Odd bits of vegetables are a common sight in my fridge. I will have leftover vegetables from recipe testing, and some are tragically abandoned at some dark corner of the fridge. Of course, I can use the leftovers for another recipe, which also means that I might need to get more ingredients (and end up having more leftovers–vicious cycle!).
Hello everyone! I am back at Chubby Hubby. My apologies for the hiatus–I have been busy with personal projects, work, school and many more (you know the usual excuse). I think for a moment our editor, Charmaine was worried that I was kidnapped by aliens–I was so terrible in replying her email (Ed’s note: yes indeed! so glad you’re back 🙂 ).
I am lucky to live in a neighbourhood where I am surrounded by food establishments that produce delicious food at a reasonable price. One of them is Ciel Pâtisserie. Nestled underneath a public housing block, Ciel Pâtisserie’s chef-owner, Chara Lum (a graduate from Le Cordon Bleu, Paris) churns out an amazing array of French treats. Amongst them, my favourites are the Fuji and the strawberry shortcake.
During my stay at Angsana, Bintan, I had the opportunity to participate in a cooking demonstration with Chef Renu Homsombat, Banyan Tree’s Corporate Chef at Saffron. The dishes that I was learning were from the four course dégustation meal that I had at Saffron. I was very excited to uncover the secrets behind Chef Renu’s delicious food.
It has been crazy for the past two months. I was piled with work projects, photo shoot and amidst the chaos, I actually signed up for an online course. With my tight schedule, cooking and baking had to take a back seat. My meals were made up of mostly takeaways and fast food.
A couple of weekends ago, I was invited to Angsana Bintan for a quick weekend getaway, and also to experience their quarterly weekend event, The Colours of Thailand. Among the activities lined up, it included feasting on a selection of Thai cuisine that was thoughtfully prepared by Chef Renu Homsombat, Banyan Tree’s Corporate Chef at Saffron, who had specially flown in from Bangkok for the event.
At the beginning of the year, I volunteered my services to test the recipes for an upcoming cookbook called Plusixfive: A Singaporean Supper Club Cookbook. At that time, I barely knew anything about Plusixfive–a supper club that is based in London and started by a very enthusiastic young man named Goz Lee. The story behind plusixfive is simple–man craved for authentic Singaporean food in London, man could not find good Singaporean food, and so man learned how to cook delicious Singaporean food. And one thing led to another–with confidence and help from a few friends, Goz Lee shared his love for Singaporean food by starting a supper club.
I got pretty sick the past couple of weeks. I had a bad bout of flu and cough, and I lost my taste buds. I was so buried under my blanket that our editor, Charmaine was rather shocked that she had not heard from me for a while.
Have you ever been disappointed by a plate of flavourless, badly cooked char kway teow, and know you can make a better version? Or perhaps your mission in life is to cook and preserve Singapore’s hawker food? If you love to cook local fare and have an adventurous heart, you might want to put on an apron and join MediaCorp’s newest reality cooking series, Wok Stars. We think this initiative is a really great one, so I was excited about finding out more about the upcoming program from Lawrence Ng, producer of Wok Stars.
When I was nine years old, my Aunty J migrated to Vancouver, Canada. Every couple of years, she would make a trip back to Singapore to visit my grandma. Each trip, she would lug goodies from Canada for all of us. I remembered seeing Aunty J unpack her luggage, anxiously anticipating the treats that I was going to receive. We got boxes of peaches and cherries, salmon jerky and my favourite – Wagon Wheels.