Man don’t live on meat alone

When you’re used to eating meat, beef and chicken you feel like eating alien food when you’re served with a vegetable dish. I eat anything, if ever I eat more vegetables than beef. I try to eat healthy, even if it doesn’t look that way. Of course, I have my usual cravings, like cheese, pizza and chocolates. I’m all alone and the least I could do is enjoy what I eat.

There are so many vegetable dishes you can cook and eat in Singapore. I sometimes have difficulties on how to prepare certain vegetable, just so I can have some variety with it. I love bok choy and mushrooms. My favorite’s always been the Portobello mushrooms. I just grill them with salt pepper and EVOO and put them in a toasted bun with lettuce and tomatoes and drizzle it with balsamic vinegar. That’s what I call a vegetarian burger.

The mushroom, when grilled, tastes like meat. Some people marinade them with the balsamic vinegar already, but I don’t like them to burn easily, but the taste of caramelized Portobello is also delish.

Another favorite of mine is a combination of wild mushrooms. I sauté them with onions and some garlic, wait till their golden brown then add more EVOO then mixed it with my spaghetti. To add richness to it, I sometimes use butter and cream then put some truffle oil.

My truffle oil is well hidden in my pantry. It’s so expensive I only use it when I’m in bad need of good food. And I don’t use it on any ordinary mushroom. I make sure that my mushrooms deserve that kind of treatment. I love shitake, chanterelle, oyster and porcini with my mushroom pasta. I can tolerate canned tomatoes on my pasta, but I wouldn’t eat canned mushrooms with my pasta. No matter how good it looks.

My friends say that I’m having a relationship with my food. I don’t care. Because food makes me happy, and food doesn’t judge.

Coffee and a Butter-sugar toast

I’m not a morning person. I barely have patience in the morning. That’s why I don’t usually talk in the morning, until I get my daily dose of tea tarik and some French toast. I cook my own French toast, so I just bring them with me and get my tea tarik on the way. But last week, my friend asked me if we can get breakfast first before going to work. Its 10am, that’s past my breakfast and would mean that I’m on my 2nd tea. I still accompanied her and we made our way to this famous Singaporean breakfast place.

Tea Tarik means “pulled tea”. It tastes sweet because they use condensed milk instead of ordinary sugar. Some still put sugar on theirs, but I like mine without the added sugar. That’s going to be too sweet for me.

She also got me those buttered-sugar toasts. Maybe because I haven’t had buttered toast in awhile but this bread is really good. It wasn’t too sweet or too buttery. The outer part is crusty, but the inside part of the bed is so soft, and not saggy at all. The butter is melted on the bread with sprinkles of sugar on top.

I liked it a lot. With the tea, I totally forgot that this is my second breakfast already. The toast is thicker than the usual slice of bread. Maybe that’s why the butter didn’t turn the bread saggy. The sugar on top was not burnt, but it didn’t taste raw.

I’m not sure why I haven’t been going to this place for so long, because I know they offer simple and tasty breakfast options. So, I guess enough of French toast for now and hello, butter-sugar toast.

Vegetarian-Singapore style

When I was little, my mom never had a problem with me eating my vegetables. I love it as much as I love my fried chicken and hotdogs. I even eat the slimy okra and the hard to swallow bitter melon. When I moved to Singapore, vegetables became one of my favorite foods.

Because of its ethnic background, vegetarian food is being offered here everywhere. Even if you go to a steak house, there will always be a vegetarian dish on their menu. I don’t mind eating vegetables whenever I eat out, it’s a good alternative to what’s usually on the table.

One of the most under-rated vegetable is the Kangkung (water spinach). It’s super cheap and in the Philippines, there’s a season where there’s an abundant of Kangkung in the river that anyone can just grab and cook it. In Singapore, they like their kangkung with dried shrimp mixed with shrimp paste. They stir fry it with a little bit of soy to add color.

I don’t like it saggy or drowning in oil. I can eat Kangkung even if it’s just blanched in boiling water, without any seasoning at all. Some, however just to make it look more expensive will add tomato or chili sauce.

Another vegetarian dish favored by the locals is Terong Belado. It’s a poor man’s version of the Ratatouille. It’s actually Eggplant in tomato sauce. Eggplants are often eaten with something else. They’re not exactly the main component in a dish. But this vegetarian dish main focus is the eggplant.

Anyone can cook this dish. You just have to grill the eggplant and then sauté tomatoes in garlic, onions and let it simmer till the water from the tomatoes evaporates. You usually just spread the tomato sauce on the eggplant and put slivers of basil just to liven up the taste. I serve this dish to my friends but I add up some breadcrumbs with parmesan cheese and put it for a few minutes in the oven. The cheese will melt and it’ll form a crust on the eggplants. Yummy!

There are so many vegetarian dishes in Singapore. If you want to eat healthy, or to avoid the monotony of meat-eating all the time, then I recommend you try out some of these dishes.