favourite recipes for everyday cooking and baking

  In all my years of eating and cooking, I have only recently embraced bittergourd into my cooking repertoire. I was visiting my mum and she was wondering what to do with the leftover roast pork she had in the fridge. She suggested doing a stir-fried bittergourd with roast pork dish, which I've heard of but never tried before. I can't remember if she ever cooked that during my childhood, but back then, I shunned anything that had bittergourd in it. I was a picky eater when I was young. Dare I admit that I never ate my veggies until I was in my late teens. Okay, my kids don't have to know this. Really. Anyway, back to the bittergourd. I decided to use beef instead of roast pork in this dish, cooked with salted black beans. To make it a one-dish meal, I tossed it with some flat egg noodles (we call this Mee Pok in Singapore, though I'm not sure why) and added a splash of black vinegar, and it turned out to be a most slurp-worthy and delicious bowl of noodles. Mee Pok (Fla

Piri-piri is a Swahili word for "pepper pepper", and is also known as African Bird's Eye chilli. It is the predominant ingredient in making piri-piri sauce - a tangy, garlicky, fiery hot chilli sauce that is popular in South Africa cuisine. If you didn't know already, piri-piri chicken (also known as Portuguese chicken) originated in Mozambique (some say Angola), which were former Portuguese colonies. Hence, the influence of spicy Portuguese cooking found its way into South African cuisine. It's probably more accurate to refer to this dish as piri-piri chicken, rather than Portuguese Chicken. After all, it did not originate from Portugal. It's a bit like Hainanese Chicken Rice, which did not originate from Hainan Island in China, but is one of the national dishes of Singapore (next to Singapore Chilli Crab, I suppose?). Anyway, piri-piri sauce is a great way to dress up your next roast chicken, and tastes fantastic especially if you love chillies, lemon and ga