Asian Food

I am partnering with my friends at MOLECULE-R to give away a Cuisine R-EVOLUTION kit. There will be one (1) winner whom will receive one (1) Cuisine R-EVOLUTION kit. The value of the Cuisine R-EVOLUTION kit is $58.95. At least once, while growing up you heard the proverbial – don’t play with your food. MOLECULE-R is breaking the rules and allowing you to experiment with food in the comfort of your own home. With MOLECULE-R’s Cuisine, Cocktail, and Siphon R-EVOLUTION kits, any dish or cocktail can be deconstructed into a 5 star restaurant recipe with these all-encompassing D-I-Y kits. Each R-EVOLUTION kit contains pre-measured sachets of natural food additives, the essential molecular gastronomy tools, and a DVD with step-by-step recipes. Experimenting with the most popular molecular gastronomy techniques (gelification, spherification, and emulsification) foodies are now able to...

Sorry, I have been just swamped with work since my return from holidays. So you get these little outrageous blog bites instead.

The first house that my parents bought had a sizeable backyard planted with six to eight pine trees. The trees were mature and covered the sloped yard with about a foot of crunchy long brown pine needles. One summer, I decided to ‘clean up’ the needles to see what was underneath. I filled up bags and bags of pine needles and didn’t seem to make much of a dent. It was a 1950s home that we bought in the late 1970s. There may have been a good decade’s worth of pine needles to gather. It was tedious but I discovered that I like goofing off in the yard. It’s kind of mindless but also meditative and rewarding. There’s patience and surprise in gardening. You can...

It’s the Father’s Day weekend and I am sure many of you will be celebrating the special day. I always think that Father’s Day is way underrated compared to Mother’s Day. I personally think that fathers give as much as mothers, if not more. They are out working, making a living to support the family, and when they come home, they have to play with the kids and help out with the chores. I have the world’s best father at home (Mr. Rasa Malaysia), and my son is very lucky that he has a wonderful father. I am blessed that I have someone whom I can “unload” my son to in the evening and on the weekends. It’s really precious. Anyway, I digress. When I saw this Sicilian Orange Cake on my friend CP’s Facebook, I knew that I had to tell her to share this Sicilian Orange Cake recipe with me. Sicilian Orange Cake tastes like butter cake, with an...

A huge and somewhat delayed thank you to P from Saudi Arabia who very kindly dropped off a bounty of pine nuts for Marketman at one of the Zubuchon restaurants. Thank you very much. I seem to have misplaced your email address and can't find it in my address book so I thought at the very least I could do this quick post. I will go pesto crazy and add the toasted pine nuts to salads as well. Totally unexpected, totally unnecessary, but greatly appreciated. Salamat!

A few days ago, my good friend Alice at Eat A Duck I Must texted me that I ought to try out their lobster somen recipe, citing that it takes only 15 minutes to prepare and it’s their ultimate go-to summer lunch dish. She even sent me a picture of the dish. At the sight of their gorgeous photo, I knew that I had to make it. It’s also a great coincidence that lobsters are on sale at $6.95 per pound in my Asian store. The timing couldn’t be better. Somen, a type of Japanese noodles, is popular especially during summertime in Japan. Somen is usually served cold in a dashi-flavored sauce. The sweetest thing about this lobster and mushroom somen is that it took me practically 15 minutes to make, and the final dish was refined, thanks to the grilled mushrooms and lobster claw as the toppings. It was delicious, and utterly satisfying slurping down cold noodles with the...

I just spotted this notice on a wall while driving by it in Cebu a few minutes ago. You just gotta laugh.

Much has happened since I started planting this year’s garden. The morning after I put the plants in the ground, the bugs arrived. For reasons I don’t fully understand, whiteflies and other bugs love to nibble on Vietnamese balm (kinh gioi). I situated the plant close to some summer savory and Chinese chives – two pungent herbs that I thought would deter the bugs. That didn’t work. Each morning, my husband and I would peek outside our bedroom windows to examine the herb bed for overnight damage. Within about 5 days, I knew that I had to defend my plants. I’d cultivated them for me to eat, not the bugs. I pulled out a few old tricks and headed to a local nursery for advice...

You will NOT believe how easy it is to make this fresh ham!!

To celebrate the upcoming Father’s Day, I am partnering with my friends at Magimix to give away a Vision Toaster. There will be one (1) winner whom will receive one (1) Magimix by Robot-Coupe Vision Toaster in black color. The suggested retail price of the Vision Toaster is $199.95. A decade in development, the Magimix by Robot-Coupe Vision Toaster has made its debut as the world’s first see-through toaster. Now available in three new shades of ivory, red, and jet black, it’s the ultimate kitchen gadget for those who love technology and design. With double borosilicate insulating glass windows, you can watch the inner workings of its four quartz heating elements as they create browned toast – certain to ensure no more charred toast is in your future. For those early mornings, there are four pre-programmed heat settings that are happy to do the thinking (and the cooking) for...