I guess I’d always known that there’s something of a learning curve involved as far as the topic of Asian ingredients is concerned. This became starkly evident to me when I was working on my Truly Malaysian Street Food at Home cookbook, when my American editor struggled to keep up with half the stuff in…
I remember as a kid back in my Templer Flat days in Seremban, one of my neighbours once brought a gigantic stone mill up to their 11th floor unit and set it up on their balcony. It was so heavy and our block of welfare units was so flimsy I wondered their balcony was going…
This is one of the easiest Malaysian desserts you can make at home, but there are a few crucial steps to getting the sago and the sauce just right. I made this on Episode 6 of Malaysia Kitchen Season 1, and used what turned out to be an aesthetically awkward choice for a mould, thanks…
Recipe for Maggi Ketam (Claypot Crab with Maggi Noodles) from Indra Tom Yam One trend I’ve noticed in my trips to Malaysia in recent years is the use of Maggi ie. instant noodles in some street food dishes. You might come across Maggi Goreng (ie. fried Maggi noodles) cooked Mee Goreng-style at some food courts,…
A quick video to show you how I extract tamarind paste from a block. Tamarind is used quite extensively in Malaysian and Southeast Asian cooking, so this is something that’s handy to make in batches and freeze. Fun facts about tamarind – 1) Tamarind is a sour fruit, the pulp of which is used in…
If you don’t own a Thermomix, you can quite easily make this in a regular blender – it takes longer and may require more stopping and stirring/scraping but that’s about it. If this were all the Thermomix is capable of, it’d be a pretty expensive blender, but of course, it can do quite a few…
I think the first I heard about Thermomix was round about when The Katering Show’s YouTube series came out (warning: language). I really didn’t know much about it and figured it was sort of a glorified blender for people (read: rich Westerners) whose diets consisted mainly of healthy dips and smoothies. I don’t do “healthy”, and…
Chai Tow Kway a.k.a. Fried Radish Cake Not a dish that was readily available in my hometown of Seremban when I was growing up, my introduction to it was during my first visit to Singapore. The version here is closer to what you would find in Penang, which comes with a darker, richer sauce. This…
Bubur Cha Cha a.k.a. Sweet Potato and Taro Cubes in Coconut Sauce This is one of the street food dishes my stepmom used to make on a regular basis at home because it is so quick and delicious. I like using frozen taro, found in Asian supermarkets, for convenience. They’re already peeled, available year-round and…
Growing up in Seremban I used to get Kaya toast from a stall above my local wet market. The vendor used large, very light and fluffy bread, cut into thick slices. The slices were then grilled over charcoal before being smeared with a generous amount of Kaya and sandwiched with thick chunks of butter. It…