Hot Hot Hot Sauce!

The dear friends grew ghost peppers and harvested them. They made them into a hot sauce, and gifted a jar to us! Okaaaay, they asked if we wanted it and we shamelessly said yes. They grow all sorts of really lovely leaves and all in their home, and they have generously shared them with us. We just finished a big jar of pesto they had made.

It's a gorgeous sauce. The way is done is SOOOOooooOOOoo tasty. Intense and lovely. It's not the typical hot sauce with tomatoes. This version is done with garlic and oil, like toum. The heat is just right. Well, it could be spicier, but at this level, it can complement breakfast at 7am if the husband so chooses (I don't bother with brekkies). If it's spicier, then it would be like a lunch or dinner accompaniment. 

The husband is a happy camper. He has been having spoonfuls of this hot sauce with every thing this week, beginning with breakast. The first taste of the sauce was as is, the moment it arrived. Then it went into breakfast the next day. It goes great with scrambled eggs, frittata, an egg white scramble, Tuscan beans and Italian sausage, and pretty much everything. It also lends a good touch to pasta, buffalo chicken with rosemary potatoes and blue cheese, and all things lunch and dinner. 

I love the hot sauce too, but I don't need to slather it in all my food. I'm not eating it with everything. LOL I had it for the very first time properly with an aglio e olio fusilli and plenty of mushrooms! Much umami, many flavors. NOMS.

Pork Jowl :: คอหมูย่าง

Pork jowl is never going to be a lean cut of meat since it's heavily marbled with layers of fat. It's not a lean low-fat protein option. It's probably fattier than pork belly. Hurhurhur. Yet it's sooooo tasty. I like this in the form of Thai Issan-style grilled pork jowl (คอหมูย่าง / khor moo yang). 

However, I want the excess heavy fat trimmed away as much as I can. And that is dependent on the butcher or the line chefs in the kitchen. Most restaurants give diners to full fatty chewy oily shiny slices. There're very few restaurants who try to do it the way I like it — with as little excess fat as possible. An oxymoron, I know. But they can do it by scoring the skin and slicing it thin across the grain to distribute the fat evenly.

Years ago, I found my ideal pork jowl dish at Little Elephant. They've always been consistent in the way they slice it and render the fat. Till today, it's still gorgeous. I have bravely tried pork jowl at the restaurants around the island, and even in Bangkok. Few can do it the way Little Elephant can. I know their menu so well now that I know what dishes the kitchen seems to be stronger in, and what I absolutley would not order there, say noodles, they can't seem to do noodles well. 

I always order pork jowl at dinner. I was very pleased to see pork jowl now offered on the classic set lunch menu too. Little Elephant has a few options for set lunches on week days, and it's fairly popular with the office lunch crowd. It has no air-conditioning. The fans provide ventilation, but at mid-day, it's hot. So if you go to have lunch, go prepared to sweat. 

The waiting time for a grilled pork neck is stated as '20 minutes'. They do need to grill it. It's faster than that if your timing doesn't clash with a ton of orders going into the kitchen at the same time. At lunch, I come in at 1pm, and I always get my plate within 15 minutes. 

The grilled pork neck comes with a tangy dipping sauce of naam jiim jaew (น้ำจิ้มแจ่ว). It's mostly sweet and sour instead of spicy, made with tamarind, fish sauce, lime juice, chili flakes, and toasted rice powder. Little Elephant's version is sweeter. I'm not fond of it. I leave it be. If I want spicy, I'll take the chilli padi in fish sauce. It makes lunch so satisfying. Just don't ask me about the fat content, nutritional value and such. The egg gives me more protein. 

How Many Identities Can You Have?

[THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS.]

I waited a long while for the digital copy of Boston-based Singaporean author Yu-Mei Balasingamchow's 'Names Have Been Changed' (June 2026). This has been a novel years in the making! I'll get around to buying a hard copy soon enough. (Reviews here, here, here and here.)

38-year-old Ophir (not her real name) hosts a podcast while being on the run from a crime she never intended to commit. As an accidental fugitive at 27 years old, she skipped town (Singapore) with $60,000 in cash, and traversed Bangkok, Tokyo, Ecuador, London and Colorado. Along the way, she does odd jobs; became a hostess at nightclubs and takes on waitressing gigs for income. She changes her name often and takes on new identities to evade arrest. She has been Kara, Amelie, Hui Ying, Kaylee and Noora.

She longs for human companionship. She is lonely and homesick. But she doesn't want to go to jail. She wants to remain free, even if it's on the run. She has led this life for ten years. Then it's 2020, the world goes into lockdown, and her father suddenly died in a traffic accident. Her mother died when she was born, so she felt this parent's death keenly. She's the youngest of a total of six children in this family. She's close to her brother Jacob, but she is unable to contact her family in Singapore or attend his funeral. Hosting this podcast makes her feel less alone. She can talk, people can hear her, but no one will know who she is. Well, unless they know her by voice alone.

I'm not sure that retelling your life story publicly while being on the run is a good idea. Ophir was a voice actor in Singapore getting by okay, leading a pretty normal lifestyle but wishing for extra cash like everyone else. She was pulled into a scam as a money mule by her best friend. She only wanted to make extra cash, but it was a crime. We know what she's running from. So where is she running to? Will there be a name or an identity she finally settles on?

London began peacefully enough, but reached a shocking end when Ophir ran into a familiar face and things spiraled out of control. Her London sojourn ended rather dramatically. But it was also in London that she got an opportunity to go to Colorado for... ... redemption. She met a Singaporean doctor who is a political exile, along with her husband. And the good doctor treated her injury and sent her to Colorado based on blind trust. The doctor has been in exile for 40 years, and she has stopped counting. 

Every Sunday night, Ah Mun paid me in cash, and I took off. She never asked where I lived.

At the time I was renting a room from a Bangladeshi widow and her sister above their curry house. My first job in London was for a cousin of theirs, cleaning the office at his car repair workshop. I think they let me move in because I looked pretty harmless, which, as you know, I am, unless you tempt me with thousands and thousands of dollars. Also, maybe no one wanted to live above the exhaust vents of their restaurant. By then I knew there were worse things than the smell of stale food and kitchen grease, and once I was spending my days at Golden Pearl, I honestly couldn't tell you whether I reeked more of chicken tikka masala or Cantonese wok hei.

Of course food got highlighted! Hahaha. Food is always a trigger point of memories and cultural references in novels. We have Singaporean food spoken of and eaten. After you read this story, you might not want to have Singapore Fried Noodles for a bit. Heck, I don't even like Singapore Fried Noodles in any city. If the kitchen ditches the curry powder and ease up on the oil, it would be almost palatable.

[STOP READING HERE > SPOILERS ARE NEXT.]

Colorado felt like redemption because it was. The 'job' in a small town in Denver was easier than manual labor and scrubbing toilets, and she had food and a roof over her head. Izati was closer to her in age, and somehow, accepted her and her past. It didn't take a genius to find out Ophir/then-Noora's true identity.

Each podcast Ophir puts out, is a chapter in the book. During the lockdown years, the podcasts somehow went viral and reached thousands. People knew who she is. She didn't think it would be such a 'hit', but it is. Television and interview offers stream in. It seems to be only a matter of time before the Singapore police get a start on identifying her location and identity, and come knocking. 

She also has a podcast producer named Tina. Of course it's a pseudonym. Tina is smart, protective and loyal. She goes through the emails received about Ophir and such. She doesn't pry or judge. She simply is there for Ophir. And oddly, Ophir didn't double-cross her, and for the first time, she felt supported and less alone. Tina is Izati. I knew it! There were plenty of hints in the lines.

The ending was expected, yet unexpected. I thought her loneliness would be a huge factor in deciding to turn herself in. Especially when her closest sibling Jacob came in search of her. And found her. He had never stopped looking for the past decade. He persuaded her to come home with him to Singapore. He outlined a possible life in Singapore after doing time, and offered her sanctuary at his home. But he has a partner, and two children. She wasn't wanting to ruin his life now. He managed to even convince her to get to the airport in Los Angeles, check in and get to the passenger boarding area.  

She hesitated, and made her decision. She can't go home to Singapore. It's not home anymore. She has done this for 10 years. She could continue to do this. It's her life now. She has chosen it.

Being away for so long, it was all I had to hang on to. It's not going to be the same, though. It'll never be like it was, and it's not the place I'm looking for anymore. They'll put me in a box—a box I deserve, to be fair, but I don't want that or what comes after, starting over and also trying to live down what I've done. Why do I have to keep paying for it? Haven't I carried enough my whole life?

I can't be the person they want me to be. I know how to live like this now. I can do it.

I should move quickly. I don't have much time.

I don't see Jacob, I think he's still at the gate. Waiting. He trusts me. Don't think about that.

Is this a book about migrant culture? I think not. If it is, it makes a very odd reference point to what Singapore is about. I look at the book as one that explores the Singaporean diaspora. Yet it's uniquely Singaporean. The multi-culturalism and inherent prejudices come up. We see Singlish in the lines. We have Malay too. I didn't listen to the audiobook, so I wouldn't know about the different accents adopted by the narrator. But I heard a sample of it, and some friends say that the audiobook narration is excellent.