Before I discovered coconut milk in a can, there was the coconut auntie at the wet market. One whiff of coconut and I'll be transported to the neighborhood wet market where I grew up in Singapore. Once a week, usually a Saturday, I'd accompany my mom...
Every once in awhile--and particularly when it's cold and grey out--I'll yearn for the stodgy British staples I learned to love during our stay in England: toad-in-the-hole, bamgers and mash, pork pie, and ...
Taiwanese cuisine has languished under the culinary radar in the U.S. for far too long. To be honest, even I was unsure how Taiwanese food distinguishes from mainstream Chinese. Fortunately, I came across The Food of Taiwan—Recipes from the Beautiful Island (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) by...
Heady spices like coriander and cumin mingle with coconut milk in this lovely chicken curry, one of my favorite childhood dishes. I’ve tweaked it a little to make it simpler to prepare but don’t worry, it’s just as tasty. The slow oven technique (thank you...
I still crave many dishes from my childhood, like ayam goreng kunyit (turmeric fried chicken), pastel panggang (a shepherd’s pie of sorts), and roti bakso (sweet pork buns). Some, I’ve tried to recreate in my own kitchen and others, I patiently wait for. I do...
Instead of celebrating Lunar New Year like the Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese, the Japanese celebrate the Western New Year on January 1st. This wasn’t always the case. It was only in 1873, five years after the Meiji Restoration (the revolution that transferred power from the Tokugawa shogunate to...
When I first met Shulie Madnick, I was confused. With straight, black tresses skimming her shoulders, an olive-brown complexion, and pretty almond eyes that crinkled at the corners when she smiled, Shulie looked South Asian. Yet she had an indistinguishable (to me!) lilt to her...
