Life is unfair. My daughter is thrown into immersion Mandarin classes once per week while I wander the food stalls and outdoor market of the nearby mall.
I wonder if they have anything for Chinese New Year here.
At the outdoor shopping area you can get anything $1 can buy, which is a lot if you are looking for cheap knock-off items from China. Hello Kitty spelled many different ways and Mickey Mouse ashtrays. I found bottles of rice wine that I had been looking for but then I began to wonder if it really was 100% rice wine. We now have a new shopping rule: No buying discount food items set up on a pallet sitting in the grass.
The hawker stands, however, are fair game as long as something looks boiled, steamed or fried enough to kill the hardiest of bacteria. Which led us to try a famous Roti burger, a Malaysian sandwich that was supposedly banned in Singapore. We do not know why and, in fact, thought they were still outlawed, but there they were. Some sort of marinated ground chicken or beef patties grilling in grease.
It is fairly simple. You make an omelet, add the patty and a slice of cheese, and then wrap the patty in the egg. Add two kinds of sauce — chili sauce and a mystery sauce that might be mayonnaise — and place the omelet into a toasted hamburger bun with margarine. It could be a winning entry for This Is Why You’re Fat.
Elysia had an instant craving for tea eggs and steamed peanuts. Maybe next week I can try the steamed cakes.
Tea eggs. Apparently 7-11 in Taiwan sells 40 million per year.
Steamed cakes
Bags of steamed peanuts
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what is story with eggs? love the pretty steamed cakes. are they as tasty as they are pretty? what is in them? are they cake? are they filled with red bean paste and whatnot? and i want some steamed peanuts.
I did not try the eggs but may try one next week. They’re hardboiled, cracked, then put in hot tea that might have something like Five Spice. The cakes are just cake but have not had one yet. I don’t think they’re filled but I will have to conduct more fact-finding missions.
OK, now I’m hungry! Good thing I’m getting dim sum this morning.
The burger is called a Ramly burger, and apparently you can only find them in Singapore in these outdoor markets. I guess because of their itinerant nature, it’s harder to enforce the ban. The sauces are mayo, chili sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Not as flavorful as I thought they’d be, given all that hype, but I’m glad we got to try it.
Sadly, my experience with those particular cakes has been that they are much prettier than they actually taste. Now you have me craving tea eggs though– yum!