The Great Starbucks Mooncake Epic Fail

      I have made a new friend named Lucy! (And she has a daughter named Lulu.) We met for coffee this morning at the rather upscale shopping mall at the Jurong East MRT station.  We were going to meet yesterday but she was babysitting her grandson.

      Starbucks is the first store when you enter the mall from the MRT, so we decided to meet there.

All Eight Starbucks Mooncakes.

     In the interests of researching the Starbucks conception of a mooncake, Lucy and I tried a bite of each, while we told each other our life stories. 

Lucy was born in 1942, so she's four years older than me. She was too young to remember the Japanese Occupation.  I told her about my father's voyage to Bombay, India, with a troopship of British soldiers, who sailed from on to Singapore arriving just as the Japanese attacked. 

Lucy was the second of 16 children. She grew up in the area of Singapore near River Valley Road and Zion Road. Her family consider themselves Paranakan Singaporean, tracing their root their roots to Riau in Indonesia and Southern China. Lucy attended Catholic school and was baptised a Catholic, and identifies herself as Buddhist. Lucy told me she did not consider herself Chinese, and I asked her what she meant by that. She explained that if she were to go to China, she would feel completely foreign.  She doesn't speak Mandarin.  Because her father, born in 1919, was adopted, it's not possible to trace his Hakka ancestors to a particular village. 

She has two children, one a lawyer, married to a lawyer, living in London, and the other, the father of her grandson, living here and working for his father.

I told Lucy about my two children, and she repeated, Atlanta, Georgia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We are planning to have coffee each week. She's studying oil painting, I'll be studying Mandarin, Chinese Brush Painting and Asian Film. I know we are going to have great conversations.

The Starbucks mooncakes are about two inches across, and bear the mould of the Starbucks mermaid. Our verdicts caption each one:

The Yuzu White Lotus Paste with Red Bean
was more like a macaroon than a mooncake.

 

We found the Coffee White Lotus Paste
with Maple Walnut, much much much to sweet.

Brownie with sea salt chocolate truffle?
Too sweet!

Mango with Passion fruit truffle?
Great flavours --- for sorbet!

White Lotus Paste with Black Sesame
was quite good.

The White Lotus Paste with Egg Yolk had
a balance of sweet and savoury.

You know I love Hazelnut, but Hazelnut
Macchiato with Milk Chocolate Truffle,
NO WAY

The Lavender and White Chocolate Pearls
with Earl Grey Truffle was back in macaroon land.

      I would love to know who dreamt up these flavours.  On one hand they seem to go against the grain of local tastes, yet then again young Singaporeans have very adventuresome eating habits!

When the Quotidien Isn't

    This morning, I'm headed off to the Indian Heritage Center.
     First, I wanted to muse on my good fortune at being here.  It is a delight to get up and go swimming every morning, with a almost 50 meter lap pool just a walk away. Then, breakfast,which is usually a salad---so healthy! Once a week, I indulge in the marvel of kaya toast and soft-boiled egg, or noodles.
     I'm in the midst of daily explorations both the gardens and the cuisine of Singapore.  At night, I delve into the extensive literature, scholarly and popular on these topics.  One terrific resource is from editor Ken Albala's Rowman and Littlefield Studies in Food and Gastronomy: Eating Together: Food, Space and Identity in Malaysia and Singapore by Jean Duruz and Gaik Cheng Khoo.

     Here's what I'm not doing: Cooking. There doesn't seem much point when great food is available for S$3-6 a plate.
     Here's what else I'm not doing: Eating at the plentiful branches of western fast food. These are to be found in the shopping centers located at main transportation hubs.  But I am paying attention to the morphing of global chains to local/global tastes.  Here are some illustrations:

Pizza Hut does English Comfort Food for Australians?

Pizza Hut does Swiss and French?

    And this:

Starbucks Does Moon Cakes!

     Invention is everywhere!

You know you're craving a coloured flavoured soup dumpling!

     I know I'm craving plain Shanghai soup dumplings, an maybe, just maybe will try the truffle one.

     And speaking of Ken Albala and soup for noodles, here are the directions for making the Hokkien Meehoon Mee.  I begin to understand how the noodles get their flavor when this marvelous liquid is added back into the stir-fried egg and rice noodles.

      In a large saucepan bring 4 cups of water to a boil and add 1 and 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce, 1/2 teaspoon sugar, 1/2 lb pork butt. Stir in 3/4 lb shrimp, Unshelled, boil for 2 minutes, and transfer with a slotted spoon to a bowl. Let the shrimp cool until they can be handled and shell them. In the boiling liquid boil 1 lb. cuttlefish or squid, turning it for 1 minute and transfer it with slotted spoon to a bowl. Let the cuttlefish cool until it can be handled and cut it into 1/4 inch rings. Continue cooking the pork in the cooking liquid at a gentle boil, turning it, for 25-30 minutes, or until the cooking liquid is reduced to about 1 cup. Transfer the pork to a bowl, reserving the cooking liquid.. Let the pork cool until it can be handled and shred it. 

      This is the recipe that Gourmet's Fred Ferretti and his wife, Eileen Yin Fei Low extracted from the Hyatt Regency Singapore in 1986 for Gourmet.  I suspect that Zanne Early Stewart tested it as well!