It has been a few weeks since I came back from Taiwan and several things bring back memories from the trip again and again. One of the new things that impressed me was the local liquor called Kaoling. Kaoling is an essential product of the islands Kinmen and Matsu which historically have been part of…
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Asia is a continent that conserves traditions while simultaneously holding a vision for modernisation; a concept that never fails to surprise me. It amazes me how often we tend to forget about what has been around us for centuries. We also usually regard some of these old school products as secondary ingredients that are fed…
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Ray & Eelke – A Four Hand Interview There are plenty of great restaurants in major cities, and I have always admired chefs, who pack up their city lifestyles and move to the countryside and open their dream restaurants there. Recently I bumped into a friend Ray Adriansyah, from Locavore in Ubud and while we…
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Recently I saw several coloured café lattes (green – matcha, orange – turmeric) and wondered how they were made. Meanwhile, I fell in love with a drink called “jamu” which consisted of turmeric juice, honey and water. Here’s to learning more about turmeric… Indian turmeric is considered to be the best in the world. The…
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Bali is a tropical island full of amazing surprises and one of them is an amazing fruit similar to lychee called mangosteen, which was introduced to us via Komang, the young bartender from Room4Dessert, based in Ubud, Bali. Mangosteen is a sap tree and belongs to the Clusiaceae family with more than 200 species found…
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Recently it was national Orange Blossom Day. You might be wondering what does orange blossom have to do with the Indigenous bartender, well let’s take look… The Orange Blossom is the fragrant flower that comes from an orange tree, which is commonly used in the perfume industry. Some people say that it is an aphrodisiac.…
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As a little boy, I always loved to watch western movies where the Mexican cowboys always ate beans and pepper. On the other hand I always thought of chilli pepper as being associated with Asian cuisine. I’ve been in Singapore now for five years, so it is about a time I explored more… Believe it…
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In one of the previous articles introducing pomelo we talked about four original citrus fruits on the planet and here’s another one of them – the mandarin. Mandarin played a big role in hybridization as it is the only sweet citrus fruit out of all ‘original four citrus fruits.’ The mandarin orange is the most…
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When I look back in time and think of what types of citruses have been used in cocktails, I realized that you can probably count them all on one hand…lime, lemon, orange and grapefruit. But then you look at all the different cuisines all around the world, each calling for different types of citrus…that got…
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In the previous article, we talked about the history, production and origins of rice. Rice is very important to humans as a form of food and has been at the center of several different cuisines for many centuries. And so, it has naturally also found its way into the culinary segment of pleasure aka alcoholic…
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