It's been my weather since the start of the year.
There're many reasons why I have a special love for this kind of weather. It could be that I have pleasant memories associated with chilly winds and cold rains. It could be that I dress like a beatnik and like wrapping myself up burrito-style in sweatshirts, hoodies and jumpers. It could also be that as a pluviophile (a lover of rain), the music of raindrops and the chill in the air calm me and make me more restful.
Anyone familiar with cold climates will tell you that the first and foremost goal of a warm-blooded creature is to find a way to keep cozy- and warm using whatever means within their reach.
Clothes, food, fire, dwellings etc. etc. etc.
Whether this is how the Thai version of hotpot came about I don't know, but it is again raining today- it has not stopped raining since yesterday afternoon- and right now seems as good a time to have the hotpot they call mookata.
There're many places around our 'hoods that offer mookata, but whenever the mood strikes and whenever I can, it is to Singapore's Little Thailand that I go.
Either that- or- as I recently discovered- Parklane Shopping Mall at Selegie- where on the first floor looking out towards Selegie Road is Cheese Story Mookta.
A bright, cozy nook this place is, and very family friendly. There is no thumping Thai disco here, but you do get a myriad of T-pop, T-ballads, and the occasional Mandopop, Cantopop billboard hit.
What's important, of course, is the food.
Which Cheese Story Mookata does not shortchange.
For $30/pax, you get a selection of seafood, meats, vegetables, the usual hotpot stuff, rice and noodles- all of interesting variety, plus a choice of drinks and ice cream.
Truth be told, I don't do a lot of seafood.
I mean I do eat it- fish, prawns, crabs, the like- but for some reason when we come here there're just a couple of items we order off the seafood menu- prawns (for the soup), scallops and crayfish (for the grill). One time we ordered some sort of clams but they turned out to be the bamboo sort which we didn't seem to be able to grill so we chucked the lot into the soup and made seafood soup instead.
Crayfish, however, is a favorite of ours when we come here- because it does taste lovely when grilled, and because they have it already peeled for our convenience. No wrestling with the shell of the crustacean here. It comes, you put it on top of the grill, and leave it there.
We too have our usual order of meats when we come here- most of the time we have two kinds of beef, two kinds of pork and one kind of chicken. It's a little awkward, but because we tend to go straight for what we want, I don't know what the varieties are on the menu.
There's black pepper beef- something we normally have- and then there's another kind of beef- but for the life of me, I can't recall what variety it is. (I just eat, that's why)
We have had pork- cleanly marinated- I don't remember our raw meats there having lots of sauce- and which we could only grill as we ate otherwise the little pork pieces would have turned hard and dry.
And we have had chicken- garlic chicken- which is probably one of my best likes at this place- and which, like the pork we have to grill and eat at the same time lest it gets all hard and dry.
When it comes to the vegetables there's also plenty to choose from. Lettuce (a favorite of mine for soup), sweet corn, mushrooms, carrots and xiao bai cai are what I tend to select. Sometimes I eat the sweet corn, sometimes I don't. Mostly I have the lettuce (in soup), the mushrooms, the seaweed, and the xiao bai cai.
Vegetables, by the way, are a must for me when it comes to hotpot and mookata. I can skip the noodles and the rice, no problem, but i want my lettuce, and I want my green leafy vegetables, whatever kind they are.
Of course, one cannot come for a mookata meal and not have the soup.
The soup- to me- is the whole purpose of this meal.
For to date there is no other hotpot I know of that combines the flavors of whatever I put in the moat with the flavors of the lard oil with the flavors of whatever I put on the grill earlier.
And so my soup for the day had the flavors of (grilled) chicken, (grilled) beef, (grilled) pork, seaweed, cheese tofu, prawns, (grilled) crayfish, sweet corn, and bamboo clams.
It was so good, I tell you.
A little on the salty side, yes, but it wasn't that kind of salty that made you very thirsty afterward. Rather, it was the kind of salty that had a roundedness about it, and a richness that your tongue appreciated but (unless you really tried), your mind could not place. It's like I tasted a bit of the sweet from the sweet corn, a bit of the salt from the meat, and a lot of sea-sea-salt from the seaweed and prawns and clam.
It's distinctive, I do say, the flavors of the soups from mookata, and no two soups are exactly the same. Even if you order the same dishes for the grill, even if you place in the same ingredients for the soup, the quantity, and the cooking time will vary- and you'll have a soup that will taste different from the last which you had the previous time.
What's lovely about Cheese Story Mookata is that even though they do have fish sauce and the lime dip, they have a cheese dip by the side of the grill that you can dip your food in, and if you're keen, you can dip literally everything in. Chicken, prawns and beef taste good with the cheese. Crayfish and xiao bai cai, not so much. :)
I hope they hang around at Parklane Shopping Mall for a good long time.
And I hope they'll continue to have the deal that they're having now.
After all, few are the diners who don't wish to have the choice of drinks (Thai milk tea included) during the meal, and ice cream (chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, lychee and lime) for dessert right after. :)