Umami Mart

You may think that coconut custard pudding sounds quite ordinary or not your thing, but trust me, you haven’t tried one of Sri Lanka’s best-loved desserts. I’m a self-confessed dessert-aholic and one of my favourite sweets is crème caramel (pudding or purin in Japan). Wattalappan (or wattalappam, the spelling seems to vary) is similar except […]

Before I go into this week’s tear-jerking post, I am fortunate to tell you that all my peeps in Japan are fine, but my thoughts are with everyone who is affected by the earthquake. This is truly awful, sad, and devastating for all of us. Japan may be well-equipped to handle the situation technologically, but […]

My MO-obsession (baking with rice flour) has returned, and this time, it’s the MOcaron. Now that I know exactly what to do when it comes to macaron-making, substituting almond flour with other ingredients is not that hard. Having said that, I had no idea whether rice flour would work. Since the first recipe I used […]

PREFACE: Battle ReCPY: Madeleines (Mary Ann + Marcus) Valentine’s Day is so overrated. Why do people pay extra for red roses? Why do you have to buy new lingerie? WTF is up with all the chocolate? I don’t understand what’s so romantic about today–it’s just a regular Monday to me. Us consumers are so manipulated […]

The kawaii (= cute) world of Japan is a very positive dimension of happiness, beauty, bunnies, rainbows and ribbons. And not just something that contains characters, but also an aesthetic approach that appeals to your heart, with a rather feminine touch and usually a soft design that makes you go, “Awwwww, that’s so CUUUTE”. Girls […]

Since I got a nice Williams-Sonoma gift card for the holidays, I went there to hunt for things I wanted, but didn’t necessarily need. Aside from multi-color paper muffin cups for my MOffins and new sheet pans for my macarons, I also picked up a madeleine pan. I don’t know why but the shiny pan, […]

My neighbourhood is changing rapidly these days– for the better. The whole block used to be really sad, shopping-wise. A nasty old bakery with day-old bread, Christian-sects’ offices, and three different Thai “massage” parlours (last year a war broke out between them, and the hookers smashed each other’s glass windows with bricks every night, what […]

This weekend two designer friends Louise Gaarmann, Tina Ratzer and I threw a “julestue” (directly translated: “christmas livingroom”) which is sort of a Christmas market with things to buy and stuff to snack on– but in my apartment and not in a local store. It was an experiment and I was biting my teeth beforehand. […]

To conclude ReCPY for the year, I am writing this week on something that requires a huge amount of patience. I catered our apartment building’s holiday party, and since I live in a VIP building in Chelsea (we have a celebrity hair stylist, a professional hockey player, financial tycoons, a semi-successful artist, an event planning […]

Photo by Erin Gleeson.