….because you can make them quickly and easily at home, and oh so much better. I remember when I first started to cook and I used to doctor up jarred tomato sauce with herbs and such. I felt very clever about making it “better” – until my mother said, hey, basically you can use plain old tomatoes and make a REAL sauce doing very nearly the same steps. A mind blowing food moment for a teenager – cooking is… easy?!? Continue Reading →
Coincidence is a funny thing. The day I walked into the Shinola flagship store in Detroit, Michigan, I was informed by the very cool sales guy helping me that that very night, they were opening a shop-in-shop, their first international outpost in fact, in Singapore. My thoughts raced from, “How cool!” to “What? And I came all the way here?” to “The prices better be better here in Detroit” to “How come neither I nor anyone I know knows about the Singapore store?”, and finally, “So, what product is only available here?” Continue Reading →
The one and only time I tried checking out Michelin-starred dim sum specialist Tim Ho Wan in Hong Kong was a complete bust. My wife and I had tried stopping by the original Mongkok branch for an early breakfast before a full day of appointments. Unfortunately, the line was simply too long and after a little more than 30 minutes, we had to hightail it back to Central, sans dim sum. Continue Reading →
Tomorrow, 3rd December, is #GivingTuesday — or as we’re calling it in Singapore, #GivingTuesdaySG. This social media driven new global day of giving was created by the 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation in the USA last year. In just two months, they brought together over 2,500 organisations to drive philanthropy and pledges of volunteerism. Movie stars, politicians, and other celebrities endorsed the campaign, helping to spur 50 million Internet users worldwide to spread the #GivingTuesday message. Continue Reading →
Earlier this week, I wrote about the seven course dinner I prepared for my brother and his wife. In that post, I shared the full menu as well as my recipe for the evening’s first course. Well, today I’m sharing another dish – another new recipe that was created especially for that meal. Continue Reading →
Fifteen years ago Brisbanites could only dream of having the kind of access to farm fresh produce that much of Europe and Asia enjoyed for as long as anyone can remember. Roadside stalls with boxes of produce and an honesty box yielded you a hit and miss selection of whatever was in season if you were prepared to hit the hinterland on a weekend but other than that and what you could grow in your backyard, produce buying happened at the local fruiterer and increasingly, at the supermarket. Continue Reading →
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of whipping up a real feast. The occasion was the birthdays and wedding anniversary of my brother and his wife, which all fall on the very same day in November. Because of our current work and child schedules, Su-Lyn and I don’t find the time to entertain as often or as dramatically as we used to. But for this dinner, I decided to go all out. Continue Reading →
In The Five Obstructions, one of the strangest documentaries I’ve ever seen, the notorious filmmaker Lars von Trier challenges the equally controversial Jorgen Leth to remake his most famous short film, The Perfect Human, five times, each with a set of constraints of von Trier’s choosing. The stipulations – the film must be reshot in Cuba; it must be made into a cartoon; Leth himself must play the leading role – are patently ridiculous, as are the remakes, which manage to be even more avant garde than the original. Continue Reading →
Whenever Christmas comes round, it signals the start of mum’s American Cheesecake baking season. Her record was set in the early 2000s when 47 cheesecakes were made and sent out our doors over a period of 3 weeks leading up to Christmas. The whole house just smelled of cheesecake… constantly. So safe to say, everyone in the family is a sucker for the dessert. Continue Reading →
When I think of prime rib, I think of Lawry’s. I don’t crave red meat often, but when I need to scratch that itch, it’s go big or go home. Glistening slabs of marbled, well-aged, juicy, melt-in-the-mouth, immensely flavourful beef, with proper gravy, hearty mash, artery-clogging Yorkshire pudding, and perhaps creamed spinach as accompaniment, this is meat-and-potatoes Version 2.0. If there ever was a meal my hubby might walk over hot coals for, this would be it. Continue Reading →
…because you can make them better at home.
Before I moved to Asia, I used to regularly buy these items in the supermarket. And actually a bit after I moved as well….until my then Singaporean boyfriend said…what? You don’t make your own chilli sauce? He was shocked. Appalled. Perhaps even a bit ashamed. Apparently a woman without her own recipe for sambal is not marriage material. Ha! Well the Singaporean boyfriend is no longer in the picture, but the recipe for sambal is. Continue Reading →