quattordicine

Hullo to readers old and new.

I have been living in a hotel room in Singapore for two weeks. All in all, a remarkably restful experience, and a remarkably sensible way to deal with a pandemic. This is what I ate. As always, a reminder that this newsletter is free and a labor of love. If you like it, the best way to show your support is to share it with someone else.

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1. 

Breakfast is nasi lemak with fried chicken. There is a lot of chicken. The rice tastes coconutty and metallic. There is neither coffee nor tea. 

I think lunch is sweet and sour pork. The sauce is very red, painfully sweet, and painfully sour, so much so that I cannot tell what it is coating. It comes with about a pound of  rice, and some curiously yellow broccoli. Maybe a local cultivar. 

Dinner is spaghetti in bechamel. It tastes like it came from somewhere very far away. There is meat, a cross between a curry, a goulash, and a stir fry. Multiculturalism is glorious. There is a slab of mango pudding, the color of a yellow cab. 

I decide I am not willing to consume this quantity of meat every day for the next two weeks, so I call the front desk and ask if I might get put on the vegetarian meal plan instead. Ominous silence. “I call you back.” 

Ten minutes later: “OK, we change you to vegetarian, but no more changes after this, ah?” Hm. 

2.

I awake to find that I have been labeled a Chinese Vegetarian. The one is undeniably true, the second is functionally correct, but the label somehow seems more like a threat than a statement. 

Breakfast is fried noodles, and a dish of broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. The vegetables are tender but not falling apart, submerged in a pool of something thick and translucent. The sauce doesn’t taste of much, but it certainly has body. Perhaps it’s an extra serving of starch. The noodles lack wok hei. The color indicates they have been sauced, but the flavor suggests otherwise. They are topped with steamed bok choy, raw shredded carrots, and raw bean sprouts. There are two steamed buns, compressed and tough. 

Lunch is a pound of steamed rice, some broccoli, and a dish of peppers. I did not know stir fried  bell peppers were a Chinese Vegetarian dish. The peppers were cooked with straw mushrooms and shredded carrots. The combination is original but I’m not sure there’s real synergy. The broccoli is quite al dente and comes with shredded carrots. Both broccoli and peppers are coated in a mild but full-bodied sauce. 

Dinner is a pound of steamed rice, some broccoli, and something deep fried. The broccoli was cooked with some pale mushrooms, and shredded carrots, in a neutral-tasting and barely liquid sauce. The fried objects are a mystery. There is a wrapper and a filling, but I can’t tell what either is made of. The wrapper has a sort of pasty coating, as though these things were wrapped, then dipped in batter. I can’t tell what the coating is either. I look to the sauce for clues, hoping a classic pairing will give the dish away. No luck. 

3.

Breakfast is the same as yesterday, except the bun is large and purple. The noodles and the vegetables taste like leftovers, which did not improve with age. 

I think dinner is meant to be char kway teow. It’s nice that they’re trying to remind us of home. This one is expertly cooked to achieve a total absence of wok hei, or indeed, any other flavor. Unlike the version made by No. 18 Zion Road Fried Kway Teow, this one is made with raw shredded carrots and raw bean sprouts. There is something deep fried, in a red sauce. Is this the same red sauce as on the first day? I cannot tell where the wrapper ends and the filling begins. The wrapper may have dissolved in the sauce, like a demonstration molar in a bottle of coke. What does this imply about the filling? 

4.

Back to small, white buns for breakfast. Still no wok hei. 

Lunch is craggy and very bouncy and comes in red sauce. The bok choy comes with shredded carrots and goji berries. The sauce flows like sweetened condensed milk. 

My mum drops off coffee and rambutans. I sit on the balcony eating the latter, an act that requires my full attention.

Dinner is a pound of fried rice with bok choy and some kind of meat replacer in a brown sauce. The meat replacer is wrapped in nori. Perhaps it is meant to simulate the black chickens prized for their tonic qualities. The sauce tastes brown, as though it is a simulacrum itself. Dessert is a slab of mango pudding.

5.

Yesterday’s mango pudding sits accusingly on the table. I contemplate eating that instead of another fried noodle breakfast. The rosette of whipped cream on the top has held its shape perfectly, so it’s probably still good in spite of not having been in the fridge. 

A pound of steamed rice has 600 calories. There is also broccoli, and vegetable protein in a brown sauce. This might be the same brown sauce I from two nights ago. I wonder if they are using a master stock. The nuggets of protein are exceptionally toothsome. Miraculously, there are no shredded carrots. Instead, goji berries and pale, squeaky mushrooms. Sauce thickness: nasal drip. 

Dinner comes with a bag of madeleines. I try one, but it does not inspire a reverie.

6.

Breakfast includes slabs of tofu in a brown sauce. They must be using a master stock. This one actually tastes like something. It tastes like I’m eating white pepper by the tablespoon. Tofu can take on an endless array of textures. This is the texture of a stick of lip balm. 

I am out of rambutans. My mum drops off some fried rice, a hunk of pandan chiffon, two passion fruits, and a knife. My palate reels from the assault of flavor. 

7.

Things have progressed to their natural conclusion – a dish of shredded carrots, goji berries, bean sprouts, pale mushrooms, and nothing else. Sauce thickness: London Smog. There is also something wrapped in yuba. I cannot tell what the filling is, but at least filling and wrapper are distinct. It does not come in either red or brown sauce. The food supply chain is breaking. 

8. 

Most Chinese kitchens have a house special style of fried noodle – 本楼特色, which explains the unchanging breakfast recipe. But this morning, they used a different kind of noodle, which made it smell like an overheating air conditioner. 

Culinary innovation is when you cook your bok choy with frozen mixed veg instead of shredded carrots. Perhaps they lost the carrot shredder. Perhaps there was a rebellion in the kitchen. Sauce thickness: conditioning shampoo. 

9. 

My first chef told me that consistency was the mark of a great kitchen. The breakfast noodles are extremely consistent. They have found the carrot shredder again. Or maybe they scraped some shredded carrots off the walk-in floor. 

I have eaten the passion fruits. I consider eating the knife. 

My mother comes to the rescue with some roast duck noodles. I am briefly incapable of coherent thought. 

She also brings jackfruit, some longans, and a ripe papaya from the tree she has at home, which I consider ripping apart with my bare hands. 

10. 

The buns were green today. The other thing in the breakfast tray is a mindbendingly accurate replica of airline chicken breast, napped with a clear, tasteless fluid the consistency of something unmentionable. There is a single leaf of bok choy in the noodles.  

At lunchtime the bok choy comes with shredded carrots, goji berries, and squeaky mushrooms. I guess culinary innovation didn’t take. Sauce consistency: jello puree. 

There were two grains of browned rice in the fried rice tonight, and one kernel of charred corn, as if to establish beyond reasonable doubt that they do indeed place it in a wok. I think the cilantro was having a bad day. 

11. 

You can smell jackfruit at thirty paces. The sweetness and intensity make me think of sumptuary laws. 

Lunch is tofu and broccoli and a pound of something that is 72% water and 28% starch, with trace amounts of vitamins and minerals in quantities that are not nutritionally significant. The broccoli comes with more mushrooms and goji berries. Sauce consistency: gesso. The tofu looks innocuous, but smells like the results of an all night bender. When I bite into it, it farts. 

The bell pepper in the fried rice is furtively charred, as though by a cook defying the chef. There is a dish of shredded carrots, shredded daikon, and enoki. The Chinese word for carrot is the same as the Chinese word for daikon. The nori-wrapped meat replacer reappears, in what seems to be a tempura batter. Perhaps this is a sign that it’s actually meant to simulate black bass, but that does not make it taste any better. 

12. 

As I open the door to collect my lunch, I see my next door neighbor walking past with her suitcase. She gives the lunchbox a wistful look. Lunch is a dish of light brown cubes in dark brown sauce (sauce consistency: motor oil). Their master stock does not seem to be improving. Of course, it probably takes years, not days. 

My mother drops off some bak kut teh. I drink it from the thermos, leaning on the balcony railing. The smell turns heads four rooms away. I crunch on the cartilage, relieved that my dogs aren’t here to watch. 

13. 

The breakfast noodles today crunch. Perhaps they’re actually imitation pork cartilage. They can imitate all kinds of meat these days. Frying them must have taken immense skill. There is a dish of baby corn with carrots and mushrooms in a grey liquid that might be dishwater. 

Lunch is carrots, goji berries, bean sprouts, pale mushrooms, and cornstarch, which I think is what the kitchen makes when they aren’t allowed to have broccoli. There is something fried, in red sauce. I would swear I ate this meal a couple of days ago, and check the pile of takeout boxes on the table to be sure. A pound, it seems, is 7,000 grains. I wonder if they mean grains of rice. 

14.

A celebratory dinner. The kitchen has attempted an elaborate construction of something in brown sauce (consistency: raspberry jam). A slab of tofu, topped with bean sprouts, kept in place with a toupee of starch with strange granules suspended in it, like dandruff. I’m touched. They cooked the bok choy with shredded carrots and goji berries in a sauce like sodden velvet, just like the always do. The peas in the fried rice have a wonderful chew, and it is perfectly free of wok hei. I will miss this place. 

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Once again, this newsletter is free and a labor of love. If you like it, the best way to show your support is to share this with someone who’ll like it too.

If you’d like to give it a shout out on social media, you can find me @briocheactually on both twitter and instagram.

best,

tw

p.s. I’d love to buy you a coffee. Drop me a line!