Welcome

to my food oeuvre. I'm new to substack but can anticipate doing a monthly cooking video demonstration with articles on a specific dish/dishes with weekly shorter entries exhibiting other meals.

Haobuhao?

This question is something my aunties would yell when placing food on the table. Anything from Bak Kut Teh, Mee Pok, Nasi Kandar, Jemput-Jemput, Rendang or Ais Kacang, asked as if we hadn’t already been eating this particular meal our whole lives. Haobuhao means “good, or not good”, something I echo to myself or others every night at dinner.

Utilitarian cooking

I like to eat at fancy restaurants but my bread and butter is the home cooking of matriarchs. Being resourceful and procuring dinner out of the cheapest cuts of meat and whatever vegetables are cheap at the market is the backbone of acerbic cooking to me. There are instances where it is only sensical to gather very specific ingredients to make a dish that is reverent to tradition, but most of the time I opt to experiment with what is available. This handling is what I think makes this newsletter worth doing.

It is easy to obey the top google search for “Casunziei recipe”, but to watch somebody work around the scarcity of ingredients to create something analogous and equally delicious is much more interesting.

I hope you enjoy and find insight and encouragement from these writings!

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