Chik's Crib

06 October 2025

Peranakan Cooking

Peranakan October 06, 2025 0

I’m a fan of Peranakan cuisine, and I remember that at every occasion, our family gatherings would often be supplemented with several wonderfully spiced dishes made by my Peranakan aunt. I became especially hooked ever since our visit to Malacca in 2023. The cuisine draws me in: the earthy buah keluak gravy, the hearty lemak (coconut stew) and delectable kueh pie tie.

I would love nothing more than to recreate these dishes at home. Stews are generally quite manageable to make, but my difficulty comes from the unfamiliarity with the ingredients. The buah keluah nut, for example, is poisonous and would require sourcing for treated nuts or doing some of the treatment steps at home. I’d really much rather first attend classes and have the instructors introduce me to these unfamiliar ingredients and guide me through the recipes. And most importantly, tell me where to find good quality ingredients.

Having time to take lessons is truly luxurious. I took a wine appreciation course last year, and this year, learning about Peranakan cooking seemed right up my alley. It wasn’t that long ago for me when work entailed long hours and was all-consuming. Everybody in the industry that I knew of was working 6-7 days every week, and having an entire weekend off was so rare, we called those occurrences a Golden Weekend. (More often than not, we had to make up for a Golden Weekend by working a consecutive stretch of 14 or 21 days.) It was also the norm to stay overnight in the workplace once or twice every week and continue working throughout the night. And yes, when morning comes around the next day, we’ll be expected to continue working alongside the rest of our colleagues. A stretch of one week without being on call overnight was a true luxury - we got to sleep seven nights that week! The demands of work was intense, to say the least, and the schedule was murder on my sleep cycle. More than that, when I was going through those 6, 7 years in a constant sleep-deprived state, I had little bandwidth (and off-days!) to learn much about any other interests. Now that I’m in a better work situation, I’ve been making up for lost time, and attending some classes on topics which I wanted to learn more about.

And here we did learn. Chef Susan guided us through the steps of the recipes, where to find good quality ingredients in our area, when it is not worth it to make prawn stock, and when we can use dried shrimps instead of using store-bought prawn stock. Another time saving tip, which would have saved me a bunch of grief when I was making these Thai-style pork ribs, was to use tamarind paste (this one labelled Adabi Asam Jawa Xtra, in particular) and not spend ages handling those packages of raw tamarind pulp and seeds.

I’ve attended classes by different instructors over the last few months, and let me tell you: there’s a big difference when you’re being taught by an instructor who’s shopping for and cooking with these ingredients for all of their lives, versus another who’s just reading out the recipe steps and wasn’t really sure where to find these ingredients. Try to attend classes led by the former - there’s just no comparison. Chef Susan gave us heavily-edited versions of the textbook recipes, advised us on where she shops and where shortcuts should be taken. She also had her own rice grains brought in for the classes because she didn’t like the rice provided by the school.

We went down to Tekka Centre's wet market one weekend to buy the ingredients. Either this market or the one in Geylang Serai would net you everything you need to whip up a Peranakan feast. Even if you, like us, are not a 100% sure what to get, just speak to the shopkeepers who'll point you in the right direction. In most cases, they're friendly and happy to answer any questions you may have. While picking up herbs for nasi ulam (herbed rice salad), we were introduced to the ulam raja plant, which wasn't in the recipe that we obtained from school but was recommended by the shopkeeper (Chia's Vegetables Supply, #01-93). At a nearby shop ran by two lovely ladies, we bought dried shrimps and chilli, and learned all about balachan (Southeast Asian fermented shrimp paste) from them. And yes, we bought buah keluak from the stall ran by Mr Seah at #01-210. He sells both whole nuts (which requires several days of soaking and processing in your home kitchen before they're safe to consume), and deshelled nuts (called buah keluak paste) which you can use straightaway. We went with the latter for posterity's sake.

I'll be posting simple Peranakan recipes over the next few weeks, including tips from the culinary school's instructors and clarifications that I made with my aunt. I hope you will have as much fun as I did learning about this wonderful cuisine.

21 September 2025

Kuala Lumpur and the Food from God (Dewakan) - 2025

Travel September 21, 2025 0

I returned to Malaysia not long after our Ipoh trip, this time back to Kuala Lumpur. I’ve visited KL just a year ago too, but a group of friends were planning to visit again, so here I am. I wasn’t worried about returning too soon - KL’s one of those cities where there are so many more established and new eateries to explore, there was slender chance that the places we were going to would overlap.

By far and away, the first eatery that popped out of everybody’s mouths when I’d asked for their KL food recommendations was Village Park Nasi Lemak. I left KL last year lamenting that we couldn’t make it there, and this time I was taking no chances. We came straight here from the airport with our luggage, and we weren’t the only ones coming in like this. Heck, someone on crutches climbed up the stairs to get to his table on the second floor.

It was early for lunch when we reached, and a weekday besides, but the queue was still formidable and spanned 4 neighbouring storefronts. Luckily, the queue moved fast. We were seated in a span of perhaps half hour. The place was air-conditioned, which I did not expect but much appreciated.

The food took a while to come, but it was worth waiting for. The fried chicken was wonderfully done: perfectly-crispy skin with moist tender thigh meat. It wasn’t dry in the least. The coconut rice was fluffy and delicious. The rest of the sides were adequate, including the additional order of beef rendang. I would’ve just gotten extra fried chicken next time. It truly was fantastic.

We also went to Heun Kee Claypot Chicken Rice (first picture, above), a well-regarded claypot shop next to a bustling highway entrance. The 黄酒马来鸡 Claypot Chicken Soup with Chinese wine came to the table still deep in a rolling boil straight from the heat of the burning charcoal. Each sip was deeply aromatic and complex with a generous pour of wine.

We also had their signature Claypot Chicken Rice and another with cured duck sausages. The rice was flavourful with bits of crispy rice shards.

A huge fan keeps the charcoals burning fiercely and the cooks (relatively) comfortable, but I doubt there’s much getting around how hot and sweaty it must’ve been for them. Liquid added to the claypots boils and steams up immediately, so the heat must've been formidable. Rings of charcoal are also placed over the claypot lids to cook their contents from the top. The cooks had to juggle not just the cooking of the ingredients, but also the positions of the claypots and the burning charcoal. It was incredible to see.

Another delicious find was Chen Chen Hong Kong Goose Duck Chicken 珍珍深井燒鵝燒鴨. It’s not one of the well-known destinations of KL (the Grab driver gave us a puzzled look), but that’s a shame because we had a good meal here.

We enjoyed their tender, deeply-flavoured char siew. And the goose. Oh my goose. As I cut into the roasted drumstick, a rivet of rendered fat tricked out. It was moist and well flavoured. Ever since I had roast geese in Guangzhou, I’ve become a big convert. I’m a bit salty how they’re not available in Singapore and so I take them whenever I see them. The duck and the roast pork belly are pretty okay, though nothing particularly noteworthy. Nobody should be eating duck when there’s geese available.

We also tried a couple of fine-dining restaurants around town. One of our friends suggested Bar Kar, a restaurant overlooking KL City Centre. Their countertop seats ring their the open-kitchen fire pit.

They have a few memorable starters: the bone marrow (pictured) was excellent. Another dish starring tiger prawn was particularly fine too.

There's a lot of rave reviews on their brioche bread (uni bread, pictured; truffle bread, not), which were fine. They were also really, really pricey.

The Claypot Wagyu was so good, we ordered another round.

And then there was Dewakan.

Table at Dewakan's kitchen, overlooking the Petronas Twin Tower at sunset

What can I say about this restaurant that more accomplished writers hadn’t?

Dining here had been an experience for sure. I’ve never came to a restaurant where patrons needed a glossary to explain the ingredients that they used.

Local greens with breadfruit crisp

This was more than a meal. It’s an interactive museum experience where diners not only learn about the local edible flora, many of which are no longer commonly used, and how Dewakan had worked with producers to cultivate them for commercial use.

Each course starred ingredients that I’ve never heard of. You have the Javanese Longpepper, which isn’t as peppery as regular peppercorns, but contains whiffs of cinnamon. Kulim smelt like garlic and truffles. The pulp of the Dabai fruits held herbal notes and of avocado and chocolate, which when grounded up, behaved like cacao paste. All these and more. The chef brought us around the kitchen and pointed out these indigenous ingredients to us. We smelled the nuts as he broke them apart, tasted the flesh of some fruits when it was feasible, and sniffed into the urns fermenting a variety of ingredients.

The Two Michelin stars weren’t for nothing: the craftsmanship was exquisite. One soup featured sturgeon meat that was cut into perfect dices and mangosteen flesh shaped in smooth spheres. One course of dessert featured mulberry smoothly wrapped in cempedek flesh. If you’ve ever had cempedek before, you’ll know how sticky they can be to work with.

Check out the perfectly even julienned bits atop the cempedek confectionery

Keranji, a local fruit variety that reminded us of tamarind, was the filling of a crunchy butterfly statue pastry.

The flesh of the Perah fruit was churned into an ice cream, and together with a piece of candied kindang (mango plum) encased in a soft shell of tropical chestnut.

Dewakan is the brainchild of chef Darren Teoh, a molecular gastronomy lecturer at KDU who had first set up the restaurant on the school campus. Despite the location, it was so well-received that its next stop was on the 48th floor of a city center’s skyscrapper overlooking the Petronas Twin Towers.

It’s a talented crew running this restaurant, and it’s even more stunning to learn that the oldest cook working here is 32 years old. Their spotlight on indigenous ingredients (most of which I’ve never heard of) is wonderful, as is their list documenting the staff's favourite local haunts.

Rice tempeh dumplings, tapai ubi sauce

Do I like the restaurant? I do, but I wanted to really like the restaurant, if you get what I mean. We left with more questions about the indigenous ingredients than answers. Do all these ingredients usually have this texture and taste profile? That’s unlikely. But because these ingredients are so foreign and most diners wouldn’t have known how these ingredients are normally cooked, it’s hard to appreciate the creativity and work the team must’ve put in to craft these nuts and fruits into a fine-dining experience. I think that the Dewakan experience would have been much more interesting if they had served a sample of a traditional dish made with that ingredient, alongside their modern interpretation.

Was it worth it? It’s a hard question. Like most two-starred Michelin, the price was pretty high. How high was high? Our total bill at Bar Kar, with six mains, five appetisers and alcohol, was about the price of one seat at Dewakan. It’s hard to put a price tag on craftsmanship, but the formidable price makes a return to Dewakan daunting.

We were ambitious when planning for this trip, with plans to check out the latest shops, the hottest restaurants, and some of the entries in Asia 50 Best Bars. But when us four overworked adults finally arrived for our long-awaited vacation, we needed - and it became - a a much more relaxing sort of trip (We pretty much agreed that had we checked out the bar scene, we would've fallen asleep at the table.) Instead, we bummed around for a bit, went for massages, ate and slept plenty, and spent the evenings catching up with one another.

So as bizarre as it may sound, my happiest dining experience was at The Butcher’s Table. It’s a casual air-conditioned restaurant. Perhaps it was a little of our own fault for packing our itinerary with the crazy-popular restaurants of KL, but here, we found the peace that we sought. There was space from everybody: space from the other customers with no crowding, space from our servers who were attentive without hovering. It was a blissful dining experience. The food of course, was excellent. There’s plenty of excellent meats, all wonderfully prepared. There’s all the water and serviette that you need, without needing to pay RM30 for each 750ml bottle of still water. There’s beer and also wine glasses available for guests who BYO. We stayed and chatted and ate and drank until closing. After everywhere else that we’d been to on this trip, it was a breath of fresh air. Terrific food, beer, and the atmosphere to sit and relax. It’s the hospitality sector and they nailed it.

06 September 2025

Japanese Milk Pudding Recipe

Recipe September 06, 2025 0

How's everybody doing?

I've had some success with a couple of low-effort desserts recently. I wasn't sure if I was going to talk about them, but I guess I've told people that up-keeping this blog's kinda my hobby, and I'm running out of things to post. I’m working on one about a recent trip to KL but that’s taking a while to write and my queued posts are dwindling. So, you know...

Guess anything goes!

We made milk pudding over one weekend that tasted like those fancy $6 apiece puddings that we got from Kyoto. The good news - or bad news, depending on whether you had bought these puddings before - is that it probably costs about $0.06 to make. There's no special skill or equipment required either. It's really, really simple to make. It’s so simple, a baby could do it.

Possibly.

Don't quote me.

Japanese Milk Pudding Recipe

Makes 6 servings

Original recipe from Kirbie's Cravings

Had I mention how easy it is to make this? The most difficult part was finding what vessels to serve the milk pudding in. We kept and used the wee lil' bottles that we got from Kyoto, but shallow baking dishes for crème brûlée or regular ramekins or even teacups would work.

Ingredients

500 ml whole milk

50 ml heavy cream

3 tbsp granulated white sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

2.5 tsp unflavored gelatin powder

Steps

1. In a medium-sized saucepan, combine milk, cream, sugar and vanilla. Add gelatin and combine.

2. Set the saucepan over low heat and gently warm up the mixture. Stir constantly as you do. Remove from heat once gelatin and sugar have dissolved. Do not let the milk mixture boil.

3. Pour the mixture into individual bowls, or into those tiny bottles that you've brought back with you all the way from Kyoto, while telling anybody who'll listen how "it is a good idea to have brought these back, see?"

4. Cover with cling wrap and place in the refrigerator. Chill overnight, or for at least six hours until the pudding has set.

Storage: They keep well for a few days. They can be made in advance for a gathering to take some the stress off hosting a dinner.

01 September 2025

Mushroom Soup Recipe

Recipe September 01, 2025 0

I recently visited a wholesale centre for fresh fruits and vegetables, and came away with a large haul of fresh produce: bags of shallots and onions, and trays upon trays of mushrooms.

The place can be a bit of a maze, but I like it. By the second visit here, we could roughly figure out where to go to get what we wanted. My favourite finds were these mushrooms, and I snapped up some fresh thyme from the store on our way out for this soup.

I gotta admit, the sight of the trays of mushrooms in my fridge brought me quite a bit of joy. It’s aesthetically pleasing, looking like something out from a farmer’s market or from my childhood story books.

We topped the Portobello with sliced cheese and roasted them in the oven. For the white button mushroom, we turned one tray’s worth of mushrooms into this soup.

Mushrooms are pretty nutritious: high in antioxidants and vitamins, pretty decent in protein and fibre content, and low in calories, fats and cholesterol. In the spirit of healthy eating, I’ve used milk instead of cream, and olive oil instead of butter (see ‘mushroom bisque’ below for the original recipe.) This version has a higher mushroom content, and despite the lack of butter and cream, remains plenty flavourful and more-ish.

This recipe is easy to follow, and delicious. Don’t expect any leftovers.

Mushroom Soup Recipe
Recipe adapted from John Mitzewich

Ingredients
900g white button mushroom, sliced
60ml olive oil, or enough to sauté mushrooms
A large pinch of salt
1 yellow onion, diced
1 tbsp flour
4 sprigs fresh thyme, tied into a bundle with kitchen string, plus some picked leaves to garnish
2 cloves garlic, peeled, left whole
4 cups chicken broth or stock
1.5 cups of milk
Salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste

Steps
1. In a large pot set over medium-high heat, add olive oil. When hot, add mushroom and a large pinch of salt. Mushrooms have a lot of water content and will release a lot of water during cooking. Cook until the water has boiled away and mushrooms are browned. (If there’s still a lot of liquid in the pot after 10 minutes of cooking, I’ll just go on ahead to pour them out. If you’re using bouillon cubes, you can use the liquid for the bouillon stock.)

2. Add onions and reduce the heat to medium-low. Cook for 5 mins until translucent. Add a splash of olive oil if needed to prevent burning. At this point, you may reserve half a cup of cooked mushroom for garnishing later.

3. Add flour to the mixture and stir for about 2 minutes, until the raw flour taste is gone. If needed, you can add a bit more olive oil to prevent burning.

4. Add a cup of chicken broth, and make sure to scrap up the flavourful fond (browned bits) sticking to the pot. Add the rest of the broth, and then the thyme and garlic. Cover and let simmer on low for about an hour.

5. Remove and discard thyme. Blend the mixture until smooth (using a stick blender, or in divided portions in a regular blender to prevent spillage.)

6. Add milk and stir to combine. You can further thin out the soup with water/stock to your desired consistency. Taste, and add salt and pepper if required.

7. Portion the soup in individual bowls. Garnish with reserved sliced mushrooms and thyme leaves. Serve and enjoy.

Notes:

Mushroom soup freezes well. I would freeze the soup in portions at the point before dairy is added.

Variation: Mushroom Bisque (the original recipe)

The original recipe uses 1/4 cup unsalted butter instead of olive oil, and 1 cup water + 1 cup heavy cream instead of milk. It would result in a richer, smoother result. Serve this for special occasions.

24 August 2025

Charcoal Series: Grilled Unagi

Recipe August 24, 2025 0

I recently bought a grill mesh, and grilling unagi directly over the chimney starter had quickly became my favourite way to cook unagi. By keeping the hot charcoal in the chimney starter, the heat of the burning charcoal is concentrated in a smaller radius, making it terrific for fast grilling.

My initial feeble attempts trying to cook unagi on a grill. The charcoal's too spread out for fast grilling. Don't bother doing it this way.

Adding under the plus column of grilling food directly over the chimney starter: it's also one less thing to clean-up. And by the time you're done with your meal and ready for desserts, the heat's still enough for a few rounds of marshmallow.

We’ve been buying frozen pre-cooked unagi and grilling them to make unadon with sushi rice. On the days when I'm free run to the stores, I come back with a small variety of sashimi, but even without other accompaniments, unagi and rice makes for an excellent meal.

Like this, but with precooked unagi. The heat is too intense and the radius too narrow for raw eggplants, which are actually better cooked over a regular grill.

Charcoal Series - Grilled Unagi

INGREDIENTS
Unagi (commonly bought pre-cooked and frozen), thawed

STEPS
1. Thaw the frozen pre-cooked unagi a few hours before you start.

2. When ready to begin, fill the chimney starter with about half a chimney worth of charcoal. (You don't need a full chimney of charcoal for this. It's a pretty quick cook.)

3. While the charcoal is starting to burn and ash over, prep the grill net. Oil the inside of the grill net with a neutral-tasting oil, and place the unagi inside. Lock the grill net together. For grill nets with loose catches, you may find it useful to further secure the net by wrapping a small piece of aluminium foil to prevent it from popping open during the cook.

3. Grill the unagi over the charcoals until the surface is lightly blistered and the sauce bubbles vigorously, about 2-4 minutes on one side. Flip the net over and warm the other surface, for about 1 minute. Remove from heat and serve immediately. If you’re serving the unagi over rice, you may want to brush a layer of homemade unagi sauce over the rice before topping each bowl with unagi.