In Search Of The National Dish

I have always been personally convinced that our national dish is the Hainanese chicken rice. A simple meal of steamed (cold) chicken dribbled with sesame oil and soy sauce, rice cooked in chicken stock and soup (optional). Not chilli or black pepper crabs which the tourism board would have us believe. I suppose crabs are more exotic and sophisticated than plain rice and chicken.

Every time I have been on a trip, and inevitably when the conversation turns to what would be the first local dish we would be digging in at our first meal when we get home, my answer never varies, it was always "chicken rice". Chicken rice is the (safe) choice one made when faced with a myriad of stalls in a hawker centre, dazzled by too many choices. It is the lunch you asked your colleague to buy back for you when you are too busy to leave the office. It is the take-away dinner you buy on your way home, a drip-free, fuss-free dinner which you can manage to feed yourself with your eyes glued to "Desperate Housewives".

In my 5 months here, when I started to long for chicken rice, I experimented with 2 different brands of mixes, trying to make my own, both attempts were flops in my opinion. I then proceeded to interview the locals (only Asians please, for their more discerning tastebuds) on the location of the best chicken rice they had eaten in this city. And so, through the interviews and badgering them to take me to their favourite joints, I have found the best chicken rice (so far) in terms of value and taste. The chicken is actually nothing to shout about, but the rice is fragrant without being oily, the pork-rib soup is sweet and tasty (so good that one can forgive the fact it is not chicken soup) and finally, the minced ginger in oil is fantastic (even though the drip on my jeans has caused a stain that is beginning to look indelible despite my immediate cleaning efforts using water and chinese tea, thereafter rubbing liquid detergent on it when I got home the way the man in the advertisement does it, and now finally, a belated effort of rubbing flour (as I have no powder) on the stain to absorb the oil in a last-ditched attempt).

And now that I've satisfied my craving for chicken rice, did I mention that I'm searching for the breakfast staple of chwee kueh (steamed rice cakes topped with preserved radish and dried shrimp chilli)?