Abdhus Salam Rojak

One of the church mates craving for Indian Rojak and we came to Ayer Rajah Food Center. As there were quite a number of people who attended the service that day, we split up into different cars and hence the food choices varied.
Parking was easy to find but not seats. We split up the table seatings according to the cars we came to this place with. After hearing about Indian Rojak, decided to give it a try.
There are quite a few stalls that offer Indian Rojak and one of my friends recommended this one as it had been talked about on the newspaper before. We ordered two plates of Rojaks with different ingredients and split the costs into 6.
It took quite awhile before the Rojaks arrive as there were quite a number of people queued before we arrived. At the stalls, one is supposed to use the tongs provided to grab the ingredients that you would like and place it into the plate provided. They will then re-​heat the ingredients before serving the dish. The plate was definitely colorful and the ingredients looked chewy and crunchy even before biting into them. They also provided sauces on the side (red-​orange in color).
Took a quick snapshot of the dish before digging into them and I realized that the ingredients we took was cut into smaller pieces. We were also given plastic forks and spoons to eat the Rojak ingredients with. Most of the ingredients are chewy and crispy. Some of them are tender in texture which make you crave more of it after one bite. My friend jokingly commented that Indian Rojaks had loads of carbs. I think one of my friends did a good job in mixing the ingredients together.
The sauce was mostly sweet and a little hint of spiciness. The taste lingers in your tastebuds for quite awhile and it makes you continue eating even though you are full. I am sure that this is my first time having Indian Rojak and I’ll definitely be back for more if I am around the area.

Mr. Ali has been crafting Indian rojak since 1994. This should be all you need to know. If it isn’t, then the constant custom in front of stall 73 should be a pretty good indication that there is something going on here that might just be special. I don’t want to use the word institution, but that’s the way I feel about what hawkers like Mr Ali have built. Mr Ali and his crew are craftsmen. They have gotten very good at doing one thing consistently, they are consequently known for that product, that level of craftsmanship and professionalism. When Indian rojak is what they want, craftsmen like Mr Ali are who they seek out. Mr Ali has honed his craft over decades and you appreciate this immediately and in a very palpable way when you place the first few morsels tentatively into the sauce and then quickly into your mouth. You know you’ve just had something good, but aren’t quite sure why yet.
There is no quick way to unravel the mysteries of Indian rojak. The reason becomes immediately apparent when you visit a serious rojak vendor such as Mr Ali’s Abdhus Salam Rojak. There are usually about 20 different items to choose from resulting in a near-​infinite number of permutations for enjoyment. Another less obvious reason is that Indian rojak is a deceptively complex dish. If you bother to vary the ingredients each time you have this dish, you will necessarily experience a different aspect of this foundational ethnic cuisine. The complexity of the dish derives as much from the variety of its ingredients as their cultural roots; there is fishcake, which is of southern Chinese origin, brought to Singapore by the Teochews and Hokkiens and beef lung or paru which is Malay, right alongside ingredients such as Vadai and spiced potato which are of distinctly Indian origin. You begin to understand that experiencing Indian rojak is going take a while, like the Shahryar, you keep coming back to hear Scheherazade spin wondrous tales, each more enthralling than the one before and one after another. The takes are spun from artfully weaving the seemingly disparate threads of different cultures, times and places. And like the Sharyar, at the end of telling, you are enthralled, in love, forever changed by the telling of the tale and the storyteller.
I am an advocate for the lesser known combinations or menu items in Indian rojak. I like to have beef lung, which is deep fried and then sliced thick. There is the rich tang of offal, the vestigial saltiness of blood and rich textural notes of a spongy innard that resists your attempts to break it down just long enough, only then to surrender itself completely and dissolve into a miasma of flavor that floods your brain. This is poor food, innards, usually the discarded bits of an animal used only for it’s muscle, but food that I find offally good. Offal tells you so much more about the food that you’re eating. It’s like a date that is both beautiful AND witty.
I would also recommend the Vadai, a clan of which there are 2 outstanding representatives. Now since I long ago, more years ago then I can remember, lost my virginity and therefore allegiance to the rougher, edgier, Mr Crusty, this will be the variety of Vadai that I would suggest you try at Abdhus Salam Rojak.
Maybe finally adding a whole braised squid and a spiced potato.
Now, the charms of rojak sauce, a sweet, spicy and slighlty tangy concoction are largely lost on me, but there are bits of rojak that marry well with sauce. If you have tepung or the flavored fried dough balls, or the shrimp or prawn cakes with the whole prawns embeded in a deep-​fried cake (cook to look at and photograph, not so much to eat, for me at least), then you’ll want to dip the above morsels in this hellish red condiment.
This is what I love about foundational cuisines. The true skill of the master craftsman is in restraint, in resisting the urge to dazzle with fancy knife skills or a complicated preparation, and in so doing, NOT screwing up a perfectly good ingredient. Rojak is no exception. You hand your plate of ingredients over to be parceled into bite-​size morsels which are then tossed with fresh chopped large green chili peppers and fresh onions. Your ride will now begin. Please remember to keep hands and feet in the car at all times… faint moaning allowed.