My Cooking - My imaginary Mee Siam ... hee hee

After making this spicy noodle soup, I realised it looks like mee siam, maybe cos of the egg too lah ... hahaha. It was just tom yum paste as the soup base, noodles, enoki mushroom, lots of spring onions and the hard-boiled egg.

My Cooking - Spicy Okra with Ikan Bilis

After making the spicy ikan bilis and peanuts earlier, I made spicy okra with ikan bilis for lunch. With so much ikan bilis, I am gonna smell 'fishy' ... hahaha (Ms K, I know you laughing ok!). Had that with white rice and it was damn shiok (Singlish expression denoting extreme pleasure) ah! However my mouth and stomach is burning big time now ... OOPS!

My Cooking - Spicy Ikan Bilis & Peanuts

Ok, I was bored and went ransacking the kitchen to see what I can come up with. Since the hubby worked today, I decided to cook something spicy and not choke him with the smoke and spiciness in the air ... hee hee. The spiciness of the chilli was so strong, I was coughing up a storm myself ... hahaha!

I found some ikan bilis aka anchovies and raw peanuts so I chopped up some onions, took out the chilli mom made for me and started frying up. It was my first attempt and came out not so nice looking, the peanuts were 'chao tah' (burnt) and the ikan bilis were abit chewy eventhough I had deep fried them first, need more practice liao ... heh heh. It's spicy and the taste's quite nice lah, have to give myself some encouragement mah ... hee hee.

My Cooking - Spicy Chicken Noodle Soup

Ok ok, this picture is not doing justice to the spiciness of this chicken noodle soup, trust me, my mouth and stomach are still 'burning', looks can be deceiving.

My Cooking - Sardine in tomato sauce

Yum! Sardine in tomato sauce with chopped onions, chilli padi and some black soy sauce (my mom's way of making this dish ... I miss you very much mommy, wish you were here to eat with me lah!) ... so shiok! Even better if I had rice but since I didn't, I had it with noodles and it still tasted really good ... burp! However the chilli padi was so spicy, my mouth and stomach are burning now.

Singapore - Mee Siam米暹, Lontong & Curry puff 咖喱卜

Mee Siam, Lontong & Curry puff

Old Chang Kee curry puff

A1 Curry puff

Being so far from home sweet home which is good old Singapore 新加坡, I can only salivate 流口水 when I see this pic of mee siam 米暹, lontong and curry puff 咖喱卜 ... drool drool. KT and I tried the lontong at one of the NY chinatown's malaysian restaurant and trust me we were NOT impressed at all.

Mee Siam 米暹 - which means "Siamese noodle", is a dish of thin rice noodles (vermicelli) in spicy, sweet and sour light gravy. It is one of the popular one-dish meal in Singapore. A "dry" version, which is essentially stir-frying the rice noodles with the same spices used in the "gravy" version, are also popular among the Chinese in Singapore.

Originally a Thai dish, it became a Nyonya specialty that is now prepared by Indians, Malays as well as Chinese stalls in Singapore with slight variation in ingredients. It is served with salted soy beans, dried bean curd 豆干, boiled egg鸡蛋and tamarind, garnished with spring onions and Chinese chives.

Lontong - Traditionally, the rice is rolled and compressed in banana leaves, as seen above. It is also known as Nasi Impit [also spelt Nasi Himpit]. In certain places, Lontong is a dish itself - where the rice roll is cut up into bite-sized pieces and served in a coconut vegetable stew [similar to Sayur Lodeh], and topped with sambal and toasted coconut [kerisik]. However, Lontong is the term most familiar internationally referring the Rice Roll only.

Curry puff 咖喱卜 - Malaysian, Thai, and Singaporean snack which is of Malay origin. It is a small pie consisting of specialised curry with chicken and potatoes in a deep-fried pastry shell. The curry is especially thick and rich to prevent itself from running.

This snack is found at many stores, especially at Malay food stalls. The Malay version of this snack is known as epok-epok which is smaller than the curry puff. Other varies of the epok epok that is filled without chicken and half a boiled egg and an alternative is canned sardines. Curry puffs are also sold by Chinese stalls throughout the island.

Some of the more renowned curry puff includes A1 Curry Puff and Old Chang Kee. Polar Puffs and Cakes introduced the curry puff with western puff pastry, which has a different taste and shape. This version of the curry puff can be found also at Delifrance in Singapore as Curry Chicken Feuillette. Other puff snacks modelled on the curry puff concept have also been introduced. For example, A1 Curry Puff also sells puffs with sardine, yam, durian, corn and even custard filling.

Singapore - Indian Rice stall at Orchard Towers

Indian Rice stall at Orchard Tower
Originally uploaded by seraphim1970.

This is my fave indian rice stall in Singapore. Ignore the fact that they call Orchard Towers the 'pick up mall' or one of the 'Legal Red Light Districts', they do have good food at the basement food court.