Goodies From Taiwan

In July Hubby went on a business trip to Taiwan. He came back with bags of goodies, courtesy of his colleague in Taiwan as well as the local hosts.

The irony was that in June we had just gone on a family trip to the very same country. (It seems that Taiwan seems to be having a renaissance of some sort when it comes to travel. In the last decade or two, many people were visiting China, its booming coastal cities as well as the more exotic places of attraction in its vast interior. But in the last two to three years, it seems an increasing number of people are beginning to go to Taiwan for vacations again, judging from anecdotes and the burgeoning number of blogger posts about Taiwanese trips. Which is a good thing, for Taiwan is a friendly and beautiful country. And getting around it is easy, especially for Singaporeans who speak Mandarin or Hokkien.)

Er hem, I digress.

Back to our Taiwanese trip. As we didn’t have much time (we went the inefficient and circuitous route of Taipei — Taichung — Hualien — Taipei in 6 days; don’t ask why, it’s a long story) and didn’t do much research beforehand, I didn’t manage to lay my hands on a couple of Taiwanese products that I’ve heard people raving and ranting about — the sun cakes ( 太阳饼 ) and the almond powder.

Imagine my delight when Hubby returned from his business trip lugging these amongst the other goodies!

The sun cakes were from Li Ji ( 犁记 ) and they were every bit as yummy as I remember sun cakes to be.

It seems that Taiwanese pineapple tarts ( 凤梨酥 ) tend to be more popular but I generally find them to be overly sweet, and more than a little synthetic in taste, including the ones Hubby brought back this time. But I have always loved the rich taste of sun cakes and the ones from Li Ji did not disappoint.

 Each cake comes with a red stamp on it, saying sun cake in traditional Chinese. So old-school that it brings back the memories. I used to loathe eating anything with red dye. Perhaps because the young me associated the colour with blood, and being no vampire, I didn’t find the idea of ingesting blood the least bit attractive. In fact, it was revolting.

Fortunately the old me has no such qualms. I wolfed down the sun cakes all right, and found them to be utterly delicious, the buttery fragrance mixed with the complex richness of malt sugar. The pastry was just the right thickness, not too thick but thick enough to prevent the mixture from being overpoweringly sweet.

They have a branch in Shanghai too. So the next time you are in Taipei or Shanghai, pick up a couple of boxes of this. I assure you they’ll disappear real quickly.

The other gem from the bags of goodies was this:

Instant All Natural Almond Powder from
Golden Mountain

To prepare this, add three teaspoons of the powder into a cup of cold or hot water. Then stir until all the powder has dissolved. And you’ll end up with a smooth, creamy cup of almond milk.

I’ve been drinking it hot. And I like it thick so instead of three teaspoons, I add three tablespoons  :)

I find that immediately after adding the hot water, there tends to be a bit of burnt taste but that goes away pretty quickly. So I’m not sure if it’s my imagination. Taste is pretty good too. Mildly sweet and if you like the fragrance of almonds, this will be a hit with you.

There are supposedly a ton of benefits associated with this drink too. It is supposed to give a radiant complexion (no wonder the girls always buy tons of this when they visit Taiwan) and helps to boost your memory too. Tastes good and is good for the brain. What’s not to like?

I was told that a different brand of almond powder can be purchased in the NTUC in Jurong Point, so I’ll be trying to hunt it down. I’ve already finished this can. If anyone knows where else in Singapore I can get my hands on instant almond powder, kindly drop a comment to let me know. I’ll be eternally grateful.

For any Chinese reader who
may be reading this   :)

TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY By John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck is one of USA’s literary giants. Yet I’ve never read any of his works. I know, I know. My only excuse is that Singapore is an ex-colony of Britain and my own reading tastes tend to veer towards British writers. Another reason is that I tend to be sceptical of American claims which tend to be larger than life.

I read about this book somewhere on some website and out of idle curiosity, while I was in the Jurong East Regional Library one day, I decided to check to see if the library had a copy and they did. I checked the book out, out of the same idle curiosity.

Right from the start, Steinbeck’s writing blew me away. His writing was brilliantly original, witty and sharp, and deeply American, which I realise is not a bad thing when done properly — it adds an authentic flavour to the book.

Travels With Charley was published in 1962, the same year in which Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was based on his four-month journey around the States in the late fall and early winter of 1960. He travelled in a mobile home — a truck with an attached cabin that contained the comforts of home — that he christened Rocinante after the hero’s horse in Don Quixote. Although his wife joined him at certain short segments of the trip, his only constant companion was his dog, Charley, hence the title of the book.

At the start of the book, Steinbeck explained that he embarked on the trip because of travel lust, a restlessness that had plagued him since he was young. He kept putting it off, think that age would temper the urge, but upon realising that even at the grand old age of 58, he was still possessed by this compulsion, he decided to give in to it. He set off with the intention of learning the truth about his country, though he cautioned the reader that truth is always subjective, focused through the lens of the person experiencing it.

The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 is the introduction in which he explains his rationale for the trip as well as his plan and preparations.

Part 2 plunges into the start of his trip. He set off from his home in Sag Harbour, New York, and travelled north to Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire. He stopped in Maine before heading north to Canada briefly and then returning to USA, passing through Ohio, Michigan and Illinois at high speed. He stopped briefly in Chicago where he was joined by his wife.  And that concluded Part 2.

In Part 3, Steinbeck describes his journey through Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Washington, and Oregon before he reached California, where he had spent his childhood. After spending some days there, he left for New Mexico and that concludes the third part of the book.

The last part of the book covers Steinbeck’s journey to Texas (where he again met up with his wife) and New Orleans before he finally turned round and headed for home.

What makes the book interesting is Steinbeck’s detailed observations of his country’s landscape and his keen insights on his countrymen. Some of his observations remain relevant, and are even prophetic, some fifty years after he had penned his sojourn. There are many reasons to read this book: to gain a better understanding of that vast and complex superpower, the USA (USA is too complex to be succinctly described in a thin book, but Steinbeck’s travels give us a relevant perspective); it’s a good way to pass time (his wicked humour is highly entertaining); Steinbeck’s sharp understanding of human nature is enlightening; and to see how the English language is wielded by a master.

As a teacher, during writing lessons, I would explain to my students that to describe a place, they need to use their five senses as much as possible. And because humans are highly visual creatures, the most important sense that needs to be described is sight. If they should be stumped about what to describe, they can always fall back on colours.

There is no better way to illustrate this than to see how a master wordsmith does it. A couple of examples here:

In the Bad Lands

Steinbeck initially found the Bad Lands foreboding and unwelcoming. But he discovered that as day turned into night, the passage of time drastically transformed the Bad Lands into the ‘Good Lands’.

[…] And then the late afternoon changed everything. As the sun angled, the buttes and coulees, the cliffs and sculptured hills and ravines lost their burned and dreadful look and glowed with yellow and rich browns and a hundred variations of red and silver grey, all picked out by streaks of coal black. It was so beautiful that I stopped near a thicket of dwarfed and wind-warped cedars and junipers, and once stopped I was caught, trapped in colour and dazzled by the clarity of the light. Against the descending sun the battlements were dark and clean-lined, while to the east, where the uninhibited sunlight poured slantwise, the strange landscape shouted with colour.

In Oregon where he visited redwood country to pay homage to the ancient trees

The trees rise straight up to zenith; there is no horizon. The dawn comes early and remains dawn until the sun is high up. Then the green fernlike foliage so far up strains the sunlight to a gold green and distributes it in shafts or rather in stripes of light and shade.

The middle segment of the book lags a little, so some readers may find it dreary, and all the place names can be confusing for a non-American. But as an introduction to Steinbeck’s writing, it is a superb initiation and I can’t wait to start reading his famous works of fiction, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.

So Pho

B1-08 Jem, Jurong East

Tel: 6339 0058

B1-15  Serangoon Nex

Tel: 6636 8195

Even before my sister sang the praises of the banh mi (a legacy of France’s colonisation of Vietnam) she tasted in Hoi An, I knew I would like it. That’s because I’ve always liked baguette.

An old secondary school friend of mine commented before on my perverse taste: I like old apples that are slightly soft (I find it sweeter and enjoy the melty texture) when crunchy apples are the mainstream flavour; I like bread that is hard on the outside (hence my very soft spot for baguette), and don’t mind if the interior is a little tough rather than soft and fluffy.

Anyway, I knew bahn mi would be a hit with me. And I was proven right when I finally tasted my first bahn mi last month at Pho Street, Westgate. It wasn’t the best meal of my life but I enjoyed it. Then I tried the one at Nam Nam, Raffles City. Also nice, but a tad too rich.

Today I tried my third bahn mi (fourth if one wants to be accurate, I tried two at Pho Street but alas, took neither pictures nor notes so I can’t do a review on them) at So Pho, at the basement of Jem.

From their name card, I realise that So Pho is owned by Katrina Holdings, which manages quite a number of other brands, the most famous of which is Bali Thai.

At So Pho, the menu has been tweaked to cater to local tastes, so apart from the typical Vietnamese fare like spring rolls, pho and banh mi, they also serve hotpot. Weird, since I didn't realise Vietnamese cuisine includes hotpot, but I could be mistaken.

Decor was nice and pleasant, but nothing outstanding. The broadcasted music was a little too loud though, more intrusive than adding bustle.

  

I didn’t dine at the restaurant. Instead, I ordered a grilled chicken banh mi for takeaway.

Banh mi with grilled chicken and chicken pate;
S$5.90 before GST, S$6.30 nett

The banh mi came with slices of grilled chicken and chicken pate, accompanied by julienned carrots, cucumber, cilantro and mint. There was also some plant that tasted like lemongrass or some similar pungently fragrant leaf. Or it could be the mint. Either way, I'm not really a fan of it.

On the whole, it was nothing special. It wasn’t bad, just average, middling, mediocre. The grilled chicken was nothing to shout about, and the chicken pate was tasteless, adding nothing to the experience but a strange floury, starchy and wet texture to the bread. The bread was also not crunchy on the outside, a no-no for me — baguette has to be crisp on the outside!

At S$5.90 before GST, it’s a dollar cheaper than the equivalent at Pho Street, just a building across in the basement of Westgate, and I prefer the latter, if simply for the crunchy exterior of the baguette. Will I be back again? Perhaps, if only to try their pho and see how that compares with Pho Street’s pho or Nam Nam’s. But it’s doubtful that I would order their bahn mi again.

Tonkatsu by Ma Maison

I'm a porky person.

I discovered quite late in life (when I was in my mid thirties) that my favourite meat is actually pork. Bak kwa, ba kut teh, pork chops, I like them all.

Thus it should come as no surprise that I’m particularly susceptible to the temptations of tonkatsu (pork cutlet covered in breadcrumbs and then deep fried). My go-to place for tonkatsu is Tonkichi in Ngee Ann City. I’ve been frequenting that particular restaurant for more than a decade, albeit not on a too-frequent basis due to its rather steep prices.

I first came across tonkatsu in katsu-don form. That is the same bread and deep fried pork cutlet, but in this case, there is the additional step of cooking the cutlet after it has been deep fried with egg and onion in some magical stew and then the whole shebang is served on rice. In the dim and misty stretches of my memory, I no longer remember my first katsu-don; it may or may not have been that unforgettable version from Ginza, a Japanese restaurant near Rosebery Hall, my hostel in London, a good two decades ago. Sadly, that restaurant is long gone.

(Apart from the fantastic katsu-don that they served — which surely used black magic to make it taste so good! —they also served the best mochi I ever had. Mochi is simply rice cake. In Singapore, we have the sweet form dusted with crushed peanut and sugar. In Japan they are also mostly in the sweet form. Now, this version from Ginza is a slab of rice cake, dressed in a layer of miso and I don't know what else and then wrapped with a piece of seaweed, before it is put to the grill. I tell you, it is absolutely tastebud NIRVANA. Sadly, I’ve never been able to find this version of mochi after I left London, both in Singapore and on subsequent trips to Japan.  Up to this day, I console myself with the local version, and occasionally, the Korean versions, like the dukbokkie from Bibigo.)

This is the closest to mochi heaven I could find on the internet:

Don't be fooled by its nondescript look -
it hides heaven in a bite!

If anyone knows what I'm talking about and where to get it, please let me know. I would be eternally grateful.

But I digress. Like the vanished mochi, when I returned to Singapore, I hunted high and low for the perfect katsu-don, not unlike a character in Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen, who travelled the length and breadth of Japan to find the best katsu-don (that book has one of the most seductive descriptions of katsu-don ever; in fact, it might have been it that triggered my memories of Ginza and instigated my own search). Unlike my quest for the Ginza mochi, this one had a happy ending. When I tasted the katsu-don from Tonkichi, I knew that my search had come to an end. And so my katsu-don saga came to a natural pause.

Until recently.

Do you believe in synchronicity?

Well, as it happens, synchronicity has a part to play with my run-in with Tonkatsu by Ma Maison.

About a month ago or so, I dined at Tonkichi with my family, and for the first time, we ordered a katsu curry set. The curry was simply F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S. It was so good that I kept thinking about it even weeks after the meal. Yeah, that good.

So to temporarily satisfy my craving, I took to surfing the internet for reviews of Tonkichi. Quite sad, right?

Anyway, anyone who has surfed before would know how one click always leads to another, and before long, I found myself on a review of tonkatsu by a rather well-known Singaporean lifestyle blogger. This blogger did a comparison of various tonkatsu in Singapore and he rated Tonkatsu by Ma Maison as highly as Tonkichi.

So far so good.

I should also mention that I stumbled upon this blog in Jurong Regional Library, which is located in Jurong East, right behind JCube. If you’re familiar with the geography of Jurong East Central, you could guess what happened next.

After getting enough respite from the tropical weather, I decided to leave the sanctuary of the air-conditioned library and window-shop at Westgate and Jem before heading home. Guess what I found on Level 4 of Westgate? Yeah, an outlet of Tonkatsu by Ma Maison.

If that is not synchronicity, I don’t know what is.

And that is how a couple of weeks after I spotted Tonkatsu at Westgate, I made a date with my sister to try out this new eatery and see if it indeed lives up to its name as a rival of Tonkichi.

My verdict: It’s a pale shadow of the latter. (My verdict is rather charitable compared to some of the choice words my husband used.)

Things got off at a rather bad start when my instructions were misinterpreted. My taste in tonkatsu over the years has evolved. This time, I hardly ever orders katsu-don. Instead, I would get the katsu toji.

Katsu toni is essentially the same as katsu-don, except that the pork cutlet drenched in the titillating concoction of gravy, egg and onion is served separate from the rice.

This is what katsu toji looks like:

Note that the rice is separate from the pork and egg.

Katsu toji is not on the menu of Tonkatsu by Ma Maison. Not a big problem. They have katsu-don, right? If can cook katsu-don, surely can also cook katsu toji. After all, they’re the same thing, just served differently.

I told the waiter I wanted katsu-don but that the pork and egg should be served separately from the rice. He looked bewildered for a second. Then the confusion cleared from his face and he said it would be possible. Good.

However, when it came, it looked like this.

Katsu toji misinterpreted: see how the poor pork cutlet
is sitting all by itself, and the egg mixture is all slumped
all the rice. Cost of this hideous dinner: S$21.80

Yes, they served the egg and what-not on the rice, and the left the poor naked pork cutlet by itself on the platter. My husband definitely did not enjoy his dinner. He complained that the pork was plain and the rice too soggy.

Apart from the freak katsu-don, we also ordered the katsu curry (remember? it was my craving after tasting it in Tonkichi that led us to try out Tonkatsu) and the mackerel and pork loin sets.

Katsu Curry - S$21.80

The curry was not as fragrant and tasty as Tonkichi’s. In fact, it was rather middling.

Mackerel and pork loin set: S$29.80
This comes with a bowl of tartar sauce and a wedge of lemon,
which don't help much in masking the strong fishy taste.

The fishiness of the mackerel was over-powering; perhaps mackerel is not a good choice of fish to be done in the style of katsu due to its strong flavour. I personally found the pork okay. Crispy and tender, fragrant too, although I still prefer Tonkichi’s. But that could be simply because I prefer the katsu toji style which I obviously didn’t get to sample at Tonkatsu.

But my opinion was not shared by the rest of my family who declared the pork tasteless.

And that wrapped up a rather below-average experience at Tonkatsu by Ma Maison. Will we be back again soon? It’s pretty unlikely.

To be fair, my sister pointed out that the original blogger had had his meal at the Mandarin Gallery outlet and we know how sometimes the standard can be inconsistent at different outlets. But at the sort of prices they are charging, I’m not inclined to visit Mandarin Gallery for a test taste to confirm if the problem was indeed a case of inconsistency, an overly positive blogger or simply that standards have fallen since the review was written in 2012.

There was a complimentary appetiser.

Cool radish which also acts as a palate cleanser.
Quite pleasant actually, if you're into raw radish,
which unfortunately I'm not.

Tonjiru soup

There was a complimentary appetiser. All the sets come with a bowl of tonjiru soup, a heap of salad and pickles - the same as Tonkichi, except that Tonkichi serves miso soup; you have to add a charge of I can't remember how much to upgrade the miso soup to tonjiru.

But miso or tonjiru, both Tonkichi soups beat the one at Tonkatsu hands down.

Sorry, I didn't take the shots of the pickles but if you peer carefully at the pictures of the sets, you'll be able to spot said pickles lurking in the background.

The sauces for the salad. They have a sweet version and a spicy version. I'm not too fond of this at Tonkichi but I like the ones at Tonkatsu even less, no thanks to a strange Chinese medicinal taste in both of them.