Singapore: The Good, The Bad and the Pretty

The Good:

1. Yakitori Chicken Skin at the ION Orchard food court.

Which I am personally not into in large quantities, but which Goosey says he can eat by the bucketloads. I am sure this is a lie that, if tested, would end with a tearful vomit-ty boyfriend revoking such a ridiculous claim, but unfortunately for me and fortunately for him, I will not try to prove it.


2. Ayam Penyet at Confused Cook? (Deliberate ?, to denote the Cook's confusion, not mine)

I like ayam penyet and sometimes wish I was Indonesian so I could stake a claim to it, but really, who am I kidding, if the tempe and tahu are goreng-ed, I will automatically fall in love with you and then eat you, and it doesn't really matter what else is on the plate.


3. I Love Meat Sandwich, Confused Cook?

Goosey's sandwich, thus his hands all over said sandwich, trying to figure out how best to put all three meat layers in his mouth at one go.


4. Blackforest Profiteroles, P.S. Cafe

MAGICAL. Like chocolate ice cream cherry pastry MAGIC in your MOUTH.



The Bad:

1. The National, who, by the way, was the sole and much anticipated reason for the entire Singapore trip, CANCELLING THEIR SOLD-OUT SHOW. Because of the tsunami and earthquake. Which happened in JAPAN. If they didn't make such beautiful music I would never forgive this terrible oversight in geography and swear them off forever. As it is, I am swearing them off for a minimum of two weeks.

2. Falafel Wrap, Marmalade Cafe

Did not taste like falafel, but like bland mashed potatoes in a wrap.



The Pretty:

1. These books.


1. This bag.


Somehow it is easier to justify being a crazy book lady than a crazy bag lady (it might have something to do with the whole reading books imparts knowledge thing), but both are equally pretty.

Waffles & Ice Cream; Hartamas

Yes. So. Contrary to popular belief, or rather, the total radio silence MIA AWOL where the fuck did she go now, I did not die. (Unless you count being totally swamped with work as death, which I am inclined to do.) I just got lazy about it. And then lazier. And then even lazier. And the fact that my office network blocked blogspot did not counteract the laziness, and then before I knew it, I hadn't blogged in a year, and now I miss it.

So I have returned, dear loyal readership of two (my mom, and maybe my aunt: hello!), and as I have not been starving myself over the past year (I will now be grudgingly honest and say that is DEFINITELY not the case, and if you would like proof, please behold my increasing derriere; baby got back and IS back), and could not rid myself of the irritating habit of snapping pictures of my food before I devour it, I now have many many food pictures of which to post.

A lot has happened in a year, and I feel that I have grown in many aspects of my personality and have matured as a human being.

For example, I used to dislike waffles and ice cream, or at least used to deny that I liked it, but now I like it and have come out of the closet. This took much time and effort, as I had to grapple with the fact that I cannot and will not bite ice cream (you're supposed to lick it! Tongue not teeth! It's cold and melts, which means it is liquid!) and it is a difficult, trying task, attempting to get your mouth to bite the waffle but lick the ice cream. But I persevered, learned to mouth multitask, and now present to you a picture of my new friend, waffles and ice cream.

There are, of course, many other ways in which I have grown and matured, all of which are as remarkably important and terribly interesting as this one, but my blog wouldn't be my blog if I didn't veer wildly off topic and write rambling soliloquies about nothing in particular while pretending to write about food. Right?

This Much I Know

(Thanks PP! Though ultimately traced back to the Observer)

Iman, Aspiring Dictator/Feta Cheese Lover, 24, Kuala Lumpur

- I miss blogging. Though I fell, and hard, for the seductive wiles of twitter, I miss having the freedom to ramble on for more than 140 characters at a time. I have thus returned in a prodigal-son-like manner. Little foodie blog, mama has come back! Cue fanfare and joyful anticipation... or maybe not, because I may get bored and stop doing this in about a week or so.

- I know blogs and twitter and myspace and facebook status updates are manifestations of how grossly narcissistic the human race has become, but my god I like writing random things and releasing them into the random spaces of the internet and I do not apologize for it. Also I am not GROSSLY narcissistic as I don't use facebook or myspace (anymore and at all, respectively), I am merely as harmlessly narcisstic as the next blogger/twitterer.

- The best comfort food is spaghetti bolognese. Though this may only apply to me, because that is the food I most associate with my childhood. And that, in turn, is because my sisters and I were brats who would not eat rice more than three nights a week and spaghetti was the easiest alternative food.

- Growing up is nothing like I thought it would be, and all the insecurities and flaws that I thought would magically disappear when I turned 21/started working/graduated college/moved to KL have instead been magically magnified. Dammit!

- The most important thing to have in the whole world is an open mind. The most important thing to know how to do in the whole world is how to balance your own opinions with keeping an open mind.

- I find it hard to forgive wilful ignorance paired with rude behaviour. I'll let it slide if you have the misfortune of being afflicted with one or the other, but I pretty much automatically hate you if you are both.

- Yell at pervert misogynist douchebags on the LRT, because if you do not, the regret will haunt you forever. Also they may be perving on some other unsuspecting person that they may not have been perving on if your yelling had successfully scarred them for life.

- To-do lists make everything easier, more manageable, and will save you from jumping off Level 37 of Petronas Twin Tower 2 due to stress. When in doubt, list it out.

- Running in heels is one of the most useful talents a woman can have. Applying make-up in a moving car with only the aid of a compact mirror is another. I consider it a huge achievement that I have mastered them both, and yes, I say this in all seriousness.

- I am (evidently) not great at this whole This Much I Know thing, because I don't think I know anything of great consequence, but I do know that everyone would go crazy with the chaotic state of the world unless they kept their eye on the ball. Find your ball, and keep your eye there. Mine is a goose who is a crankypants in the morning, but I graciously overlook that as he performs his ball function.

- Everything is kismet, and if that thought doesn't make you feel don't-worry!-be-happy! and a-okay, then the last resort is always dessert.

Birthday Cakes; Nando's, KLCC, & Sultan Lounge, Mandarin Oriental

WELL. It turns out I have been discovered. Found out. The popo are onto me. The pigs are on the scent! Big Brother is watching, and he doesn't like what he sees. The office network has blocked blogspot. This cannot be a coincidence. I've been sneakily and stealthily posting regularly since I started working here and now all of a sudden it is blocked and I know it's because of me. Dammit. I even tried posting on Samson the BlackBerry but he doesn't support the uploading of pictures. I will find a way to perservere though. Oh yes. I will.

More birthday cakes even though it is no longer my birthday. Cakes taste so much better when they are: i) surprises, ii) set on fire by way of candles, iii) eaten right after you make a birthday wish, and iv) accompanied by the sweet (figuratively) and not-so-sweet (melodically and musically) sounds of people you know singing to you.

Chocolate cake with ice cream from Nando's--thank you colleagues! I was totally not anticipating a cake so this came as a surprise to my stomach. My stomach and I had not budgeted for dessert, and so I couldn't finish all of it.

Chocolate mousse cake with strawberries, gooseberries and mulberries--thank you boss! I really want to rave about this cake because it was PERFECTION but since it was a surprise (and it WAS, because I got this four days after my actual birthday) no one will tell me where it came from. Or what it's called. Or whose idea it was!

But it was gorgeous and perfect and the mousse was just the right texture to melt in your mouth and the chocolate rice krispies at the bottom added just the right something extra to the creamy moussiness and I love love love loved it.

Does cake get better as one celebrates older birthdays? Because I can't ever remember being spoiled with three different kinds of cake before. This makes a very strong case for looking forward to turning 25.

Root Beer Float; Delicious

One of the many perks of being an adult (almost on par with the Main Perk, which is the beloved Pay Check) is that I can now consume fizzy drinks whenever I choose.

Yes people, it is sadly and shockingly true: I am a product of one of those families that did not (still DOES not, actually) stock fizzy drinks in the refrigerator. And growing up, I was never allowed to order Coke or any carbonated variation thereof whenever we ate out at restaurants. Even though I crave sugar like crack and this craving started when I was still a wee tyke.

As a result of this fizzy drink prohibition, I grew up intensely jealous of people who got to drink Coke and have ice cream floats whenever they wanted. Ice Cream Float Nights became much anticipated and awaited rare celebratory events (wait, you think I'm being hyperbolic? I'm not. We used ice cream floats to toast joyous and special occasions. Like New Year's Eve) whenever my mom DID buy a liter of Coke that was to be shared between four sugar-deprived siblings, none of whom really wanted to share this coveted elixir of joy.

But now I'm an adult and can drink Coke whenever I want! Yes! Independence! Freedom! Fizzy!


And now it is my little brother who laments the fact that he can't drink Coke whenever he wants, forcing him to question the injustice within the parental system. I sympathize, but ultimately: too bad, buddy.

You can look forward to the Freedom of the Fizzy when YOU become an adult and join me in the adult world (please take your time, I like you as a kid). We'll toast your adulthood with a Coke ice cream float.

Warm Chocolate Chip Cookie with Hot Fudge Sauce and Vanilla Ice Cream; Bijou, Mont Kiara

Well girls and boys, it is that time of the month where I crave cupcakes and kisses and chocolate and ice cream floats. Okay fine, I crave all this every DAY of the month, but I know when it’s THAT time of the month (does anyone else think that combining uppercase letters and euphemisms is sort of like a schizophrenic literary technique: Pay attention to what I am saying! Wait, don’t pay attention to the fact that I am talking about something gross and unsavoury! But pay attention to the screaming uppercase disguise of this gross thing!) when I suddenly find myself irascibly argumentative and completely intolerant of stupidity, inadequate customer service, and, my personal PMS pet peeve: people who think they know everything when clearly they do not, or if they DO know that thing, then they should realize that I know it too, and how dare they imply that I didn’t know whatever they were pointing out to me, regardless of the fact that they probably thought they were being helpful and harmless by pointing it out? (“Hey Iman, the KLCI is below 900 points.” “YES. I KNOW. PLEASE STOP INFORMING ME OF BASIC KNOWLEDGE TO WHICH I HAVE ACCESS AND INSTEAD DUNK YOUR HEAD IN COFFEE”).

Basically, anyone who either talks slow or thinks slow grates on my nerves like manicured nails on a blackboard right about now. I feel like I need to quarantine myself from people with an IQ below a certain level. I am so mean. It's completely irrational. Most of the time I am a warm, bright ray of sunshine. Right now I am a ray of blinding sarcasm and razor-sharp-will-make-you-bleed contention.


Chocolate makes me feel better though... so I am posting this picture of dessert that was the SHIZZLE. All my favourite things--Haagen Dazs ice cream (albeit vanilla), warm chocolate fudge, chocolate chip cookies, cappuccinos-- literally served on a platter and ready to be ingested so they could come together in a hari-raya-fireworks-type explosion of the chocolate variety in my mouth. THE SHIZZLE.

Cantonese Hor Fun, Banana Fritters; Madam Kwan's

I know, I know, I've already posted pictures of Cantonese Hor Fun on this blog but I felt the need to give due credit to the meal that singlehandedly rejuvenated my formerly-MIA appetite! That reignited my flames of hunger! That resurrected, ala Jesus, my will to eat! Oh fat noodles drowning in egg sauce while hanging out with chicken pieces and vegetables, you brought me back to life!


AND I didn't even feel sick after scarfing the entire plate of noodles. Nor did I have to run to the bathroom straight after eating, to do the number that comes after 1, like the person with whom I was eating (don't worry goosey I won't tell anyone it was you). Now THAT is a sign of a good meal. Or a hardy large intestine, I'm not sure which. The point is, now that I have hit bottom, lost my appetite, and regressed to talking about my intestinal fortitude, there is nowhere to go but up (up being more dessert eating). And all thanks to you my little hor fun. Also to you, banana fritters with vanilla ice cream.

Dessert Buffet; Ritz-Carlton, Singapore

The following post is why one should not ever give me access to buffets with generous dessert spreads. I do not have a large enough appetite to eat both savoury AND sweet foods, so when given the choice between something savoury and substantial and something sweet and completely unhealthy, I will of course choose the latter.

Thus I literally stuffed myself to bursting point and seriously almost fell into a weird hybrid of a sugar rush-food coma after lunch. This was not good considering I was sitting right next to my boss in the post-lunch meetings and the only reason I was in Singapore was to attend work conferences, and not, as my stomach had managed to make me forget, to eat like a heifer.

White Chocolate Cake with Raspberries

Blueberry & Chocolate Pudding

Chocolate & Pineapple Cake (sounds like an intriguing combination, but turned out to be neither intriguing nor tasty)

Classic Cheesecake (with a crumbly cookie base: MY FAVOURITE KIND OF CHEESECAKE BASE and one that is surprisingly difficult to find)

Raspberry, Strawberry, Blueberry Berry Cake

Espresso Ice Cream
Vanilla Creme Brulee
Raspberry Pudding

Lemon Meringue Pie
Caramelized Pear
Raspberry Sorbet (I made Mr. Ice Cream Scooper pick out all the raspberry fruit chunks to put in my scoops of ice cream. It ended up taking him ten minutes to put the above concoction together. I'm sorry, Mr. Ice Cream Scooper)

Bread & Butter Pudding (absolute FILTH. Seriously. I couldn't eat more than two bites. How the hell does a six star hotel mess up a bread and butter pudding, by definition the most rudimentary of all puddings? For shame, Ritz Carlton, for shame)

Lemon Pudding with Meringue Topping

I have no idea what this is but seeing as it was on the dessert bar and my mission of the day was to clean out the entire dessert selection, I ate it anyway. Is that disturbing? Yes, more than slightly. Is that surprising? No, not at all.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip; Häagen Dazs Bukit Bintang

Had one of those weeks where you wake up at 5.45am every day and arrive home at 10pm almost every day and have your appetite sucked away from your stomach by the devilish creature known as Grand Lord Torturer Herr Stress (occupation: Right Hand Man of Satan), and subsist primarily on three coffees per day, each piled to the brim with an abundance of caffeine and sugar. And also potato chips (not in the coffee, obviously... though that IS an idea...). Lots of them, but only in the evening, because although your office thoughtfully started a snack food box at your petition, it is to be opened after 6pm only (silly fascist dictator dietician of a company). So I had one of THOSE weeks; you know how it is.

Then karma happened, and I got my reward for being diligent all week (I am aware it's only Thursday, but it's been a long four days):


CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM, MOFOS! Häagen Dazs finally restocked my flavour! Maybe the sad faces I made at the sales people the day they didn't have Chocolate Chocolate Chip touched their ice cream filled hearts and moved them to restock it asap. Maybe it was the sheer intensity of my desire to have not only chocolate ice cream, but also similarly flavoured chips in said ice cream, that magically brought the ice cream into the store. Maybe the shipment was due to come in anyway and had nothing to do with me? Yeah now I'm just talking crazy, it clearly wasn't the last reason.

Going to attempt to nap with my eyes open now/run off for Coffee #2 of the day.

Cookies & Chocolate Ice Cream; Häagen Dazs Bukit Bintang

First of all I feel the need to point out that I LOVE Häagen Dazs ice cream more than ANY OTHER ice cream brand in the WORLD. Occasionally, I admit, I give into curiousity-induced temptation and fool around with NZ Ice Cream (too watery, not milky enough), Baskin Robbins (too sweet, not creamy enough), Ben & Jerry’s (Phish Food has MINIATURE CHOCOLATE FISH and MARSHMALLOW SWIRLS in CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM. I mean I love my HD but no mortal woman is strong enough to resist that ingenious combination) or even slum it with—gasp, I know, I am ashamed— McDonalds (in my defence, their chocolate sundaes are decent and the fudge is always heavy and sticky). But I always regret it, and I always come back to HD. It’s the fattiest and creamiest: therefore it’s the best.


That said, I was super pissed off that they didn’t have my favourite flavour today. I mean some flavours are just staples: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry. If you are Häagen Dazs, that list of staples should also include Chocolate Chocolate Chip. That is not a suggestion. It is a fact. I made sad faces at the ice cream guy and he said he was very sorry but there was nothing he could do except make my ice cream scoop extra fat. Though Cookies & Chocolate was the closest thing I could get to my beloved Chocolate Chocolate Chip, fewer things get my goat than setting my mind on eating something and not getting it in the end. This is almost as bad as the time that I went to Planet Hollywood, got the set lunch with the expectation that I would be getting chocolate cake for dessert (I even asked the waiter to double check and he confirmed that the chocolate cake was in fact the dessert of the day), and after eating a chicken lunch that I only endured in order to get to dessert, was presented with a gelatinous excuse of a mango pudding for dessert. AFTER I had set my stomach on chocolate. And when I was like where is my cake, homies?! The waiters looked at me like I was a deranged woman. Like there's no difference, apparently, to the Planet Hollywood staff, between CHOCOLATE CAKE... and MANGO PUDDING. These things are important to some people, okay! My stomach has dessert expectations! You deceived, lied to and betrayed my sweet tooth and I will not take this injustice lying down! And while I am ranting, when I ask for Coke and waiters bring me Pepsi or, even worse, Diet Coke, and I'm like dude this isn't Coke... do not look at me like I am psychotic! I don’t drink diet anything! I hate the taste of Pepsi! Because it tastes different from Coke! They are not the same!!

Must calm down now. Am getting too agitated for a Friday afternoon.

Dessert; Serendipity 3, Upper East Side, New York

I have wanted to eat at this restaurant ever since I saw it in the movie Serendipity, which was a truly shiteous product of filmmaking, but the dessert scene during which John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale share a chocolate ice cream volcano and fall in love was inspiring and simultaneously spoke to my heart and stomach (not an easy feat).

INGREDIENTS:

A pretty menu (extra points for the swirly illustrations and creative food names: they have a chicken dish called A La Garden of Allah. Piqued my interest, but I decided it was mildly blasphemous and also I was too full)


... Doled out in massive proportions (the aforementioned menu was approximately 75% of my formidable 5 foot height span... which means it was... umm... okay you can do the math)


One Ice Cream Crepe (Danny's), which was not only swimming in whipped cream and fruit sauce but somehow evoked the impression of doing so while enjoying a cold lemonade on a blistering and cloudless summer day


One Strawberry Fields Sundae (mine), a gargantuan concoction of strawberries, strawberry ice cream, cheesecake, and whipped cream, which, with the exception of the strawberry ice cream, is a combination of some of my most favourite things in the world; topped with a dash of lyrical Beatle-esque inspiration in the sundae name


Eat for an hour (cappucino optional), promptly pass out upon finding nearest available bed, and you too will dream of strawberries tap dancing on cheesecake the whole night.

Sicilian Ice Cream Cake Cassata; Cipolla, Bangsar

(Goosey's) Sticky Date Pudding with Vanilla Ice Cream; Delicious

Chocolate Fudge; Baskin Robbins

Chocolate Fudge, Cookies and Cream; New Zealand Natural