ten-ele-ven

My mom’s homemade chili paste is comfort food to me. Growing up, there is always a bottle of chili paste in the refrigerator. I add her chili paste to almost every home cooked meal that I eat. I add this chili paste to bowls of rice filled with meat and vegetables (and mix it all up bibimbap-style), to noodle soups (because I like my food spicy) and even to western-style meals of steak and roast chicken.

When I decided to start documenting my mother’s recipes, this chili paste was right at the top of my list. Coming up next is my mother’s sambal chili, or rempah – the sort she uses to cook sambal okra, sambal kangkong, sambal eggplant and as a base for laksa!

Ingredients:

160g Vietnamese chili padi, seeds removed, sliced

60g freshly squeezed lime juice

85g fresh garlic, sliced

Instructions:

1. Blend chili padi and garlic into a fine paste using a food processor into a fine paste. If you prefer, you could pound the chili and garlic using a pestle and mortar.
2. Add lime juice to the chili paste gradually and taste. Depending on whether you prefer your chili paste more tart or less tart, adjust the amount of lime juice according to your taste.
3. DO NOT ADD SALT to the chili paste.

Variation:

1. To make the ginger-chill paste used as a condiment in chicken rice, add blended ginger and a spoonful of chicken oil to the chili paste.

1. Hearing the trumpet

I used to play the trumpet when I was in secondary school. I spent four years in the school military band. Those were the best years of my life – every day was filled with joy, purpose and camaraderie.

I did not choose to play the trumpet. I wanted to play the flute because the instrument looked so graceful and dainty. I was assigned the trumpet by my seniors and loved it from that moment onwards. The trumpet produces such sonorous and melodic sounds.

2. Teh Tarik

Piping hot Indian-Muslim frothy milk tea. Sweet and savoury.

3. Sunflowers

Besides their bright yellow cheery-looking flowers, sunflowers remind me of my late grandpa and my childhood. He used to grow sunflowers in the garden of the house that we lived in. I used to pretend to harvest sunflower seeds by breaking off the flower heads and removing the seeds when the flowers were dry. Never failed to get a huge beating from my grandmother for destroying the flowers.

I belong to the generation where a childhood vacation meant taking the coach or the car to Genting Highlands or Cameron Highlands with the family. I made my first proper trip out of the country when I was 15 years old. I took a plane to Kuala Lumpur to attend a 5-day church camp without my parents.

I do not remember travelling anywhere with my parents except for the occasional trips to Johor Bahru to visit my dad’s childhood friend who ran a coffeeshop in the city. I was about 6 years old when we started going to that coffeeshop. I went wherever my parents took me during the weekends. I disliked most of the places they took me to.

I hated visiting the coffeeshop in Johor Bahru because the place was hot, grimy and crowded. The coffeeshop sold traditional coffee, dim-sum and noodles. I could not fathom why my parents would go to a place like that. It was no fun for a kid like me. I wanted them to bring me to a nicer place like McDonald’s for a burger and fries. If I told them what I preferred, it would probably attract the cane. I did not want to have cane marks on my legs, or made to stand in a corner of my bedroom as punishment.

As young as I was, I felt that I was living in a different world from my parents. I did not know how to communicate with them about what I wanted or needed. This feeling stayed with me till now when I am 45.

During one visit to the coffeeshop, I saw bags of meat dumplings stacked next to the dirty bathroom in the coffeeshop with flies buzzing around. I felt nauseous immediately. I had just stuffed a meat dumpling into my mouth minutes before going to the bathroom. I never ate the food in that coffeeshop again. I also refrained from drinking water because I did not want to have to use the coffeeshop’s dirty bathroom. No one had bothered to clean the bathroom – human waste was lying all over the floor.

I also recall that the coffeeshop had a red-and-white enamel spittoon under every table for customers to spit into. It was awful. I remember peering into the spittoon under the table out of curiosity and saw sputum, phlegm and goodness what else in the spittoon. I was traumatised. Afterwards, I sat on the chair cross-legged because I was so worried about my legs touching the spittoon or the floor. I was utterly miserable being in such an unhygienic place.

In those days, there was no smart phone for a kid like me to while away my time. I would bring along a storybook to read, and escape into a different world for a couple of hours while my parents hung out with my dad’s friends in the coffeeshop. I read voraciously as a kid. It was a cocoon to shield me from unpleasant experiences.

I don’t remember when we stopped visiting the coffeeshop. I suppose it was in the year I turned 10 – when my dad suffered his first stroke.

Our 13-day self-drive trip in late October took us from Nagoya to Nakasendo, Kamikochi, Lake Kawaguchiko and Tokyo. We were looking forward to seeing autumn in Japan but the season came very much later in Japan. While we didn’t get to see autumn in full bloom, we were treated to snippets of autumn foliage in the Kamikochi mountains where temperatures were much colder than the rest of the country and a very clear view of Mt Fuji at Lake Kawaguchiko.

We woke up to this beautiful view of Mt Fuji on our first morning in Lake Kawaguchiko. I snapped this photograph of Mt Fuji from the window of our room in a ryokan very early in the morning, just in case the skies become cloudy. We were really blessed to get this gorgeous view all day long.

After an excellent breakfast at our ryokan and snapping an insane number of photos of Mt Fuji from the ryokan, we left to go to the Kawaguchiko Forest Music Museum. It is a whimsical little place that is fun for both adults and children, where you can spend a good one to two hours depending on whether you are interested in their shows. Then we drove out in search of lunch, and saw the scenic Oishi park next to the parking lot.

We got to see the kochia shrubs in deep seasonal red at the Oishi Park. The park must be gorgeous in spring time when a large number of flowers are in bloom.

The weather at Oishi Park was blazing hot at noon – it felt like summer instead of autumn. We entered a cafe near the park to escape the heat and get some ice cream to cool us down.

This was excellent soft-serve that comes with a really cute Mt Fuji shaped biscuit.

We sipped sake and watched the sun go down at the balcony of our room. It was a lovely moment experiencing Mother Nature. The sun going up and going down is something that happens everyday that I take for granted. I rarely pause and appreciate the beauty that comes about with this natural phenomena.

Where did we stay in Lake Kawaguchiko that gave us this superb view of Mt Fuji?

Shuhokaku Kogetsu

We booked this ryokan from Agoda. Every room faces Mt Fuji – whether you get a clear view depends on the weather and your luck! The price of the ryokan includes an excellent buffet breakfast (served in the dining room at the lobby) and a kaiseki dinner (also served in the dining room). However, you can request for the ryokan to serve you dinner to in your room or in one of the private dining rooms in the lobby.

I love the spicy Korean seafood stew known as haemultang. Each bubbling hotpot comes with a chockfull of clams, mussels, octopus, prawns and tiny crabs. I don’t really care for the seafood. All I care about is the hearty and flavourful broth.

One of the places that I like to go to for Korean seafood stew is this small-ish eatery hidden in one of the back alleys of Myeongdong called Myeongdong Eomeonijip (translated as ‘Myeongdong Granny’s House’). We usually go there during dinner-time, the time when the eatery is crowded and jam-packed with lots of diners. We practically have to sit elbow-to-elbow with the diners at the same table as us.

Myeongdong Eomeonijip’s seafood stew is very yummy and reasonably priced for two persons. Besides the seafood stew, I also like to order my other favourite Korean seafood dish – cold marinated crab (called ganjang gejang) at the eatery. Their ganjang gejang is excellent, fresh and the crab comes with lots of cholesterol-laden roe.

I don’t really know how to describe the directions to get to Myeongdong Eomonijip. All I can say is that it is in one of the back alleys of the main shopping street in Myeongdong. Best to locate the eatery using Google Maps and look for the store-front in the photo above.

Myeongdong Eomeonijip

Address: 100-809  11-6, Myeongdong 8-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul