Confessions of a City Slicker

So I finally went to check out that Arabian cuisine stall I’ve been talking about.

The tau keh soh at the stall was very pleasant but she can’t speak English very well.

It was a little disappointing to see that they don’t offer a lot of varieties.  Just two choices of kebabs (beef/chicken) to be eaten with either saffron rice or naan. Well, it was just a small stall so I guess they can’t afford to offer a lot of different varieties.

No prizes for guessing which kebab I chose and since I’ve had a few types of naan before, I opted for the saffron rice.

I must say, their kebabs are different from what I have eaten before. The ones I’ve had before were always moist and some are even slathered with lots of sauce.

When my food arrived, I found that they were really dry. Maybe cooking over a charcoal fire dries up all the moisture. The kebabs were a mixture of beef and onion and they gave me a dollop of butter on top of the rice.

I forgot to ask the tau keh soh what the butter was for, so I mixed it up in the rice. It did work to give the rice a little bit of fragrance. But other than that, everything else was below expectations.

I’m planning to give the chicken kebabs and naan bread a try the next time I’m there.

I picked up something interesting from the tau keh soh. Dairy products feature very prominently in their cooking, so it is common to see yoghurt on every dinner table. But they don’t eat it together with their meal. It is only consumed after a meal to prepare the tongue for a change of taste, like from a salty main course to sweet dessert.

Hmm….interesting.

Will it work just as well after a bowl of pedas gila tom yam that leaves my tongue throbbing and lips swollen?