The Runaway Cook

This was the first wet curry dish we made in Singapore, and although it has fish in it, the coconut milk made up for it in my phase of fish hatred- see earlier posts. THis can easily be made vegetarian by leaving out the fish and increasing the vegetables or using a firm tofu. I loved this dish and I hope you do as well

There is a place where, when I cross the street, the hairs on my arms stand on end. It’s as if I walk through this mystical barrier and every sense is awakened by the strong difference. The moist air feels thicker and the architecture changes from big modern Asian city to putty colored arches, small awnings, and skinny sidewalks. The women here a

re in full bloom wearing vibrantly colored, sequin-covered Sarees (traditional Indian dresses) that seem to dance to the perfect playlist of twanging exotic music escaping every window. Yet, the most intoxicating stimulus of all, the smell! Flowers and fruit line the streets, steeping in the heat to make a tea of aromas. As I walk by stall after stall I am overtaken by scents of jasmine, hot Ghee-laden flatbreads (clarified butter), sweet incense escaping the Hindu temple walls, and my favorite smell: the simple yet potent nuttiness of curry leaves. Sigh little India you are captivating.

This in one of the only place here in Singapore that makes me feel like I am far from home. The stark difference in culture is refreshing. And I seem to have fallen for this place. (to the left is a photo of the Hindu temple at night)

THE CLOTHES

After just and eight block walk from the YWCA i call home now, are the beginnings of little india.

As the streets change the shops do too. Thick glass panes are the only things that separate the black street from dazzling gowns made by skilled women who fold, tie, and pin and exceptionally long piece of fabric. The Saree, my new favorite fashion, is a traditional Indian garment for women, made by rolling one's self in fabric. My jaw must have unhinged to drop that low. So many stunning fabrics and they never seemed to end. After seeing hundreds of these pretty things my friend and I wanted to take a peek and try them out for ourselves.

After some searching and some tangent jewelry gawking, we found ourselves in one of the many clothing stalls above the wet market. Nothing in this store seemed quite right so we asked about a sarees. The gentleman there told us that he didn't sells those but he knew who did. He immediately jumped up out from behind the counter and smiled as he said, "This way." The three of us sprinted down this corridor of textiles made a sharp turn to the right and found ourselves at the foot of a small shop covered in hanging fabric.

Inside this dent-in-the-wall shop stood a coffee-skinned, chubby-cheeked woman just probably in her 40s, named Jeet. Her bouncy short curls were about as live as she was. After just 20seconds or so she grabbed me, spun me up in a saree and made

me feel as though I was a princess. Which was quite a feat since I was sweating on all sides, had no make up on, and my hair looked something like a drowned tumbleweed. Needless to say we both ended up buying a saree. And as the week progressed we conned all our friends into buying them too. haha To the left are three of us ladies in our Sarees at the graduation brunch at the Ritz.

THE MARKETS

Ok. Time to move on from textiles and on to food. Little india is filled with little stalls selling anything you can imagine that might in some way be related to Indian culture. It's pretty endless. And even though there are innum

erable vegetable stalls and random coconut sellers along the street, my favorite place to shop for food was at the wet market.

The wet market here is similar to the one in Chinatown, but cleaner and filled with more foods I am apt to like. As one meanders through this maze, little wooden boxes of shops are filled with fruits and vegetables, flowers, spices and spice blends, fresh meats- with the exception of beef of course, and the largest section, seafood.

This seafood section is not anything like the fish case and lobster tank at your local supermarket. NO WAY. Here the

word fresh means mostly alive. Rows and rows of shaved ice keep blue crab, sharks, eels, and multitudes of fish alive in the tropical heat. Every time I visited this market I stopped to admire the collage of sea creatures. And every time I was there I found fish that were still breathing! In fact, sometimes they would hop right off the table.

......TO BE CONTINUED

Finally! Indian food!!! I love this world of bark that tastes like heaven, powders that have more flavor is a spec than whole casseroles,sweet dried fruits, and my favorite creamy delicacy: (well second to whole milk) coconut milk.

Today, our chef led us in making biryani and chicken tikka. Two of my favorite dishes.

I love biriani. It is this blissful combination of rich stock, tender chunks of meat, luscious long grain rice, sweet raisins, spicy chillies, buttery nuts, and spices including: cardamom, peppery cinnamon, star anise. . . .oh my Lord. . . I can’t even. . . it’s just too good to talk about anymore. Wheew. . breathe Elizabeth, breathe.

I had only ever had this dish from my favorite Indian restaurant in Providence, so learning about it and how to make it correctly was one of my goals for this trip. The result, amazingly out

standing food that was nearly the same as my at home

favorite. I have no doubt that this will be a staple in my diet from now on. I would say to you all, If you are ever around me and smell a sweet, spice laden and savory aroma, its probably my breath because i just can’t get enough of this stuff.

The chicken tikka was dang good as well. I could not believe how simple it was to make. Basically, it is a process of blending spices with yogurt and letting some chicken hang out in the goo. THen you skewer it all up on these giant metal poles and place it in a Tandoor aka fiery oven from hell. Once in the oven let the chicken hang out until cooked. remove from the pole and eat. Oh we also made naan, an Indian flatbread also baked in this oven, however this is cooked by sticking the dough to the blazing hot sides of the over. It literally only takes a few minutes to cook... amazing!!!

SIGH I am satisfied.... for the moment {muuuu-ahhhhhhh-hahahahahaha}

It was the second day of Chinese cuisine today and to our surprise we were kicked out of our little

lab kitchen and into (in a low echo-y voice) ThE AsIaN KiTcHeN. . . . All 24 of us meandered through the hallways and eventually filed into this tiny kitchen filled with very oversized and

very foreign looking cooking i

mplements. As a cook, you would think that I would have been extremely excited to be face-to-face with burners the size of hub caps and a roasting thing that reminded me of a pig feeder or maybe a silo. . .large enough to cook myself inside it, but I felt a little afraid to be working with so many strange and large vessels only to be making even stranger foods with them.

Luckily, the reluctance faded as I lost all sense of pride and decided to be completely ridiculous and just cook with no fear. . . this may not have been the wisest decision as it ended in lots of food flying all over t

he kitchen

;)

Being from Iowa, and an Iowa State Fair junkie, I thought I had seen nearly every kind of food on a stick that could be on a stick. Apparently, there I was severely misinformed. Today I learned how to skewer and roast a piglet. I feel terrible writing that down, but it’s the truth.

After the initial boiling and skewering of the mini pig, we roasted and toasted it over an open flame. To do this, one must slowly swing the pig back and fourth over the fire by means of sliding the pole in and forward then out and backward in ones hand.

This may sound simple, but that is the last word to use for such an act. This job is so intense women are banned from roasting pigs because it is considered danger to their lives. I have no qualms with that

idea. In fact, this farm girl could barely perform the act once, let alone over the period of and hour. I can only imagine the heat and exhaustion felt after that length of time. When we had finally finished this campfire style hog, our instructor took a cleaver and dissected that collage of meat and bone like nobody’s business.

Ok, enough about the pig already! Time to wok it out! Hahaha. Just for a minute, try to imagine 24 people who can’t flip a wok for the life of them trying to tos

s dry rice up and catch it back in these giant

metal bowls . It is a sight not to be missed. Rice flies everywhere, metal clangs on metal, and everyone’s faces are express the pure concentration or. . . panic. It is hilarious! The following is a video of our silliness in the kitchen and of course, yours truly in an attempt to show how to fry rice, however all I really accomplish is coating the floor and myself with hot rice and slightly burning the rice that did stay in the wok. It brings new meaning to the song “Walk it out”

Today was AMAZING! We traveled to chinatown and experienced some culture there. I feel a little more like I'm actually out of the USA and just especially glad that we were able to escape the classroom.

It all started with our run to the wet market, which really is not wet. . .except for the cement under tables of fish and other edible sea creatures. Instead, it is filled with teeny tiny stalls each bursting with a selection of strange vegetables or exotic fruits. Each stall seemed to specialize in their own unique selection of goods, some dedicated to specialty dried items including dried squid and cuttlefish (used to make soups).

Although Singapore has no natural resources, due to it's small size and that the land they do have is mainly developed, they do have magnificent fruit and vegetable stands. The fruits here seem like some sort of Dr. Seuss drawing come to life. From the hot pink fin-like folds of dragon fruit peel or the Jurassic - size of the jackfruit, every fruit placed in the worn cardboard boxes is a natural wonder in every color imaginable. I went a little bonkers, I bought several fruits I had heard of like: rambutan, jackfruit, red dragon fruit, mangosteen, and lychee. . .and then I bought a few things that I didn't know what they were and still can't remember the names. Regardless, I was in heaven tasting all these sweet fleshy foods with their exotic floral and earthy flavors.

For the first time in my life I saw a stall dedicated purely to eggs, which are not refrigerated here. Eggs are seperated by size then by the strange action performed on them. For example century eggs. . . these babies are not 100 years old. No, they are preserved by an alkaline solution. Traditionally, the eggs wee left in a pile of hay and urinated on by the barnyard inhabitants to change the pH and preserve the eggs. However, today they use more cleanly means to turn the while black and make the feared food.

I tried a slice of a century egg thinking that is would be retched, but learning that it merely tasted like a slightly cooling hard boiled egg. (When I say cooling, I do not mean that is made me chilled but that it tingled and felt like mild mint, but not having the taste of mint. It was very strange.) Truthfully, This egg was almost normal, except for it's frightening color. I probably could have eaten a whole one inside a salad or something.

After the wet market we made our way through the many touristy stalls selling "fake"- handbags, souvenir fans and kimonos, and t-shirst with odd sayings. There was no blending in as 25 obvious americans waltzed through all in chef-whites. Shop keeps holle

red at us, "Hey chef" or "American" as an attempt to get us to stop and purchase something.

It was strange to get so much attention and how we seemed to stand out so much. In fact, none of us were prepared for how to purchase foods here and how different that method is from purchasing non-foods. For foods, first rule: NEVER TOUCH THE FOOD! Shop keepers proceeded to yell at us in Chinese and/or English with such a heavy accent that we could barely understand them. The good news, after just one mistake you know what to NEVER DO AGAIN. Also, there's no bartering on the price of foods, if the shop keeper likes you he/she will give you a few extra small fruits after weighing them just to say thank you. But if you're buying non-food stuffs then you must ask for lower prices. I actually got the price for and Item down 60% from the original price.

Wow... Sometimes I just can't believe that I'm doing this. I mean I can't believe that I'm able to tell you how to and how not to buy fruit in a foreign country. Sometimes life is amazing in even the simple things :)

It’sThursday, 3:51pm and amazingly, I am sitting/laying here on the teeny twin bed needing to use the restroom desperately, but too tire to get up and do my business. (in this hot climate one drinks a LOT of water) In my left had is a clear cup filled with a light green creamy-looking liquid and black pearls of tapioca. What was supposed to be kiwi bubble tea is not really, rather it is becoming a regret. Unfortunately, the each-a-cup shop has one flaw- thei kiwi bubble teas taste terrible, a bit like flax seed oil. I am exhausted from a long day of class is a hot and humid kitchen in a hotter and even more humid climate. I am sick of eating food that taste like fish paste. I do not recant my earlier statement of liking it before, but after a while it is just too much for me. In fact, I am sick of fish and shellfish all together. I want a land animals and vegetables. Give me curry! Ugg....

It was my first day on the job today, and wheeew what a day it was. After a very interesting breakfast of congee (a porridee of rice that is topped with savory items soy sauce, onion, sesame oil and the like as well as very strange toppings that I have found I really can't swallow :/), terrible scrambled eggs, orange juice that really wasn’t juice, strange salad dressing on

salad and a lotus paste steamed dumpling I was ready to get out of the hotel and into the classroom. It is so hot here. Every time I breathe it’s feels like I’m trying to breathe water, not ideal for a terrestrial mammal.

What we did:

We immediately had a change of schedule this morning. It was forecasted to rain so we took a tour of the spice garden first. I was glad to see all the different spices and herbs and the many plants that they come from. Being in nature with no pressure to perform in the classroom was nice. And figuring out what all these plants were in front of our school was interesting. THe jungle here is becoming less intimidating. I loved our tour guide, AKA Chef Wilson. He made walking through giant killer ants bearable.. . . . yes I just said giant killer ants. Truth- they were not killer but their bites were painful and they really did crawl up our pants- ahhhhh.

After the tour we headed back into the kitchen to make Laksa. I have to admit that even though I am not so fond of shrimp paste, this dish was pretty delicious. Besides my new found approval of food including shrimp paste, I also discovered that I really like this style of learning. Each student is set up with their own in-counter induction burner, pots and pans, and stainless surface. The long tables are set up in the same way as a science lab. This set up along with the overhead mirror in the front made it possible for each student to make the item on demo. I loved it! I felt as though I was learning right from

Today was encouraging. I am so glad to have made it here and I am anxious to see what the rest of the week holds.