How to master pastry: French chef François Payard says it’s not so difficult
Pastry – especially French pastry – is a step too far for many home cooks. They take one look at the beautifully decorated pastries offered in shops or listed on the menus at French restaurants and...
View ArticleHow a 90-year-old ‘grumpy dragon’ taught chef David Thompson all about Thai food
The world’s worst cook I was born in Sydney in 1960. My mother was one of the world’s worst cooks. A lovely woman and smart, but she hated being a cook and that dislike showed. That I survived her...
View ArticleLucky dish for Chinese New Year: how to make roast duck lettuce wraps
Dishes that are considered auspicious play a major role in Lunar New Year celebrations. San choi bao (a lettuce wrap) is eaten year-round, but it is especially popular during New Year because lettuce...
View ArticleWhy Chinese New Year puddings by Hong Kong brand Dashijie are so popular -...
Theresa Yiu, founder of Hong Kong food brand Dashijie, is frying radish cake in a canteen in the offices of food and beverage company Maxim’s Group on a recent winter morning. It doesn’t take long...
View ArticleTop drops from Napa Valley’s mountain wineries: challenging to make but worth it
Wines from California’s Napa Valley have a distinct style when made from grapes also used in Bordeaux, France – cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc and petit verdot – especially if they are...
View ArticleNonya cooking labour-intensive but worth the effort, cookbook shows
Iflipped through Nonya Flavours: A Complete Guide to Penang Straits Chinese Cuisine (2003) searching for the author only to realise that it was a collaborative effort – a collection of recipes gathered...
View ArticleHow dramatic weight-loss surgery helped roast-pork-loving chef go from fat to...
Did you always want to become a chef? “I actually wanted to play rugby but I was lazy [laughs]. I thought you didn’t have to train. Before I turned 18, I was naturally fit and sporty, so you think it’s...
View ArticleHow to cook clay pot rice – a classic Cantonese comfort food and winter warmer
I love to watch the professionals make bo jai fan (clay pot rice) – they do it with such ease, moving the pots from one blazing hot burner (charcoal, please – it tastes better) to a slightly cooler...
View ArticleItalian winemaker tackles climate change and bureaucracy head on at...
Alberto Cordero di Montezemolo is the face of a family-run winery in Piedmont, Italy, that traces its roots back to the 14th century. He says vineyard ownership in Italy can be highly fragmented...
View ArticleHow cookbook authors Elizabeth David, Marcella Hazan gave chef Joe Trivelli...
Joe Trivelli, a chef at The River Café, in London, had performance anxiety when it came to writing a cookbook. It’s not that he didn’t know his subject. Born to an English mother and Italian father, he...
View ArticleTwo easy green tea dessert recipes, so you can have your tea and eat it too
It is easy to adapt a favourite dessert recipe to a green tea version because the powdered tea is both a colouring and a flavouring. Some recipes call for “green tea for baking”. Ignore that – that...
View ArticleTo decant or not to decant, that is the question when it comes to wine
Decanting wine is a simple process – a bottle is opened and its contents are poured into a glass container to allow the wine to “breathe”. What makes it complicated is deciding which wines need it, and...
View ArticleDesserts ‘nourish the soul’, write Greg and Lucy Malouf in latest cookbook
It is not difficult to guess the meaning of suqar – the Arabic word gave English its sugar. It is also the name of Greg and Lucy Malouf’s latest book. The Lebanese-Australian chef and his ex-wife...
View ArticleI’m not a chef, I’m a ‘curious human being’, says Bo Bech, man behind...
What was your childhood like? “I got teased a lot for being fat, for being a stupid guy. I wasn’t trendy, I wasn’t beautiful, I wasn’t clever – I was an easy target. As a child I was a ghost in a...
View ArticleAlain Ducasse on the plane crash that changed the course of his life, vegan...
Kitchen nightmare I was born in 1956 and grew up on our family farm in Castel-Sarrazin, in southwestern France. My memories of the farm are of the smells that nurtured my passion for cooking: the smell...
View ArticleSavoury pancake recipes: how to make Korean bindaetteok and latkes
Pancakes – thin cakes pan-fried in a skillet or griddle, rather than baked – are common to many cultures. They can be sweet or savoury (and sometimes both), and cooking them is relatively...
View ArticlePortuguese celebrity chef Henrique Sá Pessoa opens first restaurant in Asia...
What was the first dish you cooked? “A really good spaghetti bolognaise that my auntie taught me how to make. I put a touch of cream in my sauce because, back in the 1990s, it was trendy to use cream...
View ArticleHow three Hongkongers turned their passion for wine into a business
When three wine-loving Hongkongers joined forces to turn their passion into a business, they took a pragmatic approach.Anthony Fung Kar-hey, one of the investors and managing director of the winery,...
View ArticleCelebrity chef Jacques Pépin teaches the basics of cooking with his books
Close to 30 years before The Cook’s Book (2005) was published, with its step-by-step photos of basics such as how to make fresh pasta, kill and clean a lobster, and scale and fillet a fish, there was...
View ArticleIs Indian food unhealthy? Celebrity chef Harpal Singh Sokhi clears up...
What were your food experiences growing up? “I’m from the eastern part of India, near Kolkata. My father worked on railways. I never planned to be a chef but I did have great food experiences as a...
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