You know, looking through my pictures earlier, I realized that out of the many times that I have been for a meal at this place on Joo Chiat Road this year, of pictures, I have only four.
I don't know why.
I don't know why I never took a picture of the yam rice or the youtiao which my friend makes sure always to order.
By right, there should be more.
Especially of the food.
But I guess I am usually quite hungry by the time the rice and everything else at the table.
So all I have are these.
Sin Heng Claypot actually offers more than just bak kut teh and ter ka.
On the menu there are a couple of zichar style dishes- prawns, poultry, vegetables, fried rice, claypot noodles, vermicelli, even opening appetizers like prawn rolls with sweet sauce that you generally would not find alongside with bak kut teh.
But here they are.
And quite popular they are too.
I've seen people order the cereal prawns.
I've also seen people order two kinds of vegetables to go with their claypots of soup and gravy.
For my friend and I, our orders tend to be regular.
What we usually get is one dish of bak kut teh, one dish of ter ka, one bowl of yam rice, and one bowl of youtiao.
Depending on the appetite, sometimes we order just the bak kut teh.
But sometimes we order both.
In recent months I have come to appreciate the servings and portions that this place serves.
This isn't a bias.
It's true.
See, all along I had thought that everyone served up their portions of pork ribs in regular-sized, near-rectangular shapes. I mean, Song Fa does that. Founder does that. Ng Ah Sio also does that.
But, as I found out not too long ago, it is not an absolute.
There is no law, spoken or unspoken, that states your pork ribs must be of a distinctive shape and distinctive size before it is brought to you.
So it is perfectly acceptable that your bowl of soup come served with ribs chopped up so small that- whilst easy to pick up with chopsticks- make you wonder what you are paying for, how much of a portion are you supposed to have for your meal, and where all the shiokness has gone.
Bak Kut Teh, like frog porridge, and some other dishes, is one of those meals that you have to feel shiok about when you're eating it.
There is no two ways about it- you either feel like you've eaten a full, satisfying meal with plenty of meat, or you feel like you've consumed drips and drabs of meat that had been left hanging from the bones.
I prefer the full, satisfying meal- and Sin Heng here does it well.
Their ribs are regular sized, their meat is tender, and so easy does it fall off the bone that all I need to do is to take a single bite, tug, and the whole piece comes off straight away.
I don't have to chew and chew and chew.
I also don't have to tug and pull and tug and pull.
What's more, the pork has a nice, slight warmth nestled within, so much so that the meat actually feels warm inside your mouth as you're eating.
The dark soy sauce in which you dip the meat into takes away nothing of the taste.
Best part of this dish, however, has to be the soup.
At first glance, one might think that it be more like a thick concoction of the medicinal kind, but a few sips in, and you will soon realize that it is clearer, cleaner, and more refreshing than it actually appears to be.
I like having at least one and a half bowls of soup whenever I am there.
It makes for a great complement to the gravy of the pig trotters.
Which, by the way, is my favorite part of the dish. The gravy, rich with vinegar, goes well with everything- the trotter meat, the pork from the rib, even the youtiao and the yam rice.
It isn't that I don't fancy a nice, big trotter.
It's just that I am not so good at the sight of the trotter in the pot itself. My mind flies to the pig, to its foot, and then at the now thoroughly cooked leg simmering in the pot right in front....
I'm not very brave.
Never was. Chances are, never will.
Doesn't matter whether I have been enjoying the trotter meat for a few years, or that I can take a bit of the collagen-rich skin- the sight of the pork leg itself is what scares the heck out of me.
What's more, the inexperienced me can't seem to distinguish between the bone, the meat, and the skin unless my chopsticks poke around the dish.
However, etiquette doesn't permit me to do that, so normally I wait for my friend to break open the trotter and then I try to hunt for the meat, or ask him for help to see where on the leg it is.
From time to time, the sight gets a bit too overwhelming. That's when I take all the vegetables and dump them on top of the trotter.
Out of sight, out of mind.
But only for a little while.
I do eat them parsley- or is it coriander- with a bit of the trotter meat over a spoonful of rice.
The tastes and textures work together really well!