For the past few weeks, S has been testing banana cake recipes for two reasons. The first was part of our quest, mentioned in my previous post, for the perfect house cake. The second was because she had been recently asked to contribute a recipe that reminded her of home to a new cookbook and […]

As I mentioned in my previous post, S and I have just moved into a new house. You can’t imagine just how happy we are with our new place. The house itself is a project that was two years in the making — starting with purchasing a small one-story intermediate terrace house; tearing it down; […]

Ever tried making something from a cookbook that looks really cool and really simple but just doesn’t turn out right? Or, as happened to S and me just a few days ago, right-side up?
A great friend of ours had recently given us a copy of Modern Spanish Cooking by Sam & Eddie Hart. She and […]

When we were in Jakarta two weeks ago, some lovely friends of ours gave us a boxful of mangga gedong (which happened to be in season) to take home with us. While mangga harum manis is famously sweet, the relatively smaller mangga gedong packs a heady punch. It is not only sweet and juicy, but […]

It’s unquestionably green, although I’m not quite sure why it’s called a salad. Our dear friend D has often spoken of his paternal grandmother’s green salad. It is something that his family serves at every Thanksgiving and Christmas meal. The subject first came up a few years ago when we discussed the idea of organizing […]

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 […]

I have to admit that I bought Emily Luchetti’s A Passion for Desserts primarily because I had to have her recipe for the enticing chocolate chip ice cream cake that’s featured on the book cover. While there are days when one may be inspired to take on Pierre Herme’s Plaisir Sucre, the demands of […]

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 […]

I only became obsessed with making my own ice cream after I set eyes on the Musso Lussino Pro, a sexy, 38-pound stainless steel ice cream-churning R2D2 with its own built-in refrigerator unit. After reading the glowing review in Burt Wolf, Emily Aronson and Florence Fabricant’s The New Cook’s Catalogue (“makes superb ice cream of […]

The goon was still ranting. He was, thankfully, ranting rather diplomatically, speaking in rather hushed tones, not wanting to call obvious attention to himself. Unfortunately for me and my colleague, what he lacked in volume he was more than making up for in longevity. We had been sitting together for over an hour and for […]

The very yummy cake that chef Pignolet whipped up during his cooking demonstration
One of the restaurants that I’ve always wanted to eat at but have not gotten around to visiting yet is Bistro Moncur, located in Sydney, Australia. My good friend J, who runs the sumptuous blog Kuidaore, went there a while back and has […]

I’m a big believer that food should be fun, for adults as well as for kids. Which is why, when I saw the recipe for the delightful dessert pictured above in a new cookbook my darling wife S had just purchased, I knew I had to make it. The book, which I urge all of […]

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 […]

Andrew, over at Spittoon Extra has proposed a fun once-off food meme, posting the details of breakfast today, Sunday the 20th of November. More info on this can be found here.
S and I had a late, lazy but small breakfast this morning. We were going off to a friend’s place for a homemade pizza lunch […]

I first ate Jean-Georges’ molten chocolate cake some 10-11 years ago. It was at a restaurant on 105th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue in New York called Metisse. It had just opened and, as one of the resident food and movie critics (among other things) for my college newspaper, I made it a point […]

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 […]

Well, this is my first post on the new site (which aside from the URL shift should hopefully look the same as the old) and what better celebratory food than an age old classic dessert and snack, the ice cream sandwich. This one was made using chocolate brownie cookies and mint chocolate chip ice cream.
I […]

We recently purchased a copy of The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, a great big volume full of yummy recipes. After a quick dinner (soya sauce chicken noodles—yum!), we decided to make something. I had some Reese’s peanut butter chips that I wanted to use. I had originally bought these to put in a home-made […]