Last year, following a friend’s initiative, in the name of sustainability, I decided to cut down on the amount of meat and fish I consume and try my best not to eat meat during weekdays. I also started looking for recipes and cookbooks that are more vegetable-centric.
Over the years, my gorgeous and svelte wife S has continuously pressured me to make lighter and healthier pasta dishes. You see, my default, when it comes to pasta, has always been rich and creamy. That’s just the way I like’m. But as I’ve aged and the pounds have become harder and harder to keep off, I have to admit that I’m finally seeing the wisdom in my beloved’s request. My favourite non-creamy, light, but still flavour-packed pasta recipe right now is a crab tagliatelle with an aromatic shellfish broth.
In all honesty, this post was prompted by the fact that I’ve finally found Meyer lemons in Singapore. For years, the Meyer lemon was one of those elusive culinary treasures that I’d read so much about but never tasted. And I never would’ve recognized the lemons as Meyers (given that they were only labeled with their country of origin, Australia) if I hadn’t happened to taste my first one just weeks before at the Noosa International Food and Wine Festival.
I love ayam buah keluak. This distinctive Peranakan dish–a spicy, heady chicken and black nut stew–is so very special. The best versions are obviously homemade, but I have yet to even attempt this at home. […]
Ah, Miami Beach… a place known for its outstanding Cuban food but this time, I have decided to go a different route and return to an old Puerto Rican favourite of mine: Jimmy’z Kitchen.
The first time I had ever heard of Diner en Blanc was when a friend forwarded me one of the many YouTube videos of the 2010 dinner held in the courtyard of the Louvre. Watching it, I was astounded. And I really badly wanted to have been there. It looked like such a fun event. And the concept? Combining great food and wine, sartorial splendor, and a flashmob? Genius. So, when it was announced earlier this year that Dîner en Blanc was coming to Singapore, I immediately signed up. I also (shamelessly) wrote to the organiser, Clemen Chiang, asking him if he could interview for this site. I was thrilled that he said yes.
When my girlfriend K and I were college students living on the fringes of New York’s scenic West Village, there were two kinds of restaurants that we enjoyed frequenting. The first kind is the so-called ‘superstar’ type — this is the kind that has received widespread media coverage and whose chef clearly has his finger on the gustatory pulse of the city. The second kind of restaurant is the neighborhood joint. These are eateries which have won us over with their hearty food and good service, and which are typically a short stroll from our apartments. Joseph Leonard, happily, is a restaurant that falls into both categories.
One of the best meals my gorgeous, foodie wife S and I have ever had was at L’Osier, the now closed three Michelin-starred French restaurant in Tokyo, helmed at the time by Chef Bruno Ménard. The food was original and perfectly executed. The room was warm, clubbish, buzzing, and filled with the laughter of happy patrons. Service was impeccable and memorable; at the end of the meal, umbrella-toting staff walked us around the block and helped us find a taxi. While we are sad that L’Osier has closed its doors, I’m thrilled that Chef Ménard now calls Singapore his home. Last week, we dropped by his newly opened sandwich and burger shop, &MADE.
I didn’t attempt to make my own yoghurt until I had our son, T. We always had some in our fridge, but I guess it never occurred to me that it would be worth the effort to make my own. Prompted by a desire to minimize T’s exposure to additives as he started on his first solids, I tried a recipe I found in a baby food cookbook that was unfortunately a dismal failure. But Google, combined with a mother’s obsessive compulsion can be a powerful thing. The outcome: the unearthing of a recipe from Harold McGee—master of culinary science and precision. A version of it (see below) now resides in my mobile phone.
I love a good Clams Casino. It’s a lovely retro dish that I happen to adore but is quite hard to find these days. If you’ve never had a really good version, with fresh, plump, sweet clams and topped with parmesan, bacon (hey, who doesn’t love bacon?), oregano, parsley, bell peppers, shallots, and garlic, you don’t know what you’re missing!