dāo xīao mìan

this whole blogging thing is kind of time-consuming. i'd love to do it every day, but man... it takes up so much time. this is the second time i'm posting in a week. i'm already beating my average for blog posts per week. :)

these past 2 weeks i have been meeting up with old friends from high school. one of those friends is a kiwi (she hails from new zealand. special note: a 'kiwi' is a person from new zealand. not to be confused with the kiwi fruit or the kiwi bird) but she spent over 12 years of her developmental years living in singapore. so, even though she is caucasian, i trust her judgment of se asian foods. or maybe i trust her judgment because she is caucasian? who knows. anyways, last week she introduced me to 'popiah.' (for you caucasians out there it is pronounced kinda like 'poe-pyah') its this wrap with turnips and veggies and peanuts inside. i didn't get a photo and i'm probably not describing it to its justice and i honestly have no idea whether its chinese or malaysian or a lovely mixture or what. but it was amazing. i will definitely be having popiah again, and not just to grab a photo. but this past sunday, we were having lunch and i decided to try something completely new. i had no idea what i was ordering, except that it was some sort of soup, and i had the options of chicken, beef, or pork. it was pretty good. it was called dao xiao mian:

'dāo xīao mìan' (刀削麵, knife-sliced noodles)
(thank you wikipedia)

it was a soup with hand-cut noodles. i had it with chicken (which i am not sure if i would do again - they only give you the options of using a spoon or chopsticks, and yet the chicken was in full drumstick form. i'm sorry but i am not exactly deft enough to be able to cut up chicken drumsticks with chopsticks.) and it was quite tasty. the interesting part was watching the chef handle this lump of dough, because he shaved the noodles off the dough into the hot boiling soup right in front of you.

in my quest to be more adventurous with foods here, one of my friends has shared with me a list of over 50 foods that one has to eat in singapore, so i will have to try to work my way through it while i'm here. we'll see how that goes...

becoming a southeast asian foodie

i used to live in singapore. but i was a teenager, so you can imagine that i ate a lot of fast food, most of which i make sure i avoid these days like most people avoid h1n1.

i will be spending a couple months in the south east region of asia - mainly singapore and indonesia - and i am hoping to be a bit more adventurous with food this time around. i've been here over a week now, but sadly i didn't have my camera on me for many of my meals. lugging that heavy contraption around is just more pain than its worth sometimes. i'm still coming up with a solution to that....

but here are a few of my favorites (from my teen years, and still now) that i managed to sneak photos of:

kopi - malay/indonesian for coffee

i think kou fu is a chain of coffee shops here. its not that i care specifically for THEIR coffee, i just like coffee in general. sadly they do have starbucks here, and sadly, i have ventured into not one, but two of them. at least. overpriced. and i can't even use my starbucks cards so i actually have to pay for the coffee i buy there. but i digress. kou fu, and other coffee shops here like kopitiam, yakun, and other nameless shops here make coffee the traditional malay/indonesian way, which is strong, sweet, and made from a sock. and often made with either sweetened condensed milk or evaporated milk. if you ask for coffee, they will give you coffee with sugar and condensed milk. if you ask for coffee 'o' it is black with sugar. if you don't take sugar or milk you have to be very specific, and ask for 'kopi kosong' which means 'empty coffee.'*

guava - a type of fruit.

this stuff is pre-cut, peeled and conveniently bagged for me, so you can't see the green skin or the seeds inside. its a crunchy fruit, comparable to an apple but not really.
some people think its bland, but i love it.
its even better with salt.
oh yeah, i grew up on this fruit in the jungles of indonesia. i'm pretty sure it was one of the first words i spoke as a baby.

roti prata - oily goodness.

that's not what it means, but seriously, oil never tasted so good. it's an indian delight you can get for roughly 80 cents a piece. (curry included) literally roti prata means 'flat bread.' this is one of the cheapest, most satisfying dishes one can get in singapore.

here's what i gained from wikipedia:

"Roti prata is the Singaporean evolution of the Pakistani and Indian paratha, a pancake bread made of dough composed of fat, egg, flour and water."

please, avid readers (i know you exist! don't worry i am going to write more often than every few months), stay abreast for more exciting foodie adventures with joey.

*important note: i may not actually know what i'm talking about. just general observations. if i write any untruths please, please tell me. this way i can be irritated that you brought my faults to my attention and proceed to correct my naivety and assumptions.