Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [49]
When the Ngs see us striding toward their out-of-the-way booth, they know we’re coming for crab, which they have stacked all around them in plastic laundry baskets and burlap flour bags. As soon as she seats us, Madame Ng carefully selects two of the live crustaceans for our approval—both 2.2 pounds plump and as feisty as boxers going to the ring—and then hands them to her husband for cooking. “Both want chilli crab?” she asks.
Cheryl says, “Make one of them a pepper crab,” another local specialty loaded with freshly ground Tellicherry pepper.
“Want greens, too?”
“Sure,” Bill answers, unsure until later that he’s ordered stir-fried greens with garlic.
The supper costs much more than other hawker meals, and takes much longer to prepare and eat, but it’s worth all of that and much more. “The pepper crab really zings you,” Cheryl says, “but I like the chile version better because the sauce gives it greater complexity.”
Bill agrees. “The sauce must be invisible, too, because I don’t see a drop on your blouse, messy one, even though we’ve trashed the entire table and my stomach is screaming ‘burst, burst, must die!’ Let’s go hail a cab on the street and get drenched with rain instead.” The downpour ends, of course, as soon as we reach our hotel, a good excuse for wrapping up the evening with an obligatory Singapore Sling in the Albert Court’s bar.
Early the next morning, we walk to the Tekka Centre in the Little India neighborhood near our hotel for breakfast snacks. “What’s going on?” Cheryl asks, baffled by the festive decorations that have sprouted overnight on Serangoon Road, the area’s main street. A huge sculpted peacock spreads his feathers brightly over the entrance to a department store and giant images of lotus blossoms, parasols, and elephants drape from the lampposts. Neither of us has a clue about the meaning until we discover most of the food stands at Tekka shut down tightly, in honor, according to an apologetic sign, of the official beginning of the preparations for the local Deepawali celebration.
So we hop on the subway back to Chinatown to track down some vendors who had been closed yesterday. In the Hong Lim Market and Food Centre, the group includes Outram Park Fried Kway Teow, which gets Makansutra’s highest marks for char kway teow, a dish that becomes one of our personal favorites in Singapore. The stand’s cook wok-fries a combination of fettuccine-size rice noodles and spaghettilike wheat noodles with bits of Chinese sausage and pork (including a generous portion of cracklings), cockles, bean sprouts, other vegetables, and a thick soy sauce. Sitting across from Cheryl on a simple outdoors-style picnic table, Bill says, marveling, “What a fantastic blend of flavors and textures, the seafood with the pork, crunchy with silky.”
“You’re right, a winner for sure. It speaks of a culinary sophistication way beyond the bounds of this humble setting.”
One of the Makansutra Legends, Ah Kow Mushroom Minced Pork Mee, operates in a dark back corner of the same building. Cher Hang Peng stands behind the stove, where he’s been for fifty years since the age of ten, preparing bak chor mee, minced-meat noodles with black vinegar, dumplings, and vegetables. His wife sits at an unoccupied table when she’s not taking orders, folding wonton wrappers around big balls of finely chopped pork to make the dumplings. Both are a joy to watch, Mom folding and stuffing as Pop dunks wheat noodles and then minced meat and dumplings into a boiling broth to cook quickly. He puts the core ingredients together in bowls and adds, over the top, bean sprouts, crisp fried shallots, cilantro, Chinese black vinegar, and chile sauce. A cup of the steaming broth accompanies the main dish. For a grand tasting and the show, the tab comes to U.S. $3 total.
Positively aglow from the day’s two starter courses, we stroll several blocks to the large Chinatown Complex, which brings us down a couple of notches from our noodle high. To get to the second-floor food stalls, visitors