The Night Tiger

by Yangsze Choo

believed they covered up a multitude of sins, including the unladylike ability to calculate interest rates on the fly.

“No, the dream-eater is a ghost animal. If you have nightmares, you can call it three times to eat the bad dreams. But you have to be careful. If you call it too often it will also gobble up your hopes and ambitions.”

!!!

Going to the wet market had always been one of my favorite errands. You could buy almost anything there: piles of red and green chilies, live chicks and quail, green lotus seed pods that resembled shower sprinklers. There were fresh sides of pork, salted duck eggs, and baskets of glossy river fish. You could eat breakfast, too, at little stalls serving steaming bowls of noodles and crispy fritters.

I love this passage. Going to wet markets was always the best part of my day when I lived in China. this makes me long for it.

Three plump chickens are in the wooden coop at the back. They’ll be made into chicken cutlets and Inchi Kabin, crispy twice-fried chicken served with sweet-and-spicy sauce. Local beef is tough and lean, and comes from water buffalo, so Ah Long will make beef rendang, slow-cooked dry curry with coconut, to round out the main dishes.

I like food descriptions :) esp beef rendang!

The long side buffet in the dining room is laden with tureens of rendang and fragrant, steaming rice. Sour green mangoes are shredded in a kerabu: a salad tossed with mint, shallots, and dried shrimp drizzled with lime and spicy sambal sauce.

again, yum.

In the airy bungalow, where the sunlit leaves outside dapple the whitewashed rooms a pale and luminous green,