favourite recipes for everyday cooking and baking

I told myself I was not going to make pineapple tarts this year. It's just too much effort and physically challenging (for someone of my age) and I figured I'd just wait for friends passing through Singapore to bring back tarts for me to eat. No thanks to Facebook, I keep seeing posts of pineapple tarts spilled across the page, made by my baker/foodie friends. I tried to resist the temptation, really (for almost a day). I admit I have a terrible weakness for pineapple tarts. I've made them every year since I moved to Sydney and had to D.I.Y. these CNY ("Chinese New Year") delicacies to satiate my cravings. After all, it's not CNY until you've had pineapple tarts (and bak kwa , but that's another story). And so, last night, I bought pineapples and made pineapple jam, so that I could roll them into balls and make the tarts this morning. By noon, the pineapple tarts were ready and mission accomplished for January 2016 (although that was not my new year...

Sayur lodeh is a vegetable curry commonly found in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. The version I grew up with contains cabbage, eggplant, long beans, deep-fried tofu (and sometimes tofu puffs) and glass noodles. I made this for lunch today and it turned out perfect (really!) and so I decided to post the recipe here in case I forget how to replicate the dish next time. Cooking is a bit of trial and error sometimes, especially with Asian cooking. I think I've got the recipe down as accurately as I can, and it's super duper delicious with rice (or even on its own). Malaysian Vegetable Curry (Sayur Lodeh) Serves 6 Ingredients 1 packet (300g) deep fried tofu 1 cup sliced carrots 3 cups cabbage (about 1/4 of a cabbage), cut into 2 inch strips 2 cups green/long beans, cut into 2 inch lengths 2 eggplants (the long and slender type), sliced into 2 inch halves 2 pieces kaffir lime leaves, torn and crushed 4 cups water 1 1/2 teaspoon ikan bilis stock powder 1 tablespoon palm sugar 1/2...