My culinary adventures in Singapore refuse to end. The other day I, rather daringly, tried a dish named The Steamboat, from the Greatwall Chinese restaurant. In the semantic map of my brain, steamboat resides right next to submarine, which meant that my anticipation of the dish was overladen with the connotations usually attached to a submarine sandwich. So one can imagine my amusement when I was handed a huge two-layered pot, the lower level of which was filled with a greyish powder. I was in the process of resolving my dilemma as to whether I should eat this strange-looking stuff with a fork, mix it with curry, put it in the soup, or eat it with rice when, to my utter shock, the restaurant-lady set it on fire. It was also the moment it dawned upon me that however harmless these adventures might seem as compared to, say sky-diving, one ought to be more careful. Uptil then I had been living a very contented, complacent life – just indulging in the local culture, immersing myself in the local language, soaking up the culinary traditions developed in this melting pot of a nation, and keeping away from the usual life-threatening adventures a typical traveler, in want of a thrill, subjects himself to. (Read Scuba-diving, Skydiving in SE Asia). The food I eat fills up the thrill-quota for me alright.
Back to this particular experience. I was just getting accustomed to the idea of having a flame burning (rather violently) on my table- still not sure what it was for, or what to do with the stew placed in the container on top of it. There was an assortment of meat, green vegetables, tofu, noodles and some other stuff which I had been served with the hot pot. Earlier, in a rare display of timely intervention, the waiter had informed me that I ought to put all that in the stew. Maybe he was reading my face back when I was considering the prospect of having raw coal in my mouth, and had registered my subsequent shock. Good chap – that waiter.
So I did dump all that stuff in the stew (with the flame burning violently underneath it), and started eating. Halfway through the first morsel, I realised that I didn’t know how much time it takes to cook something like that.Maybe I should leave it for 10 mins. Maybe 15. Surely the 2 mins that I had given the food to get cooked was too less, and maybe, being undercooked, the vengeful food will strike me down with some heat-enduring bacteria the raw meat was still carrying. I decided to let it be for another 5 mins or so. Nevertheless, when I finally resumed eating, I still had a bad feeling about it. I was eating directly from the pot with the fire burning under it. I have never seen someone eat like that – apart from two kinds of folks – Chefs, who do have a habit of stealing a spoonful or two with the excuse that they were just checking how their art production is turning out, and Cannibals. In all my vast theoretical (but little practical) knowledge of food eating traditions of the world – I had never heard of someone eating food directly from the pot with a flame a burning under it. So I thought to myself that I’d be much better off by removing the stew and the food from the container.
It was then that I had another brilliant insight in the nature of the problem. Not as much of as an insight as an epiphany, but it did help me make more inroads as to solving my conundrum. The realization was that maybe I was supposed to close the lid to have the food be cooked properly over the fire. I had a vague recollection that certain cooking processes, like boiling, require the lid to be closed. For how long it ought to be closed, I still did not know. But I decided to make sure that I close it for atleast 2 mins and not more than 5 mins- something which would ensure some amount of boiling, but not too much boiling such as might turn the food inedible. In more mathematical terms, I was assuming that the time it takes for the food to boil follows a Normal Probability Distribution, with a mean of around 3-4 mins. A reasonable assumption this, for a restaurant, especially one which charges the bill while taking the order, would not want its customers to be sticking around too long blocking the table. So I left the food with the flame still burning and the lid closed, for a while. Mind you, some of the most savoury of today’s dishes were invented by such flukes. So I was just following what a positive-minded fellow would call ‘the spirit of an experimentalist’.
After what seemed like hours, I commenced with the Grand Finale. I put the lid aside, removed the stew with the food from the pot, and eagerly proceeded to eat. Of course, it was too hot. So hot that for a moment I contemplated the possibility that I had burnt the darned piece of dish. But, in all my infinite wisdom, I discarded that possibility, and let the food cool down for another 15 mins, before I finally put an end to its misery.
Luckily the restaurant was almost empty. So there were not any Chinese people giggling at my incompetency with their cuisine. Not that they would have, had they been present. The Chinese like to keep to themselves – they are not concerned with other people’s plates. A few old-aged conservative uptight Chinese might have glared and gawked at the spectacle. A few- not many. Glaring, staring and giggling are rather activities that Indians fancy. But only when it comes to the Indian cuisine – in this case they would have probably sympathised, and ridiculed the Chinese cuisine instead. And when it comes to the Indian cuisine – one would find it extremely hard to eat it in a way worse than the Indians themselves .
I couldn’t finish The Steamboat all by myself – maybe it was not meant for just one person, or maybe my hunger had died out. It was also not altogether very tasty- though healthy no doubt. But, in a typical Buddhist-Taoist flavor, the Steamboat did spew forth the following piece of self-reflexive wisdom:
One should learn to cook.
16 July 2012