cleansing!

First of the sweets was this little coconut coated tapioca kuih. From what i gathered Kuih/keuh is essentially a generic word for sweets found everywhere from china, indonesia, malaysia etc and they can vary in preparation, ingredients etc hugely so forgive me if i make any errors on these... These were filled with a liquid and we were instructed to pop the whole thing in our mouth so as not to dribble! They were incredibly sweet but pretty good. Next we had these little pinapple tarts - essentially just a really buttery pastry filled with a condensed pineapple and sugar jam This dessert platter followed You have the multi coloured Angku which is a tortoise shell shaped nyonya delicacy which is made with glutinous rice flour wrapped with varying fillings depending on the outer colour - ours included red bean, green bean and peanut fillings amongst others. Angku is commonly used for Chinese prayers and served during baby full moon parties and at chinese new year as well. The green pancakes are Kuih dadar a rolled crepe flavored with pandan juice and filled with grated coconut steeped in gula melaka or Malaysian palm sugar. Pandan leaf is the core ingredient of kuih dadar. The green exterior of kuih dadar is made of batter colored with natural pandan juice extracted from pandan leaves (and i suspect a healthy dose of food colouring!) These were nicknamed drug cakes by our guide as they were so addictive !! The middle multi coloured kuih are kuih lapis (i didnt try those so cant tell you much more about them sorry) Then you have the dumpling looking ones that are actually filled with taro, peanut, chilli and dried shrimp which were well, odd to say the least. I think the pyramid shaped ones were kuih Koci - made with glutinous rice and peanut paste Finally a pink tapioca pudding served with palm sugar and coconut milk/oil on the side for added flavour (again sorry no photos..)

Not to play devils advocate - can he get the whisky he enjoys locally? if not he may just be happier with a bottle of that and it also shows that you know his preferences... If he can get them locally then i understand you getting something different....

Also known as kacang botol or winged beans. The salad is served cold but the beans were lightly stiffened first along with the sambal belachan (fermented ground shrimp) this was then served with a good dose of fresh lime and fresh chilli. They were really crunchy and had a pronounced taste that held it's own amongst the other ingredients - if you look in the photos I took in the supermarket there is an image of them there.

One last note on the food tour, we went to the area of Joo Chiat which is maybe a bit off the normal beaten tourist path but is highly HIGHly worth a visit. Chew Joo Chiat was at one point one of the top 10 richest men in Sand donated the land necessary to have a paved road put in to assist in trade abck at the beginning of the last century. As a result of his generosity and the area bears his name even now. The area is filled with stunning Peranaken shop houeses and is a conservation area dating back to the 1920's and 30's and is definitely worth a wander. My food tour was arranged through the Betel Box Hostel ( i found it through a recommendation on lonely planet) and i can vouch for how amazing it was. The guide, Tony Tan took us on a comprehensive tour of the local area - including the HDB's where around 85% or so of Singaporeans live which was really interesting, his knowledge is quite literally second to none and i really feel so much more informed and aware than before - it was $80 incredibly well spent and i will definitely arrange to do it again when i have friends visit. If you do make the journey over here look him up.

@Prasantrin - i am looking forward to taking my parents to Raffles when they visit, i know they will enjoy it - it is indeed the same pre mix they use on singapore air ( i recognised the containers from my flight - not that i took advantage of the on board drinks too much ) I have not seen thae fanceir version of the woo kok but will look out for it, i actually really like it - i can't stand the really slimy tofu, i prefer it chewier so this is a happy discovery - incidentally the fist time i had rojak and the lady told me it had woo kok in it i thought she said pork which had me disecting the rojak very carefully to try and discover it without much luck! My "Singlish" is improving slowly but surely now though!

@ Hassouni, I really enjoyed the Kang Kong, i am a big fan of green veggies in general but these were very tasty indeed - as for the chilli crab, absolutely eaten with the hands! I had one of the parts with the smaller legs as opposed to the claw as we had a couple of people who had never eaten crab before on the tour and i couldnt deny anyone that first taste! The small legs snapped open really easily so no need for crackers/picks etc anyway. I was an absolute state by the time i finished but thats half teh fun of it isnt it?!

Up next on our mammoth tasting was a great prawn sambal - prawns stifried with chilli and vegetables, the prawns were delicious, sweet and smaller than most i have seen here and all the better for it Then we had a pork dish - i'm afraid i cant find any notes on this - maybe someone can help me out? It was essentially pork ribs in a sweetish sauce - it was ok but didnt set the world on fore or anything Some chinese vegetarian dishes follwed next - mock pork stirfry and a bean curd wrapped dish filled with pulses and vegetables that was pretty good. Nasi Goreng was very nice - lacking the hit of chilli i was hoping for but the rice was cooked beautifully Then Laksa Goreng - a Malay dish which is a fried version of laksa with noodles, crispy tofu, prawns, boiled egg and limes - a hit! Hassouni - your chilli crab request was next, a couple of big juicy crab served with sweet rice bread rolls for mopping up the sauce with. Sri Lankan Crabs were used here, the meat was so sweet and beautifully cooked (this was the only pictured i managed to take of the crab before we all piled in) HOWEVER.. i didnt get any major sense of spice or chilli which i was hoping for - a s a chilli freak that would have made all the difference but still it was a great crab and i shall be ordering chilli crab again soon Kang Kong - a local green vegetable stirfried with soy and sambal added some much needed vegetables to the meal And last of the main courses - the outstanding dish of the night described only as belimbing ( a sour fruit) This was a sour pork stew - simply divine, despite being at the end of the tasting i could have finished the bowl off (am hoping to track down the recipe which i will post at some point as this was really WOW) Off to work, tonight i will finish the sweets from this meal and post up yesterdays fish congee and fish head curry....

Our version was veggie Blether but i have seen beef versions in the past I dont know what Pedas means i'm afraid - i don't think it is vegetables as i havent seen the word before, it had sliced peppers and halved onions in it as well as the okra and tomatoes.

There were 6 of us all in all Hassouni - we didn't manage to finish everything but put in a valiant effort!