Oatmeal, a breakfast and baked goods staple, doesn’t really appear in many savory entrees. However, it is a featured ingredient in oatmeal butter prawns, a Singaporean dish that is equally sweet, savory, and spicy. The preparation is relatively simple: wok-frying with egg, butter, curry leaves, oats, sugar, and bird’s eye chilli. The result is a deliciously fragrant dish that is at the same time comforting and exotic. It seems to have been bred from both a sun-kissed Southeast Asian sidestreet and a Norman Rockwell-esque kitchen. The fast wok preparation ensures the oatmeal stays crispy. Wow, you think, oatmeal can taste this good outside of a cookie.
We had this dish tonight at Singaporean Secrets in Beijing’s The Place. The restaurant had other decent selections, including mee goreng and roti prata, but it was the oatmeal butter prawns that stood out. At the start of a blistery Beijing winter, munching on the prawns made me wonder about the cost of airfare to Singapore.
Singaporean Secrets
B142, The Place, 9 Guanghua Lu
CBD (Central Business District), Chaoyang District, Beijing
朝阳区光华路9号世贸天阶B142
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Eh – forget Singapore, come to Malaysia instead. ;-)
Maybe I’ll just visit both. :) How I miss warm weather…
Correct, forget about eating in SIN, come to MY for the real stuff.
SIN food basically originates from MY (since we used to be one country), and a lot of chefs in SIN are actually Malaysians. However, SIN is doing a much better job in promoting the food hence you think its theirs. That’s all!
If you are Singaporean, you can hate me now. ;)
I’ve heard the same sentiments from my other Malaysian friends. While they love Malaysian cuisine, they concede to Singapore being much better at PR and thus drawing the top chefs and opening more talked-about restaurants. I guess I’ll just have to go to both and see. :) Now you’ve gotten me thinking about warm weather again…