I’m beginning to better understand wine after my WSET course, but the finer points of whisky eludes me. I occasionally use it for my Hojicha Whisky Tiramisu recipe, and did enjoy drinking that bottle of Monkey Shoulder neat while we were in Batam, which I gotta say, was easy to drink and pretty incredible for the price point. A whisky fair isn’t something that I would have normally signed up for, but I’m glad that I...

Once or twice a year, we take a day off and head off to Johor Bahru to unwind. I have a selected list of restaurants that I really really like, but this time around, we decided to try several new recommendations. As usual, the queue at the border was non-existent on a weekday at 7am (I guess nobody was quite as bo liao as we are), and we made across the border bright and early for breakfast at Ah Soon Ba Kut Teh. The charcoal-cooked BKT was...

I’ve recently been getting really into slice-of-life genre. Have anyone watched Frieren: Beyond Journey's End? I binged on the show and caught up on the manga within days. The sleeper-hit The Makanai was a little too placid for my taste, but I started listening to the soundtrack whenever I'm cooking or baking, which helped to keep a lid down on some of the anxiety and impatience that I get while working in the kitchen.The braised...

The beaches of Sanchaya, at low tide.What a holiday. It’s with absolutely no exaggeration to say that this is the most opulent resort I’d been to. It was with some skepticism when I read reviews on TripAdvisor declaring The Sanchaya to be the most luxurious resort - ever, on a global scale, bar none. I'm naturally a skeptical person. But now that I’d experienced how responsive and proactive the staff are, I see what they mean. I hadn’t...

My usual chocolate tart is a recipe from Alice Medrich, with a smooth velvety chocolate filling made from cream. This makes a different sort of chocolate tart: the filling is also rich, but the texture is fluffy and billowy, with a almost brownie-like crust.  Daily life often gets in the way of baking. I don't always have time to bake when I have a particular dessert craving, or more frequently nowadays, I want to bake something but...

I was stunned the first time I had such a sauce combining peanut butter with chili. It was in 2016, when Miss XS and I patronised New Shanghai in Melbourne. We quickly became regulars, and even when we left Melbourne, the thought of the sweet-spicy peanut sauce stayed with me. Recently, I’ve seen this sauce served with handmade 拉面 (la mian, hand-pulled noodles) served in a hearty bowl. Much like the sesame-soy sauce, this...