I remember Shanghai red bean paste-filled pancakes being a staple on the sweets trolley at yum cha back in the day, but I have to admit that I haven’t really seen them around in recent years. The good news is that they’re actually pretty easy to make, and apart from red bean paste, all you really need are flour and eggs, and oil for frying. I used » Read More
How to Make Harm Chim Peng (Savoury Doughnuts) w/Red Bean Filling
October 25, 2018 by
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again… Harm Chim Peng (I’ve spelled the dish the way it’s pronounced in Cantonese; I don’t know of a standard spelling for it), is a type of savoury doughnut sold at street stalls back in Malaysia, and it comes in a number of different varieties - plain, spiralled, filled with sticky rice, etc. My favourite » Read More
How to Make Hakka Lo Pek Pan (Hakka Radish Cake)
July 24, 2018 by
I sometimes feel sorry for those not born into the culture trying to learn all the nuances of Chinese food. It’s hard enough trying to wrap your head around the topic, let alone recognise all the different iterations of specific dishes by different Chinese dialect groups. Radish cake is one such example; the Cantonese version found at yum cha » Read More
How to Make Perfect Roti Canai Dough
July 2, 2018 by
A Wok Around Asia Recipe By Traders Hotel Kuala Lumpur When I got into this whole “food thing” back in the day, I had to learn how to make everything myself through trial and error, because hawkers in Malaysia were notoriously secretive about their craft. One of these recipes was for roti canai (roti prata if you’re Singaporean), and I’ve » Read More
How to Make KL Hokkien Mee With Homemade Noodles
June 19, 2018 by
On my most recent trip to Kuala Lumpur, I was reintroduced to a childhood favourite known in my hometown of Seremban simply as Hokkien Mee (Hokkien noodles). I bought it from a stall in Ampang run by Feh Loh (literally “Fat Guy” in Cantonese - that was what he called himself, I promise), asked for it to be made with no pork, and it ended up being » Read More
How to Cook Cheesy Crab Noodles
June 19, 2018 by
I first learned about cheesy noodles when a Malaysian friend posted about the long wait lines to eat at a Kuala Lumpur restaurant which specialised in cheesy freshwater prawn mee hoon/bee hoon (vermicelli). With a bit of digging, I found out that the Malaysian proprietor got his inspiration from some restaurant in Hong Kong that served cheesy » Read More
How to Make Coconut Candy
June 17, 2018 by
A Deepavali Favourite Using Natural Plant Extract Coconut candy is one of my favourite memories of Deepavali (aka Diwali, though not in Malaysia), the Indian Festival of Lights. During this public holiday, our Indian friends would hold “open houses” where they served up a culinary extravaganza to feed the friends from all ethnic backgrounds » Read More
How to Make Seremban Beef Noodles (Ngau Lam Fun)
June 12, 2018 by
This, folks, represents my culinary raison d'être - the world famous Seremban Beef Noodles, otherwise known (in Cantonese) as Ngau Lam Fun; one of countless childhood memories that finally lured me away from IT consultancy and into food full-time some 17 years ago. To expand on that a little, the reason I got into this “food thing” was partly to » Read More