Green Apple and Carrot Salad with Japanese Mayo & Wasabi Dressing

This salad is healthy, totally raw and refreshing, which makes it an excellent source of fiber.  It has a Japanese twist because of the Japanese mayonnaise, nori (seaweed) and wasabi.

Thai Spicy Beef & Whole Peppercorn Pasta

Whenever I visit Bangkok, one of my favourite dishes to eat there is a Thai-Italian fusion pasta at The Greyhound Cafe. It is a pasta with Thai ingredients like raw, green, whole peppercorns and Thai basil.  Whole green peppercorn is the dried, unripe fruit of the pepper plant.  It has an interesting, fresh taste and is not THAT spicy.

See more here on the different kinds of pepper:

Peppers - black, green, white and pink....

I buy the green, whole peppercorn and the Thai basil (which is different from Italian basil and more pungent) from Golden Mile Complex in Singapore, the frequent habitué of Thai workers here. I have tried looking for these in the neighbourhood wet market or supermarket, but have not seen any. Lots of authentic Thai ingredients at Golden Mile, including Sriracha sauce!

Here's my take on this Thai-Italian dish.

Linguini with Squid, Crab, Cherry Tomatoes and Breadcrumbs

This is a seafood pasta dish, with crab claw meat, flower cut squid, and yellow cherry tomatoes. The flavoured, toasted breadcrumbs on top add a great texture to the dish.

Carrot & Cucumber Sesame Salad

This is a cold, raw salad of carrot and cucumber, sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds, in a dressing of lemon, honey and sesame oil. Simple to do, very refreshing and perfect with dry, grilled or fried food. It's very healthy too, because it's completely raw and fresh!

My Mom's Hamburger Recipe

There are some dishes from my childhood that I have never forgotten because they evoke such warm memories. They're comfort food, the type you'd like to eat on a rainy day, or when you're tired, or very hungry, or you simply want simple food that satisfies.

One of these dishes is my Mom's hamburger. The patties are crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, flavourful and above all, moist. The ingredients are very simple and the magic ingredient, I believe, is that dollop of mayonnaise. When I was a child, we used to eat this with a sauce of native toyo (soy sauce) and calamansi (a small, native Philippine lime).

Now I serve it to my kids at breakfast, lunch or dinner, sans the toyo and calamansi. My children also take it to school for lunch.

I've dolled up the recipe a bit by making a mushroom cream sauce to drizzle on top or serve on the side. But most of the time, we just eat it "naked," and even without this fancy Western sauce, it tastes soooo GOOD!