Still Feeling Peckish

People can be so annoying. I was in the condo lift last night and this young brash expat-type (non-local) Millennial was having difficulties figuring out the lift system. The building has private lifts that you can access the floor only if you have intercommed the home owner. He was griping that “Singapore is such a stupid place. The people try to be so high tech but they can’t make anything work.” And when I helped him to use the intercom system to get the lift to his floor, there was nary a word of thanks…I seethed for the rest of the night because he didn’t only diss my country, he also acted like I was a completely invisible and useless part of the population. His girlfriend must have felt bad because she was trying to point out “Oh look! Toshiba! See it’s not Singapore’s fault!” Of course, extremely uncharitable thoughts were running through my mind about how his home country is actually an epitome of how things don’t actually work. It’s seldom to see such arrogance and entitlement  but it becomes hard not to build up racial prejudices from encounters like this.

I don’t think I’m a rampant nationalist but I happen to be secretly proud of my shiny little city state country. Of course I reserve the right to complain against the “gahmen” and various quirks that exist in this place. And when it comes to food, I’m so grateful that I live in Singapore. I was just watching Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” which featured his seventh visit to Singapore. He paid tribute to the tremendous food culture here and also the absolute passion for food among the locals. We don’t need to look too far for great meals at any time of the day (yes and even in the dead of the night!). I truly believe that we have better street food here than many restaurants in many parts of the world. I do have my own favorites however and nothing makes me happier than remaking these recipes to be low carb friendly. The great thing about beef noodle soup is that it doesn’t really need much tweaking – I just do a simple Shirataki noodle substitute for the thick white rice noodle that usually goes into this dish.

This beef soup is probably Hainanese in origin. The Hainanese form the 5th largest dialect group among the Chinese in Singapore and were relatively late immigrants from the Chinese diaspora. Because the other dialect groups were already established in commerce and other more lucrative industries, the Hainanese immigrants ended up in the food industry, becoming cooks, waiters and bus boys. They were credited with bringing in the coffee shop (kopitiam) culture into Singapore as well as some of Singapore’s more famous food icons such as Chicken Rice, Hainanese pork chop and even the Singapore Sling was created by a famous Hainanese bartender in the Raffles Hotel.

Hainanese beef noodles usually comes in a soup version as well as a dryer version that has a thick gravy over the noodles instead of a clear soup. Both versions are rich and tasty; the thick gravy version usually features meatballs whereas the clear soup version features other cuts of beef like beef tendon or beef tripe, which is what I have included here. This recipe is for 8 people and a dish like this, because it takes so long to prepare, is probably worth doing when you have a small crowd of people to feed.

For Singapore food purists, I have to apologise for taking the liberty of using a ginger dipping sauce to pair with the sambal chili dipping sauce that actually has its roots in chicken rice condiments. Ginger and beef is such a nice pairing and I couldn’t help the urge to tweak this part of the recipe. The sambal chili sauce can be easily found in any supermarket in Singapore.