My Fav Food
I have a very, and I mean, very long history with Chinese food. From the age of 3-4 years when my father was posted to Hong Kong for deployment, I was eating noodle and rice dishes with the best of them. My parents ate out a lot with a gaggle of kids in tow. I think it was because they got better service with all these angelic looking blond-haired kids. Like the Family Von Trapp.
My parents had their favourite spots so much so, they were known by name, and ate at street stalls and little hole in the wall, mom and pop affairs with the locals. As kids, this was great because we were given an endless supply of sodas and ice lollies through out any lengthy meal. Like I said, my parents like to eat. And as such. My first memories of food were not of English food, fish and chips, or roast dinners. But of spicy piquant noodles and rice dishes whose names I have long since forgotten.
And while we were only in Hong Kong for 3 years, Chinese street food became the go to taste for my palate. Everything else was, well, just bland.
We moved for a few years back to the UK but it wasn't long before my father was posted abroad again, this time to Singapore. It was like coming home for all of us to a place, culture, and especially food that we were comfortable with, and loved.
By the time I was 12 that was it. Other food while enticing at times, and enjoyable enough as a diversion, paled in comparison to the food I love and crave. And while I'm no great cook, a lot of my weekly meals even now decades later, always default to spicy noodles and rice as my base, loaded up with a ton of veggies, and topped off with a small amount of meat or seafood.
My only sadness is living in Canada, the food served here as Chinese is most definitely not the Chinese of my childhood. And oh, how I long to go back there, into my past, to enjoy those roadside meals.
Malay Satay anyone?