Food
I think about food. A lot.
Not just because I love to eat: I also think that food is politics, history, culture, and the best lens through which I can learn about the world.
I've been lucky to have eaten extensively across the world. I've also worked on several cookbooks. Now, I write an occasional food newsletter, obsessively review tacos, and develop recipes that are at once traditional and outright absurd.
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A Walk Around a Wet Market in Taiping, Malaysia
Wet markets have a bad reputation, because of the 'rona, but their name really just comes from being the opposite of a 'dry market' (like a market that sells pots and pans and such). They are very common in many parts of Asia and don't have wildlife. For many of us, a wet market is our first port of call to make the…
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Street Life: Air Mata Kucing
As a child, my parents would put us on a bus or train to Kuala Lumpur to see friends, visit people, or just have a weekend break. One of my strongest memories of KL: getting out of the overnight train at the old railway station, and strolling to Chinatown (Petaling Street) for breakfast. Air mata kucing (literally…
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Well Fed: Two Artisans
As you may know from elsewhere, I love food. I am obsessed with it. I love eating, I love food stories, I love writing about food, I love writing about people who make and eat food. I did that more actively in the past where I wrote a few travel guidebooks and cookbooks, and also published a few articles about Asian…
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A unifying theory of Singapore food that ends in a dream
'Singapore food' is a difficult term. It's hard to put national wrappers around a smorgasbord of different culinary influences. This is why we keep getting into fights about appropriating others' food. Singapore food is Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Hokchiu, Teochew, Malay, Javanese, Sumatran, Tamil, Kerala, Mamak,…
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Akhuni
I could not believe my eyes when my wife Sabrena put on an Indian movie on Netflix and we saw at least two Northeast Indians at once. On screen. Having lines. Being whole people. Doing something. Something that seemed important. "Axone" (pronounced Akhuni) - is a Naga speciality dish made with fermented soya…