I have always wondered how long congee hawkers take every morning to cook their pots of rice porridge. It must take a lot of time and patience to cook it – which means they would have to wake up in the wee hours of the morning, every morning, to prepare it. It’s definitely not an easy job to manage, especially since most of them still use the conventional method of cooking their porridge over large stoves of fire.
Currywurst is what you must try to grab a bite of when you are in Germany, especially Berlin. I had my first authentic taste of Currywurst in Berlin all by myself. The weather, I remember, was cold, and the sausages turned cold within a minute. Nevertheless, the lingering curry taste was memorable and the spiced ketchup helped to warm up my lonely heart.
Pork floss buns used to be the craze about fifteen years ago, when the Bread Talk Group emerged in the market. Back then, their buns were relatively medium-sized (not big, but not too small either) and consumers loved to watch the bakers knead their dough behind the open-concept kitchens.
Spanish paella is the national dish of Spain, originating from the Valencian community in the country and popular among the Spanish beyond this community. Paella is a really flexible dish that combines saffron-cooked rice with many different types of ingredients, including seafood, vegetables and beans, depending on which of these are available where the locals stay – similar to how people in other countries try to use the freshest ingredients available to cook their rice with.
It all started when we were both staying in the UK back in 2010. Packets of what were termed as ‘Singapore Noodles‘ were commonly seen on the shelves of many supermarkets – Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury, Waitrose, Tesco. We were at first curious about how they tasted, since we’ve never heard of such a dish in our life before, even though we are both true blue Singaporeans. After a while, the curiosity gradually washed off us and we decided the amount of cash required to buy a vacuum-packed box of rice vermicelli was just too extravagant, given our cash-strapped lifestyle. (Ya right…)
