“Who eats vegetables for breakfast?” he asked when I help myself with ratatouille during breakfast in a hotel at Paris recently. “The French?” I replied. “Weird” said he. This is another dish I make to include more vegetables into my love one’s diet. How do you convince a boy who loves steaks and ignore vegetables to …
Easy Chinese Chives Pancake – 3 main ingredients Read More »
As my family is of Hakka descent, we love making typical Hakka dishes like Yong Tau Foo and Hakka Stuffed Oyster. I remember we have Yong Tau Foo almost every week! My father would buy huge tenggiri (mackerel) from Pudu market, and my mother will be scrapping the meat with a spoon and bouncing the fish …
Steam Tofu With Fish Paste & Oyster Sauce – 10 min Read More »
People often say: never trust a thin cook. Well, you can trust that a thin cook cooks food that keeps you slim. My palate naturally gravitates to light and healthier food. I’ll choose asam laksa over char koay teow, and kuih bingka over pisang goreng. When I cook, I tend to cook lighter food – even if …
This miso soup is without tofu or spring onions – two fresh ingredients that I don’t always have at home. It’s made with three basic ingredients – homemade dashi stock, miso paste and wakame. You could use dashi granules, but I always like to make my own stock. Understandably, in a typical Malaysian kitchen, we …
When I eat out, it is mostly to hang out with friends; food is secondary. We’ll try new restaurants (normally hipster-ish) and talk more than we eat. When I do go out for lunch to fill my stomach, I almost always choose Japanese food. The Japanese restaurant in Selangor Club Bukit Kiara is my go-to lunch …
Chawanmushi (Japanese Steamed Egg) – 5 ingredients Read More »
One of my constant battle in eating well is consuming enough leafy vegetables; Malaysian food is severely lacking in greens. In Vietnam, each dish comes with a huge plate of local vegetables and herbs. In Japan and Korea, where presentation of food is very important, meals are mostly accompanied with colourful vegetables. When I came …
Japanese Spinach Salad (Ohitashi) – 4 ingredients + 5 min Read More »
Japanese cuisine has a special place in my heart. At sixteen, I went on a student exchange programme to a little town in Ishikawa called Komatsu (小松市). Then, the ignorant teenager that I was thought the Japanese only raw food like sushi and sashimi, both which I didn’t learn to love yet. But my host …
Japanese Stock (Dashi With Kombu & Bonito Flakes) – 3 ingredients Read More »
Crispy pork lard has a bad reputation of clogging arteries hence shortening one’s life. But I am raised in a family which has a good relationship with food – no matter how ‘unhealthy’ some food are claimed to be. We happily eat everything moderately. In my family, we consume crispy pork lard cautiously and in …
One weekend, after hiking and intense squat exercise at a hill near where I live, I found myself in a hipster cafe. This modern cafe is furnished with wooden fittings, offers smoothie bowls, cold-pressed juice, and other superfood-laden dishes. My exercise buddies and I thought: how can we ruin hours of exercise with unhealthy food? So this …
Pink Pittaya Smoothie Bowl – 5 ingredients + 5 min Read More »
I know that not everyone like vegetables, but it’s news to me that some people dislike fruits. How can it be? Fruits are so sweet and delicious! When I try to cajole these fruits-hater from taking a bite, they casually said “I don’t need fruits, I’m not constipated!” But fruits is not good only for …
Thai Chilli Salt (Prik-kab-klua) – 3 ingredients Read More »
Since investing in a slow juicer, I try to make cold-pressed juice as often as possible. Realistically, the best I can do is two to three times a week. My modus operandi is make enough to last a few days before juicing again. Having spent many hundreds on this appliance, I told myself “This will …
Easy, No-Peel Cold Pressed Juice – 3 Ingredients Read More »
There’s so many ways to cook tofu, this is one of the easiest and most delicious. The otherwise bland tofu is topped with tasty fried shrimps and shallots mixture. It is then seasoned with soy sauce and sprinkled with spring onions. When I was just a little girl, my mother would cajole me to eat …