whine & dine

So. I know I’ve posted this recipe for Steak & Guinness Pie before. But that was a while – slightly over two years! – ago. (Whoa, has it only been two and a half years since this bastion of deliciousness made its way into my home, stomach and heart?) So I figured it wouldn’t hurt to repost it, and nag all of you who haven’t yet made it into finally doing so!

Last week, I also downloaded Paper by 53 which is an incredible sketchpad app. Actually, to call it a ‘sketchpad app’ seems a bit dimunitive, since the whole point of making it fairly minimalist (it’s meant to feel like you, anywhere between 1-5 simple, intuitive tools, and a piece of paper) is that you’re only limited by your imagination. So after making this pie for D’s belated birthday dinner last night, I was nursing my food baby in front of the TV and sent a doodle of the ingredients list to Vick, who then commanded me to sketch the rest of the recipe steps out and post them here. Keep reading →

It’s no secret by now how much I love cake. Cupcakes, muffins, teacakes, cakey breads, coffeecakes; iced, frosted, buttercreamed, or any which way, cakes are all good. They’re delicious and never fail to hit the spot (when done well anyway). Keep reading →

Whilst sifting through my blog for inspiration one afternoon this week (I had drunkenly invited a friend and his girlfriend over for dinner and had no idea what to cook but wanted to impress), it came to my attention that there’s a huge discrepancy in the number of Asian vs Western recipes I post. Some of this is due to my not being a huge fan of Asian desserts, so all dessert recipes I post automatically add to the Western category, and also thanks to how most of the Chinese food I cook at home (stir-frys, fried rice, Chinese soups, steamed fish) doesn’t tend to be very photogenic. Keep reading →

Recipes are a divisive thing. Everyone’s got an opinion on which is the most authentic or the best. And if there’s a type of recipe that gets everyone’s panties in a twist, it’s how you make a cocktail. This is probably since you don’t need to know how to cook to be able to make a cocktail, and that opens the floor to just about anybody’s opinionatedness. And as much as I often appreciate digging into the history of a dish and researching the original way of making it, there’s often room for improvement and for tweaking something to suit one’s tastes, while still respecting what it’s meant to taste like. Keep reading →

I hate brandied cherries. Well, to be fair, I’m not the biggest fan of fruit that comes in any form apart from fresh or as juice. (I particularly dislike dried fruit and that annoying knack they seem to have for appearing in my cake or cookie which just destroys the entire eating experience for me.) But brandied cherries, as far as I was concerned, deserve a special place in hell all for their sickly sweet, horror-face-and-gag-reflex-inducing qualities. Why anyone would voluntarily include them in desserts or cocktails was far beyond my comprehension. Keep reading →