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SingaporeFarewell, SingaporeThe last weekend I was in Singapore, the team I had been working with threw a cookout at the manager's apartment complex as a farewell. Hanging out at the grill and snacking is apparently a Filipino / Singaporean thing. I was told, bring a dish to share. I'm from the American South. If you're going to a cookout, you bring something serious. All you bring is chips, it better be three different flavors and at least five bags. I brought roll your own chicken burritos, which took me some effort sourcing the ingredients. Mexican food is not really a thing in Singapore. One of the Western style groceries had an Old El Paso display, which is kinda sorta close to Mexican and was the only brand of refried beans I could find. While the folks at the cookout were good with the roll your own thing, and experiencing Mexican food (kinda sorta), the burritos were too substantial for a grill-out, not leaving room for the other goodies. What I should have brought were tapas of some sort. Ah well, my first experience. One of the items was milkfish, which is a species particularly loved in Singapore, and incorporated into a slow-cooked soup that was not on the menu this day. The fish were gutted and cleaned, then grilled whole, and part of the experience apparently was picking the meat off the tiny bones with your fingers. Other than the social bit of sharing hot grilled fish, it wasn't particularly memorable. The paneer skewers that Vijay brought, however, were. His wife had set them up the night before, to send with him, flat squares of paneer threaded on skewers and marinating in yogurt spiced with cumin, turmeric, and several other things I couldn't pick out. They came out of the marinade and went straight onto the grill, a minute or so each side to crisp them up, and done. I asked him to have his wife send me the recipe for the marinade, but I never got it, and that makes me sad. I could probably get close with a korma-style marinade, maybe. |