I have been a chef for more than 30 years and been cooking since I was a little kid, bribed by my granny who was in some ‘mahjong’ gambling den. Win or lose, she would come home proclaiming she has won. And would take me out for late suppers in some street stalls.
So you now understand that like for every Malaysian, food became the centre which my life evolves and is a part of every stage of life… from waking up to night supper, from birth to death.
Even as a teenager, I would hunt for the best hawker food with my friends in every corner of the island of Penang, I guess you can say I practically live to eat, not eat to live.
I wrote my first Malaysian cookbook and named it “Blame It On Granny” a couple of years ago. Why “Blame It On Granny”? Because it was all her fault, she started it all with all her bribes in terms of extra pocket money and late night suppers. Anyway I tried hard to find a publisher for my book. Couldn’t find any publisher that even would bother to look at it. I can understand them, who am I? Nobody knows me! I am not a well known writer but just a normal “Joe” who like to pass down some recipes which I have learned from my aunties and granny.
But then in 2011, I had it published as “print on demand”. It felt so good holding that published book in my hand, you can imagine the grin on my face and see me jumping in joy. “YES!!!!! I did it.” The only setback for “print on demand” is that colour print is too expensive to really sell well. So now I have decided to make it into an ebook which is more affordable for everyone. Now I have 3 other books which are still in process, an asian vegetarian cookbook, a fusion cookbook on seafood and a healthy clean diet book. I have decided to publish them as ebooks and book-apps in the future.
I am now living in Stockholm but I can never forget my own heritage which is Penang in Malaysia. That is why I included some information about Malaysia and a Penang food guide on my site. I hope it will prove useful to anyone visiting Malaysia, if you are not so lucky at least you might get hungry! Most of all I want to do justice to the famous food paradise and heritage of Penang.
Hope you enjoy every topic covered on this site.
ISAAC LEE
Thank you for sharing your recipes. So good to see many Peranakan recipes.
July Croager, thx for you support and sharing the site and granny’s FB page to others. Happy cooking
From handphone. Good loooking chef…