Week 10 (2023) - Substitution

As a food allergy family, the easiest substitution to make is to swap in plant-based eggs for anything involving eggs, and that was what led us to roti john, a Singaporean omelette sandwich that is usually eggs, minced meat, and onions topped with a tomato-chili sauce on a baguette-like bread. Considering that the theme was substitution, I didn't just swap out the eggs, but also decided to make the sandwich vegan by using Impossible for the ground meat.

The recipe I followed was from the cookbook, The World Eats Here, about the Queens Night Market, one of my favorite food events in NYC that I haven't been to in a few years and very much miss. (It's a little more difficult these days between travel time and food allergies. Can't just take one train anymore!) The number of different cuisines you can try in one place while supporting small businesses is something that you can't really find anywhere else in the city at that level or price point. We never visited Native Noodles, the vendor who contributed this recipe to the cookbook, since they didn't start selling there until 2019, but if they had been there back when we went, I'm sure we would have.

To make the sandwich, you start by toasting the baguette, then heating up the garlic, onions, and then the meat-cumin mixture in a skillet until cooked. An egg mixture is added next (mixed with sambal oelek (only used a little bit), salt, and pepper) to cover the meat, and then the bread is pressed onto the mixture while the eggs cook (so that the eggs get absorbed into the bread). A spicy ketchup (ketchup, sriracha, and sugar) is spread on top of the finished baguette before it's closed up into sandwich form.

The sandwich was delicious. Messy, but so tasty. I'm sure the version at the night market was better when it could be made on a proper griddle, but I was happy with our version.

Masak

Back in early 2013, we visited Masak, a Singaporean (influenced) restaurant down in the East Village. Sadly, a few weeks after our visit, they closed. When a restaurant has closed up and we have a draft post still languishing in our list, we'll often decide to abandon the review altogether, but (1) this would count for Singapore WorldEats and (2) sadly there isn't any Singaporean food in NYC right now that we know of (since Singapura, the only other place, closed later that same year). Since our Masak post was partially done back in 2013 (we really need to get better about completing them...), we're going to finish it up and dream about some delicious chili crab dip.

We really loved the food on our only visit to Singapore over 5 years before our Masak visit and had wanted to try Masak for a bit, so when we saw a voucher offered online for them, we jumped at the chance. With so many restaurants to try in NYC, it's hard to make it to everywhere we want to go, so in some ways, we used the voucher to give us a little bit of a push there. Our voucher gave us 2 appetizers and 2 entrees for a set price ($39), and we could order anything on the menu without restriction (which was really liberating, compared to some other places).

The one appetizer we knew we were getting before we got to the restaurant was the chili crab dip, which was accompanied by fried mantou.

We had chili crab back in Singapore and years later, we still think about how good it was. The subtle sweetness of the crab and tomato-based sauce mixed with a very mild hint of heat makes chili crab so special, and it's such a delicacy in Singapore. The chili crab dip here really captured the essence of chili crab using only the crab meat itself and not whole pieces of crab. The fried mantou that came with it added even more sweetness and a light crispness as well. Masak's offering wasn't quite as good as the one we had in Singapore, but it was still quite delicious.

There was still a lot of dip so we got more mantou. That stuff was so filling, but so good. If only there were a place to get mantou now...

For the second appetizer, we chose rock shrimp tempura with spicy aioli. When M hears rock shrimp tempura, the dish that comes to mind is usually the one from Nobu. Crispy fried shrimp coated in a spicy mayo sauce. This rock shrimp tempura was fairly similar in style. It was good, from what we remember.

For the entree course, M got the devil chicken which came with fried fingerling potatoes and a small side of kale. The chicken was cooked well, and the vegetable sides were good, but outside of the sauce, which did have Asian notes to it, nothing about this dish really screamed Singaporean to M. It looked like something you could get at any bistro. From what we remember, it was tasty, but the thing we remember most about this meal wasn't the chicken.

A went with the babi assam tamarind braised pork belly with fried black rice. It's been a couple of years, so we really don't remember very much about this. Clearly, the entrees did not make much of an impression on us.

We were too full for dessert, so even though the tang yuan dumplings sounded interesting, we had to pass. We really enjoyed our meal there and would have considered going back, so we were sad when we read the news that they had closed. Considering how great Singaporean food is, why can't we get a lasting Singaporean restaurant out here?!

Shrimp Cakes and Sugarcane Skewers

Our last snack before the Starship concert was from the Singapore kiosk. This kiosk was in a really crowded part of the showcase, especially at concert time. We both had traveled to Singapore once before (over 4 years ago) and were hoping the food from the kiosk would bring back memories of the delicious food we had there.


We were hoping the menu would have something like laksa but sadly it did not:


We tried the beef rendang (coconut braised beef) with jasmine rice ($3.25):


M's take - This was OK. It had a lot of flavor (but that also meant that it had a lot of sodium). We have had rendang at various restaurants though, which did a better job at it.

A's take - In a word, disappointing. There wasn't the normal heat you normally get from a rendang, and overall the flavors didn't seem quite right. Maybe this is traditional rendang, but I don't think every other restaurant we've tried was wrong.

We also tried the shrimp cake on a sugarcane skewer with Singapore noodles ($3.50):


M's take - This dish was a mix of highs and lows. I liked the shrimp cake a lot. It was like a big dumpling (or as A says, a meatball - that's probably more accurate). But the Singapore noodles were so bland! I'm used to the Singapore noodles with lots of flavor and curry, but these had very little flavor and were kind of disappointing.

A's take - We love Singapore noodles, but these just weren't that great. No flavor, and not really much of anything. The shrimp cake thing was tasty. Nice and soft, definite shrimp flavor to it, and really reminiscent of a giant shrimp meatball. The sugarcane stick was actually fun for me. I've always enjoyed gnawing on sugarcane and getting the nice sweetness that comes out. M wasn't quite as good at it so she let me enjoy it more.

Favorite dishes at the Singapore kiosk:
A: Because of the shrimp cake and sugarcane it's the noodles, but the noodles themselves weren't very good.
M: Shrimp cake (but not the Singapore noodles)