Tao You Bak (Stewed Soy Sauce Pork Belly).

All Chinese families must have a Tao You Bak recipe of their own. It's especially useful when you're in a foreign country and just can't get your hands on the traditional pork belly dish that your mum cooked for you when you were little.

So, let's get started...

Step 1: Marinate (min. 30 mins before cooking begins) 2kg of Pork Belly (uncut slabs) with salt, pepper, oyster sauce (optional), 5 pieces of anistars, 5 cardamoms, a pinch of peppercorns and a stick of cinnamon.

Step 2: Boil 5-6 rice bowls of water in a pot. Add carrot, tomatoes, ginger, and/or vegetables of your choice, which you will remove once the flavour builds in the soup. Add groundnuts too (optional), but only if you fancy them. And/or mushrooms for extra flavour.

Step 3: Remove all the spices used as marinate and place them into the boiling vegetable soup plus 5 tablespoons of premium light soy sauce.

Step 4: Pan sear marinated pork belly slabs till golden brown on the skin. This helps to retain the flavour.

Steps 5: Place pan-seared pork belly into the pot of boiling soup, along with 5 cloves of garlic (whole) and 5 tablespoons of caramalised soy sauce – for 50 mins if you're using a pressure cooker, then leave for another 30 mins. (The sauce should just cover the slabs of pork belly). For claypots, cook on slow fire for an hour and a half or less, depending on how soft you like your Tao You Bak.

Step 6: Remove the slabs of pork belly, and it should look something like this :P

Step 7: Cut to chunks or thin slices; serve with sauce and cut chili padi on the side.

New World Mutton Soup.

I've heard of so many stories about what I will find in Bedok, being one of the oldest Singaporean residential township and all.

And I've been moving around from one bus stop to another via Tampines, looking for the good stuff.

On this particular trip, I've found one of the best herbal mutton soup after alighting bus 69 at the Bedok North Interchange.

This is one of my favourites in Singapore, so far: New World Mutton Soup.

The soup is no doubt potent, but not too strong on herbs. It's just enough to complement the aromatic mutton ribs, tripes, mutton balls and tendons. You will also enjoy the prominent taste of liquorice roots that leaves a tantalising aftertaste.

And you can have this with rice, or as it is.

Right next door to the New World Mutton Soup stall, you'll probably notice a long queue most of the time.

That will be the place where you can get the famous Bedok Chwee Kueh (Water Cake) that melts in your mouth, and in your hands. Malaysians will know this appetising side dish or dessert as Woon Chye Kou (Bowl Cake).

Homestyle Chiang Rai Style.

It's not everyday that you'll get to walk into a Thai restaurant without feeling you're gonna get a whooping bill with a hefty figure written at the bottom of it.

And more importantly, the dishes are authentically homestyle Thai, unlike those in most fancy-tiled and spotlight-lit fakes that you'll find at a stone's throw in malls and commercial lots across KL and PJ.

Boy, I'm so missing this place right now.

Chinese New Year Stories.

We all have our family traditions designed especially for the Chinese New Year. From the wearing of new clothes to usher in a prosperous new year, to the serving of tea to our parents (or you won't get your Ang Pow - red packet with money that signifies good fortune luck and promotes the sharing of wealth among family and friends), to the preparation of the reunion dinner by the eldest member of the family who volunteered to cook!

Every year, we'd look forward to the same few favourites, like the Puck Cheet Kai (Poached Chicken), and many other dishes, with recipes passed down by our mother, our mother's mother, and so on.

Another must-have as we celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year is the appetiser dish Yee Sang (Raw Fish Salad). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusheng

Some also call it Lo Hei (loosely translated as Prosperity Toss). And it is normally served on the 7th (of 15) day(s) of the Chinese New Year - that's the day known to us as Yan Yat (People's/Everybody's Birthday). But it is now commercially consumed almost one month before the festive season starts.

And it gets even more colourful - The Emperor's dish, or what the Chinese call it, Choy Kiok.

There's a story that comes with this one. Back in the olden China days, a Emperor returns victorious from one of his many battles, and demands for a feast. The Royal Chef was surprised by the sudden decision that he was caught without fresh supply of meat and vegetable in the palace kitchen.

So he had to think on his feet. His solution: Get Gai Choy (Mustard Greens), a vegetable that's difficult to stir fry and tasteless to eat on its own, throw it into the pot along with the leftovers from the night before – the roasted duck, the roasted pork leg, the mushrooms etc, then add in the tamarind peels (flavour enhancing) and dried chillies (appetising appeal).

The Emperor tasted it and, to the Royal Chef's relief, gave a standing ovation for the ingenuous dish. And that's how it came to be.

More New Year favourites? There's Tong Yuen. This is the same dessert we have during the Winter Solstice. It is glutinous rice balls with sesame or red bean paste fillings, served in sweet, ginger soup. The egg-like roundness of the glutinous rice balls signifies 'birth'.

In my mother's words: "We grow a year older with every bowl of Tong Yuen."

Last but not least, the batter-fried Nian Gao (Sticky New Year's Cake) – a 'bribe' that ensures the Kitchen God returns to heaven with a favourable annual report.

Or so the story goes.