August 28th, 2005
It was Lena 's birthday weekend! Kelly and I wanted to treat one of our original and best friends here from Singapore with a proper celebration! We were gonna have an American cookout with a Singapore flare which primarily involved added Kilos of fresh as it gets sea food.

Click on me to the right for more pictures and less talk!

Fisherman's Market Warf

It all started with an early rise and pickup from Adrian and Lena at 4:30 AM . We drove all the way to the north of Singapore to the main warf were all the wet market stalls buy their fish for the day. Yeah baby, cutting out the middle man and going to the source! Of coarse, in order for this too work you have to buy a LOT of seafood. Well, sounds good to me! Adrian was able to get the guy at the gate to issue us a temporary ass to get over to the selling area. Even though we got there at 5:15 AM it was fairly clear that most people had already been there and the fishermen were selling off the leftovers. My god, if these were the leftovers I can't even image the insanity of when everything was full earlier! In typical Asian style, most forms of cleanliness were reduced to simply dumping water and more ice on the fish which were strewn every where over the bare concrete floor. I had to get over my brief shock at the amounts of fish and the condition in which they were being stored before I could get my camera out and snap some pictures in the early morning twilight. After we all walked around with our mouths hanging agast we started to collect and start focusing on buiying some seriose seafood. Lena had her heart set on sting ray. Before I could stop Lena we had agreed to buy 24kilo's of full grown stingray! Next thing I knew the galosh totting fisherman was hacking the wings off these poor dead beasts with a giant cleaver and dumping them into three large plastic bags for us. Jesus, could we really eat about a dozen huge stingray wings! We also purchased 5 kilos of fresh squid and several kilos of prawn. (For those of you back home, there are 2.2lbs per kilo and a prawn is a shrimp). All in all we got more seafood then we could eat and spent a hefty 140SGD at the wharf for what would have cost a small fortune back in the states.

Food Prep

We had soo much seafood the car seemed to ride a bit lower on the way home and prepping of the goods took all 5 of us another 4 hours. I really regret not snapping some pictures of this fiasco! I managed to steal 2 foam boxes for us to use during the barbeque and we put them to full use in the preparation. I have just one cleaver that pales in comparison to what the fisherman was using. We first tried prepping the stingray in our kitchen but it was too much so we ended up having to move the entire operation down to our parking area outside the elevator. I am sure the surrounding tenants loved this as we proceeded to hack apart fish leaving blood, skin, bone, and some lovely entrails scattered around the parking area despite out efforts to clean the mess up afterward! Good thing it rains a lot in Singapore ! Prepping the squid was amazingly easy! You just pull their spinal bone out, pull the guts out, rinse, and done! I think we all took a break to pass out and catch some shut eye at some point of the day before the official BBQ started! We were exhausted!

BBQ

I had reserved a BBQ spot in the neighboring park because our condo's unit had been nabbed by another group just 30 minutes before Kel had tried to get it earlier that week. Our condo has hundreds of clients and only one barbeque! W T F! When I first arrived at the pit it was along a big metal construction fence and in the wide open with no protection from the searing sun. Once again, WTF, who's bright idea was it to build a BBQ pit 78 miles north of the equator with no SHADE! Well, sunburn or not we had a fabulous time, drank, and ate our hearts out with the BEST seafood I have ever had in my life! I never liked squid before because it was always like chewing on a rubber band. Now I know it's not supposed to be like that. If you get it really fresh the way it's supposed to be it is delicious and breaks right apart in your mouth! The Stingray was incredible! The bones are in a simple layer that you can peel the meat right off from, and it was soo juicy and good!

BBQ-2

We had soo much food that we held another BBQ the next weekend at our condo and enjoyed the stingray we had frozen all over again. This is even after Lena took a good 5 kilos of prepped stingray back to her mother as well!

© September 6, 2008