‘That’s nice! What is it?’
Or:
‘What’s for dinner?’
She of an earlier generation might - and did - dismiss the impertinent questions with a kindly but sarcastic culinary neologism. But the next generation - the abundant post-war offspring (whose parents feared, after two wars in a few decades, will we lose these as well?) grew up into a cossetted mid-century middle class that wanted answers. Newly cosmopolitan, and hearing the siren call of airbound silver jets roaring across airport boundaries and up and down the streets and avenues of the suburbs and banlieues, they crossed becalmed oceans, freshly ridded of U-boats, to hunt for foreign dishes, just as their safariing grandparents had hunted game. The names of such captured dishes would be practised in front of pre-dinner party mirrors and tripped off tongues with the syllabic facility and pronunciation of a first language - bouillabaisse; onigiri; cacciatore - and the resulting culinary exotica would be displayed - and announced, like grandmother’s commonplace gooligum of a generation earlier - pococurante at dinner parties. It was almost boring, intentionally perhaps, until the Quelltaler Hock kicked in.
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Singapore fried noodles - as a name - appears to be one of those 1950s faux-jingoistic hangovers like Maltese Macaroni Bake, Scotch Eggs or Irish Stew, dishes which made the dinner table of my childhood metaphorically resemble the atlas-laminexed desks of the same era. The dish itself appears to be a curried but cabbageless or celeryless cousin to chow mein. It never goes out of fashion. It is reputedly - as if told as some kind of joke on fusion cuisine - a Hong Kong dish using noodles favoured by Cantonese chefs and the Indian curry introduced through the British colonies.
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You can’t eat dry noodles. This dish, whatever its alias, needs oil. Three ‘healthful’ seconds of oil sprayed out of an aerosol can will not do. (Aerosol oil is a travesty anyway. Mankind has rarely invented anything more transiently and ingeniously wasteful as the aerosol can.) You need to envelop the noodles in enough oil to carry the flavour.
Soften rice vermicelli according to instructions. Toss prawns/chicken/char siu pork - or a combination of all three - in hot oil in a wok or large pan along with a julienned carrot, a finely sliced red capsicum, a grated knob of ginger and a clove or two of scored garlic. Toss until prawns and/or chicken are done. Remove to another pan and keep warm. Add more oil to the wok, stir through three or four beaten eggs, and quickly add prepared noodles to coat. Return meat and vegetables to wok and add three sliced spring onions, a tablespoon of curry powder, two of soy and a dash of caster sugar. Toss and stir. Add a little Chinese rice wine if necessary. Finally, add a cup or more of bean sprouts and combine. (All quantities general.)
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Speaking of Singapore, British singer Leo Sayer recorded 'Orchard Road' in 1983. It had a ring of the east about it; but the road of the title was not the famed Singapore shopping strip but the fictional London address (actually Churchfield Road) of his estranged wife. The song was an emotional hand grenade: it blew the robotic art-rock tracks of the early eighties into synthesised shards, emerging from early FM radio like a shaft of sunlight on a tiger lily*. The key change at the high noon moment puts me in a then-modern now-demolished 1960s building in St Kilda Road (416 to be precise) where I sit in the creative department at Clemenger Advertising with a Ball Pentel, an A3 pad and Lesley, the creative secretary, an English rose who will type my scripts in duplicate, file one in a grey cabinet, call me taxis, and note when I will be out of the building, mainly at AAV studios, or on occasion, at lunch.
* Yes, a Fairlight was used in the Orchard Road production, so my comment about synthesisers is slightly unfair.
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