I make this Thai basil laksa leaf pesto in large batches when we have to prune our Thai basil and laksa leaf (Vietnamese mint) plants. It doesn’t contain any cheese, but the fish sauce (I like Red Boat) provides the umami kick that you’d otherwise get from the parmesan in a traditional pesto. I store some in the fridge and freeze the rest so that there’s always some close at hand. Continue Reading →
My brined turkey recipe arrives too late for this year, I know. I’m just quickly filing it away here while the memory of how it was made is fresh in my mind because this recipe, a variation on my friend Sujata’s, is a keeper. Continue Reading →
This super easy to make, light and tender-crumbed Red Velvet roll cake weds CH’s obsession with Red Velvet and my love of Japanese-style roll cakes (ロールケーキ or ro-ru keiki). Continue Reading →
I thought I’d share this splendidly simple cornbread recipe just in case anyone happens to need one for Thanksgiving dinner (although this cornbread is so irresistible that I know that this recipe will going onto my regular, rather than special occasion, baking list). When I tested the recipe earlier in the week, I immediately knew it was a winner because my toddler, T demanded for seconds and was chasing me around the dining table for my slice of cornbread. Continue Reading →
I am slightly obsessed with cramming as much whole grain as I can into my toddler, T’s diet and have been hunting for a tasty whole wheat cookie recipe for ages. The few I’d tested out sadly tasted like caked sawdust. So, I was thrilled when both T and CH gave this one the thumbs up. I love that the dough works beautifully when it is cut out (T really appreciates interesting shapes). It’s also deliciously tasty and just sweet enough to satisfy CH’s sweet tooth. To top it all off, it’s a 100 per cent whole wheat sugar cookie!
This is an awesome recipe for a super-quick pizza. I’d go as far as to describe it as the perfect spur-of-the-moment pizza recipe. I used it to make my toddler, T, pizza in 90 minutes flat. T, as well as CH and my fabulous mom-in-law (a discriminating diner, to say the least), gave it the thumbs up. So, this pizza recipe is a real keeper. Continue Reading →
Like many Chinese children, I grew up eating plenty of porridge (which, in the Chinese context, is savoury and usually made with white rice). It’s the sort of dish I still find comfort in when I’m feeling under the weather. But it’s not the one dish I’d pick if I had to eat only one thing for the rest of my life. Continue Reading →
This dish of spare rib ramen—that the Japanese call pakomen (and if you read the kanji, it would be called pai gu la mian in Mandarin)—leapt out at me when I first studied the menu at the Capitol Hotel Tokyu’s all-day dining restaurant, Origami, on our most recent trip to Tokyo. It is part of the hotel’s old time favourites menu that consists of beloved dishes that that had been served at the old Capitol Tokyu Hotel for decades. As it turned out, pakomen was one of eight varieties of ramen that had been served at the Capitol Tokyu. It was the most popular, and the one dish that purportedly every Japanese prime minister has enjoyed. Continue Reading →
If you’ve been put off by bland tasting quinoa salads (as I have), this recipe for roasted vegetable and quinoa salad may just change your mind. For the longest time, I put the blame on quinoa itself. Despite that fact that quinoa is a complete protein high in fibre, iron and magnesium—an all-round superfood—I’d avoided it like the plague for many years because the first time I’d eaten quinoa, I felt like I was being punished. It tasted like damp cardboard someone had forgotten to season. Continue Reading →
Vanilla fridge wipe is a household cleaning product that I first discovered as an undergraduate in Western Australia. It’s a food-safe disinfectant that also smells delicious, which helped to make housework just that tiny bit more tolerable. To my dismay, when I moved back to Singapore, I discovered that it wasn’t sold here. And because it’s highly flammable, I couldn’t purchase it in Australia and take it home with me either! Fortuitously, some years later, I chanced upon a recipe for homemade vanilla fridge wipe in Donna Hay Magazine (in Issue 17, to be precise). Since then, I’ve been happily whipping it up at home.
Japanese home cooking may be pretty simple, but if you haven’t had the chance to witness the actual practice of preparing the dishes, there are always nuances that are lost when you just follow a recipe. This is often exacerbated by the inevitable inaccuracies of translation. How you work out what kind of starch is used to dust tofu for frying, gauge whether oil has been heated to the right temperature for deep frying tempura or whether you’ve wrapped your gyoza correctly is made so much clearer when an expert shows you how to do it and talks you through the process as you try your hand at it. It’s doubly useful when the person guiding you speaks the same language that you do. This is why Haru Cooking Class in Kyoto is such a gem of a find. Continue Reading →