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Some of my favourite meals have been of the Henry Ford variety. “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants,” he said of his production-line motor vehicles in 1909, “so long as it is black.”
There was a truly great meal at Union Farm, the roadside stall of a chicken farm in Singapore, where you could have any food you liked, as long as it was chicken. And any chicken you liked, as long as it was chee pao kai – marinated, wrapped in paper, and deep-fried. You unwrapped it, burnt your fingers, ate the sticky, fragrant, caramelised meat within, and left. Perfect.