Hainan Zai Beansprout Cockles – Simplicity Rocks!
It was too wet a day to be out, but we found ourselves at Chong Pang for lunch. Thinking that some hot soupy meal would perk us up on this chilly wet day, we decided to have some kway chap. The meal was filling, but a tad disappointing. We’ve wasted our lunch meal quota for the day, but hey, you can’t always win, right?
Discovery!
However, my friend seemed a little excited coming back from getting us some drinks to wash the meal down. She had spotted something interesting while on the way to the drink stall.
Going to check them out for their other dishes!
Beansprout cockles.
Despite being born and raised in Singapore, I’ve never had this dish before, never even heard of it! So naturally, it piqued my interest. Beansprouts, cockles, what can come out of this seemingly weird combination?
Despite being full from our meal, we decided to share a plate. There was a queue at the stall, so I took the chance to observe them a little. Operated by three persons, they offer a total of six dishes. They are oyster egg, prawn egg, fried kway teow, fried carrot cake, fried hokkien mee, and beansprout cockles.
Everyone seems to be placing orders for everything except the beansprout cockles. That got me a little bit worried, but still, I think we should give it a go.
Deceivingly nondescript. Get ready to be amazed!
I went for the smallest order as we were still full from our lunch. Even then it’s already $6. A tad expensive for a plate of “tau gay” – beansprouts, but I guess they have to charge something for the cockles. As I observed, I got a little worried when I saw them grabbing a massive pile of beansprouts and throwing them into the flaming hot wok!
“How are we going to finish this?” I thought to myself as I made my way back to our seats with a relatively big plate of beansprout cockles.
A simple plate of wonders!
At first look, this nondescript plate of vegetable doesn’t look at all impressive. And it seems like the cockles are missing, we were ready to resign to the fact that this lunch is not going anywhere. So, without thinking much, I took a spoonful of the beansprouts.
Spoons of delight!
Hmmm!!!! That tasted really nice for a bunch of beansprouts! Thinking it must have been the sauces, I gave the plate a good stir to mix and coat everything with the sauce. That’s when I saw it. The generous load of cockles are buried beneath the fresh, crunchy bunch of beansprouts! We also saw a generous serving of pork lard scattered underneath, all over the dish. We scooped up a bit of everything onto the spoon for a mouthful, and it was fantastic!
Each spoonful of the mix is savoury, with a fabulous texture! Every mouthful is bursting with flavours that really made us forget the disappointing meal we just had. Soon, the plate was empty.
As we sat there drinking our coffee and tea, we were glad we decided to give this dish a go despite feeling full. We were thoroughly impressed by how something so delicious could come out of such simple ingredients.
That’s the beautiful thing about the food culture in Singapore, a wonderful cauldron of discoveries waiting for us to uncover!
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