Sometimes I Eat Chinese Food

which I cook.

Found a box of Hainanese Chicken Rice mix in the cupboard today. It was like a craft kit, but food. The label said, "Best before Febuary 2007". In keeping with my tradition of eating expired Asian food, I said, "Well, then, it's about time we cooked it up!"

So I did.

Even though I felt very low-class throwing frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts into the stock pot. Sacrilege, yes, but I swear, I did not have a whole pullet in my fridge/hen run! Frozen white meat was all I had! Along with the weird unmatching bok choy (and not even baby bok choy, at that).

Jenna came into the kitchen, sniffed and said, "What smells so good, Mum? Can we have it for lunch?"

Ah, the good smells of the clean, light, delicate, subtle Chinese flavourings that are worth eating - ginger, shallots, coriander, garlic, sesame oil. So unlike the bizarre plum sauce, hoisin, kikkoman soy concoctions that are all over the restaurants here.

And right away, I was transported back to that little chicken rice restaurant at (if I remember) Woodlands Avenue 1, where I lunched between visits to schools to counsel the Sad and Bad kids. Their chicken was superior, of course, and I miss their consomme, but this was good enough.

Jenna and Kate wolfed quite a bit of the rice, it was so lovely -

but that chilli sauce was the main thing:

Ah, chicken rice chilli sauce - all tangy and garlicky and wonderful. I miss Mum's chilli sauce collection - she always had at least 5 or 6 different kinds of chilli sauce in her fridge to accompany the different dishes that required them. Oh, too have a different kind (Mum says, "the right kind") of chilli to eat with different dishes! Yes, there is such a thing as the wrong kind of chilli - in Singapore, entire meals have been written off as complete failures because the cook was careless with the chilli sauce. But I should talk - I, who indiscriminately (and somewhat desperately) pour vast quantities of generic "red pepper flakes" from my Costco-size bottle, on almost everything I eat here that isn't a dessert.

So yes, I am biased towards Indonesian/Malaysian food, but I will also eat Chinese food sometimes, especially when the chilli is right. The day will come when I will cook again from scratch - and put away my Red Pepper Flakes for good. But it will be for a while yet, and until then, hurray for premixes. Hey, I think there's a box of Mee Rebus premix in that same cupboard, best used by 6 Jan 2007.

Perfect.