A lunar fish salad of our times

Just some thoughts on yu sheng (鱼生). For a long time, I never connected with it. It was just an annual ritual from a tradition stemming from......childhood I suppose. Never fully understood its origins. Never liked the bits of ginger it it.

Aside from short rambunctious spurts of "huat ah!", I didn't feel much for lou hei. After all, most of us were just going through a motion because everyone else did with everyone else. But as the years went by, we took things into our own hands. Got rid of what we did not like about it and made it our own. 

There's been a few variants of it. This year, we ventured into Donki's platter. In this one, we added hamachi and tai (also courtesy of Donki), canned mandarin oranges and fresh pomelo along with an extra splash of Korean sesame oil. No ginger of course. A lunar fish salad of our times that's closer to my heart with people that are closer to my heart as well..

Back at Hillman 99

Has been a really long time since I've stepped into Hillman 99 (99 Pasir Panjang Road, tel : +65 6474 6835). The place is old school just like how their food is.

It's also one of few places where one can get chrysanthemum tea served in beer mugs. Each order of these is bottomless.

I almost, subconsciously, described this order of their paper wrapped chicken  (纸包鸡) as obligatory. But it wasn't obligatory. I ordered it because I enjoyed it from what I remembered from their restaurant at Kitchener Road.

Sweet and savoury caramelized exterior on chunks of chicken thigh meat.

Claypot pig liver was impressive. That sauce was intense with a lot going on from the gritty texture, the sweetness and garlic infusion. Not to mention those caramelized sweet cloves of tender garlic in there. I regretted not getting white rice with this but, there'll be another time. Livers were tender and not overly cooked.

Stir fried Chinese mustard (芥菜). Sauce was pretty salty. Pretty sure that there's sugar in it as well. But I enjoyed the vegetable. A little bit of crunch in them still.

Old school tasting yang zhou fried rice (扬州炒饭) - it's greasy, has real char siew and also little shrimps. This hit of nostalgic flavour was so complete an experience that I will probably never want to order it from them again because it was a little greasy for my liking. The one unique experience was that we could even get the subtle crunch of the salt granules/crystals in the dry beady rice. Some mouthfuls were pretty salty and some a little bland.

This was noodles with omelette and prawns - pretty similar to the wong po lou meen at Quan Ji because they are just different renditions of the same dish. I like Quan Ji's rendition better. This one was more saucy and that sauce was pretty salty.

Sandakan Food (山打根美食), Chinatown Food Centre

Noticed this stall (#02-053 Chinatown Complex Market and Food Centre, 335 Smith Street) recently and was intrigued by their fried pork hor fun. While their offerings by virtue of the stall's name indicates Sadakan food, the variety was very small, discounting stuff like chicken wings and nuggets which were generic.

Anyways I ended up with an enjoyable hor fun. It came with a sweet brown sauce and the plate reminded me of chee cheong fun. Not so much crunch on the fried pork with the dominant flavour being five spice powder - a difference from the also Sandakan Ah Yen Traditional Fried Pork which was crispier and flavoured by the fermented red bean curd marinate. That chilli on the side was salty and packed considerable heat which made everything deliciously feisty.

Mandalay Style Restaurant, Peninsular Plaza

We've never explored Burmese food much previously so this was a step out of our usual zone at Mandalay Style Restaurant (#B1-01 Peninsula Plaza, 111 North Bridge Road). Pretty much everything we ordered looked like a game of chance because of our lack of familiarity but on hindsight, we did know a tiny bit and there're some similarities we could relate to Thai food.

Like pork organ doke htoe. From what I could find out, these were supposed to be pork parts on sticks? Anyways, this rendition was in what appeared to be sweet soya sauce broth. There were parts like tripe, liver, ears, tongue, intestines and some which I couldn't identify. The braised offal were pretty tender, notably so for those pig's ears. Liver was dry and powdery but that texture/flavour had it's appeal.

This was a corn and tea leaf salad - the tea leaf being the same fermented stuff as laphet thoke. Tangy, earthy and a bit of heat that I didn't see coming.

Ordered a rice platter so that we could sample what they had. Clockwise from bottom

• laphet rice - Rice with the laphet. Flavour's kinda similar to the salad with much less intensity.
• pone yay gyi rice - I read it's made of fermented horse gram beans but it tasted like olives. Like a less salted version of a Thai olive fried rice. There's sliced chilli and onions in it.
• rice with beans and peanut oil - This in our opinion was the best tasting. It's as described, rice with beans, peanut oil and some salt. Don't know if there was anything else but the simplicity was oustanding. I could come back just for this.
• pyay rice - There's some spicy crispy stuff in it. And coriander too even though we told them not to include coriander for every item we ordered.

There's also a whole bunch of spicy anchovies + other crispies in the middle which was not bad tasting if one could deal with the heat.

The menu listed this as Mandalay styled mango salad. Imagine a pretty spicy som tam mamuang minus the sugar, lime and fish sauce. That was pretty much it. The heat from this salad took a little bit of time to build up and ended up pretty potent.

Beef murtabak from Al Tasneem

Haven't eaten at Al Tasneem in a while. Another itch scratched there with their beef murtabak. For some reasons I just need to know.

Generally speaking, I wouldn't say that it was a bad tasting murtabak. Had at least half of it without curry so that I could taste it properly. The minced beef was as undistinctive as the ones from their neighbours. Tak shiok.

Masala tea tasted dilute. It's a pale shadow of a good brew. Note to self : don't get them here again.

Half fried chicken with rice from Golden Rooster

Came back for the fried chicken rice plate from Golden Rooster. The meat appears to be more moist compared to the barbequed one. Now I'm torn between both. Noticed that the stall has some pretty large chicken legs on display. Legs much bigger than the ones on the spring chickens they're selling. 😳