I mentioned a couple posts ago that one of the very best ways to enjoy homemade wontons is with noodles and charsiu (roast pork), i.e. as part of a perfect plate of wonton mee. What I should have said also is that to really make that dish special, you should also make the charsiu and […]

One of my all-time favourite categories of food is dumplings. Especially pork dumplings. I like them fried, steamed, boiled… you name it, I’ll eat it. My two favourites are gyoza and xiao long bao. Neither S nor I have made the (from what I gather) rather monumental effort of trying to master the latter, but […]

There are some foods that we self-professed gourmands try as often as possible to prepare from scratch. We shake our head and pooh-pooh store-bought pasta sauces. Canned soups are verboten from our pantries. We cry foul whenever friends try to serve us pizza baked on premade bases. Pasta must be made by hand. So too […]

One of the nicest things about running a relatively popular food blog is that from time to time, S and I will get emails from publishers, asking us if we would be interested in receiving copies of some of their new cookbooks. Regular readers know that S and I are both cookbook lovers. With a […]

It’s no secret that S and I, like so many other greedy gourmets around the world, are mad for macarons. The best we’ve had, hands down, have come from Pierre Herme. S also adores Laduree’s licorice versions while I can’t get enough of J’s peanut butter and jelly ones. We also both really love Chef […]

While the above might not be the prettiest picture I’ve ever taken — heck, it’s probably not even among the top 50 — I’m pretty darned excited about it. Or rather, what it’s showing. Obviously, it’s an egg. More specifically, it’s an egg whose white is set but whose yolk is soft, squishy and runny. […]

What do you cook when the person you delight in sharing the pleasures of the table with most isn’t with you? Sardines on toast, baked beans on toast, cheese on toast—you get the idea. I actually lose my appetite when CH isn’t around. The only thing that inspires me to get into the kitchen when […]

Food author Faith Heller Willinger has had the great fortune of calling Florence home for the last thirty years. (If only we were all so fortunate!) In her latest release, Adventures of an Italian Food Lover, she has created a gorgeous hybrid food lover’s tome which is part cookbook, part travel guide and part old-school […]

We recently received a reviewer’s copy of Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter written by Phoebe Damrosch. Phoebe was part of Per Se’s opening team and her charming memoir offers an amusing peek at the goings-on behind the scenes of a high-profile restaurant opening. The sweet coming-of-age, romantic tale makes for engaging light […]

This past New Year’s Eve, S and I hosted a small dinner party for 6 other friends. Because neither of us wanted to work too hard that night, we hired a super-talented chef, Jimmy Chok, to prepare our meal. Jimmy had also cooked for us the previous New Year’s Eve. (I’ll write more about the […]

It’s always satisfying to create a recipe that wows your friends. For a recent dinner party, I had told my wife S that I wanted to create a lobster ravioli. I was inspired partly by the amazing seabass ravioli, made by Chef William Ledeuil, that I tasted while attending the Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok’s World […]

One of my wife’s favourite people in Singapore is Chef Vincent Bourdin. Vincent is Valrhona chocolate’s regional pastry chef. Which means that he knows more about chocolate and desserts than most people and definitely much more than I could ever hope to. Vincent’s background in pastry is pretty impressive. He’s worked at La Tante […]

Don’t. Don’t cook it. Because tuna, I believe, should be eaten raw. Cooked tuna, for the most part, to me at least, isn’t appetizing. A grilled tuna steak, while popular in many places, turns me off. Cooking tuna usually turns this succulent, soft, and delicious fish into a hard, tough and tasteless thing. Searing tuna […]

It all started because of Monkey Bread. For almost 2 years, while attending Columbia University, I lived on 125th Street and Broadway. Around the corner from where I was staying was a small and humble bakery called The Bread Shop. (Sadly, I’ve learned through a quick google search that The Bread Shop has closed down […]

S adds the foam to a “tortilla”
I’ve never had the pleasure of dining at El Bulli, currently considered (if you agree with Restaurant magazine) the world’s best restaurant. That said, I’ve long admired Ferran Adria, the crazy mad scientist chef-owner who spends half of each year in a laboratory experimenting on new cooking and food […]

I really love sweetbreads. I love them most when they’re sautéed in butter, served crispy on the outside and tender (and sometimes creamy) on the inside. I love that duality of textures and I love their taste, somewhat meaty but also somewhat nutty. That said, while I’ve always eagerly ordered them in restaurants, I’ve always […]

Growing up in New York City, one of the restaurants I always wanted to go to was Lutece. It was, in its heyday, considered by many to be New York’s–or even America’s–best French restaurant. As a child who liked going to restaurants, how could I not dream of dining there? Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on […]

CH says: During the summer of 1994, I spent a little over a month in Vienna, doing an intensive German language course. The school was located in the heart of the oldest and most beautiful part of the city, just steps from St Stephansplatz. In addition to being located perfectly for lunch hour and after […]