on thoughts from a bowl of bak ku teh...

nothing revelatory this time, just some fancy thoughts while having "bak ku teh" (肉骨茶) at the "kopitiam" opposite the road from my home. What happened was my mom returned late from her visit to a friend's place, and felt too lazy to cook. So she told us to go grab dinner on our own.

It so happens that the next day gonna help out a friend at his company. remembered seeing from a TV documentary last time that in the founding days of Singapore (in the 19th century), before the coolies* start their new jobs doing hard labor at the wharves, they will go and have a  bowl of "bak ku teh". As meat was expensive and jobs were scarce, the coolies did not have much chance of eating meat.

Well, my friend did not ask me to do menial labor.  still, i got craving ah. So went to the nearest stall at the "kopi-tiam". Felt a bit cheated, cos the stall-owner charged me an extra dollar for ordering a bowl of "you za kway" (油炸鬼). Think I'm gonna ban that stall from my eating places list, even though their "bak ku teh" was not bad. The soup stock is good, the chili in the sweet dark soy sauce is fantastic. I just have an issue for the "you za kway". I can buy a stick for 40 cents, and you dare charge me a dollar for a bowl's worth of cut-up dough stick? That's it ah, boycott your stall, man...

But the great thing was they served the "bak ku teh" in a claypot. Fantastic! Not many stalls i know do that nowadays, because it's troublesome to do so. somehow it just gives the eating experience that extra "Oommph", eating out of a claypot...

oh, still haven't talked about the thought that struck me. I was just marvelling that last time, people used to cook everything by coal-fire. Nowadays all cooked by stove, so less troublesome^. The wonders of modern technology!

ok, now i'm rattling... gonna go sleep and dream of that "bak ku teh"...

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* not because they are cool or what. For those not familiar with Singaporean Chinese immigrant history, "coolie" is just an appellation for the forced labor of the poor uneducated masses. From the chinese words "苦力", which translates as "bitter labor".

^ Must qualify the statement. It's still not easy to cook a good bowl of "bak ku teh", even when you use stove-fire to cook. But if you compared with using coal-fire... you get my drift.