When I was counting down my favourite meals of last year, I wrote that one of them was had at Neil Perry’s very sexy Chinese restaurant, Spice Temple. While I had originally gone in slightly skeptical, I left a believer. And while the food may not have been the most authentic, it certainly had flavour, […]

Sometimes it takes a great chef to come up with the simplest and most elegant solutions. Like blowtorching a prime rib before slow-roasting it at low heat for several hours. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me backtrack a bit.
As you all know, my voraciously literary wife S and I are avid cookbook collectors. […]

I’ve never made my love of burgers a secret. Despite the fact that a large part of my working life revolves around slightly fancy restaurants, I still have a thing for burger bars and the simple joy of chomping into a juicy, beautifully seasoned burger, chased with an ice-cold beer or soda.
I’ve tried a lot […]

V’s yummy pork belly
A few years back, my darling wife S and I took part in a home cooking challenge with 3 other couples. The theme was boys versus girls, which meant that all of the men were on one team and our wives/partners on another. On two different nights, each team planned and prepared […]

There are some cookbooks that you know, after just one use, that are going to be a keepers. And constant kitchen companions. You know what I mean. These are the books that, no matter how large your collection becomes, you keep going back to. Because they are dependable and inspiring and comforting all at the […]

For most guys, scones aren’t exactly the food of our childhoods. They’re things our girlfriends and sisters, mothers and especially our grandmothers, ate. There is absolutely nothing masculine about sitting down for tea and scones. Which meant that for the majority of us boys, during our childhood, it would have been up there with cooties, […]

My always hungry wife S and I are devoted Japanese food addicts. We recently realized that 8 of 10 meals we eat out at are at Japanese restaurants. One reason might be that we’re pretty proficient at cooking most other cuisines, so when heading out of the house, we tend to go somewhere where we […]

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 the most satisfying and simple comfort foods in Chinese cuisine is the wonton. A hot bowl of wonton soup is perfect when exhausted or ill. A serving of wontons sauced with a thick, reduced chicken stock is a delicious snack. A portion, tossed in a spicy homemade chilli-oil sauce, can be a fantastically […]

One of my favourite scenes in Robert Redford’s fantastic film Quiz Show takes place over lunch. Ralph Fiennes’ character, Professor Charles Van Doren, has taken Rob Morrow’s character, Dick Goodwin, to the Harvard Club for a bite. The special that day is a Reuben, about which Goodwin decides to “educate” Van Doren. He tells Van […]

Although we’ve cooked for a few friends since moving into our new house, all of these meals have been pretty easy affairs — the kind of things that don’t require more than a few hours of puttering around our new (dream) kitchen. This past weekend, however, my darlin’ wife S and I entertained the […]

Over the past few years, as S and I have been travelling, visiting and sometimes staying with friends, we’ve noticed a very interesting shift. Not too long ago, we would have been offered a foldaway couch, or some uncomfortable cot in a friend’s living room. Most recently, though, friends have pleasantly surprised us with very […]

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 […]

While my darling wife S and I usually try to ensure that our dinner parties unfold smoothly and surely, sometimes mistakes just happen. A couple of years ago, we had planned a rather ambitious menu for a dinner party we were hosting. One of the courses was an oxtail ravioli, made entirely from scratch. I […]

Despite being both Singaporean, S and I had very different up-bringings. My family moved to New York City when I was two years old. When I was twelve, we moved to Washington DC. When I graduated high school, I returned to Singapore for two years after which I moved back to NYC to go to […]

I know this post is going to offend some readers. So, I’m placing this little warning here. If you’re among that part of the population that doesn’t condone the cooking and eating of cute, baby animals, please don’t scroll down. If, however, like S and me, you live to eat and absolutely love the idea […]

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 […]

For a good chunk of my life, I’ve harbored a secret. It’s something my wife is pretty disgusted by, something that few friends here in Singapore sympathize with or even understand. But I know there are others out there like me, others that share my hidden shame. Some are even more passionate about it than […]

I remember when Keith McNally opened Balthazar. It was the Spring of 1997. And even though I was no longer living in New York, word of this ultra-hip, retro-chic, uber-trendy and neo-traditional French bistro reached me in Hong Kong. The NY press went wild over SoHo’s hottest new restaurant, dedicating several column inches to cover […]

In a recent post, I mentioned that my darlin’ wife S and I have a pretty big collection of cookbooks. And while some books are rarely used, there are others that have become well-worn kitchen companions. We all have favourite recipes and favourite cookbooks that we turn to first when looking for something to make […]

S and I are huge book lovers. We love spending hours exploring bookstores. It doesn’t matter if the establishment in question is a brand-spanking new megastore or a quaint out of the way second-hand store. We each love different kinds of books. S loves chancing upon cool children’s books, collecting wacky etiquette books, and appreciates, […]

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 […]

On our recent trip, S and I spent 3 days visiting a friend in Dubai. Our friend CC co-owns the coolest (contemporary) art gallery in town and if you are ever in that area, you must check out her cool space, called The Third Line. While there, we enjoyed several excellent meals. We passed […]

One of the most aggravating things about travelling is the requisite wasted time spent hanging out in airports, bus stations, ferry terminals and other random transit spots. I also hate short-haul flights during which in-flight entertainment usually means listening to the annoying guy in the row behind you try to pick up the gal […]

Today, 2 April, our younger golden retriever, Alix, celebrates her fourth birthday. Friends have observed that we have a softer spot for our second dog. I guess I can’t help it. Alix is smaller than her older sister and inevitably gets less than her half of the back seat in the car because Sascha has […]

When I was younger, I had the pleasure of spending two summers working in Paris. During that first summer, I didn’t explore the city as much as I would have liked to. The second time, however, I made sure to block off days which I dedicated to simply wandering around that fabulous city, happily exploring […]

It’s always wonderful to find something really cool that you can’t wait to not only buy for yourself but also for as many friends as possible. The other day, S came home with the cutest new book. Irene’s Peranakan Recipes, published by uber-cool design and custom-publishing firm Epigram, was originally produced as a Christmas gift […]

One of the things that I’ve been fortunate to have had the opportunity to do over the past few years is work on a number of pretty nifty books. The latest one to see print is titled French Classics Modern Kitchen (okay, I’m tootin’ my own horn a little here). It’s the cookbook for the […]

I’ll admit that this book wasn’t exactly a title on my Amazon pre-order list. I hadn’t heard of Kitchen Sense or its author Mitchell Davis until the lovely Cathy of A Blithe Palate emailed us an invitation to participate in this Cookbook Spotlight event which she is co-hosting with Sara and Alicat of Weekend Cookbook […]

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 […]

While I know that a number of magazines and other fabulous food bloggers have already printed and posted their own holiday gift guides, I thought I’d share my own ideas for what you could buy a loved one, or yourself, this year for Christmas.
And in the spirit of Christmas, I’ve chosen 12 items, one for […]

Couple days ago, Anthony over at Spiceblog shot some of his cookbooks. Like all things on the web, this has kicked off a fun new meme, asking foodies on the web to post pictures of their cookbook collections and answer the below questions. For more info, check out Anthony’s original post here. I hope all […]

When friends visit my apartment for the first time, they’re often surprised by the number of cookbooks and food books my wife and I own. One whole wall of our living room is devoted to these books. And while, compared to the collections of some other foodies we know, our stash isn’t that large, it […]