Ribeye & Hainanese Pork Satay

It was meant to be a casual cookout to taste lovely slabs of rib-eye, and a star version of Hainanese pork satay. The hosts took care of those mains. The rest of us contributed bread, salads, a quiche, and cheese. Well, everyone declared that nobody would be drinking that much alcohol. Riiiight. There were many bottles of wine, beer and whisky. So.

The slabs of ribeye were lovingly marinated overnight, and grilled. Experimented with a portable smoke-less grill, and then on the regular charcoal grill. W took on the duties of charring it. He did it blue and rare. They were perfect. Gorgeous. As much as I like beef, a small piece was more than sufficient tonight. We definitely grill better steaks at home than at the restaurants. I think by now, none of us bother to eat steaks at restaurants in Singapore anymore.

Hainanese pork satay is served with peanut sauce and grated pineapple slush. These marinated meat on sticks and accompanying sauces and slush at the cookout, were dished up by the elusive Tiong Bahru satay man (otherwise known as ‘Ah Pui’), or uhhh Mr Ang. By now the entire world knows his name already lah. The last time he did something seriously different and so public, was to team up with Moosehead Kitchen-Bar in their Supper Series to offer a one-off special satay night in April 2017.

I think, if you like pork, and lard, this version of Hainanese pork satay is really good. On each stick, it's like a meat-fat-meat ratio. The grated pineapple slush was pretty fun, and oddly went well with the salad. There’s no heat in this type of peanut sauce though. Blinked when I realized that the friends could do 20, 30 or 40 sticks at one sitting. Whaaaat. That’s a lot of meat! I managed all of five sticks, and even then, I couldn’t bear to eat the lard.

I was completely stunned when the friends trotted out a birthday cake. Didn’t realize it was meant to be mine! My husband didn’t even know this would happen; nobody didn’t say anything to either him or I at all! These sneaky people did it! It was wayyy too early to be celebrating my birthday, so I had thought it was for someone else! The cookout wasn’t meant for me, at least. Hahahaha. Whewwww. It was just a get-together. But still! A cake! The clever folks bought a coconut ice-cream cake from Island Creamery. And it stated ‘EARLY’ too. Hahahaha. This tasted more like sorbet. Lighter. Nice! I would find it hard to reject coconut-anything. Oof. 🥥 I ate quite a fair bit of that coconut sorbet cake!