Now that's a cracker!

If you go to the Haitai^TM website you will learn that the Haitai Cheese Cracker is the "Cheese Flavored Legitimate Cracker".

It really is a cracker. No joke.

It's actually a really tasty cracker that could be the lovechild of a Cheezit^TM and a Saltine^TM, but better that either of its "parents". Or maybe that's what the "legitimate" claim is all about. Maybe it's "legitimate" meaning "original" and it's the Haitai Cheese Cracker that gave rise to both Cheezits and Saltines?

In any case, it seems to be very popular with coffee: "You Can Enjoy The light Taste of The legitimate Cracker When You Eat It with coffee" (caps original).

If just coffee and crackers aren't good enough for you though, here are some serving suggestions on the box.

The national pastime

It's kind of a toss-up between shopping and dining.

However, since I'm pretty sure that most of the people I know who have been here for more than three weeks would say it's dining (and that would be nine people out of Singapore's five million residents), I'm going to go with that.

And so begins my first (and still very naïve) post about Singaporean food.

Singapore has plenty of regular restaurants and food shops, but it's most famous for its hawker centers.

Hawker centers are basically open-air food courts with counters offering food from lots of different cuisines. As you walk up to the counter to check out what the stall is selling, the cooks/sellers try hawk their wares. Actually, it can even go a little farther than this and at some hawker centers you may be approached by someone bearing a menu from one of the stands in an attempt to entice you over to their stand to order.

One of our Singaporean colleagues invited the new faculty (and spouses) out for dinner at Makansutra Glutton's Bay. Makan means "food" or "eat" in Malay. So you can sort of think of Makansutra as "How to Eat", but Singapore style.

Glutton's Bay is a sort of a cleaned up mini hawker center. It has really good food stalls that were handpicked by a local food guru named K.F. Seetoh when he re-opened Glutton's Bay a few years ago (the original, in a different location, closed in the 1990s), but it's a good hawker center for beginners because, as our colleague said, it's not as loud or messy as most hawker centers and you can linger over your meal and the food is really good (imperative!). Its smaller size also gives it a nice ambiance and it has a fantastic view of the marina and CBD skyline and the Merlion ... none of which figure into the photos I took that evening. I did take this one of the crazy Noah's ark spaceship casino that opened earlier this summer.

Here's how we ate:

Oyster omelette, which is a fried egg and potato flour mixture that gets nice and crispy (from the potato) but is still soft (from the egg) and topped with small oysters (and cilantro).

Grilled sambal skate with calamansi (the little lime-looking thing that makes really delicious juice) and chili "vinaigrette"

Chicken, beef and lamb (l-r) satay with peanut sauce

Crabrolls

Chili clams and "morning glory" (also called "water spinach")

We ate all of it. And then topped it off with some ais kacang (shave ice) with durian and chendol. It was too dark to take pictures of those, so I'll post photos of another outing for desserts sometime soon.

Food culture is really unbelievable here. It's like a whole nation of foodies. There is food everywhere and there are so many cuisines represented it's astounding. You think you like Chinese food? Well do you like Cantonese? Hakka? Hainanese? Hokkien? Peranakan? Teochew? And that's just some of the more typically local Chinese cuisines, not to mention the varieties of Malay, Indonesian, Indian, and other cuisines I don't even know about yet that constitute Singaporean cuisine.

The cuisine of Singapore is a force to be reckoned with ... a juggernaut to submit to. Ok, so I'm being dramatic (but only a little!) and I don't really mind acquiescing. And since we're waiting for housing and living in the university's executive center with no kitchen of our own, that's a good thing.

More to come ... we've already eaten so much more than this!

Life as a raised zebra

Don't jaywalk.

This is serious business in Singapore. Here's an excerpt from a 2009 police force media release:

"Pedestrians who jaywalk commit an offence that entails a composition amount of S$20/-. If charged and convicted in court, the pedestrian is liable to a fine not exceeding S$1000/- or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months. In the case of a second or subsequent offence, the offender faces a fine not exceeding S$2000/- or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months."

Mind you, the fine in many US cities is considerably higher, it's just that there's no risk of prison time. But does anyone really get put in prison for jaywalking here? I kind of doubt it. However, there's some good signage, and that's the real reason for the post.

The pedestrian is instructed to use the crosswalks.

And here, the crosswalks are called "zebra crossings".

As I have just learned, that's the British English terminology. (Note also the spelling of "offense" in the press release.) The "raised" part? Well, that's because these are a crosswalk + a speed bump.

In my experience, most signs that warn drivers about crossings usually make reference to the thing that's going to be doing the crossing. And I guess this one does too, but with conflicting information: is it a man or a raised zebra?

The British traffic lexicon also includes the entries Pelican, Puffin, Toucan and the (elusive? mythical?) Pegasus crossings, but I've yet to see signs for those here.

I have seen plenty of scofflaws jaywalking their way across the street though.

First impressions

It's eerily clean, orderly, efficient and quiet here.

Those sound like positive things, so why are they disconcerting? Well, they also stand in stark contrast to some of the things we were quite used to before coming here.

So, I love France, and I miss it, and I want to go back like nobody's business but it's also true that spending a couple of years there certainly made me expect a little grit, more than a little noise, some minor chaos -- unless you're at the préfecture in Marseille (then major chaos) -- and long, long waiting times for official business. Of course, after two years there, I can easily see that there are certain advantages that go along with each of those "negative" things (except maybe the noise one ...) and there are plenty of other really great things about France that make me want to go back, but these are some of the aspects of life that you immediately notice are different here. And that feels both nice, and a little weird.

We stepped out of the plane, which had been full (in coach class at least -- I can't say what was going on up in business or first where passengers get to travel in their own little cocoons because they don't let the riff raff up there) into the calm, cool air of Changi airport and followed the signs through the new and sparkly Terminal 3.

It smelled like the Polynesian hotel in Disney World used to smell in the 1980s. Aahh!

The bathrooms were impeccable and had toilet paper, soap and a choice of paper towels or hand dryers. Yes, this is actually something of note for me and James.

There is a special area of immigration for citizens and permanent residents that allows you to scan your ID card the way you'd scan a subway pass and go right on through. Residents-to-be and visitors have to go to the normal immigration counters, which, in this case, were not so normal because none had a line of more than about eight people and it only took about five minutes including waiting for those eight people in front of you.

James passed through immigration first (it's all orderly and "one-at-a-time", except for parents with small children) and barely had time to get a luggage cart (free) before our bags passed by on the luggage carousel.

Where was this strange land where you could get off a 13-hour international flight, go through immigration and get your bags in less than 20 minutes?

The same strange land where you could get a delicious bubble tea in the airport!


Blueberry and honey.

Or go on a walk on the airport nature trail, or swim in the airport hotel pool.

Also the same strange land where getting your work/resident permit takes about 15 minutes (of your time -- there's obviously stuff that gets done before you get there). We went down to the Ministry of Manpower (which they call "MOM") Employment Pass bureau with our paperwork and photos at the appointed time ... well, actually we were a little early. Luckily, there were greeters to help us.

And that went down something like this:

"What, you're 20 minutes early? No problem, may I have your letter?"
[Takes the letter over to one of the electronic registration kiosks and scans the barcode on the letter, returns the letter to us]
"You can go in and wait for your name to appear on one of the screens. When it does, you may go to any available counter."
We were done before our scheduled appointment.

We did have to get fingerprinted as part of that process (image on the back of the card), or thumbprinted, which seems a little intrusive, but I know that foreigners entering the US have to have all their fingers (and palms) scanned so I probably shouldn't feel weird. It's just that this never happened at the préfecture!

(It turns out my thumbs aren't very printable, so clearly I should have chosen a life of crime ... using only my thumbs. I guess there's still time, but Singapore's strict penalties for lawlessness make this a bad time to get my chops.)

After that we took a little stroll around downtown, got some fresh water chestnut juice and some guava juice at a hawker stand (more on these to come) and were amazed that we were able to carry on a conversation out on the street without having our voices drowned out by passing scooters. It seems people are required to keep the muffler on their two-wheeled motorized vehicles here. And it doesn't hurt that all the roads are new and well surfaced -- though far less charming.

All this calmness was a little too much to take so we went to Carrefour and then sat down for an apéro: the Singapore Sling -- cliché, but a drink I have been curious about since Richard Pryor mentioned it in Superman III.


Some liken it to cough syrup, but I beg to differ. It's a tasty blend of gin, cherry brandy, Cointreau, Bénédictine, grenadine, pineapple juice and bitters. I would get another one, but alcohol is insanely expensive here -- like US$25 for a bottle of certain $7 Trader Joe's wines -- so that will have to wait for a special occasion.

But other than the price of wine, so far so good in clean, orderly, efficient and quiet Singapore.



More pictures to come!

Le Mas has moved ...

...to Singapore.

Which means that there are a whole lot of things that I never got around to posting about in France!

I even have a few entries that I started and didn't finish up. Ugh.

Well, I'll have to save those for a rainy day ... some rainy day at some point in the future.

For now, you'll have to read about what's going on nearer to the equator.

If you want money, don't go to the bank

As I was leaving the bank yesterday, having barely managed to get what I had come for, I thought to myself, money is a strange thing in France (at least from the perspective of someone who didn't grow up here). And I mean that in several ways, but getting it and spending it especially.

So, first, a quick primer: euros come in every denomination you'd expect, and then some. There are coins in the denominations of 1-, 2-, 5-, 10-, 20- and 50-centimes, or cents. There are also 1€ and 2€ coins. Finally, there are bills in the denominations of 5€, 10€, 20€, 50€ (and although I've never seen them in real life), 100€, 200€ and 500€.

That all seems normal, but here's where things start to go awry: when you go to the ATM and get out 50 or more (which you might do most times you go to the ATM for reasons that will become apparent later in this post) you pretty much always get a 50€ bill for at least 50 euros of that. This might make you think that it's easy to break a 50 here. And that's where you would be soooooooorely mistaken.

David Sedaris says it much better in When you are Engulfed in Flames, so I'm not even going to try to be clever here, but basically, you're kind of expected to give exact change and use only small bills and coins. Merchants routinely ask you to use change, "Vous n'avez pas de monnaie?" ("you don't have any change?"), instead of what would seem to be a perfectly reasonable bill, like the last time we rented a car and I wanted to pay for the 17€ insurance using a 20€ note.

Where you're supposed to get these small bills and coins when the ATM routinely gives you 50s is not clear.

And it's not as easy as just using a carte bleu or debit/credit card instead of your large bill. A surprising number (again, I mean surprising to me) of merchants don't take cards. I find this so odd because France has been using the carte à puce or "smart card", since the early 90s and while I haven't been able to verify this, I think France has been using those portable card readers (like you now sometimes see in US restaurants) since then too. But, you frequently need to use cash so you make your large ATM withdrawls, and then you think of ways you can break that 50 ...

Or, there's what's behind door #3: you can write a personal check.

Yes, checks are widely accepted -- almost everywhere you can use cash. Even restaurants (and I'm not talking about ticket restaurant or chèque restaurant, which are a whole different thing) will accept a check from your checkbook.

But even le chèque is not foolproof. For several weeks this fall, I ran paid subjects in an ERP experiment and I am finishing up a second study (the reason I went to the bank yesterday). Basically the way it works is that my supervisor writes me a check and in a roundabout way, I pay subjects with this money.

Roundabout? Yes. For several reasons.

First, you can't cash a check in France, unless you're at your bank and you've written the check. (This is actually probably a good idea because the bank can verify how much money is in your checking account.) So, you can deposit the check that your supervisor gives you and then write a check for cash. Unless you didn't bring your checkbook with you because you were planning on cashing your supervisor's check. In that case, you have to go back to the bank the next day.

But it may not work then either.

There are two branches of my bank in Aix. One of them is open from 9h-12h15 and 13h35 - 18h, the other from 8h45 - 12h30 and 14h - 18h. Despite these opening hours, one has teller service only from 9h - 12h15, and the other one has teller service during its morning opening hours and until 16h45 in the afternoon. Of course these pieces of info are not posted, so when you arrive at 16h55, more than an hour before closing time, that's when you learn that you're out of luck. But, the nice person at the reception tells you that when the teller windows are open, you can get any denominations (coins or bills) that you want. Not that this helps you all that much when you have a subject at 9h the next morning and need to be at the hospital before the bank opens to set up the experiment.

So you go back the next day, after your subject, with your checkbook, during teller hours, ready to get your money. And they're out of it. Or at least they only have one 5€-note. Yes, just one 5€-note. That's it. Not only that, but they were only willing to part with ten euros worth of coins, in a 2€, 1€ and centimes combo.

What gives?

In some ways it's not bad, it's an excuse to buy a chocolat so you can get some change, and undoubtedly, sipping that chocolat will help you think of creative ways of breaking those 20s you had to get so that you can end up with some combination that totals 15€.

Silly me, it looks like I sold the bear's pelt before I had killed it (like that? it's the French equivalent of counting your chickens...). I thought I had all my subjects. And then we realized that we really did have two groups of learners ... and that meant getting more subjects to round out the groups. So yesterday, arriving at the bank only minutes after it had opened, I managed to get only three of the six 5€ bills I wanted. It's ok though, it's the weekend and we're in the middle of a cold snap. A chocolat will taste really good tomorrow.

Bom chika wah wah ...

It's time for a little food porn.

Chocolate mousse with its crème anglaise and confit de cédrat.



Ok, so this dessert I'm bragging on isn't entirely homemade. Actually, it's mostly store-bought. I'm using the soft lighting and artificial glow that Picasa have provided me to (almost) hide the traces of the plastic mold that this chocolate dessert came in. (Welcome to the Semi-homemade with Sandra Lee episode of Mas de Bonheur!)

What you should really be looking at, though, is what's on top of the purchased chocolate dessert and crème anglaise. That's homemade confit de cédrat, or citron marmalade.

Last year in Grasse, we saw a citron tree, but I had never seen a fully ripe citron, until James brought this one home from the market.


They're all weird and knobby on the outside, and pithy on the inside.


So what to make?

The tarte lady's fiadone seemed like too much of a challenge. And, besides, we also wanted to see what the citron was like on its own. So candied citron it was ... until I cooked it a little longer than I had planned to and it became citron marmalade.

Citron marmalade
1 citron
sugar
water

Juice the citron and set aside what little juice there is for later. The juice is pretty intense. It was a little like *really* acidic grapefruit juice ... or something that's gross and would make you stay away from citrons. (And you shouldn't do that, because the end result is really tasty.)

Using a sharp knife, remove the outside of the peel in long strips. Cut the swaths of peel lengthwise into narrow strips. Try to resist rubbing the zest all over yourself and save it for the marmalade. (It really does smell that good.) You should also resist eating the rind because in its unprepared form, it doesn't taste as good as it smells.

Actually, there isn't much point in giving a recipe here, because there isn't really one to give. It sort of makes itself.

But in case you're actually reading down to the bottom, basically, you make some candied citrus peel, but with a little less water than you might use if you wanted a syrup. I used something like a little teacup full of sugar to two teacups of water (a scant 1/2 c. to scant 1 c.?). Stir the sugar into water over low heat until it dissolves, then add the citron peel and simmer while your dinner finishes baking (20mn?) and then cools enough that you can eat it.

Then add the juice and let it simmer until you're ready for seconds, or until what's in the pot looks like marmalade. Remove from heat.

It smells unbelievable while it's simmering. Just stick your nose over the peel and it's like the best lem-apefr-ange you've ever smelled, with a little something different and special that isn't entirely unlike something that's in molasses.

It's good on bread or brioche, and especially good with chocolate in both its homemade and not-so-homemade incarnations.

Mimosas

This lovely (grainy ... sorry!) little pom-pon is all over southern France between late January and early March. This year, thanks to the especially cold and long winter, it peaked in mid-to-late February. Now it's all but gone. Which means that we missed the Route du Mimosa! It also means we won't be able to get any more at the flower market, so it's a good thing James got these when he did.


But it also means that maybe it will actually start getting warm around here soon.

It's Pi(e) day again!

Yes, it is once again pi(e) day and I'm letting myself off the hook with an easy post. Yes, that's right, you guessed it: a food post.

This year, unlike last year, we have an oven. And this means that unlike last year, when we had to have makeshift pie, we can have a real homemade pie.

So apple frangipane it was!



Crust
200 g flour
40g powdered sugar
pinch of salt
100g butter (only a little cooler than room temp if you're doing this by hand)
1 egg, beaten

Whisk the flour, powdered sugar and salt together, then mix in the butter until your mixture looks sandy -- with maybe a few larger blobs of butter. At least this is what happens if you do this by hand because you have no pastry blender or food processor and the two knives cutting technique never worked for you. (And if you're lucky enough to have hands that are like blocks of ice, melting the butter isn't a problem.) Then drizzle the egg over the sandy dough and cut it into the dough with two knives (they do work well for this part).

Chill while you butter your pie pan.

Pour the dough into the pie pan and pat into place. (If you are unlucky enough to have uncharacteristically warm hands during this part of the pie-making, you will end up with a somewhat tougher crust than you'd like to have.) Prick all over with a fork and chill for 30-60mn.

Then bake blind (with rice, beans, weights) for 20mn at about 400F.


Filling
125g almond powder
125g powdered sugar
100g butter, very soft
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 Tbsp. Amandine (almond liqueur)

Whisk the almond powder and sugar together in a bowl. Add the butter and work it with a spatula until it's well mixed. Add in the egg, vanilla and liqueur, still with the spatula, and mix until it's pretty smooth and homogeneous. Spread into baked shell.


Topping
3 medium pie apples (like Chantecler, a really delicious hybrid of a Golden Delicious and a Reine Grise), sliced thin and tossed with lemon juice. (You will probably have extra, which you can put in a 2010-style 1980s chef salad with ham, Comté and some sort of crazy mesclun mix, instead of iceberg.)

Arrange the apples on top of the frangipane and bake for 30mn at about 400F.

Then eat, from crust to tip.


And make your wish on the last bite.

Almost the ides

Ok, so despite my best intentions, this blog really hasn't existed since I started working full time. And even a little bit before then. I haven't given up, and we haven't stopped doing things, it's just that blogging can take a lot of time. At least for me. But like the dissertation that you put off writing because it's just so big that it's easy to put off, eventually you do it.

Now, however, the question is raised: where do I (re)start?

At the beginning of the things I didn't post about, but for which we have many albums on picasa?

Or maybe the bigger, more interesting things first? If any of it's interesting to anyone.

I'm thinking that reverse chronological order might be the way to go because it's at least seasonal -- in the beginning, but of course less seasonal as you proceed. But then I can mix in new things too.

So anyway ...

Here comes a new post to celebrate an especially special holiday: pi(e) day!