Stories and recipes from a Malaysian home kitchen
A teriyaki chicken poke bowl is a thing of joy – and the perfect quarantine meal. First, what’s poke bowl … is it Japanese or Hawaiian? Poke is a regional American-based cuisine from Hawaii, heavily influenced by Japanese cuisine.The word “poke” means “to slice or cut” in Hawaiian. In the original version, poke bowls feature…
Folks, meet Japanese garlic fried rice. Like all simple dishes, it only looks easy to perfect. I couldn’t believe that making fried rice could be so difficult, until I tried to recreate the dish at home. The results were not bad, but somehow my garlic fried rice lacked umami, or wok hei, or something. I…
I’m no stranger to onion jam. A sweet-sticky condiment of slow-cooked onions, it’s typically served with burgers in Western restaurants. In Asia, it’s sometimes just called “caramelised onions”. Is it nice? Yes, but nothing to get excited about. Until I ate a version made by a friend in Singapore, using her personal recipe. Holy smokes….
Ginger scallion chicken reminds me of dad ❤️Unlike mum and I, dad has a milder palate. He would go for dishes like this whereas Mum and I would order fiery, spicy stuff like curry fish and kung pow chicken. In fact, I used to think that ginger scallion chicken was boring!Not anymore though.I now appreciate…
This ridiculously simple sausage tomato pasta is so tasty I couldn’t believe it until I made it myself. I’ve seen variations of this floating around the internet. Jamie Oliver has made a version of it, among other people. But it wasn’t until I saw Catalina Tre’s gorgeous photo of her spicy sausage pasta that I…
My first encounter with pâté was thanks to the late Dr Frank Dourado, a popular general practitioner in Ipoh. Many years ago, my father went to his clinic on Brewster Road for consultation. Both gardening geeks, the two men got along like a house on fire, though their backgrounds were very different. Their friendship extended…
This delicious gulai labu is the combination of two brains – a friend, and my mum’s! How did that happen? Well, it all started when Madam R gifted us her gulai labu to eat for dinner a few days before Eid. Food gifting has become common during the COVID19 pandemic era, as a way of…
A lot of my friends asked me how I made dengaku nasu in an air fryer after I posted it in my Facebook and Instagram stories. Since I aim to please, I thought I’d roughly write up my experience 🙂 Some of you might be asking – what is dengaku nasu? It’s a traditional Japanese…
I first ate iconic Thai dish goong ob woonsen (prawn glass noodles) 20 years ago at a restaurant in Thailand, while travelling with my mum and aunt. So long ago, yet I can still remember the taste like yesterday. The combination of juicy fresh prawns and saucy noodles in a spicy and fragrant peppery paste…
In the spirit of eating healthier, I’ve been making more plant-based recipes and last weekend, I attempted something a little more ambitious: vegetarian mushroom burger! (Yes, bean-based vegetarian burgers ones are common but they give me flatulence. Ahem.) Verdict? I loved it! The mushroom texture and flavour tasted amazingly close to meat. I was worried…
One of the most popular dishes during the month of Ramadan sahur is, tadah, shakshuka! Featuring poached eggs in a hearty tomato sauce, this beloved Middle Eastern breakfast dish is perfect for sahur because it’s healthy, nutritionally balanced, keeps you full and most of all, very delicious! Just dip some crusty bread in the creamy,…
Loving my keto lemon loaf so much! … keto? How did I, inveterate lover of carbs, end up on the keto bandwagon? This was partly inspired by a chat I had with a dietician when my parents came down in KL for medical appointments. She posited that adopting a low-carb diet can reverse diabetes. Or…
There’s no shortage of Vietnamese lemongrass chicken recipes online – I’ve even attempted some of them – but I never knew how magnificent it could be until I tried the version at Ăn Viet. Winsomely tucked between split lemongrass sticks, the dish arrived beautifully presented. But it was when I bit into the meat that…
I keep making ’em, these things called Dutch baby pancakes. What exactly are they, you ask? And do they have anything to do with the Dutch or the Netherlands? I posed this question to my cousins who live in the Netherlands and they said no. To be more accurate, the Dutch have Dutch MINI pancakes…
The first ever noodle soup I made was not kai si hor fun, or prawn noodles, or curry noodles … but Thai beef noodle soup! Why? Thanks to Youtube queen Marion of www.marionskitchen.com, who made the process look so easy, I simply HAD to try making it. To my surprise, it wasn’t hard at all….
