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Hi everyone. It’s been a really long time since I’ve been active here.

I thought I would share some recent photos with you guys. S and I took off for a super fast 3 day trip to Tokyo last week in order to celebrate her birthday. While we would have loved to have stayed longer, we had to get back in time for my son’s first birthday, which is only 3 days after S’s birthday. Yup, little T is now one year old and he’s the cutest kid on the planet (but hey, I’m biased!).

We managed to pack in some amazing eating in our short trip, as follows. Day 1: An oily, soupless ramen with pork belly and soft-boiled egg from Abura Soba Sohonten for brekkie; deliciously fatty katsu at Butagumi for lunch; and the best sushi of my life at Sushi Sho in Yotsuya (seriously, this place has no Michelin stars–but has appeared in The Miele Guide year after year–and for my money was far better than any other sushi meal I have ever had in my entire life, including more famous places like Sushi Saito, Kyubey, or Mizutani) for dinner. Day 2: Lots of yummy pastries from Isetan Shinjuku’s food hall for brekkie; manju from Higashiya Omotesando as a midday snack; burgers at Blacows mid-afternoon; and a beautiful Modern Japanese multi-course extravaganza at Aronia de Takazawa to celebrate S’s birthday. Day 3: breakfast pastries at Laduree Ginza; good but overpriced sushi at Sushi Mizutani for lunch; wagashi at Higashiya Ginza after lunch; and super fun Yakiniku with lots of premium sake at Sutamina-en to end the day (followed by a mad dash to Haneda).

Anyway, here are some snaps from the trip. (I’ve also been playing with a fun CCTV 25mm f1.4 lens for my GF1, hence the Lomo-ish style pix with lots of bokeh.)

(Please keep reading… some important info at the end of the post)

That said, I am going to be taking a short break from blogging. The combination of my work and fatherhood has prevented me from really giving this site the attention it deserves.

But, that doesn’t mean you have heard the last from me. I hope to be able to relaunch this site, with a new design and a new style of pushing out content, and hopefully with renewed energy, in about 6 months from now.

In the meantime, I will keep tweeting, at least more often than I was blogging.  My twitter handle is aunkoh. Please follow me.

Til then, happy eating and again, thank you.

Yesterday afternoon, I had the great pleasure of attending the local (Singapore) launch of the Singapore International Culinary Exchange (SPICE for short) and the unveiling of the Singapore Takeout. The Singapore Takeout is a custom-fabricated shipping container that, with the push of a button, transforms into a pop-up kitchen. This flying kitchen has been engineered so that it can be used for both demonstrations as well as a proper, working pop-up restaurant kitchen.

Singapore Takeout will feature some of Singapore’s current crop of top chefs as well as our very best food products. The Takeout leaves our shores next week, setting sail for London. From there, it will travel to Paris, Moscow, New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Delhi, Dubai, and Sydney. The chefs representing Singapore include (as pictured from left to right at the top photo of this post) Andre Chiang, Haikal Johari, Malcolm Lee, Benjamin Seck, Janice Wong, Willin Low, Ryan Clift, Armin Leitgeb, and the team from Iggy’s (represented by Ignatius Chan in the photo). In most of the destinations, one or more of each city’s celebrity chefs will be asked to work alongside our local chefs. Each pop-up event will last 3 days, during which the paired chefs will serve up amazing Singapore-inspired dishes at private and public events, as well as conduct demonstrations and workshops. (Keep reading)

So, there’s a small reason I haven’t had time to post for a while. 3.075 kilos small to be exact. On 10 March, my darling wife S and I became parents (for the first time). Our little boy–we’ll call him T on this site–is a real cutie and has been keeping both of us very busy. S is doing very, very well and I’m slowly getting used to fatherhood.

My new favourite time of each day is my 945pm bottle feed duty. It’s one of the only times on weekdays at which I get to spend some real quality time with T. And since I come visiting with 120ml of delicious mama’s milk, he’s always happy to see me.

I’ll get back to blogging soon. Next up will be the brioche recipe that we use for our burger buns. So, thanks for your continued patience and support.

It’s no secret that I love burgers. Love going out for them and also love making them. And I think I do a pretty good job. Haven’t had too many complaints at least. That said, I’ve always been slightly bothered by one thing. I prefer my burgers with a slightly thicker patty. It’s just more pleasurable to chomp down on a nice fat burger. While I have had good burgers made with thin, flat patties–which necessitates at least two patties per burger–they just don’t have the same level of juiciness and taste compared to a well-made thick patty. My problem is that cooking a thick patty can be tricky. All too often, and unless you like your burgers well-done, it’s hard to gauge exactly when the whole patty is perfectly cooked. I like my burgers somewhere between medium-rare and medium. And all too often, after frying or grilling them for what I think is the right amount of time, and having developed what looks like the perfect crust on the exterior of my patty, I’ll bite into it and realize that the inside core is still under-done. And there’s nothing ickier than a mushy raw center.

Of course, this is why thin patties are so frequently made and used. It’s a lot easier to cook a thin patty completely to a preferred doneness (although with thin patties, you almost never get one any less cooked than medium–and that only if you insist). And while I could make life easy for myself, I’m not willing to sacrifice on flavour, texture or taste.

In my quest to build a better burger, and in part because of my recent obessive use of my SousVide Supreme (picked up from ToTT), I decided to see if I could cook my burger patties by sous-vide. (Keep reading)

Hola! I have just returned from a jam-packed week in Madrid, Spain. My colleagues and I were there to organize a super-cool culinary event that was also used as the launch pad for a whole series of even cooler food initiatives.

The event was titled A Night in Singapore and was the opening event (the welcome cocktail) for this year’s Madrid Fusion. Madrid Fusion, now in its 9th year, is quite simply one of the world’s most important culinary conferences, attended each year by 500 or so of the planet’s most talented chefs, restaurateurs, and food media. Each year, there is a featured foreign country. Last year it was Australia. This year it was Singapore, represented by 3 of our most talented chefs, one amazing mixologist and a quick-talking street food evangelist.

Madrid Fusion’s timing and its choice of Singapore as featured country was serendipitous. For the last year, my agency has been helping the Singapore Tourism Board, ieSingapore, and SPRING create a campaign that would help promote the changing face of our gastronomic scene to the world. This campaign would promote our best food brands–from people to products to concepts and even books–to the world’s foodies, media and trade. It was decided that Madrid Fusion would the perfect opportunity to launch this campaign. (Keep reading)

Last month, I had the pleasure of announcing and hosting a little contest sponsored very kindly by Staub. I had asked readers to send me their best photo of a gorgeously scrumptuous one-pot meal. The winner–chosen by my wife S and I–would receive a nice, brand new 18cm cherry red Staub cocotte.

S and I were overwhelmed with the entries. We had over 50 fabulous photos to choose from. We want to say a big thank you to everyone who entered the contest. Many of the dishes sounded sensational and we would have loved to have tasted them with you. But, there can be only one winner. And that person is Sherie Lee of maameemoomoo. Sherie sent us the fantastic photo of what looks like the most delicious coq au vin, presented at the top of this post. Congrats Sherie! I’ll be in touch very shortly to follow up on sending you the cocotte.

The runner-up was the above photo by Weylin Liew. Another gorgeous picture of what is easily one of my all time favourite dishes. I could not resist also sharing Weylin’s beautiful picture with all of you as well. Again, thank you all for taking part and (since I forgot to say this in the last post) Happy New Year!

Over the past few months, the way that I have been cooking has changed irrevocably. You see, late last year, I picked up a device from Singapore’s newest, coolest and easily largest kitchen store, ToTT, that has not only changed the way that I cook but also what I am cooking.

The device is a SousVide Supreme, which is something you quite simply need to use to realize just how revolutionary it can be for a home chef.I am sure by now most of us are familiar with seeing the words “sous-vide” on restaurant menus. What this means is that the proteins we are eating have been vacuum packed (often with certain flavoring agents) and cooked in a water bath at a precise temperature and for a specific amount of time. This technique allows chefs to cook foods to perfect doneness and through varying cooking times, achieve textures not possible previously. The process can also often enhance flavour as well as retain moisture in meats and other proteins that might be lost during other cooking methods. (Keep reading)

Tis the season. And in the spirit of gift-giving, one of my uber-kind advertisers has kindly offered to allow me to share one of its amazing products with one lucky reader. This December, I am giving away a beautiful 18 cm cherry red Staub cocotte.

I love cooking with Staub’s cocottes. They are the perfect pots for braising and slow cooking. They are fabulously well-made and always look damned good, in the kitchen and on the dining table.

All you have to do to win this gorgeous little cocotte is email me a photo of one of your favourite slow-cooked/braised dishes–that you cooked yourself–with a one sentence description of the dish. Email to givemeacocotte@chubbyhubby.net by 31 December 2010. The most delicious sounding and looking entry will win the beautiful 18 cm cherry red Staub cocotte.

This giveaway is only open to Singapore-residents.

I am very much looking forward to seeing what you guys and gals come up with.