When I was small, raisin was one of the imported food I got to know first and foremost. I remembered that only during our Lunar New Year, raisin would be served to the guests when they visited our home, or when we visited our friends and neighbors’ houses. So in my memory, only when the new year came then raisins also came to our home.

And since imported raisins were not so cheap for an ordinary working family, so to me, it was like a "luxury" good. I also realized that there were different grades of quality, the most delicious and most expensive ones were the "big" raisins with beautiful light golden color. Still, raisins were not something people, especially children, could have during year round.

So I loved raisins since then due to the special taste and the fact that I could eat them on only one occasion of the year. This fact is, of course, wrong now. Yet I still love raisins and everything with raisins. Cookies with raisins always got my attention and inspiration to try making.

These cookies are not very soft but also not very hard. They are not crunchy but also not chewy. They are neither moist nor dry. They are just in the middle of every sense and feeling.

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This pudding is so sweet, a perfect dessert for your loved one. Chocolate is always a symbol of romance. Bitterness and sweetness make love meaningful and truthful. I made this for my fiance last Valentine and we really enjoyed eating them together. 

With this pudding, this time I used a vanilla pod. Of course with the dark color of the chocolate, we cannot see the tiny seed of the vanilla bean. However, I was amazed to really that I could feel those tiny seeds between my teeth while eating the pudding. Yeah it’s true. A new interesting experience for me. And so I had a new "game": playing with the tiny wonderful seeds in my mouth.

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This is my quick dinner. When I cannot think of what I want to eat, or when I don’t feel craving for anything, then I will look into my fridge to see what I have left inside. Normally I can find a few ingredients that I can combine and make me a good dish of pasta. I think cooking pasta is very flexible, still of course there are some principles that we should understand about pasta so that we do not create a messy dish without a combination of ingredients and flavors.

I follow the recipe from my pasta bible book, "lexicon of pasta", the book that really opens my view and understanding about pasta. Following the recipe from this book, I have made my wonderful dinner, with a glass of red wine.

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This is the first time I tried making this beef salad in Thai-style. However, I have eaten other kinds of Thai salads several times before, so I get the typical flavor out of Thai salads. Still, I was amazed at the great flavor out of this dish. It gave me a refreshing feeling and I craved for more.

This salad is the combination of beef and other kinds of vegetables, plus some Asian herbs, which are typical especially for South East Asia. These herbs and fish sauce are the main ingredients that create a distinctive taste to the salad. For me, I am quite familiar with this kind of combination of the salad dressing with the herbs since many salad dishes in Vietnamese style also call for this combination. This similarity between Thai food and Vietnamese food (maybe mainly because both nations use fish sauce very often in cooking) reminds me of the homely flavor.

Try, I bet you will like this. I follow the ingredients in one of the cookbook "Bowl Food" that I do reference quite often.

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My friend who has been studying her undergraduate in Germany said after I posted this salad that this dish is one of the most popular salad in German style. She really loved this salad and often made it at home. I didn’t know about the origin of this dish, however, just like my friend, this salad did make me surprised by its wonderful taste and flavor.

I had some cleansed baby potatoes so I decided to use them in this salad. Making this salad is quite simple once you have all the seasonings which are typical for Western salads in your cupboard. For me it is not so simple. It does take some time for me to gather all Western seasoning ingredients since I spotted one recipe I wanted to do. However, it’s worth the effort.

This salad brings out a dominant creamy taste due the the cooked potatoes and the hard-boiled eggs mashed into the salad. However, the fresh celery and parsley still gives a fresh feeling, plus the olives that create a good texture to the dish.

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These pancakes are perfect for a weekend breakfast. I only have time to make pancakes for breakfast at weekends when I have longer time to prepare something special for a relaxing day.

I often make pancake, but this time, I made an alternation to the familiar pancake by topping a slice of pineapple on top. So, these pancakes are not only soft but also very juicy and fragrant with pineapple flavor. At the same time I consume both fresh fruit and cake all in one breakfast.

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If you happens to visit Singapore during Chinese New Year, the biggest celebration of the year for Singapore Chinese people, you will notice that the pineapple tarts are sold almost everywhere, from the supermarkets, shopping malls’ shops and wet market stalls. I don’t know why these sweets are called tarts by local people, because they look very different from the traditional shaped of a tart. This "tart" comes into two different shapes. The first one is as the photo above, which the pineapple jam is stuffed inside the pastry crust. Of course, the ones sold outside look different from mine as I didn’t have a specialized tool to create the outside pattern (often strip pattern) to the crust. I also didn’t apply egg wash to them, so the color is the real color after baking.

This may not be the right time to make these tarts, however, during Lunar New Year, I often went back to Vietnam so I didn’t spend that time in Singapore. Not long ago when I came across a ready-made pineapple jam at the supermarket, I suddenly thought of trying making these tarts. However, you can choose to make the pineapple jam yourself, the method is very simple and I also included below.

The home-made baking is always better than the commercial ones. The pastry crust is softer and more fragrant due to the higher amount of butter used in making the dough. Of course the butter you use at home for your baking is better in quality than the wholesale butter used by producers. Not having a tart mould, I used the small tart tins to make these tarts into the two different shapes. I also tried the brioche tin, and I got the tarts looked like flowers. Very interesting. And I love the home-made tarts.

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