Saturday, June 09, 2007

Fry! Wanton Me(e)

My parents have gone to Malaysia on a little trip with some family friends (part of a tour group), leaving me and my brother at home, alone. Possibly the first time I have been left home alone ever since I was born, heh. It's an interesting experience, but then again it's only for 2 days, so I can still subsist on whatever little I manage to find to fill my stomach. Makes me wonder if I will survive when I'm old and have no one to look after me; I'll probably wither and rot away and still be picky about food ("I hate the chicken rice from the coffeeshop, the chicken's too hard.." - one of my common complaints about outside food).

I decided to go out today because it's easier to find good food when you're out, as opposed to being stuck at home and choosing between instant noodles and the food from the coffeeshop, which, while edible, is not particularly enjoyable. I headed for Sunshine Plaza, mainly because KKnM had a release yesterday which included this cute Justice T-shirt which tempted me to buy it. The secondary purpose of the trip was to try the apparently famous and really good zha yun tun mian (wonton noodles with deep fried wonton).

The T-shirt was already sold out when I got there; guess it's not that much of a surprise since it's really nice (the purple of Justice and charcoal grey of the shirt matches nicely, and is much prettier than the Freedom variants the store also had in light and dark blue). Just as well it was out, because the price, after my not-so-subtle inquiry, turned out to be $39.90, which kind of exceeds what I would rationally fork out for a T-shirt, Gundam or no Gundam (or how purple the Gundam is). I have a gazillion wants but only can satisfy a handful, but I've gotten used to that. Somehow you tend to appreciate things more when you have scarce resources to distribute. Though it would be really nice to have all of them, still.

Next stop, Parklane Zha Yun Tun Mee Stall (I think that's the name, what a mouthful). I think it definitely lived up to the stuff I've heard about it, though the servings were a little small, and even though I got the larger version (at $4 as opposed to $3 for the smaller serving) it was only about enough to fill me up.


For me the plate of noodles was pretty all-rounded goodness; delicious in all aspects, unlike some noodle stalls that tell you it's their chilli that is the best (the effect of which, for someone like me who doesn't eat chilli, is kind of lost, and the rest of the noodles - without chilli - isn't all that edible) or when the wonton are delicious but the noodles are like decidedly tasteless rubber bands. Let's break the plate of noodles down into its individual elements:

Noodles are light and springy, not too tough/rubbery, and they don't form unwieldy clumps at the bottom of your plate, so they're easy to handle. A generous amout of dark sauce forms a sweet coating around the noodles, thick with the redolent scent of mushrooms (I couldn't tell what else was in it because the mushroom aroma was pretty much all I could detect heh); no lard used here, but still delicious and fragrant without being cloying. The roast pork was a little stiff, but contained almost equal proportions of lean and fatty meat, the fat portions almost crunchy (like the middle portion of pork satay), and aromatic with the scent of the slightly charred exterior. Vegetables are like normal vegetables (not much to surprise one, there). The noodles come with a bowl of clear soup that is light with the taste of wontons and refreshing to wash down the noodles with; floating in the soup were two cooked wonton that were not too bad. But certainly the highlight of the meal is the handful of deep fried yun tun, golden and crispy. The wonderful thing about them is how they have so much crunch, shattering in your mouth when you bite into them, and yet after a moment the fried skin seems to evaporate, melting on your tongue into barely perceptible flakes, rather than persist as sharp fragments that dig into the gums. The sheer delight of the deep fried skin almost makes you forget about the filling, but it's not overlooked by the makers of the noodles, being nice and meaty, a good accompaniment to the skin.

Haha, on and on I go. But I really liked the noodles, and will probably return for more. They make a good cup of tea too. Apparently there's another branch behind Bugis, just beside Liang Seah Street; I happened to chance on it while hoping to try the Hong Kong Iced Red Bean at Ah Chew's Desserts, but alas, the dessert place was too crowded with no seats available.

The rest of the day was spent strolling around the Bugis area before I went to Orchard and walked around there too. Had dinner at the Lucky Plaza food court, which has a stall serving excellent claypot rice (and other claypot/hotplate foods).

On the way home, I happened to turn my head and saw this very nice cloud formation in the evening sky. I always marvel at the beautiful shapes that clouds make, and one of the main reasons why I keep thinking of getting a digital camera is so that I can take photos of beautiful clouds and sunset skies with the camera.


Watched Zodiac on Wednesday with G and L. I liked the movie, though it's hard to pinpoint exactly what I liked about it. Perhaps it was just that this movie is so unlike the usual blockbuster you go and watch, sitting down for two, three hours to be dazzled by action, adventure, magic, computer-generated dazzle; this movie almost seems like a documentary, an essay of real events, of life. It's like the difference between reading a Dan Brown (or any fantasy novel, for that matter) as opposed to reading (can't think of an example) something not so exciting, but still more meaty and satisfying in that you could well imagine yourself in such a situation. Kind of difficult to explain, but it was definitely quite enjoyable. The acting was great, too, combined with a tight script, with many moments of suspense, that somehow never manages to bore you even though with such narrations of historical events it can get rather yawn-inducing; that's a good thing. The scriptwriters also throw in many moments of levity that help add the human dimension to the characters, as they find humour in the face of fear and uncertainty. I was bugged by the fact that I found the actor for Bill Armstrong (one of the police investigators) extremely familiar but couldn't put a name to the face. I thought it might be Edward Norton, but at the credits found that it was actually Anthony Edwards (Dr Greene, from E.R., though it's difficult to recognise him as he looks taller and seems to have more hair in the movie lol).

I think I've typed more than I should today; seems that I'm having a bit of verbal diarrhoea.

Avaris / 6/09/2007 09:44:00 PM

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