And now: eating AND cooking in Singapore!

Living in a hotel and being forced to eat out every night is not really a hardship, especially not when you’re doing so in Singapore where there is sure to be yet another hawker centre, food court, cafe or restaurant around every corner, all of them offering a bewildering array of dishes to choose from. But, as evidenced by this site and my former life as a caterer and chef, I like to cook. What with the crazy few days before leaving South Africa and nearly three weeks in a hotel, I hadn’t cooked a thing for about a month. The closest I came was making peanut butter and apricot jam sandwiches on the floor in our hotel room for Andrew to take to work. Peanut butter and jam sandwiches are delicious, but a three-year-old can make them with eyes closed (maybe; perhaps I should get my sister-in-law to do an experiment with my three-year-old niece). Which is to say, my daily sandwich-making hardly provided me with any sense of culinary achievement.

The walk home from the shops, along a canal

However! Buying random, unfamiliar vegetables, packages, bottles and jarred things and trying to figure out what to do with them in order to end up with an edible dinner – now that does provide me with a sense of achievement, even more so if the dinner is not just edible but actually good. We moved into our flat – called a condo here – over the weekend, and before we’d even unpacked anything, we’d been to our local grocery shop and stocked up on some familiar staples, and a whole lot of other things that seemed like they might be good and weren’t too expensive (in case they weren’t good).

Inaugural dinner, much more average than the word "inaugural" implies

After weeks of eating out we both just wanted vegetables, so I roasted a big tray, tossed it in a spicy peanut sauce (that possibly contained cuttlefish; I think I accidentally bought cuttlefish-laced chilli sauce but didn’t tell Andrew and he didn’t seem to mind) and called it dinner. It was edible, but not great; it appears Chinese green carrots and white radishes are perhaps not best when roasted (although, please do correct me if I'm wrong).

Dinner number two - much better!

But I was not discouraged, and dinner number two fared much, much better. We managed to find proper whole-wheat spaghetti, to my delight, and tossed the hot, cooked spaghetti with sautéed shiitake mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, Chinese spinach, crushed garlic, lime juice, soy sauce and olive oil. I topped the pasta with enormous toasted pumpkin seeds, and voila – dinner. So good. The kind of thing I would’ve made back in Cape Town, but using lots of local ingredients (that is, as local as things can be when not much is grown on this small island).

Biggest pumpkin seeds I've ever seen

Mushroom spaghetti with spinach and lime

Serves 3 or 4

Most of the ingredients here can be easily substituted. For example, you could use normal spaghetti, or a different shape pasta; use sunflower seeds instead of pumpkin; replace the mushrooms with any other variety of mushrooms you can find; use English spinach or rocket instead of Chinese spinach; and while the lime juice is lovely, lemon will also work. Reduce the garlic if you’re not used to too much.

150g shiitake mushrooms

180g enoki mushrooms

2 cloves garlic, crushed

Large bunch of Chinese spinach

Juice of 3 tiny limes, or 1 average lime

75g pumpkin seeds

4 tbsp olive oil

Salt

250g whole-wheat pasta

4 tbsp soy sauce

Pepper

First do your prep: slice the mushrooms, crush the garlic, cut the spinach up into bite-size pieces, squeeze the lemon juice and toast the pumpkin seeds in a hot oven till golden – watch them, they burn quickly.

Once your prep is done, place a large pot filled three-quarters of the way up with water, a tablespoon of olive oil and a teaspoon of salt over high heat to bring to the boil.

Meanwhile, place a large, heavy-bottomed pan over high heat, pour about a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan, and add the shiitake mushrooms. Sauté the mushrooms until dark golden; add the enoki mushrooms and sauté for a few more minutes (skip this step if only using larger mushrooms; the enoki mushrooms should be cooked much less since they’re so small and frail). Remove the pan from the heat and lower the heat to medium.

Your pasta water should be boiling by now – add the spaghetti.

Return the mushroom pan to the heat, adding the spinach and garlic. Sauté for a few minutes until the spinach has wilted. Scoop a few spoonfuls of pasta water into the pan and add the lime juice, soy sauce, another two tablespoons of olive oil and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Give it a good stir and turn the heat as low as it can go.

When the pasta is cooked, drain thoroughly and add to the mushroom pan. Turn the heat up to high and toss the pasta quickly until most of the liquid has evaporated. Remove from the heat and taste – you might need to add a bit of soy sauce or salt, or some more lime juice or pepper. If you do add more liquid, return it to the heat for another minute or two; otherwise, remove from the heat and scrape into a serving dish.

Top with the toasted pumpkin seeds and serve.

Bizghetti, and chana masala with butternut wedges

Simmering chana masala

When I was little, my favourite food in the whole world was spaghetti with my mom’s tomato sauce. Or, as I called it, bizghetti. It was what I wanted to eat every night. As a compromise between me and the rest of the family, my mom made bizghetti about once a week, and my small self would proceed to eat three helpings, more than even my dad.

When we moved to Moscow, I was eight and it was just after the fall of Communism. It was a difficult time for Moscow, with very little available in the shops. As a result, three months before leaving, we packed a big wooden crate full of provisions and sent it to Moscow on a ship, to meet us when we arrived. Amongst those provisions were many tins of tomatoes and packets of spaghetti.

On our way to Moscow, we stopped over in London for a week to do a bit of sightseeing and have a family holiday before the reality of our new life hit us. It was a lovely week, and I remember a good pub lunch one afternoon, but for that whole week we didn’t have spaghetti with tomato sauce once. This was far from ideal, but I thought – well, I just have to wait till we get to our new home. Soon.

Except, not so soon. First there was the ferry over to the Netherlands, and then the three – or maybe four? It all became blurry – day train ride through Eastern Europe, all the way to Moscow. We drank black Russian tea and ate bread, cheese, and cold meats while watching the progressively more derelict country houses pass us by. By this point, it was close to two weeks since I’d last had spaghetti with tomato sauce. It was a bleak situation, but now at least we were ‘home’!

But not so fast. We were in our new city, yes, but not yet in our new flat. Instead, we had to stay in a hotel while we looked at various potential rental flats. At the hotel’s restaurant, I remember mostly being served stale bread, rotten apples and beer (for an eight- and ten-year-old), while shops and kiosks outside the hotel seemed to sell only oranges and Snickers bars. So my sister and I survived on oranges and Snickers bars, which was far from unpleasant, really. But still not spaghetti with tomato sauce. I was by now extremely worried about the bizghetti outlook.

Then, finally, we found our flat – we were moving in and were ecstatic! Even better was that Christmas was fast approaching, and now we would at least be in our own home by Christmastime. Here’s where things get a little ridiculous, though. Upon moving in, it turned out our landlords were still there, slowly packing up. The concept of renting flats was a new one in Moscow at that point, and they didn’t understand that we expected an empty flat on moving day. So while we started moving in, they were busy moving out, and that evening our landlady Vera made us dinner. There we sat, landlords and renters, having dinner together. Looking back now, I think it was probably quite good, but at the time, chicken broth with a hardboiled egg cut floating in it was completely bizarre. My bizghetti-deprived brain couldn’t wrap itself around this dinner.

A few days later, our landlords were finally completely moved out. The flat was really ours now! My mom could commence cooking spaghetti with tomato sauce immediately! Except that there were still only oranges and Snickers bars in the shop (along with, I admit, some bread and possibly eggs), and our huge wooden crate, carefully packed with all sorts of provisions, was stuck in customs.

The next few days were tense. My dad spent his days at customs, trying to get the officials to release our crate without paying ridiculous amount in bribes. My mom was trying to make a home and feed us, and get us excited for Christmas, with very little food and no Christmas tree or presents (all still in the crate). My sister, I am sure, also had her own worries, but I wasn’t aware of them because it was now close to FOUR WEEKS since my last plate(s) of bizghetti. I was edging closer to a meltdown.

And then, a Christmas miracle. On the 23^rd of December, the officials released the crate, my dad managed to get a man with a truck to deliver it to our flat, and late that night, we finally unpacked and set up our Christmas tree and presents. And all our glorious food – tinned and packaged food had never looked so good. It was too late that night for bizghetti, but we all knew I had to have it as soon as possible. And that’s how we ended up eating my mom’s delicious spaghetti with tomato sauce on our first Christmas Eve in Moscow. It is still one of the best Christmas meals I’ve ever had.

I still love a plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce, but I’ve branched out as I’ve grown older and my palate wants more variety. Anything tomato-sauce-y remains my number one choice of comfort food, but it doesn’t have to come with spaghetti. This chana masala is a case in point. I cook the chickpeas in lots of tomato, and cook it down to be nice and thick, so it gives me the tomato-y comfort I need, but with all the lovely spices to make it interesting.

While mashed potatoes and other warm, soothing food may be others’ first choice for comfort, dishes like this chana masala is mine. As well as, of course, the occasional bowl of bizghetti.

Comfort food dinner

Chana masala with butternut wedges

This is very far from being a traditional chana masala, so much so that I should probably come up with a different name altogether. I’m not very good at thinking up names for dishes, though, so chana masala it is. It’s been tweaked and changed to suit my tastes – much, much more tomato than is traditional, and the spices are all wrong. But I like it.

Serves 2 – 3

1 small butternut, cut into quarters and deseeded

Vegetable oil

Salt and pepper

1 tbsp butter

1 small onion, chopped

3 tbsp tomato paste

2-3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

Large knob of ginger, finely chopped

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp garam masala

¼ tsp chilli powder

1 cup cooked chickpeas

1 x small tin chopped plum tomatoes

Lemon juice

Salt

To serve:

Thick plain yoghurt

Chutney – I used a fresh homemade coriander and cashew chutney

Coriander leaves

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Place the butternut wedges in a foil-lined baking tray, drizzle with oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place in the oven to roast slowly for 45 minutes to an hour, until the butternut is soft and cooked through, and caramelizing at the edges. I leave the skin on, I like it and I’m too lazy to peel it, but you can peel it if you prefer.

While the butternut is roasting, heat a large pan over medium heat and melt the butter in it. Add the onion and cook till starting to caramelize, about 20 minutes. Now add the tomato paste and leave the pan for a few minutes, for the tomato paste to caramelize a bit. Don’t be tempted to stir it around!

Once the tomato paste has caramelized a bit, add the garlic, ginger, and spices, and sauté it all together for a few more minutes. Add the chickpeas and chopped tomatoes, give it a good stir, and reduce the heat to medium-low. Let the mixture simmer away slowly to thicken and develop the flavours while the butternut finishes cooking.

Caramelized butternut wedges

When the butternut is cooked, taste your chickpeas for seasoning, and add lemon juice and salt as needed. I tend to add a lot of lemon juice, and very little salt – this is one of the few dishes that I don’t like very salty.

And now you’re ready to eat. I eat this dinner out of a large soup plate, butternut wedge on the bottom topped with chana masala, then yoghurt, fresh chutney, and a big handful of coriander. When I finish that I just eat the rest of the chana masala straight out if the pan, and then I lick the pan.