ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

Keradok: Bean Sprouts salad with colored prawn crackers in peanut sauce Grilled Rice in Banana Leaf, tempe, kangkong, chicken in green chili sauce Deep fried Ikan Nila [Tilapia] fish Corn and Potato Fritters Chicken with Green Chili sauce As Singapore becomes a cosmopolitan city, we might paradoxically have less interesting international fare due to purely commercial circumstances. Most restaurants would stick to the tried and true recipes for they know that these will always be in demand. Thus expect more Ramen, Teppanyaki and Sushi places. Expect a Korean restaurant to always have Kim Chi and Gin Seng Soup while the Chinese will have their La Mian noodles and assorted dumplings. For Indonesian restaurants in Singapore, the tried and true and boring mean dishes like Ayam Penyet [fried chicken flattened with a knife], Sop Buntut [Oxtail Soup] and deep fried Gourami fish. Or we also have the Nasi Padang restaurants with their little plates of assorted meat and vegetables. But recent...

1. Freshly brewed Kopi Luwak 2. In the packaging of the kopi luwak, the story of its origin 3. The certificate, and serial number of the 10g kopi luwak satchel 4. Rawon dish: salted egg, chili paste, shrimp cracker, cucumber, and bean sprouts 5. The rich consomme of beef and buah keluak the poisonous seed To my many American friends who find their breakfast coffee as unexciting as their Budweiser Light, I recommend a cup of Kopi Luwak coffee. The Luwak, a species of Civet Cat ( Paradoxurus hermaphroditus ) that lives in the coffee plantations of Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi islands of Indonesia has a nose for selecting only the best (in terms of ripeness and nutrition)coffee berries. In the process it deposits the undigested beans on the jungle floor where they are eagerly picked up by the locals. Somehow the stomach acids and enzymes of the Luwak turns these beans into arguably the best tasting coffee in the world. And definitely the rarest. A cup of certified-authentic kopi luwak c...

Of all the cuisines in the world that I have experienced, my favorite is the cuisine of the Indonesian islands. Indonesia is a vast archipelago of 17000 islands stretching 2000 miles and more from New Guinea to Sumatra, from Sulawesi to Kalimantan. The great diversity in people, language, culture brings forth great diversity in cuisine. Nasi Padang is steamed white rice accompanied by a variety of meat, fish and vegetable dishes. 'Nasi' means 'rice' in Indonesian and 'Padang' is a town on the island of Sumatra where this dish is said to have originated. The people of Sumatra, being part of a culturally distinct Riau archipelago are more akin to the Malays of Singapore and Malaysia than to the Javanese and Balinese next door . So Nasi Padang is also a common dish in Singapore and Malaysia. Unfortunately, the standard of Nasi Padang in Singapore has deteriorated so much, that I find most of the stalls serving almost inedible Nasi Padang. No more only sold by smal...