Asian Food

Although I had my first raw kale salad years ago in the form of a kale Caesar at a restaurant in Berkeley, it’s taken me until this now to make it myself. Raw kale salads haven’t appealed to me as much as they have to others for the sole reason that most of the kale sold has had tough, super curly leaves. Salads made from that kind of kale are like chewing on a wet Brillo pads. I know that raw kale is a super good-for-you food but how much of it can I really eat to be ‘healthy’? Not much. Kale, I thought, was best boiled, simmered, or sauteed. Well, until now. We’ve been making an Asian style kale and seaweed salad once a...

It’s strawberry season and every market you go, there are plenty of fresh, big, juicy, sweet, ripe strawberries on sale. In Irvine, there are still many strawberry farms around, and some of them are right off the roads. I was driving by one of the main roads in Irvine one early morning and saw the hardworking workers harvesting the strawberries. I couldn’t help it but went straight to the farmers market right next to it and bought two boxes of them. The good news about strawberry is that everyone in my family loves it, including my picky eating toddler. He had two big and juicy strawberries that day and asked for more. As a mother, I couldn’t be happier that he is eating healthy and that he loves his fruit. I decided to use some of the strawberries to make strawberry scones for breakfast the next morning. I love my scones with strawberry jam but adding some chopped...

Our office internet is misbehaving and it's hard for me to post new content without wasting hours of time waiting for things to upload. At any rate, I am reposting this post on kamansi from 8 years ago because of a question posed to me yesterday about the difference between kamansi and rimas...

Most Malaysians love clams, especially those stir-fried with a spicy chili paste. I love clams; I grew up eating all sort of clams as my late mother would buy clams from the market and cooked them into a variety of delectable dishes, such as chili clams. (Check out my chili crab recipes here and here.) One of my favorite childhood memories was the many clam digging picnics with my late parents, at the beaches in Penang, and Kedah—my mother’s seaside hometown. Whenever we went to a beach, we would dig up the sands in search of clams, or siput. We would spend hours until we harvested enough clams for dinner, it was always so excited whenever we went to the beach. The few years when I was in the Midwest of America,  I was constantly craving for fresh clams. But alas, there was never any live clams at the markets there, due to the cold weather. Once in a while, our local Chinese...

I love to read a good book review, one that’s full of insights tinged with humor and sometimes, a bit of well deserved snark. T. Susan Chang is one of the few professional cookbook reviewers in the United States. You may know her work from National Public Radio, the Boston Globe, or her website. She takes every book to task, testing recipes and evaluating the merits of each work on a variety of levels. Susan’s got twelve (12!) years of professional experience to back her up, plus a solid knowledge of cookbooks that goes back further yet. You may not agree with Susan on all of her calls but you don’t have to. Like all excellent reviewers, she lays out her deep assessment so that...

According to Wiki, Shark fin soup dates back to Ming Dynasty, China and is considered by Chinese as one of the eight treasured foods from the sea. This delicacy was coveted by emperors because it was rare, delicious, and required elaborate preparation - i can relate to this cos i just had the chore of preparing a box of dried Shark Fins which costed $134,00 usd. Holding both culinary and symbolic significance, this dish is a staple of gourmet Chinese cuisine which symbolizes wealth, power, prestige and honor..............Continue to read and for recipe click HERE

I’m partnering with Blendtec to giveaway a Blendtec Designer Series WildSide Color blender. There will be one (1) winner whom will receive one (1) Blendtec Designer Series WildSide Color blender in a color of their choice: Black Base, Cream Base, Red Base. The retail price of the Blendtec Designer Series WildSide Color blender is US$454.95. Blendtec® is pleased to introduce the all-new Designer Series™ blender. It has been engineered to bring a whole new level of beauty and functionality to the high-end blender category, without compromising the famous power and efficiency of our Total Blender Classic. Features include all of these unique Blendtec advantages: Complete speed control Vivid icons New sleek design Easy, fast cleanup Versatile functionality Technical Details: Amps: 13 Watts: 1560 Actual weight: 8 lbs Shipping weight: 13 lbs Actual dimensions: 7″ wide x 15″...

On Monday, my husband had dental surgery and for his post-operation, recovery dinner, I made a comforting (read: easy to chew) tofu, shrimp, and peas stir-fry. The Trader Joe-san medium tofu came in a 1 1/4-pound (565 g) block and I only needed about a pound. I had a little block left. What can you do with a chunk of leftover tofu? You can save it in the fridge, or in my case last Monday, I added it to a simple Vietnamese soup with mustard greens and a bit of chicken thigh sitting in the fridge. Asian mustard greens come in many varieties. At an East Asian or Southeast Asian market, you see “big gai choi” or “little gai choi.” Vietnamese markets also have a...

I have a story to tell you about my first encounter with egg foo young, the quintessential Chinese-American dish. A long time ago, when I first set my foot on the US soil for higher education, I went straight to the middle America. After 36 hours of tiresome journey from my hometown of Penang, Malaysia, I arrived in the state of Iowa. Starved to death and completely disoriented, Mr. Rasa Malaysia (then my boyfriend) chauffeured me to the best Chinese restaurant for a welcome lunch. Among the dishes I ordered, there was egg foo young, or ???, an egg dish that I love and enjoy very much. When my food came, I was shocked to find out that my egg foo young didn’t look much like what I had back home in Malaysia (where great and authentic Chinese food is plentiful and popular). The egg foo young was puffy, almost shaped like an UFO, and doused and drowned in a gloppy brown sauce. There...

I’ve been making very simple foods for the past week, mostly because my days of recipe testing and writing have been very full, often extending till 11 p.m. when I collapse into bed. That kind of work schedule doesn’t permit elaborate cooking. By late afternoon, the kitchen can look like something exploded. After tidying up, my husband and I usually take a daily walk to buy groceries for dinner. Some days, that’s the only time I leave my house so I relish the chance to stretch my legs and breathe extra fresh air. It’s also an opportunity to ponder dinner. Local farmers grow some spectacularly tasty broccoli and broccolini, which are sold at weekly farmer’s markets as well as independent grocery stores. My default preparations...