Can I have these food for take away?

When I was working in a restaurant, there's one thing that really saddens me. Sometimes people order too much food and end up unable to finish them. It's still all right if they ask the food to be wrapped but more often, they just leave it as a waste which end up in the rubbish bin.

I noticed that in chinese tradition or for some people as well, over-order of food (or over-preparing), symbolizes abundance. I was told that for some Filipino, it's customary to have abundance of food on the table during new year so you will have an abundance throughout the year. Another case is, whenever I went to my friend's home for chinese new year dinner, there are so many food we can't even finish half of them.

I understand that it's nice to have an abundance of food. But I noticed the negative part on ordering/cooking more food than you need.

First of all. Some of those will be wasted. While some can be kept in the fridge, given to the dogs or cats, the rest would likely end up in the bin. And yes, I hate to waste food. Even those I don't like. Think about the production chain needed for the food to arrive at our table. From the farmers, the ranchers, the truck drivers, the market vendor, the suppliers... to the cook and the person to serve. A long way from where it came from and ended up in your trash.

Secondly, extra food on the table is the best way to induce overeating. Say you have 4 pieces of chicken on the plate that was so tasty. Although you only plan to eat 2 pieces and left the remaining 2 for the next meal, it's infinitely more temptation to clean up the whole 4 pieces rather than having only 2 on your plate.

Third, kept food is no longer fresh. Frankly, I hate reheated food. I know someone who don't eat reheated food and all food served must be freshly prepared. For me, I feel reheated food already lose a lot of it's original flavour.

So how to manage these problem? Simple, order less food if you're in a restaurant. If it's not enough, you can always order some more. If you're stuck in a rut like, one is too little-two is too much, order one and water down the rest. Water is the best medicine for overeating. Don't worry whether you'll have enough food. Hey, you're in a restaurant! You can just order more or even better, keep some extra space for desserts!

But what if you cook? There's a simple trick here: Cook less, standby some heat-and-eat ready. Sure you can cook 4 pieces of chicken right away, but keep the other 2 out of sight! If you cook for a group of four, or even 10: cook as if they're all on diet! However, do prepare some extra fruits and healthy munchies in the fridge. Create some fibre-rich appetizers such as carrot and celery stick with blue cheese dip or homemade salsa. These tummy fillings are healthy and will induce everyone to eat less.

So help yourself. Eat less, be healthier. There are people out there, don't mention places with hunger and poverty, they might just around you: people who can't have food. Students that have to skip dinner and having their lunch with instant oatmeals, children whose parents are downsized and have not even a penny to buy them food, homeless people who have to get food from social charity day by day, or even those with diabetes and kidney problem who can no longer taste how wonderful rice is.

Taste you meal, savour it... make every single bite counts and appreciated.

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people. [Orson Welles]

Great combo!

Sometimes, unexpected food combination causes awful result. But some carefully crafted combination would make things even better.

While simple combination such as salmon and cheese, or perhaps fish and wasabi would create a wonderful mix, some surprising combination had been found by great chefs.

Human tongue can differentiate 4 tastes, right? Sweet, sour, bitter and salty. Well, not really. The fifth taste, called umami, detects savory taste. Using the knowledge of these combination, human can practically invent infinite amount of taste combination.

The first combination that actually surprise me is honeydew melon and mayonnaise. Surprised? Good if you don't. Cheese and spring onion, while familiar for some people, still come as a surprise for me. How about barbecue sauce mixed with mayonnaise? creamy and tangy at the same time.


Like my usual principal. My intention is never to tell you to do this and that. Yes, you can do that. But I'd like to encourage every kitchen artist to go and discover these great tastes by themself. how about grape jelly, cheese and spring onion sandwich. Sounds funny, eh? but you'll never know until you try it. Remember, everyone has a different taste and what you like, might not be liked by others and vice versa. So don't be discouraged if people don't like your new taste. However, be true to yourself: Don't just because it's your own cooking, you have a lighter judgment on it. A better artist demand more from himself.


Find that new taste. Someone find that beef and cheese are good pair and create cheese steak and cheeseburgers. Someone find how great rosemary and thyme for roast chicken. Someone invent Tom Yam Kung and Yakiniku. Why not you?

Go, explore, taste, create and share to all of us.

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.

[Orson Welles]

Sicko...

Well, since I've start the roll with documentaries I've watched, why don't I share another documentaries that I'd love you yo watch as well? Few months ago I borrowed the DVD "Sicko" from the library. It's about the healthcare system in the U.S. and other countries. Although this documentary should be taken with a pinch of salt, it still will make your heart wrench.

What would happen if the medicine created not to heal you, but to keep you alive and depend on the drugs? What would happen if the healthcare system is designed not to get people healthy, but to squeeze more money for the corporations? Isn't it weird that the volunteers helping during the 9/11 actually unable to get any health benefit resulted from their work while the terror suspect held in Guantanamo Bay receive full health benefit?

Let's start from the root. Illness happen from unhealthy lifestyle. Too much drugs, antibiotics and chemicals would eventually mutate the cells in your body. Not enough water, not enough breathing, life full of stress would induce cancer, stroke, high blood pressure and other ailments. Too much sugar and simple carbohydrate would make irregular workload for your pancreas producing insulin and eventually, causing diabetes.

To end it all, live healthy. Drink more water. (not tea, coffee, soft drink... but pure plain water) Choose healthier food. Whole grains, organics. Get out of stress. Did you know that more than 70% of today's illness mainly caused by stress? Stress causing your body system to work in unnatural cycle. Stress resulted in cancer, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and a whole load of stuffs. Get the health you deserve!

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside

[Mark Twain]

Do you know what you eat?

I just watched the Oscar nominated documentary for this year, "Food, Inc." and although I kinda expect what's the movie's discussing, I couldn't stop myself from being disgusted to the way human treats others.

I'm not going to preach here but indeed what the bible said: The love of money is the root of all evil. Wouldn't it kinda true when we're talking about how the economy in the developed industrial countries work?

You see, man are trying to get more money. Hence, they find out the way to grow even cheaper food. This way, their company can earn more with even less cost. Well, since now food cost less, people eat more food, right? Wrong! People eat excessively huge amount of food! Ca Ching! Money for the food industry!

As a result from overeating, obesity happen. So people want to get back to health. How? By slimming centers, slimming products (pills, herb, Açaí berry, meal replacement, carb blocker, fat blocker, whatever...), fitness centers... ca ching! Money for the health industry!

But some people can't really be convinced that they need to stay healthy. So as a result, illness developed. Diabetes, stroke, cancer, heart diseases... Hear that silence? That's the sound of money being transferred to medical and pharmaceutical industry.

Oooh, I love the sound of money. But let's see the bad effect. First, to create food that resistant to pest and illness, great amount of pesticides were used for the plants and more antibiotics used for the animals. Pesticides = poison. Antibiotics = poison. Accumulation of poison in your body = cancer!

And then to get the plants and animals grow faster, Genetically modified organisms (GMO) are planted and growth hormone injected to the animals. GMOs = mutant. growth hormone = mutant. If growth hormone can alter the growth of chickens to double their natural growth, what makes you think it won't do the same to your body? And yeah, have I told you that cancer is basically unnaturally altered cells in you body? i.e. mutated cells?

Oh, yeah. Forgot to Ca Ching for the medical and drugs companies. Ca Ching!!!!

Think about it. I haven't discuss about environmental and ecological impact, social and anthropological impact, and many many more damage these people can do. And to imagine: It's all begin with only one thing: Love of money.

Sorry if I'm a bit out of topic right here but we need to start healing this world. And nothing better than to start it with the man in the mirror.

I would totally recommend you to watch this movies about food industries. "Supersize me" would be another great documentary you should watch. Eat healthy, eat less, have a nice and proper meal, try your best to get organic and healthy food.

You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients. [Julia Child]

Wrap it up!!!

Lumpia, popiah, bò bía, harumaki,... whatever you call it. It's essentially variety of vegetable wrapped in thin skins. Or in common english, we call it Spring rolls.

Philippines style Lumpia

The great thing about spring rolls is you can fill in practically anything you like. Indonesian Mataram Lumpia filled with bamboo shoots, some other like Singapore Popiah are using stewed grated jicama (Bangkuang). Some snacks vendor in Jakarta filled their Risol (politically wrong name derived from Rissole. Which is practically a spring roll as well but coated with crumbs) with vermicelli, bean sprouts and bits of tofu. in short, you can fill in anything with spring rolls.

Singapore Style popiah

I've seen spring roll sushi, spring roll filled with freshly stir fried vegetable, spring rolls with fresh prawns and sticks of zesty spring onion...

What I've found is: Everybody loves spring rolls! Seriously. I love it. And if you think you want to start evolving some dish, you can definitely start with spring rolls, or rissole if you have time to make the skin. (normally spring rolls skins are easily store-bought while rissole demanded home-made labor-intensive crepe-like skin)

Indonesian Style Lumpia

Just wrap it up! Once upon a time in China, some guy wrap duck skin, cucumber, spring onion, and a bit of hoisin sauce and Voila! Peking Duck was born! now it's your turn. Don't be afraid to wrap it up! It's good, nice and practical.

Peking Duck... essentially a spring roll...

Go for it! Wrap it up!

He who comes first, eats first. [Eike von Repkow]

3 levels of Cooking

Depending on where you are, your cooking ability is divided to 3 skill levels. I would call it imitate, mutate and create.


Imitate is when you start to learn to cook. Just like Mozart when he start playing pieces of music from the symphony, or playing it off the scores. Somebody did it. Somebody created it and we learn by following. This is the first step of learning to cook: learn from recipe or let somebody guide you along the way. Similarly, when you ate in the restaurant and you find the food tastes great, you would love to find how to cook it yourself. So you look up in the recipe book, or internet, or even look around whether any of your friends have the recipe. While imitation might be the first grade in cooking, it's imitation that makes traditional recipes going on for millenniums. Sushi, while mutate and evolve for centuries, it's essentially the same stuffs from centuries ago. And simple food such as bread, rooted from way back in history.


Mutate is the early step of create. You see a great dish and you modify it to make it better suit your taste. Bread for example, was basically baked leavened dough of flour. The Japanese create an-pan (bread with sweet red bean fillings) and karepan (bread filled with curry, coated with bread crumbs and fried). Others including countless of variation and recipes for bread. Who knows that adding a raw egg yolk on top of pasta carbonara would greatly enhance its taste? Or adding Guinness or coke or coffee in your steak would greatly alter the taste of your beef? If you're not here yet, don't worry. Many cooks dare not even to venture to this level. But when you achieve this level, you'll feel the surge of creativity comes into your brain. and you're ready for the next step:

Create! The ultimate dream of a chef. Louisiana Crab cakes, Singapore chili crab, Hainanese Chicken rice, Korean dolsot bibimbap, Japanese soba noodle... you name it. They all invented by somebody. Someone dare enough to venture to the uncharted waters. They make it great and people follow. These are people that think really out of the box. Although indeed some dish are created by accident or result of leftovers tossed in together (Japanese takikomi Gohan, Singapore Hokkien Mee). But a new dish is a new dish after all.

My advice, when you start dancing in the kitchen, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to start, to imitate. Don't be afraid to step out of the box, just walk out with little evolution and alteration from existing food. And lastly, never fear of creating new dish. And for single guys out there, a wonderfully created new dish named after the girl you adore, beats roses and chocolate anytime. (while chocolate and roses with a great dinner would really enhance the music.)



So get back there in the kitchen and start doing great things.

Never eat more than you can lift. [Miss Piggy]