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...

On our way back to Shanghai, we detoured to see several attractions along the way. It was raining when we reached Yaowan Village (婺源瑤灣景區). In the cool chill that the rain brought along, the mist rose off from the distant treetops in a cool ethereal glow. Anhui isn’t a wealthy province. The land is mostly mountainous and the rocky terrain makes for poor farming. Naturally, the cuisine is rougher around the edges compared to other parts of...

As we landed in Shanghai in mid-September, we thankfully missed the worst of the summer heat, when the temperature can soar as high as 40 degree Celsius. Now, the ambient air sits at a moderate 25-30 degrees; not cool enough to make climbing the famed Huangshan mountain easy, but warm enough such that we don’t yet need to encumber ourselves with extra layers during our trek. Shanghai is the closest international airport to Huangshan, but it...