McCheeky

Blogarhythm: Top Jimmy - Mean Street (covering Van Halen)

Tsukiji Market

Spoiler alert: not advised reading for those who can't stomach the idea of "real" food!

10th July 2010: Up at 6am to sleepily jump on the train to the Tsukiji Fish Market, only a few stops and a short walk away.

I knew we were going in the right direction because of all the old men with wellington boots and wicker baskets.

Although we didn't arrive in time for the auctions, there was still fearsome activity underfoot, and a seemingly infinite selection of seafood fresh from the boat.


The prize catch is of course the tuna. A fish may have lost it's life, but there's something terrific yet beautiful in the way it it is treated with such reverence.


The true pleasure in visiting the market comes afterwards ... finding a nearby sushi restaurant to enjoy the morning's catch in the best way possible.

The Chutoro was divine as could be expected, but the real surprise was the Kampachi which absolutely knocked my tastebuds out of the ballpark. And even weeks later the thought of the Uni+Ikura sushi immediately makes my mouth water in anticipation of the salty creaminess!


Which leaves me with only one question: is the princely ahi and maguro tuna in ANY way related to the sad excuse for nutritious cardboard that ends up in tins on the supermarket shelves?



Blogarhythm: Fresh - The Lost Fingers

NB: I am retro-blogging Tokyo which is why this post is a little delayed

Trending Groceries #twiglets

In Australia, kids are called vegemites in honour of that most delicious of gastronomic inventions - yeast extract. In the UK, children have Marmite. Is it the same? Better? The debate rages.

Bitter & salty - whether you bat for the Vegemite or Marmite team, kids can't get enough of it. Which is really weird when you consider these are the same kids who baulk at a single brussel sprout or any cheese that hasn't had all hint of character resoundly flogged out of it.

In 1929, some clever bastard (M. Rondalin) realized you can't run around all day with a slice of bread in your hand and had the genius idea of baking convenient little breadsticks smothered in yeast extract. Twiglets were born and the rest is history..

The problem is that unless you live in one of those yeast-extract addicted countries, Twiglets are as rare to find as, well, yeast extract.

So when I find them on a supermarket shelf, they are a must buy. I emptied the shelf at a local Cold Storage to get the picture below.




Clip for this post: There ain't 'alf been some clever bastards - Ian Dury & the Blockheads

See also: Trending Groceries #cider

Casuarina Curry

Google Street View is pretty amazing. Here's my favourite prata place. Local and also one of the best in Singapore;-)

View It's a Prata Map in a larger map

Soundtrack for this post? Eat 'Em and Smile - David Lee Roth

Trending Groceries #cider

You know when your local supermarkets and shops never stock one of your favourite things?

But you search the shelves on every visit anyway (just in case).

And when you do find it (even though you weren't really expecting to) you just have to buy it.

And you hope that somewhere back in the warehouse an alarm went off, and the clerks are leaping into action..

Smithers, we're spiking on sales of X. Hurry man, there's no time to waste: Reorder! Replenish! We must never go out of stock again.

Rationally, your "consumer activism" is hardly a blip on the radar/grain of sand in the Sahara. But maybe it's more like tweeting to your grocery manager, and hoping you'll kick off a "trending groceries" list to get their attention.

Well, I thought I'd start a list of my own "trending groceries". Today: cider..

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#1: #cider

So rare to find in Singapore. For the past few years I've been unconsciously checking on every visit to my local NTUC Fairprice.

And then one fortuitous day I found a Pipsqueak 4-pack sitting on the shelf like a poor orphan. I had to adopt it of course, and have been back every week to save more of of it's brothers and sisters.

Oh boy, got to get one ...Zimplistic Rotimatic

This sounds great, and congrats to the winners of Start-Up@Singapore 2009 for the Zimplistic Rotimatic.

But I want to know ... can it also do the perfect prata?

Chapati or roti is a staple in Indian diet. Yet it can take over 30 minutes to prepare a simple meal of roti. Repeating this at least three times every day is a cumbersome process.

Zimplistic’s invention is an elegant automatic roti-maker set to be the rice cooker of India. With a push of a button, the roti-maker can mix, make and bake rotis from just the addition of water and flour to the machine.

Zimplistic’s founder Pranoti Nagarkar Israni is no stranger to product design. Only in her 20s, she left her job at a leading electronic manufacturer to start-up on her own. She graduated from NUS and majored in mechanical engineering. Zimplistic aims to go one step further by developing more innovations such as the roti-maker, to make every meal more convenient to make and consume.

Potatoes need garlic

Last time I wrote about real garlic toast. Garlic really is the wunderkind of the kitchen. Potatoes? Mmmmmm....

l'amour de l'ail

As I found in Leon: Ingredients and Recipes garlic: you either like it, or you're completely nuts about it. Well I must be nuts. Whether it is sweet delicious nuggets in the best Bak Kuh Teh, or sliced in your favourite Thai stir fry, garlic claims its' place as one of the four essential pillars of great cuisine (along with salt, pepper and chili). One of my most memorable dining experiences was at the Stinking Rose in San Francisco (they have a great cookery book available).

But as usual, simple is best. I don't think there is anything better than fresh bread toasted with virgin olive oil, and rubbed with fresh garlic before immediate consumption. Warm, crisp on the outside, soft on the inside with the sharp pungency of fresh, raw garlic.

Mmmmmmmm....

Tu Plang, Unit and the Green Papaya

I've had Regurgitator's Tu-Plang and Unit since when I was working in Sydney around 98/99. These albums are classics. I love their sound, and the lyrics are smart. They still get a regular listen, and that's not going to stop. In a twist, I saw recently on the Food Lover's Guide to Australia that Quan's mother established a Vietnamese restaurant in Brisbane called Green Papaya, and it has great reviews. It was Hanoi-born Lien Yeomans's dream come true - opening her own restaurant. At Brisbane's Green Papaya she cooks dishes from North Vietnam. She says she has her rock star son Quan to thank for her fame (he’s with the band Regurgitator) but we think it’s her recipes, each one linked to a personal story from her incredible life.

So next time I'm in Brisbane...


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