Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

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November 20, 2014 By cheryl

Kim’s Fried Hokkien Prawn Mee (Singapore): A God of Noodles

Kim's Hokkien MeeIf you happen to wander into the cozy hawker center perched on a sleepy bend in Singapore‘s Bedok neighborhood, an incongruous sight may catch your eye.

Amid the usual phalanx of hawkers in jeans or shorts sweating over hot stoves and churning out bowl after bowl of tasty cheap fare, you’ll see a stately man in a tailored black trousers, a white dress shirt, his hair neatly slicked and combed back. With a gold Rolex watch on one wrist and a towel casually draped over one shoulder, this man silently and deftly stir-fries woks of Hokkien mee, a delicious Singaporean Chinese dish featuring three different kinds of noodles stir-fried with shrimp, eggs and squid in a thick shellfish-inflected gravy.

When I first spied this on a recent trip home, I had to stop and stare for a moment. Who was this man? Why was he dressed like a banker to fry up noodles?

Most important — how was his Hokkien mee?

Well, there was only one way to find out …

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Asian, Chinese, Hawkers, Hokkien, Holidays, Noodles, Seafood, Singapore, Singaporean, Southeast Asian Tagged With: Bedok, Bedok Army Camp, Bedok Corner Food Centre, Hokkien Mee, Kim's Fried Hokkien Mee, Makansutra, Seafood

November 14, 2014 By cheryl

Chinese Tea Eggs: Lucky Birthday Treats

Tea eggs One thing my mother always taught me about birthdays: You’ve gotta have eggs.

Sure, cake is nice and tasty. And candles — definitely the icing on, well, the icing.

But eggs? No two ways about it. That was the absolute must.

Every year on my birthday, she’ll either make me hard-boiled eggs or call to make sure I’ve had them. The eggs symbolize life and birth, after all. Paired with a bowl of noodles (for longevity) in a slightly sweet broth (for a sweet day and year ahead), this is just the super lucky trifecta I simply had to have every year.

So, when the super lovely Karen over at GeoFooding suggested doing a favorite birthday treat for November’s Let’s Lunch to toast my special day this year, I didn’t need to think twice. My mother’s voice was already in my ear — eggs it was … [Read more…]

Filed Under: Asian, Breakfast, Chinese, Comfort Food, Let's Lunch, Recipes Tagged With: Chinese, Eggs, Let's Lunch, Tea eggs

November 4, 2014 By cheryl

New Ubin Seafood (Singapore): Eating The Dream

New Ubin SeafoodFor months now, I’ve been tortured by Instagram.

Specifically, a seemingly endless stream of Instagram photos from a place called New Ubin Seafood in Singapore. In the middle of the night in Brooklyn, I’d find myself scrolling through photo after photo of gigantic crabs, split open and doused with gravy, wooden platters piled with glistening chunks of steak — and I would think, why have I never been to this restaurant?

Thankfully, I have good friends who wanted to fix this right away. So on a humid Saturday night, I found myself wending the desolate night streets of an industrial estate in Singapore’s Sin Ming neighborhood …

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Asian, Chinese, Meat, Restaurants, Seafood, Singapore, Singaporean, Tales From the Road Tagged With: American, Baked Crab, Bishan, Black Angus Ribeye, Boss bee hoon, Brinjal, Fried rice, Kai Lan, New Ubin Seafood, Noodles, Pulau Ubin, Sin Ming, Singapore, Sri Lankan Crab, Steak

November 3, 2014 By cheryl

Bedok Mian Fen Guo (Singapore): Perfect Peanut Pancakes

Bedok Mian Fen GuoMy mother rarely let us have sweets in the house when I was a child — something I have a great appreciation for now. (I realize I have her to thank for my lifelong aversion to soda and overly sugary pastries.)

There was one treat that she shared — rather, showered us with, however: Bee chian kueh.

Magically, this spongey Singaporean pancake — filled with crushed sweet peanuts — would appear in our kitchen, usually following a trip she’d made to the wet market for groceries. It’s typically eaten for breakfast, with strong coffee, or as a late morning snack. When done well, the pancake’s firm sponginess encased in a crispy crust, combined with the crunchy peanut filling, is just delicious. And if you bite into it while it’s still hot, it’s simply divine.

I hadn’t had this pancake in many years — it’s not something I’ve found in the Chinatown haunts of my adopted home, New York, and when I’ve visited Singapore, I’ve tended to focus on crossing off the meals I miss, not snacks I somewhat dimly remember.

In recent years, however, this pancake has started magically appearing in my Singapore kitchen again. One day, my mother took me to a nearby hawker center so I could see why …

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Asian, Breakfast, Comfort Food, Hawkers, Singapore, Singaporean, Snacks, Southeast Asian, Sweets Tagged With: Bedok, Bedok Mian Fen Guo, Bee chian kueh, Mian fen guo, New Upper Changi Road, Pancake, Peanut, Singapore, Snack, Sweets, The Straits Times

November 2, 2014 By cheryl

Eleven Finger (Eu Kee) Scissors Curry Rice (Singapore): A Cut Above

photo (30)A few years ago, after I mentioned my big love for Singapore‘s Hainanese curry rice to an old friend who knows her food, she immediately asked, “Have you been to that ‘Nine Fingers’ place?”

Now, if you’ve ever had curry rice, you’ll understand why that name might be disturbing. It basically comprises a bunch of different dishes of your choosing (breaded fried pork chops, crispy fried eggs, curried squid, braised tofu or chicken wings, etc.) snipped up into bite-sized pieces with a gigantic pair of scissors, dumped on a plate of rice and then doused with mellow Hainanese curry.

“Nine fingers?” I asked, wondering whose plate that lost digit might have ended up in.

“I forget how many fingers,” my friend Jill said. “But it’s good.”

Since then, I’ve been intrigued by this curry rice — finally, this week, I decided to make the journey. It turns out that it’s eleven fingers, not nine. Not that that makes the name any less bewildering …

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Asian, Chinese, Comfort Food, Hainanese, Hawkers, Rice, Singapore, Singaporean, Southeast Asian Tagged With: 3838 Eating Place, Bugis, Eleven Fingers Curry Rice, Eukee, Hainanese, Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple, Singapore

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