Truth be told, growing up in Seremban, Dosai (aka Dosa) was never on my radar. (Though, in my defence, I can’t be the only Malaysian who’s all about roti canai when eating breakfast at a mamak stall.) Times have changed however, and we now eat dosai at home practically every day (by “we”, I […] The post Making Dosai at Home with a Thermomix: My Tips and Tricks first appeared on Jackie M. The post Making Dosai at Home with a Thermomix: My Tips and Tricks appeared first on Jackie M ..read more

A Cookbook for the Durian-Curious I get it: durian is divisive. Some people can’t get enough of its pungent aroma and creamy texture, while others run for the hills at the mere mention of it. But what if I told you there’s a middle ground? A way to enjoy the unique flavour of durian without […] The post The Durian Cookbook: Bridging the Gap Between Love and Hate first appeared on Jackie M. The post The Durian Cookbook: Bridging the Gap Between Love and Hate appeared first on Jackie M ..read more

A few weeks ago, I launched a new range of handcrafted curry pastes online, and I now finally have a chance to actually explain what they are and how to use them.  First of all though, a bit of background –  As many of you would know, I use to be the owner-cook of my namesake Malaysian restaurant, Jackie M, in Concord (Sydney). When I closed my restaurant to look after Noah (the doctors basically said life as I knew it was over, I’d have to stay home and look after him around the clock forever, blah blah), I converted some of the recipes from my restaurant into wet curry pastes and ..read more

This is a post covering some troubleshooting and tips for your next batch of homemade tau fu fah. It’s not a recipe post, since I’ve already previously shared the recipe: Here (making it from scratch) – https://jackiem.com.au/2019/07/24/how-to-make-tofu-pudding-taufu-fa/ and here (using the shortcut version) – https://jackiem.com.au/2022/05/11/how-to-make-easy-taufu-fah-sweet-tofu-pudding/ and since I don’t monetise the content on this site, I’m not that invested in writing the kind of 3000-word essays that permeate food blogs. This blog post follows on from the Live broadcast I did last week ..read more

Since Covid travel restrictions ended in 2022, Paul, Noah, and I have visited Malaysia five times. During some of these trips, we teamed up with our Masters of Malaysian Cuisine (MOMC) chefs and YouTube content creators like the Dodo Explorers and the Jetlag Warriors. Other times, it was just the three of us. We even joined an exclusive durian fam tour hosted by the Malaysian Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security – And created lots of content, including: The award-winning Durian Cookbook in collaboration with the Malaysian Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security Five series of Street ..read more

When I first came to Australia in 1984 I watched an Australian TV chef misconvey how to handle a basic Asian ingredient (rice vermicelli) on breakfast television. It made me so angry I swore off watching cooking shows, and the passage of time hasn’t really repaired my cynicism about TV chefs (I’ve never even watched my own cooking segments on TV).   All this is to say that I don’t have my finger on the pulse of who’s who in “celebrity chefdom”. However, there’s one name I do recognise – Martin Yan.  That is because Martin Yan predates my disillusionment with TV chefs; in fact ..read more

I’d always assumed high-powered gas stoves were my only option if I wanted to – 1) use my round-bottom traditional Chinese woks 2) generate good “wok hei”. That was before I met Kenneth Lim, the owner of Omnomnom Food Truck in Perth. Kenneth convinced old-school (behind-the-times?) me that chefs in China have long ago adopted concave induction stoves and that they can generate as much wok hei as any high-pressure gas stove I’ve ever used. So, after checking out my options online, I went ahead and bought the most powerful one I could find, that was also cheap enough (I paid AUD$195 for a 3500W ..read more

Plus – A Case Study Using My Easy Prawn and Pineapple Curry Recipe If you’re a Thermomix TM6 owner you’re likely familiar with Cookidoo – a platform where you can pick and choose out of thousands of recipes. You select what you want to cook, and it guides you step-by-step with preset temperatures, times and speeds.  But if you’re a Malaysian food enthusiast like me,  you might notice that many Malaysian recipes have yet to find their way onto the platform.  I have some 400 recipes on this website which I’m working on adapting for the Thermomix, but in the interim, one of my Mala ..read more

So, last week, one of my online students threw me a curveball — could I demonstrate how to use a Thermomix to cook non-Thermomix-specific recipes? Now, I have some 400 recipes on my website (the one and only jackiem.com.au) but most of them weren’t written for a Thermomix audience. I figured, why go back to the drawing board and reconstruct my previously-published “Easy Prawn and Pineapple Curry” recipe from scratch? Why not see if the much-hyped revolutionary A.I. tool ChatGPT can help, and do it all Live On Air? Maybe it’ll pull up rubbish (which it’s been known to do) and we can all have ..read more

Curious about whether I still do markets post-Covid lockdowns? The short answer is, yes I do. But before I get into what markets you can find me at, and what I now sell, here’s a bit of an update since I last published about my in-person (IRL) activities back in early 2020 (check it out here >> https://jackiem.com.au/2020/03/10/concord-hospital-markets-coronavirus-notice/) So yes, Covid-19 meant that Concord Hospital Market, which I used to attend weekly, had to shut down in March 2020. It didn’t resume for two and a half years, during which I’d gotten rid of most of my gear (including ..read more