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Published on Jan 19, 2014
CHEAP & GOOD
Stuffed on tau pok
Look at my photo of grilled stuffed tau pok. What do you see? An amazingly eagle-eyed Sherlock type might quickly deduce that this is an irresistible dish from the fact that the bean puffs, each cut neatly into four squares, don't add up on the plate.
Here I have to confess that when the nicely charred dish was served by a stall on the rooftop of Beauty World Centre, my lunch companion snatched one square and ate it before I could object: "Hey, I haven't taken a photo yet!"
I also admit that I have eaten the dish twice and have never been able to properly count how many bean puffs are served - they disappear too swiftly.
It was a street food enthusiast who introduced me to the stall, Ye Ri Xiang Xiao Chi (Fragrant Night And Day Snacks), and explained why it is superior.
At many stalls, tau pok is stuffed only after it is grilled (or warmed up in a toaster). The tau pok and filling meet for the first time only on the plate, seconds before they are served. They are complete strangers, one hot and the other cold, and there is no sense of togetherness.
But at Ye Ri Xiang, tau pok is grilled, stuffed and grilled some more. The $3.20 dish arrives at the table as bite-sized sandwich squares: crispy tight bean puffs enfolding moist cross-sections of shredded cucumber, grated lime and a peanut-heavy sauce.
Other dishes are prepared with the same attention to detail. The oyster omelette ($4) has soft, fragrant folds of faintly charred egg. The cuttlefish rojak ($5), which has fresh-from-the-grill chunks of fritters, doesn't overwhelm you with cuttlefish and prawn sauce. Instead, you taste the lime and peanut in it.
The proportions of the dish are also so precise, there isn't a big puddle of dressing left at the end. And this, as any food detective knows, is proof of a well-mixed salad.
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