roti john

i couldn't resist taking a shot of what my ma whipped up for me for dinner. my ma - she's no superb cook but i love eating at home anyway. wait, maybe i'm being too objective. i guess it's cos my ma doesn't really know how to cook dishes like curries? it's no easy feat to cook up a mean curry dish. i mean, one can sure learn to cook it but perfecting it takes some experience. just like pasta is an easy dish but can you do a mean one, as easy as it is? i always joked that i have my ma to thank - for not knowing how to cook this sinful dish - so that i could stay slim. imagine all the lemak that would've been converted to fats in my body if i drank the stuff since young. lol. where i lacked, i topped up when i had my laksa binge. i'd slurp up pretty much all the lemak if it's tasty. check out what go into making laksa and you'll get me.

i got distracted again there. anyways. it's just that my ma surprises me sometimes, so i hafta log in these moments. no grains for tonight's meal. instead, there's bread done like roti john: french loaf local style, pan fried with bits of meat (usually mutton) in egg batter. if i'm not wrong, it's malay in origin. it's hard to find good roti johns these days. the harder part is finding the stall that whips up the sauce for dipping the bread in. i believe bottled chilli sauce is most of what's used in the sauce. yet. kwim now? my ma's version contained garlic slices and luncheon meat was used. she fried it in butter. maybe the butter's salted, or the luncheon's salty, so roti john's a bit too salty for me. and i thought it weird that she didn't use the minced pork on the roti (means bread in malay). meat patties are one of her specialties. we'd usually eat them sandwiched in traditional white bread for breakfast. there's egg beaten into the minced pork patty, too. [edited to add: realised i should point out that the bread's the one next to the cutlery. i didn't talk about the fish that's nearest the soup.]

the soup was also something that's not very her style yet it's very tasty. it's got prawns, tomatoes, cucumber and carrot. i like the tanginess of it. my ma's cantonese, so her soups are not something you do up in half an hour. you just gotta be stingy with the ingredients and turn off the heat one hour short and you can taste the difference immediately.

you can google for more info about roti john (and curries: not indian but nonya or malay). i recently ate one that frankly sucked plenty. when i saw the girl put mayo on the bread, i almost wanted to just walk away. i used to live in the east, where one should be able to eat authentic malay dishes. i don't recall mayo ever having a part to play in the history of roti john. oh all right. i'm just not a mayo fan. i know of mayo fans who eat sushi with mayo. can you beat that?? lol. reminds me of one movie in which someone drowns her food in ketchup. was it stallone's cobra? i loved the movie! ok ok that's all now.