War on Buffet (geddit?)

Not a mis-spelt reference to the sage of Omaha, but a comment on the prevalence of buffet deals in Singapore restaurants. I don't know about you, but buffets are generally anathema to me ( I will make an exception for the Sunday Champagne brunch at the Four Seasons and my sister would insist that I exclude the chocolate buffet at the Fullerton), but the attraction of the all-you-can-eat offerings so beloved of Singaporeans passes me by. That said, I think you would like to hear about some of the more exotic buffet choices on offer - at pretty knockdown prices by comparison with most UK dining opportunities. So here goes:

Sunday brunch (a favourite pastime here) first. How about a Taiwan Porridge Buffet? This is rice porridge, of course, not hot oatmeal as eaten by men in kilts, and comes with a variety of "toppings", I suppose you would call them - like sweet potato (atop the rice in the picture to the left), roast chicken, duck, silverfish ( a sort of teeny weeny whitebait), carrot cake (it's carrot cake, but not as we know it), fried wontons, fish cake, mushrooms, stewed peanuts (yes, really), bamboo shoots and black fungus, to name a few. I'd like to say that the black fungus tastes better than it sounds, but since I have never plucked up the necessary courage to put any in my mouth, I'm afraid I can offer no opinion. I am sorry to say that this is true of many of the items considered a delicacy in Asia, and quite frankly, I blame my upbringing. This has nothing to do with my mother's cooking; she hated cooking as it happens, but that's beside the point. It has to do with custard. Now I am sure you must be asking yourself the question, "How so? How can an innocent substance like custard be responsible for my culinary cowardliness?" Allow me to enlighten you.

Those of you who know me well may already have encountered my aversion to "slippy pudding", by which I mean anything sweet and gelatinous, like cold custard, tapioca, blancmange and jelly, for example. This aversion also extends to savoury slippiness, like aspic jelly and gravy, and emanates from a meal I ate about 45 years ago, every detail of which I remember as if it were yesterday. It was a weekend lunch, and pudding was tinned peaches (slippiness epitomised) and custard, which started out hot and therefore not too slippy, but when cold and congealed was gag inducingly so. It became cold and congealed because I refused to eat it - because of the slippy peaches - and I was made to sit at the table when everyone else had left until I did. Of course, every time I tried to get it past my throat, I would gag. To this day I come close to hyperventilating whenever I come across a tin of Bird's custard powder, and since many Asian dishes are fairly slippy (innately so, like shark's fin soup and some of the fungi, or made so, like many of the sauces), I tend to interrogate the waiting staff and insist on "dry" food, whenever I go out. But enough of my phobias; back to buffets. There are seafood buffets, dim sum buffets, high tea buffets, Thai buffets, Japanese buffets, and Indian champagne brunch buffets (the food is Indian and the champagne, fortunately, French).

I mentioned the chocolate buffet at the Fullerton Hotel earlier, which is served from 8 to 11 pm on week nights. Just the thing for a stressed chocolate lover after a hard day at work.

Movie news

I'm conscious of the fact that I haven't contributed any movie reviews to the blog recently, so let's rectify that right away. First up, "The Other Boleyn Girl". I saw this yesterday, having read the book when we were in Bali, and I am in two minds, If I'd not read the book, the film would probably have impressed me more, and to be fair, I was mightily impressed by Eric Bana as Henry (yum!), but because the book was able to develop several plot lines by virtue of its being a book, and a pretty long one at that, the film seemed rather superficial by comparison. That said, definitely worth seeing, if it's just to wonder how they managed to disappear Scarlett Johansson's bosom in those frocks.

A book that I have not read is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which has now been made into a film of the same name. It describes the life of the writer - Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a massive stroke when he was 43, which left him with a condition called locked-in syndrome - completely paralysed apart from the ability to blink his left eyelid. He managed to dictate his book by dint of blinking his eyelid when the relevant letter of the alaphet had been reached. The film makes for quite harrowing viewing, but it is quite brilliant.