I don’t remember buying roasted meat in my life for the dinner that I cook. Well, when I was back in Hong Kong, my mother used to ask me to go downstairs and get some roasted meat but I never cook anything back in Hong Kong. Last week, ran out of idea what to cook, I wanted to try something new. I thought of duck, I thought of porridge. So duck porridge it shall be.
Since I have not bought any roasted meat in Singapore before, I really did not know how much it cost. I always thought that it is expensive. Perhaps S$40 to S$60 per whole duck. Although the roasted meat seller and I conversed in different dialects, I gathered that half a duck only cost … S$11.20! I have no idea if it is a reasonable price but S$11.20 sounds … cheaper than what I thought!
Then I was thinking, perhaps I shall use duck neck to cook with the porridge and not to waste all those seemed to be tasty duck meat. I asked how much the duck neck cost and in a different dialect, the seller answered S$0.50 per piece. Ouch! That sounded expensive!
The seller asked me how many pieces of duck neck do I want (in dialect) and I answered, “Erm … how many do I need (bear in mind that each piece is S$0.50) for making duck porridge?” He frowned and hesitated and just when I was about to answer “four please (that will be S$2)”, the seller held out 2 whole pieces of duck neck (that came with heads) and said, “That’s all I have and probably not enough for duck porridge.” I was like, “Erm … that looks good. I will take both please”. S$0.50 for a whole piece of duck neck with head? That is just so … reasonable!
The roasted duck meat was really good, probably one of the best I have tasted in Singapore. The stall resides in one of the HDB blocks off Boundary Road. I guess they use quite a fair bit of red dye though because my porridge looked a bit … erm … reddish.