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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...

  So, I was telling my friend Samuel the other day that I made fish head curry three times in a row prior to posting the recipe for it last week. I explained that I couldn't get it to taste the way I wanted it to, and I couldn't possibly share a recipe for something I'm not happy with. I got it right on the third attempt though, after I figured out who the culprit was - it was the fish curry powder with the Candlenut! So I changed that, made my own curry paste and it turned out almost exactly like I wanted it to. Some dishes are a little tricky to master especially when doing a copycat dish, and you just can't place your finger on the secret ingredient. I remember cooking Korean Fried Chicken at least five times before I was happy with the results. That included experimenting with various recipes for the dipping sauce until I finally achieved the right balance. There are also those dishes that are in WIP, for example, attempting to make laksa from scratch....

  So, I'm not an expert on Burek, nor do I know enough about its cultural background and history to be able to give an accurate account of how it originated. I'm thinking  Wikipedia should be fairly reliable, and therefore I quote a few sections from it which provide some insight into this delicious filled pastry. "Börek (also burek and other variants) is a family of baked or fried filled pastries made of a thin flaky dough known as phyllo (or yufka ). It can be filled with cheese , minced meat, or vegetables. Most probably invented in what is now Modern Turkey , in the Anatolian Provinces of the Ottoman Empire in its early era, to become a popular element of Ottoman cuisine . Börek is also very popular in the cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire , especially in North Africa and throughout the Balkans . The Northern Slavic cuisines , historically developed by people living in close contact with the Turkic peoples of Asia and Europe, also feature...

My mum has been making this lemon tart since I was a little girl, and it is one of the best-loved desserts in our family. I would like to think that this is the best lemon tart I have ever eaten. I have never known any other version of lemon tart until I came to Australia and noticed that all the lemon tarts sold at cafes and patisseries were different from what I was used to. They were really lemon cream tarts I suppose, as the lemon filling typically contains cream. I have to say that mum's version wins hands down, as I prefer the tart and lemony jam-like filling which is perfectly balanced by the rich, buttery and slighly salty shortcrust pastry. Pure heaven! It's really hard to stop at just one slice, and I can shamelessly admit to having two or three ( or four ) slices in one go. The kids love it too, especially the crisp and buttery edges of the tart shell. When I was a kid, I used to break off the edges of the tart as they were my favourite...